Courting Trouble (8 page)

Chapter Eleven

“Who knew there were so many dratted socialists in Swan River.” Jed ushered Esme into the hall of the Mechanics Institute and saw the row of chairs occupied by men from the working and middle classes and by a surprising number of beribboned and flirtatious women.

They hadn’t exchanged any conversation on the short ride to the meeting, and he wondered how she’d respond to his challenge.

At least she hasn’t hit me over the head with her umbrella.
It was a calculated risk, turning the reins of their courtship over to Esme. But then, it wasn’t as though he’d been doing such a great job of steering it.

For a supposedly intelligent man, it had taken him a disgraceful length of time to understand Esme’s fear that his courtship threatened her independence. That was why she’d been so determined to run into trouble, flying dirigibles and heaven knew what else. She needed to prove to the world and to herself that loving him didn’t make her less, didn’t make her weak. He had to respect her suffragette pride.

Jed sat beside Esme and folded his arms. Her hand on his knee stopped the irritated tapping of his foot. She smiled and withdrew her gloved hand.

He’d been a fool, but he had a second chance.

Nazim strode to the podium, and a sighing ripple came from the ladies in the room. Jed scowled. So what if the man was handsome. He was a menace. After a few minutes, though, he had to admit the man could talk.

“The rich own gold, land, houses, jewels and more. Ah, so much more. They own our newspapers and our thoughts, the plays staged in our theaters and the songs sung in our music halls. They own our hearts and our minds—and that is what we must change because it is we who keep them rich and ourselves poor.” Nazim seemed to feel no embarrassment at his own wealthy, fashionable attire. “The poor must be taught to believe in their most secret hearts that they are as good as a duke, as important as an archbishop. And the important men must learn that the earth is not theirs to rule over and exploit.”

He segued into the standard socialist spiel: “…an eight-hour day…access to public libraries and healthy outdoor activities…social welfare on the Prussian model, but more advanced…recognition of women’s rights…”

Jed glanced at Esme. This was the sort of equality she fought for, the principles of respect for all humanity that she believed in wholeheartedly.

After flinging his dare at her, he’d descended to the hidden workroom to study the blueprints with an eye to building the prototype. It appeared remarkably easy, a matter of following the intricate design of the blueprints with scrupulous accuracy. He was an inventor—he could do that. Indeed, it would be a relief to have concrete work, not tangled emotions or devious opponents to deal with.

Esme’s father’s workroom was well stocked, but he would have to buy a few items. The list of what he needed resided in his jacket pocket. The slip of paper made no impression on the set of his jacket. His pistol, on the other hand, created an odd outline, even if most of the civilized audience wouldn’t realize what the bulge of his shoulder holster indicated.

And the crowd at Nazim’s socialist lecture was most definitely civilized.

This wasn’t a meeting of radicals, but of grumbling malcontents and frivolous people in search of entertainment. Jed had been in Swan River long enough to recognize faces and learn something of their histories. Mr. Gilbertson, slouched in a corner, had never worked in his life, but mooched off his father-in-law. Miss Pudding ostensibly kept house for her widowed schoolmaster brother, but in fact filled her days with social criticism and writing bitter, confused letters to the newspapers. A small group of young Indian men sat together, watching Nazim earnestly, looking for a role model.

“Any final questions? My friends, I thank you.” Nazim wound up the evening with aplomb, bowed to enthusiastic applause and stepped down from the podium.

Was this what Nazim had intended to prove to them, his unassailable social position? Who would believe that this dandy was a dangerous anarchist? They would laugh at the notion, as Munroe had. Nazim’s camouflage, like that of the best of predators, was too perfect.

Acquaintances caught Jed and Esme, holding them up with an exchange of courtesies and genial gossip while the young men and women mobbed Nazim.

“I’m glad your burn is healing. Every garden should have aloe vera,” Esme said to elderly Miss Dalrymple. “Irons are so dangerous. Do you have a ride home? Jed and I can give you a seat.”

But Miss Dalrymple had arrived with Mr. and Mrs. Helmsworth and “wouldn’t dream of intruding.”

The gig was an open carriage, so there was no impropriety in their being together.

No privacy, either.

“Miss Smith, Mr. Reeve.” Taking in their evident intention to depart, Nazim shook off his admirers and descended. “May I claim a moment of your time? I shall walk you to your carriage.” His manner discouraged any other company.

Outside the hall, the stars were bright overhead. A boobook called, quietly melancholic. The small owl was seldom visible in town. Down at the harbor, a steamboat whistled, departing with the tide.

“Say what you have to say, Nazim.” Jed contemplated how satisfying it would be to punch him in his smirking face. There was the outstanding matter of all he’d lost in the workshop fire. A knockout punch to the jaw would go some way to leveling the score.

“The affairs of India are none of your business. Believe what you will, but this girl you protect, Lajli, is a thief. What she stole from me, she must return. When she does so, she will be safe.”

“That sounds like a threat. How can she—we—trust you?” He looked at Esme, who was studying Nazim through narrowed eyes. So she, too, noticed that he answered to Nazim, abandoning the pretense of the false identity.

“I have no intention of staying in this dreary town a moment longer than I must. Do not think yourselves of such great interest to me that I would waste an instant’s thought on you, did you not stand between me and my rightful property. We are practical men, you and I. Return to me what is mine and we go our separate paths. Your little thief shall be safe.”

Esme nodded fractionally and Jed agreed. Time to confirm that he, not Lajli, possessed the blueprints for Kali’s Scream. Then the girl would be safe. “I have your papers.”

The Indian opened his hands and waved them in a generous, graceful gesture. “You have studied them?” His mouth tightened at Jed’s nod. “Such a beautiful design. My felicitations to you, sir, on this wondrous opportunity you have to study its principles. You conceive of its brilliance. My friend was very talented. Thanks to his sonic amplifier, deaf shall hear—”

“It’s a weapon,” Esme corrected him flatly.

Jed grinned. Challenging Nazim was dangerous, but he liked hearing her tell the man off.

“What it is, is none of your business.” When he abandoned his flowery language, Nazim sounded ugly. “I want what is mine returned.”

Jed moved forward, judging that the smaller man wouldn’t dare use a knife or gun so near a watching crowd. “You don’t like Swan River. Fair enough. I suggest you leave. Now. Without your papers. You see, Nazim, far from returning the blueprints for Kali’s Scream to you, I intend to demonstrate to the authorities the extent of the fatal treachery you plan to enact against your own people.”

Satisfied by the shock that flickered across Nazim’s face—he was more accustomed to threatening than being threatened—Jed went to the horse’s head and unclipped the nosebag.

“Miss Esme, you should be afraid for yourself and all you hold dear.”

Jed turned swiftly.

But Nazim had already retreated toward the light and audience of the hall. His final words drifted back. “Give me Lajli.”

“Why would we do that?” Esme frowned. “Why would he want her?”

Jed craved action not speculation. “I should pound him.”

“Prove that Kali’s Scream is a weapon of devastation, and we can hand him over to the authorities. As it stands, he has shown tonight that he is very convincing. Who here would believe him capable of plotting conscienceless murder?”

“No one.” He sighed sharply. The young ladies greeted Nazim with flutterings and coos of delight. A male hand slapped him jovially on the back as he joined the group. “At least you see his evil.”

She ignored the comment as Jed helped her into the gig. “What makes a man so careless of people’s lives?”

He climbed in and shook the reins. The horse started off. “I’m an inventor, not a philosopher. I cannot explain why some men love and others hate.”

In the narrow bench seat, their shoulders brushed.

Nazim had dared to threaten her.

His hands tightened on the reins. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper with Munroe. We might have been able to convince him to have someone watch Nazim, even if the snake can’t be arrested till we have proof the sonic amplifier works.”

“I suspect Nazim could have given any watcher the slip.”

“True.”

The tinny sound of a cheap phonograph floated on the air from a nearby cottage. Someone had set Robbie Burns’s poem to music.
Oh my love is a red, red rose…

“Esme.” Private thoughts and vulnerabilities were easier to share under the veil of evening shadows. A man could even ask for reassurance. “I’m waiting for you to woo me. I won’t need much encouragement. A few sweet words, a kiss.”

“You have a nerve, Jed Reeve.”

“‘I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none.’” He quoted Shakespeare softly. “You need me. Don’t shake your head. I need you, too. Loving someone doesn’t make you weaker—less, as you called it. I’ve been on my own ten years and more, traveling everywhere. I was never tempted to give up my independence, to modify my desires to another’s needs. Until I met you.”

“Jed.”

“It’s your choice, sweetheart. First we’ll deal with Nazim and his darned threats. Take the time to think about a life with me or a life without me.”

She resented the hint of ultimatum. Then she noticed the tense set of his jaw. He wasn’t as confident as he appeared, and that cut the heat from her steam of indignation.

Abruptly she wished she’d brought a shawl to the meeting. A life without Jed would be very cold.

Chapter Twelve

If you want my love, you have to woo me.

Jed’s challenge still echoed two days later as Esme sat in the library and contemplated the stack of letters, mute evidence of her industry, waiting on the corner of her desk. He hadn’t repeated it, but his mere presence, the knowledge he was in the secret workroom beneath the house, made her restless.

And then there was the threat Nazim represented.

She’d dressed carefully this morning, taking certain precautions. Against all usual practice, the gates to the stable yard and house were shut and bolted.

It had been quite a performance, dragging the heavy wrought-iron gates over the leaf litter and dirt that had built up against them through months of standing open. There’d been the rusty immobility of the bolts. Francis had muttered, but Esme had been adamant. Andrew had arrived with an oil can and squirted generously, splattering himself and Francis, much to the latter’s vocal disgust.

Try how she would, she couldn’t dismiss from her mind Nazim’s threat against all she held dear. She discovered that courage in the face of a personal threat was relatively simple. One took precautions and walked tall. But courage in the face of threats to those one loved…ah, that was a horse of a different color.

Anyone who ambushed her father at his mining claim would deserve everything they got. After his last trip home, he’d returned to it with the makings of an electric generator and the declared intention of shocking intruders.

Ayesha was known to Nazim as a friend of Esme’s. If he found out Ayesha was harboring Lajli, he’d go after them violently. True, Ayesha had designed any number of ingenious gadgets to ensure women’s safety. Although her chloroform bulb required some additional work. At the moment it was prone to self-detonation, with unfortunate results for all in its vicinity.

Heaven knew what devastation Nazim might cause in crowded Bombaytown. With its many wooden buildings, fire was a constant threat. People could die and he would only shrug. In his twisted mind, their lives would be the price paid for thwarting him.

Please God that Nazim never learns of Ayesha’s involvement.
It was hard enough dealing with the knowledge that Jed remained his primary target.

Uncle Henry, Jane Bryant, her good friend, and Mrs. Neeson, her godmother—there were so many people whose suffering would hurt her.

Loving anyone made you vulnerable.

This morning, work was her attempt to avoid that fact and her thoughts.

With a flourish, she signed her name to a reasoned, powerfully argued letter to the governor, glancing over it a final time. Let him wriggle out of this indictment of the government’s lack of care for ex-convict women. Poor old souls. They’d suffered enough from what was usually a small crime of theft or opportunity—transported to the other side of the world, separated from friends and family—and now, decades after transportation ended, if they hadn’t rebuilt their lives, they were facing old age in lonely, desperate poverty.

Lonely,
desperate poverty.

“I’m not lonely.” But she was. The gap resulting from her own panicked rejection of Jed’s courtship had shown her what a huge part of her life he was.

She stared at the conch shell hiding the speaking tube. She could contact Jed. He was so close, the thought tempted her. He’d said she was in charge of their courtship, that she should woo him.

Did she want to?

That’s not the issue right now.
She stretched out her hand for the speaking tube. Jed had been underground for hours. He needed fresh air. She would invite him to stroll down to the post office with her. Her busy morning had left her with more letters than stamps.

“Jed.” She waited for his acknowledgement, a preoccupied
Huh?
“I need to go to the post office. Would you care to accompany me?”

Unaccustomed butterflies rioted in her stomach as she waited for his response. Was this nervous anticipation, this bracing for possible rejection, what men endured when they courted a woman?

“I would like that very much.” The speaking tube distorted his voice.

She couldn’t read emotion in it, so took the words at face value. The butterflies quieted a fraction. “In ten minutes? Perhaps we could stop for tea while we’re in town?”

“Fine with me.”

She set the speaking tube down and crossed over to the mirror above the fireplace. Her color was high, her eyes shining. She looked like a woman in love. She touched a finger to the smooth glass. “Am I?”

“Good afternoon, Esme.” Jed stood in the library doorway, a smile and something more lighting his eyes. His dark brown suit sat impeccably across his shoulders, with a honey-and-gold-colored silk waistcoat beneath. His boots gleamed with a high polish.

“Jed.” She hurried back to the desk, gathering up the stack of mail. “I’m sorry. The time got away from me.” She offered him a small smile.

“I’m early.” His answering smile was as intimate as a kiss, though his words were prosaic. “It’s cool out. You’ll need a coat.”

How could a man’s smile make her pulse quicken?
“It’s in the hall. I went out this morning to the printer’s.”

“How is Angus?” He watched her walk toward him.

She was conscious of his admiration. She smoothed her hand over the fine wool of her suit. Its soft sage-green color and her own full curves were an enticing contrast to its masculine cut. She wondered now if she’d worn it to elicit that wanting look in his eyes. “Angus is a very proud papa. Paul, his eldest son, has won a scholarship to the grammar school.”

“Clever boy.”
Beautiful woman,
his eyes said. He touched her waist lightly as she walked past him, out the door.

Her breath caught. She wanted to lean into his touch.

The threat of Nazim and the sonic destroyer ought to have loomed like thunderclouds on the horizon, and they did, but they also revealed something unexpected. She saw Jed’s gravity and sense of responsibility, rock solid beneath his easy charm, and it strengthened his appeal.

He noted her momentary hesitation and his hand lingered, only to drop away as they exited the library. At the foot of the stairs, he helped her into her coat. His gloved fingers stroked her throat.

“I thought
I
was meant to court
you,
” she managed. “If I loved you,” she added hastily.

He smiled as his hand drifted down her shoulder, her arm, and slowly relinquished her hand. “An uncertain suitor needs some encouragement.”

Francis was visible through the stained glass beside the front door, and Maud’s voice could be heard approaching as she scolded a maid. Esme liked all the servants—and Francis and Maud were more like family—but at this moment, she could have wished them all to Antarctica.

Francis opened the door and Jed stepped back from her. The fresh spring wind swept into the hall, carrying the scents of coal smoke and salt from the port.

“We’re just off for tea, Francis.”

“You could have that here,” he grumbled.

“True, but a walk will be invigorating.”

Francis’s faded blue eyes looked from Esme to Jed and back. Some of the grouchiness left his face. “Invigorating, is it?”

Esme whisked Jed out of the house before Francis forgot himself and let loose a wicked comment on young love in the springtime. His chuckle followed them down the front steps.

They walked through the gate and downhill into town. She concentrated fiercely on everything but the man walking lithely beside her.

Posters for a traveling circus and various patent remedies occurred with increasing regularity on the walls of buildings and fences as they drew closer to the town center. Somers’s Summer Tonic. Pristine Starch for Pristine Women. Billiard’s Baldness Cure. A horse-drawn tram rattled past with a solitary passenger standing up and chatting with the driver. A joiner’s apprentice idled along, pushing a barrow of timber off-cuts. He glanced up, saw the time on the town hall’s clock and broke into a trot.

“How goes your work on the prototype?”

“I’ll be ready to test it tomorrow.” The strain he was under showed only in the slight deepening of the lines at the corners of his eyes.

She shivered. “I hope it doesn’t work.”

He covered her hand where she clasped his arm. “I know. I hope the same, but I have to be sure any failure is in the design and not in my realization of it.”

“Of course.”

From the veranda railing of Miss Strezlecki’s terrace house came a shriek of derision. Mozart, her sulfur-crested cockatoo, considered himself a critic, and this time it seemed the bird had a point. Esme winced. From Miss Strezlecki’s front parlor came the halting sound of scales played badly on a piano—another less-than-talented music student at practice.

Esme could sympathize. She appreciated good music, but couldn’t play herself. Heaven bless the inventor of the player piano. Which reminded her, Mr. Lewton at the music shop had been expecting a new shipment of piano rolls. She had promised to stop in and buy some, only Jed’s description of the design principles underpinning Kali’s Scream had put her off the notion of music, music boxes and anything related to them. “I wish this was all over.”

He pressed his elbow to his side, trapping her hand between his arm and body, a subtle caress. All that was permitted on a public street. “On the positive side, we haven’t had any trouble from Nazim.”

“But you still go armed?”

“Yes.”

“I hope it’s a pistol and not just a knife.”

They turned a corner into the high street, busy with pedestrians, and the opportunity for private conversation passed. One could hardly discuss preparations for mayhem on the main street.

Sunlight glinted off colored glass bottles displayed in the window of Fotheringway’s Chemist’s. Beside it, the sign above a narrow door proclaimed Dental Surgery, No Appointment Required. A miserable-looking miner walked toward it, a scarf wrapped securely around his lower jaw.

“Poor man,” she said, distracted from their problem. “I do hate visits to the dentist.” She turned away from the unhappy sight. “Goodness!” The exclamation was the result of the crowd gathered on the steps of the telegraph office. “I do hope nothing terrible has happened.” Such crowds usually meant bad news.

A mix of Europeans and Indians spoke in low voices and studied a few newssheets passed from hand to hand. Jed bought one from a newsboy who darted forward. The headline was lurid: Delhi Disaster—Indian City Explodes.

Jed held the newssheet so they could both read it. The details of the story were less sensational, though no less tragic. It wasn’t Delhi that had exploded, but a dye factory operating in a small village on the city’s outskirts. The three boilers that powered the factory had exploded.

“Three?” Esme murmured, dazed.

“Sabotage.”

The newssheet made the same deduction as Jed. Two hundred people were dead, and hundreds more—workers and villagers both—were injured. In the surrounding area, many were sick from the purple and sulfur-yellow clouds of smoke released when the factory went up in flames.

“Oh, God. Imagine if the winds had driven the smoke toward Delhi rather than away?” Esme leaned into Jed’s sturdy strength. “How awful.”

“Bleedin’ horrors,” a Cockney-accented voice said hoarsely. “To do this to women and children. Bastards.”

When she looked around, it was obvious that as news of the disaster sunk in, unlikely conversations were springing up everywhere.

Nazim stood by the steps of the telegraph office, resplendent in his Oxford style and flamboyant necktie. It was a flowing shimmer of blue silk, such as an artist might wear. Standing a wary distance from him, and leaning wanly against the office, was Gupta Singh.

“M-Miss Esme, Mr. Reeve.” Gupta straightened and moved toward them through the crowd. “Isn’t this appalling?”

“A tragedy,” Esme agreed. “Those poor people.”

“Poorer than you know.” Nazim followed in Gupta’s wake. “That dye factory was notorious for what it hid.”

His brazen approach astonished her, coming as it did on the heels of his threat to all she held dear. Beside her, Jed tensed into battle-readiness.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Nazim,” she said with rigid politeness. “I don’t understand how a dye factory could hide anything.”

“The British Raj said it was a dye factory, and indeed, its terrible aniline dyes poisoned the villagers’ wells, but it was the laboratory attached to the factory that truly interested them—and explains why they required not one but three boilers to supply steam power to the factory. They dreamed of adding dyes not simply to clothing and textiles, but to food. And with the dyes would come other chemicals, chemicals to control subject people’s very moods. Imagine. A people zombified to do their masters’ bidding or sterilized, denied children.”

The murmuring crowd grew silent, listening.

Gupta eyed Nazim askance. There was too much unsteady passion in the man’s glittering eyes and loud voice. It could stir the crowd to violence. The youngster ventured a distraction.

“I-India has had m-much bad luck recently. The goddess is angry. Wh-whoever stole the emerald from her golden belly three months ago has unleashed her curse.”

Discussion of a curse was more to the crowd’s taste than derogatory talk of the Raj. They seized on it eagerly. The Jungle Heart emerald was the largest in the world, and no one knew where it had gone or who had stolen it. Such brazen theft caught the imagination.

“Emeralds again,” Jed muttered.

“To talk of curses is foolishness,” Nazim said. “The only curse on this earth is man himself—and he is going to oblivion.” He pushed through the crowd and strode off.

“Barmy bloke,” someone in the crowd dismissed him.

“I hadn’t realized he was quite so…despairing.” Esme watched his departure, the jerky nature of his walk hinting at uncontrolled emotion.

“Yes, he didn’t seem concerned how much destruction the saboteurs caused.”

“Anarchists aren’t. I’ve read about their nihilist beliefs in my research into radical theories of social change. They argue that life is without meaning and that the world must be annihilated to destroy the evil of the existing social order—or that is the excuse they give for advocating violence.”