Now Playing on Outworld 5730

by R. T. W. Lipkin

  Playing one, she reminded herself. A role like any other. More extensive, more consuming, but just a role. Yet she had always played every role as completely as her talents allowed, and this one was no different.

  “Please, my lord,” she said. Had Booker ever poured her a cup of tea? Had he ever had the opportunity to? And if he had, would he have known how to do it? Or had such elegant hands to do it with? Or made her feel that pouring a cup of tea was the most seductive action she’d ever witnessed?

  “Sugar, my sweet?” said Trevelton as he poised the tongs over the bowl of sugar lumps.

  “Lots,” Violet said. “My lord.”

  “Ah, darling, please be circumspect. You’re just recovering. Mustn’t overindulge.” Trevelton picked out the smallest lump in the sugar dish and put it into her cup, then handed it to her with a facetious bow.

  Her hands shook as she reached for the cup. It’d been more taxing to get out of bed, remove the nightgown, wash herself off, and get dressed than it’d been to race around the lake, lagging after the self-righteous prig himself.

  Clearly, Trevelton was a man who was far too comfortable pretending to be a marquess. Maybe he was one in his real life, back on Earth, as well. After all, in order to afford such a grand role, he had to have vast resources. If there were still marquesses around, which maybe there weren’t.

  Violet took a sip of the tea, which was still too bitter, and carefully placed the mug back on the tray. Then she reached for the toast and a knife, but Trevelton prevented her from completing her action as he deftly moved the butter away from her extended arm.

  “Must start small, my dear,” he said. “We’ll save the butter for another day or two. When you’ve recovered completely.”

  Then the bastard actually took the butter off the tray and put it on top of the tall dresser near the doorway. Unreachable. She’d never make it that far. She wasn’t even certain she’d be able to stand up again for hours. And she’d so wanted the butter, something she’d never’ve eaten in her real life, the life of Violet Aldrich, widow and actor. Not Violet Aldrich, convalescing lady’s maid.

  But even dry toast was marvelous. Maybe the best thing she’d tasted since the afternoon she’d come home to find Booker’s corpse littering their hocked-to-the-limit living room.

  “If all is suitable, then, I’ll leave you to it, my delicate flower,” Trevelton said as he started to turn toward the doorway.

  “Please don’t go,” Violet said with a mouthful of toast. “My lord.” The empty ache had reappeared the moment he’d said he was leaving, and she was shaky enough without that additional discomfort. Even if she hadn’t intended to say those words—and she hadn’t—they were what she felt.

  Trevelton, who’d made it to the door already—it was a very small room—slammed the door shut, locked it, and resumed his previous position, looming over Violet’s chair.

  He bent over, his hands resting on the fabric of his dark brown breeches, and said, “Violet.” Just that one word.

  She looked up at him and put her toast back on the plate.

  She felt his breaths as his heavy exhalations filled the air between them. He was so very close to her. Was he about to kiss her? Would she kiss him back? How had she allowed one mere person, pretend marquess or not, to make such inroads into her most guarded emotions? She’d been here not even a week.

  “You’re killing me,” he said, finally breaking the silence. “And I don’t have time for this. Do you understand?”

  “No, my lord,” she said. He’d have to explain himself. She didn’t know this man, and so much of what he said was in jest that this was quite possibly another snide, provoking remark.

  “You. This,” he said, standing back up and gesturing at her, at the tray, then at her bed. “Everything.”

  “Yes, my lord?” If the three words he’d spoken were supposed to have constituted an explanation, they were failing monumentally.

  She decided to take another sip of tea. Prove to him how little she cared for his explanations, for his attentions. Or for him.

  Chapter 18

  Violet looked as though she were going to disintegrate right there in front of him. Spontaneous evaporation, he thought, if such a thing were possible. Even if it weren’t, she might be the pioneer.

  She’d probably destroyed herself getting out of bed and getting dressed and now she was engaged in a pathetic attempt to seem like a healthy, hale specimen. When what she was, was an actor suffering from outworld sickness, depleted, and needing time to recover.

  She sat in her plain wooden chair, her spine stiff, taking minute sips of her tea, her hands shaking so badly it was a wonder she hadn’t spilled it all over herself.

  He leaned back down, scooped her up in his arms, and deposited her on her bed.

  “Stay there,” he said, pointing at her.

  Violet was clutching the brown tea mug, and he wrested it from her grip and put it back on the tray. Still within her reach but no longer threatening to spill over.

  “My lord,” Violet said as she attempted to swing her legs over to the side of the bed. Did she seriously think she could stand up?

  “Stay,” he said.

  “No, my lord,” she said as she moved her legs around.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, blocking her from any further movement.

  “Today you’re staying in bed,” Trevelton said in what he hoped was his most authoritative, no-arguments-brooked voice. “I’m sending up one of the maids to help you get undressed.”

  “But, my lord,” Violet started to say.

  “No arguing,” Trevelton said. “You have but one job now: recover. Anything you do to impede that will be considered insurrection. There’s a heavy penalty for that, darling.”

  Violet slumped back onto her pillows.

  “That’s better,” Trevelton said.

  “Yes, my lord,” Violet said. Her eyes started closing and her breaths were already taking on the cadence of sleep.

  He leaned over and gave her an impossibly gentle kiss on her tea-flavored lips while her hand lightly wrapped itself around his wrist.

  Rafe knew he had to leave immediately. Not only was Violet in no shape for the activities that he was now freely imagining, but his plans for the majestic—and for his life in general—had definitely not included anything of the sort.

  There was Saybrook to attend to, he reminded himself. That’s why he was here. That was the only reason he was here at Hollyhock Manor on Outworld 5730, wearing breeches, bringing tea to swooning maidens, and deserting his duties at home.

  “We’ll leave Gretna Green for another day, then, shall we, my dear?” he said.

  He got up, grabbed the butter dish from the top of her dresser, unlocked the door, and left her room.

  “Yes, my lord,” she said dreamily as he closed the door behind him.

  Out in the corridor of the servants’ quarters, Trevelton encountered one of the footmen and handed the startled fellow the butter dish as he brushed past him, trotted down the back staircase, waltzed through the kitchen, and vaulted up the stairs into the corridor just outside the dining room.

  Relieved that no one upstairs had seen him, Trevelton took a deep breath and brushed off the sides of his jacket, which was as clean as it had been this morning when Etterly had needlessly helped him on with it.

  “Must do it this way, my lord,” Etterly had said. Half the time Rafe felt like he was working for Etterly, since his valet had a way of taking charge, particularly when it came to wardrobe and dressing.

  Trevelton chided himself. He really was taking this Regency stuff too seriously. At home, he would’ve been in the kitchen, his feet propped up on the table while he read the latest agricultural news off the linear and snatched dinner ingredients as they were being prepared by a cook not half so talented as the one here at Hollyhock.

  But Sumner Dobbs wasn’t at home. He was here. And it was time to track him down.

  Chapter 19

  There was n
o sign of anyone in the dining room, but there was still food laid out, and Trevelton grabbed a roll, devoured it in two bites, then grabbed two more and stuffed them in his pockets. Maybe when he had a spare minute he could coax some secrets out of Cook, because really these rolls were far superior to anything he’d had back on mundane eighty-seventh-century Earth.

  He walked down the corridor past the study, which he’d had only a glimpse of since he’d arrived. The door was shut, and from inside he heard some rather interesting sounds, so he doubted Saybrook would be in there, unless he’d started early.

  Hadn’t he just gotten in last night? Had he already seduced someone? Well, that was his style. Isn’t that how he’d won over Charlotte that weekend?

  But he couldn’t think of Charlotte. Not directly. That wouldn’t help his cause and would serve only to distract and disturb him further. Better to concentrate on the lothario himself, the Earl of Saybrook.

  Trevelton smiled to himself as he rounded the corner into the solarium, which was also empty. Quite smart of him to’ve taken on the title of marquess. Well worth the outlay, since Saybrook was a mere earl. Better to start this thing off right, already one rank above his worthless ex-roommate and ex-friend.

  Trevelton walked through the solarium, which got better light in the late afternoon, and stepped out into the back garden, where a host of roses were in bloom. There were several varieties he had no familiarity with and would have to inspect them at greater length when he had the chance, but right now . . .

  “Oh, my lord!” said the silly voice of the far too talkative Vernie Dalston. “I was hoping to run into you.”

  She skipped up the path and turned a poorly executed curtsy in his direction.

  Then she fanned herself with her open hand and coughed a sharp cough.

  “Forgive me, my lord,” she said.

  “Of course, Miss Dalston,” Trevelton said, not really knowing what he was forgiving her for other than interrupting his quest. Where was that buffoon North when you needed him? He didn’t seem to mind talking to Miss Dalston and actually seemed to enjoy her airy, empty chatter, which Trevelton had had to endure every night at dinner.

  “I do love petunias,” she said, glancing at the nearest rosebush. “They’re so luscious. And of course they have that distinctive odor. I would like a perfume that smelled like this.” She fingered a rose and leaned down to sniff it, then coughed again.

  Rafe wondered what he could say to this empty-headed person while still maintaining at least a glimmer of propriety. Back in Northumberland he would’ve ignored her and gone on his way.

  “Yes,” he said. “The flowers are quite pretty.”

  “I’m enjoying everything so!” Vernie Dalston said. “You know, Lady Patience and I have been friends since childhood. We played with blocks together. And in the sand. And once . . .”

  “How very . . . interesting,” said Trevelton, interrupting her but hardly realizing he’d done so. He looked around, hoping that someone else would show up and take Miss Dalston away with them. Perhaps the Grim Reaper, who was never around when he could do the most good.

  But no one responded to his wants, and he stood in the rose garden pretending to listen to Vernie Dalston for another year or two while she rambled on about the petunias, about how she and Lady Patience—when they’d been just little girls, of course—had named their dolls after characters from their favorite Shakespeare play, the one about the princess who died in the car crash, and how she was eternally happy that she was naturally thin because she saw how Lady Patience struggled so, especially with all the delicious food that was laid out for them at every single meal and snack.

  Was there no one to rescue him from this interminable monologue?

  “Vernie, there you are,” said Lady Patience, who came through the solarium and out into the rose garden. She was carrying a basket and had a set of shears ready in her hand.

  “Pam—Lady Patience,” Vernie said. “Aren’t these petunias the finest you’ve ever seen?”

  “My lord,” Lady Patience said to Trevelton as she curtsied, then turned to her friend.

  “And for God’s sake, Vernie, they’re roses.” Lady Patience shook her head and clipped a blush-colored bloom, placing it carefully into her basket.

  “My ladies,” Trevelton said, thinking it wouldn’t be too overly demonstrative if he could produce a medal from somewhere and pin it on Lady Patience’s sleeve for the great boon she’d just delivered.

  “I’ll be on my way now,” he said, and he started walking toward the garden gate as quickly as he thought propriety would allow.

  He didn’t recall anything in the extensive background material that Jewel Allman had given him about how long one had to engage in insipid conversation before one was permitted to run for the hills.

  Chapter 20

  Jewel sat at the long kitchen table looking over one of her many lists.

  Now that the duke was finally here, and Saybrook too, she could really start in on executing some of her grand plans. The first would be a ball—not the masked ball, which would come much later in the season, on the night of the lunar syzygy, when all three of 5730’s moons would be aligned in a configuration that wouldn’t again occur for another seven hundred years—but something to let people touch each other and mix with players they hadn’t yet gotten to know.

  She’d coordinate with the Regency majestic taking place at neighboring Brixton Hall, where the participants were probably getting tired of one another and needed to see new faces, so their appearance at Hollyhock was practically guaranteed.

  Speak with Thalia this afternoon, she wrote to remind herself. Thalia Rivers was the historitor in residence at Brixton, and a longtime friendly competitor of Jewel’s.

  “That man,” Cook murmured while she worked. “Really. He’s a problem, he is.”

  “Which man is that, Cook?” said Johnny, one of the footmen.

  “What other man could she mean?” said Rosie, who’d just emerged from the staircase. “But the one who left poor Violet in her dress on the bed, exhausted and fevery again, I fear.”

  “That man,” Cook said. “The marquess. He should really learn his manners. Taking a tray up to the servants’ quarters. Himself, he did. God help me.”

  “Oy, that man,” said Johnny. Johnny had an elfish smile that he used to manipulate everyone downstairs. Upstairs, it’d never work, but down here it did wonders. His bright red hair, though, probably worked no matter where he was.

  “What man is that?” Jewel said. She’d half heard the conversation but had already sussed that when Johnny was involved in gossip, it had some truth behind it, so she wanted details.

  “Lord Trevelton,” Johnny and Cook said in unison.

  “Oh, him,” said Jewel. “What’s he done now?”

  “Nothing so much as taken a tray up to poor Violet’s room and left her alone and practically dying on her bed,” said Rosie as she pushed an errant strand of strawberry blond hair back under her cap.

  “Now, Rosie, that’s an exaggeration,” said Jewel.

  She dearly hoped it was. Please don’t die on me, Violet Aldrich, she prayed. The same prayer she’d said a thousand times since Trevelton had brought Violet back that night, drenched to the bone and suffering from one of the worst cases of the outworld sickness Jewel had yet encountered.

  And Doc Hoffstead halfway across the hemisphere, attending to someone in one of the thirty-fifth-century bordellos—someone who had God knew what wrong with her.

  “See for yourself, Mrs. Allman,” said Rosie. “I’d never lie.”

  Johnny harrumphed at that, and Cook gave Rosie a wink. “Of course you wouldn’t, girl,” said Cook.

  “Is someone there with her now?” said Jewel. What if Violet died unattended? The commission would have her neck, and every other part of her body that they could tear off.

  “I just left her, Mrs. Allman,” said Rosie. “She’s asleep now. She’d gotten up and dressed and then I guess it was just
all too much for her.”

  “And who’s attending to Lady Patience?” Jewel said.

  “Harriette’s filling in, Mrs. Allman,” said Cook. “She was hardly any use here.”

  “Oh God,” Jewel said. “Really?”

  “She was the only one we could spare. The duchess’s lady’s maid could hardly attend to anyone else. And . . .”

  “Never mind. Harriette will have to do for now. Violet probably won’t be up and about for another few days.”

  “At least,” Cook said under her breath.

  The two maids and footman who’d gone to clean up the study came into the kitchen, and one of the maids sat at the table.

  “Finished so soon?” Jewel said. That was nothing short of miraculous. But perhaps they hadn’t done a very thorough job. She’d have to go check. And she still hadn’t tallied up the damages, which’d come right out of the duke’s and duchess’s escrow, both of which were, fortunately, quite hefty.

  “Oh no, Mrs. Allman, ma’am,” said the footman. “We’re unable to gain access.”

  “You have to knock, you know,” said Jewel. Did she have to tell them how to do everything?

  “We surely knocked, Mrs. Allman,” said the maid, who was hunched over the table, drumming her fingers on the bench.

  “Stop that right now, Nell,” said Jewel, and Nell immediately stopped, then quickly started again.

  “No one answered?” Jewel said. Getting a story out of this trio was becoming frustrating.

  “There were noises,” said the footman.

  “Breaking glass?” said Jewel. If the duchess had broken the other lampshade . . .

  “Oh no,” said Nell, giggling. “More like pigs rutting.”

  “Watch your language, girl,” said Cook.

  “More like pigs having congress,” said Nell, giggling even harder.

  “Nell,” Jewel said. She made a mental note to keep Nell away from Baron North, lest he feed the girl even more inappropriate terms and phrases.

  “A reenactment of a rustic barnyard scene,” Nell said, finishing with a whooping laugh.