Now Playing on Outworld 5730

by R. T. W. Lipkin

  The carefully arranged book-lined walls—and not one of the players could possibly appreciate how difficult it was to procure books and how expensive it was to have them here on Outworld 5730, and all of them, well, nearly all of them, authentic—the handblown lampshades on the twin desk lamps, the lovely bronze sculpture of the sea goddess on the sill of the mullioned window in the corner.

  But now all that remained in place was the sea goddess, but only, Jewel thought, because she’d probably been too heavy for the duchess to lift.

  The books, except for the ones still in place on the highest shelves, were scattered across the desk and the floor, most of them lying near the yellow satin–upholstered chair where the duke himself was sitting with his feet propped up on the chair’s mate, a brandy snifter in his left hand and a cigar in his right.

  Also in front of the duke were the shards of one of the two handblown lampshades. Jewel took a deep, but silent, breath.

  “Your Grace,” Jewel said to the duke, curtsying. He raised his glass to her and took a puff of his rank-smelling cigar. “Mrs. Allman,” he said. “I fear the room will need a cleaning.”

  “It’s your fault,” the duchess said, glaring at her husband, who finished off his brandy and threw the glass to the floor, where its shattering made a quite euphonious noise against the broken glass of the lampshade.

  “I’ll have someone come in immediately,” said Jewel. And she’d charge the duke and duchess for the damages. She’d heard about this couple, but she’d never worked with them before. The rumors hadn’t been exaggerations, she was sorry to see.

  She bent down and picked up a copy of Belinda, which book Jewel had never been able to get through, despite its importance to the Regency period. The spine was broken, but it would look all right back on the shelf. She hoped.

  “Now,” the duchess said as she hoisted the as-yet-unbroken twin to the lamp whose shade had already been destroyed, and looked threateningly at the duke. She put the lamp back on the desk when she saw Jewel’s pained expression.

  “Have them come now,” the duchess said, and Jewel said, “Yes, Your Grace,” curtsied, left the room, and fled downstairs to get a crew to attend to the study immediately.

  But when the two maids and footman arrived at the oak-paneled door, their knocks went unanswered.

  Chapter 14

  “Really, my sweet, you’re going to have to stop breaking things,” said Edgar Thomas Samuelson, Duke of Bedford.

  “As soon as you stop misbehaving,” Sophia, Duchess of Bedford, said with as much defiance and hauteur as she could muster.

  “I haven’t seen you for a bloody year,” the duke said. “Try to hold your temper.”

  “We’ll make it two years next time,” the duchess said. She went to the room’s corner and fingered the bronze sea goddess, then closed her fist around its neck and pulled on it. It was incredibly heavy. Immovable.

  The duke puffed on his malodorous cigar. “But I know how much you like pheasant, my love,” said the duke.

  He ran his hand back through his light brown hair, which was naturally curly and wavy, a definite advantage to his Regency haircut. And his sideburns had turned out perfectly. He might even keep them when this was all over.

  When this was over. He wouldn’t see Marguerite again for another year after this—and now she was threatening two. Yet it had always been worth the wait. Just to be in the same room with her, hearing her shout at him.

  Maybe especially that. Because it was so normal, something they didn’t have and, if Marguerite never changed her mind, they never would have it. Because as many times as he’d begged her to leave her legendarily faithless scoundrel of a husband, she’d always refused.

  In the meanwhile, if these biennial majestics were the best he could get, he’d take it. Better to have this than never to see her at all.

  “And did you have to go with Saybrook?” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “He’s a nice chap, actually. And a remarkably good shot,” said the duke, finally rising from his chair. He turned the lock on the door, then crunched across the broken glass on the floor in front of him.

  The duchess leaned back against the windowsill even though she knew that a real duchess would probably never look like she needed the support of anything other than her steel rod of a spine.

  Bedford walked toward her, kicking books out of his path. When he got to the desk, he put out his cigar in the crystal ashtray, one of the few survivors of the duchess’s tirade, and stared at Sophia.

  Sophia. He must remember that’s who she was now. She was his wife, the duchess, and he had the span of the entire majestic during which he could bask in her every mood . . . and her every emotion.

  “You think you can get away with anything,” the duchess said to him, although it was actually the other way around. The duke shrugged.

  “My dearest wife,” he said, savoring the words. If only Sophia were his wife. “Let’s stop arguing for a while. I have far more urgent needs, and they must be met. Now.”

  He said now with the same tone the duchess had used earlier.

  She closed her hand around the sea goddess’s neck and tried lifting it again, but failed. The duke stood inches away from her, waiting. He kicked aside another book.

  “Careful,” the duchess said.

  “Too late for that,” he said, gently prying her hand from the statue and clasping his fingers around hers. He stroked the back of her hand, then turned it over and traced lines on her palm while he stared into her hazel eyes. “I’ve waited so long for this.”

  “Then why did you keep me waiting?” The duchess tried pulling her hand out of his grasp, but he held on tighter and put one arm around her back, cradling her slender waist and bringing her ever closer to him.

  He kissed her lightly in the very center of her hand and, as he knew she would, she responded instantly, sighing and wedging her hip against his.

  “Now you know how I feel for a year at a time,” he said. “So I thought I should punish you as you punish me.”

  “I do not,” the duchess said. “I only . . .” But her words were covered over by his kisses and finally silenced beneath her own encouraging moans.

  When he broke away and stood back, gazing at her, the duchess said, “Is that someone knocking?”

  “My heart,” the duke said, then guided the duchess over to the area behind the desk—the only space in the room that hadn’t been wrecked by her tirade—pushed the chair aside, and slowly lowered Sophia and himself to the floor as smoothly as if it were an elaborate dance move that they’d practiced together for years.

  As he laid her back against the plush Persian carpet and positioned himself between her open legs, she whispered, “Edgar. Don’t make me wait any longer.”

  If just once, he thought, Marguerite would call him by his real name. But she never had. Not once in all these years. She’d called him many other names, but never his own.

  “Edgar,” she whispered again, her fingers entwining themselves in his hair.

  He pulled up her skirts and petticoat and sighed as he reached her uncovered sex. Very Regency-period accurate. And just what the duke had been hoping for.

  Chapter 15

  Booker had been so kind to her, Violet thought, that she’d probably forgive him for the gigantic wrongs he’d done her, although she could no longer remember what they were, only that they were.

  All she could remember were his soothing hands, the deep tones of his comforting voice, and how he’d carried her back to the manor house in the downpour. She could still feel his strong shoulder underneath her.

  He’d surprised her by coming to the majestic. All the way to Outworld 5730. The fare would set him back for months. Years, maybe. She never would’ve suspected he’d care enough or have the presence of mind to find her. Yet he had.

  Very good of him. Especially since he was dead.

  Violet sat up in her bed and panicked. She wasn’t Violet Aldrich, wife of Booker
Holm, actor hoping for a part, maybe even a lead or at least a substantial supporting role, in Mirage. She was Violet Aldrich, lady’s maid to Lady Patience, and she was in Regency England, at Hollyhock Manor, and must find Lady Patience immediately and tend to her clothes, her hair, her accessories, and her every whim and need.

  Something with ribbons and braids, she thought as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and slid to the floor. She tried leaning back against the side of the bedframe, but couldn’t manage it, so she got on her hands and knees, hoping to be able to hoist herself back up to the Himalayan height.

  “You’re not to get out of bed yet,” said the taunting voice from the part-open doorway.

  Trevelton. She groaned. Lord Trevelton. And her on her hands and knees in a half-damp, perhaps three-quarters-damp, nightgown.

  Damn the damned damnable Booker Holm and his damned lies and worse charms and his marrying unsuspecting foolish damn me, she thought. If it weren’t for him and his life, his death, I wouldn’t be here having to fend off the most annoying man on Outworld 5730. Perhaps on all of the outworlds. And throw Earth in there for bad measure.

  “Tut, tut, tut,” said the great lord as she struggled to pull herself up onto the bed. He crossed his arms in front of his chest, crossed his legs, leaned against the doorframe, and gazed down at her.

  “Wouldn’t listen to Mummy and Daddy and now can’t obey a single order. We shall have to conscript you into His Majesty’s service and teach you just what obedience really means.”

  Violet had at this point, unfortunately, remembered exactly what had happened, why she was here at Hollyhock Manor, and what part she was playing, or she would’ve told Trevelton off after maybe kicking him in his favorite accessories. Or strangled him. Although he was far taller than she and the reach might ruin her leverage.

  As it was though, all she said was, “Yes, my lord.”

  “Ah. That’s more like it, Violet,” Trevelton said. “Get back on the horse.”

  But she couldn’t manage to raise herself to the bed, and she curled up on the floor instead. She thought of crawling under the bed, as if that would make everything and everyone disappear. Including herself.

  Trevelton came into the room then, closing the door behind him—which was no doubt against every rule, regulation, and custom in the Regency book of don’t-you-dare-do-this, Violet thought—and violated yet another rule, she was sure, by picking Violet up and returning her to her bed. Her sickbed.

  She was suddenly extremely warm. Trevelton must’ve sensed something, because he put the back of his large, elegant hand to her cheek and shook his head.

  “You’re forbidden to have another fever,” he said. “We’ve had quite enough of that for one week. And now that Bedford’s finally arrived, you’re going to have to shape up.”

  “The duke’s here?” Violet said, forgetting all the Yes, my lords and No, my lords that she’d promised herself she’d limit herself to.

  “So you do know how to speak for yourself,” Rafe said. “Of a sort.”

  “Of a sort,” Violet said. “Yes.” She adjusted the covers. “My lord.” Although the last was delivered in her most quiet voice, the one that Booker would ask her to raise, since he couldn’t hear it. Although my lord did hear it.

  “Try to stay put and not evanesce on me again, darling,” the marquess said, “and I’ll see if Cook will have something brought up for you. Maybe the side of a stag or two. You look quite pale.”

  Trevelton readjusted her covers, felt her cheek again, tutted a couple of times, then left her alone in her small room in the servants’ hall. As the door clicked shut, she felt a terrible yearning blossom. As though she needed Rafe Blackstone, Lord Trevelton, in order to understand her place here on Outworld 5730. Or, worse, on any world.

  And she realized that it had been Trevelton who’d taken care of her, not Booker.

  So while she waited for someone to return with food, which she desperately needed, she let herself cry for a few moments, mourning both her losses and her desires, which she suspected would become more losses.

  Chapter 16

  “Cook?” Trevelton said to the slight, slim woman standing behind the long table in the kitchen, putting something into a pan.

  “My lord,” Cook said as she curtsied, remembering her Regency-period manners.

  Jewel had given her an actual handwritten list of what to call everyone. Cook had laughed when Jewel handed her the paper, wondering why she didn’t just comm her, but of course, no one had their comms. They’d all been confiscated on the transport over.

  After two months they’d be allowed a half-hour’s contact with one person of their choosing outside the majestic. A half-hour’s supervised contact. Although Cook had done enough of these that she knew ways around that petty-minded regulation, although she’d promised herself that this time . . .

  “I suspect our Violet could use some substantive nourishment this morning,” Trevelton said. He fancied he recognized Cook from somewhere, someplace else, but he couldn’t place her. He was here for Violet though, not to tax his brain with its catalog of thousands of faces from his lifetime.

  “Yes, my lord, but there was no need to come down here yourself, there wasn’t.” She blushed to accompany her statement, a rather convincing blush, Rafe thought. Isn’t that what the real downstairs cook would’ve done way way way back when?

  When he got home—if he got home—he’d have to instruct his actual cook on some decent blushings. It’d be a challenge, since certainly the woman had never blushed in her entire life, having started out as a floor washer in a home just west of his farm.

  In some ways Trevelton preferred this faux Regency existence. For one thing, you could be certain that everyone you encountered was supposed to be playing a part, and it was a relief to not have to guess. He wondered if that were one of the reasons majestics were so popular.

  “I’ll get a tray up to her just now, my lord,” Cook said, with a slight hesitation before the my lord part.

  Rafe himself would laugh out loud before referring to himself as my lord. But he was getting so used to hearing it, it was almost as though it were his name. Or a nickname, maybe. Or just a synonym for Ephraim.

  “I’ll take it myself,” Trevelton said. He watched as Cook did some sort of especially complex maneuver with whatever it was she had in that pan.

  “No need, my lord,” said Cook. “I’ll have Rosie do it.” Cook turned then and shoved the pan into what looked like something from a museum of too-monstrous-to-be-believed objects.

  Cook wiped her hands on her apron and put her hands on her hips. “Is there anything further, my lord?” she said.

  “I’ll just wait over here, then, shall I?” Rafe said.

  “Oh no, my lord, it isn’t a fitting place for you,” Rosie herself said. She’d assembled a tray of breakfast items while Trevelton had been busy chatting with Cook.

  Trevelton took the tray from Rosie without another word and went back upstairs, through the servants’ stairway, since Violet’s room was in the hallway at the top of those stairs.

  “He never,” he heard Rosie saying as he mounted the stairs three at a time. The stairs were steep, but Trevelton was in marvelously good condition. He usually was, but he was in particularly good condition at present, since he’d been preparing for this majestic for months.

  He’d make sure Violet ate, then he’d see about Saybrook. Feel him out a bit. Toy with him before he brought him down to the only fate he deserved.

  At the top of the staircase, at the far end of the hall from Violet’s bedchamber, Trevelton stopped, held the tray far out in front of him, and looked himself over. Here he was, a supposed marquess, and he was waiting on a lady’s maid. Not just any lady’s maid. This lady’s maid was the sui generis Violet Aldrich.

  He started down the hall again, reminding himself that Violet was merely an actor and that she could’ve been playing any part, really, so it was all the same. That is, the ache that had aris
en from deep in his center the first moment he’d seen her would be the same no matter what role she’d been cast in.

  He opened Violet’s door after knocking so very quietly. If she’d gone back to sleep, he’d leave the tray. She was still quite weak. He’d heard of the outworld sickness, but since he’d never known anyone who’d traveled to one of the outworlds, he had no other knowledge about it. Could it recur? he wondered.

  And why had he dragged her around the lake path twice, when it would’ve been patently obvious to anyone else that she lacked the stamina for such an enterprise?

  If he weren’t careful, pretty soon his own flaws would start to rival Saybrook’s.

  Chapter 17

  It’d been a terrific effort, but it’d been worth it just to see the look on Lord High-and-Mighty’s face when he came into her room, bringing with him a tray weighed down with various breakfast foods, all of which Violet wanted, immediately, but she reminded herself to exercise some Regency-style restraint.

  Trevelton set the tray down on the table next to where she was seated, fully dressed in the same light gray gown she’d been wearing that awful night, and, looming over her chair, he said, “You’re much improved, darling. Perhaps we can make it to Gretna Green this afternoon after all. Such a bother waiting for the banns to be read, don’t you think?”

  “Oh yes,” Violet said, playing along with who knew what. What in bloody hell was Gretna Green? And what had to be banned? She’d have to bone up on Regency essentials immediately.

  “My lord,” she said, at last remembering the proper form. Two lines to learn and she couldn’t remember them. She knew entire fabulas by heart, yet my lord had a way of slipping into that sludgy pit of unknowing. Shameful, really. For an actor.

  “Tea, my lady?” Trevelton said. There was an entire pot of the bitter stuff on the tray, and without waiting for her reply, he poured some into the chipped mug. She supposed the chip was to remind her that she was really only a servant.