A Matter of Circumstance and Celludrones (Dark Matters)

by Claire Robyns

  “This is the last activity I’d have expected to find you engaged in,” came a slow drawl over her shoulder.

  She whipped her head around. Lord Adair, with his too-long hair and impossible attitude. “What are you doing here?”

  “A pleasure to see you, too, my dear.” He tipped his hat in greeting as he came around to grip the pipe extending from the front. “I’ll take this for you. A lady should never be left holding the…” His gaze travelled up and down the triangular pipe frame. “What is this thing called, anyway?”

  He was facing her, his legs braced over the wheel. His three-piece suit was a dark brown, his shirt and neck cloth a crisp white. A fob chain disappearing into his waistcoat pocket indicated the customary watch. His jaw was closely shaven and a moderate stovepipe hid most of his unruly curls. All the ordinary trappings, but not quite enough to restrain all of the wild beast.

  His other hand closed over hers on the handle bar and the intimate warmth spread straight through her glove. Lily needed no further persuasion to step back, relinquishing the air paddler into his keeping.

  “Did you follow me?” She scowled into his half-grin. “Have you being spying on me again?”

  He had the audacity to look offended. “I called for you at Harchings House and was informed of your whereabouts.”

  “You’re lying. We told no one we’d be here.”

  “Now you’re the one being less than honest, unless Ana has been spying.”

  “You asked Ana? Who would ever think to do that?” She shared everything with Ana, always had. “She’s a celludrone.”

  Lord Adair raised a brow. His grin was still in place. “Are we having this conversation again?”

  Again? That other conversation, the one that had ended with Lord Adair throwing a dagger at her, had happened inside her head. How much exactly had their minds shared? And how did he know Ana was unique? As different from other celludrones, perhaps, as his own man, Neco?

  As much as Lily wished to blot the entire memory from her consciousness, there were too many questions piling up. “We need to talk.”

  “For once, we’re in agreement.” Lord Adair chuckled. “But later. I can’t wait to see you take to the skies.”

  “Then you’re doomed to disappointment.”

  “Ah, so this contraption belongs to the vivacious Lady Harchings,” he said, his tone tagging a distinct I should have known onto the end.

  “Some of us consider life too precious to waste on frivolous risks,” she informed him frostily. “Not that I’d expect you to understand.”

  He lost the grin, looking at her for an endless moment. When he spoke, his voice was oddly tender on the rumble of his Scottish burr. “I understand. Your mother died at a young age and under tragic circumstances. You have an unnatural fear of death.”

  Her spine stiffened as she recalled his previous impertinence on this very topic. It no longer mattered how much had happened inside or outside the bubble of this one peculiar spell. Apparently either was just as real to both of them. “There’s nothing unnatural about fearing death.”

  “Except when it becomes about fearing life.”

  Lily was certain she’d win this argument, but just then she caught sight of William dragging a wooden block by a rope and a horrendous thought took precedence. “You didn’t tell anyone else we’d come to Battersea Park, did you?”

  “No?” Lord Adair replied.

  She felt suddenly light-headed at his hesitancy. Dear Lord, she’d promised Evelyn. Sharing confidences with Ana had never been a problem before. No one except for Aunt Beatrice, not even Evelyn, so much as suspected Ana was anything other than an average piece of mechanical equipment. Until Lord Adair. But as much as she wanted to blame him, she’d never forgive herself if she were responsible for an irreparable breach in Evelyn’s marriage.

  “Neither Ana nor I told anyone,” Lord Adair said with such conviction, she believed him.

  In spite of her earlier accusation, she doubted he’d be bothered to tell a direct lie. He didn’t care enough about decorum, or sparing a lady’s sensibilities, and in her experience, those were generally the reasons people fibbed.

  Once Lord Adair had helped William mount the air paddler, they left instructions for him to inform Lady Evelyn they’d gone for a walk and would be back shortly.

  “Your man, Neco, he’s an enhanced celludrone like Ana, isn’t he?” Lily asked as they set off down a narrow path winding through the ridge of tall Elms that ringed the field. “Does he come from France, too? I thought Ana was one of a kind, but it’s possible my father made another.”

  “Your father made Ana?” Lord Adair held a low branch aside for Lily to pass through, onto an open field of sweet grass and wildflowers. “Maybe you should first tell me what else you think you know.”

  Lily stooped to pluck the head of a lilac flower as she walked.

  “My father was much older than my mother, an eccentric scientist by all accounts.” She stripped off a petal and watched it float to the ground. He’d died before her third birthday and she had no memory of him at all. “My mother said he’d created Ana as his legacy to me, both a gift and a curse, as I could never reveal she was in any way different.”

  She turned her head to peer at Lord Adair. “You don’t seem as concerned about people learning of Neco. Are you not afraid he’ll be taken from you, that someone might steal him in order to learn the secret of his design?”

  “You’ve seen Neco. The man can take care of himself.” His lips twitched. “That story is almost as bad as the misbehaving bunny you made up yesterday.”

  “You think I’m making this up?” Clearly Ana wasn’t as unique as she’d been led to believe, but the celludrone was all Lily had of her father. That and a trust fund that would make her husband very happy one day. There were no paintings of the man, no miniature in a locket her mother might have passed on. She didn’t even have a single memory to treasure.

  Lord Adair met her gaze with a frown. “Your mother spun you a load of yarn, that’s what I think.” He looked away. “Neco and Ana are the last remaining celludrones fashioned on the original, ancient Egyptian schematics. I don’t know how McAllister came by the parchments. I do, however, know that Neco and Ana were built by him. In Scotland, not France.”

  “This McAllister might have built the original celludrones, but my father practically created an entirely new technology from it when he designed Ana.”

  His eyes came back to her. “You have it the wrong way round. Duncan McAllister built six celludrones such as Neco and Ana. Then he patented a simplistic model and sold it to a manufacturer in Manchester. Not for the money, although I’m sure he made a small fortune,” Lord Adair added. “The production of simple celludrones was a means to hide his six in plain sight.”

  Lily increased her pace. She didn’t need to listen to his ridiculous ideas. It was his word against her mother’s. She’d only met him two short days ago; she barely knew the man.

  Her heart pounded and the blood reverberated in her head. Why would Lord Adair lie? How does he know all these things?

  “Where’s his blasted proof?” she muttered beneath her breath.

  The flat ground abruptly gave way to a steep bank that dropped into a small lake. One foot slid forward on the slippery grass and the rest of her followed, bumping along on her bottom to a series of unladylike grunts.

  “Lily…!”

  She clutched at the long grass, thankfully finding purchase and drawing her knees up before her boots touched the water.

  “Good God, are you okay?” His hands came around her waist, sliding her all the way up the bank again and hauling her to her feet. “Are you hurt? Did you twist your ankle?”

  His hands left her waist, but didn’t go far. As if he expected her to collapse any second.

  “I’m fine.” She pushed her hat straight and wiped her brow—unfortunately before she saw the grass stains and mud on her glove. She scrutinized Lord Adair’s face to read the extent o
f the damage.

  His expression was deadpan. “You…you’re not going to cry, are you?”

  “I wasn’t planning on it.” She tugged her gloves off before they could do more harm. “Why, were you?”

  His expression broke with a deep chuckle that creased his eyes and softened the hard lines of his jaw. Lily shook her head at him, but then she was laughing too.

  Laughing at the absurdity of both the moment and at how complicated her life had suddenly become. Laughing so she wouldn’t cry at the loss of a silly childish notion that should never have lasted past the nursery.

  It had made reasonable sense back then that the ghost of her father, his soul, lived inside Ana. How else did one explain how a machine could act, react, converse like a human being and comprehend emotion?

  She hadn’t given that daydream conscious thought for ages, hadn’t even realised a part of her still clung so faithfully, until now.

  “I admire a lady who’s not afraid to laugh at herself,” Lord Adair murmured.

  If he only knew the whole of it.

  But a compliment was a compliment, and her first from him at that. And the way he was looking at her, as if he’d finally decided she might be more than a mere nuisance to be tolerated, left a pleasant warmth in her belly.

  Not quite comfortable with this new feeling stirring inside her, Lily turned her gaze from him to the lake. A light breeze had kicked up, rippling through the water reeds. Above, a few wispy clouds straggled in a clear, blue sky. A perfectly normal afternoon, like so many that had gone before, but she was starting to wonder if her world would ever return to normal again.

  “Please, tell me more about our celludrones,” she said when Lord Adair moved in front of her. “How is Ana able to imitate human behaviour so closely?”

  “McAllister called it fabricated intelligence.” He took the stained gloves from her and tucked them into his jacket pocket. “His celludrones receive and translate optical and verbal instruction in the same way as the others. The difference is their ability to process and store everything they see and hear in addition to the instructions initially loaded.”

  He offered his arm to steady her as they navigated the sharp incline to continue their walk around the lake. “Consider that we are a product of our memories. The way we talk, think and act is learned by listening, watching and mimicking. Ana watches and listens all day and, thanks to her advanced technology, she never forgets a single detail.”

  “Given enough time,” Lily said quietly, “they’d make better humans than us.” The thought was daunting. “How is this technology possible?”

  “I’m not a scientist, but I do know the memory fluid was made from the sap of an extinct papyrus plant discovered in the same tomb as the schematics. McAllister said the last of it was used in the original six. Ana and Neco are unique and can never be replicated.”

  “Who is this Duncan McAllister you keep mentioning?”

  “McAllister was chieftain of the Perthshire McAllisters. The clan rose in power around the time King James I united the Crowns and have been prominent in Scotland ever since. Castle Cragloden is one of their strongholds.”

  They’d reached the ornamental rock feature camouflaging the pump house. Lord Adair placed one booted foot on a stony ledge and rested an elbow on his thigh.

  His gaze settled on a pair of geese waddling from the muddy bank. “McAllister is the man your mother was visiting when she died.”

  “What an extraordinary coincidence.” As she spoke, the puzzle pieces clicked into place, even if she couldn’t see the picture. “Oh, right. It’s no coincidence at all.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  She realised something else. “You refer to McAllister in the past tense. He was killed in that gas explosion too, wasn’t he?”

  “Everyone was. You’re the last person who might have had some answers.” He brought his foot down and straightened. “I was given the impression your mother had confided in you, but it seems the little she did share was nothing but lies. Sweet Jesu.” He grabbed her hand, tugged her roughly behind him and let go again before she’d found her balance.

  “Heavens.” Lily flung an arm around his waist to keep from tumbling forward. “Have you gone—”

  “Quiet.”

  Her mouth snapped shut and it had nothing to do with his rude command. Somehow she’d wrapped herself around Lord Adair, one hand clutching the folds of his jacket and the other spread over his abdomen. The layers of shirt, waistcoat and jacket weren’t nearly enough of a barrier between her and the lean contours of his body.

  He dipped his head forward and went completely still.

  Over his shoulder, her gaze froze on the problem. The ostrich lady had just emerged from the tree-line across the lake. She’d exchanged her burgundy dress for muslin white, her plume of feathers for a shallow box hat, but there was no mistaking the woman.

  A rush of dread and pure fear kicked behind her knees. Lily clutched tighter to Lord Adair.

  This was not the time to dither between reality and visions.

  Everything she felt, every moment she was instantly reliving in her mind, was absolutely terrifying and ended with her dead. She hadn’t realised how badly she was shaking until Lord Adair’s hand closed over hers to still her trembling fingers.

  Some comfort came from the warmth, but the woman’s strides brought her closer and closer and why wasn’t he doing something? Jumping into action as he had yesterday, issuing orders and shoving her out of harm’s way behind the pump house or something?

  Then suddenly something was happening.

  The world around her blurred: the trees, sky, field, lake…even the ostrich lady, all smeared on a grainy canvas and then even that dissolved in a furling cloud of grey. Lord Adair’s substance crumbled and she was left clutching air.

  Chapter Six

  The cloud evaporated and the world grew solid in the blink of an eye. Lily dug in her heels on the dirt path lined with Elms. Lord Adair stood a few feet ahead, holding aside a low branch.

  The branch sprang into place as he turned to her.

  Her mouth slackened and the blood drained from her head. She’d been here. This place. This moment. She’d dipped beneath his arm and stepped out onto the open field of sweet grass and wildflowers. She stretched her arms before her, staring at the spotless gloves that were neither ruined nor tucked away in Lord Adair’s pocket. Had she descended into utter madness or…? Her scalp prickled at the unknown.

  “Lily,” Lord Adair said urgently, “what’s the last thing you remember?”

  “We were by the lake and that ostrich lady…” She faltered as she glanced up and saw the dark, grim look on his face.

  “You came back with me again. It must happen when we’re touching. No one ever has before.”

  “What must happen?” She folded her arms and set her chin on high. She was done with sugarcoating herself in ignorance. “You know what’s going on here and I’m ready to listen.”

  She was ready, even if it meant hearing she had some awful degenerative illness and her mind was in rapid decline.

  He cast a long look through the branches as he spoke. “You have visions—spells? Whatever you call it, you’re able to see things others can’t.” His gaze returned to her. “Lady Ostrich mentioned you and I are alike, and that may not be far from the truth. I, too, can do what others can’t, Lily. I have the ability to focus on a moment in the recent past and will myself to step back in time to that point.”

  Lily stared at him blankly.

  “Until I figure out how Lady Ostrich wields that control, until I know how to fight her, I have no option but to run.” He took another look through the trees. “I’ve never had to explain this before. No one has ever stepped back with me or been aware of me doing it.”

  “You stepped back in time?” Her voice pitched to a shrill.

  “By thirty minutes or so,” he confirmed.

  “You stepped back in time?” she repeated, stuck on the implicat
ions slowly dawning. He’d brought them backward, reversed a part of her life, brought her along with him to a place and time she’d been in thirty minutes ago.

  “I suppose you’re convinced by now that I’m a raving lunatic.”

  After a considered pause, she shocked herself by admitting, “Quite the opposite.”

  He spun around, his brows drawn in a cautious scowl as he stood there, watching and waiting.

  For her to come to her senses and start screaming foul?

  But the more she thought on it, the less crazy the idea of rewinding time became. Lord Adair’s supernatural revelation brought a natural order to the chaos inside her head, answering questions faster than she could formulate them. Nothing else came nearly as close to describing what she’d felt yesterday and just now. As if God had taken pity on her and reset the clock of her life at the direst of moments.

  His scowl cleared. The grim set of his jaw remained. “Lady Ostrich has somehow tracked us here. Or she will, in roughly thirty minutes. We need to get the hell away.”

  Lily’s shoulders tensed as they started up the path again. He can rewind time! She waited for hysteria to descend. But no, only a niggling concern that she should be more worried about his absurd announcement than she was. Where there should have been screaming doubt, there wasn’t even a whisper.

  “You rewound time yesterday. That was no vision, or premonition.” They’d reached the end of the path, where it opened onto the sports field, and she glanced upward. Many more air paddlers had taken to the skies and the crowd of spectators had thickened at the edge of the field. Her gaze snapped back to him. “We need to go to the authorities. This is a matter for the police.”

  “And tell them what? That someone we know only as Lady Ostrich murdered you?”

  “Of course not.” But he was right. If she went to the police with her ridiculous claims, there was only one person they’d lock away and it wouldn’t be Lady Ostrich.

  “Besides, you saw what she did to Neco and Halver, to Ana. A handful of policemen aren’t going to stand up much better.”