LOST SOULS
Andrea Dale
Benedict crashed his way into my workshop, not bothering to knock, as usual.
I’d become attuned to the sound of his key in the front door upstairs, though, so my hands remained steady as I soldered a terribly thin, delicate piece of copper wire to a switch plate. Only then did I turn.
He looked impeccable as always, square jawed and strikingly handsome with his dark hair curling neatly at the edges of his collar, his waistcoat straight and his cravat perfectly tied.
I, on the other hand, had on a dirty leather apron over my simple white blouse and everyday skirt, my bun was no doubt askew and my hands were rough and calloused from my work.
I was utterly besotted with him, with his thick-lashed blue eyes and his crooked rakish grin and his simmering energy, but if he were aware of that fact, he kept it well to himself. I preferred to think he wasn’t, to spare myself the humiliation.
He was determined to wed an heiress to up his standing in the world, as only a third son could be. I was determined to make as much money from our venture as possible, because the time would come when our partnership would end and I’d be on my own.
I didn’t want to think about that right now, so I firmly pushed those thoughts aside.
I removed my magnifying spectacles and set them down, carefully away from the soldering iron.
“How is your latest incarnation of the table mechanism coming along?” he asked. He saved pleasantries for those he tried to impress.
“It’s nice to see you, too, and it’s nearly there,” I said. “Why?”
He rubbed his hands together. “We have a commission,” he said. “In the Lake District. A holiday in the country—won’t that be lovely?”
The prospect of a week away from my workshop failed to thrill me, but the prospect of a lucrative appointment went a long way towards piquing my interest.
Thanks to Benedict’s connections, my mechanical skills and the current rage of spiritualism, we had a most excellent scheme afoot. I posed as a medium, rigging the table and indeed the entire parlor with gadgets Benedict and I could control. Knocking, table shaking, a cold mist—and now, if my calculations were correct (and they usually were), an actual appearance of an apparition. Benedict apprised me ahead of time of the details I should know about the client and the dearly departed loved one they wished to contact—he was usually in their circle, after all—and we made a tidy sum.
And on the side, Benedict usually managed to pocket a few trinkets and baubles we could fence on the London market.
I didn’t really approve of the latter; that was common thievery. Our deception, on the other hand…well, if Benedict’s friends with too much money and not enough sense were gullible enough to believe I was a Gypsy, then they deserved to be swindled.
I mean, me, a Gypsy? My father was Indian, to be sure, but my mother was Scottish through and through, and just because there was a dusky hue to my skin, it didn’t make me a Roma.
It didn’t make me a delicate English rose, either, just the disinherited granddaughter of a laird, without any prospects other than the ones I make for myself.
Benedict took my face in his long-fingered hands, and a delicious thrill ran through me.
“You are a wonder,” he said, kissing my forehead, and I closed my eyes and allowed myself to imagine him kissing my lips, my breasts and that sweet spot between my thighs.
And then I thought about another item I’d fashioned, one shaped like a man that hummed and buzzed, and how I’d put it to good use tonight, thinking of him.
The train journey to the Lake District passed without incident; Benedict slumbered and I wiled away the time alternately reading a scientific journal, sketching plans for a more efficient telegraph and fantasizing about hiking up my skirts and settling myself on Benedict’s lap after freeing his member and…
I jolted awake and cursed reality.
The house was large and rambling, right on the stony shores of a dark lake, the kind you could imagine harbored a kelpie in its depths (if you believed in that sort of thing). My mind wandered to thoughts of a contrivance that would allow you to travel underwater and quest for such creatures.
Something to ponder.
Everyone else was off on a ramble through the hills (and, no doubt, down to the local pub), the housekeeper informed us, which was fine because it gave us uninterrupted time to set up the equipment.
As we did, Benedict provided more details about our client.
“You remember Jessamine, yes?” he asked as he held the green brocade curtains aside for me so I could attach the bits to make them sway just a bit, as if in a strong breeze.
I did remember her, a fair girl with pearls woven into her masses of red-gold curls—an artist and model, as many of his other friends were. Not the society ones, but the bohemian ones.
“Well, Thomas, our host, took a shine to her and married her right up, even though he’s nearly forty! But she died of consumption less than two years later.”
I glanced over at him then, hearing a change in his voice. His face showed no emotion—which in itself was unusual.
I’d wondered what had happened to Jessamine, it was true. “Not a match I’d expected for her.”
“Oh, it wasn’t for money,” Benedict said. He took one of the sensory devices and reached up to tuck it behind the picture rail. As he did, he brushed against me, and despite layers of clothes, I felt the heat of him, sizzling to my core.
Thank goodness I’d tucked my special device amidst the other clockwork in my luggage….
“It was a love match for both of them,” Benedict went on. “They were besotted with each other. It’s said”—and here his voice dropped conspiratorially, giving me another shiver because that’s how I imagined he’d sound in my bed—“they had quite a passionate connection as well.”
My fingers fumbled on the connections that would allow me to make the parlor table judder when I pressed a remote hidden in my shoe.
“I see,” I said, and had to clear my throat. “Is that something I should be bringing up during the séance, then?”
Now it was Benedict’s turn to pause. “If you think you can do it convincingly,” he said finally.
My breasts swelled beneath the confines of my corset, tender and tantalizing. I ached for him.
But at the same time, I hid a smile. Could I be convincing? There were things Benedict didn’t know about me, and I suspected he would be the most shocked of them all to find out.
Thomas was a handsome man, and I could understand why Jessamine had been attracted to him. His eyes were shadowed and there were lines of sadness around his mouth, and I felt a pang of conscience.
Usually our clients wanted the salacious aspects of a séance—wanted to believe there were spirits and we could contact them and here were the delightful shocks of doing so. Or they wanted to know where Aunt Henrietta had hidden her diamond brooch or ancient Chinese vase or other expensive item.
Rarely was it ever about true loss, deep emotion.
Even if I couldn’t contact Thomas’s wife from beyond the grave, I could at least try to give him some peace.
The rest of the assembled group were bohemian friends of Benedict, half-stoned on absinthe and who knew what else, their fingers stained with paint and ink. Some had attended a séance or two before.
“May I present the amazing Philippa,” Benedict said to the assembled group. “In her native land she was called Vadoma, which means the knowing one,” and here he paused to let that information settle, “but to ease her acceptance into society, she has chosen a proper English name.”
I mentally rolled my eyes at the ridiculous spiel I had heard many times before. We’d decided early on to use my real name so that I didn’t forget to answer to something else.
We didn’t have the required twelve in attendance, but since this was at a remote location rather than a London townhome, I had said we could waive that detail. “You will all have to ensure your focus is especially strong to make up for our reduced number,” I said.
Benedict never participated in the actual séance. His job was to remotely operate his own controls as well as to discreetly step in if an effect wasn’t working properly. He claimed he was an impartial observer—that if I was found to be a fraud, it was his reputation that would be harmed.
I told them to clear their thoughts and be of like mind, and then we joined hands, Thomas at my left and a foreign lad named Fran?ois on my right (although I suspected he was about as French as I was Romani).
I had remotes in each of my shoes and one between my knees. Benedict had one as well, since the fashion of the day allowed him to slouch indolently against the marble mantelpiece with one hand casually in his pocket. His heavy-lidded blue eyes missed nothing.
I wished, as I so often did, that he was raking his gaze appreciatively over my naked form as I reached for his hard, quivering prick…
No. I had to focus my attention here, now.
“We seek an audience with the spirit world,” I intoned, pressing down with my big toe. The curtains shivered. At the same time, Benedict eased the flue closed, causing the flames to lessen. The room would become slightly cooler, and the vision of the curtains’ movement would make people believe they felt a breath of chill air.
“Come, grace us with your presence. In particular, we wish to make contact with Jessamine Blackstone, beloved wife of Thomas, who passed too early. Jessamine, your husband mourns your loss and wishes to know you are in a better place.”
I eased my legs together, triggering the remote between my knees. The ceramic vase we’d placed in the center of the table—one of Thomas’s own, with a rose for Jessamine—began to gently seep steam, thanks to the device I’d set inside.
A woman gasped.
Squeezing my thighs made me more aware of the heaviness I felt there, of the wetness that dampened my split drawers.
The things I was about to say wouldn’t help matters any.
“I sense a presence,” I said. “I believe it is indeed Jessamine.”
“Are you sure?” It was Thomas who asked, his voice breaking with emotion.
“She has a message for you,” I said. “She says she misses you dearly, especially the nights when you would crouch between her legs and worship her most intimate places.”
Pretty much everyone gasped at that, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Benedict stand up straight. I didn’t dare look at him.
Thomas laughed once, half sobbing, but with a relieved happiness as well. His hand clenched mine. “Oh, that sounds like my Jessamine! I miss you, my darling, desperately so.”
“She says there are erotic joys in the afterlife, too,” I went on, choosing my words carefully. “Tonight, she says, you should pleasure yourself, and she will know, and share in your delight.”
I would have been more direct and bawdy had I known the group better, but I didn’t want to shock anyone too much—or embarrass Thomas.
And I also wanted him to find peace.
“Every time you find your release, she says, she will be with you—even when you find another woman to share your bed. She wishes you to have that paradise again.”
“I could never—” Thomas said.
I coughed, Benedict’s cue. The round table we sat around jumped once, then shook. One of the women across from me—Livia, I recalled—squeaked and pushed back her chair, but the people on either side of her kept a tight hold on her hands so she couldn’t break the circle and flee.
“She says yes, when it is time, this is what she wishes for you, more than anything,” I said. “She desires your happiness, Thomas. I feel it, I truly do.”
The table stopped shuddering. Everyone, even the men, breathed out heavily, a whoosh of released air.
“I just…I just miss her so much.” Thomas’s voice broke.
“There may be a way to see her again,” I said carefully.
His head shot up. “Really?”
“I’ll make no guarantees,” I said. “It’s a new device I’ve developed. If my calculations are correct, the energy raised will allow a spirit—your lost wife—to manifest for a few moments. You won’t be able to touch her, though,” I warned. I paused. “Would you like me to try?”
Without hesitation, Thomas breathed “Yes.”
And so Benedict wheeled my new invention into the room and dramatically flung off the sheet that covered it.
It was a thing of beauty, if I say so myself: brass and burnished wood and gears and levers, and two intricate coils between which strands of stunning blue electricity would arc like lovers reaching across time itself.
The image that would appear (and I had practiced on the thing, so I was reasonably confident it would) wouldn’t be a spirit at all, but a projection. For a moment I felt guilty, but then I decided it was what Thomas truly wanted—he needed to believe.
I let Benedict handle this one, because the controls were more complex and the rules of a proper séance said that you mustn’t release each other’s hands until the ceremony had finished.
Behind me, the machine hummed and sang, and then crackled as the energy whipped between the coils.
When everyone’s eyes widened—and Thomas’s glistened with tears—I dared not turn and look behind me. Instead, I looked at Benedict.
He wasn’t staring at the apparition. His eyes were on me, and his expression was curious, one I’d never seen before.
It made the breath catch in my suddenly tight throat.
When he caught my gaze, however, he looked away, as if I’d come upon him, red-handed, looking at something salacious.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but her force is weakening. She cannot stay.”
I expected Thomas to argue, or bargain, or question. Instead, he said in a small, choked voice, “Be well, my love.”
It was Benedict’s cue to cause the apparition to fade, then turn off the contraption. Masked by the noise of chairs sliding back and everyone rising and stretching, he eased open the chimney flue again. The flames shot greedily upward toward the fresh air.
“The spirits have left us,” I said.
I took my leave of them, claiming exhaustion (and indeed, the stress of the evening had been great). Thomas followed me out into the hall, took my hands in his, and thanked me profusely. Embarrassed, I escaped as gently as I could.
But not before sneaking a decanter of sherry to take with me.
As I loosened my corset, wishing it were Benedict tugging free the ties, I found myself envying Thomas and Jessamine. I’d taken a lover when I first went to university, and another soon after, but since entering the business partnership with Benedict, I’d had no one.
Which was silly. I had to stop pining for him and get on with my life.
But the séance had made me a bit maudlin and the sherry I sipped while I removed my layers and slipped into my nightclothes made me decide to indulge in my fantasies one last time.
I lay back on the pillows, my fingers plucking at the budded peaks of my breasts beneath my white nightdress. The pressure of the corset always made them sensitive. I cupped the heaviness of my breasts, stroking the tips with my thumbs, wishing it were Benedict’s slender fingers performing the task.
I imagined him leaning over me, murmuring in that low voice about how they pressed, reddened, against the cotton. I licked my thumbs and repeated the motions while in my mind’s eye Benedict was bending to suckle the buds through the fabric, his mouth warm and then the air cooler when he pulled away.
I pushed my nightdress up and reached for the device I’d set near to hand on the nightstand.
The space between my thighs felt thick, needy, and the scent of my own arousal drifted to my nostrils, spicy-sweet. My hips shifted restlessly on the bed, as if of their own accord, as I fumbled with the brass dial, trying to get the infernal thing to—
The knock at my door startled me so badly I nearly shrieked. I muffled it down to a squeak and managed to call out in a mostly normal voice, “Who is it?”
“It’s me, of course.” Benedict, sounding brisk to the edge of impatience, as usual.
My heart leapt for a different reason, my desire- and fantasy-fogged brain allowing me to believe that he was there to see me, finally.
I scrambled off the bed, staring at the device in my hand. I couldn’t just set it back on the bedside table! There was no other easy hiding place, so I shoved it under my pillow and grabbed my robe, belting it around my waist just before I pulled the door open.
Benedict shoved his way in and closed the door behind him, then turned. Whatever he was going to say died on his lips, and for a moment he simply stared at me.
Benedict had seen me in my nightclothes before, due to the nature of our late-night excursions, but perhaps it was that my hair was unbound and loose around my shoulders. Or was I flushed? It took everything in my power not to raise a hand to feel if my cheeks were hot.
Then he shook his head and said, “Everyone’s getting drunk downstairs. I slipped away saying I had to relieve myself, so they might eventually notice I’m gone. We have a little time. There’s a room behind the library—I’m sure Thomas has something interesting in there—you did remember to bring your lock-picker?”
Ah. Oh. I’d once watched the landing and deflation of a hot air balloon, and now I understood how it felt.
I folded my arms across my chest, suddenly feeling exposed without my corset. “Really, Benedict? You’d pilfer from the man after seeing his grief this evening?”
He had the good grace to look abashed, I’ll give him that. “I just want to see,” he said, sounding like a little boy eager to peek on Christmas morning. “We won’t touch anything today. Just so I know for next time.”
I sighed. The fact was, we were in this together, and I’d never had much strength to deny him. I slid my feet into slippers and found the pouch that contained my lock-picker. If we were caught out, as we had been once before, our story was that I was sleepwalking and Benedict was seeing me back to my room. People already thought I was curious and odd, given that I channeled spirits and all.
Early on I’d devised a little automaton that could thwart any lock, but this one was so simple, I could’ve done it myself. The hidden room was more a deterrent to prying eyes than a vault to prevent valuables from being stolen.
In other words, we were greeted with a room full of salacious writings and artwork: photographs of women wearing stockings and shoes and pearls and little else; photographs of women with men in the act of love; paintings, etchings, sketches.
There were small statues from the Orient, which at first glance looked like two lovers in a chaste embrace, but when you turned them over, you saw in clear detail that beneath their robes, they were copulating.
I saw books—titles I recognized and, I confess, some of which I had read—describing all manner of perverse things.
Although all these things were considered ungentlemanly and, indeed, outwardly shunned by society, they were available to people of mature age and respected morals…which meant the wealthy.
“Good lord,” Benedict said. “Philippa, avert your eyes. This obviously isn’t what we’re looking for—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped. The moment I’d seen the room, I had felt a fresh flood of desire, and it made me unaccountably tetchy. “I’m not innocent about these things.”
Benedict stared at me. “But…a lady…”
I snorted. “When have I ever been a lady? My parents felt a woman should be educated in the ways of pleasure. And I’m no innocent, Benedict. My bed has been shared.”
He shook his head, a stunned expression in his dark eyes. “I had no idea.”
“Well, now you do.” I wanted to leave—or I wanted to stay and have him leave.
Now he gazed around the room, arms crossed over his chest. Although I didn’t know why, I waited. Finally, inexplicably, he said, “You did the right thing, telling Thomas it was time to move on. Three years is too long.”
“Two years,” I corrected automatically. What was he on about?
And then it all made sense: his expressions, his demeanor, his willingness tonight to walk away from easy money.
The dull, delicious ache between my thighs was joined by a curious churning sensation in my stomach.
“Too long,” he repeated, as if he hadn’t heard me. His eyes were on my lips. “I believe,” he said slowly, “that I have been a right fool.”
“Benedict?” I whispered, not daring to hope.
“Pippa,” he said. “I’ve long respected you—though I fear I’ve never said as much—but I thought after I’d lost in love that I would never find another love match. That I should be practical and strive only for a relationship of convenience…yes, one of money.”
“Benedict.”
He took my hands. Was it the first time he’d done so? I believe it was, and I thrilled to the simple touch.
“I think now that I’ve loved you longer than I can imagine,” he said. “I just didn’t believe—”
If romantic stories, and even the books in this room, were to be believed, it was appropriate that he should initiate a kiss.
I have never put much stock in appropriate.
He held my hands. It was a simple enough matter to yank him toward me so he was within range for me to press my lips against his.
I half feared he’d pull away. But to his credit, after a moment’s surprise, he responded in kind—better, even, in that he released my hands and cupped my face in his in order to draw me in closer.
I allowed myself to be drawn under by the kiss, which reignited the fires in my breasts and loins, better than I could have ever imagined. His touch, his tongue—oh, sweet mercy, the way his tongue stroked against mine! I only hoped he was skilled in the ways of performing that motion elsewhere.
If he wasn’t, I could assuredly teach him.
Also unlike the penny dreadfuls, this was no gentle coming together, with no sweet music swelling. This was unleashed passion, desperate groping, and the only sound was the blood in my ears and perhaps Chinese fireworks.
The swelling, I suspected, was in Benedict’s trousers.
We broke apart, chests heaving, gasping for air, and as much as I wanted him to take me right there, amidst the explicit depictions of lovemaking, I said “No. This is a shrine to his lost love. It wouldn’t be right.”
“I agree,” Benedict said, surprising me once again.
Thank the heavens for my automaton, because my hands shook too hard for me to have locked the room up again on my own. Then we were racing upstairs, uncaring of who might spy us.
Once back in my room, he made short work of the laces of my robe, then stood back to admire me, shaking his head, before taking my face in his and kissing me again with a ferocity that left me shaking. With trembling hands I plucked at his clothing—he was still fully dressed so it took longer to strip him bare than it did me.
Finally we were on the high, soft bed; lips to lips, flesh to flesh. Benedict’s hands roamed my body, stroking, petting, sensitizing. He followed with kisses and, when he discovered I enjoyed them, gentle nips.
He worshipped my breasts, suckling and pinching, murmuring his awe and delight over them as I squirmed and moaned.
My need for him was ferocious, but I also wanted to explore his body as he had mine. We rolled as one, and as I straddled him to press my lips to his chest, he restlessly drew his hands up beneath his head beneath the pillow.
“Hallo, what’s this?” He drew out my personal pleasuring device.
At any other time I might have been mortified. But his reaction emboldened me: understanding dawned on his face as he sussed what the man-shaped object was for, and an enormous smile lit his face as he looked at me. His member surged against my thigh. “Pippa, you little minx! Did you invent this thing?”
“I did,” I said, plucking it from his hand. I showed him how it operated, with dials to select the intensity at which it hummed.
He reached for it, but I held it away. As randy as he’d made me, it was still my turn to play. I slid farther down on the bed. His cock was red, oozing clear fluid. I rubbed my thumb along the head of him, making him groan, and then tasted the sticky sweetness.
Although my device was shaped like him—made for pleasuring a woman—the vibrating surface proved to be highly pleasing when I ran it over his prick and balls.
Even as I thrilled to see how it excited him, I couldn’t help but ponder how I might fashion a similar device designed specifically for men. So I was startled when Benedict encircled my wrist with his long fingers and drew me down beside him.
“Ordinarily I love the way you’re always working out the next bit of engineering,” he said, “but right now my goal is to make you stop thinking about everything. Everything except me, and how you feel when I do this—”
He crouched between my legs and ran his fingers along my most intimate folds, slipping in my wetness. I tried to cry out his name, but it caught in my throat.
“—and this—”
Now his tongue stroked and swirled on my pearl—he needed no instruction, to be sure—and the noise I made was incoherent. Thought indeed fled as my need reached a dizzying height.
“—and especially this.”
He slid his fingers inside me, coaxing and thrusting, and continued his sweet assault on my pearl, and I shrieked and writhed as sweet ecstasy consumed me.
At which point, he pulled me atop him and encouraged me to sink down on his stiff prick, which sent me over the edge yet again. Gripping my hips, he shouted my name as he joined me.
There would be time later to speak of past loves, healing hearts and future dreams. Right now, all souls were at peace.