by Beth Ciotta
“Probably as much as you do.”
“I only know that he is a Mechanic,” Simon admitted, trusting he wasn’t betraying Jules’s confidence.
“Then we’re on even ground.” Phin pushed his goggles to the top of his head. “Here comes your lovely bride,” he said with a nod toward Willie, who’d just breached the upper deck. “Listen, Simon,” he continued in a low voice. “Jules trusted you with a covert tip about the Houdinians. Let us trust that he knows what he’s doing. Aside from being quite brilliant, he’s the most cunning bastard I’ve ever known.”
“But his bum leg—”
“Won’t slow him down.” Phin rapped Simon on the shoulder. “See you at Lambert’s on the morrow,” he said, then moved forward to bid Willie a temporary farewell.
• • •
By the time they took the short train ride into London and then an automocab to Covent Garden, Willie felt as though she had been awake for three days. Her brain was as exhausted as her body and she was emotionally drained. She wanted to fall into bed and to sleep for a week. But first she had to get past Simon’s valet and cook, the meticulous caretaker who had been in Simon’s employ for five years—Fletcher.
“You’re sure he is expecting us,” Willie whispered as Simon guided her from the automocab to the stone steps of his Georgian townhome.
“As I said before, I not only spoke with Fletcher this morning, but I telephoned again from Phin’s office. Yes, he is expecting us.” Simon paid and tipped the driver, who’d carried their bags to the stoop just as the front door swung open, and they were greeted by a stiff-backed gentleman with slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair and astonishingly kind brown eyes.
“Welcome home, Master Simon. I assume the lovely woman upon your arm is Mrs. Darcy,” he said whilst retrieving their bags.
“Please call me Willie,” she managed, feeling more flustered than she had anticipated. She had never employed a domestic and felt extraordinarily uncomfortable at the thought of someone attending to her needs.
“As you wish, Mrs. Darcy.”
Simon just smiled as they followed Fletcher into the entryway and Willie got her first peek inside Simon’s home. The interior, for all its spaciousness, was not overly extravagant. Whilst moving toward the stairway that would take them to the first floor, Willie peeked into the ground-level drawing room, adjacent dining area, and a small parlor. The decor and furnishings were simple and quaint, and even though this residence was far grander than her rented rooms, she did not feel overly intimidated. On the other hand, she did not feel entirely at home either. Each room was extraordinarily tidy and free of clutter. And for that matter was absent of anything that spoke of Simon’s adventurous and technology-savvy persona.
“I’ve never been much of a homebody,” Simon said as if reading her mind. “When I am here, I spend most of my time in the library. I’ll give you the grand tour later.”
“Please, sir, allow me to tidy up in there before—”
“Move one pencil and I shall have to sack you, Fletcher.”
“You should be ashamed, sir.”
“Of threatening you?”
“Of that library,” the valet said with a sniff, then continued up the steps.
Willie blinked.
Simon squeezed her waist and spoke close to her ear. “I told you he was a fussbudget and a stick-in-the-mud. I did not say he was conventional.”
“I heard that,” Fletcher said, halfway up the stairs.
“He also has excellent hearing.”
Now Willie smiled. She found the casual relationship between this particular employer and domestic most endearing. Perhaps it would not be as difficult to acclimate to this new environment as she had feared. Breaching the landing, she noted the first floor seemed to be composed of two large rooms. Since the door was open, it was clear that the room at the front of the house was the principal bedchamber. She glanced over her shoulder at the closed double doors to the rear. “The library?”
“In all its mortifying disarray,” Fletcher said. “Do have you have a headache, Mrs. Darcy? Should I fetch some medicine?”
“What? Oh. Oh, no,” she said, realizing she was wearing her sunshades in order to conceal her race.
“Willie’s sensitive to bright light,” Simon said as Fletcher carried their valises into his bedchamber.
“I see,” Fletcher said.
“No, you don’t,” Simon said.
“No, I don’t.” Probably because it had been dark outside and Fletcher had illuminated each room with only minimal lighting. Bright did not apply. “However, it is not my place to question.”
“But you will.”
“Not at this precise moment, sir. Would you like some tea, Mrs. Darcy?”
“I don’t want to be any trouble.”
“No trouble,” he said as he glided toward the hallway. “Dinner?”
“It’s been a long day,” Simon said. “We’ll be retiring early.”
“Very well. Welcome to our humble home, Mrs. Darcy,” he said, turning on the threshold and affording her a slight bow. “I warn you, Master Simon is most incorrigible to live with, although he does have a good heart. Should you need anything at all, do not hesitate to ring.”
Simon rolled his eyes.
“I like him,” Willie said when the door closed.
“I heard that,” Fletcher called even though it sounded as though he had already reached the landing.
She laughed then, a welcome feeling after being so tense and anxious throughout the day.
“Music to my ears. You should laugh more often, Willie. We’ll have to do something about that.” Simon smiled whilst dragging off his paisley scarf. “What do you think of this room? Will it do? I know the decor is quite masculine but—”
“You forget I lived as a male for the past ten years,” she said whilst shedding her sunshades and outerwear. “I’m not accustomed to frilly things.”
“Not even in the privacy of your flat?”
“I couldn’t afford the slightest chance of giving myself away.” She swept off her derby, admiring the whimsical mechanical bird and lace as well as the charmed chain around her waist. Small considerations, yet they made her heart swell with immense pleasure. They made her feel pretty. “It’s astonishing to me that I denied my true self for so long.”
“Yes, well that’s over now.”
She shook her head. “I cannot move on entirely until we have solved the mystery. Until I understand what happened to my mother. Until we have—”
“Hush now.” Simon moved forward and took her into his arms. “We’ve been at this all day. Time to rest our minds. We’ll have another brain buster in front of us tomorrow whilst we try to narrow down and pinpoint which underground passages to explore. Good thing the Golden Jubilee and hence the announcement for the Triple R prize is a few months away. Realistically it could take a while to locate that vault. Especially if Filmore opted for the New York City rather than the London safe house.”
Willie stiffened in his arms. “We cannot afford months, Simon. We need to find the engine before it falls into dangerous hands.”
“The Houdinians have successfully protected the time-traveling engine for over thirty years.”
“Aye, but the Houdinians are quite possibly down to one, and the Triple R Tourney has inspired thousands of adventurers and explorers to set off in search of a technological invention of historical significance.”
Including Strangelove. Her stomach turned just thinking about that man. Now that she was back in London, she felt that his eyes were upon her, his spies everywhere. Imagined or not, the notion rankled.
“I cannot believe that in all these years news did not leak of the survival of the clockwork propulsion engine. Remember my mother’s words regarding a traitor? We cannot be the only ones searching for it.” Willie palmed her brow. “Gadzooks! Maybe the man who shot me was looking for it! Why did that never occur to us?”
Simon shushed her mounting hysteria with a d
emanding kiss. She struggled but a moment before giving in, giving over. She parted her lips and welcomed his tongue, reveled in the feel of his hands smoothing down her back and squeezing her bottom. Her panic ebbed and her passion flowed. Indeed, her heart was beating most frantically, her desires flaring most earnestly. “Take me, Simon,” she begged whilst tugging his shirttails from his trousers. “Take me now and completely. Ravish me. Make me forget my name.”
One night of oblivion. She was desperate to rest her mind.
He looked down at her with such fire, she was certain she felt flames licking her most intimate places. “My dear Willie, do you know what you’re asking for?”
“Everything you have.”
In a blur of a second he had doused the wall sconces and locked the door. She was fumbling with the front laces of her new corset, her actions slowed by her weak hand. Simon accomplished the task with quick and nimble fingers, kissing her all the while. Her neck, her chin, her cheeks, her eyelids. His mouth skimmed over her face with butterfly kisses, so soft, so teasing. Astonishing that those barely there kisses invoked such an aggressive response. She fairly ripped Simon’s shirt from his body. She most assuredly heard fabric tearing.
“So that’s the way of it, pet.”
A statement. Not a question. The breath whooshed from Willie’s lungs as Simon backed her against the wall and yanked up her skirt. She felt his fingers stroking her bare inner thighs. She tensed, shocked when he homed in on her most sensitive and sensual region, his fingers teasing, rubbing. Good Lord. Her back arched as an erotic ache coiled tighter and tighter. Whilst one hand worked wicked magic on her nether region, the other hand caressed her breast whilst he kissed her senseless. Still mostly dressed, her clothes askew, Willie felt almost as exposed and brazen as if she were fully nude.
“Come for me, pet.”
He had never called her that. He had never been this forceful. It drove Willie deliciously mad. Her body quivered and clenched as she acquiesced to her husband’s bidding.
“Tell me your name,” he ordered as she shuddered with a colossal climax. “Your name, dammit.”
“Willie.”
“So we are not finished, then. Marvelous.”
Her mind grappled to make sense of his words as he swooped her off her feet.
A knock on the door. “Tea is served.”
“Leave it!” Simon bellowed over his shoulder.
“That was rude,” Willie whispered, half-dazed.
“He’ll get over it.” Simon bent her over the side of his massive bed. “Don’t move,” he ordered whilst ridding her of her boots, her stockings, her petticoats, her skirt.
Willie shivered with anticipation as he peeled each article of clothing from her body, and none too gently. At once she was completely naked, bare feet on the floor, torso plastered to his feathery soft mattress, her bottom scandalously exposed.
Simon trailed featherlight fingers over her shoulder blades, her spine. “Your name?”
“Willie,” she whispered.
“Yes, well, remember you asked for this.”
One palm at the small of her back, the other brazenly gripping her bottom, Simon slid into her from behind. The intrusion was shocking and welcome. She was slick with desire. Delirious with need. She groaned low with the initial thrust, then moaned, mewled, begging for harder and faster when his fingers twisted in her hair.
Scandalous.
Wicked.
She cried out in ecstasy, embarrassed by the vehemence but unable to temper her response to Simon’s fervent and imaginative lovemaking. This was not the young, reckless man she’d fallen in love with twelve years past, but the experienced, confident man she’d fallen in love with all over again.
“Name?” he asked as she shuddered with yet another orgasm.
“Wilhelmina Darcy.”
“Christ.”
He lifted her and suddenly she was on her back, in the center of a wondrously masculine bed. Simon’s bed. She realized in a far-off way that in all the frantic lovemaking he had been most careful not to harm her shoulder. That, in itself, heightened her senses. Along with the glorious feel of his tongue, lips, and hands honoring every inch of her body, pleasuring her in ways that made her cheeks flush and her pulse skitter. Just when she thought she would expire from the erotic sensations, Simon ceased his avid ministrations.
Her breath caught and her mind reeled. It was as though she was perched on a precipice, teetering on the brink of a breathtaking fall. The anticipation consumed her being, obliterated the outside world.
There was only Simon.
“Open your eyes,” he demanded in a measured voice. “Do not deviate from my gaze.”
She nodded, incapable of words. And then . . . he did nothing. He held his magnificent body above hers, poised, promising wondrous pleasure yet not delivering. Her breath stalled in her chest, his gaze . . . so intent, so unsettling.
And then she felt the tip of his shaft. The breach. The friction. She felt him moving inside of her—so slow, so controlled—and suddenly time ceased. She felt his hand moving over her mound, his fingers teasing her folds. He increased the pressure, making her crazy there as he drove into her with hard, unrelenting strokes in the other there. The orgasm was twofold. Earthshaking. Mind-bending.
“Name?” Simon asked in a gruff voice.
“Sorry?” Willie grappled to make sense of the query as her husband plunged deep and shuddered.
His release was fierce and loud. “Good Christ,” he rasped.
A heartbeat later—or was it a lifetime?—Simon rolled to his side and pulled her into his arms. “Willie,” he beckoned softly.
Body tingling, chest heaving, she struggled to engage her brain.
“Have you forgotten your name, pet?”
“Sorry?”
She thought she felt him smile as he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Sleep well, wife.”
CHAPTER 27
JANUARY 24, 1887 QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA
Bingham blinked up at a white ceiling, smelled antiseptic, and heard the steady thwacking of a ceiling fan. He’d expected to wake up in purgatory or hell, but a quick glance about confirmed that he was lying in a small, although private—thank God—hospital room.
“Doctor said you’d rouse sooner or later this morning. Glad it was sooner,” Austin Steele said as he pushed through the door. “Don’t fancy cooling my heels in Cunnamulla a third day.”
Bingham tried to push himself up into a sitting position and almost passed out in the process.
“Easy, mate. You were gutshot. Lost a lot of blood. Lucky you’re alive. If your bodyguard hadn’t found you when he did—”
“That bitch shot me.” Bingham palmed his sweaty brow and tempered his labored breathing as his last memories cleared. They’d been under attack. He’d commanded Renee to shoot at the enemy and she’d bloody well shot him. “She’ll pay for this.”
“Something tells me she paid in spades up front.” Steele was hovering bedside now and scowling down at Bingham. “You hired me to deliver you to Queensland and I did. Even more so, I saved your sorry life. No need to thank me, mate, just pay me the other half of what we agreed on and I’ll be on my way.”
Bingham fisted clammy hands at his sides. “You can’t abandon me in this godforsaken place.”
“Cunnamulla’s not as civilized as, say, Perth or Brisbane, but it is on the map and as close as I could get you to the last coordinates you gave me without forgoing professional medical aid. Your bodyguard, for all the good he is, alerted your captain of your location and situation. Northwood, I believe his name was, said to assure you he will be here within forty-eight hours. Don’t rush recovery, do as the doctor instructs, and you may be up and around by then.”
Bingham gritted his teeth. “My personal possessions.”
Steele opened the drawer of the tall table next to the bed, handed Bingham his thick wallet.
“I’m surprised you didn’t help yourself,” Bingham said upon noting
his booty was still intact.
“Not my way.” Steele pushed his sweat-stained hat to the back of his head as Bingham counted out several large banknotes. “Just so you know, as a bonus for saving your life, I’ll be taking Renee off your hands.”
Bingham shot him a look. “She’s a menace and you’re a fool.”
“I don’t see it that way,” the insolent man said whilst he tucked away the money. “Then again, I don’t intend to bugger Renee. I like my women warm and willing and I sure as hell don’t abuse them.”
Bingham made a mental note to eviscerate this man at some point in time. Just now he simply wanted him out of his sight. “I don’t suppose you garnered the information I asked for.”
“Did better than that,” Steele said as he strode to the door. “Found your Mod Tracker and roped him in. Job complete. Wish I could say it was nice knowin’ you, Bingham.”
He blew out the door and a second later another man crossed the threshold. “Lord Bingham.”
“Crag.” Finally something was going right. Maybe. “Can you adjust this bed, these pillows? Something to elevate me.”
“Certainly, sir.”
Crag was every bit as rugged, weather-beaten, and common as Steele, but he, at least, was respectful. After cranking the top portion of the bed so that Bingham was no longer lying flat out, he poured Bingham a glass of water from the pitcher on the table.
Bingham took the glass, vexed that his hand was shaking and rattled by the severe pain in his abdomen. Fortunately Renee hadn’t aimed higher or, God help him, lower. Considering, he supposed he was lucky she hadn’t shot off his manhood. “What of Professor Merriweather?”
Crag swiped off his hat and sleeved sweat from his brow. “Sure you’re up to hearing this?”
Bingham braced and soothed his parched throat with the cool water. “I take it you’ve lost him.”
“More like someone stole him.”
“Excuse me?”
Crag fingered the brim of his hat. “Merriweather was holed up in a makeshift compound with his daughter. That compound sits in the middle of a barren tract of land. Man nor beast could approach from any direction without being seen. Using a high-powered telescope, I kept watch from a secluded copse of trees. Traded shifts with my partner, Boyd. No one got past that fence without the gate being magically opened from the inside of the house. Merriweather must be some sort of technological wizard.”
