Chapter 2 #2
Lena moved into the crowd, a smile pasted on her face. The patch of bare skin at the back of her neck tingled. Lifting her glass, she tried to catch a hint of his reflection, but the crowd was too dense.
Damn him. She shot a look over her shoulder.
Too many people, pressed together and laughing at the mechanized puppetry. No sign of Colchester.
Music and laughter assaulted her ears. The crowd was a riot of bright colors as she whipped her head around, a fist clenched in her skirts. Don’t run. God, don’t run. But where the devil had he gone?
A large pink ostrich feather floated through her vision. Adele. Lena pushed toward her. A pair of ladies gossiped behind their fans and Lena staggered between them, straight into a firm chest. Gloved hands caught her shoulders, as if to steady her.
“So sorry,” she murmured, then froze as she saw the ink-black velvet coat, with its gold epaulets and a tassel draped from his right shoulder.
“You look pale, my dear.” Colchester smiled his shark’s smile and his hands tightened as she instinctively tried to draw back. “Like you need some air.”
His grip urged her to the side, toward the garden.
Lena dug her slippers in and shook her head, a desperate smile pasted on her face.
She couldn’t let anyone see her distress.
It would only start rumors she couldn’t afford.
A lady’s reputation was all that kept her from being claimed by any blue blood as his blood whore for the night.
Somehow she forced a laugh. It was her only defense. “Au contraire, Your Grace.” A swift gesture at the gardens around them. “I have nothing but air, it seems.”
His eyes glittered with dark enjoyment. The hairs along her spine rose, but somehow she managed an insouciant shrug. Colchester would scent the rising spike of fear, acrid on her skin. A delicate sauce, he’d once told her, to flavor the meal…
“Thank you for catching me, Your Grace. But I’m afraid I must find my friend, Adele. She was feeling poorly. I was supposed to fetch her some water.”
“A pity,” he soothed, his hand dropping to hers. He stroked her fingers through the silk of her gloves. “I was hoping you would save a dance for me. The assah, if you will.”
A dance designed to tempt, to best display a potential thrall’s assets to a blue blood. The smoky eroticism of it was something she’d never surrendered to in public, but to witness it… Oh, to witness it was something else. “I’m afraid I—”
“I wasn’t asking.”
Lena tugged at her hand, but his iron fingers curled around her wrist, a hint of shadow darkening his pale eyes.
“Don’t tempt me, my dear. I’m trying to be courteous, but I’m afraid your beauty quite drives me…out of my mind.” A smile, then he brushed the back of one hand against her cheek.
Laughter surged through the crowd, making her jump. They were so close and yet they might as well be in the Orient for all the good they would do her.
“Have you thought any more on my offer?” he asked.
“I’m afraid I’ve been terribly occupied—”
“It’s been a month.”
Not long enough. She would never be his thrall. Lena tipped her chin up and stared him directly in the eye. “It’s been a busy month, Your Grace.”
“Colchester. I told you to call me Colchester. After all,” a smirk, “we are rather well-acquainted, are we not?”
She wanted to smash the glass bulb from her champagne flute and stab him in the eye with the stem. The thought of Colchester with his mouth on her body made her stomach twist.
Never again.
“Must I wait another month for an answer?”
“Let me go, Your Grace. This is unseemly.”
“Answer the question.”
“Lena!” Adele’s cry came out of nowhere. “There you are!”
A burst of perfume washed over them, then Adele was there, the feathers in her hair tickling Colchester’s nose. He flinched away, his face tightening with fury. Adele clapped a hand to her mouth and giggled, seemingly overcome by champagne. “Oh, Your Grace! I didn’t see you there. My apologies.”
The crowd pressed upon them. He had no choice but to let her go.
Lena tugged her hand close to her body, as if he’d done her some injury. Fingers brushed against hers and then Adele squeezed her other hand.
Colchester gave her a curt nod. “Until next time. I will demand an answer.” Then he turned and strode through the crowd.
All of a sudden Lena couldn’t breathe. Adele took one look at her face and hustled her away, into the edges of the garden.
“Here,” Adele said, snatching a glass of champagne off a service drone’s platter. “Drink this.”
“I…I can’t…” The only thing holding her upright was Adele’s hand.
A small folly appeared, shadowed from the rest of the garden party. Adele spun her around, forcing her to put her hands on the railing and lean forward. Tearing apart Lena’s buttons, she loosened the strings on her corset.
Lena collapsed forward, sucking in a lungful of air. Her body was trembling from top to toe. She didn’t know what had happened. Only that she hadn’t been able to draw breath. Still couldn’t, really.
Warmth splashed down her cheeks and she dashed at them with her gloved hands. Adele rubbed small circles on her back.
“Thank you.” She’d never have expected Adele, of all people, to come to her rescue.
Adele’s hand paused. “I just wish there’d been someone there…for me.”
Lena looked up and met her gaze, her breath shuddering through her. “I thought you went willingly with Lord Fenwick?”
“That was the rumor he put about. They all know, of course.” Adele’s lips thinned. “It’s become sport amongst the younger circles. They think taking a woman as thrall is old-fashioned. Why support her for life when you can take what you want from her then cast her aside?”
“But…that’s appalling!”
“One step removed from a blood slave.” Adele shrugged a slim shoulder.
“The reason I was chasing Lord Macy is because he’s a traditionalist. He believes in protecting his thralls.
If I were you, Lena, I would look to someone older.
And don’t settle for anything less than a thrall contract.
It’s the only protection you or I have these days. ”
“Why doesn’t anybody say something?”
“Who would dare?” Adele laughed, but there was no humor in it.
Her expression hardened. “And why should any of the Echelon stir a finger to help us? We’re food, Lena.
The only interest they have in keeping us alive or taking us as thralls is because it’s easier for them. We’re like penned livestock.”
Anger flared. “They’re not all like that. My guardian, Leo—”
“Knows what’s going on as surely as we do. And has he said a single word about it?”
Lena opened her mouth. And said nothing. Everything she saw on Adele’s face was but an echo of how she herself felt. Trapped. Prey.
No. Not prey. She took a deep shuddering breath. Prey didn’t fight back; they didn’t find a way in which they could make a difference, and that’s what she was doing.
“Take my advice,” Adele continued. “I saw the look on Colchester’s face. You need protection. Your guardian isn’t enough—he’s not even here, is he? If I were you, I would find some old decrepit lord with enough power to stand up to Colchester and beguile him into taking you as his thrall.”
“That shouldn’t be the only option I have.”
“Unfortunately, for girls like you and me, there isn’t any choice. The sooner you open your eyes to the world you truly live in, the better. Otherwise you’re nothing but a fool—and fools don’t survive very long here.”
***
“What’s wrong with you this morning?”
Lena opened her eyes, her head resting against the carriage’s window. Her companion, Mrs. Wade, peered at her over the top of her crochet. There was no sign of the attack of the megrims that had plagued her last night, keeping her from Lord Macy’s ball.
Rubbing at her aching eyes, Lena sat up. “Nothing. I didn’t sleep very well last night, is all.”
“Perhaps we should return to Waverly Place.” Concern rounded Mrs. Wade’s eyes. “You could do with some more rest.”
Lena’s eyes narrowed. “Your motivations are utterly transparent.” Leaning forward, she peered through the velvet curtains of the steam carriage’s window, her fingers tapping on the box in her hand. She hadn’t dared let it out of her sight.
Mrs. Wade had the good grace to blush. She had her own feelings on what constituted as appropriate recreational pursuits for ladies. Designing clockwork toys was not one of them. “I’m simply concerned about your reputation. If anyone saw us at that shop…”
“Who would see us here? And if they did, I’m only purchasing a new clock.”
The steam carriage rattled to a halt outside Mandeville’s Clockwork Emporium.
Her eye skipped over the dirty ragamuffins playing tumbler in the alleys and the coal lasses slipping through the crowd with their pails balanced on their shoulders.
She’d seen all too much of it during her sojourn in the rookeries of Whitechapel, after her father’s death.
Indeed, that had once been her, before Mr. Mandeville took her on as his apprentice.
Sympathy choked her. No matter the dangers of her own life at court, they were nothing to what the coal lasses risked, walking the streets unprotected.
At least in society she would never be left to die bleeding in the gutters, her life worthless to the blue bloods.
Her position saw to that. She was potential prey—but she was also protected prey.
The door opened and a footman appeared. “Miss.”
“Thank you, Henry.” Lena accepted his hand and stepped down onto the cobbles.
Mr. Mandeville saw her coming and opened the door for her.
With the curled ends of his waxed moustache, the pair of magnifying glassicals perched upon his windswept gray hair, and a distinct patchwork quality to his waistcoat, he would never be received within the great houses.
Yet he was one of the finest clockmakers she’d ever seen.
And so much more.