Eros Element Read online

  Professor Bailey stopped by the laboratory door and raised his hand, his ear to the door. “I think the fighting is all above. I’m going to get my equipment and valise.”

  “Good idea. Mine is in my room below.” She turned to leave but didn’t want to go alone—who knew what clockwork horrors prowled around the airship?

  “We should stay together,” the professor said, and Iris turned back.

  “Then hurry.”

  She found herself clutching the pad of paper while he put on his goggles and carefully dismantled the equipment. Couldn’t he move faster? He’d packed everything except the copper globe when a dark shape crashed through the window. She shrieked, held the pad of paper as a shield, and backed into the wall. She peered over the papers to see the professor swing hard, sending the intruder and globe back through the window and off the end of the line.

  “My chamber!” he cried and reached toward the space where an empty rope swung in the breeze.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Iris gasped around the bitter cold air that came through the window and tried to freeze her lungs. She grabbed his arm and tugged him out of the room. He clutched his partially open valise with his other hand. Once in the corridor, she tried to get a look at him to see if he bled, and something warm seeped through her glove. However, the gas lights, which had the same structure as those on the train, had gone out, and they were in darkness.

  The escape compartments were at the back of the ship under Miss McTavish’s room, so she managed to grab her bag and stuff a few things from her trunk in it. She left the mostly shredded pad of papers there. This time Edward watched with a mix of unease and admiration at the economy of her movements and decisiveness. His face and hands burned, but he couldn’t look at them for fear of seeing he was more injured than he felt.

  Miss McTavish wet a towel and gestured for him to lead the way.

  The escape compartments were four-person boxes with two parachutes that would unfurl once the box was released from the bottom of the airship. From what Edward could recall, they worked most of the time. His stomach dropped in anticipation of that first lurch into free fall—he wanted to perform aetherics and physics experiments, not be one.

  Once they settled in and opened the shades to let some light in, Miss McTavish took out a pair of tweezers.

  “You have glass shards in your skin,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone Edward didn’t feel her statement warranted.

  “Good grief, woman, does nothing ruffle you?”

  She looked away, and he thought light sparkled off something wet on her face. “A few things do.”

  “I apologize, I didn’t mean to pry. I am in your capable hands.”

  It took him a few tries to figure out whether he needed to watch her careful ministrations or look through the crack in the blinds to see how the fighting fared. He still couldn’t accept they were under attack—why, if the Clockwork Guild wanted the information they were after, would they try to kill them? It didn’t make sense. Was the Guild after Cobb?

  “There,” Miss McTavish said, removing the last of the shards. As she went, she bandaged his hands, so now he felt like the mummy he’d seen a picture of. “I’m afraid I can’t do much for your face, but at least the cuts are clean. We need to get you to a doctor. You might need stitches in a few of them, but you’re lucky you were wearing your goggles.”

  “Stitches.” Edward slumped back, dizzy. “This is not how I envisioned this journey going.” Then he remembered the manners his mother drilled into him. “But I thank you, Miss McTavish. You have saved me from grave injury, if not from death. I would not have been able to attend to my own injuries.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said. After a few seconds, she murmured, “And call me Iris.”

  “I’m Edward.” He leaned his head back against the bulwark and tried to make it stop spinning, but he felt every sway of the ship. A lurch brought his eyes open, and at first he panicked at the dark figure who had dropped into the compartment with them. He reached for his valise. He’d sacrifice the glass globe to protect himself and Miss McTavish—Iris, why did she have to have a flower name?—but his bandaged hands couldn’t manage the zipper.

  “What in blazes happened to the two of you?” Johann said and put his violin case on one of the pillows. “Edward, you look like a mummy, and Miss McTavish, you’re covered in blood.”

  Edward and Iris exchanged guilty glances. “We didn’t come straight here,” he admitted. “We gathered some things first.”

  “Idiots,” Johann growled. “Cobb’s men have the upper hand, but the airship is losing altitude. The captain has recommended we depart before we get too low for the parachute to open. If they survive, they’ll find us and pick us up.”

  “You got your violin,” Edward argued.

  “Because it was right there in the lounge. I grabbed it on the way out.” He moved aside, and Marie dropped in beside him.

  “Let’s go, mates,” she said. Her eyes sparkled, and she held the steam rifle. She reached above them, closed and secured the hatch, and pulled the release lever. They dropped into the void below.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Iris clutches Edward’s arm as they fall. They wait for the lurch that will tell them the parachute has deployed, but each second ticks by without the jerk that will no doubt be painful, particularly since their velocity increases. The towel she used to dab his wounds floats between her and Bledsoe like a bloody surrender flag to gravity and its inevitable effects.

  “I need to pull the emergency cords!” Marie shouts. She, too, floats, and her hands scrabble for something on the ceiling. Or is it the floor? Then she pulls, Iris’s neck snaps back, and everything goes black…

  Iris clutches Edward’s arm and blinks away from the light in her eyes. Where is it coming from? The blinds in the escape compartment are closed, aren’t they? She tries to move her head but can’t. What is this? Is she paralyzed?

  Somewhere in the North of France, 11 June 1870

  “Hold her, Patrick.” The voice managed to be soothing in spite of its flat accent.

  Another American? Did we float that far afield?

  “I’m trying, but it’s not easy with her latched on to my jacket.” Now this voice was Irish, another young man, and Iris’s awareness turned to her fingers, which were indeed clutched around brawny arms inside a rough cloth. She let go, but now large hands closed around her upper arms.

  “Easy there, lass,” the Irishman said.

  Iris managed to pry her eyes open. The light that tried to spear them disappeared. She found herself looking at two faces, one caramel brown with wavy black hair and soft gray eyes, and as if in intentional contrast, another with green eyes and flaming red hair and beard. Their ages matched their voices, probably about the same as Edward and his friend.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. She struggled to sit, but the redheaded man held her pinned to the straw mattress. “Where am I? Why are you holding me down? Unhand me immediately.”

  “He’ll let you go if you promise not to thrash around,” the darker of the two said. “I’m Doctor Chadwick Radcliffe. This is my friend Patrick O’Connell.”

  “I suppose I should be relieved you’re a doctor, but how do I know you’re telling me the truth?” Iris narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re American, he’s Irish, and as far as I can recall, we’re in France. None of this makes any sense.”

  “Will you or won’t you cooperate?” Doctor Radcliffe asked. “I can’t stay long with you. One of your companions looks like he went through a glass window. I started with you because you have blood on your dress, and I feared you might have injuries I couldn’t see.”

  “Edward.” Iris tried to rise again but struggled against the restraint. “All right, I promise to stay calm. Please release me.”

  The Irishman, whose large hands might as well have been made of iron, let her go, a
nd he helped her to a sitting position. Her fingers confirmed she lay on a straw-filled mattress, and worse, her bodice had been unlaced and her skirt untied. She clutched her clothing around her. Dear god, I hope my virginity is intact. She shifted her weight and couldn’t detect anything but an urge to urinate, nothing like the sensations her mother’s ring had produced. A shadow moved in the corner of the room, and Iris was relieved to see Marie.

  The two men who regarded her didn’t seem to her to be rapists, although she wasn’t sure what one would look like. “My traveling companions?” she asked. “Is everyone…?” She couldn’t finish the words. Grief swelled from the place it typically hid, and the men across from her blurred into a distorted image of light and dark. Hope and despair.

  “Your maid is unhurt, as is the musician. We’ve already talked to him. As for the other one, I have to wait and see. He has not yet woken, and I don’t have all the amenities of a hospital to do a full exam.”

  His questioning look invited Iris to elaborate, but she didn’t accept the invitation. “Can I see him?” she asked.

  “In a moment. Your maid can help you reassemble yourself. I apologize, but your well-being was my concern. Please believe that.”

  Iris nodded. He asked her a few more questions, mostly about headache, blurred vision, and other signs she might have a head injury, but soon seemed satisfied she was generally unharmed.

  While the doctor gathered his things, she looked around and found she was reclined on a bed in a room with wooden walls. The furnishings told her it must be some sort of inn, and she hoped there was a water closet ensuite. Seeing her valise relieved her, as did feeling in her pocket for the gold case and finding it there. She guessed she wouldn’t be lucky enough for Bledsoe to have lost her telegram in the crash.

  Once the doctor and his companion left, Marie rushed to the side of the bed and drew up short. “Oh, Miss McTavish, I’m so happy you’re unharmed!”

  Iris wondered if Marie had thought about embracing her. That would have been awkward. “What happened?” Iris maneuvered to sit on the side of the bed and paused to allow the room to stop tilting.

  “I got the parachute to deploy on one side of the compartment, but the other one didn’t open when it should. You and the professor knocked together and were on the side that hit first with us atop you—we couldn’t help it. And we hit hard.”

  Iris tested her limbs and found she could move everything, but not comfortably. “I feel sore all over.”

  “Not surprising. You might have some bruised ribs and other things.”

  Marie helped Iris to stand and use the water closet. Afterward, Iris walked to the dresser and leaned with her hands supporting her while Marie reassembled her clothing around her. She sat on the bed while Marie did her hair.

  “What happened to the airship?” she asked.

  A warm droplet plopped on Iris’s head. “I don’t know.” Marie paused in her brushing to sniffle and wipe her cheeks. “It might have gone down. When the Clockworks attacked, the captain turned the ship back out over the water because the Guild’s vehicles don’t have the range the airship does. It’s standard procedure. But everything happened so fast.”

  “We’re lucky we didn’t hit the water.” Iris suppressed a shudder at the thought of landing unconscious in the English Channel. It didn’t matter she wouldn’t have known she was drowning—it would have happened, and she would have missed out on…what? She didn’t want to marry—her mother had taught her by inadvertent example how that wasn’t a good option.

  I would have missed out on the chance to be a great archaeologist like my father.

  With her hair and clothing arranged somewhat—there was nothing she could do about the bloodstains on her jacket and skirt, and her two other dresses shared the airship’s dubious fate—Iris leaned on Marie and followed her into the hall. She saw they were, indeed, in an inn.

  “I have some money,” she whispered, “but I don’t know if I can pay for all of us to stay here.”

  “Not to worry,” Marie murmured back. “I’ll take care of it. Mister Cobb set me up in England in case something happened and we got separated.”

  They walked to the room next door, where they found Doctor Radcliffe and Mister O’Connell standing by Edward’s bed. The cuts stood out against his face, which appeared extra pale beneath the bandage on his head, and he moaned.

  “Perhaps you can help calm him, Miss?” the doctor asked.

  “I’ll try.” Iris sat beside Edward and took one of his bandaged hands. “Edward? It’s me, Iris. I helped you with your hands and face, remember?”

  “No, no flowers,” he murmured and turned his head. “Flowers are trouble. I want ivy.”

  “Is Ivy another one of his, er, friends?” asked the Irishman.

  “No,” Iris said in her best don’t be inappropriate tone. “It’s the plant. It’s hard to explain. He’s…quirky.”

  “My copper globe,” Edward mumbled. “Out the window, hanging like a red moon.”

  Doctor Radcliffe coughed, and Iris suspected he hid a laugh. “And apparently he’s somewhat poetic.”

  “Hardly,” she said. “He’s a scientist.” She pressed her lips together and sucked them between her teeth before she said anymore. These gentlemen had helped her, but she didn’t trust them.

  Edward sighed, turned on his side, and let out a snore.

  “We should let him rest,” Iris said and stood.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Doctor Radcliffe said with a smile.

  “I like a woman who can take charge,” Mister O’Connell agreed and followed Iris, Marie, and the doctor out of the room. They met Johann Bledsoe in the hallway. He had a bandage over one eyebrow and walked with a slight limp but otherwise appeared unharmed.

  “How is he?” he asked. “Any changes?”

  “This young lady got him to speak some,” Doctor Radcliffe said, “but it was mostly gibberish. I hope it’s from his injured body, not a fractured mind.”

  The glare Iris had prepared for Bledsoe turned into a look of worry they exchanged.

  “Does he have a history of neurosis?” the doctor asked. Iris glanced at Bledsoe, who shook his head. “Look,” the doctor continued, “I understand you don’t know me, and the circumstances are unusual, but if you want me to care for him, I need to know about him.”

  A short bald man wearing an apron approached them from the stairs at the end of the hall. “Est-ce que l’homme est dangereux?”

  “No, he’s not dangerous,” Marie said. “He’s hurt and resting.”

  “Oui, mademoiselle. Le dîner est servi.”

  “He says dinner’s ready,” Marie told Iris.

  “I had basic French at school,” Iris told her and felt like a snob. Which made her acknowledge the upper class assumptions behind her next thought, which was how did an American maid know French?

  “He understands English but doesn’t speak it very much,” Marie continued, apparently undeterred. “His wife, who normally handles their English-speaking guests, is laid up with a back injury. Doctor Radcliffe has been taking care of her in exchange for room and board for him and Mister O’Connell.”

  “You’ve gathered a lot of information in a few hours.”

  “Oh no, Miss,” Marie said. “You were unconscious for a day. It’s now Saturday evening.”

  “Saturday?” Iris didn’t want to think about that now. What condition must Edward be in if he was asleep after so long? What if he had some sort of infection from his wounds? Shouldn’t the doctor be doing more?

  Iris decided she didn’t want to get all her information secondhand from Marie, whom she didn’t trust, either. Cobb had given her money? Had Iris accepting the maid into her service been assumed? She moved ahead, happy that the stiffness seemed to subside, and caught Doctor Radcliffe as he descended the stairs.

  “What brings you and Mist
er O’Connell to France? We are in France, right?” Iris thought she’d asked Marie, but she couldn’t remember.

  “Yes, we’re in the northern part of the country, not too far from the Channel,” he said. “As for why we’re here, we’re stuck. We were returning from visiting a friend in Vienna when we got sidetracked by the fighting along the French-German border and had to go through the Netherlands.”

  “Then the bastards robbed us. Pardon, Miss,” Mister O’Connell said. “Hence why we’re stuck here. Thankfully the Missus needed the doctor.”

  “What about your friend in Vienna?” Iris asked. “Surely you could write him, and he could send you some money.”

  “Ah, the war has disrupted the tube system here,” Radcliffe said, but he didn’t meet Iris’s eyes before he gestured for her to precede her into the dining room.

  Of course he has something to hide. They all do. She wondered about the nature of the friend in Vienna or if there was one.

  They entered a comfortable dining room, where the innkeeper and a maid served them a simple country dinner of roast chicken, vegetables and crusty white bread Iris had to stop herself from eating most of. She found herself to be quite hungry, which made sense after her long nap.

  Too exhausted to contribute much to the conversation, which all seemed to be about the fuss on the French-Prussian border, Iris watched Marie, who ate with the guests in spite of her obvious service status, and who exchanged frequent looks with the innkeeper. What sort of strange place was France? Iris wondered how Marie was “paying” for their rooms, and the thought made her lose interest in the sorbet that had been served for dessert. As soon as she was able, she excused herself and slipped back upstairs.

  Iris paused in front of Edward’s door. The invitation to call her by her first name had slipped out in the escape capsule, and he perhaps had been in too much pain to recognize he’d reciprocated. It made for an awkward situation. Should she pretend it never happened? They were neither affianced nor closely related, but he had saved her from grave injury or worse at the hands of the clockwork guildsman. And they had shared some intimate moments when she pulled the glass shards from his skin and bandaged his wounds. They’d each trusted the other with their lives, which was more than many married couples Iris knew.