Now Playing on Outworld 5730

by R. T. W. Lipkin

  “Nicholas,” Marguerite said in her quietest voice. “No.”

  Instantly, Nicholas was at Marguerite’s side, sitting on the bed next to her.

  “Marguerite,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Nicholas,” she said. “Please don’t say you’re not coming back. I don’t know . . .”

  “Of course I’m coming back, my love. Don’t cry. I’ll straighten out everything and then we can go on playing the duke and the duchess for as long as you want.”

  Marguerite buried her face in Nicholas’s shoulder. “I don’t want to play anymore,” she said through her sobs.

  “Can’t you tell me why?” Nicholas said. He held Marguerite away from him, just far enough that he could stare into her shimmering hazel eyes. His strong hands felt right on her shoulders.

  She shook her head. She could never tell him why. If he knew why she couldn’t leave her husband, she’d lose the love of the only man she’d ever cared about. And she needed that in order to live, in order to have any hope at all, scant as it was.

  “Can it be so awful as all that?” Nicholas said as he stood, ready to leave. The transport was waiting for him.

  Sophia stood up. She walked to the door with Edgar. They were the Duke and Duchess of Bedford. She would escort him out to the far ends of Hollyhock’s grounds, where the transport was waiting.

  And she would never, ever tell him what Clive knew. That she was a cold-blooded murderer—and thoroughly unrepentant.

  Chapter 31

  With the duke gone, the duchess unwilling to come out of her room for more than a short walk every morning, the weather turned sour, raining every day, and Brixton Hall under quarantine after a virus had infected nearly all its inhabitants, Jewel canceled the ball.

  No sense having a gala event if there’d hardly be anyone attending.

  No sense having this majestic at all, she thought, the way it was going so far. That flagrantly uncaring Trevelton having it on with Lady Patience’s lady’s maid, an actor, no less. The handsome Sumner Dobbs—her best hope of livening things up—instead spending his days hunting and fishing and riding and ignoring every single lady present.

  The horribly annoying Vernie Dalston making faux pas at every turn, reminding anyone within a hundred yards of her that they were playing at Regency England—or something vaguely like Regency England—but absolutely not living it. Allene sulking about because the duchess didn’t want anyone near her.

  And the conversation she’d had with Lady Patience just this morning! If Jewel had ever thought of herself as the premier majestic historitor and producer—as all her publicity material claimed she was and as she was widely acknowledged to be—today she thought of herself as an utter failure at not just this majestic, but at everything.

  “What is it about Calvert?” Lady Patience had asked Jewel as they both strolled out to the meadow that separated Hollyhock from Brixton. It’d been raining this morning, of course, as it had done nearly every morning since the duke had left to go back to Earth and attend to his actual business.

  Jewel thanked the stars that she had a substantial amount of Nicholas Coburn’s credits in escrow, because it was quite possible the man was ruined. Although there were rumors that he had other sources of income. But what they were . . .

  “Are you not pleased with his performance?” Jewel said. If she had to replace Calvert, she’d go mad. And so far he seemed to be not just a good butler but the very best butler she’d ever employed in this or any other era’s majestic. And he’d fluidly taken over some of her own usual duties, freeing up her time, during which time she’d developed more and more anxiety regarding just about everything.

  “Oh no, not that,” Lady Patience had quickly said. “Really, you’d think it’d stop raining for just a day or two. Or three.” She sighed melodramatically, as though the rain were a cataclysm and not just water—or what passed for water here—spitting from the sky.

  “It’s supposed to,” Jewel said. At least that’s what the long-term forecasts had said. But Outworld 5730 was notorious for unpredictable weather, and Jewel herself had never experienced such unrelenting rainfall on the outworld.

  Lady Patience put her hand up—the one not holding the umbrella—to the back of her hair. “Do you like this new style?” She turned around, showing the entirety of the elegantly simple hairdo to Jewel.

  “It’s lovely, my lady,” Jewel said. It was.

  Maybe fornicating with the beastly Trevelton had turned Violet into a great hairstylist, Jewel mused. If so, perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing. Although there were several other ladies who were quite interested in the marquess, and his spending his time with a lady’s maid enraged her. It was so so so wrong.

  Had he really paid that huge sum in order to frolic about Hollyhock Manor with a paid performer? He would’ve been better served in a majestic of the thirty-fifth century, having his choice of an entertainingly extreme gamut of companions. A much better value, Jewel thought.

  “Lettie really does have the touch, Mrs. Allman. You were quite right to hire her.”

  “Thank you, my lady,” Jewel said. At least she’d done something right.

  “I’m thinking of asking her to accompany me. You know. After this,” Lady Patience said.

  “That would be out of my hands, my lady.”

  Not in a million years, Jewel said to herself. She already had Violet in mind for a part in the next majestic, and good actors were hard to find, even if they did spend their spare time screwing the most fantastic-looking man Jewel had ever seen. The man she had wrongly hoped would be the linchpin of this majestic. Her second choice, her backup, the ever-absent Lord Saybrook, was also turning out to be useless.

  Between those two, the duke’s ever more obvious absence, the duchess’s removing herself from all the proceedings, her own building anxieties, and the constant rainfall, Jewel had to wonder if she were losing her touch. If she were doomed to become the next Claude Sims—a formerly great majestic producer, now disgraced.

  Right at the beginning, right when Violet had nearly died from the outworld sickness—right then Jewel had had a terrible premonition. And nothing had so far happened to refute it.

  “It seems he’s too good to be a butler, I think,” said Lady Patience, interrupting Jewel’s building catalog of anxieties. Lady Patience looked off into the near distance, which was as far as anyone could see in this disgustingly constant rain.

  Ah, now Lady Patience was getting to what it was she really wanted to talk about. Not her hair, not Violet, not the weather. Calvert. Lady Patience wanted him fired and was pussyfooting around the topic, trying to praise him so that when she demanded he be dismissed it wouldn’t sound so rude or demanding.

  “He’s quite a good butler,” Jewel said, wondering what was coming next. Black men shouldn’t be butlers maybe?

  “Very attractive man,” Lady Patience said. “Very unusual.”

  Jewel waited. Unusual could mean anything from I hate the very sight of him to Couldn’t you please assign him to another role?

  Lady Patience stopped walking, so Jewel did as well. The soggy ground—it hadn’t had a chance to firm up for the last several weeks—seemed to be sucking them down into it.

  “It really should stop raining,” Lady Patience said, as though that were the finish to this conversation, a conversation that Jewel wondered about for days afterward.

  Chapter 32

  Violet rushed through her morning routine, expertly dressing LP and pinning up LP’s hair in a flash, throwing all LP’s fine underthings into a heap in the dressing room—she’d deal with them later—missing breakfast altogether, and racing out across the squishy, soggy lawn to meet Trevelton at their usual spot, the tree house.

  It wasn’t a real tree house. That was just what she’d started calling it. It was a small building, a hut, really, in the middle of the woods. Whatever its original purpose had been wasn’t evident. A shed maybe? A storage area for items for another majestic? Housing f
or some resident workers no one cared about?

  Trevelton had found the tree house on one of his extensive walks and had taken Violet there the day after the uproar in the hallway, the very uproar that had prevented Violet and Trevelton from doing what both of them had wanted so much to do. Right there in Lord Fitzmore’s cherub-encrusted bed. Although at the time, neither of them had known that was Fitzmore’s room.

  Now, though, they were doing that very thing every day, often more than that. Violet would take care of her morning duties, Trevelton would go out “for a ride,” and the two of them would meet at the tree house and make love.

  Rafe had hauled a lovely mattress out to the place and Violet had decorated the single room with items that the lords and ladies had had replaced at the manor house. Items not to their liking, yet perfectly serviceable and often perfectly beautiful.

  A set of too-long red damask drapes now adorned one of the two windows in the tree house, giving the one-room building a sort of relaxed elegance, and Trevelton had purloined a brass statue of a sea goddess from the manor house and made it the centerpiece of a small table that’d been in the building when he’d found it.

  By the time Violet got to the tree house this morning, Trevelton was already there, sitting at the table, which, fortunately, was holding up not just the sea goddess but an impressive mass of food. Violet was starving.

  “Breakfast!” she said as she came in.

  “Miss Violet Aldrich,” Trevelton said, grinning as she flounced over to the table, grabbed a hunk of Cook’s exquisite bread, and laid into it as though she hadn’t eaten in decades.

  “Such a refined girl,” Trevelton said as he tore off a piece of bread for himself. “One of the things I love about you.”

  “Mmm,” Violet said. She reached for the butter, but Trevelton pulled the plate away from her.

  “You’re still recovering,” he said, admonishing her. “Too rich.”

  “Hah,” Violet said between bites. “I feel utterly fantastic.” She tried pulling the butter plate toward her, but he tightened his grip on it.

  “I wonder why,” Rafe said.

  “Must be the weather,” Violet said. She started peeling an orange. Upstairs food. No one downstairs had seen anything as exotic as an orange since they’d gotten there.

  “I’ve never seen so much rain,” Trevelton said.

  “No need to look,” Violet said. She tasted an orange wedge, then made a face and spit it out. “Bitter.”

  “Impossible,” he said as he grabbed a wedge for himself and ate it. “Sweet.”

  “You have the strangest taste,” she said.

  “So I’ve been told,” he said. “Are you finished eating?”

  “No,” Violet said. She was still starving. She took another hunk of bread and eyed the butter with something close to lust.

  “Damn you, just have some if you want it that badly,” Trevelton said, shoving the plate toward her.

  “No need to be angry,” Violet said.

  “This is foolish,” Trevelton said.

  “The butter?”

  “This. All of it. The majestic, this so-called tree house. Us. Everything.”

  Violet had been dumped before, but this was looking like it’d surpass what she’d thought had been the most devastating breakup she’d ever experience. Before Booker, of course. All made worse because she feared that she’d fallen in love with this Rafe Blackstone, whose actual name and life she knew nothing at all about.

  She smeared butter onto the bread. Cold, sweet, unsalted, fresh, delicious butter. She sighed in appreciation and ate as much as she wanted. Cook was really the most amazing chef ever. She’d miss her food after the majestic was over. But not as much as she’d miss the marquess.

  Yet there was still time, lots of it. Wasn’t there? Unless he was breaking up with her, which seemed shockingly likely, and ever more likely as the moments trudged by and he hadn’t said another word.

  “Delicious,” she said, brandishing the last piece of bread, covered in butter. “Heavenly.”

  Trevelton just sat there, one of his beautiful hands lying on the tabletop, his jacket off, hung on the hook by the door, his cravat undone. His boots were still on, Violet noticed, and they were muddy.

  As she bit into the last of the bread and butter, a rising current washed through her—the certainty of truth. She’d been a fool yet again.

  “I’ll be going, then,” she said, getting up.

  Rafe Blackstone just sat there, unmoving, silent, his hand in the same position it’d been in for the last few minutes, his pitch-black hair pushed back from his forehead, the dull gray morning atmosphere seeming to infuse his presence with its gray mood.

  He hadn’t said another word or looked in her direction since he’d given his speech about how foolish everything was. Including us.

  Violet stood, curtsied, said, “My lord,” then left the tree house, quietly closing the door behind her.

  The morning she’d looked forward to, the morning she’d envisioned, where she and her lover would twine their bodies and souls together, where she would forget her real life and luxuriate in the heady satisfaction of what seemed enough like love to be love, had vanished into the mists. She was left with only self-recriminations and sadness.

  She’d left her umbrella behind and was drenched by the time she reached Hollyhock Manor.

  Chapter 33

  Rosie was on her way to the study, which she was on strict orders to keep in immaculate condition pending the duke’s expected return, which could be any minute now—or perhaps never.

  As she passed by the solarium, Rosie heard Vernie Dalston and Baron North laughing so loudly that Rosie felt like laughing too. She sighed and smiled and felt suddenly weightless.

  There was something carefree and wonderful about both Vernie Dalston and Baron North, unlike the unbearable tension she felt between the now-absent duke and the now rarely seen duchess.

  Unlike the fear she felt whenever she saw Violet heading off for her daily tryst with the all-wrong-for-her snob Lord Trevelton.

  Unlike the odd sensation she experienced every time she was in the same room and Mr. Calvert and Lady Patience were both present.

  Unlike the nearly unbearable longing she felt every time the Earl of Saybrook graced Hollyhock with his dashing presence.

  He’d come through the back entrance—no matter how often Mrs. Allman reminded him to use the main door, that someone would come upstairs and see to his haul—straight into the kitchen, throw his overflowing creel and often several strung-together birds onto the large central table, grab Cook around her slender waist and give her a hug while she blushed, slapped at his shoulder, and ruffled his already tousled dark blond hair, and disappear as facilely, as unexpectedly, as he’d appeared.

  “Do you think he’ll be back?” Rosie heard Vernie Dalston saying. Rosie stopped. The earl away as usual, the duke gone . . . There was so little gossip these days, the ball had been canceled, and even Johnny’s usual free-flowing information network seemed to be dammed up. She couldn’t resist listening in.

  “Hmph,” Baron North said. “Can’t ever tell. Why, once . . . There—you missed a move.” The distinct sound of a card being flicked over reached Rosie’s ears.

  “Oh dear, I did,” Vernie said. “Yes, I heard about that. But with him gone and the duchess as good as gone, my hopes . . .”

  Rosie moved closer to the doorway, still out of sight, but she’d stepped on the creaky board, the one she knew better than to be anywhere near.

  “What’s that? Is someone out there? Oh dear. I guess I must go look. What a bother.” Vernie’s bright laugh threaded through all her words.

  Rosie froze in place. If she moved, the board would creak even louder. But if she didn’t move, she’d be face-to-face with Vernie Dalston in about five seconds, so she turned to leave, but felt a hand on her forearm before she was able to take a step.

  “Are you eavesdropping, girl?” Vernie Dalston said. Vernie, like mo
st of the guests, didn’t know Rosie’s name or the names of any of the staff, other than Mrs. Allman, who wasn’t exactly “staff.”

  “Oh no, my lady,” Rosie said. Vernie didn’t correct her, as Rosie knew she wouldn’t. Who didn’t like being called my lady?

  “Then what would you call this?” Vernie said. The lighthearted tone and laughter had been replaced by stern demands and a seriousness Rosie hadn’t before encountered in Lady Patience’s frivolous, forgetful pal.

  “I was on my way to the study, my lady,” Rosie said. A half-truth was better than a total lie.

  Vernie looked up and down the hallway, then nodded, seemingly satisfied.

  “Go about your duties, then,” Vernie said. She finally let go of Rosie’s forearm, which stung from the harsh contact.

  On her way to the study, Rosie heard Vernie’s voice: “What a bother. You looked at my cards, didn’t you, you scalawag!” She laughed again, the tinkling merriment shooting right through Rosie’s chest.

  And before she had a chance to recover, her chest was pierced again, this time by the careless gaze of the Earl of Saybrook himself as he came out of the study, where Rosie thought no one but the duke or duchess was allowed.

  Saybrook was holding something under his arm, maybe an envelope, and Rosie watched him as he strode down the hallway. She had an inappropriate urge to run after him, take whatever it was from under his arm, replace it with her hand, and stride down the hall with him. But she went into the study, shut the door behind her, and swiped the hot tears from her face.

  Her friendship with Vi had caused her to become romantic—something she had absolutely no time for. And anyway, there was already one mismatched romance taking place on this majestic—Vi herself and that awful man she’d latched on to the very first night—Rosie couldn’t dare hope for another.

  As she cleaned the already-clean study, Rosie kept an eye out for something missing, which nothing seemed to be. Not since the bronze sea goddess had disappeared a few weeks ago had there been another object out of place. So perhaps whatever the earl had under his arm wasn’t from the study at all. Perhaps it was his. Or perhaps it was from the desk, which Rosie was forbidden to open. And anyway it was locked.