Hot and Steamy (7 page)

With an olive complexion and long brown hair framing aristocratic features from her piercing brown eyes to her aquiline nose, Lady Trystan stood at a formidable six feet. He couldn't quite place her origin, but he didn't care enough to ask. He simply appreciated the view and thanked God for whatever country that could produce such a resplendent specimen. Lips glossed to an exaggerated redness were pursed tightly, not betraying a hint of her feelings. She had a regal presence in her green and blue gown in a kente cloth pattern; a crinoline supported her dress with its slight train. It had a high neck with a tatted collar and soutache trim. She walked toward the bench. For a moment his eyes met hers. She held the gaze.

“Mr. Jefferson,” she said in her demure drawl, pretending she didn't know him. One of the little games she liked to play.

“Colonel.” He tipped his top hat.

“My . . . colonel. We are proud of our titles.”

“Only the ones ‘we' have earned.”

Winston still wore a gray sack coat, copper buttons running up each side, left open in order to display a four-in-hand necktie and collared shirt. The veneer of respectability. He began his career as a soldier when he was seventeen. For ten years he served queen and country, earning a battlefield promotion to colonel during the Five Civilized Nations uprising. Not that the title was anything more than honorific, as one of his station couldn't hope to command men. A moot point as, wounded as he was, he was soon discharged for his troubles. His cane, a lacquered black rod with copper fittings beginning midway up its shank to its hilt, an openmouthed copper dragon's head, allowed him to hide the slightest of limps.

“Lady Trystan.” He nodded toward the wrought iron table bedecked with a silver tray set with tea and cream in matching pots next to a plate of strawberries. “A magnificent name.”

“LaDashia Rachel Brown Willoughby of the Virginia Willoughbys.” She dipped a strawberry into the cream then rolled it in the sugar—a slow, deliberate action—before popping it into her mouth.

“A family of noble bearing. Your father, Sir Anthony Willoughby, must be proud.”

“Adopted father. My mother was widowed soon after I was born.”

“Still, he's a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences. A rare honor.”

“We both took his name when they married. I took Rachel as my confirmation name.”

“So where does the name Trystan come from?”

“Are we the sum of our names, or can we choose to own some of them but not others?”

“You tell me.”

“I had no say in my birth name. No say in my mother's remarriage. And my religion was thrust upon me. Trystan is what I choose to call myself.”

“To my ear, it almost sounds like Trickster.”

“We all could use some of Br'er Nanci's spirit sometimes.” She chatted to mask her unease, perhaps discomfited by the weight of his scrutiny. Her over-creamed coffee complexion allowed those who wanted to let her pass for a white woman. However, despite careful makeup and the distraction of her peculiar framed glasses, her features favored the Negro. A keen intelligence laid in wait behind the beguiling playfulness in her hazel eyes and mischievous humor was hinted about in her lips.

“My mother was Caucasian. My natural father was African. He passed away soon after my birth. But I was so fair, none were the wiser when we relocated to Virginia, where Mother met Sir Anthony. My heritage would be an embarrassment to him, my mother impressed upon me.”

“So why entrust your secret to me?”

“You have one of those faces.”

“What kind of face is that?”

“Handsome. Intelligent. And something just short of trustworthy.” She smiled, a terribly enticing thing.

He never imagined his oval shaped face, with low-cropped hair matching the length of his closely shorn beard, little longer than a week's stubble, as a particularly pleasant countenance. At best, he tried to carry himself as a nobleman, a proud oak of a man with a complexion to match. She differed from most of the ladies of society he had encountered, with their insipidity and air of self-importance which accompanied most of the people of high society. They reeked of privilege and uselessness, and he listened to their chatter with perfect indifference. Inane white noise which heavied his eyelids. Lady Trystan was cautious in her praise of any man, he imagined, and with her insouciant demeanor—both flippant and wry—she would make a poor wife by most men's standards. Not used to so bold a woman—sarcastic humor with a keen mind and no care for others' thoughts on her manner—she intrigued him.

“Men are such foolish creatures. Unsure of what you feel or if you should feel it. It was good for you that God chose to create women to help you along.”

“I can sort my own feelings just fine, miss.”

“Oh, I hardly believe that. You don't even realize how much attraction you feel for me right now.”

Winston found it difficult to disengage from her commanding gaze. Suddenly he straightened in his seat, conscious of where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. He was a man with a job to do, and it wasn't to be caught up in the spell of this woman.

“You look as if you've swallowed a turnip,” Lady Trystan said.

“Merely reminded of my duty.”

“Sorry if I distracted you.”

“Your father entrusted me to guarantee your safe passage.”

“Are your coterie of soldiers not enough?”

“They serve their function.”

“Which is?”

“To distract.”

Winston studied the faces of the people who shared their car, searching for anything or anyone that looked out of place. He read their eyes. A gaunt, swarthy gentleman buried his face in a newspaper. On the short side of average, in his brown suit and bowler he had the build of a rodent dressed as a dandy. The newspaper's headlines declared the beginnings of The Troubles—how everyone referred to the Jamaican uprising—as well as the Queen's preparation to appoint Viceroy Reagan to rule the American colony in the name of Albion and carry the banner for the Empire. A former actor as puppet sounded about right to him, but he didn't have the benefit of an A-level education. A young boy quavered as his father scolded him. The tone rose in volume and the tenor in harshness, a critical barrage fueled by anger and maybe a little drink. The rest of the passengers turned away in polite deference. The man's contempt erupted as he drew back to beat the boy, when Winston rose and, heedless of the pain which caused him to limp, sprang to the boy's side. His cane may have stayed his father's blow, but it was the steel of his gaze which stilled the man.

“There's no need to take so stern a hand to the boy,” Winston said.

“The boy,” the man started, swallowed hard, and then found his voice again. “The boy needed a lesson in quieting his manner.”

“A lesson already delivered. Do not let me find this boy bruised.”

“What business of it is yours to interfere with a father doing his duty?”

Winston came from a family of five children; the responsibility of the older siblings was to protect the younger ones. Funny, the number of his family was six actually, but his brother, Auldwyn, had died when he was two. Though Winston was barely old enough to know him when he died, the thought of Auldwyn, more than the actual memory of his loss, continued to pain him. “I can't abide bullies. They . . . vex me. You don't want to vex me.”

Trystan looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. A frightfully insufferable woman who had a predilection for revealing all of her teeth when she smiled, she quickly turned away, her long hair curled up into a tight coif, and she fanned herself as she stared out the window.

“As I was saying, my duty was to deliver you to the hand of Sir Melbourne.”

“Such was my father's wish.”

“He is a powerful man, your father, with many enemies.”

“And he sought to mollify some of them with this ill-conceived arrangement. My parents are quite cross with me at the moment.”

“I couldn't hazard a guess why.”

“I was to marry Sir Melbourne, the archduke of Georgia. A nobleman of noble family.”

“And?”

“He bored me.”

“And a husband's duty is to entertain his wife.”

“Your sarcasm has been duly noted. He wanted a wife interested in keeping a home, organizing social events, to be a trophy attached to his arm when at a party and placed on the mantel when at home.”

“And such is not the calling for your life.” Winston had no use for a wife. Marriage was a kind of ownership, one person belonging to another. Freedom was too precious a commodity for him to forfeit any.

“No, it most certainly is not. However, I have more to do than just find a husband. The problem is that it is unseemly to have your daughters marry out of order.”

“I trust that your younger sisters are vexed with you also?”

“All four of them.”

“You broke off all marriage talk with Sir Melbourne?”

“Sir, my heart is my own. And it tarries . . . elsewhere.”

“You still have time to change your mind.”

“I know. A lot can happen in a fortnight.”

 

The dynamo of Albion, the American colony, was a proud beacon that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, between the Five Civilized Nations of the Northwest Territories and the Tejas Free Republic of the Southwest Territories. The Tejas Express was a product of American revolutionary design. A luxurious vehicle, with an interior of lacquered mahogany, polished brass, and brushed velvet. To Winston's mind, it was like a brothel decorated with decadent designer's eye. His tastes ran to the simple. The engine snorted a continuous billow of steam as it bustled forward toward Indianapolis on its way to Chicago. For every burgeoning overcity like Indianapolis, there was a burgeoning undercity; in Indianapolis' case, the residents referred to it as Atlantis.

Winston imagined himself starting over in a place like Indianapolis. Nondescript, a blank slate where he could disappear and redefine himself. As of this moment, he was a forcibly retired—as forcibly as he was conscripted—soldier. His station was enough to spare him toiling away in the undercities shoveling coal or assembling small machines in the industrial shops, the clockwork gears biting into scabbed fingertips, for hours on end. He might be able to find a low-ranking position in the overcity, something he was overqualified for, but it'd be a place to start. Winston wondered why he couldn't just be content with his lot in life. No, the nagging fear that he ought to be doing something other than his father's profession dogged him. He had inherited an estate of $750,000 from his father, but his father had made his fortune in trafficking. Money made selling their own people into indentureship; the weight of the shame was not worth his soul. He used some of the credits to free others from indenture then gave the rest away. He was meant for greater things, to have it all, and he wanted to be beholden to no one. Perhaps his destiny awaited him as a businessman. If he could grow a business to the point where he wasn't needed to run it day-to-day, then he could expand into other ventures. To dabble in airships was his dream, but it all began with starting a business. Only then could he hope to be with someone like Lady Trystan.

“Mr. Jefferson.” She leaned on her frilly parasol in tacit imitation of him and his cane.

“Colonel.”

“Where are you from? Kentucky, perhaps?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Your manner and speech betray you. Too affected.” A furtive glance. A less attentive gentleman may have missed it. But she tracked the movements of the soldiers. “A hint of accent to your words. They don't slip out often, but they're there. You've worked hard to hide your roots.”

“Your impertinence begins to irritate me.” By nature he eluded any attempts by others to get to know him. He hated the way she saw through him, knowing him with a glance.

“There's no shame in it. Or you.”

She locked onto his eyes as if her very being depended on maintaining the intensity of their gaze. More powerful than lust, it was magic. Their world was the train. Here they could pretend they had no outside responsibilities. Distance meant nothing, time meant nothing; even though he was across the table from her, she was probably unaware that he had slipped his fingers between hers.

Winston turned away and sought to master the emotions threatening to distract him from his appointed task. He noticed a gentleman in his early fifties with an athletic build with silver hair and beard. A silver and blue eye patch matched not only the pocket handkerchief tucked into the breast pocket of his black suit, but also his elegant silk tie. He cut a striking figure though wearing perhaps too much toilet water. The man took the moment to saunter over to them. Winston stood and composed his demeanor.

“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Richard St. Ives.” He had a queer lilting resonance to his voice, as if speaking through his nose at a high altitude.

“Pleased to meet your acquaintance, Mr. St. Ives.” Lady Trystan offered her hand.

“Oh, I very much doubt that. You see, I'm an agent of Sir Melbourne.”

“Then whatever business you have is between you and him.”

“Would that it were so, but often the claims of family tread all over our well-intentioned designs.”

“The lady says she has no business with you.” Winston rested both of his palms on his cane. Not even the joggling of the train's movement budged him.

St. Ives smoothed his gloves, the corresponding gesture in their voiceless dance of intimidation and veiled threat. “But I fear I've business with her, as I have been retained to sort out matters. That is what I do.”