The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Box Set

by Kara Jorgensen

  “Are you all right?” Adam whispered as Immanuel’s body slipped lower in his grasp.

  “Yes, I am just a little weak from last night and weak-kneed because of you,” he chuckled through strained breaths. “Can we sit down? I still cannot stand that long.”

  “Of course. My room is right across the hall.”

  ***

  With a harrumph of exacerbated self-control, Hadley tossed her carpet bag onto the bench beside the door and strode down the hall toward the office as she pulled off her damp hat and gloves. “Adam, you would not believe how close I am to eloping. If Lady Dorset asks me to pick from five indistinguishable shades of white again, I will scream. How can anyone tell them apart? Does it even matter which one I pick if they all look the same?”

  Reaching the threshold of the study, Hadley’s rant abruptly stopped. His desk was empty. Where could he be? Glancing over her shoulder, she confirmed his coat was still on the rack and mounted the steps. If he wasn’t home, at least she would be able to fill a few last minute automata orders. As Hadley crossed the hall toward his room, she sighed when she spotted a tie and jacket slumped on the floor in front of the tub. Shaking her head, she snatched up the clothes and pushed opened his door, ready to dump them on his bed when she froze. For a second she thought her brother had fallen asleep in his clothes when she realized Immanuel Winter was pinned beneath him. Their legs intertwined as Adam planted a trail of kisses down his companion’s bandaged neck. Immanuel gripped his arms, but when he turned his head, his eyes shot open upon seeing Miss Fenice in the doorway clutching his jacket.

  “You left these!” Hadley called as she dropped the clothes and her face reddened nearly to her hair color.

  Before her brother could react, she turned and dashed down the hall. Cursing under his breath, Adam jumped off the bed and buttoned the top of his shirt and straightened his tie. His face pinkened to match his sister’s as he tidied his hair and clothes at his mirror, leaving Immanuel on the coverlet to slowly fix his own clothing. Adam’s heart pounded as he rubbed his wrist and walked half out the bedroom door before turning back to meet Immanuel’s guilty gaze.

  “Now what do we do?” he asked, running his hand over his pomaded hair and pacing between the cloaked window and the open door.

  “I don’t think she is angry, just surprised to find us like that.”

  “Should we leave or should we just pretend like nothing happened?”

  “Why don’t we talk to her? She already knew how we were before,” Immanuel whispered as he retrieved his tie from the floor where it dropped from Hadley’s hand.

  “I can’t talk to her about— about this!”

  Immanuel sighed as he went to put on his jacket but left it on the bed. “Then, I will.” Adam opened his mouth to protest, but he held up his hand to silence him. “We cannot stay up here forever. We will have to face your sister some time.”

  His heart climbed up his throat as he descended the steps, hoping what he knew of Hadley Fenice was true. It seemed she had an inkling about their relationship when he came to bring Adam his gloves after their first kiss, but when she saw them kissing and wrapped in each other’s arms, did she change her mind? If she did, then at least he could be a buffer between his companion and rejection. When he reached the bottom of the staircase, he found her sitting on the fifth step with her hand across her brow and her face still flushed with embarrassment. The stairs creaked as he reached her side, and she finally met his eyes but quickly averted her gaze.

  “I’m sorry,” they uttered in unison.

  “No, I am the one who should be sorry. I should have knocked.” She looked past Immanuel, but the stairs were empty. “Where is Adam?”

  “Upstairs, too ashamed to come down.”

  She sighed. “I will see if I can convince him to join us. The three of us need to talk.”

  When Hadley reached her brother’s bedroom, he was staring out the window with his arms barred across his chest and his eyes hard with the only emotion that could block out his fear. The moment he turned to meet her, he was ready to reproach her, but his sister drew closer until they were nearly touching before adopting the same fire in her eyes.

  “Don’t make a scene in front of Mr. Winter before you even know what I am going to say, Adam. What did I tell you when I came back from Palestine? I love you, and I do not want any secrets between us.” Taking his arms, she uncrossed them before holding his hands in her own. “Let’s talk about this together.”

  Adam exhaled. The anger ebbed while the fear stubbornly remained as a weight in his head and stomach. Even with his twin sister, he had never openly discussed his sexuality. When she brought it up, he fled and refused to speak to her for weeks. A part of him still couldn’t accept it, so how could she? But if he didn’t talk about it this time— if he couldn’t speak about it this time, he would be denying his feelings for Immanuel. He had rebuffed him with his actions in public, but could he reject him aloud? Following his sister down to the foyer, he found his partner at the newel post waiting for them. Immanuel mustered a reassuring smile as they took their seats at the kitchen table.

  “Miss Fenice, I hope my presence here did not create tension between you and your brother,” Immanuel began, locking eyes with Adam’s twin. “I never meant any disrespect. I just—”

  “I told him you were going to be out for a while.” His sister regarded him with the same softened gaze she had the night she discovered his secret. She accepted them even if he didn’t. “I thought we would be safe here. I wanted to spend some time with him, especially after what happened last night.”

  Hadley sighed. “I am not cross or upset with either one of you, but I do not know how to handle this situation. If one of you was female, I would have to object to what I saw upstairs, but I am uncertain how to approach this. You are both adults and can do as you please, yet I hope you are moving toward a more... intimate relationship for the right reasons. You have only known each other for a few weeks.”

  “I like Immanuel very much, and I have gotten to know him over those weeks. You know we are not strangers to each other, Hadley, so don’t act like everyone is utterly chaste. I’m sure you and Lord Sorrell—”

  “Have only kissed,” she retorted as her henna brows furrowed to match her brother’s.

  “Maybe I can explain it better.” The Fenice siblings slowly sat back and turned to the blonde man who bit his lip as he composed himself. “Yes, we are moving quickly, but when you are in a relationship like ours, you never know when it is going to end. One false move and we can be beaten or arrested for something beyond our control. A man and a woman have a prescribed set of steps they move through when they are a couple: courting, engagement, marriage, parenthood. When they are married, they can be intimate or share a household together, but we can never be married, which means, according to society, we can never be together. We never have an acceptable time to do all the things we desire. If we are found out,” Immanuel’s voice cracked at the thought, “we must part, possibly for good. A relationship like ours can only end in heartbreak, so we try to hold onto a normal life when we can. I am sorry if we offended you by publicly displaying our affection, but since you know how we both are, your home is the safest place for us.” He put his hand over Adam’s and stroked his barely freckled skin. “I wish we could have a relationship like the one you have with Lord Sorrell. For our relationship’s validity and morality to not be questioned or scorned, I would give anything.”

  Hadley’s blue eyes roamed from her brother’s face to Immanuel’s, noting the light of a smile that gleamed in their eyes when they looked at each other even when their faces never hinted at their love. How many times had she looked at Eilian like that when they were in the desert together while she was disguised as a man? It had never crossed her mind to mask her feelings for him, yet her brother and Mr. Winter had to every day. To deny her love for him had been the worst pain she had ever felt, and if she had been a different woman who lacked her experience
s beneath the desert sands, she would be giving the edict that would destroy these men. No, she could not do that even if the rest of the world would tell her she was making the wrong decision for the sake of morality. Society would not unravel at an act that only affected the two participants.

  “I am glad you trust me enough to let your guard down. In your house, you should be who you really are, and I will not stand in the way of that.” She paused as she searched for the right words. “If you are going to be intimate, for the sake of not creating an awkward situation, try to do that when I am not home and do keep your door closed because next time, it might not be me who catches you.”

  A wide grin spread across Immanuel’s cheeks, brightening his blotted eye as he squeezed it shut against the moisture creeping to the surface. Good people still existed in the world, and maybe, just maybe, there was hope for them.

  Chapter Twenty-Six:

  The Deceiver

  Lord Rose took a long drag on his cigarette, relishing the billowing ash passing between his lips and out his nostrils. Holding the dying cigarette between his fingers, Alastair carefully cleaned the prongs of the machine that helped him traverse the veil between life and death. It was coated with blood from his previous experiments and victims, and no matter how thoroughly he cleaned it, he knew Higgins, Kitty, the German boy, and Henrietta’s blood still mingled with his own. The idea of his victims being part of this process thrilled him, but if he was going to enjoy this, he would need to be calm. With a twist of his finger, he unlatched the whining hinge at the front of the brass ribs. The jar of solution was still fairly full, but he needed a fresh vessel to tease his soul into.

  In the darkened room, the quartz containers were barely discernable tucked away in the divided nooks of the crate, but as he lifted Kitty’s jar to his eye, a faint outline danced within, glowing a dull yellow like a waning firefly. Each soul was different, and while indiscernible and amorphous, he found they varied in size and color. He remembered Prince Albert’s was nearly as large as Henrietta’s, yet Higgins’s was barely a wisp. The royal consort’s soul was hidden away in a vault far below the palace beside the bubbling vat that had been his tomb for three decades, but the sight of his immaterial form forlornly knocking against the jar never left his mind.

  Narrowing his eyes, Alastair stared at the empty space in the box where that stupid boy’s soul should have been. He had eluded him, but he could wait. At his leisure he would devise a way to kill him, and next time, he would ensure he stayed dead. In less than a fortnight, he would get everything he wanted, wealth, land, a title, and all the respect he rightly deserved now that the doctor finally finished his end of the project. Someone could always be hired from the less desirable parts of town to kill the boy, but watching the life drain from his eyes permanently would be the crowning glory of his triumph.

  This moment wouldn’t be ruined by him; he had to focus on what he did have. With a flick of his wrist, Henrietta Wren’s urn rested neatly in his palm. Inside, a reddish light glowed and rippled, growing in intensity as she pressed against the edge of the glass. Alastair put his hand over the feeble heat only to have her soul shrink to the other side of the container. A cruel grin stretched across his features as he drew in an ashy breath. He had her right where he wanted, and no matter what she desired, she was his now. Killing her was not what he intended to do that night, but she pushed him too far. She thought she was too good for him, and for that, she had to pay, especially after the German escaped.

  He had seen her on the way back to Mayfair from Wimpole Street. From the back of his idling steamer, he watched her between the curtains as she wandered through the thick fog rolling off the Thames in her dark green, velvet gown and mink wrap. Immediately he recognized her. Henrietta Wren had been on his arm when they attended the Samhain ball in Oxford, and with a little flattery and sweet words, the alluring diva’s prudish hauteur crumbled for a time. After that night, she avoided him, only greeting him when necessary and attending Spiritualist society gatherings when he was not there. Maybe it was time they had a talk about that.

  Tucking his climbing stilts under the seat, his persimmon eyes followed her as she paused beneath a street lamp. The nebulous light illuminated her tightly curled coiffure like gold coins. She cast her eyes to the street signs before taking a few steps down the road but shook her head and turned to walk straight toward his hiding place. As she passed without noticing his gaze on her, he pocketed his devil mask, affixed a fresh jar beneath his ribs, and pulled his great coat closer to hide the machine that hummed and growled against his chest.

  “Miss Wren,” Lord Rose called with the door open just far enough that she couldn’t see him against the darkened interior, “would you like a ride home?”

  The opera star stopped at the sound of that familiar, cloying tone. A little voice, the one she listened to on Samhain when she saw a hint of what he was capable of, urged her to keep walking, but with the murk soaking through her fur stole and the sherry coursing through her veins, the voice died into a dull nudge at the back of her mind. With an inaudible sigh, she stooped into the steamer, crinkling her nose as she inhaled a mouthful of stale tobacco.

  “Thank you, Lord Rose. I hope I am not inconveniencing you.”

  “Not at all. You never know who you will run into at this hour. One can never be too careful with Spring-heeled Jack on the loose.”

  A throaty chuckle escaped Henrietta’s lips as she stared out the passenger window, keeping her eyes locked on the bleak brick façades sliding past in hopes that the wave of nausea from the cigarette smell and the alcohol would pass. “I am more worried about the human riffraff.”

  “Then, what brought you out of the Christmas party all by yourself?” he asked, watching her close her eyes and let her golden head rest against the seat.

  “My sister and I had a row, so she took her husband and left me behind.”

  “Then, our meeting was fortuitous.” Alastair Rose’s gaze trailed from the emeralds adorning her alabaster fingers up her arm until they came to rest on the green and gold pendant at her throat. With the woman’s eyes shut, he slid down to the swollen curves of her ivory breasts, which peeked from between the edges of her stole and rose and fell rhythmically with each drowsy breath. Slinking closer, he let his hand rest on her thigh. “We really have not seen enough of each other, Henrietta.”

  Her light eyes flew open at the pressure on her leg, but as she tried to move it away, his hand clamped down. Looking into his eyes, she swore they flashed orange before returning to their dull brown. “I have been very, very busy.” She glanced out the window at the familiar façades before calling, “Driver, let me out here, please! Thank you for taking me home, Lord Rose. This is close enough. I would not want to inconvenience you further.”

  “It is no trouble at all. For some time I have been meaning to ask you why you have been avoiding me.” His hand slid higher, cutting a strip of velvet away as he dragged the tips of his claws into the pliant flesh of her upper thigh. “I thought we made quite a pair together at the ball. Everyone spoke of how smart you looked on my arm.”

  Henrietta gasped as the metal dug into her leg so hard that blood pooled and dripped onto her chemise and drawers. Reaching behind her, she groped for the door handle, but the nobleman continued his advance until he knelt across her. When his face finally loomed over hers with his smirking eyes gleaming, she drew her hand back and brought it hard across his cheek.

  “I said, let me out here,” the diva seethed as blood trickled from his lip where her ring cut him.

  Alastair Rose glared at her, poised to attack but stood transfixed over her with his eyes locked on hers. Her painted porcelain face stared back as she held his gaze, masking the fear that constrained each breath and did not allow her to move from beneath him. In the shadows of the backseat, his hand slid closer until it came to rest at the base of her neck. Pushing his leg against hers, he leaned forward, so the humming machine’s pulse echoed through her body. Henrie
tta’s eyes darted from the gleaming ribs to his face, which had contorted into a fiendish mask.

  “No one denies me what I want,” he growled as he sunk the needles into her neck and flooded her body with electricity.

  When she opened her mouth to scream, the cry died in her throat. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets, leaving only a rim of blue at the edge of her lids. Small gasps and sighs broke from her lips with each muscle contraction that contorted the singer’s body. Spitefully holding down the trigger, he let her body dance against his even though he knew her soul was already trapped within the glass prison. A scant amount of electricity raced through the velvet and into his body where they touched, eliciting a silent moan as his limbs twitched from the energy’s effects.

  That was how he realized what the machine was capable of. It could steal life and instill it anew, but it could also bring pleasure. Did his victims, just for a second, feel the same ecstasy he experienced when he dulled the charge and plunged the prongs into his own flesh? Dropping the opera star’s soul back into the wooden box, he withdrew an empty jar and strode across the room to where the machine lay. Once the vessel was secure, he flipped the switch that sent the machine humming to life and moved the second switch to the midpoint between extraction and deposition. By keeping the setting in limbo, the amperage was cut in half, allowing him to maintain mastery of his body throughout the process. Standing before the mirror, his eyes traveled to the series of triangular wounds littering his torso. Most were sore and red and a few had even purpled from the force of the puncture, but it was worth it.