Clockwork Countess

by Delphine

  She threw back her head, whispering, “Yes… please…please touch me, Roderick!”

  The booming chimes of the great mahogany clock in the hall sounding the midnight rounds echoed through house. Even through the thick library doors, the toll of the bell sounded a grim warning, awakening his bewitched senses.

  What was he doing?

  He thrust her away from him. His breath coming in ragged bursts, as he looked at her in horror. “We cannot do this!”

  She blinked up at him in confusion, her dilated eye still drugged by desire,

  “But–"

  “No!” He shook his head violently. “Neither of us can leave this cursed place but I will do my best to stay clear of you, Rowan! For your own sake, believe me!”

  “But I want to,” she whispered, reaching out her soft rounded arms to him. “I don’t care about a proper marriage to some popinjay of the ton. I want this…I want–"

  He grasped her by the shoulders and held her firmly at arm’s length. “You and I can never be, Rowan. Never.”

  She stared back at him uncomprehending for a moment. He saw the flash of bewilderment, pain, then a disillusioned sadness dulled her eyes before Rowan wrenched out of his grasp. She began slowly pulling her gown back into place and gathered a few locks of hair into a loose knot.

  When Rowan finally turned once more to him, she bore an expression of such bitterness, he nearly pulled her back into his embrace.

  But he would not destroy her and that was all that could happen if they continued. Roderick forced his expression to remain impassive and met her hurt, accusing eyes with a level stare.

  Rowan bit her lip and nodded. “I suppose there is nothing more to be said.” With the dazed look of a sleepwalker, she turned and walked out of the room. The door softly clicked shut behind her.

  Roderick stared at the door. The vaulted library seemed darker, colder now that she was gone. If only the secret that bound him irrevocably to Heartwycke could finally be revealed and set him free to live and love as other men could.

  As the snow floated down outside, blanketing the estate in a veil of silence, the persistent ticking of the clock built into the carved mahogany bookshelves stretched his nerves to the breaking point.

  Before he knew it, he had the heavy crystal decanter of brandy gripped in his hand and hurled it with all his might at the clock. With an explosion of glass, the clock face shattered and jagged fragments rained down onto the Turkish carpet, but the unstoppable mechanism carried on, filling the yawning silence of the room with its tick, tick, tick….

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next few months passed like a strange dream. Rowan kept to her chamber or took long restless walks in the frozen winter parkland, prowling the snowy woods until her lips were blue. Hoping to tire herself out, to work out this gnawing mixture of frustration and desire that never left her.

  Roderick stayed true to his word and avoided her company as if she were something vile, spending all of his time attending to the needs of his tenants and the estate.

  The heat between them was still there. She could feel its intensity on the rare nights he joined her and countess at the formal dining table, or when she passed him in the gloomy halls, but the kinship, that feeling of having somehow found another living soul who understood her, who was simply her friend––that had vanished.

  Was it because of his guarded manner or her own rigid bearing whenever their paths crossed? Whatever the cause, she was more lonely than she could ever remember being in her life. It only made matters worse that the more she observed Roderick, discreetly from a distance, the more she grew to admire his compassion for the poor and sick of the village, his warmth and surprising playfulness with the pack of hounds who followed at his heels wherever he went. She marked how he tirelessly attended to the needs of his estate while his brother presumably drank and whored his way through every gaming hell in London. The more she studied Roderick, the more she craved his company, but it was the one luxury denied her at Heartwycke. And the time, marked by the maddening incessant ticking of the clocks, seemed to crawl by.

  One evening, as twilight fell over Heartwycke Park, Rowan went to the countess’s boudoir before dressing for dinner to discuss the new batch of gowns which the seamstress had just delivered. Though she had agreed to leave her mourning clothes behind, the frivolous brightly colored frocks felt disrespectful to Rowan so soon after her father’s death. She knocked lightly on the countess’s door and was beckoned in.

  She found the countess at her toilet, her lady’s maid fastening a steel corset around her mistress’s tiny waist.

  Rowan could not help staring in fascination at the strange steel undergarment, until she felt the countess's eyes on her.

  “Forgive me,” said Rowan coloring. “It’s just that I have never seen a corset made of steel.”

  The countess gave her a disdainful smile. “I do not doubt it.”

  Rowan felt all her unsophisticated youth as the color crept deeper across her breasts.

  The countess’s gray eyes glittered like diamonds in her lovely face as she waved a small white hand motioning for Rowan to step closer. “Come child, would you like to touch it?”

  The morbid fascination Rowan felt propelled her forward and she stretched out her fingertips to run along the steel corset circling the countess's waist. It felt startlingly cold, and smooth….

  “Rowan!” The sound of Roderick's voice startled her and she turned to see him standing in the doorway looking thunderous. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I was only…” Damn him, she had been doing nothing wrong! And yet somehow she felt as if she had been caught in some forbidden act.

  But he turned his furious gaze on his mother now, barely suppressed rage was written into every line of his tense body. “You, Madame, seem to have forgotten yourself entirely.”

  The countess shrugged her elegant shoulders and smiled with detached amusement, but then as mother and son stared at each other, her expression changed and she gave Roderick a piercing look. “I forget nothing.”

  All the color drained from Roderick’s face. Grasping Rowan by the elbow, he pulled her from the room. She trotted alongside to keep up with his wide strides as he led her along the flagstone corridors.

  But when they were sufficiently far away from the countess’s chamber, she wrenched her arm away and turned to him. “Where do you think you’re taking me?” she demanded.

  He looked down at her, all the barriers of carefully concealed emotion were gone. His face was dark with a mixture of anger and passion and was it… fear?

  “You must avoid my mother as much as you can. I’m sending you off to London as soon as possible,” he looked away and muttered under his breath, “I was a fool to think you could stay here.”

  “What is it that I cannot know?" she asked. “There’s some mystery here, I can feel it in my blood! Why does the countess wear a steel corset and why does it upset you so much for me to know about it?”

  He stood resolute with his lips pressed tightly closed, but she followed his quick glance down the dark hall to the locked door that led up to the forbidden tower.

  Rowan narrowed her eyes. “And why can I never go into the tower? What is it you have shut up in there?” Her lips began to tremble as an overwhelming sadness took hold of her. “What is it that keeps you so distant and cold towards me?”

  He rubbed his hands across his eyes as if trying to wipe away all the thoughts, all the problems. When he looked up there was compassion in his dark eyes and he took her hands gently in his. She felt anew the seeping warmth and comfort of his hands gripping hers, just as she had the first time they met at the train depot.

  “Please do not ask me these questions,” he begged. “I swear to you I have only your best interest at heart. You are so young and vibrant, so bright and very beautiful, you deserve to have your Season and find a husband to take care of you.”

  She shook her head. “What if I do not want some socie
ty puffin for a husband? I never expected to be a part of that world. Never even wanted to be…If only I had not promised my father to become a lady of the ton, like my mother, I would not have come here!”

  He squeezed her hands almost painfully. “Rowan, if you will not do what I ask for me, then do it to honor the promise to your father. Please, stay away from the countess and let me bring you to London as soon as possible.”

  She gazed up at him in frustration. She didn’t want to leave him. She could feel that in every fiber of her being. She didn’t know or care why. From the first moment he had spoken to her at the train depot she wanted to simply be with him. But she had promised her father, so looking down Rowan nodded her acquiescence.

  Roderick, led her to her rooms, and depositing her safely there, left without another word.

  * * *

  The glow of Rowan’s candle cast leaping shadows across the ancient winding staircase as she tiptoed along the worn stones steps. It had not been difficult to convince Claire to “borrow” the key to the tower room from the sleeping butler’s keychain, and with that and one dim taper clutched in her hand, Rowan had crept through the sleeping manor house toward the twisting stairway and the secret room.

  Following the steep steps upwards, her heart raced as she brushed clinging cobwebs from her path. She had almost reached the top now and every nerve was strung as tightly as the springs on the monstrous ebony clock ticking away the hours in the great hall far below.

  When she reached the sturdy tower door, Rowan paused, gathering her courage.

  She could still turn back.

  But then she would never know the secret of Heartwycke Park, the strange force that kept Roderick away, when she knew in her blood he wanted her just as passionately as she now had to admit she wanted him. Somehow, his intention to send her to London had brought that one great fact to the forefront and she could not deny the truth of her own feelings any longer.

  Taking a deep breath, she whispered, “Mary and Michael grant me your strength and protection!”

  Turning the key in the lock, Rowan pushed open the battered medieval door and stepped into the forbidden chamber.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Winter moonlight poured into the tower room illuminating a long table covered in a dust sheet and two smaller ones also shrouded under cloths.

  Rowan exhaled a sigh of relief.

  There was no red-eyed Minotaur there waiting to tear her to ribbons. No Blue Beard’s wives with their bloody, severed heads.

  More composed now, she stepped deeper into the chamber and curiously peeled back the sheet from the table. A strange metal bed shone cold in the moonlight, its disturbing iron shackles and chains hanging off the sides.

  Placing her candle down, Rowan quickly unveiled the other tables. On one rested a set of instruments she recognized all too well from her father's last days, when she had taken him to the surgeon’s for the futile operation she had given her last shillings for. Her skin crawled at the sight of the sharp blades.

  On the second table lay out a vast array of gear works and cogs, aluminum bellows and other mechanical contraptions she did not recognize.

  She reached out her hand towards one of the clockwork pieces, when the sound of heavy footsteps taking the winding tower stairs two at a time made her spring back.

  Her eyes darted around the small chamber.

  There was nowhere to hide.

  A dark figure burst into the room. He stopped and gaped, horror and fury at war in his handsome face. “Rowan!" he gasped. "Why are you here?”

  She poised for battle, and was about to reply, when Roderick marched forward and took her by the shoulders. “I told you this room was to remain locked! I thought you understood that!”

  She shook her head. “I don’t understand anything about this place, or you, or your family, or even myself anymore!” she shouted as she pulled loose from his grasp and pointed accusingly at the steel table. “What on earth is this?”

  He turned away, but not before she saw the look of pure grief etched into every line of his face.

  “Oh, Roderick, whatever it is, tell me," she pleaded. "You must know you can trust me. I don't want to go to London. I don’t want to leave here–"

  "Not want to leave here?" he said, incredulous. "Then you must be as mad as the rest of us! What in God's name could possibly make you want to stay in this wretched place? You've no friends, no amusements and you must endure us."

  "Could not you be my friend?" she asked, in a trembling voice.

  "Oh Rowan," he pressed his hand across his eyes as if to block her out. "You deserve a far better friend than I can ever be to you."

  She gently took his hand from his face and stood gazing up at him in the moonlight. "I do not believe that."

  For a moment they stood in the silver light, their palms pressed together, looking into each other eyes with the uncanny knowing between them. That knowing that they were each other's, if only....

  Rowan turned her trembling lips up towards his and let the tips of her breasts press against his chest. A delicious shiver of anticipation went through her as her eyes slowly fluttered closed, waiting for his warm mouth to graze hers.

  Roderick pulled away and moved as far from her as the small tower room would permit. He turned his back to her and gazed out the narrow window at the icy parkland below.

  Rowan opened her eyes in surprise. She could not see his face, but even in the pale light, she discerned the death grip he had on the window casement.

  "Do you remember when I met you at the train depot and I told you I understood your grief because I had lost my own father not that long ago?" he asked.

  Rowan nodded. "Yes, I could tell you were sincere. I think that is one of the reasons I..." she trailed off embarrassed.

  "That you gave yourself so willingly to me in the carriage, when I behaved like such a boar. Yes, I can imagine that," he said with his back still to her, staring out at the icy landscape. "Well, as I said, I was devastated when I lost my father, and almost frantic with worry about what would happen to the estate now that Edmund was earl. But Father, though he could not completely get around the entailment, was able to leave control of the estate to my mother until Edmund reaches the age of 35." He turned briefly back to Rowan with a grim smile. "As you said, we are on the dawn of a new century and the solicitors were able to do at least that."

  Rowan frowned. "I'm terribly sorry about your father, but I still can not see what that has to do with this...this mystery of yours and why I must leave Heartwycke."

  Roderick was silent again, standing so still he looked like a marble statue in the pale light. She was about to step forward, but as if sensing her intention, he tensed up and took a pace back from the window into the shadows where it was more difficult to see his face.

  "My mother was also heartbroken by my father's death. She was so kind, so tenderhearted..." he turned to Rowan and the ghost of a bitter laugh echoed out of his deep chest. "Nothing like the woman you know, is it?"

  Rowan shook her head and looked down.

  "Well," he continued. "I had an even greater attachment to my mother than I had to my father and when she grew ill..." his voice tightened and he paused for a moment as if mastering himself. "When she grew ill, I was beside myself. I prayed to God to save her, but when he did not. I simply couldn’t let her go. It was too soon after my father and I was appalled at the idea of what would happen if Edmond finally had control over the estate––all the people who count on Heartwycke Park for their livelihood, their homes...."

  An odd feeling was stirring in the pit of Rowan's stomach. Had he said God had not saved the countess?

  If that was the case....

  Rowan stared at the metal table, the surgeon’s instruments and clockwork gears with dawning horror.

  "Roderick..." her voice came out in a whisper. "What have you done?"

  His eyes were pleading as he rushed on. "I was still so young, and we had been conducting experiments at Oxfor
d in a secret laboratory––I felt sure I could bring her back and no one need know. All I could see was how much I loved her and that I could save her from death." A shudder ran through his large frame and he turned away again, pressing his brow against the chilled window frame, his voice dropping so low she had to strain to hear him.

  "I gave her a clockwork heart and lungs. Then once she recovered and became…became what she is, when I understood what had happened, I couldn’t destroy her. Couldn’t send her away––she was as she was because of me. And at least while she lives, Edmond cannot properly inherit.”

  "All the clocks," she said in fascinated horror. "Is that why you have so many clocks?"

  "The clockwork in her heart responds to the magnetic pull of the pendulum in the great clock in the hall. The momentum of all the swaying pendulums in unison maintains her heartbeat, the rhythm of her lungs....her life, if that is what you'd call it," he explained bitterly.

  Rowan remembered an exhibition she had once attended in Dublin at the same theater where her father was performing. The scientist had demonstrated that if you lined up a row of clocks all together, like magic, the magnetic pull of each pendulum would eventually come into synchronicity and every clock in the row began to sway and tick to the exact same beat.

  But to do that to a woman's heart!

  “But…but it is not really her then? Just a body and a mind with no human soul?” Rowan shivered in the clammy chill of the tower. “It’s monstrous!”

  “Yes, monstrous....” he said, turning away but not before she caught the pure agony twisting his handsome face. “And I am responsible. I can never leave her, or this machine that is not my mother and yet...and yet is.”

  “Oh Roderick…” she moved to place her hand on his shoulder but he flinched and her arm dropped to her side.

  “Now do you see why you must leave?" he begged in a broken voice. "I cannot condemn you to live in this unnatural hell for the rest of your life!”