Forty
Rosalind stood at the harpsicord, tracing her fingers over its delicate, detailed beauty. The warm, rich wood, the painted sky beneath the open lid, the black keys and their white counterparts, all were dear friends to her. This was the one thing she would truly miss. That was ironic, really, considering how it had also served as her prison bars.
She didn’t know what to expect, but Graham had told her not to bother packing, not to worry. She was simply to know that getting to this Chicago was going to be a little weird.
“If you come back with me, it won’t matter what your father thinks,” Graham had said. “In my world, you’ll go back to being yourself—who you were before you came here. And then you guys can be together however you want and nobody will give a crap.”
Heat had risen in Rosalind’s cheeks. “Really, Mr. Birkley. What a thing to say.”
Graham had grinned. “It’s true! People can date whoever they want. They can be whoever they want to be. You don’t want to play piano for a boatload of dances, for some schmoozy theater? Fine! Go to school, learn something else. Paint, ride horses, build cars, whatever. It’s completely up to you.”
A smile had taken over Rosalind’s face like a slow sunrise. This world of his seemed rather fanciful. And if he’d told her about it weeks earlier, she would’ve been sure a place like that could not exist. But after talking to Victoria, after the mayor turned out to be the mysterious Starkey, after her father had refused Oscar’s hand without giving her a say in the matter . . .
“But we’ve only got one shot at this tonight,” Graham had said before leaving. “So if you want to escape this life and go back to who you used to be, you and Oscar have to decide now. There’s no going back.”
The thought hadn’t given her a moment’s pause. Of course she wanted to be with Oscar. And on their terms, not on those inflicted by others, by her father, by society. A place like America could not exist, but Graham and Victoria seemed to think so. And Rosalind trusted her friends.
The sky outside was growing dim, filling with the oranges and purples of oncoming sunset. She hastened to her desk and scribbled a note, hoping Graham was able to find Victoria as he’d meant to when he’d left her here a few minutes ago. With a final glance at the harpsicord—and gratitude at her rapidly returning vision—Rosalind lifted her skirts and ran through her home—ran!—trailing the way down the servant’s back staircase.
Midnight. Her heart drilled in her chest. She couldn’t believe she’d be leaving with Oscar in a matter of hours.
Rosalind scurried past a storage room where a servant knelt to stoke coals for the fire. She passed the scullery where the sound of clanging pots and clattering dishes being cleaned arose, and she arrived in the large servant’s hall. A long table was the main feature of the room. The walls were bare save for a line of bells along the back.
The smell of broth, chicken, and freshly stewed vegetables swirled clear down to Rosalind’s stomach. Freshly baked rolls resided to cool on the countertop. She fought herself from pecking at one the way she’d done as a small child. Eartha stood beside the cook, peering into a steaming pot.
“I don’t know, Eartha, seems to have enough salt already,” said Valarie, the cook with olive skin, an accent from somewhere Rosalind had never placed, and an apron.
Rosalind cleared her throat.
The two women turned. Eartha’s mouth twisted at the sight of Rosalind, as if she’d swallowed something sour.
“Miss Rosalind, what in mercy’s name are you doing down here?”
Rosalind smoothed down her skirts, willing her voice to remain under control despite the way her heart cavorted in her ribs. “I’m leaving tonight, Eartha, and I need you to give something to Papa for me.”
Eartha and Valarie exchanged a look. Eartha removed her white, soiled pinafore and tossed it onto the counter. A few other servants scurried past with the final preparations for dinner, and more clanging and shouting came from the scullery down the hall.
“I’ll not be involved, miss. I’ve orders from your father. I’m not to let you leave the house.”
“Now that’s enough.” All Rosalind’s life she’d allowed others to control her choices and actions, but something had awoken in her. Her vision had returned. She’d pledged to be Oscar’s bride, and she would allow nothing to get in her way any longer. “I am the mistress as much as my father is the master, and I have as much say as he does. And I say I’m leaving this accursed town!”
Valarie stared wide-eyed, the soup steaming behind her. The servants stopped their bustle and stood at attention befitting a lady of Rosalind’s station. Eartha’s nostrils flared. She opened her mouth as if to argue. Rosalind thrusted the note into her servant’s hand, and Eartha closed her mouth.
“My apologies, miss.”
“You give this note to him, Eartha, or I’ll be sure he knows of your underhanded dealings with Wilker.”
A few of the younger female servants gasped and giggled.
Eartha’s face blanched. “The stable boy? Fie, miss, lies don’t become a lady!”
“I’ve no wish to be a lady,” Rosalind snarled. “Not anymore.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Rosalind snatched a roll from the cooling rack and made for the back door, her skirts sweeping the stone floor. Sunlight blared at her, but the air had cooled and crawled its way to the skin at her collar. Rosalind buttoned her spencer, her heart soaring at the sight of Oscar teetering toward her on the back step.
“Darling!” she cried. He’d gotten her note. He was here.
She could hardly wait to tell him of all the events that had transpired. Her vision had returned. And it didn’t matter if the servants overheard, or how much they knew, not now. From her understanding, Chicago was another land entirely and once there, they would never return.
Oscar stumbled through the courtyard enclosed partially by an iron fence. He wore an overlarge coat, and from the look of it, nothing else aside from his trousers. Wherever had his shirt gone?
She waited for him to envelop her, to explain himself. But he staggered drunkenly, crashing into a grouping of potted plants.
She rushed to his side. “Darling, whatever is the matter?”
His weight bore heavily to one side as though he was concealing an anvil beneath his arm and could no longer manage. His face was pallid. Sweat trailed down from his temples.
“I must—” He winced, propping himself on the paving stones of the courtyard. “I must get to water.”
Rosalind glanced up to find Eartha and Valarie’s noses pressed to the glass. Eartha stepped out, wringing her newly replaced apron in her hands.
“He’s sick, miss,” Eartha called. “He looks like he a needs a doctor.”
“Yes,” Rosalind said, her words ringing. “Valarie, send for Doctor Alverson at once.”
The two servants rushed back in, slamming the door behind them.
Oscar attempted to stand. With some effort, Rosalind helped him, worry tripping through her. She lifted beneath his arm, and he cried out in pain, faltering to a nearby stone bench.
“What can I do, my love?” she asked, desperately, her thoughts whirring. What a terrible time to fall ill. Graham had said they must go tonight. Oscar would have to leave as he was, come what may.
He breathed like a madman, his mouth agape. One bare arm left the confines of the overlarge coat. Rosalind averted her sight the way a proper lady should before throwing caution to the winds and staring at his bare chest. A pocket watch or something glinted from his shoulder within.
“I need water. It will take this chafing away. I need to be—in—water.”
He pointed beyond the wrought iron fence. Not to the gardens, but to the lake winding from the road near the left wing of Silverton Manor.
“I’ll have Eartha draw you a bath. Come.”
He fought her embrace, dropping to the ground like an animal. Rosalind struggled to keep hold, and in the process, tore the coat from its drape around his shoulders.
While his skin was smooth, creamy and completely bare from the torso up, his right arm was made of cogs just as surely as the massive arm that had gripped her a few nights ago. It clicked and fidgeted in a back-and-forth motion under her scrutiny.
Oscar lunged to replace the coat as Rosalind released a slow scream.
Tears blossomed in Victoria’s eyes. She couldn’t bear to cry in front of Graham, and so she’d run off like a foolish child. Out of Rosalind’s fine home, to the lake, to her tree. Graham was leaving her, tonight from the sound of things. The thought tore at her chest like her own personal Kreak, ripping away at her heart with its sharp talons.
If only he’d never come. Her life had been fine before; patrolling at night, training with the other Nauts and living on her own. She tried to think of other justifying reasons. Avoiding her mother whenever she could, that was another positive. Her life had been better without Graham, it had. It . . .
Oh, blast it all. She hated the feelings caving within her. The truth was, she hadn’t felt alive, the way she did in the sky, until she’d met him, until he’d challenged her to do more. And as much as Dahlia and the other Nauts might have teased her for it, she hadn’t truly felt alive until he’d kissed her. She craved him the way she craved breath.
“Stupid girl,” she muttered to herself, flattening the dirt beneath her tree. “Fool girl. Why did you ever balance your hopes on him?”
“Victoria?”
Curse it. She refused to look at him. Instead, she tossed her hair and glowered at the hovercarriages chugging past, at the pair of swans idling by, anywhere but at him.
In three more strides he was there, holding onto the limb above her head. “You okay?”
“As a matter of fact, Mr. Birkley, I’m not.”
“I keep trying to tell you what’s going on, but it hasn’t been working. You were right—I’m just going to come out and say it. You’re all from Chicago. Every person in this town. You’re from my world.”
She tore her gaze from the pair of swans. “What?”
He took her hand. That single touch defined her existence in that moment, twining around each one of her nerves. Aside from a few bird chirps, silence cloaked the air. Victoria should protest, but she couldn’t help meeting his ardent expression.
“I can tell you’re mad at me. I’ve been wanting—trying to tell you.”
“You knew me from before? Like Jane?”
“Not exactly. Starkey did though.”
“He did?”
Graham looked around for a few moments as if wondering whether or not the dirt held any threat. He opened his mouth and closed it. He began pacing.
“You know how you’ve been having flashbacks you can’t explain? It’s because he wiped your memories. He uses this stone, it reacts to water and a Charge, a power in the very air we’re breathing right now, and it’s what’s making the Kreak attack.”
“The air?” she asked. The sky, her beloved sky? Who knew even the sky held secrets?
She gripped the bark of the tree as if needing something to still her galloping pulse.
“Starkey said you all had a horrible past, and he, well, he erased it. He gave you all a new life. A great life. Do you remember any of this?”
Victoria shook her head, though someone else must be controlling the movement. It couldn’t be possible. He couldn’t be telling the truth. But how else could she explain the memory lapses and moments of déjà vu that came as if from another time? She’d always felt separate from her family too. Could this be why?
“Starkey asked me to pick people and start sending everyone back home, a few at a time. It’s not safe here anymore. The only way to stop it is to send everyone home.”
“So you’ve selected Oscar and Rosalind. You’re abandoning the rest of us.”
Stay back, wretched tears! She blinked at the burning behind her eyes, vexed at the tightness in her throat.
“What? No! I want you to come with me.”
Her world stilled. “You do?”
“I’ve thought it over. And you are the only part of this stuffy town I’ll miss. I’ve tried to imagine going back home, back to school, back to everything. And the only dark part of it all is leaving you behind. I want you, Tori. I want you there with me.”
Victoria’s heart surged. She made as if to run to him, to throw herself in his embrace. But he held his hands out as if blocking traffic. The bushes creaked nearby, like a twig being snapped, but she ignored it.
“Before you decide—‘cause I know I’m asking a lot—there’s something else you should know.”
“How—?” Rosalind could barely find the words. Oscar hung his head, trembling with apparent difficulty against the stone bench. He succeeded at replacing the coat over his shoulders and sat there now, shuddering. She was surprised to discover some burn marks and other scars on his good arm and back. What had caused them?
“How is this possible?” she asked. “What did that creature do to you?”
Oscar breathed with effort. His blond hair pulled free of its ponytail and hung loosely around his neck. His skin was sickly pale, and she bent to his level, her skirts pooling around her, her corset preventing a full range of motion. She managed to help Oscar to his knees. He clung to her, pressing his cheek to her stomach.
“I must get to . . . water. But I had—to see you—first.”
Rosalind glanced back at the large window in the servant’s quarters, as well as the window in the staff entrance door, but no faces peered through any longer.
“We must get to Graham. We’re leaving, my love. Graham knows things, he can help . . .”
Her words trailed away at a sudden realization.
She’d seen Oscar like this before.
After she’d first met him, there had been an attack near the shore. Oscar hadn’t made it to his gas mask in time. The fumes had swirled their way to him. The mayor had dashed over, carting Oscar away in a carriage, back when there were horses here. Back when there were no planes. Back when . . .
Panic pitched, solid and consuming. It climbed to her skull, all fire and gripping and fearsome.
It couldn’t be. She’d lived in Chuzzlewit her whole life. She’d been a musician, she’d been—how could she have been there on the beach that day? She wasn’t, the present part of her argued. She’d never been to the ocean during patrol before the other night. Yet, the memory remained.
But the memory couldn’t be true—the first time she’d met Oscar had been at her estate during music lessons shared in the same room. Her father had always kept her away from the shore. And where had the horse-drawn carriages come from? They’d always used hovercraft to get from one point to another in town.
More importantly, how could she have forgotten it? How could she have a completely different life now?
Oscar clawed at the pavestones like a deranged tiger. Pain was apparent on his handsome face as his overcoat slipped further.
Rosalind’s brain grew frantic with worry. She pulled out her pocket watch. It was a few minutes after eight. Only hours remained, but she couldn’t get Oscar to Starkey’s manor on her own while remaining discreet. No one else could be allowed to see him like this.
Rosalind hugged him from behind and spoke in his ear. “I will get Mr. Birkley. Can you wait here?”
“No,” Oscar hissed, rising to his knees and clinging to her. “Roz, don’t. Don’t leave me.”
His body burned against hers. His bare chest was slick with sweat. She smoothed his blond hair and pressed a kiss to his feverish lips.
“Stay near the bench. Valarie has gone for the doctor. I will return with Graham Birkley as quickly as possible.”
Not bothering with summoning for the footman, she lifted her skirts. She darted behind the carriage puttering its way down the road, hovering and swirling dust beneath its metal structure, and Rosalind did the second thing that day that a lady never did.
She ran.