“Let me go and announce your presence to the professor,” I said, once she had made herself at home in the big armchair before the parlor fire, the one warm and cozy place in the vast, drafty living space beneath the windmill.
The professor’s irritation at being disturbed melted away when I informed him who was calling. “Make tea for us, would you, Smithy?” he asked, running a hand through his unruly black curls before going to greet his guest. “And see if we have any of those caraway biscuits left.” His smile of dismissal was distracted, but still had the power to bring a sudden flush to my cheeks.
Waiting for the kettle to boil, I reflected that without the assistance, albeit indirect, of Lady Portway, I would not be here to bask in the glow of the professor’s smiles. My initial dream, when it had become obvious I was by far the brightest in my class at school, had been to attend one of the great universities. However, my mother had objected strongly. It was less a question of the money involved than her fear that further education would render me barren and unsuitable for marriage. In her eyes, Lady Portway had made the ideal career choice, using her great beauty to acquire a much older husband in ailing health. Within nine months of their wedding night, Lord Portway was dead, which did not greatly surprise London society. What did was his newly wealthy widow’s decision to use some of her fortune to help Professor John Braithwaite finance his experiments in mechanical motion. The professor’s work had been highly praised in the scientific journals I devoured on visits to the town library, and I dreamed of being able to aid him in his pursuits. How much could an eager, inquisitive mind learn from time spent in his presence? I wrote and expressed my willingness to work under his tutelage, but given his lack of money it had seemed an impossible dream. That was until Lady Portway’s generous financial input had enabled him to take me on, almost a year ago to the day.
I was grateful to her, naturally, but on walking into the parlor carrying a laden tea tray, the emotion that gripped me most strongly was one of jealousy. They made a handsome couple as they stood by the bureau, her blonde, ringleted head barely reaching his shoulder. She appeared to be hanging on his every word as he showed her one of his newest creations, a bejeweled clockwork songbird that hopped and trilled as prettily as any linnet.
“Oh, John, it’s beautiful,” she murmured, her tone utterly sincere. No one who saw the professor’s creations could fail to be impressed by the way they moved and acted, as though a strongly beating heart pumped life through their body, rather than an intricately designed mechanism. The songbird was, in truth, little more than an amusement, one of his first attempts to breathe vital essence into a mechanical being. The culmination of his work would be to create a similarly realistic mechanical man, the project on which he and I currently toiled.
I set the tray down with a clink of china, the sound causing the professor and Lady Portway to turn in my direction. Deftly, I poured tea for the pair of them, adding a generous splash of milk and two sugar lumps to the professor’s cup. Lady Portway took hers without milk and rejected my offer of a biscuit. It took more discipline than I possessed to maintain her enviably slender figure, I thought, filching a couple of biscuits from the plate to munch as I worked.
“Do you need me for anything else?” I asked. “If not, I’ll return to what I was doing.”
“We’re converting the windmill so it has the ability to be powered by steam,” the professor explained to his guest. “We’re hoping our work will enable mills to be built in areas where there isn’t sufficient wind to power the sails.” Turning his attention to me, he continued, “I would like you to stay for a moment, Smithy. What Bella has to say concerns both of us.”
Placing her cup delicately in its saucer, Lady Portway regarded us with her wide blue eyes. “I’m holding a soirée next week, to mark the international symposium at the Royal College of Science. Some of the finest minds in the field are going to be there. Martin Parnell, whose theories on the future of clockwork automata are attracting significant attention in Boston, I believe. Gunther Strondheim, of the Berlin Institute…”
Though she dropped the name casually, she must have known the effect it would have on the professor. Strondheim’s experiments in the field were well advanced; indeed, it was rumored that he had already publicly exhibited a fully functioning mechanical humanoid, though we had as yet seen no written record of such an event.
“People are naturally curious to know how your own work is progressing, John. They believe I should by now be expecting a return on my investment, to prove this is more than just an act of charity on my part. So I thought it might be—diverting—if you were to present a demonstration of your clockwork man at the soirée.”
“Why, Bella, I’d be delighted to.”
I was shocked by his answer. Only this morning, he had been complaining about the lack of progress he was making on the project; now here he was, agreeing to show the finished result to an invited audience in a week’s time. Lady Portway’s powers of persuasion were clearly considerable. Or perhaps he was simply prepared to do whatever it took to impress her, in the same way—if he only realized it—I sought to impress him.
“Very good. So I’ll expect you next Friday evening at seven, then, John.” She rose to leave. “Thank you for your hospitality, but as you’ll appreciate, I need to be back in London before nightfall.”
“Before you leave, Bella, I trust your invitation extends to Smithy, too? I’ll need her help with the demonstration.”
“Of course.” Lady Portway’s sweet smile masked the sting of her words. “But please be aware, Miss Smith, this will be a formal occasion, and both you and the professor will be expected to dress appropriately.”
Her perfume, heady with the scent of jasmine, lingered mockingly in the air after she had gone. I could not help feeling that she expected us to pass her first challenge—to have our automaton ready for public exhibition within a week—but, having seen my disheveled appearance on numerous occasions before today, she firmly believed I would fail the second.
The next week passed in a frantic blaze of activity. All work on the windmill itself was forgotten. Instead, our whole attention was focused on the mechanical man. We barely slept, and if I hadn’t broken off from my own labors to bring the professor a plate of bread and cheese every now and again, he would never have eaten. The air stank with the acrid aromas of soldered copper and woodsmoke. My back ached from bending over the workbench, assembling the delicate mechanisms that would enable our creation to blink and move its jaw in the closest approximation of human emotions we could contrive.
All too slowly, it seemed, the automaton took shape. The professor’s initial design had featured a head-to-toe covering of skin, made from animal hide, but we knew there would not be time to produce that refinement. As it was, our mechanical man was only completed to our satisfaction on the morning we were due to travel to London. We packed his component parts into crates, to be transported on the train. It had been arranged that upon our arrival at Liverpool Street Station, Lady Portway would have a cab waiting to take us to her home in the heart of Bloomsbury. There we would assemble Abel, as we had come to know our creation. We would also be able to take a hot bath—the first either of us had found time for in over a week—and change into our formal wear.
I hugged the capacious reticule containing my evening dress to myself as we waited for the train to arrive. It had been a present from my mother on my twenty-first birthday, a subtle reminder that she still saw me moving in circles where I might attract a well-connected husband, and as yet I had never had an opportunity to wear it.
Despite the uncomfortable rattling motion of the train, I was so exhausted I slept for most of the journey to London. When I finally woke, we were traveling through the overcrowded slums of the East End, where the houses and their inhabitants alike seemed grimed with the same sooty, industrial patina. I knew the professor dreamed of a world where automatons would do most of the backbreaking, dangerous jobs that were regarded as t
he provenance of the poor, so children would no longer have to climb chimneys or work down mines. He even saw a place in society for female automata, who would cater to the basest needs of men and save hundreds, perhaps even thousands of women from a life of prostitution. I wondered whether he had ever shared these aspirations with Lady Portway. If so, did she admire him all the more, as I did, for wanting to use his inventions for the benefit of society as a whole, rather than simply to increase his standing among the scientific community?
A taciturn cabbie helped us stow the crates containing Abel into the back of his vehicle. The streets teemed with life, but I paid little attention to the people scurrying past on the pavement, still lost in my dream of a world where automata were a commonplace sight.
Almost before I knew it, the cab was pulling up at the rear entrance to Lady Portway’s residence. Once a couple of her manservants had carried our precious cargo into one of the anterooms, we could begin the process of reconstructing Abel. Even without skin, he was an impressive sight. He stood as tall as I did, limbs and head perfectly in proportion to his artfully constructed metal torso. Glass eyes in a cool shade of blue were the focal point of his face, giving him a piercing, intelligent gaze. Having assembled him to our satisfaction, we were able to retire to bedrooms upstairs to change.
A maid had drawn me a slipper bath, and my dress and underthings were laid out on the bed. As I sank into the water and lathered myself with rose-scented soap, I could understand why my mother wished me to live a permanently pampered lifestyle. That, though, would have required me to find some sense of achievement in being purely a wife and mother, and my time with the professor had made me believe I had more to offer.
Having a skilled pair of hands to lace me into my corset was a novelty. Not that I wore such a constricting garment on a daily basis, but tonight it gave me the perfect silhouette beneath my scarlet silk dress. My waist was pulled in tightly, and my modest breasts thrust upward to produce a gently swelling cleavage.
For once, I left my hair loose, falling in dark waves around my face and resting on my uncovered shoulders. I spent a while admiring myself in the mirror, reveling in the femininity I so rarely displayed, until I heard a sharp rapping on the door and the professor’s voice calling, “Smithy, they’re ready for us in the drawing room.”
When I stepped out of the room, it was to see the professor dressed in an elegant evening suit, an adeptly tied bow tie at his throat, his black curls brushed into some semblance of order and slicked back with brilliantine. He looked truly magnificent, so different from the shabbily dressed genius to whom I had become accustomed. My breath caught in my throat for the briefest moment.
Trying to damp down the fire the sight of him had set raging in my body, I gestured to my own formal attire, asking, “Do you think Lady Portway will consider this appropriate?” His eyes dropped to the low neckline of my dress, then back up to meet my amused gaze. At that, he seemed to collect himself.
“You look…absolutely stunning,” he murmured at last, leaving me glowing with the compliment.
Downstairs, Abel waited for us in the room adjoining the reception, staring sightlessly ahead. The professor handed me the small brass key that was used to wind the automaton’s mechanism. “I’ll make the introduction, then you bring him in.”
Once he left the room, I inserted the key gently at the point where a living man’s navel would have been and started to wind. With the door ajar, I could hear snatches of the professor’s speech. “…Years of research…among them some of you present tonight…great advances in the world of clockwork construction…”
With a series of gentle clicks and a noise eerily reminiscent of a human sigh, Abel stirred into life. The professor had been unable to complete the automaton’s voice box to his satisfaction in the time we had, so for tonight his creation would remain mute. But he understood vocal commands perfectly, and when I said, “Good evening, Abel, I trust you are well?” his head, with those glittering blue eyes, turned toward me and he nodded.
“And now,” the professor’s voice rose in volume, “I would like to present to you my assistant, Miss Violet Smith, and her companion, Abel.”
That was our cue. Arm in arm, cool metal against my warm, bare skin, Abel and I walked into the drawing room to a collective gasp of astonishment and admiration. I caught sight of faces I recognized: Gunther Strondheim, with his luxuriant mutton-chop whiskers; Martin Parnell, clutching the walking stick he had needed ever since escaping from a near-fatal airship accident at the Staten Island landing strip. Strondheim was the first to lead the applause, appreciating more than anyone else in the room the enormity of our efforts, but soon everyone was clapping and cheering.
When silence fell, it took me a moment to find my voice, I was so overwhelmed by the reaction to our appearance. At last, I stammered out, “Abel, shall we dance?”
The professor had asked Lady Portway to ensure he had access to a gramophone. He placed the needle on the cylinder and set the mechanism running. The strains of a Viennese waltz filled the air and, as we had practiced briefly among the clutter of the workshop in the small hours of the morning, Abel and I danced. He led, I followed, moving in a sure-footed rhythm across the drawing room floor. What little we’d heard of Strondheim’s creation suggested his movements were jerky, betraying his mechanical origins. Abel glided, an intricate network of precision mechanisms working to create the illusion that he lived and breathed.
Whatever the assembled guests had been expecting, it was surely not such a lighthearted display. The professor might envisage his automata as beasts of burden, fetching and carrying, but it did not mean they couldn’t be companions, too.
The music came to a halt. Abel bowed and I curtseyed. Then we were enveloped in a crowd, Lady Portway’s guests keen to learn more about how this marvelous creation worked. I managed to slip away, anxious to see the professor’s reaction. He was still standing by the gramophone, and Lady Portway was with him, holding his big, calloused hands in her tiny ones. Raising herself on tiptoes, she said, “Oh, John, that was truly miraculous. I knew I was right to champion you all along….” She planted a kiss on his mouth, pressing her body closer against his in a fiercely intimate gesture.
Unable to watch any more, racked with a fierce jealousy, I gave a little cry and fled from the room. I thought I heard someone call after me. Ignoring them, and pushing past a surprised-looking servant, I ran down the hall in search of a way outside.
Turning a heavy door handle, I stepped into a small garden surrounded by high box hedges. The air was heavy with night-scented stock, and somewhere high above me a nightingale sang lustily. Tears stung my cheeks and I brushed them away, annoyed at the strength of my reaction.
Why should it surprise me that there was such a deep attraction between the professor and Lady Portway? She had known him longer than I had, and had so much more to offer him in terms of worldly experience.
“Smithy?” I turned at the sound of the professor’s voice. “What are you doing out here? Is everything all right?”
“I’m fine,” I replied, trying to convince myself I meant it. “But what about Abel? He’s in there on his own, and his mechanism will be running down.”
“He’s not my concern at the moment. You are. I didn’t realize being the center of attention would be so awkward for you, and I wanted to apologize.”
“You think that’s why I ran out here?” I almost laughed.
“Isn’t it?”
“No. I—I left because I couldn’t bear to see you kissing Lady Portway.” I wrung the folds of my evening dress in my hands, not wanting to meet the professor’s gaze. “It was stupid of me, I know. She’s perfect for you, after all.”
“Oh, Smithy…” The professor put his hands on my shoulders, pulling me close. “Look at me.” When I did, he continued, “Let me assure you Bella is the last woman I would choose to be with. If you’d stayed a moment longer, you would have seen how quickly I broke that kiss. We were discussing
Abel and—well, she only sees the commercial benefits of patenting him, of making others like him available for sale. It’s all about money with Bella; it always has been. Yes, she’s invested in my work, but only for the return she’ll receive.”
“Isn’t that true of any investor?”
“There are philanthropists around, Smithy, I can assure you of that. Parnell is lucky enough to have found one to back him. But there are very few people who see how automata can be useful for the whole of humanity, not just themselves.” He brushed a stray lock of hair away from my face. “But that’s not the only reason why I have no interest in Bella.”
“Really?” Unsure whether I was prepared for further revelations, I waited as the professor took a deep breath.
“Tonight, seeing you in all your finery, so beautiful and so assured as you took the floor with Abel, I realized I could no longer deny feelings I’ve had for a long time now. You may think I only see Smithy, in her unflattering overalls and with dirt on her face, but I have always been aware that Violet is close to the surface, simply waiting to be—unleashed.”
As he spoke, he brought his face down close to mine. There was a moment where myriad possibilities presented themselves, but there was no attempt on my part to choose any but the most desirable. Our lips met, the kiss deepening and growing sweeter as our bodies twined together. We each breathed in the other’s essence, the vital spirit the professor sought to recreate with his experiments but which never burns so brightly as between a couple in the first, heady flush of love.
Forgetting where we were, and all the dignitaries who waited to congratulate us in Lady Portway’s drawing room, we surrendered to the passion we could no longer deny.
The professor wrestled with the fastenings on the back of my dress, pulling them apart so the glorious silk confection slithered to the ground, leaving me in my stays and bloomers. The sudden exposure of so much of my flesh to the night air—and to the professor’s appreciative stare—brought me sharply to my senses.
Steamlust Page 9
