Scarlet Devices (12 page)

“I did my best.” She produced a jack and proceeded to raise the back end of her car, working hard to crank it as high as she wanted it. Matthew held his hands behind his back, forcibly restraining himself from helping. He was glad he wasn't standing next to her when she paused and removed her long, coatlike outer dress, leaving her in the fashionable black breeches and a frilly white shirt. If he'd been any closer he would have been unlikely to keep his hands to himself. The shock of seeing women wearing breeches had, generally, worn off. He'd seen them all over Europa, after all, and these days they were even de rigueur in New York City. That was entirely different from seeing them on Eliza. Or rather, from seeing as much of Eliza's shape as the breeches revealed.

They were more practical than the dress, however. She fetched a crawler and a tray of tools and slid herself under the steam car, disappearing from the knee up. Matthew knew he should be checking on his own vehicle, doing whatever maintenance needed doing. Instead he approached Eliza and nudged one of her boot soles with his toe.

“You seem out of sorts.”

“I've lost pressure, I told you. If I don't find the leak I'll be stuck here, and I do not want to be stuck here.”

“Nonsense, you won't be stuck.” He couldn't resist teasing her. “I'd give you a lift to the next checkpoint.”

She shot out from under the car, levering herself with her hands on the undercarriage, to glare at him. Then she wheeled herself back under without a word. Matthew heard her attack the car's underbelly with renewed vigor.

“It must be rather dark under there. I see a lantern here, would you like me to light it for you?”

One of her feet twitched in agitation and he could practically feel her exasperated sigh. “That would be very kind of you. Yes, please.”

The lantern was an old kerosene model and did little to illuminate the deepening gloom under the vehicle. Matthew could hear Eliza cursing, not as sotto voce
as she probably thought, as he went over his maintenance checklists. His own undercarriage seemed to have escaped harm, thankfully, and the car looked fine aside from a heavy coating of dirt. Even Eliza's amaranth beauty was dusted down to a shadow of its former glory. Perhaps Dodge City would have some sort of facility for them to clean their vehicles. Or at least for them to clean themselves. Matthew felt as filthy as his car looked.

Setting his tools back in their places, Matthew risked a peek under Eliza's steamer to see how she was progressing. Not well, from the sound of things or the look of the tube now dangling down where it surely should not be.

“Not a word,” she warned him, before he could ask if she needed help. “Not. A. Single. Word.”

“Eliza—”

“That is a word.”

“I wasn't going to interfere. But you know, I did make a promise to Dexter before we left and I feel I haven't done very well in keeping it.”

The tools stilled, her arms lowered and he could make out her profile through the loop formed by the drooping hose.

“A promise to Dexter? What did you promise him that you would need to tell me about now, Matthew?”

Her tone was ominously quiet and placid. He'd come to know that placidity spelled impending trouble with Eliza.

“Ah . . . that. About that.” Perhaps if he said it quickly enough, it wouldn't draw as much ire. “He made me promise to look out for you as long as I was in the race. Make sure you got safely to Colorado Springs, at least. Frankly he thought you'd be too far ahead once the air leg started for me to keep up with you after that. Isn't that part a reassuring confirmation of his confidence in your abilities?”

After a long moment of utter silence, Eliza picked up a wrench and went back to work on her car.

Matthew scanned the barn and finally settled himself on a hay bale, one of a long double row that had apparently been left behind by the farmer's team on their trip to market. Perhaps as fodder for the farm's own beasts, perhaps simply excess once the wain was fully loaded. He thought they might make a better place to sleep, with the addition of a few blankets, than the back seat of his steamer.

Eliza cursed again, thumping something heavy and metal against the packed earthen floor. She kicked a heel to the ground, apparently for leverage, and growled at whatever she was struggling with in the bowels of the steam array. Dexter's design was brilliant, but for rough terrain it might need bolstering in the future to protect more of the workings that allowed the car to take on water so easily. Matthew was saddened for a moment to realize that suggestions like this were no longer his business to make at Hardison House. He cheered himself by thinking of how he might modify his
own
design to allow for both safe, easy intake of water and rugged durability against bumps.

“Bloody—ugh!”

He was like a moth to an open flame, utterly unable to help himself. “May I ask what it is you're doing under there, Eliza?”

Her answer was punctuated with more noises of effort and frustration. “There was a minuscule puncture in the intake hose but it was right by—
oof
—the coupling so I trimmed it and then all I had to do was refit the hose to the
damn
housing. But this
bloody
gasket fell off and now it won't reseat itself properly, so the housing won't seal back to the—
grrr
—main chamber.”

“I don't suppose you'd accept any help—”

“
No.
”

“I thought not. Right, I'll just be over here on my hay bale then, enjoying the sound of the rain.”

“It sounds more like gunfire than rain.”

She was right, it did. Crossing to the door, Matthew ventured a peek out and saw the yard filling with dirty white hunks of ice.
Large
hunks.

“Hail. The size of billiard balls. Good lord.”

Eliza only growled again in response.

“Perhaps I'll pass the time by reading. I have a volume of romantic poetry. Shall I read aloud to you?”

A hair-raising screech of metal on metal emerged from beneath the steam car's undercarriage, followed by what sounded like a deep sigh.

“Why on earth do you have a volume of romantic poetry with you?”

“For wooing women, of course.”

She snickered. He heard it clearly, stifled though it was.

“And what would my cousin Dexter say if he knew his appointed protector had come to the race armed with such a weapon of seduction?”

“Oh, he gave it to me. Not for the race, of course,” Matthew admitted. “It was a long time ago. A birthday gift. A sort of gag gift, really, but it's become a bit of a good luck charm. Its usefulness for wooing women was an unforeseen benefit.”

“I see. Do you have a favorite? Keats, or Byron? No, it must be someone more esoteric.”

Matthew chuckled. “Not
the
Romantics. Just romantic, the adjective. The poems themselves are romantic, the poets are from various eras. I prefer to use the Cavalier poets for my wooing and my favorite is Robert Herrick, if you really want to know.”

“I didn't before, but now I'm intrigued. You actually recite poetry? Does this ever win you any favors?”

“You'd be surprised what a well-timed verse can achieve.” He approached the vehicle again and crouched near Eliza's legs.

“Oh, just go on and read it. You know you're dying to, and you probably won't stop talking about it until you do.” Another round of clanging indicated Eliza was still attempting to improve the state of her vehicle's innards. The undertone of frustration in her voice told Matthew she was still not succeeding.

“I don't have to read this one, I know it by heart. It's ‘To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.'”

“You are joking.”

“Nope. ‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying. And this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying.'”

“The flower metaphor is a bit heavy-handed.”

“With some women it doesn't pay to be subtle. ‘Then be not coy, but use your time, And while ye may, go marry; For having lost but once your prime, You may for ever tarry.'”

“You skipped the middle two verses,” Eliza protested.

Startled, Matthew coughed into his hand. “Well, most women I recite it to don't realize that. Or perhaps they're simply too overcome to mention it.”

“You've never recited poetry to a woman in your life. Admit it.”

She had him there, in truth. And he supposed he never would, if they all reacted to it the way Eliza had. “I admit nothing.”

“You're not the type. Dexter wouldn't have
assigned
you to me if you were. That's why he gave you the book as a joke, not as an actual aid to seduction. You're straitlaced and predictable. And dull.”

“Dull?”

“As dishwater,” she confirmed.

“I can see now I should have lead with John Donne. That would have shown you.”

“
That
,” Eliza said, “
that
is your problem. Assuming it's your job to show me anything. You're not my mentor, Matthew. And after this I don't think Dexter will be either.”

Mentoring her was the furthest thing from Matthew's mind, and he thought by now Eliza would have grasped that simple fact. He looked down at her legs again, so temptingly within reach, and looked away before the temptation could overwhelm his common sense. “So I take it you
don't
want to hear ‘To His Coy Mistress'?

“That's not John Donne, it's Andrew Marvell. And no, I do
not
.”

She knew her Metaphysical poets. He added that to the list of things he admired about Eliza.

“Clearly I need to study my poets a little harder. I'll go read and let you finish your work here. Unless you've changed your mind about needing any help?”

The wrench skimmed out from beneath the steam car at a brisk clip, knocking the side of Matthew's boot and ricocheting off to land a few feet away.

“Oops.”

Matthew bent and picked up the tool, placing it within Eliza's reach before retreating to the safety of his volume of love poems.

T
HE LIGHT HAD
grown too dim to work by, and their one meager lantern was insufficient even for reading, much less performing any type of repair. There was no hope for it. She had actually considered braving the monstrous hail, just to put some distance between her and her unwanted protector, until she realized the steam array was simply beyond repair in the current circumstances. Even if the weather
had
permitted her to leave, she was truly stuck here for the night.

Eliza gave up with an exclamation of disgust and slid out from under the steamer. After stowing her tools, she stalked across the central corridor to fling herself down with more force than necessary on the hay bale Matthew offered.

“Morning will be soon enough. A good night's sleep and you'll wake with a fresh perspective.”

She cut her eyes at him. “Matthew. Stop talking to me. Please. For both our sakes.”

He returned her gaze evenly, shrugging. Eliza was infuriated to see a faint smile on his lips. He was disheveled and it was charming, and she hated that she found it charming.
Look out for her
indeed.
How dare they!

“You sound like my old granny,” she continued, “always spouting aphorisms and warnings. No wonder Dexter thought he could turn you into my race nursemaid.”

Matthew considered that for a moment, then nodded his head, seeming to concede the point. He leaned back on his hands, legs stretched in front of him and crossed at the ankles, content to take his ease while he could. Eliza, still wound up from the events of the day, pushed off from the hay bale and paced back to her car to open one of her valises and hunt for food.

“I have some hard cheese and a little chocolate. I wish I'd thought to buy some of that cider while I had the chance, at the market just outside the city. Do you have anything?”

“Hmm.”

Much more laconically, he rose and investigated his own vehicle for stray comestibles, managing a length of smoked sausage and a bottle of wine. He waggled the bottle at her inquisitively.

“Brilliant!”

“Mmm.”

“Oh, for the love of—I didn't mean you had to stop talking
forever
, you dolt.”

“I was taking no chances. It seemed unsafe to arouse your ire before spending the night with you.”

Eliza blinked rapidly and coughed into her hand a few times. Matthew, catching his error, corrected fairly smoothly. “Spending the night trapped in a barn with you. Let's open this bottle, shall we? We'll have to share, I don't have any glasses.”

“I have a cup. Just one, sorry.”

He poured. They drank and ate, and after some time Eliza began to feel much more sanguine about their predicament.

“This could have been worse. A tornado, for instance.”

“True. Or a brush fire.”

A thunderclap rattled the rafters, and both of them flinched, laughing uneasily.

“I suppose we shouldn't rule out either of those possibilities quite yet,” Matthew said, then swigged from the bottle. A week ago, she couldn't have imagined him doing such a thing. Even in the workshop he was always so tidy and fastidious, seeming to repel the dirt that naturally gathered on most makesmiths.

She found herself staring at his throat, the muscular column that moved as he swallowed. A very faint bristle shadowed his jaw, and Eliza noticed a smear of something—engine grease, or some other less identifiable grime from the road—on the side of his neck. Dirty at last, as she'd known he must eventually become. She wanted to wipe the spot clean, then run her thumb along that elegant line from his ear to his shoulder. Then, perhaps, to the little divot between his collarbones.

“Are you planning to sketch me or dissect me?” Matthew whispered.

Eliza gasped and lifted her eyes. He was smiling at her, bemused.

“Neither.”

“What, then?”

Swallowing hard, she raised her hand to the smudge. “You have a spot of grease just here.” She rubbed at it, accomplishing little in the way of cleaning. But she achieved a great deal else. Matthew's eyes closed and he caught his breath, holding himself still as a statue while her fingers traced the contours below his ear.

His skin was warm and damp, not quite slick with sweat. The pulse in his throat beat wildly, belying his outward control. Eliza loved that contrast, the tension she could feel, the way his breath shuddered when he finally released it. It gave her the same sense of power she'd felt when he'd kissed her the night before, heady and dangerous.

“All gone,” she murmured after a moment, after she could no longer even pretend that her excuse for touching him was legitimate. When he clasped her wrist in his hand she shivered, her whole body lighting up from that simple point of contact.

“Eliza, what happened in the woods last night—”

“Failed to satisfy . . . my curiosity. On several points.”

“Shouldn't have happened.”

She'd felt the same way once they'd stopped. Somehow she forgot that though, now that she was close enough to touch him again. She wanted to kiss him, feel and be felt, more than she wanted whatever nebulous conceptual freedom she gained by avoiding him.

Society. Expectations. Having to choose between becoming a flagrantly ruined woman with no hope of being received in places I don't especially want to go, but with the freedom to go wherever else I choose . . . or becoming my mother, and dying inside.

Was that really the choice before her? She knew Matthew had no intention of ruining her. If they went further, no matter who did the enticing, he'd feel compelled to ask for her hand. He was also in cahoots with Dexter to chaperone her and had admitted as much. If his honor hadn't been enough on its own, his combined guilt and sense of duty would force him to marry her, or at least to try. And if she had so little resistance to him now, to yearn for his touch even when she was angry with him for patronizing her, how could she refuse him once he knew her inside and out?

Dexter's request and Matthew's promise didn't speak to her of trust in her abilities, but yet again of how little respect she'd earned from either of them. It wasn't even that they'd discussed her safety, but that they'd conspired about it and made decisions without her. As if she were a child.

And really, why wouldn't they see her that way? What had she done with her life so far?
Who was she
? Eliza knew that seducing Matthew wouldn't make her any more a woman in his eyes, and that she shouldn't be making decisions now, when her anger at him was making her irrational. But the rebellious spark inside her, the side that simply wanted him and damn the consequences, insisted that it would prove something to him, somehow. Give her power over him. Her logical mind struggled valiantly, but her libido pummeled it to a fare-thee-well and stuffed it into a box somewhere the moment Matthew's hand started to travel from her wrist toward her shoulder. She could think about all those things later. Right now she was through thinking.

“It's not that I don't want to,” he said, an echo of last night's assurance.

“We're not up against a tree,” she pointed out. “Wasn't that your excuse last night, that you didn't want to ravish me against a tree? These are hay bales.”

“Fine, then, perhaps I
don't
want to.” He dropped his hand to his lap petulantly. “Perhaps I don't want you at all, and I was just trying to let you down easy.”

“Liar.”

He caught her wrist again before her grasping hand could reach its destination and prove him wrong definitively. It didn't matter. They both knew he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

“The truth, then. I don't want to do it
like this
. Parts of me have minds of their own, but that doesn't change the fact you're trying to make love and all the while staring daggers at me. Instead of feeling pleasant, it feels angry and spiteful. And also pleasant, but I can't help that.”

“Pleasant?”

“
Very
pleasant. Are you angry because of what I said about giving Dexter my word I'd look after you?”

“No.” She jerked her arm away from him, putting some distance between them on the hay bales so her scowl could get the proper range for maximum effect. “I'm angry because you and Dexter didn't bother to
tell
me.”

Matthew threw his hands in the air, clearly exasperated. “Because we thought you'd be angry about it.”

“Of course I am, but not about the concern. I would have been miffed but ultimately not bothered by that, it's only what I'd expect. I'm angry about the patronizing secrecy. It makes me wonder what else you're hiding because you think it's for my own good. Anything else I ought to know, anything else you're trying to protect me from? How am I meant to trust you now?”

“And you thought seducing me would remedy that?”

“No,” she said frankly, “I thought seducing you would take my mind off things for a while. And also be rather
pleasant
.”

“Eliza . . . you don't make a
habit
of this, do you?”

She gasped in outrage and, before she could even think, slapped him hard. Then she gasped again, putting her hands to her mouth in shock at what she'd just done. “Oh, I beg your pardon!”

“I'll take that as a heartfelt no.” He fingered his cheekbone lightly, grimacing. “I suppose I deserved it, however.”

“I really am so sorry. I don't know what came over me.” After a long pause that should have felt awkward but didn't, she sighed. “I always feel that way around you, never knowing what's come over me.”

“But how can that be? I'm so straitlaced and predictable.” He favored her with a droll look, then went back to wincing as he prodded his injured face.

“I know,” she agreed, suppressing a smile. “It's a mystery to me too.”

“Mysteries. That reminds me. I do have something else to tell you, though I wasn't keeping it from you for your own good, exactly. More because I think it might just be a product of my own delusions and lack of proper sleep.”

“An actual mystery?”

“Here, let's get the blankets first. These bales are itchy and it's getting colder.”

“At least the hail seems to have stopped.” She'd noticed when she realized they didn't have to speak up to hear one another anymore. The hailstones had been almost deafening as they battered the roof of the barn. “If it had ended sooner I'd have kept working on my intake array and tried to move elsewhere for the night.”

“You would have wound up mired in mud in the barnyard, and I'd have been cruel and made you sleep in your steam car instead of letting you back in to the warm, dry barn. This is a competition, after all.”

They retrieved their bedrolls and the extra quilt Eliza had packed on her mother's insistence, then spent some time dancing around one another before finally laying the quilt over the broad bales and rolling out their bedrolls head to toe across it. Side by side, but with at least a pretense at decency. Neither of them got inside their bedding, however. They sat on the blankets with their legs crossed like children. Eliza started taking pins from her hair, releasing the heavy braid from its wrapped coil and letting it dangle. It was always one of the best moments of her day.

Matthew dove in to tell her of his mystery, without preamble. “I think Lord Orm is somehow wrapped up in both the ladies' Temperance Society and the sabotage. Also, possibly, the illegal sale of opium. Stating it like that, I realize it sounds mad. Especially as part of this theory is based on a dream I had last night.”

“We should have stuck to some safer topic, like the weather.”

“I know, I know. But working backwards from my dream, it all made sense. The poppy lapel pins that those temperance ladies wear are just like Orm's ridiculous boutonniere, in miniature. The Temperance Society is run and bankrolled by something called the El Dorado Foundation, and Orm's ranch in California is called El Dorado.”

“That does seem like an awfully lot of coincidence.” She'd been prepared to laugh off the theory until Matthew laid out his details. Now the possibility that he was right loomed like gathering storm clouds, heavy and impossible to ignore, changing the quality of the very air she breathed.

“In my dream, Phineas was harvesting poppies, in a giant field of them. It went on as far as the eye could see, and the poppies were golden. Not golden like yellow flowers, actual gold. He spoke of going west. Or rather, Barnabas did. He was there too.”

“It's a myth—”

“But what if it isn't? What if Orm is somehow using the opium dens to press-gang workers, then literally taking them west to slave away on his ranch?”

“Now he controls the opium dens as well? They're nearly all owned by the Chinese, I thought. It doesn't make sense, Matthew, where would he get the opium?”