A Riveting Affair (Entangled Ever After) Page 6

  Working with him was completely unlike working with her father. He had always been slow, thoughtful, methodical, eager to discuss his theories with her and to hear her thoughts on his ideas.

  Sebastian, however, was apparently not accustomed to working with an assistant. He was brusque and impatient, one moment barking out commands and demanding that tools or materials be brought to him immediately, and then ignoring her for hours or even days on end as he worked out an equation or crossed and re-crossed the various wires in the machine.

  He took offense at her suggestions, and they had several shouting matches over the types of materials to be used for various aspects of the machine, the calculations for phaser analysis of the electrical circuits, and the accuracy of the formulas that Sebastian developed.

  “Logically sound?” he shouted, one snowy November afternoon as she questioned a series of equations he had scribbled onto a slip of foolscap. His scarred face contorted with indignation. “Logically sound? That is the most logically sound piece of mathematics you will ever see in your life, you disrespectful piece of baggage—”

  He broke off as Rose burst into giggles. After a moment, a reluctant smile curved his mouth as well.

  “Sir, please consider that the signals from the electrical currents will vary periodically over time, and they will therefore be a combination of sine and cosine functions.”

  “So you believe that Euler equations would better represent the physics taking place in this portion of the device?” He frowned, scribbled a few lines onto his notebook. “Hmm.”

  His ears, Rose noted with great interest, had gone somewhat red, though he never did admit that she had been right.

  When Rose wasn’t helping Sebastian in the laboratory, she read, wrote letters to Jenny, and continued to oversee the restoration of Cavendish House to its former grandeur. After the cleaning robots had cleared out the worst of the debris and conducted an initial cleaning, she consulted with Greaves on the arduous task of making the mansion the showplace it had once been.

  Though Rose’s father had been a professor of mathematics, her mother had been a classical scholar who had instilled in her daughter an appreciation of the graceful and the beautiful. Both could be found in abundance at Cavendish House, buried beneath the years of dust, but Rose recognized each neglected piece for what it was: the Chippendale furniture that filled the library; the Aubusson rugs that covered the floors from wall to wall; the marble sculptures, which, Greaves told her, Sebastian’s great-great-grandfather had brought back with him from Italy after his Grand Tour.

  This project didn’t interest Sebastian in the least. “Do what you will,” he told Rose briefly, when she informed him her plans and the money she would require. “Greaves has a free reign with the accounts.”

  Though she had expected it, Sebastian’s indifference toward Cavendish House, his birthplace and the home of his childhood, puzzled Rose deeply. She believed he had allowed the place to fall to wreck and ruin not because he lacked money, but for some other, more complex reason that she couldn’t divine.

  Fortunately, Greaves was as staunch an ally as she might have wished for in this matter. Together, they drew back the curtains to the light, brought roses from the central courtyard into the rest of the house, polished the silver the machines couldn’t be trusted to handle, and washed the chandeliers together by hand in the kitchen sink.

  Day by day, the house grew more beautiful. The halls were once again filled with light. Portraits hung from the walls, vibrant with color. The little clockwork servants hummed cheerfully as they completed their tasks.

  …

  To Sebastian, the months after Rose came to Cavendish felt as though he had returned to the land of his youth, to a time before the war, when he was at university and had believed all-consumingly in science, the good in human nature, and his own limitless future.

  The nightmares came less often now. When they did, he no longer woke alone in the night, shaking and sweating, the screams of dying men and horses still echoing in his ears. Rose always seemed to know when he was dreaming and appeared in the darkness carrying a lamp, banishing the shadows that had always seemed so close to pouncing and devouring him.

  Instead, he lay awake through the endless hours of the night, his body burning with desire, and thought about Rose asleep on the floor above him, her golden hair spread on the pillows.

  He wanted her.

  It wasn’t only her beauty, though she was so beautiful that sometimes it hurt to look at her for very long. It was that she seemed to understand him in ways no one, not even her father, ever had before.

  And she made him laugh again. He, who hadn’t laughed in so long that he thought he had forgotten how. One evening, making his way past a small battalion of automatons cleaning the hall, he saw that she had painted faces onto all of them—and the clockwork butler wore Greaves’ haughty expression.

  In the laboratory, she was a brilliant partner and worthy adversary. He had never liked being disturbed while working, but to his surprise, he now far preferred it with her at his side. Her agile mind seemed to stimulate his. She seldom accepted his judgments and decisions blindly, challenging him each step of the way.

  If he had ever known women more beautiful than she, he couldn’t recall their faces. If he had ever known women more intelligent, he had long ago forgotten their names. And he knew with absolute certainty that he had never known a woman he desired more.

  But he couldn’t have her, couldn’t touch her, couldn’t love her. He had relinquished any chance of that years ago. It wasn’t only that she was her father’s daughter—the daughter of the man who had once saved his life, or at least his soul. It was that he knew he could never touch her with his murderer’s hands, with hands that had built machines that had destroyed so many lives.

  But as the days passed, and then the weeks, he felt himself turning more and more toward her, much as his roses turned to the light.

  …

  At dinner one night in late November, after a day spent most enjoyably making mice disintegrate and reappear within the machine, Sebastian examined Rose from across the table and said, “You have the ugliest clothes in the world, Miss Verney.”

  She glanced down at her navy blue wool dress. It was old-fashioned, high-necked, and ill-fitting. Sebastian was right. It was very ugly.

  She shrugged. “My dresses used to belong to Jenny’s mother. It was kind of her to lend them to me. I don’t mind.”

  “I mind,” Sebastian said. “I’m the one who has to look at your hideous dresses every day.”

  Rose raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry that my clothing offends you, but I haven’t the funds to buy anything new.”

  He opened his mouth to respond, but before he could say anything, a small clockwork footman hobbled down the courtyard steps and presented her with a letter. She accepted it with some surprise. She recognized Jenny’s slanting handwriting, but Rose had just received a letter from her friend the day before. Why was Jenny writing to her again so soon? Had something terrible happened in New Haven? Her fingers trembling, she tore the envelope open.

  My dear Rose, I know I wrote only yesterday, but I have some unfortunate news.

  Louisa knows that you are in New York. She bullied the ticket master at the train station into telling her you purchased fare to the city. She has not yet lost hope that you can be recovered and returned home without scandal. To that end, she has thus far managed to keep your disappearance a secret, telling everyone that you are simply visiting your mother’s people in Philadelphia.

  However, even now she is trying to persuade poor George to fetch you. Fortunately, he is reluctant to leave his work and his many dead fish and respiring beet roots, but I do not think that he will be able to stand firm against Louisa for long. I thought you ought to be warned.

  I will of course write to you immediately if I receive news that poor George is coming after you.

  Yours with love,

  Jenny

  R
ose reread the letter several times before folding it up. The steak au poivre, which had smelled so meltingly delicious just a few moments before, now turned her stomach.

  From across the table, Sebastian watched her with a guarded expression.

  “Something important?” he asked.

  She shook her head and forced herself to smile. “Just news of home,” she said, but there must have been something in her voice that alerted him to trouble, for he reached out and picked up Jenny’s letter.

  “Mr. Cavendish!” Rose tried to snatch the letter back but he had already unfolded it and taken in the contents with a single glance.

  “Your sister doesn’t know you are here?”

  “No,” she said morosely. She may as well confess the whole truth. “I ran away.”

  The corner of his mouth curved. “You ran away?”

  “I crawled out of my bedroom window one night, and my friend Jenny Dean—she was Reverend Morley’s daughter, but she married Dr. Laurence Dean two years ago—hid me in her house for two days, until I could sell my mother’s brooch to buy a train ticket. Then she lent me a valise and three dresses, and drove me to the station.”

  Sebastian shook his head. “Once you had made up your mind that you were going to complete your father’s teleportation device, I never stood a chance of getting rid of you. Did I?”

  Rose leaned her head back against her chair and smiled ruefully at him. “No,” she said. “You didn’t.”

  “But now your sister has guessed your whereabouts and she is sending someone named Poor George to fetch you.”

  “Jenny’s right.” She suppressed a sigh. “He can’t hold out against Louisa.”

  No one could ever hold out for long against Louisa. Her own husband, a professor of Classics, had only found himself married to her because she had decided that it was time for her to marry.

  Then she looked at Sebastian and thought, you could.

  Even Louisa’s endless nagging would be no match against this man’s iron will.

  “Is he a member of your family?” he asked.

  “No.” She couldn’t keep the gloominess out of her tone. “Dr. George Wethersby-Pooley. He’s in the natural science department. Louisa wants me to marry him.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Sebastian said, “George Wethersby-Pooley?”

  The incredulity in his voice made Rose look up. “You know him?”

  “Yes. We attended the same preparatory school, though he was a few years behind me. He was always sniveling and being bullied and hiding in closets. Louisa wants you to marry him? She can’t be serious.”

  “Louisa is always serious.”

  “But do you wish to marry him?” asked Sebastian.

  Rose glanced up at him, uncertain why his tone had changed, but could read nothing in his face.

  “No, though sometimes I was afraid that I might have to give in to him just to escape Louisa.”

  He leaned forward. “But you aren’t already engaged to him.”

  She shook her head, perplexed by his sudden intensity.

  “And he has no other legal hold over you?”

  “No, but he is very persistent in his own methodical way, and if Louisa can persuade him to come here, he won’t leave without me…” Her voice trailed off and she shook her head, feeling a stab of unhappiness at the thought.

  “If you do not wish to go with him, you need not,” Sebastian said. “I will see to it.”

  “You will?” she asked. “You won’t let him take me away?”

  Sebastian set aside Jenny’s letter and picked up his fork once again. The clockwork footman reappeared in the courtyard with a large, laden tray.

  “Certainly not.”

  “You wish me to stay here, then?”

  He watched the footman rotate its tray. “I refuse to give up the best laboratory assistant I have ever had to someone named Poor George,” he said.

  Rose looked down at her hands. Of course he would miss his assistant. She was very glad that she could be useful to Sebastian. After all, she had come here to ask him to help her build her father’s teleportation device, not to be her friend, or—or to fall in love with her, or anything absurd like that.

  There was no reason that the roses in the courtyard should suddenly be too sickly sweet, or that the treacle tart the footman served her should stick in her throat like glue.

  No reason at all.

  …

  Rose was utterly horrified when Sebastian told her that Christmas hadn’t been celebrated at Cavendish House since before the war.

  “You haven’t celebrated Christmas in over ten years?” she asked, unable to conceal her shock.

  “I can’t be bothered.” He focused on the teleportation box, where a small mouse disintegrated and then reappeared each time he flicked the rubber-handled switch. “Hand me that wrench, will you?”

  “But even Louisa gets a tree every year!”

  “Get a tree here, if you like.” He sounded supremely indifferent.

  So Rose consulted with Greaves, and by mid-December a large fir, draped in velvet and candles, was erected in the great hall. They hung wreaths on the doors and festooned the halls with ivy, and even Ashputtel received a red satin bow around his neck. Sebastian tolerated the preparations with fairly good grace.

  On Christmas day, Rose barricaded Sebastian from the fifth floor laboratory and forbade him from working. Instead, she made him join her in the kitchen and taught him how to concoct a trifle. Greaves appeared in the afternoon to begin preparations for dinner and found them eating the gooey confection with their fingers.

  “Mr. Cavendish!” exclaimed Greaves, his usual impassive face registering equal parts horror and disapproval.

  Sebastian peered down into the empty bowl.

  “I’m afraid, Greaves, that there isn’t any left,” he said sadly.

  Rose couldn’t stop a giggle from escaping.

  Supper was especially good that night, and Greaves brought them a chilled bottle of ‘39 Veuve-Cliquot. Afterward, they remained in the rose gardens, talking and laughing until the moon rose high over the skylights above.

  Rose, holding his arm as they moved amidst the fragrant flowers, was conscious of a great and unreasonable happiness spreading through her limbs and warming her heart. The wine had been too strong for her, and it forced her to see what she had refused to see before; that this man had become everything to her. That she loved him.

  The knowledge had an inevitability about it. She took a deep breath, drawing in the scent of the roses, and allowed the words to nestle in her heart. She loved him. She could never go back to New Haven again, to Poor George and the life that Louisa had selected for her. She couldn’t even go back to the Rose she had been before.

  The thought filled her with a strange, exultant joy. That was only meet and right. Of course she couldn’t go back. No one who loved Sebastian could remain the same.

  So what would she do? She would remain at Cavendish House for as long as Sebastian wanted her there, as assistant or friend—or lover, if he would have her. It didn’t matter. She wanted only to be with him, for however long he wished.

  How much time did she have left? The teleportation device drew daily closer to completion. So she must not waste a single moment of the time she had left.

  Somewhere in the house, a clock struck midnight. Beside her on the bench, Sebastian shifted.

  “You should go to bed, Miss Verney,” he said. “It’s growing late.”

  “Yes, of course,” Rose said, tilting her face up to his. She wanted him to kiss her again—wished she had the courage to kiss him herself—but she was too afraid. What if she should get it wrong?

  For a moment, his lips parted, and she thought he might bend his head to hers.

  Then his face darkened and he looked away.

  “Good night, then, Miss Verney,” he said, bowing without meeting her gaze.

  Aware of a deep, pulsating disappointment, she lowered her head.

 
; “Merry Christmas, sir,” she said in a wooden little voice.

  She left him standing alone in the gardens and made her way to her bedchamber, her footsteps slow and heavy. It had been absurd, of course, to hope that he might desire her. Since he had kissed her that second morning, he had never given her any indication that he considered her anything more than a very helpful laboratory assistant.

  She was pushing open the door to her bedchamber, when Sebastian said from behind her, “Wait.”

  She whirled around. He strode, limping, down the hall toward her. The shadows were strong around his eyes and mouth, and for a moment her heart leapt.

  Then she realized he held a package.

  “This is for you.”

  Surprised, she accepted it. “You bought me a gift?”

  “Well, it’s Christmas, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yes, but I hadn’t expected. . .” She stared at the package. “Thank you,” she said at last. “Only I’m afraid I don’t have anything to give you.”

  “You’ve given me enough,” he said, his voice brusque. “I hope you like it. Good night, Miss Verney.”

  And then he was gone.

  She shut the door slowly behind her and lit a lamp. Then, her fingers trembling, she undid the string that tied it together.

  The paper parted to reveal a new gown, made of some pale, rich blue material, and a white pelisse soft as dove’s down.

  There was no card.

  …

  One evening well after the New Year, Sebastian and Rose managed to teleport a small dusting automaton from the inside of the device onto a bench three feet away. Though they had aimed for the window seat, the automaton was completely unharmed and functioned perfectly.

  They worked even more feverishly, snatching food and rest when they could, but always returning to the laboratory to work out more equations, reconfigure more wires, rebuild some other small part of the device.

  Three weeks later, they repeated the performance with Ashputtel.

  “We did it,” Rose said, staring in astonishment as the animal, now curled up on a work table clear across the room, bent its head and licked its paws, clearly unperturbed by its excursion through the box. “We did it! Look at him!”