Outrageously Yours (24 page)

“And you were splendid with your courageous hand-raising. But never mind that.” His arms went suddenly around her, cutting off her breath with surprising strength. “Ivy, do you know what today means?”

“No. I still haven’t the faintest inkling of what happened here.” As much as she savored the heat of his embrace, she pushed him away far enough to get a good look at him. Flushed excitement had replaced his pallor.

“Help me up and I’ll explain.” After setting the brandy glass on the floor, he leaned a hand on her shoulder. She wrapped an arm about his waist and half hauled him to his feet. He pressed his free hand to his chest and frowned. “Still a bit erratic.”

“Your heart?” With a lick of panic, she pushed his hand from his chest and placed her ear over his heart. “It’s racing wildly. Simon, we need to summon a physician.”

“Later.” He surveyed the strewn magnets. “Quite the mess, but no permanent damage, I shouldn’t think.”

“What about the damage to you? You’re taking this much too lightly.”

His pensive expression told her he wasn’t listening. He was surveying the space between the two sets of toppled equipment. “Galileo’s teeth. First I was there.” He pointed across the room to his generator. “And then I was here, where you found me.”

“Well, I’m not surprised that the blast would have propelled you all that way, but—”

“It wasn’t the blast. At least not in the manner you mean.” With his arm draped around her shoulders, his trembling excitement flowed into her and raised new concerns that he was far from all right. Especially when he said, “I was conveyed, Ivy, by means of electroportation.”

“E
lectro-
what
?”

Surely Ivy had heard Simon wrong. Either that, or the explosion had left him more addled than she had feared. She cupped a hand to his cheek, then to his forehead. But for a lingering sheen of moisture, he felt normal, warm and alive. Even so, she considered hastening to the speaking tube and requesting that Mrs. Walsh summon a doctor.

“Electroportation,” Simon repeated. “You understand how the telegraph works, don’t you?”

“Electrical impulses travel along wires from one location to another.”

“Correct. Electroportation is a term I coined for a process combining the simple technology of the telegraph with the molecular process of electrolysis, wherein solid mass is broken down into its individual particles, dispersed, transported, and reassembled. In this case, I was transported and reassembled several yards from where I started.”

“Simon!” Stepping out from his one-armed embrace, she gripped his shoulders and gave him a shake. “What you are describing isn’t possible. The explosion has left you confused.”

“There was no explosion.” He grinned. “What you heard was the force of matter being manipulated.” He staggered toward his generator and ran his hands over his disheveled hair. “The coils will need to be replaced, but all the rest fared well enough. Next time—”

“What are you saying? There can be no next time. You nearly blew yourself up. Do you wish to incinerate yourself, the entire house, and everyone in it?”

His look of elation faded. “Ivy, today was no accident. It was a re-creation of a process that produced a similar phenomenon last winter. You see, I’d been toying with Faraday’s theory of electrical lines of force, and the notion that the direction of currents can be manipulated to create a power field that would remain active even after cutting off the source of electricity. I decided to use lightning as that source, and with my electromagnets I attempted to—”

A cold fear shimmied down her spine. “You
are
mad....”

His laughter did little to dissuade her. “It might appear so, but what happened next is extraordinary. Thinking I had at least a few minutes before the storm arrived overheard, I decided to make some adjustments to the positioning of the magnets. Lightning unexpectedly struck, and I was caught in the power surge.”

“But you’d be dead....”

“Yes, if I’d been struck directly, but I wasn’t. As it was, in a manner of speaking, I did cease to exist, at least in the tangible world. My mind—my thoughts—remained intact, but the rest of me became one with the electrified field, transported from one end to the other, and deposited whole again. Not long after that, I began building my generator.”

When her growing alarm rendered her mute, he grasped her upper arms and deposited a crushing, enthusiastic kiss on her lips. “Don’t you see, Ivy? This discovery changes everything we thought we knew about solid matter. It proves that nothing truly is solid, that our world is made up of intermingling particles that can be manipulated in ways we never before imagined.”

“Simon ...” She in turn grasped his arms tight in an attempt to anchor him in reality. “You are not thinking clearly. Which is understandable under the circumstances. But believe me when I say that what you are suggesting is not possible. Solid is solid.” She stomped her foot twice against the floor. “We cannot walk through walls, nor can our corporeal selves be disassembled and reassembled in other places.”

“Let me prove it to you.”

“No. I won’t let you do that to yourself again.” She released him and pulled away. “It’s madness.”

“Perhaps you’re right. Twice in one day might be pressing my luck. Tomorrow, then. You’ll see that I’m telling you the truth.”

“No, Simon. I won’t allow you to prove anything to me.”

A decision came in a burst of clarity, while the rest of her, most especially her heart, felt disconnected and numb, perceiving only a promise of future pain. All this time she had feared being sent away for her own good. Not once had she considered that she might have to leave for
his
good, to prevent him from harming himself.

“Whether or not your theory holds merit,” she said quietly, “your actions nearly resulted in your death....”

Her breath seized up in her throat. Ah, the pain was not so distant after all. She struggled past it, holding up a hand when Simon seemed about to speak. “I am sorry, but I will not be a party to your self-destruction.” She headed for the doorway.

“Where are you going?”

Into town first, to appeal to his colleagues and see if they might be able to talk sense into him. Then . . . she supposed she’d go home. She certainly couldn’t stay here, where her very presence encouraged him to take unthinkable risks.

Without turning back to face him, she paused on the threshold. “I am going downstairs to pack my things.”

Her reply met with silence, and she hurried down the steps.

 

Simon watched Ivy go, believing that in another moment she’d grasp the magnitude of his discovery and turn back around. He
knew
she would reappear in the doorway. He waited. Just another moment . . . she’d be back. . . .

Her descending footsteps echoed from the tower. Simon frowned.

Several more seconds ticked by, each one eating away at both his exuberance and his confidence. What he had done wrong? To be sure, he had frightened her, and perhaps he deserved her rebuke for that, but she had also turned her back on the phenomenon that had been the driving force of his existence these many months.

He had been so certain she would celebrate his success. How could she, a scientist in her own right, simply walk away? The answer hovered like the remaining steam drifting over the floorboards. She hadn’t believed him.

It was a possibility he hadn’t considered.

Crestfallen, he turned to examine his generator. The process had left the coils charred, the pistons pitted, the luster of the crankshaft and wheel dulled. His spirits plunged. Galileo’s teeth, what if she was right, and he
had
only imagined being transported across the room?

Or . . . what if either way, it didn’t matter? He’d been accused more than once in the course of his career of tilting at windmills. He had always ignored the charge, but for the first time now he pondered whether he’d been chasing a useless dream. Did it matter that he managed to transport himself fifteen feet across a room? He could far more easily have walked those fifteen feet, and with less wear on his body. How could such a process ever be practical?

Ben and Errol geared their work toward easing the burdens of everyday life. Light, heat, mechanics. Both men envisioned a world in which homes and industry ran on electrical power. Colin’s research focused on the improvement of farming techniques, to alleviate hunger by making food more readily available. Through means of chemistry, he sought to improve feeds and fertilizers in order to increase yearly harvest yields and strengthen livestock.

Did Simon’s discovery, glorious though it may seem, amount to little more than a hollow spectacle, a sorry attempt to play God and manipulate a world that often felt out of his control?

He went still. The nature of that last thought spoke volumes about how much influence Ivy’s disapproval held over him. Damn it, her opinion shouldn’t matter so much.

But for reasons he didn’t stop to analyze, her opinion did matter, and it sent him at top speed down the tower stairs. He didn’t slow down until he reached her bedchamber door. It stood open. Inside, the wardrobe doors swung slightly on their hinges, her clothes now piled on the bed. She had dragged a leather trunk to the center of the room; a few items of apparel lay draped over its open lid.

Simon’s heart pounded, no longer a result of the electrical jolt he’d received, but from a rising, strangling panic.

“Ivy?” At first he didn’t see her, and when no answer came, he strode into the room and tried again. “Ned?”

Her lean figure unfolded from the overstuffed chair beside the hearth. She looked lost and indecisive, and on the verge of tears. His heart twisted.

“Please don’t leave.” He darted another desperate glance at the trunk, then at the open dresser drawers. Hope surged at the sight of the clothes that still filled them. Had he arrived in time to dissuade her from going? “If you object so strongly to what I did today, I won’t do it again. I’ll concentrate on more practical matters, powering machinery, that sort of thing. I’ll still require your assistance, Ivy. Or Ned. Whichever you prefer. Just ...” His throat tightened. “Stay.”

She opened her mouth, but her lips trembled and she pressed them shut. Emotion flooded her cheeks. She looked away and gave an adamant shake of her head.

He didn’t know what that gesture meant, and a single entreaty, like a prayer, echoed through his mind.
Please.

“I came down here with every intention of clearing out.” She stared into the empty hearth, then up at him. “Of leaving Harrowood this very afternoon. How
can
I be a willing party to such reckless behavior? Your claims are pure insanity. A person would have to be mad to believe you.”

Her hands fisted in her lap. “But the problem is that . . . by the time I reached the bottom of the tower, I’d begun to question my own resolve, and when I opened those dresser drawers”—she closed her eyes, then peeked at him from beneath her lashes—“I came to a conclusion that shocked me to my core.”

“What conclusion, Ivy?”

She gave a tremulous sniffle. “That I believe you.”

The whisper filled the room, filled his heart. Reaching behind him, he shut the door.

As quickly as if he’d electroported again, he was across the room. His arms were around her, and his lips moist with the salty taste of her tears. “I’m sorry, so sorry I frightened you.”

“I’m sorry I walked out on you.”

“No.” He buried his cheek in her curls and held her tighter, as tightly as he could without hurting her. “Perhaps if I’d been forthcoming with you from the first, rather than hiding the truth and damned near obliterating myself ...”

“The hand . . . and the heart,” she said as their lips met in a flurry of kisses, “they were for this, so you could understand the effects of electrical currents on the body.”

With a nod he admitted the truth. “It didn’t start out that way. At first I only sought to learn if electricity could regenerate a failing organ or a limb. But after my accidental discovery, my focus changed.”

Her hands gripped his face. Her eyes were fierce, unrelenting. “And now?”

Yes, what now? As if electricity continued to flow through him, his body buzzed, vibrated. In those moments during which he’d subjected himself to the current, his physical self had ceased to exist. He’d become streaming energy, traveling light, disembodied and incorporeal. It had been as terrifying as it had been exhilarating. There had been an instant when he had doubted whether he could break free of the energy and reenter the world.

Her face had been the first thing he’d seen upon being solid again, her touch the first thing proclaiming him once more a physical being. And now, with her in his arms, words like
science
and
experimentation
lost all meaning. The intangibles of concept and theory—the very principles that had once kept his world from falling apart—gave way to brute physicality and the taste of her skin beneath the glide of his tongue.

Was he whole, real? No, not until now, perhaps not even now. Parts of him continued to feel hollow and shaky. He needed
her
to complete the process of reassembling his physical self. He needed to feel her body’s response to the demand of his harder self, needed to vent the desire flooding his body.

“Now there is only this,” he said, and devoured her lips.

She both yielded and demanded, as he should have known she would. Urgency made their embraces rough and volatile. They groped and tugged and pulled at each other, grabbed at clothing, limbs, handfuls of hair. The sounds of tearing, of groaning and cursing, filled his ears as they forced themselves upon each other, outrageously and indelicately. He drew her tongue into his mouth and sucked it. She scraped her teeth across his bottom lip and drew blood.

“I feared you were dead, blast you.” Fury quivered in her voice. “Dear God, when I entered that room, you looked as good as dead.”