Fields of Iron: A steampunk adventure novel

by Adina, Shelley

  “She did not have much choice, you know. Mother Mary and Sister Clara agreed—a woman cannot travel alone in this country, and her best chance of gaining an audience with His Highness was to accept the captain’s offer and then form a party with me as maid and Riley—he’s the navigator on the captain’s steamboat, the Colorado Queen—as escort. We have two others with us, but they are below on the docks, probably getting drunk with the sailors.”

  “It seems to have worked,” Joe said. “Her dance with the Viceroy, I mean, not getting drunk with sailors. She returned after the waltz and told the captain she had an audience tomorrow. She didn’t seem as happy as I would have expected, though.”

  “That was a little worrying,” Ella admitted. “Though if I had an audience with the Viceroy I would probably faint dead away and have to be carried out.”

  “Does he love her?” Evan blurted, then wished he could smack himself—or leave the table before he simply cut out his heart and offered it on a plate for everyone to view.

  “The captain?” Ella laughed merrily. “I do not know if he loves anyone—or rather, he loves them too well. There is many a woman along the river waiting for the sound of the ship’s whistle.” She laughed again, while Evan felt his face turn cold with dismay. “They do not even share a bed at night—well, they do, but she always rolls up a blanket down the middle. Half the time she and I sleep together, depending on whether our rooms have a connecting door and we can maintain the fiction for the others in the party. It would not do to have the men gossiping at this late stage.”

  Joe’s eyebrows rose, and she stuck out her tongue at him. “Never mind looking all scandalized, you.”

  “So they haven’t—you know—that is, there’s no danger of—” Joe couldn’t quite seem to get the words out, which suited Evan admirably. There were some things he really did not want to know.

  Now Ella poked Joe in the stomach, just where the silver chain hung from the bottom-most pair of buttons on his short jacket. “That is none of your nevermind, sir. But I will say that she and I are both pure as lilies.” And she laughed again, as though this were a fine joke.

  Evan stood, looking this way and that for a way of escape. And then his gaze met that of Gloria, being escorted toward them by her husband. The captain. The scoundrel. Behind them trailed two young dandies, clearly the scions of rancho families determined to make their own impression upon the Viceroy’s new favorite.

  “Why Evan, I believe this one is yours,” she said, her clear blue eyes beseeching him to play along, though he hadn’t said a word and in fact, would rather faint and be carried out himself than expose his emotion in a dance with her.

  But her hand slipped into his and his arms gathered her in for the second waltz and before he knew it, they were whirling out onto the floor.

  “Thank you for the rescue,” she said, her hand warm in his own. “It is one thing to dance with the captain, but quite another to put up with those boys. They have been following me about like puppies.”

  “Apparently their mamas are obliged to extend you invitations to stay, now that the Viceroy has shown you such favor,” he told her. Thank goodness for facts, and for having something innocuous to say. “They are likely seeking to initiate the acquaintance.”

  “Perhaps, but that does not obligate me to dance with them. Goodness, I am a married woman.”

  “Yes,” he said faintly.

  “But how glad I am to see you safe, Evan!” She squeezed his right shoulder, where her hand lay, in delight. “I want to hear more, but I understand from your translator that you are under house arrest.”

  “For now. Until I am called upon by the Viceroy. If he should have a nightmare, I am to interpret it. When my usefulness is ended, I expect I will be shipped back to the water meadows.”

  “Not if we can help it,” Gloria said firmly. “We will come up with a plan. My husband can defend a train from robbers, so I have every confidence he could stop and rob one. We shall steal you and Senor San Gregorio in short order.”

  “I would not put him or you in such danger. No, Barnaby and I had a plan in support of your efforts. I will simply return and wait for the right moment to carry it out, and escape in the behemoth.”

  “But if I can convince the Viceroy not to go to war—”

  Evan nodded, and twirled her out, then in, in the manner he had seen the Viceroy do. “That would be wonderful. Then I will merely have to mount a rescue, not an attack.”

  “Oh, Evan.” She smiled up at him, her eyes soft. “I cannot believe you pursued me across all those miles of desert, only to miss me by mere moments! How different our lives might have been.” The smile faltered, and her gaze came to rest on the button of his collar.

  “One must not wish for the might-have-beens,” he said as bravely as though his heart was not beating practically out of his chest. “Mrs. Fremont is the belle of the ball, with the Viceroy’s regard, a handsome husband, and every prospect for happiness ahead.”

  “Yes,” she agreed slowly, as though the concept were strange to her.

  And when the music ended, Senor de la Carrera y Borreaga claimed her hand, and there was nothing left for Evan to do but return to the table. He met Joe and Ella coming out for the next contredanse, which left Captain Fremont and his man alone at the table.

  Suddenly, Evan could bear no more—and certainly not a tête-à-tête with that scoundrel.

  He waylaid Joe on his way past. “I am going up,” he said. “I still do not feel quite the thing.”

  “As you like,” Joe said, never one to mind anyone else’s business.

  “I’ll make your excuses to the others,” Ella said helpfully, and he smiled at her in gratitude.

  Even as recently as this afternoon, he would never have believed that returning to the beautifully furnished prison of his bedroom would provide such inexpressible relief.

  Chapter 19

  Rather than dissipating after her waltz with the Viceroy, the tension in Gloria’s belly increased to the point that the thought of dessert made her feel ill. Part of it was due to her inability to tell whether the young prince’s agreeing to see her on the following day was a triumph or a disaster. Perhaps he simply wanted to arrange lunch. Or a long stay in prison. Or an execution. How long did it take to arrange one of those?

  When at last she narrowed her list of partners to the grandees and avoided their sons who sought to monopolize her dance card, she had finally had enough.

  “Captain,” she said to her husband as he came off the floor with Ella—so strange, she would have imagined that he would have been cutting a much wider swath through the ladies of all ranks in this crowd. “I am exhausted. May we make our farewells?”

  “Is that wise? What if the Viceroy wishes to dance with you again?”

  “Senor de la Carrera told me just now that His Serene Highness has retired for the evening. I must say I am glad. The poor man looked ready to drop—and he only danced with the ladies of the house after me.”

  “Must I go too?” Ella looked distressed, and doing her best not to look over her shoulder, where the slender young man who had come with Evan was lurking in the shadows. “Senor Douglas has gone to bed, though it is only eleven, but Joe is still here, and I am not ready to go.”

  “If he will escort you down to the inn afterward, there is no reason you cannot stay,” Gloria said, smiling.

  “He cannot, Gloria,” her husband reminded her. “He is under house arrest.”

  Oh, bother. So he was. How could she have forgotten? “Then Riley must do it.”

  But Riley was nowhere to be found, and Ella looked close to tears. After a parting with Joe that was heartrending in its restraint, she sulked all the way down the gravel walk to the mission, and said not one word as they hailed a conveyance and were driven along the harbor to the inn. Gloria, fretful and exhausted, put every ounce of civility she possessed to the task of not slapping her and bursting into tears.

  At least Ella was free to choose up
on whom she wished to bestow her affections.

  Not that Gloria wanted to give them to Evan, or anyone else. But to have the freedom to give them … oh, never mind. She was not thinking clearly, and could hardly wait to close herself in her room and bury her face in the pillow.

  But the captain paid the conveyance driver and followed her up to the room they shared, complete with bolster in the middle of the bed. She had expected him to join his crew in the public room and drink himself into oblivion, not close the door and assist her in removing her boots after she unhooked the tight bodice of her evening gown.

  “Thank you,” she said, stepping out of the voluminous skirt and draping it over a chair. What were the odds she would live long enough to wear it again?

  “Tell me what is on your mind.” He pushed the pillows up against the headboard and stretched out on his side of the bed as though he meant to stay awhile.

  “Are you not going to join the others?”

  “My crew are not embroiled in a political coil up to their necks, and do not need me at present.” He patted the quilt, whose bold flowered pattern made a note of color in the lamplight. “I do not spend all my time carousing, you may have noticed.”

  “I did notice.” She curled up against the pillows on her own side. “Stanford, I am so afraid.”

  She had not meant to say that. She meant to sound firm, and confident, and brave. Instead, her voice broke.

  He pushed the bolster to the floor with one foot and drew her to his side. “I am, too. Any sane person would be. You really could not tell the Viceroy’s meaning? He knew who you were, and what the Ambassador told him you had done, and gave you no hint of what he plans to say or do tomorrow?”

  “Not a word.” His shoulder was firm, and steadying, and quite comfortable. He was not making fun of her or casting blame. Instead, he was behaving like … a friend. A confidante. Someone who could be trusted.

  And how badly she wanted to trust! To share the burden she had carried alone for so long. She had had friends to help her—in the beginning, at least. But even they had not known how much fear she had carried, how little self-confidence.

  “Truly, I fear he has sent for the Ambassador already, to arrange for my execution,” she said slowly. “De Aragon certainly hinted at it on our journey here. But my goodness, can a man dance with a woman one day and order her execution the next?”

  “A man might not—but who can tell, with princes?”

  “I wonder why the Ambassador is not here.” It had been bothering her since their arrival. Once her trepidation about meeting him again had lessened, it was only replaced by fear of what he might be up to while no one was watching. “One would think he would be interested in the Viceroy’s health, or accompanying him south in order to inspect the troops, or some such.”

  “That had occurred to me, too. I don’t suppose you grilled any of your partners on the matter, did you? I noticed you chose them rather carefully.”

  “I had hoped no one would notice,” she said wryly, and added with a sigh, “I make a very bad spy.”

  “I disagree. The good ones are pretty—but the best ones are clever. And you qualify on both counts.”

  “Have you met so many spies?” She poked him, and he laughed. “But a few tidbits did drop between the waltz and the polka. Enough to confirm our guess that not everyone supports this war. Oh, they didn’t say it outright,” she told him. “But I could read it in the eyes of Santa Cruz and San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, and feel the tension in the shoulder and handclasp of San Miguel Arcangel when I danced around the subject.”

  “Keep your observations close, my dear,” he said.

  “Oh, I shall, believe me. But I have a feeling the observations of women are not held in high regard in any case.”

  “Your friend Mr. Douglas made himself scarce earlier than I expected,” he said in a change of subject rather abrupt even for him.

  “I imagine after being in gaol for weeks, a fiesta would be rather difficult to face, don’t you agree? There is too much going on under the surface for a rational person to be entirely comfortable.”

  “Truer words were never spoken,” he murmured. “He appears to be as much in love with you as ever.”

  And here it was again, rearing its ugly head. She tilted her head to gaze up at him, his shoulder suddenly hard as stone beneath hers. “Let us be clear on one thing at least,” she said. “I care about Evan very much. I owe my life to him, for he pulled me off that gun before the missile hit, risking his life to save mine. But I said my vows to you. And while we both know that they were said to further a cause, I for one do not plan to break them.”

  “Only to release me from them?” The words were said with casual ease, but the tension in that shoulder had not eased in the least.

  “We will release each other if that is what we both want,” she said awkwardly. “But … for my part … if one must be married … there are many worse persons to be married to.”

  She wasn’t sure what she expected, but a chuckle was not among the possibilities she might have considered. “Do not overwhelm me with the force of your affections, dear,” he said.

  At least the tension had gone out of his shoulder, making her bold enough to say, “We agreed to be honest with each other. And … I have never met another man to whom I could countenance marriage, despite my father’s best efforts to rope and tie one and drag him to church.”

  “There must have been a few willing victims. After all, you were the first choice of a prince this evening.”

  “True … he did not know about the Meriwether-Astor millions at first, which at least made his choice disinterested.”

  “A face like yours would interest any man.” He sat up to look into her face. “They cannot really all have wanted you for your money.”

  She lifted a shoulder, clad only in a chemise. “I could not take the chance. My parents’ marriage was … well, if you had been at the Battle of Resolution, you would have seen similarities. And he had the nerve to elevate her practically to sainthood the moment she died, after treating her abominably while she was alive.”

  If she laid her cheek on his shoulder, would he allow it?

  The crisp linen was soft and warm against her skin, and more than merely allowing it, he lifted his arm and put it around her. With a sigh of relief, she settled against him. “This would have been unthinkable for them.”

  “What—sitting and talking like this?”

  With a nod, she said, “I feel as though I am sailing in uncharted waters. I—I do not actually know how to be a wife. Only a comrade at arms. A friend. A traveling companion.”

  In the silence of the room, he drew a breath, and then it hitched, as though he had thought something that he would not say. “Though I have as little experience as you, I imagine that a wife can be all those things if she wants to.” And then— “Do you want to be more?” This time it was he who tilted his head to see her face.

  She swallowed. Had her toes been clinging to the edge of a precipice, she could not have felt a greater sense of … falling? Flying? “I—I think I might.”

  “But not tonight?”

  “I do not think so.” She was having a hard time breathing, so intense was his gaze. “But perhaps … soon.”

  “When you accomplish your mission?” His voice was low. Soft, yet musical. So unlike his usual tone of command, or sardonic observation. “Because, you know, that could be as soon as tomorrow night.”

  “Tomorrow night,” she repeated in a whisper.

  It sounded almost like a promise.

  Chapter 20

  Evan was dragged abruptly from sleep by a rough hand on his shoulder. “Senor! Wake at once. You are needed.”

  He blinked himself awake, only to squint in pain at the light of a lamp in his face. He pushed it away. “What the devil—? Who are you? What do you want?”

  By the time he’d swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached for his borrowed pants, he had recognized the fami
liar face and form.

  “Senor de Sola. Am I needed by the Viceroy?”

  “Si, I am sent to fetch you. He has had a dream, and wishes you to interpret it.”

  Evan had been having his own dream, a puzzling but exhilarating one that involved blond hair and dark Californio eyes and delicate fingers caressing the leaves of lemon balm. One could not smell in a dream, he knew that, and yet it seemed as though the scent lingered in his nostrils even now.

  “Of course.” He shook off the last shreds of sleep and dressed quickly, pulling on his boots not because he thought he would be taken away in chains, but because one simply did not approach a prince in stocking feet.

  As they walked quickly along the dark, deserted colonnade and into the guest wing occupied by the Viceroy, he said as calmly as he could, “Commander, if I might make a request?”

  “Of course, if it is within my power. What is it?”

  “Have you said anything of my abilities as a doctor to those attending His Serene Highness?”

  The man glanced at him, puzzled. “Why should I not? Certainly His Highness’s councilors and staff wished to know everything about you before you could be permitted to attend him in such an—intimate capacity as this.”

  Evan’s heart sank. Even now he was not certain that it mattered if they knew he was a doctor, but Isabela had spoken so seriously… “I see.”

  “You are not here in that capacity in any case. You are here because of what you did for me.”

  There was nothing for it but to hope that his medical skill or lack thereof would not matter. He was an interpreter of dreams and a prisoner to boot.

  A guard at the door ushered them through, and Evan walked down a flagged corridor to the Viceroy’s bedchamber, where another guard stood at attention, and they were admitted by a gentleman as fully dressed as they. Perhaps these men slept only in the daylight hours.

  A fire burned briskly in a raised hearth shaped like a beehive, and in a comfortably upholstered chair next to it sat the Viceroy in a rich burgundy velvet dressing gown, a tiny glass of some dark liquid at his elbow. A man in a black linen jacket, wearing augmented spectacles that allowed him to see in very fine detail, leaned over him, pressing his forehead and chest as if he were feeling for fever.