A Clockwork Christmas

by JK Coi, PG Forte, Stacy Gail; Jenny Schwartz

  Jasper had used the connection to meet the famous Calliandra, surprised and impressed to discover that the hauntingly beautiful and mysterious dancer was a bright woman full of vibrancy who made him feel ten feet tall. He’d pursued her relentlessly until she finally agreed to marry him.

  And the rest was history.

  So when Jasper had finally received word that Callie was recovered enough to return home, he’d only trusted Malcolm to go on ahead to the clinic while he took care of the last bit of business, the last loose end before he would feel safe enough to fetch her. “The doctor said her throat had been badly damaged—”

  “It’s not that she can’t speak, because she screams well enough in the middle of the night.”

  Jasper’s fists clenched at his side, but he nodded. “What else?” There was more. He could tell there was more.

  “She’s become more withdrawn since she learned you were on your way. Hasn’t come out of her room for three days.”

  “All right.” He took a deep breath and looked past the big soldier. “Thank you for watching over her until I could get here.”

  Malcolm paused. “There’s still more.”

  “What is it?”

  “You weren’t the only visitor expected this week.”

  “What do you mean? A new patient for the doctor?”

  His expression turned fierce. “Apparently, General Black is coming. He’s coming here to see Callie.” Malcolm hated the general almost as much as Jasper did himself. “The storm might have delayed his arrival for another couple of days, but he’ll be here before Yuletide.”

  “Then we’ll be gone before Yuletide.” Jasper deliberately pushed aside his anger to deal with later. He wouldn’t be any good to Callie if he walked into her room seething with rage. “Let me know if you hear anything more.”

  He stepped past the captain.

  “Colonel.” Malcolm dropped a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Did you know this was going to happen?”

  He turned back around, meeting his friend’s hard gaze. “I had been told from the start that there would be a price for saving Callie. The War Office’s involvement practically guaranteed it. Although, at the time I believed that I would be the one to pay it. And you know I would have gladly paid anything.”

  “But they can’t mean to… You’re not going to let him take her, are you?”

  His hand clenched into a tight fist at his side at just the thought of that bastard getting anywhere near what was his. “Not without a fight.”

  “Good. I want in on that fight.”

  Jasper nodded, grateful to have the experienced captain in his corner. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Before he could enter Callie’s room, Malcolm stopped him again. “Did you find the third?”

  “Dead.”

  “Good.”

  “Now there’s only one more.” The bastard behind it all. The traitor. “And we’ll find him too.”

  “Count on it.”

  It was warm as he entered Callie’s room. The fire looked like it had been stoked recently. It crackled and popped with energetic vigor.

  His gaze found her in the window seat staring out at the deepening twilight. Her knees were bent and she rested her chin on them. He was glad to see it because it meant she had control of and flexibility in her artificial legs.

  How long had she been sitting there? Long enough to have been watching the snow fall while he did the same back on the train?

  She didn’t look up and seemed lost in thought, but he could tell she knew he was there from the tightening of her shoulders. After stepping across the threshold, he stopped in his tracks and drank in as much of her as he could. With the firelight causing the shadows to flicker and dance, she seemed naught more than a dream. Insubstantial. If he blinked, she might be gone. Gone for good.

  Her hair was so short, shorter than she’d ever worn it. After their arrival at the clinic, the doctor had shaved her long silky hair to bore a hole into her head. She’d been unconscious for a whole day by then and the quack had said her brain was swelling, that the pressure on her skull needed to be eased immediately or she would never wake up. At the time, Jasper hadn’t been able to credit what he was hearing, but Cassie had looked so pale, so close to death. There’d been no choice but to let him try it.

  He hadn’t handled it well. It hadn’t mattered that he’d once dug a bullet from his own thigh or that he’d watched men die in all sorts of horrible ways, right in front of him. It hadn’t mattered that Callie had always been so strong, completely capable of handling herself. This had been different.

  Miracle of miracles, the procedure had actually worked. The doctor had proven himself more than just a quack after all. Still, later Jasper had collapsed in a chair by Callie’s bedside and wept for hours and hours. He wanted to weep again now for all she’d suffered, but knew he couldn’t do that.

  Her glossy dark locks were growing back in, with thick curls that went every which way. It lent her a gamine quality that complemented the pensive, faraway look on the face reflected in the glass of the window. He searched for the other changes, but besides being much too thin, the shadows quickly invading the room prevented him from seeing more of her face—until she finally turned to look at him.

  And then it was impossible not to see all the differences. They bludgeoned him in the head and gut. They hit so hard, he almost took a step back, but caught himself at the last minute.

  Ah God, her poor eye…

  He squeezed his own eyes closed, unable to keep from imagining the agony she must have endured at the hands of those monsters.

  His only consolation, however minor, was that he’d spent the long months of her recuperation tracking down every one of the three spies who’d crept into their home and hurt her. He’d hunted them down. Tied them down. And repeated to them every violent, bloody, agonizing injury they had forced on her. Including taking their eyes.

  Before he’d killed them.

  When he looked at her, she’d already turned back to the window, shoulders stiff.

  “Oh, Callie, I’m sorry.” He was afraid his momentary lapse had hurt her. That she’d seen his involuntary horror before he’d been able to push it back down. “Please don’t turn away from me.”

  She didn’t acknowledge him, but he watched a small shiver move through her and stifled a wince at her visible rejection. After a long moment, he realized he remained standing just inside the doorway like a dumbstruck idiot.

  This wasn’t the reunion he’d expected. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but not this painful, absolute silence.

  Suddenly, the barrier between them was so much greater than a physical door, as he’d believed only a few minutes ago out in the hall. The barrier between them was built out of anger and pain and guilt. He’d thought he could handle it, but now that he was here he realized how wrong he’d been. He didn’t know what to do to bring the wall down.

  In the two years they’d been husband and wife, Jasper had never come into a room where Callie was waiting and not taken her into his arms. He’d never hesitated to greet her with a scorching kiss, and she’d always welcomed him with bright smiles and laughter.

  But now he was afraid.

  He pushed his feet into motion. When he reached her side, he touched her shoulder.

  She whipped around so fast he didn’t even see her fist smack him in the chest, could only feel the impact of it as she sent him stumbling back a half dozen steps.

  When he regained his balance, Callie had come down from the window seat and retreated to a corner of the room, her back against the wall. He stepped toward her, but she hissed and raised her hand to ward him off. Her mechanical hand.

  Jasper held back. Although he’d prepared himself, the sight of that unnatural gray iron in place of Callie’s warm, smooth skin shocked him more than he thought it would. He hesitated for half a heartbeat before shaking off the unworthy feeling.

  It’s Callie. And she’s alive.
r />   He reached for her again. “Calliandra, please.”

  Although no actual fear showed in her face—no fear, no anger, no nothing—her body was pressed so closely to the wall she might go right through it if he dared take another step toward her.

  He drew in a deep breath, hoping he projected all the reassuring things he wanted to say out loud, but for some reason couldn’t. God, he was going to lose her.

  Just take it slow. Take it slow. Give her time.

  He didn’t approach her again. He didn’t speak to her again. Instead, he backed off and took a seat in a chair across the room.

  Callie remained standing in the corner, watching him. He wondered what was going through her head. Did she hate him for what had happened, for not being there to protect her? Did she even remember him and what they’d meant to each other? Or was it as the doctor had implied and she’d been forced to eradicate certain memories in order to survive the trauma? Maybe the memories of him had been too closely connected to those of her torture and near death? Maybe she’d talked herself into forgetting everything, including the years of happiness and love, in order to start over with a clean slate.

  After a few minutes, her shoulders relaxed and she carefully returned to the window seat, settling back in as if he wasn’t even there, to watch the snow falling heavily on the other side of the glass.

  They stayed like that for hours. Callie ignoring him. Jasper looking at her, trying to project strength and calm. Neither of them managed perfectly.

  When a long set of reverberant gongs echoed from the standing clock out in the hall, he realized it was midnight and reluctantly got to his feet. He didn’t want to leave her, but guessed that she wouldn’t sleep until he did. “Good night, Callie,” he said gently. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  She didn’t turn or acknowledge him in any way as he walked across the room, but as he pulled open the door, he thought she whispered his name. “Jasper.”

  It was something. It was a start. Whether the start of the end for them, or maybe a new beginning, he just couldn’t be sure.

  Unable to sleep, he’d been nursing a brandy for the last two hours and chewing over all the mistakes he’d made. Then. Now. So many mistakes.

  He’d been here for two days and made very little progress. He worried that General Black would show up any minute, but Callie still refused to speak. She refused to acknowledge him, touch him, or even leave her room, and he refused to force her after all she’d already been through.

  The only thing that kept him going were the brief moments when he said or did something and a flash of emotion broke over her face, as if she wanted to respond, but didn’t dare. As if to do so would put a crack in her armor, and she might just fall apart.

  God, that night he had returned home to find her…

  Callie thought he’d gone to check on his property in Scotland. She’d had no idea he was a spy against the French, and would have taken a shotgun to his head if she’d found out how deeply he’d pledged himself in service to his country.

  And now that obligation went even further, but he’d had no choice in the matter. He would have done anything to save her life. But was it enough?

  What a foolish ass he was, thinking he could just walk into this place after all she’d been through, and maybe she’d rail at him, and they’d cry in each others’ arms for a while, but then everything would return to the way it had been, and they would leave here to spend the holidays in Yorkshire like they always did.

  How gullible he’d been to assume that as long as Callie lived everything else could be fixed.

  Yes, like her mangled hand had been fixed? Her beautiful eye had been fixed? And beneath her skirts, the dancer’s legs which the doctor had also “fixed”?

  What have I done?

  He shook his head. He had to believe all that was better than death. That Callie would adapt, and find a way to feel some joy in being alive, in having survived. But he knew from a life spent at war that there were some things the mind was not meant to endure.

  His fingers tightened around the tumbler. He had to try. Had to trust in the strength of their love. And yet, there were also some things love was never meant to suffer.

  Her screams reached him through the wall dividing their two rooms.

  He was on his feet and out the door in the space of a fractured heartbeat. Murphy was already in the hall and Malcolm stumbled out of his room at nearly the same moment as Jasper, but he waved them both back as he reached Callie’s room. “I’ll see to her,” he shot over his shoulder.

  Her cries tore through him like razorblades sliding down his throat, but even in his urgency, he thought to shut the door behind him as he entered her room. If something was wrong, he would run for the doctor, but if she’d become caught in the throes of a nightmare, he didn’t want anyone else to see her in her vulnerability.

  She’d left a lamp burning on the table, and the fire in the hearth gave off a soft glow. When he reached the bedside, he saw that her legs had become twisted among the sheets. Her body thrashed about, but in her sleepy delirium she couldn’t free her heavy limbs from the smooth cotton.

  When Jasper moved to gently extricate her, she cried out and took a wild swing at him. He was too slow to avoid the shot, and her iron-plated fist caught him high in the cheek. Pain exploded across the left side of his face. Damn. At least it wasn’t his chest again.

  With a grunt he gave up and simply climbed into her bed, pulling her into his lap and wrapping his arms around her tightly.

  She continued to moan and flail against him, but he held her fast, a silent promise that he would never leave her to suffer alone again.

  After a short while, she settled down. When he’d rushed out of his room for hers, he hadn’t bothered to button his shirt. Her head fit into his shoulder so very naturally as he cradled her close. The warm puffs of her short, raspy breaths glanced across his skin.

  It was heavenly torture to finally hold her like this again—to feel the proof that she was healthy and safe and alive. At this moment, he couldn’t ask for anything more…

  But he still wanted more.

  As she shifted, her soft breasts pressed against his chest and the need for her became an insistent throbbing in his groin, feeding his guilt. Jasper indulged his other needs instead, filling his senses with her scent and touch. His lips brushed the top of her head, letting her wayward curls tickle his nose and chin. He breathed deeply and felt his very soul expand as his lungs drew her in. Thank God, she smelled just the same. She smelled like…his.

  He was grateful for this chance to look at her now when she wouldn’t think he was staring out of sick curiosity or disgust. Jasper took his time. He grazed the curve of her cheek with his finger, marveling at the smoothness of her skin as if he’d never touched her before. He rediscovered the tiny, almost invisible freckles across the bridge of her nose, and traced the perfect line of her lips, trying to remember how they had felt crushed against his.

  His gaze fell down her body, over the curve of her perfect breasts and the sultry indent of her waist. He’d already experienced the proof of how much power the artificial limbs had given her. His cheek still throbbed, and the place where she’d hit him in the chest had been tender for a full day. Now that hand lay curled over his abdomen.

  As he watched, her fingers flexed. The movement was smooth, making the hand seem like a natural extension of her arm. He took a moment to marvel at the doctor’s miraculous ability to connect flesh and bone to metal in such a way that the rest of Callie’s body was able to communicate with the new parts so perfectly.

  Jasper understood the mechanics behind it only to a certain extent. The doctor had explained that he’d spent many years in the development and experimentation of biomechanical organisms so small they were visible only by means of magnifying glasses. After surgically attaching the patient’s new limbs, these organisms were injected into the bloodstream and left to travel throughout the body, somehow carrying messages back
and forth between the limbs and the brain, allowing the patient, Callie, to control the replacement hand or foot, or even the eye, the same as she controlled her other body parts.

  Apparently, they also enhanced her ability to heal and gave her strength beyond that of three grown men.

  Very gently so as not to wake her, especially now that she seemed to be resting more easily, he reached for the skirt of Callie’s cotton nightdress and drew it up slowly. A low groan escaped his lips at what was revealed to him.

  Both her legs were comprised of metal and hinges and gears from just above her knees, all the way down, including her feet. He clenched his jaw tightly, trying to examine them with an emotional objectivity. He was able to acknowledge that they were as much a marvel of modern engineering and medicine as her hand and eye. In fact, there was a certain beauty and symmetry to the way they had been fashioned. As much as possible, they looked just like Callie’s own legs had looked before the attack—slim, proportional, strong.

  A wild, primal rage clawed up his throat, threatening to explode. As grateful as he was to the doctor for giving his wife back her legs, her hand, her eye…none of it should have been necessary.

  If he had kept his promises, it wouldn’t have been.

  Chapter Four

  Jasper had arrived home weeks later than he’d promised, sporting a barely healed scar in his side, a growling stomach and a boatload of regret and anger.

  His bloody retrieval mission had very quickly turned into a royal mess and exploded in his damned face. It hadn’t been as simple as it sounded. He should have known. They never were.

  Something had been wrong almost from the very beginning, when Murphy told him their contact insisted on meeting in a derelict, out-of-the-way French cottage in the middle of nowhere. But he’d kept trying to convince himself he hadn’t been set up.

  Until the first shot nicked his arm, and the second got him in the side.