The Blushing Bounder (An Iron Seas Short Novella) (6 page)

Newberry let go of her hand, climbed out. “Go quickly, and find the inspector. I’ll keep near him, and wait for her. Find the Horde woman who was just hit!” he called to the driver.

“All right,” she said, but the man in the suit had already stopped, was peering down the path toward her. “Oh. Oh, he recognizes me.”

“I didn’t mean to!”
came a desperate shout.
“Let me be! I didn’t mean to!”

“Go!” Newberry turned, just as the machine suit spun and the man began to run. “Go!”

She watched Newberry sprint down the twisting path after the man, and then the rickshaw lurched into motion, a rapid clickity-clack darting through the crowd, and this time Newberry wasn’t there to keep her from bouncing around. She gripped the side of the cart, her heart fluttering painfully, and this was not exhilarating at all, but simply terrifying.

Just as she was about to be sick all over her feet, the rickshaw stopped. Temperance shouted out, “Inspector Wentworth! Newberry is after him!” and the woman took off at a run, brothers close behind, but Temperance was already coughing, coughing, and could not run at all.

“Follow them, please!” she managed to tell the driver, who gave her a wild grin and pumped his legs, and they had almost caught up to the inspector when she darted down a side path, and the cart tilted wildly as the spidery legs all seemed to shift about in one great heave, and Temperance was suddenly facing the same way, tasting bark beer in her mouth.

Ahead of them, she saw the springing machine, bounding, bounding, bounding beneath the roof of the striped tent. The crowd grew heavier as everyone came into the middle of the path to see, and soon even the driver’s honks and shouts wouldn’t move them ahead any farther.

It was not that far. Not that far. Temperance couldn’t speak for coughing, but she gave the driver a heavy coin and gestured for him to wait.

He nodded, and she began to weave her way through the crowd, pain stabbing her lungs with every cough, and blood in drops on her handkerchief. The machine had stopped bounding, but people in the crowd ahead had begun pushing back, as if trying to get away. Temperance clung to a stall post, legs almost too weak to keep her upright, and she would stay here, she decided, so that she wouldn’t be trampled and because Newberry could find her on his way.

Rising above the shouts came another noise, a high-pitched whistling. Oh, and she knew that sound. A boiler with its vents blocked and its pressure rising to the point of explosion. And as the crowd cleared, she saw it: the man trapped in his suit, with Newberry and the inspector frantically working to get him out. The inspector seemed to be shouting at him, and Newberry shook his head, and Temperance wanted to scream at him to
run! run!
but she couldn’t even breathe. And finally, the man came away, Newberry staggering back as a buckle suddenly broke free, and then the inspector was running, and Newberry running and carrying a murderer.

The explosion knocked Temperance down, knocked almost everyone else down—and those left standing ducked to escape the flying shrapnel. Shaking the ringing from her ears, she looked up. The inspector was standing, her brothers were standing…and Newberry was not getting up.

She couldn’t hear the inspector over the shouts, but as she staggered to her feet the brothers were lifting Newberry between them, carrying him at a run—too fast, and they were past her, and she could not even call out.

A hand touched her shoulder. She looked round, and the inspector frowned at her, shook her head. “Newberry’s lucky. The man we pulled out wasn’t.”

How lucky?

The inspector seemed to read her face. “He’ll be all right. They’re taking him to my father,” she said, and suddenly swept Temperance up in her arms—carrying her easily, even when she began to run.

Good Lord. The bugs did this?

Ahead, she saw the brothers flag down a steamcoach, but they didn’t wait for Temperance and the inspector. With a great bellow, it started off, and the inspector tossed her into the waiting spider rickshaw and shouted a direction to the driver as she climbed in.

They scuttled off at speed. Temperance gripped the side of the cart to keep from jostling into the inspector. Her breathing had eased, a little, but she saw the inspector’s gaze fall to her bloody handkerchief, saw the hardening of the other woman’s eyes.

“They’re taking him to my father,” she said, “but with this sort of abdominal wound, he’s likely to become septic after the surgery, do you understand? Without the bugs he’ll probably die. He
needs
the transfusion.”

Was she asking the wife’s permission? Yes, yes. Temperance nodded wildly.

“Newberry told me last night that he wouldn’t do it unless you did first.”

Oh.
There was no question, then. She would waffle about saving her own life. She wouldn’t do the same with his.

“I will,” she said.

It was simple for her. Temperance lay on a sofa, while the inspector’s father with his brown beard and sharp eyes gave her an injection of his own blood through a small hollow needle. Then he gave her a sleeping draught, and when she woke in an unfamiliar room, it was the next day, and her chest did not hurt, and her legs were not weak, and she walked down a stair without needing to cling to the banister.

The boy—Andrew—met her at the bottom of the stair, and led her to the back of the house where Newberry lay upon a table, a blanket over his hips, his chest bare and his stomach covered in a bandage. He lifted his head and saw her, but the red stubble on his cheeks had darkened his skin, concealing most of his blush.

She took his hand. “Good morning, constable.”

“Good morning, wife.” His eyes searched her face. “How do you feel?”

“Wonderful. And you?” She looked to his bandages.

“His lordship says that I’ll be completely healed by this evening. He’ll let me leave after dinner.”

“So all is well, husband?”

“Yes.”

For her, too. Temperance rested her cheek on his shoulder and wept.

5

I
T WAS NOT THE
first time Temperance had dined at an earl’s house, but it was the most pleasant. No one cared that her husband sat at her side, and she did a
very
good job of not staring at the countess’s strange mirrored eyes.

But though it was pleasant, she did not want to sit. For months now, it seemed that she had always been sitting, or sleeping, or in her bed. She wanted to walk and run all the way home, and then dance with Newberry around the rooms of their cozy, perfect little flat.

Perhaps they noticed her impatience. After dinner, the inspector wore an amused expression as she walked with them to the waiting steamcoach. Newberry assisted Temperance inside the carriage, then turned to the inspector, gave a nod.

The inspector closed the door after he climbed in, and said through the open window, “It has been quite the day, and this is the first night that you are both in full health since your marriage began. I won’t expect you early tomorrow morning, Newberry.”

She rapped on the carriage’s side. It jolted forward, and in the dark Temperance didn’t know if Newberry’s face was as hot as hers, but she guessed that it likely was.

“Is she always so bold?” Temperance wondered.

He sounded as if he were choking. “I believe so.”

Temperance could not be. She took his hand, and that was enough as the steamcoach traveled the short distance down Whitehall, then west to their mews.

Newberry seemed satisfied as well, though when they reached their flat and lit the lamps, it seemed his blush had not yet faded. Still he was, as he’d always been, the perfect gentleman. Her heart pounded as she readied for bed. She climbed beneath the sheets and then she waited.

And waited.

She heard his bedroom door close.
Ah
. Retrieving his things to move into here, no doubt.

Still, he was taking a very long time. She passed it by remembering how his chest had looked. How his lips had felt. Her shift grew uncomfortably hot, and she wanted to tear it away, so that she would be nude when he finally came to her.

Burning with frustration, she sat up and called, “Edward?”

He appeared at her door a moment later, hair wild, gaze darting to the window. “Yes?”

He’d been in bed, she realized. Sleeping—or trying to. Suddenly aware of her bare breasts beneath the thin shift, she pulled her sheet up to her chin.

Temperance almost lost her courage before she found it again. “I thought you might sleep with me from now on.”

His blush covered his face, his neck. How far down did it go? Her gaze dropped, then stopped at the linen stretched over his hips, the tent tall enough to house a fair. Her fingers shook, and the ache started again, so needy, so deep.

“I think that you would like to come to bed, too,” she said. Oh, and how
she
wanted him to.

His eyes closed. His voice was tortured. “I haven’t…before.”

So? “Neither have I. But I’m sure we’ll manage to fit everything into the right places.”

He nodded, and her heart thumped as he approached the bed. She scooted to give him room. He lay on his side, his feet at the very bottom. Gently, he stroked her cheek.

She touched his, felt the heat. “My sister once warned me that a man who blushed so easily was probably a
Man With Appetites
.”

His fingers stilled, and worry crept into his eyes. “I might be. I want so much, Temperance. But I don’t want to frighten you. Or hurt you.”

He was the sweetest, most perfect man. She brought her face close to his.

“You cannot hurt me, Edward.”

His nod was small, a bare movement of his head. Their lips were close. His ragged breath swept across her mouth before he filled the distance between them.

And,
oh so sweet
. His kiss was a slow taste, a tease against her lips before he opened his mouth on a groan and took it deeper. His hands found her waist, hauled her against his rigid body. She felt the hard press of him against her hip, and she’d never,
never
have imagined that simply knowing how he wanted her could strike sparks through her body, could make her squirm against him, until she was panting and wet—so wet!—between her thighs that she could not even look at him when he first touched her there.
Wanton.
But he didn’t push her away; it only seemed to inflame him, tearing her shift up over her body, his mouth suddenly hot on her nipples and his fingers pressing inside her.

She gasped, squeezing her thighs around his hand. Edward stilled.

“Am I hurting you?”

Unable to speak, she shook her head. But now his mouth was slower as he bent his head, the suction of his lips and tongue at her breast matching the languorous movement of his hand. Tension began to roll through her, some deep, awful, wonderful tightening that seemed to cramp at her calves and push her hips into wild gyrations, leaving her crying out his name and sobbing for some release—and suddenly it was there, in great pulsing waves that shook her, shook her like the convulsions of a cough, but so luscious.

Edward’s mouth found hers again, his hips settling in the cradle of her thighs. She felt him, thick and probing. She closed her eyes and stilled as a new ache formed, moving deeper, deeper, and her fingers dug into his shoulders. He groaned and his weight came over her, the ache not so painful anymore but just so
there
, it was all that she could feel.

His body shook. With her hands on the bunched muscles in his shoulders, she urged him to move. He withdrew and surged, and that easily Temperance forgot herself, forgot everything but the strength of his body, the sweetness of his mouth, the heat of his skin. The tension came again, building, and she strained to meet it, rising with him, falling, circling her legs around his hips to hold him close, arching her back as it swept through her, coming again and again with each heavy thrust. He called her name then, his body suddenly still but for the pulse of him deep within.

With a groan, he settled over her. Temperance wrapped him in her arms, felt the heaviness over her chest that was her constable, pinning her to the bed—and for the first time not making her fear that she was dead, because she’d never been so alive.

She kissed his jaw. “I love you,” she said, and laughed as he rolled over, carrying her with him. “And thank you for saving my life.”

“Saving you saved mine,” he said gruffly.

“I’m glad,” she said, and smoothed her hand down his side. His blush rose, and she grinned. “I ought to warn you that I’ve just discovered that I’m also a
Woman With Appetites
.”

He smiled. “Then it’s a fine thing we’re in London. No one will come when you scream.”

She laughed and lowered her head. Yes. A fine thing to be in London, indeed.

Thank you for reading!

I hope that you enjoyed
The Blushing Bounder!
Constable Newberry was a supporting character in my first Iron Seas novel
The Iron Duke
, and after writing about him there I just had to give the blushing constable his own happily-ever-after. You can also find a free (very short) tale starring Mina Wentworth and Constable Newberry in the Iron Seas version of the urban legend “The Hook”
on my website
.