Now Playing on Outworld 5730

by R. T. W. Lipkin

  “Yes, it’s true,” North said. “Should be quite the spectacle.”

  “I guess that explains why the duchess has decided to join us for dinner, then,” the viscount said as he returned his attention to his plate.

  Across the table, the duchess was deep in conversation with Lady Patience.

  “We must stop them, Your Grace,” Lady Patience said in her quietest voice. Even Vernie, who’d known her for years, couldn’t hear what she was saying.

  “I can’t think how,” the duchess said. She looked at the pheasant pie and shook her head. Much too rich for her, and nothing she’d eaten lately had stayed down where it belonged.

  “We must do something,” Lady Patience said. “I think Lettie’s going to die of worry before tomorrow morning.”

  “Your lady’s maid?”

  “You know. She and Trevelton were having an affair. Lettie, I mean.”

  “I didn’t know that,” the duchess said. If you stay in your rooms, you miss out on all the juicy goings-on. Yet she thought Violet and Trevelton probably made a handsome couple.

  “He ended it this morning, then challenged Saybrook to a duel.” Lady Patience speared a potato with her fork.

  “Over Violet?” The duchess tried to imagine her own lady’s maid, the personalityless Allene Dickens, having an affair, but she didn’t think it was even slightly possible.

  “Over someone else, it seems. Charlotte. Even Lettie doesn’t know who she is.”

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” the duchess said as she pushed her chair back before a footman could get there to attend to her. She stood, and everyone else stood.

  “Please,” the duchess said, gesturing to the gathering but not really looking at anyone, then walked quickly out of the dining room and barely made it to one of the downstairs washrooms before she cast her accounts for the third time that day. And she’d eaten hardly anything. But merely the aroma of the rich spread had been too much for her.

  Although she wanted to return to her rooms, she found she couldn’t move, so she put the cover down and sat on the toilet. She’d been a bit concerned that Hollyhock wouldn’t have modern plumbing, but her concerns had been unnecessary.

  “Nicholas,” she whispered to herself. “I need you.”

  So quiet here in the washroom, away from the chitchat at the table, away from the noises of the staff cleaning the hallways and rooms. The faint smell of lemon helped calm her ever more disturbed stomach.

  Saybrook, Nicholas’s friend, was about to have a duel with Trevelton. Lady Patience was right. This had to be stopped.

  But she had no idea how to do that. Could she, as the duchess, forbid the duel? Yes, that seemed right. Tomorrow morning she’d be out in the field where everyone had said the duel would take place, and she’d lay down the law. Hollyhock Manor was her domain and, absent the duke, she was the reigning authority.

  She put her hand on her bare throat. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to wear a necklace this evening, even though Allene had practically insisted on it. The pressure and weight of it would’ve made her even sicker.

  “You can’t just go downstairs with your neck so bare,” her lady’s maid had said. “It isn’t done.”

  “No matter, Allene. It’s being done now.” She was the duchess. If her neck was bare, then every other woman at the table would be sporting a bare neck at the next meal.

  She got up from the seat and cracked open the door. No one was in the hallway, so she took off her shoes, crept out of the washroom, and tiptoed up the grand marble staircase, unseen by anyone.

  Chapter 45

  “Vi, you don’t have to do this,” Rosie said.

  Violet was helping Rosie with the dinner dishes, even though Violet was an upstairs maid, a lady’s maid, and hardly a kitchen worker.

  “I can’t sit still,” Violet said. “This is better. And Lady Patience won’t need me for another hour at least.”

  “You don’t really think they’re going to do it tomorrow, do you?” Rosie took a stack of cleaned dishes and put them in an upper cabinet, standing on her toes to push the plates into their proper location.

  “Now, girls, that’s enough talk of tomorrow,” Cook said. “Best to concentrate on the dishes instead.”

  “But, Cook,” Rosie said. “It’s all anyone can talk about. And the dishes are sparkling.”

  “God help us,” Cook said. “If those two men kill each other . . .”

  “Don’t say that. Please,” Rosie said, looking between Violet and Cook.

  “Well, they just might,” Johnny said. He was bringing the last of the dishes from the dinner. The plates were all empty.

  “We could’ve served another whole pie,” Johnny said. “Nothing like a duel to smarten up the appetite.”

  “Johnny!” Rosie said.

  “Well, it’s true,” Johnny said. “I’ve never seen the upstairs so excited. Except for the duchess. I thought she was going to puke.”

  “That’s enough gossip, Johnny,” Calvert said. He was sitting at the large table, working on the inventory.

  “I wouldn’t call that gossip, Mr. Calvert,” Johnny said.

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” Calvert said. “You wouldn’t call anything gossip.”

  “Well, Mr. Calvert . . .”

  “You’re right there, Mr. Calvert,” Rosie said, smiling. Next to her, Violet was scrubbing an already-clean platter and her eyes looked like they were about to erupt in tears yet again.

  “I think that Patience lady is plotting something,” Johnny said.

  “Lady Patience, Johnny,” said Cook.

  “Sure,” Johnny said. “I heard her tell the duchess that they had to stop this.”

  “Did you?” Calvert said, looking up from his books. “It can’t be stopped, you know.”

  “Oh, I know that, Mr. Calvert. Sir. But the ladies upstairs—that’s a different story. They have romantical notions.” Johnny looked smugly at everyone in the kitchen.

  Mr. Calvert gave him a stare that would’ve felled a more sensitive person, but Johnny had been stared at that way so often in his life that he’d become impervious.

  “Mr. Calvert, please make him stop,” Rosie said. “Vi’s going to start crying again.”

  “There’s nothing so special about Lord Trevelton,” Johnny said. “It’s about time that Violet realized she has other possibilities.”

  “Johnny!” Rosie said as a plate slipped from Violet’s hand and crashed to the floor, breaking into hundreds of shards and thousands of near-microscopic particles.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” Cook said. “I told you girls to concentrate on the dishes and stop talking about that godawful duel. And you, Violet Aldrich, you don’t even belong in here.”

  Violet bent down to start cleaning up the mess, but Rosie stopped her. “That’s my job, Vi,” she said.

  Calvert glared at Johnny again, and he got the message, quickly kneeling to help Rosie with the cleanup.

  Violet stood, pulled off her apron, and went out into the kitchen garden.

  She wished she were still back in the maze with Lady Patience, who’d never been so kind to her before. And for a while both of them had thought that they’d be spending the night there, since they’d gotten lost several times in the tangled mass of untended hedges and wild undergrowth.

  But they had, finally, found the maze’s center and had laughed gleefully at their success, as though they were children who’d discovered a secret that even Jewel Allman herself hadn’t known about, congratulating each other on their maze prowess and making a pact never to let anyone else know their secrets.

  After that, getting out had been easy. It seemed the maze had surrendered to them, no longer leading them into dead ends and instead allowing them to freely exit.

  Impossible that Violet and Lady Patience had had such a good time, yet they had. And Violet had said much more than No, my lady and Yes, my lady. Far more. As though she and Lady Patience had been friends and not lady and lady�
��s maid.

  Even better, for a few minutes Violet had forgotten about tomorrow’s duel.

  Violet sighed. She wished she were in Los Angeles, with a starring role in Mirage, getting ready for tonight’s performance. Even a supporting role. Even in next season’s cast. But not here on Outworld 5730, barely able to breathe in anticipation of tomorrow’s debacle.

  Violet wished she were back in Los Angeles saying no to Booker Holm when he asked her to marry him that afternoon in the crowded bistro. Or going to the audition she’d missed the day she’d met the duplicitous charmer, having lunch with him instead, listening to his baroque lies.

  Violet wished she were in the tree house with Rafe Blackstone. Making love to him. Talking him out of the duel. Convincing him to back down. Making her best arguments.

  Or begging the ultracool Sumner Dobbs to spare Trevelton’s life. Offering anything Saybrook might want in return. Anything she could give.

  Would Lady Patience stop the duel? Could she? Could the duchess?

  Someone had to, despite Calvert’s definitive insistence that the duel couldn’t be stopped.

  Because Violet knew with a terrible certainty that when the two men met tomorrow at dawn, only one of them would still be alive by noon. And it wouldn’t be Trevelton.

  Chapter 46

  When Sophia opened the door into her rooms, she was struck with a new sensation: she wanted to go home. Not to her home on Outworld 75. That was Clive Idrest’s home, not hers.

  No. She wanted to go to her mother’s home, sit in her cozy parlor, tell her about the majestic, about tomorrow’s duel, and, most of all, about Nicholas. How her mother would enjoy all this. How Marguerite would enjoy it. The two of them hadn’t spoken to or seen each other in years.

  Because after you murder your own father and escape your turbulent outworld, stowed away on a cargo transport, fearing every moment that you’ll be discovered, it’s impossible to return home, no matter how happy your mother would be to see you. No matter how grateful your mother was to you for putting an end to your family’s hellish life.

  “Nicholas,” she mouthed. “Please come back.”

  She could picture his face, almost as if he were there with her. She’d become expert at doing this, since she had no likenesses of him, save those stored securely in her mind, to refer to when they weren’t together.

  She could call on those images at will, knowing his every expression, many of them overly serious, yet the day he’d left, she’d seen things he’d never shown her before. He’d said he wouldn’t come back—and he’d meant it.

  He’d relented immediately when she called him Nicholas, but it was the memory of his promising never to return that lingered. Because he still hadn’t returned and it had been weeks now.

  The intricate braids that Allene had worked so hard on restricted Sophia’s very mind. Frantically, she took the pins out of her hair and started undoing each tightly wound braid until her auburn tresses were hanging in jagged strands down her back.

  She locked the door to her bedchamber and stripped. None of her clothing felt right on her despite everything’s having been made expressly for her form. But lately everything hurt, making her body sore and achy. She thought of putting on a nightgown but even that seemed too much.

  Although Regency-era duchesses probably never slept in the nude, Sophia climbed into bed without a stitch of clothing on. Even the sheets hurt against her skin, and she kicked them off, despite the chill in the air.

  Had the note been Nicholas’s farewell? His way of telling her that if things were different he’d return? But that they weren’t and he couldn’t?

  She went back through every word. Return at the first opportunity. Trust Saybrook.

  You have only to say the word. What word was that? And how could she say it to him if he weren’t here?

  Enjoy the majestic. That was the key phrase, she thought. The one that said Nicholas had absolutely no intention of returning. He’d practically handed her off to Saybrook, who she didn’t know and didn’t like and who anyway might be dead in a few hours if her plan didn’t work out.

  She vaulted out of bed, ran to her bath chamber, and threw up yet again. It was getting to be a regular thing, she thought. She couldn’t get relief even when she wasn’t nauseated, so certain was she of the nausea’s return.

  After cleaning herself off, she stared at herself in the full-length mirror in her dressing room. Her body had changed. She was thinner than she’d ever seen herself, yet her breasts were fuller, her nipples larger. When had that happened?

  She hadn’t looked at herself in a long time, afraid of what she’d see. A murderer whose husband could turn her in whenever he pleased. A adulteress whose lover no longer wanted her.

  A desperate woman pretending to be a duchess or the commander of a starship or any of the other roles she’d played at the majestics she’d attended, running away from the truth of her actual life, the one where she was sure to be sent into exile, punished by daily lashings, and worked to death at the worst of the slave mines, where all one’s fellows were also convicted felons.

  Sophia couldn’t appreciate her own beauty. If she’d once been beautiful, now it was just a word that other people used to describe her.

  She turned to the side. Her abdomen was rounded. Her breasts were heavy.

  Every fear she’d ever had for herself was eclipsed by a sudden understanding.

  Nicholas had gotten his wish.

  Chapter 47

  After everyone in the manor was asleep and she could no longer hear any sounds in the hallway, Violet, armed with a lit candle, snuck out of her room, went down the back stairs, and made her way into the dense, black forest.

  She had to see Trevelton. She sensed that no matter what Lady Patience and the duchess were planning, she was the only one who could stop the duel, because somehow she was the cause of it, no matter what else or who else it seemed to be about.

  When she got to the tree house, all the lights were doused, and when she tried the door, it was locked. Maybe Trevelton had gone back to his rooms in the manor house. He probably needed Etterly to help him prepare for the proceedings.

  She turned to walk back, then remembered that there was no key to the tree house. It locked from the inside only. She knocked softly on the door.

  If she presented everything to Trevelton in a gentle, relaxed way, in a sane, logical manner, surely he would understand. Anger was one thing, but death surpassed every emotion.

  It was colder outside than she’d anticipated, and she had on only a light shawl over her dress. She shivered and knocked again.

  Still no answer.

  Then she banged on the door. “It’s me,” she said. “Let me in.”

  Silence.

  She pounded on the door. “You can’t do this, Trevelton. Please tell me you’re not going to do this.”

  Her candle sputtered and went out, creating a cloak of stygian blackness that seemed to both spread and grow more impenetrable with each moment.

  “Rafe,” she yelled as she pounded on the door. “Please.”

  There were no sounds from inside the hut. Maybe he’d figured out a way to lock the door from the outside, and she was standing out here, getting colder by the moment as she begged an empty building to let her in.

  Violet wrapped her shawl more tightly around herself and willed herself to stay calm. She had to get back to the manor house, and she had nothing to relight her candle with. She’d just have to hope the same intuitions that had cracked open the secrets of the maze that afternoon would now help her return to her room.

  But if he was in there, she had to give it one more try. She smashed her hands and then the metal holder the now-useless candle was in against the door. Again and again, but there was no response.

  Something was on her shoulder, her neck, the back of her hand. She brushed away at whatever it was, not able to see, shivering against the slick feel of it.

  Lightning struck over the tree to her right,
and in its flash she saw the sky break open and the deluge descend . . . and Lord Trevelton’s face at the window.

  She raised her hand to pound the door yet again when it opened and Trevelton pulled her into the tree house, pulled her against his chest, wrapped his arms around her, and covered her mouth with his.

  The rain followed Violet into the hut, a heavy wind forcing the downpour onto both her and her lover.

  The moment he touched her, her desperation to save his life converted to a desperation to make love to him.

  “Rafe,” she said when he moved his mouth to her neck and then a place on her shoulder that only he knew about. She felt his hard length press into her belly and she heard him finally close the door behind her.

  “Why did you leave me?” he said, nearly growling. “When you know how much I love you.”

  But she couldn’t answer. His mouth was on hers again and it was as though he were devouring her as she, in turn, devoured him.

  Her dress was pooled on the floor at her feet, but she didn’t know how it had opened—if she had done it or if Trevelton had. He leaned his arrogant head down onto her chest and suckled her as though she could nourish him, holding her breast with one hand as he grasped her tightly to him with his other, his arm still wrapped around her waist.

  She leaned back in ecstasy, moments away from that exquisite release, although he’d not yet touched her sex.

  “Why did you let me go?” she said as she gasped for air. She undid the front of his breeches and reached for him as a deep moan rose from his chest.

  “This one last time,” he said when he lifted his head up, his pitch-black hair falling forward onto his face. Another lightning flash illuminated his pale skin, the raindrops shimmering on his cheeks, his dark eyes darker than the impenetrable night had been.

  “Rafe,” Violet cried out, hanging on to him with her very soul. Because she understood that even he knew tomorrow would see his end.

  Chapter 48

  So she had returned. He’d waited, he’d called to her, and she’d heard him, come to him.