Now Playing on Outworld 5730

by R. T. W. Lipkin

  Did Clive know about Edgar? Was that why he’d said it’d be five years until she could go to another majestic? How could he have found out?

  So rarely did Sophia encounter anyone from Outworld 75 at a majestic—the pastime was considered déclassé or foolish or unnecessary on her home world—that she’d been startled to see Lady Patience—the heiress Pamela Hyland herself—at Hollyhock Manor.

  There’d been a brief, almost embarrassing moment when the two recognized each other, but it had swiftly resolved into a relaxed friendship, and in many ways it was a relief to have someone she recognized, other than Edgar, around. She sensed that Pamela was also happy to see a familiar face at Hollyhock.

  When Sophia’d first met Edgar, nearly seven years ago, her first thought had been that if Clive could have anyone he wanted—which he did—then so could she. But her second thought, her second feeling, had been that she was in danger of falling deeply in love.

  Her third thought had been an elaborate fantasy, one where she and Edgar (he’d been Hugh then) would stay at the majestic forever, living in thirty-fourth-century Naples in their fifteenth-century town house and enjoying each other, the bay, the city, and their separation from their real lives, which they’d never have to return to.

  But, of course, she had to go back to Clive. She always had to go back. She was his front—the loving, beautiful, loyal wife. Silly of her to enjoy those majestics, but he was so kind to put up with it. The perfect husband. Understanding, supportive, and catering to her most foolish whims.

  He was actually none of those things. Although he was her husband, and to him, everything was perfect.

  She’d never leave him, because if she did, her life would be over in a flash. She’d be stripped of her possessions, sent into exile, and would be worked to a not-fast-enough death in a slave mine on a remote outworld.

  Clive had all the evidence he needed. And he never let her forget it.

  “Sophia, my dearest,” said Edgar, breaking into her thoughts. “I see the wall is being reconstructed.”

  Allene looked at the duke’s reflection in the mirror and saw that he was looking only at the duchess.

  “I’ll be ready in a moment,” Sophia said. “Finish up, please, Allene. My hair really couldn’t look any better.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Allene said. “It will look even better for the ball.”

  “We don’t want to turn too many heads, Allene,” said the duke.

  “No, my lord,” said Allene, curtsying and leaving the room.

  “Are we going riding this afternoon, Edgar?” Sophia said.

  “As planned,” the duke said. “And afterward we’re coming back here to start work on the heir.”

  Sophia’s heart did a somersault into her abdomen. “Edgar?” He’d never spoken to her like this. About this, the most forbidden of all forbidden topics.

  The duke stood behind the duchess’s chair and leaned over to kiss her earlobe. “On second thought,” he whispered into her ear, “let’s start now.”

  Chapter 28

  Violet arranged and rearranged LP’s undergarments, overgarments, nightgowns, stockings, shoes, dresses, blouses, skirts, perfumes, powders, paints, bath oils, and soaps.

  LP’s bath was ostentatiously grandiose, yet Violet imagined the duke’s or duchess’s bathroom was probably far grander. Although how gold faucets and a marble tub could be made grander, she wasn’t sure.

  Maybe in the duke’s and duchess’s bathrooms there were cherubs painted on the ceilings. She’d have to go check. Maybe now would be a good time to do that, during the early-afternoon lull in the manor’s activities when most of the players were out on the grounds or reading in the solarium.

  She walked softly down the hallway, stopped outside the duchess’s bedroom, put her ear to the door, and felt a rush of warm breath on her neck.

  “Mustn’t be so nosy, my lady,” said the equally warm, ever-mocking male voice.

  She jumped back away from the door. Bad enough that she’d just heard things no one other than the participants should hear—did the duke and duchess spend all their time having sex?—but to be caught doing it by the marquess made it that much worse.

  Strong hands held on to her shoulders. She’d launched herself right at the insufferable Trevelton, thinking she was getting away from him. Violet shook him off and headed down the hall, never looking back.

  But she felt Trevelton’s presence beside her. Yet she refused to look in that direction.

  Look ahead. Stay away from this man. Forget what you heard behind the door. Forget that people have sex, that they may love each other.

  “The duke and duchess have the right idea,” said the marquess, reminding Violet of precisely what she was trying to forget.

  She quickened her pace, although she knew she could never outdistance her tall companion. If she could only get out of this majestic, off this dreadful outworld, get a part in Mirage, walk five times faster, change her past, kill Booker before he had a chance to marry her and die.

  “Look here, Miss Violet Aldrich, lady’s maid to Lady Patience,” said Rafe Blackstone.

  Violet felt like screaming or maybe crying or perhaps just punching Lord Trevelton in the gut, since she couldn’t hope to reach his haughty jaw with enough power to make any difference. Why wouldn’t he just leave her alone? Hadn’t he been forbidden to have contact with her? Isn’t that what Rosie had told her?

  “You can’t run away from me,” Trevelton said. “Or from anything, really.” His voice had taken on a different tone. He sounded almost serious, almost like a real human being, a thoughtful human being, and not an annoying, preening, full-of-himself dandy.

  Violet turned to her right and looked at him, which she’d told herself not to do. They were both stopped in the middle of the long, wide hallway, the faces of invented noble ancestors staring down at them from their overly gilded frames.

  “You’re right,” she said to Trevelton. “It’s impossible. I have to face up to everything, no matter how unsavory or unwanted or impossible it is. My lord.”

  Her hands were in fists by her side and her heart was in her throat. If it would only rain inside right on Trevelton’s white shirt, white cravat, and dark brown knee breeches. If she only could run away from her past, from Booker’s debts, from the premonition she’d had over and over that she would end up as Trevelton’s lover and that he would crush her heart under his aristocratic boots.

  “Good for you,” Trevelton said. “I’m in the same position, you know.”

  “Just higher up,” Violet couldn’t resist saying. “My lord.”

  Trevelton lowered his head so it was even with Violet’s. He put a hand so so so gently on her shoulder. “Is this better?”

  “Don’t,” said Violet. “I can’t. I won’t.”

  “Have you been eating those rich foods?” His breaths fell on her forehead and cheeks. “Because I thought I warned you. You’re not fully recovered yet.”

  “I am recovered,” Violet said. “I can have whatever I want.”

  Trevelton stood up to his full height then, leaned his head back, his pitch-black hair falling away from his face, and roared a bitter laugh.

  “I hope you can, Miss Violet Aldrich,” Trevelton said between gasps for air. He couldn’t stop laughing.

  “There’s nothing funny about it!” Violet said. Now she really wanted to slap him. Anything to make him shut up. How could he make such fun of her? How could she still be so attracted to him while he was doing it?

  “You’ve forgotten something,” Trevelton said, looking down on Violet with a wicked grin.

  “I have not,” Violet said. But she had forgotten something. Damn him. “My lord.”

  “Not that,” Trevelton said as he leaned over and softly kissed her first on her forehead, then on the top of her left earlobe. Violet thought if it were possible to die of pleasure, she’d do it right there.

  “Come back to my room with me,” Trevelton said as his lips found Violet�
�s. He kissed her with a gentleness that negated every foul thing she’d thought about him, and she kissed him back, freely giving him a part of herself that she’d never given even her dead duplicitous husband.

  Rafe Blackstone, Lord Trevelton’s mouth covered Violet’s. His tongue searched inside her for that deep connection, and her tongue searched in return until she found something she hadn’t known she was looking for.

  He put his arms around her and she melted into him, moaned into him, although she heard only his moans.

  “Damn you,” he said between kisses.

  “Damn you,” she said as she laced her hands behind his head and drew him closer to her.

  He’d half picked her up and her legs were just about to wind themselves about his hips when Johnny, clutching a filigreed silver tray with a crisp eggshell-colored envelope resting on it, rushed by them, breaking the spell.

  He was in such a hurry that he’d barely noticed them or, if he had, he had no time to be distracted.

  At the duchess’s door, Johnny pushed back his red hair, stood tall, brushed off the front of his shirt, and knocked.

  Trevelton guided Violet to the nearest doorway, urged her inside, and shut the door behind them. Yet even from inside the room, even with the heaving breaths both she and Trevelton were taking, even over her rapidly racing heartbeat, she could hear Johnny’s echoing voice out in the vast hallway.

  “Important message for the duke,” Johnny said as he knocked again. “Urgent.”

  Chapter 29

  “Get the fuck out of here,” the duke’s voice said through the shut doorway. He and Sophia had just finished making love and he was intent on starting again as soon as possible. Something had happened—he wasn’t sure what—and Sophia was unusually passionate, even for her, and he had to take advantage of this situation.

  “Urgent, Your Grace,” Johnny said through the door after another knock.

  “Not now!” Edgar said.

  “I’ve been told to deliver this immediately, Your Grace,” said Johnny.

  “Answer the door, Edgar,” Sophia said. “Or he’ll never go away.” She leaned back onto the pile of pillows that’d facilitated the rather creative position she and the duke had just experimented with.

  “Who’s in charge here? Me or some footman?” Edgar sat up in bed. He was half erect, and he wanted Sophia again. Immediately.

  “Don’t be foolish, Edgar,” Sophia said. “It’s obviously something important.”

  “There is nothing more important than this,” Edgar said, smoothing his hand across Sophia’s cheek. “We’re going to finally have the heir we deserve.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Sophia said.

  “Yes, you do,” Edgar said. “Marguerite.”

  She grabbed his wrist and bit the palm of his hand. “Shh,” she said. “Johnny’s just outside the door.”

  “It’s urgent, Your Grace,” Johnny said from the other side of the door. “I’m quite sorry. Mrs. Allman said.”

  The duke got up then, threw on the breeches Sophia taken off him earlier, shrugged into a yellow silk banyan, and opened the door.

  “For God’s sake, Johnny. What could it possibly be?”

  “This, Your Grace,” said Johnny, offering up the silver tray with the envelope on it. “Mrs. Allman said.”

  “Yes, never mind what Mrs. Allman said.” The duke took the envelope, stared hard at Johnny, waited for the footman to step back, then closed the door again and locked it.

  “What is it?” Sophia said. She’d gotten up and somehow, miraculously, it seemed, in the few moments it’d taken Edgar to deal with Johnny, she’d gotten almost completely dressed. Even her hair looked neatened. Just moments ago, it’d been splayed across the pillows, like a rouged sunburst around her fine features.

  The duke threw the envelope on the bedside table.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” the duchess said.

  “I don’t like being interrupted,” said the duke. “Come back to me.”

  Sophia walked over to the bedside table and touched the envelope, turning it over, then back again. “I hate secrets.”

  “Let’s not have any, then,” the duke said.

  Sophia picked up the heavy vellum envelope and handed it to the duke. “Open it, Edgar. I can’t stand not knowing what’s in it.”

  Edgar took the envelope, ripped it in half, then in quarters, and tossed the pieces in the direction of the table. While the fragments fell to the floor, he pulled down his breeches, sat on the edge of the bed, lifted Sophia’s skirts, brought her even closer to him, and sat her on his erection.

  “There now,” the duke said. “Satisfied?”

  “Not yet,” Sophia said, laughing as she deftly undid the back of her dress, then wrapped her arms under the yellow silk fabric of Edgar’s banyan.

  “Don’t stop,” Edgar said as Sophia’s hips began their sinuous movements, driving him wild with lust and need.

  “I can’t,” Sophia said. “I can’t.”

  A few feet away, two rooms down from the duchess’s and on the same side of the hall, Trevelton was just about to carry Violet to the opulent bed of neither of them knew who when a further disturbance shattered the mood.

  “I told you to give His Grace the letter immediately!” said the quite loud voice of Jewel Allman, easily heard through the thick doorways of both the duchess’s room and the room where Violet and Trevelton were about to consummate their disapproved-of relationship.

  “Shh,” Trevelton said to Violet.

  “She can’t find out I’m in here with you,” Violet said.

  “Be quiet,” Trevelton said, then kissed Violet again and again.

  “I did, Mrs. Allman,” said Johnny’s voice out in the hallway.

  “Did he see it?” said Mrs. Allman in her most demanding bark.

  “He took the letter off the tray, Mrs. Allman,” said Johnny, sounding ever more frustrated and upset. “I made sure.”

  “Did he open it?” Mrs. Allman was now shrieking.

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Allman. How could I know?” Violet thought she heard tears in Johnny’s voice, but perhaps they were her own tears.

  Trevelton kissed her again and again, and she wanted nothing more than to continue what they’d started. She kissed him on his lips, then on the side of his neck. She pulled the undone cravat off his neck.

  “It’s your job to know, you fool,” said Mrs. Allman as the fragments of the ripped-up letter floated out into the hallway, followed by the stinging reverberation as the duchess’s door was slammed shut two, three, four times in a row.

  Chapter 30

  Inevitably, though, the Duke of Bedford, or rather Nicholas Coburn—because that’s who the letter was truly meant for—was faced with the reality that his factory in Sunbury had been destroyed by a suspicious explosion, three workers, and his trusted right hand, Beau Ogden, had been killed in the blast, and he had to return to his business—his real business—immediately if he had any hope of salvaging its remains.

  “Marguerite, come with me,” Nicholas had said after Mrs. Allman had shoved a handwritten note—not in an envelope—under their door, and Sophia had beaten Edgar to it, then picked it up and read it.

  She’d stared at the name for a long time: Nicholas Coburn. She’d always known that’s who Edgar/Hugh/Bertram was, but she’d never seen the name written out, and this one small thing broke her heart.

  “I can’t. You know that, Edgar,” Sophia said.

  “Just for a few weeks,” he said. “It’s in Australia, you know. Not that far from Melbourne. You might like it there. Then we can come back here. No one needs to know.”

  “He’ll find out,” Sophia said. “He finds out everything.”

  “That’s what I fear,” the duke said, brandishing the note. “Beau’s been with me since the start. I never thought . . . He’s as solid as they come. It’s just impossible. Unthinkable.”

  “Clive wouldn’t,” Sophia said, speaking her husband’s
name for the first time in front of Edgar—in front of Nicholas. “He just wouldn’t.”

  “Your words fill me with certainty,” Edgar said acidly as he expertly tied his cravat. He didn’t need a valet to do it for him. He didn’t need the cravat, actually, since he was about to get on the transport, which Jewel Allman had said was waiting for him, but he didn’t want to ruin the majestic for anyone else by walking through Hollyhock Manor in inappropriate dress.

  “What else wouldn’t he do?” Nicholas said. Something dreadful had changed, and Marguerite could no longer look at Nicholas Coburn and think he was the duke or the playboy or any other role he’d played over the past seven years. Even though that’s the way she’d always thought of him, the way she’d always told herself to think of him.

  But his factory had been demolished, and four people were dead. Now he was obviously Nicholas Coburn, inventor and entrepreneur, and the man she loved. She couldn’t answer him.

  “Divorce you, for instance?” Nicholas had never been so bitter, so sarcastic, so angry.

  “You don’t understand,” Sophia said. Marguerite said. She didn’t know who she was.

  She wanted to be Sophia again, the duchess. She wanted Edgar Thomas Samuelson, the Duke of Bedford, back. She wanted to stay at Hollyhock Manor forever. She wanted Clive Idrest to be the one who didn’t exist, the one who was playing a part.

  Nicholas picked up a delicate pale purple ceramic vase and passed it back and forth between his hands, throwing it just a bit farther, just a bit higher, with each toss.

  “What exactly don’t I understand?” he said as he brandished the vase in his left hand.

  “I can’t leave him. I can never leave him.”

  Nicholas took the vase and hurled it into the wall opposite the bed. It shattered into thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of pieces.

  “It’s time you explained yourself, Marguerite,” he said.

  “I just did.” Her hands were in her lap.

  “Then don’t expect me to come back.” He threw on his jacket and strode to the door without looking at her.