A Riveting Affair (Entangled Ever After) Read online

  That brief expression of intrigue, of excitement in his eyes when she had mentioned the device to him, gave her hope. Some part of him was still interested, and if she could persuade him to help her build her father’s device, she could remain as his assistant. It wasn’t, of course, a permanent solution to her problems, but it would give her a place to stay and a task to perform until she could determine her next course of action.

  She turned the plan over in her mind, examining its many flaws. She very well might be unable to persuade him, of course, and she had to admit that she hardly knew the surly man who had stood across from her tonight to feel certain of success. But the boy he had once been would have been utterly unable to resist the lure of the device, and her intuition told her that boy still existed somewhere beneath the scarred, angry facade.

  And she would find him.

  Rolling over again, trying to warm herself by rubbing her hands over her arms, she sneezed. At the same moment, something skittered across the floor, and she shuddered.

  Was it the mice? She hated mice. Or was it that large furry animal that had darted past her into the house? Surely it wouldn’t have made its way up four flights of stairs?

  She hoped it hadn’t been a rat.

  The place was a disgrace. If she intended to stay here to build her father’s device, she would have to see to it that the rooms were properly cleaned and heated.

  She fell asleep composing a list of the things she would need to do to make the house habitable again. In the back of her mind, she wondered how long it would take Sebastian Cavendish to realize she had no intention of leaving, and what he might try to do when he found out.

  …

  Rose came awake in the middle of the night to the sound of hoarse shouts coming from down the hall. She sat up on the hard settee and gazed blearily around the chamber, which was visibly filthy even by moonlight.

  The noise had to be coming from Sebastian’s room, since Greaves likely lived in the servants’ quarters. She rose and hurried out the door and down the hall, the unintelligible cries guiding her. What was happening? Was he hurt or ill? She all but broke into a run, kicking up dust that choked her lungs, and threw open the door.

  He lay in his massive bed. Sheets twisted around his waist and legs, and he thrashed his arms as he cried out. His naked torso was damp, as were the locks of dark hair that clung to his forehead and temple.

  With a shock, she noticed what she hadn’t seen earlier that evening, when he was still fully dressed; his entire left leg was hideously crossed with violent , puckering scars. In places, the muscles were twisted and shrunken.

  Her heart clenched, but when he jerked and twisted again, she made herself act.

  She knew what to do. She had nursed enough soldiers during and after the war to comprehend what was happening. She crossed the length of the room to his bedside, then hesitated.

  A man caught in a war nightmare recognized no one. Once, trying to awaken an airship lieutenant dreaming of battle and death, she had found herself thrown halfway across the hospital ward when he had mistaken her for some nameless, faceless enemy.

  She would remain safely out of Sebastian’s reach, she decided, and employed her firmest tone.

  “Mr. Cavendish,” she said. “Wake up. Immediately. You are having a nightmare.”

  He shifted uneasily in his bed, murmuring something in a low voice, but didn’t waken.

  For a moment, she maintained her safe distance from the bed, wondering how best to proceed. She tried saying his name several times more, each time in progressively louder accents. The attempts failed, however, and she found herself looking around for something with which she might rouse him.

  When he cried out again, however, she made up her mind. She couldn’t endure to watch this obvious suffering a moment longer.

  Drawing a deep breath, she leaned over him to shake his shoulders.

  He moved so suddenly that though she was prepared for a reaction, she didn’t step aside quickly enough. His hand shot out, grasping her wrist in a powerful grip. When his eyes opened, they were the eyes of an animal, feral and savage.

  “Mr. Cavendish!” she said.

  He didn’t seem to hear her. Between one heartbeat and the next, she found herself flat on the bed beneath him, his body pressing hard against hers, his arm heavy against her throat. The heavy weight of his leg pressed painfully against her calf.

  She gasped, choking for air, and at last he seemed to recognize her. He released her immediately and jerked away. Reaching for a walking stick leaning against the wall nearby, he rolled off the bed to stagger to his feet, taking the sheet with him. In the moonlight, the material was very white against his swarthy skin.

  Her eyes widened.

  He had been sleeping naked.

  Rose had seen naked men before. Dozens of them. Possibly hundreds. She had bathed them and dressed them and changed their bandages.

  She really ought not find this man’s nude form so fascinating.

  She tore her gaze away.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” He staggered to the window, leaning heavily against the cane, his left leg obviously too weak to carry his weight. Since he hadn’t been carrying a cane earlier, she wondered if he usually wore a leg brace.

  “I was trying to wake you up,” she said, taking a deep, steadying breath to calm the pounding of her heart. She sat up cautiously. “You were having a nightmare.”

  He moved painfully to the basin on the far side of the room and splashed water on his face.

  “Tell me about it,” she said.

  He was silent for a long moment, leaning over the basin, the damp ends of his hair dripping water.

  Rose said, “It helps, you know. To talk about it.”

  He turned to look at her. Then he said, his voice like ice, “If you don’t wish to spend the duration of the night in that bed with me, Miss Verney, you had better go now.”

  Her fingers tightened convulsively on the blanket at the unmistakable sexual threat in his voice. But when she slid off the bed, she forced her voice to be very calm.

  “Good night, Mr. Cavendish.”

  And left, shutting the door very softly behind her.

  …

  When Rose woke the next morning, it took her a moment to remember again where she was. She lay perfectly still and stared at the beautiful moldings shaped like acanthus leaves overhead. Not the plain, flat ceiling of her little white bedroom at Louisa’s house.

  Then she remembered slipping out of Jenny’s house early in the morning with her borrowed valise and her father’s blueprints, the train ride to the city, the confusion of trying to find Sebastian’s house, and then Sebastian himself, scarred and inscrutable. Kissing her in his bedroom. Telling her that he no longer built machines.

  She sat up in a great puff of dust. Sebastian Cavendish might not know it, but he was going to build this machine with her.

  However, her first order of business, before she even sought out the laboratory in the house, was to find food. Her stomach growled, and she was increasingly conscious that her last meal had been the bread and cheese she’d brought from Jenny’s home and eaten on the train.

  Since she had slept in her borrowed traveling dress, she did her best to shake the dust and wrinkles from her skirt, and then set out to explore.

  The halls were silent and deserted, and it was easy to imagine that she was the only person in it. She would have to find the kitchen first. Where would it be?

  She had never been in a mansion of this size and grandeur before, but she suspected that the kitchen would be tucked discreetly out of sight. Wandering through the main house would be a waste of time.

  She finally found a door that led to the servants’ stairs, and nearly broke her neck making her way down the long, narrow flight. On the ground floor, she came to a labyrinth of rooms that eventually led her to the kitchen.

  It was a large, vaulted room with a range the size of a small airship, a kitchen table larger than
a tennis court, and an entire wall of shelves stacked with gleaming pewter and copper.

  Here too, however, the neglect and disrepair that characterized the rest of the house was in evidence. The gray morning light streaming in through the window revealed a pigsty. No fire burned in the grate. Dust and detritus mingled on the floor. Dirty dishes and pots lay piled on a small wooden side table.

  And there, curled up amongst the ashes, was a small gray cat with white socks. Did he belong to the house? Or had he simply followed her through the door last night? The butler had seemed unconcerned by its appearance, but perhaps he was simply accustomed to various small, furry animals taking up residence in the house.

  “Good morning,” Rose said gravely.

  The cat mewed plaintively. Rose surveyed the poorly stocked pantry and found several dozen eggs, still fresh, as well as a large rasher of bacon. Further rummaging produced flour, butter, and milk, all of which she placed on the kitchen table.

  On the far side of the room, she found the scullery through a small door. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, and then she almost gasped.

  The room was full of machines.

  They must have been of Sebastian’s own invention, for she had certainly never seen the like of such automatons before. Many she couldn’t even identify, though she could guess the purpose of others: a dishwashing machine that could stand over the sink; a long, thin, arm-like device with a large basket that must stack dishes into cupboards; box-like mechanical brooms and mops that could clean the floors on their own.

  It took her several tries to get one of the clockwork brooms to work. She located a maintenance cupboard and greased and oiled its cogs and gears first, then fiddled with its many buttons. When it slowly sputtered to life at last, she turned on the sink and set the dishwashing automaton to work as well.

  She didn’t dare experiment with any of the cooking robots, however, and set about making the food herself, lighting a fire for the stove to heat. Within minutes she had bacon and eggs sizzling over the fire.

  As she cooked, she kept an eye on the clockwork servants. It was clear no one had used any of these machines in a very long time, but why? With so many clever automatons, it would be possible for one, or at most two, people to run an extremely effective and efficient kitchen.

  She had poured the cat a saucer of cream and was sitting down to her own breakfast when the butler appeared in the doorway. He cast a quick, horrified gaze at the various machines working to clean the kitchen, then managed to school his features into their usual inscrutable expression.

  “Good morning, miss. A coupe is awaiting you outside.”

  “You may send it away.” Rose continued to eat. “I won’t be needing it today.”

  There was a long moment of silence, during which Greaves couldn’t seem to keep his gaze from flicking once again to the machines. Then he gave a tiny cough. “I beg your pardon, miss, but Mr. Cavendish gave me explicit instructions last night to ensure that you departed this morning.”

  “Well, I will not be departing, and you may tell Mr. Cavendish so,” Rose said.

  Greaves looked, if possible, even more inscrutable.

  Rose raised her eyebrows haughtily. “If you do not care to tell Mr. Cavendish so, I will be happy to do it as soon as I have finished my breakfast,” she said, though the idea made her stomach clench briefly with nerves. “By the way, there are extra eggs and bacon on the stove. “

  “Miss?”

  “You may join me for breakfast, if you like,” Rose said. She set her tea down. “I also made enough for Mr. Cavendish, if he is awake.”

  “Mr. Cavendish, ah, never rises before noon.” His gaze flickered now to the stove top, and he couldn’t keep the longing from his expression. His nose quivered like a patrician rabbit’s. She thought it likely that it had been a long time since he had eaten food prepared by a competent cook.

  Rose went to the stove and filled a plate with food, which she set down, along with silverware, at the seat across from her. After another moment’s hesitation, during which he was clearly torn between his desire to eat and his perception of his august station, Greaves pulled back the chair and sat.

  “Thank you, miss.” He picked up his fork.

  “Certainly.” Rose pointed to the content animal now purring over its near-empty saucer of cream. “Does that cat belong to this house?”

  A look of horrified fascination crossed Greaves’s features. “Certainly not.”

  “Well, he will remain here as well,” she said. “This place is alive with mice, and no automaton can match a cat at mousing. I take it that there is no cook here?”

  “No, miss.”

  “Is there any other staff in the house besides you?”

  “No.”

  “I see. Well, that ought not signify. I noticed many machines in the scullery.” She gestured toward the clockwork broom now vigorously sweeping the floor, closely followed by a device that scrubbed at the cobblestones. “They ought to be able to attend to the housework. I noticed several automaton cooks. I presume they still work?”

  “Mr. Cavendish does not usually, ah, permit the use of any of his automatons,” Greaves said. The food on his plate was disappearing rapidly. “In fact, these had better be shut off and removed back to the scullery as soon as possible.”

  “Well, I’m not cleaning this kitchen myself,” Rose said. “Unless you would care to do the scrubbing, the automatons will have to stay.”

  Greaves coughed again. “Mr. Cavendish will not be pleased. The last time I turned on a clockwork servant, he threw it down the staircase.”

  “Where, no doubt, its pieces still remain, gathering dust,” Rose said, raising an eyebrow. The information didn’t surprise her. “However, I will be living here as well, and I refuse to tolerate the dust and dirt. The place is a disgrace. You will round up all the clockwork servants you can find, and you will set them to work immediately. If Mr. Cavendish raises a fuss, you may refer him to me.”

  “I… I beg your pardon, miss?”

  Rose leaned forward, wondering if the old man was going deaf. “I said,” she enunciated, “I refuse to live in a pigsty. As I will be living here for the foreseeable future, and as neither you nor I will be cleaning this place manually, you will need to see to it that all the clockwork servants are put to use.” She folded her hands together as she leaned forward. “Greaves, I intend to see to it that Mr. Cavendish helps me finish building my father’s teleportation device. I will not permit anything to stand in my way. Not Mr. Cavendish’s own pigheadedness, not the appalling state of this house, not the lack of staff. Do you understand me?”

  Greaves straightened in his seat. He had a gleam in his eye that told her he approved of her plan. “Perfectly, miss.”

  “One more question, Greaves,” she said. “Where is Mr. Cavendish’s laboratory?”

  “He had it removed,” Greaves said. “It used to be in the central courtyard, which are now the rose gardens. However, I took the liberty of bringing all of Mr. Cavendish’s equipment and tools up to the fifth floor.”

  “Why didn’t he order the machines and laboratory destroyed entirely?”

  Greaves blinked. “I haven’t the faintest notion,” he said.

  With the cat following closely at her heels, Rose found without difficulty the room in which Greaves had stored the contents of Sebastian’s laboratory.

  As soon as Rose pushed the door open, the cat immediately darted forward, seeking out mice. Rose ignored it and made her way to the windows, picking a path through the debris with care, and then drew back the curtains so that pale winter sunlight spilled into the room. It was the largest chamber on the fifth floor, and judging from the cradle and broken rocking horse in one corner, it might have once been a nursery.

  The bulk of the room’s contents appeared to have once belonged to the laboratory. For a moment, Rose gazed at the abandoned accoutrements of invention: heavy leather aprons, brass goggles, boxes full of tangled wire a
nd glass beakers. There were broken pieces of machinery, a frayed basket that looked as though it might have belonged to a hot air balloon, wings of various shapes and designs.

  After a moment, she made her way slowly through the room, sidestepping workbenches and tools and the hundreds of leather-bound books, stacked precariously into towers. The heel of her shoe caught in a loose floor board, and she staggered a little, knocking over the nearest stack of books. It crashed to the floor, raising a cloud of dust and sending spiders scurrying in the opposite direction.

  Her heart pounded.

  Then, in the far corner of the room, she saw them: row upon row of clockwork servants. Like everything else, they were covered in dust and cobwebs, but they were unmistakably a domestic army, bearing brooms and dusters and mops, ready to work after years of disuse.

  Rose lifted her skirts to her ankle, noting her gown might never recover from this foray into Sebastian Cavendish’s mansion, and climbed over several work benches to reach the clockwork servants.

  She examined the machines one by one. Several she couldn’t identify, but their purposes were mostly evident. On the back of each one was a steel hook with a wheel that spun just under the curve.

  It took her a moment to understand the purpose of the hooks. Then, with dawning wonder and admiration at the cleverness of the design, she realized that these hooks must attach to the banisters of the servants’ stairs, allowing each automaton to move easily between floors.

  She spent the morning cleaning and oiling the clockwork servants, and then sent them off, one by one, pushing them out into the corridor and watching as they obediently swept up the debris, cleared away dust, and shook out the curtains in the halls. She paused only to sneeze several times in rapid succession.

  When she had released all but three malfunctioning automatons into the house, Rose turned back to the room. It would do for a laboratory, she decided. It certainly had enough space and light.

  Though she intended for the clockwork servants to do much of the cleaning, she would have to sort through the debris herself. She certainly couldn’t depend upon a machine to separate the still-useful and usable parts and tools from the junk.