Now Playing on Outworld 5730

by R. T. W. Lipkin

  “She’s my sister, Vi,” Rosie said. “I’d best get downstairs now.”

  “And she’s working here? Or is she at Brixton? Why didn’t you say so?” Violet lowered the mask and put it on the dresser. “All this time and you’ve never said a word about her. She should come to the ball too.”

  “She can’t, Vi.”

  “I guess somebody has to work, but it’s so unfair.”

  “Yes.” Rosie had her hand on the doorknob and had half opened the door, but closed it, came back in, and sat down on Violet’s sole chair.

  “She’s not here, Vi. I didn’t mean for you to think she is. Samantha’s back home. She’ll never be able to leave.”

  “There must be a way. Let’s try to figure it out. You obviously don’t think it’s good for her there.”

  “It was the rush flu.” Rosie looked past Violet, into the corner by the window.

  Violet swallowed the next fifty sentences she’d been intending to speak. She’d heard of the rush flu—there’d been an epidemic on Outworld 212 a few years ago. Thousands of people died, and hundreds were permanently affected.

  “She’s my twin, Vi. But I never even got sick.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t. You’re my dearest friend.”

  “Vi, Samantha was my dearest friend but now she can’t do anything. Or say anything. And she can’t even die. But I don’t know what’s stopping her. If it were me, I’d die.”

  “Please don’t die, Rosie. Please come back with me tomorrow. You don’t need to stay here.”

  “That’s why Johnny and I have to do this, Vi. For her care. I can’t come back with you.”

  “I’ll get you a better job. I promise.” Violet’s brain was whirling. Surely they needed set decorators and designers on Mirage. They’d take one look at Rosie’s drawings and hire her immediately.

  “I shouldn’t’ve told you, Vi.”

  “All this time and you never said anything.”

  “I didn’t want to. Johnny and I don’t even talk about it. About Samantha. It’s too . . .”

  Rosie started to cry, and Violet felt like she was going to faint. The corset probably, and hearing about Rosie’s twin like this, the day before she was leaving. Violet felt helpless.

  The rush flu did awful things to its victims, the unlucky ones who lived. Violet dared not ask Rosie exactly what was wrong with Samantha, who couldn’t do or say anything. Perhaps she was paralyzed or comatose. Perpetually not exactly dead.

  The room spun around a bit and Violet grabbed onto the edge of the dresser.

  “I have to go back to the kitchen, Vi,” Rosie said as she mopped up her tears with a handkerchief she’d pulled out of her apron pocket.

  “I’ve never had such a good friend,” Violet said as Rosie left the room and closed the door softly behind her.

  Chapter 114

  “You’re going to have to tell me what’s wrong. Eventually,” the duke said. “Might as well tell me now, before we go downstairs.”

  “You look wonderful in these evening clothes, Edgar,” Sophia said. “I’m sure I’ve never seen you quite so handsome as you look right now.”

  “Sophia,” the duke said. “Marguerite. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Nothing, my dearest,” Marguerite said. The words choked her and she thought she might have to cast her accounts again, although she hadn’t done so for hours and had even kept down the tea and small cakes that Johnny had brought upstairs for her, Lady Patience, and Violet in the late afternoon.

  “Violet was so pleased,” Sophia said.

  “Because of the dress. You told me that already, dearest,” Nicholas said. “What did Jewel Allman want with you?”

  “Something about the lamps, you know. The replacements are inadequate. So I think they’ll probably . . . I don’t know. Charge us more, I guess.”

  “You’re a brilliant woman but an inadequate liar,” Nicholas said. “She’d hardly ask to see you about that. I’ve got a substantial escrow here, and Allman knows I’ve never questioned her numerous deductions.”

  “Nicholas, if it wasn’t you, who did give me the antidote?” Marguerite said as Sophia fell away. Marguerite was more beautiful than Sophia, Nicholas thought. Because Marguerite’s soul was undisguised. He needed to see her every day for the rest of his life.

  “Leave him, Marguerite. It’s time. You’re carrying my child. We could be married. I have such plans for us.”

  “Nicholas,” Marguerite said, then turned and realigned the perfume bottles on her vanity. She never wore perfume, but the bottles were beautiful to look at, as was nearly everything here at Hollyhock Manor. She’d miss all of it.

  As she arranged the bottles, she memorized them, forced herself to concentrate, to remember everything—shapes, colors, shadows, aromas. The slightest details: the way the lace edge of the cloth on her vanity looked like the face of a sleeping cat, the color of the dark blue bowl with the hairpins in it, the faint smell of vanilla.

  If only she could live here with Edgar, the Duke of Bedford, and their son. If only she were Sophia, the Duchess of Bedford, the duke’s wife, the mother of his child, the future Duke of Bedford.

  If only she weren’t a cold-blooded murderer who’d taken pleasure in killing her own father. She might have been able to rescue her mother and Alexander some other way, but she hadn’t been able to come up with any that would work out quite so efficiently, so permanently.

  She sighed. Now she would have to go home to Outworld 75, face Clive, face his reactions, his punishments, his pleasures in her predicament. And no doubt she’d finally face the comeuppance of her crime.

  Because Clive would certainly not hold back. All the threats he’d made would be instantly enacted. She’d be tried and sentenced and sent into exile. The intergalactic courts were swift to act when it came to capital cases.

  Lawrence Rhodes had been the respected, honored, and revered governor general of Outworld 15. How lucky she was to have such a father, such a family—she’d often heard that. He never injured her anywhere that wouldn’t later be covered with clothing, or covered by her terror of revealing the sickening truths of her life.

  When she was eleven, she’d had to give a speech in school about the government and her father’s exalted place in it. Her father and mother watched from the front of the room. Her back had burned from the welts and her ribs ached. One was broken, another badly bruised.

  Her father had smiled at her, the smile that promised he’d be in her room again that very night, doing whatever he wanted with her.

  If only he’d die, she’d thought while she was telling the school what a fine leader he was.

  Now, in less than a month she’d be wearing rags, working most probably in a mine, her son expunged, her life over, her death a prayed-for end.

  “Marguerite, talk to me,” Nicholas said. “I can’t bear it. It’s time you told me.”

  She glanced at Nicholas’s reflection in the mirror, to see him one last time before he knew the truth about her. To see what the face of the man you loved looked like while he still loved you. To remember it. To remember everything as it was, as it should be. As she’d pretended it was at every majestic she’d been to with Nicholas.

  “I killed my father,” she said. She couldn’t turn around. She closed her eyes.

  “Marguerite, I’m sure you’re exaggerating,” Nicholas said. “We all have guilt about our parents.”

  “No, Nicholas.” Marguerite turned around on her upholstered stool, smoothed down the skirts of her gown, and rested her hand on her ever-expanding belly.

  “I see,” Nicholas said. But he obviously didn’t see.

  “He was going to do to Alexander what he’d done to me. He’d already started.”

  “Alexander?”

  “My brother. He’s ten years younger. I heard my father in his room that night and I knew I had to kill him. But I know that doesn’t make it right. I’m still a murderer.”

  “Marguerite,” Nicholas said. />
  “Clive sent for me.”

  Chapter 115

  Eli Calvert was putting the finishing touches on the table arrangements for the buffet. There wouldn’t be a sit-down dinner tonight, but the buffet would be available for two hours, just before and during the beginning of the ball. Later, there would be drinks and later still there would be more food.

  The kitchen had been a madhouse, Cook too busy to do more than direct her staff and have a panic every five minutes, and Eli was happy to be out of there for a moment, to be alone before the players came downstairs, before the Brixton mob got to Hollyhock, before the music began.

  He’d been bent over the sideboard, but stood when he sensed someone was in the room with him.

  “Lady Patience,” he said as he turned. She’d never looked more beautiful, he thought. Her blond hair in a magnificent array of braids and ribbons, her skin radiant next to the crimson velvet of her ball gown.

  “Calvert,” she said.

  She surveyed the food on the sideboard and played with her mask, which she was holding. It wasn’t time to put it on yet. Not until the ball officially started, over an hour from now.

  “I’d like to speak with you,” she said, hating herself for the way it sounded, as though she were the great lady and he, the lowly servant. She hadn’t meant it that way, but she couldn’t say what she meant.

  “Certainly, my lady,” Calvert said. “But perhaps it could wait until tomorrow.”

  “Lettie told me that the servants weren’t invited to the ball,” Lady Patience said.

  “Of course not, my lady.”

  Lady Patience thought better of telling Calvert that she’d made sure that at least Lettie would be there. She didn’t want him to stop Lettie from going. He could be stiffly proper. The perfect butler.

  “But . . . you’ll be there, surely, Calvert. Won’t you?” She felt the midnight blue feathers on her mask as they grazed her wrist.

  “Of course not, my lady.”

  “Calvert,” Lady Patience said as she walked toward him, but something stopped her from getting too close. Even ten feet away felt too close—the air between them was infused with an almost overpowering charge—and she paused at one of the terribly uncomfortable side chairs that was pushed up against the wall and rested her hand on its back.

  “Yes, my lady,” Calvert said.

  “What will you do after this is over?”

  “My duties will be the same as always,” he said. “Minus the preparations for the ball.”

  “I mean, the majestic,” Lady Patience said.

  “I’m pleased you think of Hollyhock Manor as majestic,” Calvert said.

  He wasn’t going to stop being the butler, wasn’t going to let go of his role for even a moment.

  Lady Patience sighed. “I suppose it could be,” she said. “If things were different.”

  “Things change all the time, my lady,” Calvert said. “Inevitably.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right.”

  She turned to leave.

  “You look dazzling this evening, my lady,” Calvert said just as she stepped across the room’s threshold.

  Only when you’re looking at me, she thought as she made her way across the hall.

  She wanted to see the ballroom before anyone else was there, so she could freely imagine herself dancing with the only man at Hollyhock Manor, the only man she’d ever met, in fact, who could be her mate. Yet she couldn’t even have a conversation with him that wasn’t a conversation between Lady Patience Barrington and Mr. Calvert, whose first name she still didn’t know.

  Vernie Dalston went by her as she passed the grand central staircase. Vernie was deep in conversation with Baron North and nodded politely at her once friend, Lady Patience Barrington.

  “Trent, dear,” Vernie said after Lady Patience was out of earshot. “Do you suppose Fitz is right and we’ve lost it all?”

  “Nothing’s decided yet,” North said as he scratched his neck. His collar was much too rigid for his liking.

  “My source is impeccable,” Vernie said. “If only Lord Trevelton had won. Really won,” she said.

  “Quiet down, Vernie,” North said, adding in a shh just to make sure she got the message.

  The whole scheme had depended on Conroy Aerospace collapsing as it was supposed to’ve done, but now with the duke returned, with Wyatt Conroy quite alive . . . well, it wasn’t the result they’d been hoping for.

  Although of course Vernie hadn’t and didn’t really want anyone to die. Not Wyatt Conroy, not anyone at all. Investments, like majestics, were merely games to be played, enjoyed, relished, and then forgotten about. Something to fill in the empty hours with. Like having sex or eating.

  Vernie herself had only a small stake involved, since she’d never risk anything too large. But Fitzmore was a gambler, or had been in the past, and she feared he’d stand to lose a substantial amount of his fortune if things didn’t change. Nevertheless, there was nothing she could do at this point.

  “My source is impeccable,” Vernie said. Although, where was Allene Dickens? Vernie hadn’t been able to find her all afternoon, and she was hoping for some better news.

  But nothing was decided yet, as Baron North had so cleverly pointed out. Things could still change.

  “Never mind,” the baron said. “The ball will be fun tonight no matter what. Let’s have a drink, my dear.”

  “Yes. Let’s,” Vernie said. “Let’s have several.”

  Chapter 116

  This must be why they call them majestics, Violet thought as she entered the ballroom. An entire orchestra, not just a small group of musicians, was playing a quadrille, and the room itself seemed to pulsate along with the music and dancers.

  The decorations were magnificent, the chandeliers festooned with hundreds of ribbons that traced a mesmerizing, breathtaking path across the ballroom’s thirty-foot-high ceiling, and the light cast by the candles Rosie had found was magical.

  Rosie has done all this, Violet thought, and she won’t be here to enjoy it. Another of life’s numerous injustices.

  The ball was well under way, but Violet had waited until the room filled up, afraid that someone might tell her she shouldn’t or couldn’t be there, despite Lady Patience’s invitation and the duchess’s involvement, and she saw neither of the two women on the dance floor.

  But it was Violet’s last night at Hollyhock, on the weak-atmosphered Outworld 5730, and she wanted to have a good time.

  Tomorrow she’d be on her way back to Los Angeles, and in a week’s time she’d be on the set of Mirage, wearing something far different from the luxurious violet gown that the duchess had given her for this evening. And without the fanciful yellow butterfly mask that Lady Patience had lent her.

  She’d be well away from Outworld 5730, from her role as a lady’s maid, and from Rafe Blackstone, Lord Trevelton, Ephraim Croft, and the rest of his infuriating, frustrating, attractive, appealing, unforthcoming, hateful lot of selves.

  So many people here, and many of them Violet didn’t know. She wasn’t familiar with the group from Brixton at all, having not really paid attention to them the day of the duel, when all she’d been able to think about was that Trevelton was about to be killed. And, afterward, that letter he’d written her. And Charlotte.

  He couldn’t love her.

  “Is this dance spoken for?” said a deep male voice just behind her.

  She turned to see Lord Saybrook, looking completely unlike himself, and not just because of the mask he was wearing. Although he was still possessed of his usual slightly slumped posture, he was dressed in fantastically stylish and crisp evening wear, and his cravat had been tied by an expert.

  “No, my lord,” Violet said.

  Saybrook held out his hand, and Violet accompanied him to the dance floor, where an intricate pattern of steps was being executed by all the players.

  Violet had studied several dance patterns before coming to Outworld 5730, and she was familiar with this o
ne. So, apparently, was Lord Saybrook, who turned out to be an almost ideal partner.

  “I haven’t seen him yet this evening either,” Saybrook said as he changed places with Violet, then took her hand and circled around her.

  “Maybe he’s not coming,” Violet said. Maybe he was still in the center of the maze. Let him stay there.

  “Etterly wouldn’t stand for it,” Saybrook said. He bowed and Violet curtsied, and the pattern started over again from the beginning.

  “That gown is very becoming on you,” said the sinuously slender man who was now holding Violet’s hand as she rose up onto her toes. Saybrook’s partner of the moment, Lady Katherine, was whispering to him.

  “Thank you,” Violet said, although she wanted to run away. The man’s hand was cold and inhuman, and the gaze from the yellow eyes that squinted out from behind his macabre mask terrified her.

  She held her breath against anything else he might say, but mercifully the pattern changed and she was now across from Lady Katherine.

  “Is he staying away because of you?” Lady Katherine said to Violet, bending down to be able to speak into Violet’s ear instead of a half a foot above her head.

  “Whoever could you mean?” Violet said.

  “He’s interested in me now,” Lady Katherine said as they circled each other. “Lord Trevelton.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Violet said, remembering her lines for a change.

  Then she was in the arms of the yellow-eyed man, and it was as though he were about to attack her, she thought, as irrational as that thought was.

  Perhaps it was just his mask, which seemed to be something a satyr or a demon would be wearing, not a Regency-era gentleman. Or his nauseatingly yellow eyes. And he held her too closely. This was Regency England, after all.

  “Sir,” Violet said as she squirmed, trying to reposition herself, but he held tight until the pattern changed again.

  “Lord Saybrook,” Violet said as they held hands and moved away from Lady Katherine and the yellow-eyed man. “Can we sit for a moment?”