Now Playing on Outworld 5730

by R. T. W. Lipkin

  She was soaked through, as he was, and her hands and feet were covered in the mud that’d churned up with alarming speed in the sudden tempest. Almost as though the storm were trying to bury her with its fierce power.

  Had he killed her by quick-marching her around the lake in this outworld’s flimsy atmosphere? He picked up her lifeless form and threw her over his shoulder as a pulse of lime green lightning lit up both the sky and the path back to the manor house.

  Chapter 10

  Maybe it was the unidentifiable aroma, but Violet absolutely knew she was at Trevelton, wherever that was. Wales? Scotland? Northumberland?

  The lord himself had taken her there in a grand carriage, gilded and decked out in pennants and tassels. This carriage must’ve been drawn by horses, but she couldn’t really picture the horses, having never seen one in person. They carried her away as if she were on the back of an enormous hawk.

  The marquess’s silky black hair fell over his forehead as he leaned down across the carriage to adjust the itchy blanket around her. It seemed too many fabrics were itchy, scratchy, abrasive, and uncomfortable. But this was warm at least, as were Lord Trevelton’s hands. He laid one on her forehead, but now his hand felt cool and damp. She shivered and wished Booker would come get her now.

  But Trevelton was so lovely, Violet thought as she looked out over the vast snow-covered fields. She must be in her room now. The wide window. Movement had stopped. Winter, but it was toasty and warm, really too hot in here. She kicked away at the itchy blanket, but it kept returning to its place around her.

  No more LP, Violet realized with a happy sigh as she turned onto her other side. She’d been miraculously taken away from that awful planet, from the job she’d been forced to take. She’d be working on Mirage soon, as she’d been planning. No more Regency England. No more Outworld 5730. No more insufferable Lord Trevelton.

  Although as she thought that she felt a great emptiness open in front of her. She reached for him, sure he was nearby. Wasn’t this his estate? Yet she’d be starting on Mirage soon. Must learn her lines. Why had the script not arrived yet? She must check her . . .

  “The bucket,” she heard someone say. The harsh voice of a harsh woman.

  The heat broke off and she was lying underneath a snowbank. She started crawling through a tunnel that opened up in front of her. She had to get to her wedding. Booker would be waiting. They were going to start their marriage and she was up for that part in Mirage and afterward, she’d have dinner with the marquess, who she was secretly in love with. Mustn’t tell Booker. He’ll be so disappointed.

  “I can’t believe I’m waiting on her,” said a beautiful voice from two miles away. “She’s supposed to be my lady’s maid. What did you do to her, Trevelton?”

  They handed her a thin cloth, so thin that she could see her hand through it, that she could hold it up and see the rolling hillsides at Trevelton through the fine mesh. But she’d been given the cloth for a reason. She might not be Lady Patience’s lady’s maid any longer, but now she was a drudge, expected to use this thin cloth and a cupful of sludgy water to clean the rough stone floor of the basement.

  That was her job now. Cleaning the floor, using this small, thin cloth, every day.

  When Jewel Allman came to inspect her work, she always criticized it. She hadn’t been thorough enough. Didn’t she know that the reason they gave her that special cloth was so she could get into every crack, every crevice, every indentation?

  “Try to eat this,” said Trevelton. A spoon pressed against her parched lips. The spoon worked its way into her mouth, and Violet pretended to swallow.

  “I’ve got enough on my plate without you dying, Violet Aldrich,” said the soothing voice of the arrogant lord. “Damn you.”

  She pretended to eat another spoonful of the tasteless broth.

  “If you can’t get her to eat that, my lord, we’ll have to try something else,” said a woman’s voice. “She’ll waste away.”

  “She’s eating now, Cook,” said Trevelton.

  In order to please both the cook and Trevelton, Violet did her best pretend-swallow, the one she’d learned in her first acting class on a broiling morning in Los Angeles, when she was a child.

  The fluid was warm and comforting as it moved through her throat and neck and into her torso. The spoon was pressed against her lips again and Trevelton’s hand held the back of her head. What good hands.

  “Lord Trevelton,” said Lady Patience. “I knew I’d find you here.”

  The words were covered in another snowdrift, and Violet saw that Booker was on his way now and they’d be married at sunrise, out in the Trevelton rose garden, while the lord himself watched the ceremony, leaning against the pillar at the arched entryway, lancing her heart with his unwavering gaze.

  The rose petals, some pink, some white, some red, some gold, blew about the ground as the sodden hem of her gown brushed against them. There were petals on Trevelton’s shoulders too, and he left them there to taunt her as she and Booker walked past him into the open fields.

  Chapter 11

  “She’s eating now, Cook,” said Lady Patience.

  Trevelton had to give her credit. Even though she was the lady and Violet was but her lady’s maid—even though she had paid handsomely to attend this majestic and Violet was a mere hired actor—Lady Patience had been sitting watch with Violet for the past two nights, cooling her off or making sure she was warm as Violet’s fever wildly rose and fell without any discernible pattern.

  “It’s the outworld disease, it is,” said Cook, whispering, since the majestic was fully under way and any mention that they were on an outworld or talk of a disease caused by interplanetary travel was strictly forbidden. “I’ve seen it before. There’s nary enough air here for some.”

  “’Tis I who kept her out that night,” Trevelton said. “I’d no idea she’d not eaten.” He berated himself for the thousandth time for dragging her around the lake path that night, teasing her, testing her, thinking only of himself and his perverse pleasure in seeing her struggles. How that had amused him so. And kept him from what he was truly feeling.

  How he’d thought she was acting, not realizing that she’d collapsed from lack of food and from being here on this rotten planet with its too-thin atmosphere. And probably from waiting on Lady Patience, who he’d been occasionally waiting on himself while she took care of Violet and there was no one else to do Lady Patience’s bidding, since the rest of the staff was kept busy from before dawn to well after midnight as all the players arrived.

  Violet had collapsed from yet something else, Trevelton sensed. Something named Booker, who Violet alternately called out to and cursed at with language even Rafe had never encountered, not even at the academy, which had been a hotbed of unfettered verbal filth.

  “She’ll recover now, my lady,” Cook said to Lady Patience. “I’ve seen it before this way. Give her another day or two. At most.”

  “Well, I’m going riding tomorrow morning,” said Lady Patience. “So Jewel had better find someone else to sit here and tend to Lettie.”

  “Violet,” Trevelton said. He somehow despised hearing Violet called Lettie, and he thought that Lady Patience had figured that out, but maybe she hadn’t. Or maybe she was deliberately defying him.

  “Violet,” said Lady Patience, giving Lord Trevelton her best smile, showing off the dimple she daily congratulated herself for having gotten as her sixteenth birthday present. Dimples were always in fashion, no matter what the century.

  Trevelton looked at Lady Patience, stared at Violet, and thought of why he was on this hellish planet anyway. But he hadn’t yet had a chance to speak with Saybrook, who’d arrived yesterday, far later than expected.

  Saybrook and the duke had been out hunting together, which even the duchess hadn’t been advised of. She complained loud, long, and bitter about it, and was still complaining. The two men had brought back with them a clutch of pheasants and the stench of having spent several days out
in the fields, murdering birds who existed only to be toy targets for the majestic players.

  And Saybrook and the duke had been drinking something that must’ve been superior to the horrid red wine that continued to be served with every evening meal at Hollyhock, since both men had been soused past the limits when they’d arrived late last evening.

  Even though up until the two men’s arrival, Lady Patience had been very attentive to and interested in Lord Trevelton, the moment the earl showed up, her entire demeanor had changed. And she’d lost some of her interest in tending to Violet, who was far from recovered.

  Rafe worried that Lady Patience would desert Violet altogether, and he’d have to sneak about to continue caring for her, since the only reason his presence had been acceptable up to that point was that Lady Patience was there and everyone thought he was courting her.

  It was one thing to have a dalliance with a lady’s maid—and Baron North kept nudging him at the dinner table, winking at him, and calling him a fast worker—but it just wasn’t done for a marquess to be nursing a lowly servant. Even if this were just a game, just another majestic.

  Jewel Allman had taken Trevelton aside yesterday and reminded the marquess that his presence was required elsewhere and that the only reason she’d tolerated his spending so much time in Violet Aldrich’s sickroom was that she’d wanted him to get to know Lady Patience better. All so skillfully done that Jewel Allman somehow remained the marquess’s underling during the entire dressing-down.

  “She’s a lovely woman,” Jewel had said to Trevelton.

  “Quite,” Rafe said. The chestnut hair, those shimmering green eyes. He’d gasped when he picked her up that night and hoisted her over his shoulder. She couldn’t’ve weighed as much as a small sack of flour. Didn’t she eat?

  How had he not noticed her gaunt face? he’d thought as he laid her on the narrow white-painted iron-framed bed in her bedchamber. Etterly had immediately run down to the kitchen and returned with a basin of warm water, a pile of clean white linens, and a small folded paper, whose powdery contents he deftly unloaded into a cup of steaming hot tea.

  But Etterly hadn’t been able to get Violet to drink any of it. Only Trevelton, it seemed, had that power, and sometimes, after another day had passed, Lady Patience was able to get Violet to swallow a drop or two of something as well.

  In those three days Trevelton had spent by Violet’s side, he’d developed a complete hatred of this Booker character, whoever he was, who had obviously caused Violet irreparable, abysmal, untenable pain. Yet she still called out for him, looked for him sometimes, and Rafe feared she was in love with Booker almost as much as Trevelton himself might be in love with Violet.

  At night he’d pace outside her room—he wasn’t allowed to go in after dark. Something about propriety, which he cared nothing for, Regency period or no, and he’d snuck into her room in the early hours every day.

  If she died, he’d murder Saybrook twice—once for Charlotte and once for Violet. Because if it weren’t for Sumner Dobbs, Rafe wouldn’t be on Outworld 5730, destroying the life of the beautiful Violet Aldrich. Falling in love with someone when he’d vowed to never again succumb to such a disastrous act.

  But he’d find whoever this Booker was and make him answer for whatever brutish thing he’d done to cause Violet so much distress. Then he’d kill him slowly and deliberately, making him suffer a hundred times the pain, hurt, and unbearable suffering that he himself had caused Violet.

  Chapter 12

  Not even a week in, and this majestic had already had more problems than the average majestic had during its entire run. Jewel Allman was spending all her time putting out fires and rearranging servants and making sure that the lady’s maid Violet Aldrich, who she never should have hired, wouldn’t die on her watch.

  This might be Jewel’s production, but she had overseers and regulators to answer to, and Claude Sims, the renowned historitor who’d been the foremost majestic producer for two decades, had almost completely fallen out of favor since one of his principals had actually died—although, mercifully, not of the plague—during one of his twenty-seventh-century extravaganzas.

  Usually the people who were going to get outworld sickness contracted it after many months on the outworld, during a time when their services were not so urgently needed and they could be neatly stashed away until their recovery. And of course the principals never got it, since anyone with sufficient resources to attend a majestic also had the wherewithal to procure the steeply priced preventatives beforehand.

  Jewel wondered if in the future she’d have to supply those preventatives herself for the hired actors, since what was going on right now with Violet Aldrich was not just bothersome and distracting, but was upsetting the correct order and arrangement of things. Of everything.

  That Ephraim Croft, as haughty—perhaps even haughtier—in his real life than he was playing the part of the ultra-arrogant Lord Trevelton, had already, not a week into this, taken up with a lady’s maid, probably compromised her, caused her to become ill, and was now making a spectacle of himself by attending to her as though he were her servant.

  Jewel knew that even though other players in the majestic didn’t know what was really going on between Violet and Trevelton, they had noticed his absence from the main company, and the duchess had asked Jewel just this morning where the mysterious Lord Trevelton was off to this time?

  Of course the duchess was furious at the duke’s cavorting about with Saybrook, so she was on the prowl to find even more things to be furious about.

  But perhaps now that he’d returned, the Duke of Bedford would calm the duchess down. In Jewel’s experience, after a successful hunt, the hunters were invariably sexed up.

  And perhaps Violet would soon return to her duties as Lady Patience’s lady’s maid, shift her attentions to one of the footmen—Jewel had just the one in mind, the good-looking redheaded Johnny—and Trevelton would assume his rightful place at the dinner table, at the daily activities, and interesting himself in a much much more suitable companion.

  Lady Patience, for example. They’d make such a beautiful couple—he with his pitch-black hair and pale skin and she with her blond hair and rosy complexion. Pamela had told Jewel that she was hoping to find a suitable mate this time, and Jewel felt that Ephraim Croft could be the man she was looking for. If not, then she’d nudge Pamela in Sumner Dobbs’s direction.

  Neither of the men possessed anything near Pamela Hyland’s wealth, but since she’d rejected all her suitors on Outworld 75, her home planet, the only place in the galaxy where anyone nearly as well cushioned lived, or would live, she was going to have to pair up with someone of lesser means.

  Jewel sighed. So much to think about, to plan, to arrange, to manipulate, so many people to keep in line. And so so so many complications. So early in the game.

  She’d noticed that many of the players and staff already needed a refresher course in Regency customs, manners, and etiquette. Not that she had the time for it. Not now. Not with everyone still getting oriented, settling in, and a few of them walking about as if they were wearing straitjackets instead of suits and gowns, and letting their accents slip when they were tired or irritated . . . or drunk.

  But at least the food was good. Although Cook, going about her duties as though the electro were supposed to have appeared for her, had never thanked Jewel for that appearance.

  Ah, but the exquisite loaves she’d baked this morning.

  And everyone knew that the cooks were the most difficult of the majestic players to acquire and the most temperamental to deal with—and the most essential to have settled, secure, and comfortable. The cooks knew it too, and used their leverage wisely, as Stephanie had.

  “Mrs. Allman,” said the voice breaking her reverie. She wasn’t “Mrs.” anything, but this was Regency England, and she had to be called something.

  “Mr. Calvert,” she said to the butler, a man she’d never worked with before, but she’d been sure of hi
s suitability for the part the moment he arrived for his audition.

  Tall, broad, and imposing, the deeply dark-skinned man wasn’t the typecast butler, a reedy slim whiter-than-white presence, but his commanding demeanor was extremely butlerlike, and she’d hired him after the briefest of auditions. Her first impressions rarely let her down.

  Monte Rice—Mr. Calvert now—would’ve been wonderful to have upstairs, but as long as he was going to be downstairs, he was going to be in charge.

  He’d arrived, taken his place, and immediately impressed everyone with how smoothly he took over running everything and everyone. Benevolent but stern. Unreachable and aloof yet still lovable. His word was law, yet one felt that he empathized. The perfect butler.

  “You’re wanted upstairs, Mrs. Allman,” Mr. Calvert said.

  Jewel nodded, stood up, and headed for the stairs while praying that Violet Aldrich hadn’t had a relapse—or died—that Lord Trevelton hadn’t added any further deeds to his list of rapidly accumulating improprieties, that the duchess and the duke weren’t at it again, and that nothing else had happened to stomp all over her glorious majestic.

  Chapter 13

  “See here,” said Sophia, Duchess of Bedford, loud enough that Jewel heard her through the closed door to the study. “You can’t just go off with whoever you please and return here as though nothing was amiss. You have duties here.”

  Jewel heard the sound of glass shattering, cringed, and took her hand back from where it was poised to knock on the door.

  A pause, and then, “And to think that you were out with that ne’er-do-well Saybrook. He’s not even dressed properly.”

  Jewel raised her hand again, listened, heard nothing further, and used the lull to knock gently on the study’s huge oak-paneled door.

  “Come,” said the lowered voice from inside the room.

  Jewel opened the door and stepped inside to what had been, just hours, possibly just minutes, earlier, one of the most beautiful rooms in the entire manor house.