Scarlet Devices (11 page)

“Mm-hmm.” His eyes were squeezed shut, and so were his lips. He looked like he was trying to keep from exploding.

“Though one is always expected to,” she allowed. “Ignore it, I mean. We all
know
, but young ladies are supposed to pretend they don't. Which is rather stupid, isn't it? Pretend we don't notice
that
, even when it's all . . . how it gets. And pretend we aren't in the least curious, when
of course
we are.” She was prattling because she was flustered, and she knew that but still couldn't make herself stop. “I'm sure you are too. Not about
that
, I mean, about . . . although perhaps you're not still curious, because I'm sure you've taken the trouble to find out, as young men seem to have no shortage of opportunities to—”

“If I kiss you again will you stop talking about it?” He sounded quite desperate. No doubt this conversation too was failing to play out as he'd foreseen.

“I hope so. God, I hope so.”

It was a kindness. Yes, a kindness he did her by covering her mouth with his and stealing her breath away with an exquisite, velvety roll of his tongue. That kiss was downright philanthropic. It deserved her honest effort in return, and she gave it, clutching Matthew's back to pull him close again and echoing everything he did with his mouth. In no time at all, he had her pressed against the tree again.

Her nightwear seemed to fascinate him. He couldn't keep his hands off the filmy stuff, couldn't seem to help sliding it over her skin and reminding her that she was wearing nothing under it. When he finally came up for air, he had most of her skirts bunched in his fists, exposing her legs up to mid-thigh.

Eliza's mind held only one thought:
Keep going, keep going, keep going
.

With obviously superhuman determination, Matthew stopped. When he let the fine fabric drop, Eliza wanted to pound something in frustration. His chest was closest, so she gave it a firm tap with her closed fist.

“Ouch, what was that for?”

“You're an awful tease, Matthew.”

“Pardon?”

“Why did you stop?” It had just been getting interesting. Now Eliza felt all out of sorts, worked up and more tense than when she'd started her walk. The point of which had been to relax. Her gown had fallen back into place, more or less, but was sticking to her in various damp places, increasing her feeling of edginess. Sighing, she tugged the garment to rights and refastened a few buttons.

Matthew stepped back, grimacing at the evident discomfort of his currently too tight trousers. “If I hadn't stopped, I would have . . . kept going.”

“And?” Was he honestly
that
thick? He seemed such a bright young man most of the time. Brilliant, even. And other good things, things she ought to admire but didn't at the moment, like honorable and trustworthy and decent.

“I'm hardly going to ravish you up against a tree, Eliza.”

Ravishing. In a rush of confused emotion, Eliza realized he meant
actual
ravishing. By “kept going” he meant he would have
kept going
, and she might well have let him. Right there, in the forest, up against that tree. And she was a painfully naïve and inexperienced idiot, and Matthew was decent and honorable, and those were traits she did indeed admire in him. Most fervently.

She'd felt powerful, but in truth he'd been the only one with any hint of control. Her sense of strength had been but a dangerous illusion, exactly the sort of thing her mother had always warned her about. And while Eliza had been caught up in the magic of the moment, now that the glow was fading she was horrified to think of the consequences she might have incurred if Matthew hadn't stopped.

He'd kissed her, touched her, and she'd completely lost her common sense. Fondness, hanky-panky in the woods, all this could only lead one place in the mind of a man like Matthew. The one place she didn't want to go. A marriage bed, from whence she could never again set forth to explore the world.

“It's not that I didn't
want
to. You're eminently ravishable.”

And now the darling man was trying to make her feel better about things. Standing there in the moonlight, gazing at her earnestly with his strange eyes and his cheekbones so high and sharp they cast shadows, and generally looking like some sort of eldritch, beautiful creature of the night sent to tempt her into sin. He was lovely
and
he was exercising reasonable restraint, while being considerate of her feelings. It made her want to kiss him all over again.

That impulse terrified her.

A
RUMPLED, OUT-OF-SORTS
Eliza had haunted Matthew's fleeting dreams during the few hours he'd managed to sleep after walking her back to her tent. She wandered, in her nearly transparent night rail, through a field of flowers that shimmered in the sunlight, almost blinding. He bent to pick one for her, and a thin petal of hammered gold sliced his palm. When he pulled back, instead of one line of blood he saw two, running parallel from his forefinger to his wrist.

“Cat claws,” Barnabas explained, from his seat among the gleaming poppies. He held up a hooked double blade, but it wasn't a knife. It was his hand. “Beautiful, aren't they? They look so innocent.”

Barnabas looked gray and skeletal, with the glazed, unseeing eyes of an opium eater. In the dream, Matthew understood that this was because he had turned into Phineas, and Phineas was dead. Rotting, in fact, there among the flowers, which were now real flowers instead of gold. They bobbed on the end of long stalks, looking soft and harmlessly sweet. But he knew they would still cut him if he tried to pick another one. Phineas harvested them one at a time, in dream-slow movements, swiping each stem with his claw but leaving the flowers to wilt on the ground. Matthew knew that wasn't how the tool was meant to be used. There was something about the blooms themselves, he was certain, some
other
thing Phineas was supposed to be doing there.

“You're wasting the flowers,” he pointed out. It seemed a grave injustice for Phineas to spoil all those flowers when he was dead anyway. Matthew had only needed one, for Eliza, and he couldn't even get that.

“I'm sending them west,” Phineas countered, becoming Barnabas again. “To find him.”

Eliza drifted closer, holding a daguerreotype of Barnabas, who was holding up a portrait of Phineas. She gazed at the flowers, then at Matthew with an unreadable expression. “That isn't what I want,” she said, then vanished.

Matthew had woken up in a cold sweat, reaching after Eliza but knowing it was too late. In the logic of the dream, he blamed dead Phineas. Once the nightmare left him and his brain was fully in the waking world, he decided he must feel guilty about leaving Barnabas behind. And about nearly ravishing Eliza in the woods, though she hadn't seemed to mind. Thankfully there were no reporters in the camp that night, nobody to broadcast a scandal about what had almost happened. As far as Matthew could tell, only one other person had seen him escorting Eliza back to her tent, and that was Cantlebury. Since he'd been in the process of sneaking from Miss Speck's tent himself at the time, Matthew was fairly confident of his discretion. They'd given one another the solemn nod of implied secrecy, and that was good enough for Matthew where Cantlebury was concerned.

His main concern now was simply staying awake. His restless night took a toll, and Matthew had to snap himself from a doze more than once despite the increasingly jarring ride. It was mostly wagon trails now, and because of the rough conditions, the drivers had two days to make it to the next checkpoint in Dodge City. They would have to make camp wherever they could tonight, a prospect that didn't thrill Matthew. This was the territory of the frontier lords, who guarded their domains with the fervor of petty chieftains but did little to keep the peace beyond their walls and fields. Over the rolling, grassy hills with their picturesque scattering of wildflowers, Matthew caught occasional glimpses of armed outriders, and twice spotted castle keeps hulking in the distance.

Typically a traveler in this region ran the risk of highway robbery, or worse. Matthew kept an eye out for the telltale silhouette of wind balloons, the multi-sailed airships favored by wealthy adventurers and prairie pirates alike for their speed and maneuverability. Unlike the lords, the pirates had not been bribed to let the racers pass unmolested through these lands. Still, wind balloons were vulnerable when they approached the ground to launch an assault, and with any luck, the pirates wouldn't want to risk bothering with the racers. A single passenger in a steam car was unusual enough to draw attention, but also not as tempting a mark to a pirate as, say, a mail coach.

Eliza had passed him early in the day, along with a pack that included the Watchmaker, Jones, Moreau, and Madame Barsteau. A few of the others had been nipping at his heels all morning and half the afternoon, while Parnell and Jensen were too far behind to track. Nobody had stopped for lunch, as far as Matthew could tell, and none of them seemed eager to be the first to stop, even when it grew overcast in the late afternoon. Without markers, towns, waypoints to give a sense of distance traveled, it felt as though they had been driving forever along the rolling track, and would forever continue driving through the grasslands.

At least I'll sleep well tonight
, he thought. He would be too tired for nightmares, surely, after this day.

The steam car strained going up the next incline, a slightly bigger hill among the others, and when Matthew got to the top he nearly lost control of the vehicle for staring at the vista before him. The darkening clouds hid most of the sky, but a thin strip of gold showed at the horizon, hinting at the sunset that might have been. Scattered across the landscape, rain showers slanted from clouds to ground.

Gold
.

That shining gold line did it, brought all the pieces together in one moment of insight. Gold, like the poppies in his dreams, the poppies on the lapels of the horrible Temperance Society ladies. Gold, like the gilded frippery of Lord Orm's boutonniere tool, also shaped like a poppy. Poppies, opium harvesting, Phineas. And all the sabotage.

“He doesn't want us going west.”

The next second he dismissed the notion of Orm as some sort of nightmarish mastermind, because Matthew's mind tended toward the practical. He didn't like Orm and he definitely didn't care for the man's taste in accessories, but that hardly qualified him as a villain. Motifs like stylized roses had come into fashion in times past, so why not a poppy? And he'd heard that an innocuous cousin of the opium poppy was a common wildflower in the California Dominion, so it made some sense for Orm to adopt it as his symbol. His cattle ranch was located somewhere near those allegedly poisonous mountains, after all.

El Dorado, he called the place. He'd boasted of the ranch's size and untapped mineral wealth when Matthew had seen him in France. Murcheson had spoken of the increasing need for gold in industrial applications, and Orm had claimed that the hills of his ranch were practically paved with it, but then added something odd. “All kinds of gold,” he'd said, in a smug tone that spoke of secret knowledge.

Matthew's stomach clenched as his mind slipped sideways and ran up against another puzzle piece. The waiter at the hotel in St. Louis had said something, something about his aunt and a packet for the charter of the Temperance Society. Which had come from the
El Dorado Foundation
.

His car jounced over a particularly deep rut in the track. Matthew admonished himself and tried to focus on his driving again. He could have damaged the undercarriage of his steamer through his inattention; some of the ruts and dips in the track were easily deep enough to get him into real trouble. He would have to set aside the puzzle for now, but he knew he was missing some obvious connection and that he would have to think it through at some point.

When he reached the next rise, he saw a structure some way off the road, the first he'd seen in miles. Glancing at the sky, then at the nearest patch of rain, he weighed his options. It was not yet full dark. On the other hand, the wind was worsening and the rainy sections seemed to be converging and taking over more and more of the sky. The clouds had taken on an eerie greenish tint that didn't bode well, and whatever that structure was, it might be the only form of cover he could find for the night if he didn't fancy sleeping in his steam car.

Ahead of him, there were other drivers making choices of their own. Would one manage to take on a significant early lead through pressing into the rainy darkness for a few minutes more? Or would that driver bottom out in a rut that looked deceptively like a shallow puddle once filled with water?

Prudence won out in the end, and Matthew turned when he came to a narrow track through the high prairie grass. It led directly to the building he'd seen, which turned out to be a small complex of buildings sheltering in a grove. The biggest, a barn, had hidden the rest from his view. He headed for the farmhouse, wondering how in hell a lone farmer managed to survive this far out.

He had an answer within moments: heavy artillery. The sound of a mechanism drew his attention to the roof of the quaint building, where a turret gun had swiveled to point directly toward Matthew and his vehicle.

Throwing his empty hands in the air, he stopped cold.

“Please don't shoot! I'm not a pirate!”

It was the first thing that came to mind, but he felt stupid even as he said it. Of course he wasn't a pirate, and who was he talking to anyway?

“That's just what a pirate would say,” a gruff voice pointed out from some hidden location. Cued by the sound, Matthew spotted a slot by the heavy-looking front door, just big enough for a firearm's muzzle. He knew it was big enough because a shotgun was pointed at him through it.

“It's also what somebody who wasn't a pirate would say,” Matthew countered.

“We could argue that all night. Probably ought to shoot you just to be on the safe side.”

“Matthew! What on earth?”

Eliza's was the last voice he expected to hear. She rounded the barn at a quick clip, racing to stand between him and the front door.

“Whatever he's done, please don't shoot him, Mr. Thayer!”

“I haven't done anything . . .”

“Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Hardison.” The door opened and out limped an elderly gentleman with a shotgun tucked under his arm. Not pointed at anyone, Matthew saw with relief. “I was just having some fun with the boy. Friend of yours, I take it?”

“Another of the racers. Mr. Thayer, this is Mr. Matthew Pence. Shake hands, Mr. Pence.” She prodded him none too gently with her elbow as she stepped to one side, and Matthew dutifully stuck out his hand. The old farmer took it with what looked suspiciously like a grin. It was difficult to tell behind the outrageous whiskers.

“Mr. Thayer is one of Lord Hasseltine's men. He runs this hay farm. He and his wife, that is. And his daughter Evangeline. She's the turret gunner.”

A towheaded girl of twelve or thirteen peered up from a hatch by the roof gun and offered Matthew a tentative wave. From inside the house, he could hear a woman grumbling about something. Her voice grew louder as she neared the door, and he glimpsed a plump, busy shape for a moment before she disappeared again, her voice lingering behind.

“Still not givin' 'em any tea. Brazen scarlet hussy!”

“Beg your pardon again, miss,” the farmer said to Eliza.

“Temperance Society?” guessed Matthew.

Eliza nodded. “They've been dropping leaflets, apparently. But Mr. Thayer has graciously agreed to let me wait out the storm in his barn. Which is just as well, because I don't think I could have made it any farther tonight. I scraped a hose on a rut a few miles back and now I'm losing pressure.”

“The team is out to market so the barn's empty,” Mr. Thayer explained, gesturing with the shotgun. “Should be plenty of room for your demon contraptions. That's what the missus calls 'em.”

“Thank Mrs. Thayer again for her Christian charity in allowing this brazen hussy and her colleague shelter for the night,” Eliza said, smiling graciously at the old man.

As if he weren't clearly charmed enough. Matthew thought she was laying it on thick, but since she'd secured them both a place to stay, he was not about to complain.

A sharp gust of wind plastered their clothing to their skin. The air tasted thick with impending rain. Eliza glanced from Matthew's car to the barn. “You should pull into the barn first, then you can help me push mine in after. Mr. Thayer says we may see hail, so it will be better to have the cars under cover.”

The mostly empty barn usually held a large hay wain and housed a team of four oxen, in addition to storing the hay. Their large steamers fit with room to spare, to Matthew's relief. The rain struck just as Eliza's rear bumper cleared the large double doors, which he quickly closed.

“Warm, dry and snug as two bugs in a rug,” he pronounced them. Eliza made a noncommittal sound and opened her back door to start rummaging for tools in one of the trunks. “Well done. You seem to have won Mr. Thayer over despite his wife's affiliations.” He wondered whether to tell Eliza of his newly formed suspicions about the Temperance Society and its connection to Orm and the sabotage, but decided to wait rather than worry her. Mrs. Thayer hardly seemed like a saboteur, despite her grumbling and her refusal to provide them with tea.