The Marriage Machine (8 page)

“What do you mean by that, young lady?”

“I mean no disrespect, Citizen Ramsay. Your family’s invention may have saved the human race—”

“There is no doubt that it did.”

“And again, no disrespect.” She paused, hoping her words would not over excite the man and cause him to have a heart attack. But she didn’t think he was as frail as Mark had led her to believe. She sensed in him an indomitable physical being and an even more indomitable spirit—much like she hoped someone would see in her someday.

She raised her chin. “I believe the Marriage Machine has seen its day.”

“What?” he sputtered. “You have no idea what you are talking about.” Spittle flew from his wrinkled lips “What’s your name again?”

“It’s Shutterhouse, sir.”

“Shutterhouse, before
my
great-grandfather invented that machine, we were lucky to have a handful of births a year in Londo City. The damned radiation cloud had made everyone sterile.”

“I am aware of that. But that was long ago. The world is changing.”

“People’s reproductive organs were malfunctioning.”

“I know. My great aunt told me all about it.”

“You stand here today, Shutterhouse, because of the Marriage Machine. Without the machine, your own mother would never have realized the full bloom of womanhood.”

“But as I have said, times are changing.” Elspeth pressed forward, wanting to be heard for once by someone who might be able to make a change, even though she suspected her philosophy would not only ostracize her from Londo society but from the Ramsay clan as well. “Women’s bodies are changing, citizen. But no one has the courage to speak out.”

The wrinkles on his brow deepened. “What do you mean, women’s bodies are changing?”

“Young women are reaching menarche on their own, without mechanical assistance. We are overcoming what the Grave Mistake did to us.”

For a moment the old man gawked at her, as if he couldn’t make sense of her words. Then he shook off his shocked expressions.

“You’re speaking nonsense.” Ramsay shook his cane in the air. “Whoever heard of such a thing?”

“My cousin began bleeding at the age of twenty. My best friend at nineteen. And I myself have menstruated since I was twenty-two. But no one will come forward. They are too afraid of being labeled as freaks. They
want
to be selected for the Marriage Machine.”

“And you don’t?” he stared at her.

“No. Not when there are such side effects.”

“Couldn’t be helped.” He cackled to himself. “And who wouldn’t want a woman that’s always happy to see you—is never upset by anything?”

“Weren’t dogs bred for that?” Elspeth retorted, her voice cold. “And look what happened to them.”

Ramsay stared up at her from under his bushy white brows.

“I doubt
your
wife was a drone,” Elspeth remarked. “I bet she wasn’t a little brown mouse from Londo City, dumbed down and silly.”

Ramsay’s watery eyes slanted away. For a moment he gazed at the wall of blank shelves as if looking back to earlier days, to the days the library had been full of books and perhaps a beautiful young woman who had loved him and at the same time challenged him. For a moment, he lapsed deep into thought.

“I’m tired,” he snapped, without looking back at her. His shoulders seemed to have disappeared beneath the shell of his suit. “All this talk is wearisome.”

“I’m sorry, but the truth is hard to take,” she said. “And change is even harder.”

He glanced at her, and their eyes locked. For a moment she thought she had gotten through to him, and that he was going to say something. But then he broke off the stare and rapped his cane on the floor.

“Mark!” he shouted. “Mark!” He scowled at her, as if he’d come to a decision. “I don’t know where you belong, young lady,” he exclaimed. “In a detention center or an insane asylum.”

Elspeth sucked in a breath, damning her faulty judgment in having said too much to the wrong person.

“But I can assure you, Shutterhouse, that you will not leave this house until the Overseers have been notified.”

“Please do not betray me,” she begged.

He frowned, pursing his lips over his prominent teeth as he regarded her with his watery but sharp regard. “I have no choice. It was high-handed know-it-alls like you who caused all the trouble in the first place. It appears that you have learned nothing from history.”

She had, but not from the history the Overseers had fed them.

Elspeth swallowed and glanced around the room. She was trapped for certain if she didn’t take a move before Mark returned.

She dashed around the old man in his wheelchair.

“Where are you going, young lady?” Ramsay shouted. “Come back here!”

Elspeth sprinted down the hall, ran past the stairs and yanked open the front door of the townhouse. She fled across the street to Scotland Yard and plunged into a grove of yews, just as the first flakes of snow began to fall.

Chapter Six

Elspeth sat on the hard bench of her cell, a piece of paper in her hand, and her stomach churning with anger. After being pursued through Londo City like a dog, she had been captured two days later and thrown into the detention center near her aunt’s house. Wet, cold, and exhausted, she had been dragged into the same cell as before. They hadn’t given her dry clothing or shoes and had left her to suffer the cold and to reflect on her transgressions. Hours later, an agent of the Overseers had delivered their decision.

The document in her hand ordered her—on the pain of death—to attend her wedding ceremony. She would be transported there by two guards, who would make sure she did not run away. Her aunt would be allowed to bring her a dress for the occasion, but that is all the contact she would have with her family until after the ceremony. They deemed the marriage punishment enough for her rebellious behavior—and they were right. Tying her to a man was the worst prison sentence she could imagine.

Elspeth’s dinner sat untouched on a tray on the small table near the wall. She had no appetite, both for the food and for the day to come. She would be married at Boswellian Bower tomorrow afternoon at 4:00.

She sat there, tired, angry and frustrated, and barely took notice when two people approached her cell. If more agents had come to preach to her, she would cover her ears, curl up against the wall, and refuse to recognize their presence.

“Shutterhouse,” a familiar voice called.

Shivering, Elspeth raised her head, shocked to see Mark Ramsay approach the other side of the bars. Words fled. She couldn’t even utter a greeting. He was dressed in his usual black traveling coat, unbuttoned now, and displaying black and white eveningwear, set off by a white cravat tied at his throat. His family must be celebrating his brother’s wedding by going out for the evening—a rare occasion for anyone these days. He must have come to mock her or upbraid her for disturbing his great-grandfather. Why else the thunder in his expression?

“Why hasn’t this woman been given dry clothes?” Ramsay bellowed, glaring down at the guard.

“It was what the warden ordered.”

“Get her clean things at once!” Ramsay pointed at the corridor behind him. “A blanket as well. And make it quick.”

“I can’t leave you here alone with her.”

“You’ve searched me. I pose no threat. I’m only here to speak to her. Now off with you, before I report such inhumane treatment to the detention commissioner.”

The guard scurried away as Elspeth rose, grateful for Mark’s intercession but surprised to see him all the same.

“Good Lloyd,” he grasped the bars and stared down at her. “Look what you’ve got yourself into, Shutterhouse.”

“The worst is yet to come.”

“You should have let me handle it.”

“Why?” she retorted. “You have only one thought, to protect that infernal Marriage Machine.”

“You should never have told my great-grandfather the truth.”

“Someone needed to.” She clutched the bars. “Someone has to speak out. If your great-grandfather is the custodian of that machine, maybe the Overseers will listen to him.”

“It doesn’t necessarily work that way.” Mark wrapped his warm fingers around her cold ones. She tried to snatch her hands away, but he held her fast.

“How does it work then?” she retorted. She had nothing more to lose. She might as well speak her mind. “Who
does
have the ear of the bloody all-powerful Overseers?”

“No one.” His voice held no reproach. Only gentleness. She had to force herself not to break down in tears. “Unfortunately.”

He stared down at her and did not chide her for being a fool, as everyone else had. She paused, suddenly wondering why he had actually visited, if not to berate her.

“Why didn’t you tell me you had received a silver envelope?” he asked.

“You know the rules—no talk of envelopes outside the family.”

“So you follow some rules and not others?”

She glared at him, still trying to get away, but fighting an entirely different battle on an internal level. Though it made no sense, she was glad to see Mark Ramsay. His outrage at her predicament had warmed her on the inside, just as his hands were warming her frozen fingers. His looming bulk was a like a bastion of strength between her and a world that had spun out of control. But worse, when he touched her and looked down at her with concern darkening his unusual eyes, her heart pattered in erratic leaps of elation.

Her breath caught in her throat. He seemed to notice, and for a moment he stared down at her lips. She thought he was going to kiss her. She ached to be kissed by him. She had never felt such a compulsion in her life. As she stood there, her hands surrounded by his big paws, she realized that she felt closer to Mark Ramsay than she had to anyone in her entire life.

But with the revelation came a bittersweet irony. This was one man she might be able to live with and not chafe at the bindings of matrimony—even without the Marriage Machine. But Mark was not destined to be part of her future.

“I’m told you are to be married tomorrow in fact,” he continued.

“It hasn’t escaped my notice,” she replied. “Or anyone else’s, it seems.”

“A damnable situation.” His voice rumbled with repressed emotion, and she glanced up at him, shocked. His grip tightened.

“Elspeth, it can make little difference if I speak my mind, but I—” He studied her face, and then seemed to think better of what he was about to say. He let his words fall to nothing and sighed.

“Why the sudden holding back?” She studied his face, wondering at his odd behavior. “You’ve been frank with me up until now. What are you hiding?”

“Some things are better left unspoken.” He clamped his jaw tightly. She could see a muscle work on the left side of his face. “Forgive me. I forget myself.”

“Mark,” she jiggled her hands under his, trying to make her point, and trying to rattle him to his senses. “I’m to be married tomorrow. I’ll never be the same. I’ll never desire the things that I want so badly today. I’ll be just a shadow of myself. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

He looked down and shook his head.

“It’s
not
for the best,” she continued earnestly. “Getting married in that machine. Maybe at one time it was. But it’s no longer right or necessary that a woman lose herself for the greater good.” She pressed her face to the bars until her nose nearly touched the cravat at his throat. “Please, Mark, can’t you get me out of here? Just let me run?”

“You can’t live outside society, El.”

“I could!”

“It will be just another prison sentence. It’s not the solution.”

Elspeth leaned her forehead against the cold bars and fought back tears.

Ramsay’s coat rustled as he stepped closer. “Perhaps it
will
be best if the fire in you is doused, El. You could burn for the rest of your days, if life is not what you want it to be—if you aren’t with the right man.”

“I would rather burn than bow.”

“Don’t say that.” He glanced sharply at her. “Don’t do anything drastic, Elspeth. Don’t make a martyr of yourself.”

“Better a martyr than a matron.”

“You might get part of what you desire in life. But not everything. That’s the way life is.” He squeezed her hands. “Promise me you won’t try to escape. That you won’t do anything rash.”

“Why?” she asked, puzzled by his cryptic words.

A door slammed behind him. She could hear the clump, clump of the guard as he walked toward her cell.

“Listen to me.” Ramsay reached through the bars and cupped her cheek with one of his callused hands. “Don’t fight this, Elspeth. You cannot win like this. Trust me.”

“Trust you?” she repeated, accustomed to using sarcasm when speaking to him. She began to retort that she trusted no one, least of all him. But the words died on her lips. She did trust Mark Ramsay. Deep in her heart, she trusted him implicitly.