Steamlust (19 page)

“Well, Thomas, our host, took a shine to her and married her right up, even though he’s nearly forty! But she died of consumption less than two years later.”

I glanced over at him then, hearing a change in his voice. His face showed no emotion—which in itself was unusual.

I’d wondered what had happened to Jessamine, it was true. “Not a match I’d expected for her.”

“Oh, it wasn’t for money,” Benedict said. He took one of the sensory devices and reached up to tuck it behind the picture rail. As he did, he brushed against me, and despite layers of clothes, I felt the heat of him, sizzling to my core.

Thank goodness I’d tucked my special device amidst the other clockwork in my luggage….

“It was a love match for both of them,” Benedict went on. “They were besotted with each other. It’s said”—and here his voice dropped conspiratorially, giving me another shiver because that’s how I imagined he’d sound in my bed—“they had quite a passionate connection as well.”

My fingers fumbled on the connections that would allow me to make the parlor table judder when I pressed a remote hidden in my shoe.

“I see,” I said, and had to clear my throat. “Is that something I should be bringing up during the séance, then?”

Now it was Benedict’s turn to pause. “If you think you can do it convincingly,” he said finally.

My breasts swelled beneath the confines of my corset, tender and tantalizing. I ached for him.

But at the same time, I hid a smile. Could I be convincing? There were things Benedict didn’t know about me, and I suspected he would be the most shocked of them all to find out.

Thomas was a handsome man, and I could understand why Jessamine had been attracted to him. His eyes were shadowed and there were lines of sadness around his mouth, and I felt a pang of conscience.

Usually our clients wanted the salacious aspects of a séance—wanted to believe there were spirits and we could contact them and here were the delightful shocks of doing so. Or they wanted to know where Aunt Henrietta had hidden her diamond brooch or ancient Chinese vase or other expensive item.

Rarely was it ever about true loss, deep emotion.

Even if I couldn’t contact Thomas’s wife from beyond the grave, I could at least try to give him some peace.

The rest of the assembled group were bohemian friends of Benedict, half-stoned on absinthe and who knew what else, their fingers stained with paint and ink. Some had attended a séance or two before.

“May I present the amazing Philippa,” Benedict said to the assembled group. “In her native land she was called Vadoma, which means
the knowing one
,” and here he paused to let that information settle, “but to ease her acceptance into society, she has chosen a proper English name.”

I mentally rolled my eyes at the ridiculous spiel I had heard
many times before. We’d decided early on to use my real name so that I didn’t forget to answer to something else.

We didn’t have the required twelve in attendance, but since this was at a remote location rather than a London townhome, I had said we could waive that detail. “You will all have to ensure your focus is especially strong to make up for our reduced number,” I said.

Benedict never participated in the actual séance. His job was to remotely operate his own controls as well as to discreetly step in if an effect wasn’t working properly. He claimed he was an impartial observer—that if I was found to be a fraud, it was his reputation that would be harmed.

I told them to clear their thoughts and be of like mind, and then we joined hands, Thomas at my left and a foreign lad named François on my right (although I suspected he was about as French as I was Romani).

I had remotes in each of my shoes and one between my knees. Benedict had one as well, since the fashion of the day allowed him to slouch indolently against the marble mantelpiece with one hand casually in his pocket. His heavy-lidded blue eyes missed nothing.

I wished, as I so often did, that he was raking his gaze appreciatively over my naked form as I reached for his hard, quivering prick…

No. I had to focus my attention here, now.

“We seek an audience with the spirit world,” I intoned, pressing down with my big toe. The curtains shivered. At the same time, Benedict eased the flue closed, causing the flames to lessen. The room would become slightly cooler, and the vision of the curtains’ movement would make people believe they felt a breath of chill air.

“Come, grace us with your presence. In particular, we wish
to make contact with Jessamine Blackstone, beloved wife of Thomas, who passed too early. Jessamine, your husband mourns your loss and wishes to know you are in a better place.”

I eased my legs together, triggering the remote between my knees. The ceramic vase we’d placed in the center of the table—one of Thomas’s own, with a rose for Jessamine—began to gently seep steam, thanks to the device I’d set inside.

A woman gasped.

Squeezing my thighs made me more aware of the heaviness I felt there, of the wetness that dampened my split drawers.

The things I was about to say wouldn’t help matters any.

“I sense a presence,” I said. “I believe it is indeed Jessamine.”

“Are you sure?” It was Thomas who asked, his voice breaking with emotion.

“She has a message for you,” I said. “She says she misses you dearly, especially the nights when you would crouch between her legs and worship her most intimate places.”

Pretty much everyone gasped at that, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Benedict stand up straight. I didn’t dare look at him.

Thomas laughed once, half sobbing, but with a relieved happiness as well. His hand clenched mine. “Oh, that sounds like my Jessamine! I miss you, my darling, desperately so.”

“She says there are erotic joys in the afterlife, too,” I went on, choosing my words carefully. “Tonight, she says, you should pleasure yourself, and she will know, and share in your delight.”

I would have been more direct and bawdy had I known the group better, but I didn’t want to shock anyone too much—or embarrass Thomas.

And I also wanted him to find peace.

“Every time you find your release, she says, she will be with you—even when you find another woman to share your bed. She wishes you to have that paradise again.”

“I could never—” Thomas said.

I coughed, Benedict’s cue. The round table we sat around jumped once, then shook. One of the women across from me—Livia, I recalled—squeaked and pushed back her chair, but the people on either side of her kept a tight hold on her hands so she couldn’t break the circle and flee.

“She says yes, when it is time, this is what she wishes for you, more than anything,” I said. “She desires your happiness, Thomas. I feel it, I truly do.”

The table stopped shuddering. Everyone, even the men, breathed out heavily, a whoosh of released air.

“I just…I just miss her so much.” Thomas’s voice broke.

“There may be a way to see her again,” I said carefully.

His head shot up. “Really?”

“I’ll make no guarantees,” I said. “It’s a new device I’ve developed. If my calculations are correct, the energy raised will allow a spirit—your lost wife—to manifest for a few moments. You won’t be able to touch her, though,” I warned. I paused. “Would you like me to try?”

Without hesitation, Thomas breathed “Yes.”

And so Benedict wheeled my new invention into the room and dramatically flung off the sheet that covered it.

It was a thing of beauty, if I say so myself: brass and burnished wood and gears and levers, and two intricate coils between which strands of stunning blue electricity would arc like lovers reaching across time itself.

The image that would appear (and I had practiced on the thing, so I was reasonably confident it would) wouldn’t be a spirit at all, but a projection. For a moment I felt guilty, but
then I decided it was what Thomas truly wanted—he
needed
to believe.

I let Benedict handle this one, because the controls were more complex and the rules of a proper séance said that you mustn’t release each other’s hands until the ceremony had finished.

Behind me, the machine hummed and sang, and then crackled as the energy whipped between the coils.

When everyone’s eyes widened—and Thomas’s glistened with tears—I dared not turn and look behind me. Instead, I looked at Benedict.

He wasn’t staring at the apparition. His eyes were on me, and his expression was curious, one I’d never seen before.

It made the breath catch in my suddenly tight throat.

When he caught my gaze, however, he looked away, as if I’d come upon him, red-handed, looking at something salacious.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but her force is weakening. She cannot stay.”

I expected Thomas to argue, or bargain, or question. Instead, he said in a small, choked voice, “Be well, my love.”

It was Benedict’s cue to cause the apparition to fade, then turn off the contraption. Masked by the noise of chairs sliding back and everyone rising and stretching, he eased open the chimney flue again. The flames shot greedily upward toward the fresh air.

“The spirits have left us,” I said.

I took my leave of them, claiming exhaustion (and indeed, the stress of the evening had been great). Thomas followed me out into the hall, took my hands in his, and thanked me profusely. Embarrassed, I escaped as gently as I could.

But not before sneaking a decanter of sherry to take with me.

As I loosened my corset, wishing it were Benedict tugging free the ties, I found myself envying Thomas and Jessamine. I’d taken a lover when I first went to university, and another soon after, but since entering the business partnership with Benedict, I’d had no one.

Which was silly. I had to stop pining for him and get on with my life.

But the séance had made me a bit maudlin and the sherry I sipped while I removed my layers and slipped into my nightclothes made me decide to indulge in my fantasies one last time.

I lay back on the pillows, my fingers plucking at the budded peaks of my breasts beneath my white nightdress. The pressure of the corset always made them sensitive. I cupped the heaviness of my breasts, stroking the tips with my thumbs, wishing it were Benedict’s slender fingers performing the task.

I imagined him leaning over me, murmuring in that low voice about how they pressed, reddened, against the cotton. I licked my thumbs and repeated the motions while in my mind’s eye Benedict was bending to suckle the buds through the fabric, his mouth warm and then the air cooler when he pulled away.

I pushed my nightdress up and reached for the device I’d set near to hand on the nightstand.

The space between my thighs felt thick, needy, and the scent of my own arousal drifted to my nostrils, spicy-sweet. My hips shifted restlessly on the bed, as if of their own accord, as I fumbled with the brass dial, trying to get the infernal thing to—

The knock at my door startled me so badly I nearly shrieked. I muffled it down to a squeak and managed to call out in a mostly normal voice, “Who is it?”

“It’s me, of course.” Benedict, sounding brisk to the edge of impatience, as usual.

My heart leapt for a different reason, my desire- and fantasy-fogged brain allowing me to believe that he was there to see
me
, finally.

I scrambled off the bed, staring at the device in my hand. I couldn’t just set it back on the bedside table! There was no other easy hiding place, so I shoved it under my pillow and grabbed my robe, belting it around my waist just before I pulled the door open.

Benedict shoved his way in and closed the door behind him, then turned. Whatever he was going to say died on his lips, and for a moment he simply stared at me.

Benedict had seen me in my nightclothes before, due to the nature of our late-night excursions, but perhaps it was that my hair was unbound and loose around my shoulders. Or was I flushed? It took everything in my power not to raise a hand to feel if my cheeks were hot.

Then he shook his head and said, “Everyone’s getting drunk downstairs. I slipped away saying I had to relieve myself, so they might eventually notice I’m gone. We have a little time. There’s a room behind the library—I’m sure Thomas has something interesting in there—you did remember to bring your lock-picker?”

Ah. Oh. I’d once watched the landing and deflation of a hot air balloon, and now I understood how it felt.

I folded my arms across my chest, suddenly feeling exposed without my corset. “Really, Benedict? You’d pilfer from the man after seeing his grief this evening?”

He had the good grace to look abashed, I’ll give him that. “I just want to
see
,” he said, sounding like a little boy eager to peek on Christmas morning. “We won’t touch anything today. Just so I know for next time.”

I sighed. The fact was, we were in this together, and I’d never
had much strength to deny him. I slid my feet into slippers and found the pouch that contained my lock-picker. If we were caught out, as we had been once before, our story was that I was sleepwalking and Benedict was seeing me back to my room. People already thought I was curious and odd, given that I channeled spirits and all.