Eros Element (13 page)

A glance across the coach at their companions—Marie sat between Radcliffe and O'Connell—revealed that the doctor looked out of the window with a pensive expression, Marie with a melancholy one, and O'Connell with amusement. Iris guessed O'Connell would tell her what had transpired that morning. He acted the gentleman, but she surmised he had a good sense of humor, and if he found the morning's events funny, he would want to share. With that decided, she had to pay attention to Edward, who picked at her sleeve and asked for water. Then he couldn't get comfortable, and his shifting around made her have to practically sit on Bledsoe, who of course found her discomfort hilarious in spite of it keeping him awake.

Iris found there were many, many miles between the little French village where they'd landed and Paris.

Chapter Fifteen

Hôtel Auberge, Paris, 12 June 1870

According to the original itinerary, the travelers were to have had their own rooms, but with the addition to their number plus Edward's condition, they divided themselves among the three hotel chambers Cobb's agent had reserved for them. Iris and Marie took one, which was fine and not fine with Iris. She was relieved to have a maid again but had been looking forward to some quiet after their long, arduous journey. Once the carriage wheels bumped over the cobblestones of Paris, Marie started talking about what a wonderful city Paris was and simply would not be quiet.

“Perhaps you could draw me a bath,” Iris requested when they reached her room. She'd stopped paying attention to Marie's narrative, something about a theatre nearby, long before they checked in. The hotel had both hot and cold running water and a large claw-foot tub in the
salle de bain
as well as a shallow bowl with a spigot and drain Iris was afraid to ask about. She knew she was hot and tired from the morning's journey and suspected she smelled less than sweet since her last bath had been the night before they set out on this horrid adventure, and she'd been wearing the same bloody—and she was happy to take the opportunity to use both literal and swearing senses of the word—clothes since her trunk went down with the airship.

That was what they had been able to surmise—that the airship had gone down because Cobb hadn't made any attempts to contact them, and there were no messages waiting at the hotel. Of course, as Marie informed them, they were to have as little communication as possible with Cobb once they reached French soil in order not to tip off the French Clockwork Guild to their presence.

However, a whirring noise caught Iris's attention while she waited for Marie to finish preparing her bath, and she saw one of the little clockwork butterflies flitting overhead. She wanted to get a closer look at an intact one and prevent it from reporting back to its makers, so she moved beneath it and took one of the cases off the pillows. It followed her, and she took her shoes and stockings off and stood on the tall bed.

“Come here, you little bitty pretty,” she crooned. The little brass creature quivered and flitted nearer her, its wings a blur. Iris reached out and captured it with the pillowcase, but it continued to fly with surprising strength, and she found herself holding on to the bedpost with one hand, the pillowcase with the clockwork spy in another. Marie found her like that shortly thereafter.

“Should've figured you'd try to catch one,” Marie said. “We all do, but it's a good thing it thinks it can escape. Otherwise your ears would be splitting—they have a pressure valve that makes them scream to get away like some bugs. Hold it there.”

“Trying,” Iris said through gritted teeth. She now hung off the bed with one leg hooked around the bedpost and wondered how much more her arms could take.

Marie took the metal top off a glass container with a clawed pewter bottom and opened a spigot behind the tea and coffee station. She poured steaming hot water into the carafe and put in a tea bag.

“This is hardly the time for tea, Marie.”

“It's not for you, Miss. It's for the clockwork. Hold it still, please.”

Iris didn't dignify Marie's comment with a response. As if she had any control over the whirring thing, and she did want tea once this ordeal was over. Marie held the carafe under the clockwork, and steam enveloped the flying end of the pillowcase. The tug grew less as the clockwork wound down, and Iris rolled her shoulder back and forth to loosen the muscles. Finally, Marie held the now soaked end of the pillowcase containing the clockwork in her hand, and Iris let go, sinking down on the bed. She stretched both hands, her fingers tight and sore. Now that she thought about it, all of her was tight and sore.

“Is it dead?” she asked. “And why the tea, not just water?”

“Professor Bailey would have a better explanation for it, Miss, but I'll do my best. There are things called alkaloids in most substances, and the ones in the tea break down the stuff that allows the clockwork mechanisms to fly with minimal rubbing of their parts.”

Iris knew some basic science from her time in school, the one class she'd had. “You mean it breaks down the lubricant that allows the clockworks to fly with minimal friction and therefore go longer on the same amount of winding?”

“Yes, Miss, that's it.” Marie smiled at her. “So it's not dead, just stuck, but it hasn't had any sudden force, so it won't break the part that makes it scream.”

“Excellent. Please bring it to Professor Bailey for him to examine. He'll need something to occupy himself while he heals.”

“And then a bath for you, Miss.” Marie's wrinkled nose told Iris all she needed to know. “And while you do that, I'll work on finding you some more clothes. I believe there was an appointment for you with a
modiste
this afternoon, but you may have missed it. Either way, first you must bathe.”

Iris didn't argue.

Edward made it to his room on his own two feet—barely—with Doctor Radcliffe supporting him on one side and Johann on the other. It seemed that whenever one part of him felt better, another started aching or stinging or stabbing and joined the chorus of discomfort. He exhaled when the bed took over supporting his body and floated for a moment in relief before the chorus, now a smaller ensemble, started again. Johann would be proud of his musical analogy, he thought, but before he could tell his friend, he drifted off to sleep.

But not for too long—a crash outside woke him. The hotel room windows stood open to the early summer breeze, and they were high enough to pull in few city smells. The noise below told him they stayed in the middle of a metropolis.
The air is something, I suppose.
Although he knew he would watch the window for signs of one of those little clockwork butterflies, at least when he was awake. The memory of him shoving the pirate out of the window with his beloved copper globe popped into his mind, and he shook his head to dislodge it.

“Are you hurting?” Radcliffe asked. He sat by the window with a newspaper open on the marble-topped table in front of him and a cup of tea beside him on the windowsill.

“Somewhat,” Edward admitted. In a brief moment with the two of them that morning, Johann had cautioned Edward not to alert the doctor—who showed a strong interest in affairs of the mind—to his anxiety and previous breakdown, so he wasn't going to admit to his mental anguish at the loss of his materials. The maid Marie had cleared the shattered glass globe shards from his valise, so all he had left of his travel aether isolator were the connections and stoppers. The burner also had to be discarded after it bent and spilled its fuel.

Doctor Radcliffe examined him and said, “As far as I can tell, you're healing slowly, but it would help if we could get a look inside.”

“Not surgery,” Edward said. “The risk is too great.”

“No, no, I have some colleagues here in Paris who are doing work on ways to look inside the human body without cutting anything open. With your consent, I'll get in touch with them, see if I can get us an appointment.”

“Very well.” Edward shifted, and his left hip sang a sharp solo. Yes, his mind must be injured if he was thinking in musical, not scientific terms.

The maid Marie entered with a pillowcase, one end of which sagged and dripped. “I have a present for the Professor from Miss McTavish,” she said, her dimples evident.

“Oh, a present!” Edward struggled to sit, and the doctor helped him. “What could it be?”

Marie deposited the bundle in his hands, and he unrolled the pillowcase to reveal one of the clockwork butterflies. It looked smaller now that it wasn't moving, and he examined the delicate parts, all fashioned of brass, some of which greened in places where it had been nicked or scratched.
Oh, thank you, Iris! This is just the thing.

“Marie, is my magnifier intact?” he asked.

“Yes, Professor. You wrapped it very well. Shall I fetch it?”

“Please do. I've been wanting to see one of these up close and whole.”

Marie handed him his magnifying glass and asked. “Perhaps you would be more comfortable at the table so you can see the creature in the light? Would that be all right, Doctor?”

They helped Edward to the table and propped him up with pillows. He noticed the fatigue from moving that short distance but also that he felt stronger than the day before.
I shall study this device and see if I can make it useful for us.

By teatime, Edward shifted positions every few minutes due to aching.

“You need to rest,” Radcliffe told him and gently pried the clockwork, from which Edward had managed to detach the wings, from Edward's hands. He thought he'd isolated the winding mechanism.

“I don't need to,” Edward told him, but he said the last word through a yawn. A new sharp pain in his arm made him look down to see Radcliffe injecting him with something, and he tried to jerk away, but the doctor held him firm.

“It's to help the pain, and you need to sleep.”

Edward thought he said, “But I want to choose when I sleep—it's not time for a nap.” But he wasn't sure his statement made it out loud before he was sucked into a dream about flying brass horses galloping after the airship as it plummeted to the hungry sea below.

“Did he like it?” Iris asked Marie when she entered. Iris, clean from a warm bath with an extra change of water, stood in her shift, which at least had been rinsed at the inn, and held the soiled dress away from her.

“He was very excited,” Marie told her and took the dress from her. “You don't want to wear this, do you?”

“Of course not.” Iris squelched the feeling of panic at letting go of the gown and reminded herself the little gold case was no longer sewn in the pocket but hidden in a secret compartment in her valise. She rubbed her fingers together, but the action didn't clear the feeling of griminess from them.

“I sent for a gown from the theatre. It's on the risqué side for daytime, but I also have a shawl for you, and it was the only one in your size. You need something to wear to the
modiste
.”

“So I didn't miss the appointment with her?”

“You did, but she agreed for you to come to her shop as a favor. We've used her before for last-minute costumes, so she's pretty agreeable. Plus she doesn't make much money on Sundays.”

Iris tried to remember who the “we” was, probably someone mentioned as part of Marie's ramblings as they drove into town in the oven-like carriage. She hoped the Gastrons' neighbor charged Bledsoe extra for their miserable conveyance.

Marie helped her into the corset, petticoats and light green dress, which instead of having a high collar, exposed what felt like a scandalous amount of chest with its square neckline. She'd never seen her breasts plump like that. Thank goodness Marie pinned a lace shawl around her shoulders, and it provided some discretion. Otherwise men taller than she—and that was almost all of them—would have quite the view. Iris studied the brooch, which held a large peridot inside a stylized “C”.

“Is this yours?” she asked. “Wouldn't you rather hold on to it? It looks valuable.”

“Not really, Miss,” Marie said. “Now let's put your hair up.”

Coiffed and dressed, Iris barely recognized herself. She hardly looked the image of the field archaeologist she wanted to be, but she doubted she'd be brave enough to walk around Paris in men's clothing like one of her idols Jane Dieulafoy, famous for both her archaeological discoveries and scandalous sartorial choices.

What's the harm in play acting a little?

While Marie changed into a dark blue day dress and removed her maid's cap, Iris took the opportunity to read the brooch. Disgust flashed through her, as did that feeling between her legs she remembered from her mother's ring, but no images.

“It's best I not look like your maid,” Marie said and straightened her stylish hat atop her dark curls. It had silk birds and blue ribbons that matched her dress.

“Why?” Iris asked and went into the
salle de bain
to wash her hands at the sink. She scrubbed until her fingers turned red but couldn't clear the slimy feeling from them.

“I'd rather not say, Miss.”

More and more secrets.
But Iris said nothing, only allowed Marie to pin a small straw hat swallowed by green and cream-colored silk flowers on her head. She pushed Marie's hands away—goodness, what was she going to do if she couldn't bear for her own maid to touch her?—and tied her own chin ribbons before putting on her gloves. Marie gave her a look of mingled sadness and resignation.

Iris and Marie passed Patrick O'Connell in the hotel lobby, where he played two men in cards while others looked on askance. Iris, desirous of not being alone with Marie, remembered her intention to ask Patrick what had transpired in the inn that morning and smiled at him.

He rose and threw his cards on the table. “I've taken enough of your money for today, gents.”

“We will find out how you are cheating, you devil's beard,” one of them sneered.

Patrick put on his hat, turned to the two women, and asked, “Are you ladies heading out? That Bledsoe chap warned me not to let you go without a chaperone.”

“I grew up in this part of Paris,” Marie said. “We'll be fine.”

Iris looked at Marie, who indeed seemed to bloom under the admiring glances of the men around them.

Will I ever get there? And at what cost?

“Regardless, I'll be joining you.”

“That's fine with me,” Iris told him. He held his arm out, and she took it. They walked through the revolving door and into the sunlight. Iris had been too tired, hot and miserable on the way into the hotel to notice much, but now she had to struggle not to stop and look around at everything. Marie wouldn't slow when Iris entreated her to.