Steamlust (10 page)

For some unaccountable reason it makes me flush red, to think of all the thoughts Mr. Hartley could use against me. Why, I’ve never imagined a single indecent or strange thing in all my days! My mind is a veritable banquet of nothing, an empty space between my ears—and even more so in the presence of someone like Mr. Hartley. Everyone always tells me, “Elspeth, you rarely have an interesting thing to say,” and it is true.

I’m sure Mr. Hartley would say the same, if he were to catch a glimpse of the pumping, churning swirl of emptiness inside my head.

And yet he continues to aim his gaze on me, as we sit on the little circle of chairs he has laid out. Of course I think of séances and other such wonders of the modern world, though to me they seem a lot less like wonders and a lot more like terrors.

If he calls forth a ghost, I don’t know what I shall do. Kitty said that when she went to the House of Scientific Endeavors they did that very thing, right there in the viewing room with everyone crowding in, and that the ghost had no mouth but tried to speak anyway. Frankly, I can hardly think of anything worse. Trying to speak with no mouth!

How awful, how dreadful, oh, lord how I long to leave. Kitty is far braver than I. She is red faced and excited, and whispering to Mrs. Hollingdale about mechanical wings that make people fly, whereas I am quite lost about such things. I do not wish to fly. I do not want to see ghosts.

I do not want Mr. Hartley to stare at me, or use his infernal device on my personage.

And yet I sit quite still when it comes to my turn to have the apparatus attached to me. I watch him go around the circle with his handful of wires and the little thing on the end of each that looks as horrible as a spider does, and my heart beats wild and high in my chest. I’m sure at any moment I’m going to faint, but
it is somewhat easier when I do not look at him directly.

That way, I don’t have to think of his cold eyes or the miniature spider thing, and as it appears that one must have it attached to the nape of one’s neck, there’s actually very little to fret over. I barely even feel his fingers against my skin, as he attaches it. There’s no sense of something biting or anything like it.

There’s just a coolness and then a low strange feeling of regret. I wonder how he was able to do it so successfully, without actually touching me? He’s very deft, I suppose. Very deft and very tight lipped. When Mrs. Hollingdale says, “Why Mr. Hartley, you must now tell us what it does!” he barely acknowledges her. And he has such a way about him that she goes immediately closemouthed, as though sensible of a great faux pas that she has made.

It occurs to me, then, that he could turn his device on and kill us all. I’ve heard of currents being passed through bodies and things of that nature. I am not completely oblivious to the wonders of the age.

So why, then, do I not stand? Why does no one stand? Do they all look in those great eyes like cold, blue moons, and feel they brook no refusal? Perhaps they all wish, as I do, that he had laid a hand on the nape of their necks. Just one comforting hand, just one hint of humanity beneath that gleaming exterior.

I remember once attending a ball that he was present at, and when Father and I had gone about the room to offer our goodbyes, he had taken my hand. I hadn’t asked it of him, or even offered, but he had taken it anyway. Sometimes, I am certain I imagined it happening. Sometimes I hardly wish to think of it at all, because it feels strange that I so often do.

“Now,” he says. “If everyone might close their eyes.”

It is funny how you can believe that you’ll be reluctant to do something, and then when the time comes you do it faster than
anyone else. My eyes are closed before he has finished speaking. I can see his parlor still painted across the backs of my eyelids, all heavy mahogany and straight lines and darkness—the device aside.

No, the device is rounded, golden, messy. Now that he has started it I can smell the rich scent it gives off—of gaslight and smoke and perfumes too complex to name. Strange, really, that such thoughts and sensations conspire to remove my fear, though it’s true. They do. After a moment of listening to it creak and
huussshh,
I feel quite at ease.

Relaxed, almost—then more than that. A syrupiness infuses my limbs, though I’m sure the machine hasn’t begun whatever it is meant to begin. I have not felt the spider do a single thing, and there is no current running into me.

It is almost a disappointment. I say almost, because just then I have the strangest feeling. I suppose one might say it is like dreaming while still being awake, though how such a thing should come about I do not know. I cannot say whether I am naming it right or not, and opening my eyes to ask seems like the very worst thing to do.

Everyone will think I am a buffoon—the others are so quiet and settled! And Mr. Hartley doesn’t say a word, so this must be what the device is intended for. To make you dream while you’re awake, on seas of such vivid color that I almost gasp.

I am in a great, green maze the likes of which I have never actually witnessed, and all about me each leaf curls perfectly, each twig or blade of grass stands out as bright as the sun. My own mind has never conjured up such vitality—I’m quite aware of that. And as I traverse this half-dreaming world, I see a sky above me, of a different hue than it is naturally.

I see a hundred things that do not occur naturally and yet seem so real and right that for a moment my breath is stopped.
There are trees at the heart of the maze, and they have veils for leaves, and at the very center of all of this is a gleaming spire that reaches up to the violet-shot sky.

I fervently hope that none of the others have opened their eyes. If they were to, I’m sure they would wonder why a tear has found its way down over my cheek. In truth, I am wondering why a tear has found its way down over my cheek too, because there is nothing all that wonderful about a spire and the trees with leaves flowing like air and my heart, oh my heart.

How dull the world seems, next to this dreaming place. I want more than anything to open my eyes and thank him, for creating something so lovely out of something so smoke driven and mechanical, but I fear I will make a fool of myself. Perhaps this is all only my imagination and not his device at all. Perhaps I am simply not thinking clearly, because then everything in the scene melts away like a painting running, and suddenly I am in a corridor made out of tapestries.

I walk through it all—the blood reds and the swirling greens and everything so lush, so lush, and at the very end all is darkness. I cannot see a thing. But then a match is struck, a single match, and I see Mr. Hartley standing there in this pitch-black alcove, his eyes burning so bright a blue it’s like the heat at the center of a flame.

“What are you here for?” he asks, and oh, I have no clue. I cannot bear to know. He takes my hand just as he did all those years ago, and I feel it in the exact same way I did then. As though the electric current comes from him, not some steam-powered machine.

My body heats all the way through—all the way from my too-red face, right down to the tips of my toes. I can feel each finger he’s touching exactly, and when he moves closer to me I do what I would never dare to in real life. I sway closer to him,
as though we’re magnets and metal. As though I cannot help it, and I suppose that is true.

I cannot. I want to edge closer to him, and feel every word he speaks with that mean mouth—because he says so little and yet I am certain he says so much. He is the ghost who tries to speak without a mouth, he is the center of my maze, the gleaming spire, oh, lord why am I thinking any of this?

Perhaps he is making me,
I consider—yes, perhaps. It could be that the very purpose of his machine is to fit strange images and fantasies into a young woman’s mind, then have his wicked way with her. And yet I do not believe so, I cannot believe so, it could not be true, could it? What, by god, would a man like him ever want with a woman like me?

And he would never imagine something so simpering and lovelorn, I know it. If this were real life, he would not say, “I know why you are here.” He would not blow out the match and gather me up in his arms like he would a swooning maiden; he would not kiss my lips with such soft pressure that I am quite undone.

My heart beats slow and thick, now, as though the entirety of my insides have been coated in syrup. I cannot see where I begin or this waking dream ends, though I know I do things that I would never. I am practically a spinster now—these things are not for me. I should not let him unlace my nightgown and pull it from my shoulders, so that he might kiss each one.

And yet I do, I do. I tell my mind that is just a dream, and let the warm waves of whatever this is flow over me, one after the other. I think of kissing—oh, how I have always wondered what it would be like—and lo and behold, here it is. Here is how it would feel exactly, perfectly, not like a dream at all but rich with sensation. The fine shimmer of something touching my lips, the way it forms a web that spirals out through each muscle
and nerve in my face, my throat, my body. The heady sensation of something slick against a part of myself and then the pouring knowledge that it is someone else, another person.

In all my days I have never experienced such a thing—this feeling of someone else longing for me and wishing to touch me. It heightens every little thing—even something as innocent as two hands on my bare shoulders.

Though I suppose such a thing is hardly innocent at all. It isn’t innocent to be bare in front of a strange man—one you’ve barely uttered a word to. We’ve shared no more than three sentences in all the time we’ve moved in the same circles, and yet when he runs those fingers I so hoped for down my spine—the one that isn’t mine but the machine’s,
the machine’s
—I tremble. My body aches in a way I am sure it has never done, and I feel my nipples stiffening beneath the softness of my chemise, the rough edge of my corset.

It is how this dream body feels and reacts to things, I know, but still I feel it in my real self, too. I sit on this little chair in his dark parlor and thrum with a new kind of heartbeat—one that beats hardest between my legs. It is something that I’ve only previously encountered privately, in some idle and obscure sort of way, but here it is strong and rich and oh, how shameful, in front of all these people.

How awful, that I want to press myself tightly against this mean little chair and have that sensation swell and blossom—though really I have no need of physical action. When his mouth touches my throat in this dream state, my whole body sings like a string that’s been plucked. My sex grows slick and plump—I know it does. I know of these things and I hardly want to turn them away at all.

What other things could he do?
I think, but the dream does not require logic or sense or questioning. Everything just happens
as though it is real, in a way I could never think of—as when he puts that mean mouth to my breast and kisses me there, too.

I am quite sure that I would never think of such a thing. I certainly don’t know what it would feel like, until his lips part over the bud of my nipple—so loosely covered by a flimsy nightgown—and then pluck and pull at it.

Like kissing
, I think, only not on the mouth.

And it feels so…correct, too. I know it does. If one were to kiss a lady in such a way, the material of her nightgown would grow damp and every sensation would seem doubled, because of the chafe of the material and the slow spread into slickness.

All of which I feel, even in this strange dream state. I can feel the moisture and feel the heat of his mouth, and when he pushes one hand between my legs I can feel that, too. Oh, he is wicked, Mr. Hartley. So very wicked and quite improper—though really, what does it matter, here?

I suppose I should feel even more ashamed now, with images of him almost kneeling before me, his hand between my legs and his mouth on my breast—and yet curiously I do not. With each passing moment my shame slips away, and a new sort of idea takes hold of me.

Go ahead
, this new idea tells me.
Ask him to do more
.

And though I hardly think I can, my dream self grasps at the opportunity well enough. My dream self lifts her nightgown and implores him to continue, and when she does he looks up at her with those cold eyes—only now they are very far from cold. Now they seem bright and fierce with some strange, lost sort of emotion, and that fire in him only intensifies when he slips his fingers over my bare flesh.

I part my legs and he follows me exactly, probing my sex in a tentative way, at first. But then after a moment I can see he wants more of me, and in truth I want it too. I want to feel
what it is to have a man stroke through those slippery folds, and uncover my little hidden bead and the waiting hollow of my sex. I want to feel it and he does not deny me, rubbing over things I had long forgotten, parting and fondling and oh, dear, oh, dear, I cannot tell if I have gasped aloud in the dream, or in reality.

I strain to hear if anyone else is making a single sound, but it is far too complicated to experience one world while trying to know things in another. All my attention needs to be in this place, this place where I am kissed and loved and spread over the bed.

I believe I am naked, now, but the idea does not seem to concern me. Mr. Hartley is naked too, but that hardly concerns me, either. He is as strong and firm as I imagined him to be—broad shouldered and silky smooth in places I thought he might be coarsely furred. I run my hands down over his bare chest, and a great pang goes through me to think I will never know whether this is real or not.

I will never know the real Mr. Hartley. This is just a dream-demon, perfect in its feel and shape, passionate in his kisses that he lays on my throat, my breasts, my mouth. I kiss him back with as much ardor as I can muster, because there is one benefit of this dream state, if nothing else.