“Alice,” he whispered hoarsely, “oh God, Alice. I don’t… We have to stop now or…”
“Or what?” she whispered back.
“Or we have to keep going.”
She moved her hand again, fascinated and excited by his length and hardness, by the reactions and gasps of pleasure her touch elicited in Gavin, and she ached for his hands on her, but he was barely moving now, as if he were afraid he might explode. He gave another groan.
“. . . should we keep going?” he murmured. “Can we?”
She knew what he was talking about. A baby. If she got pregnant now, before they found a cure for Gavin, the baby would grow up without a father. That would destroy Gavin, not to mention what it would do to her. Further, an illegitimate child would also be unable to inherit her title, and despite all the traditions she had flouted, this one she wasn’t willing to give up.
It would be so easy to take him back to her stateroom, put him on the bunk and help him undress. She wanted to see him, feel him, touch him skin to skin, no barriers between them. And no one would know, or care if they did.
Her body hungered for him. But no. She had flouted any number of traditions, but this one… This one she wasn’t ready to forego yet. She dropped her hands and turned aside. Gavin swallowed, then turned his back so he could adjust his clothes. When he turned around again, she couldn’t help reaching out to brush his white-blond hair back into place, and she nearly leaped into his arms again.
“I’m sorry.” With effort, she pulled her hand back. “I wish there was some way we could…”
“We’ll live,” he said.
The little automatons were still hovering in the doorway, some of them literally. Alice shooed them off. “What happened while I was asleep? Kemp told me only a little.”
He turned back to the efficient worktable, upon which perched a new machine the size of a shoe box. A speaking trumpet was affixed to the top, and a crank stuck out of the side. One side of the box was open, and a few stray pieces lay on the table with some tools. Alice craned her neck to see what the machinery inside was for, but the angle was bad, and Gavin’s body blocked the way.
“Let’s see.” Gavin picked up a screwdriver and set to work with it. “After Phipps broke the firefly jar, we got back to—”
“She
He set down the screwdriver. “You didn’t know?”
“No!” Alice’s knees went weak, but there was no place to sit down. She leaned on the worktable instead. “How do you mean it broke?”
“Phipps threw a rock. All the fireflies flew away, though they bit a lot of people first. I’m sorry, Alice. I thought you were still awake when it happened.”
“Dear God.” She looked down at the spider gauntlet on her left hand. No possibility of cutting it off now. The escaped fireflies would infect a number of Flemish, but only a few of them would travel beyond their homes, and it would take years for the cure to reach around the world without artificial means. She had planned to release a few fireflies in every city they passed through, hastening the cure’s movement, but now…
“I’m all of it,” Alice said. “I have to spread the cure as far as I can now.”
Gavin set his face and went back to work with the screwdriver. “You can only do so much, Alice.”
“I have to do what I can. I have to save them, Gavin.”
“It won’t do the world any good if you kill yourself in the process.”
Despair crashed over her, extinguishing her earlier arousal. “What should I do, then? Every day I malinger in bed, recovering from curing people, someone else dies.”
“I’m working on a way to help.” Gavin tightened the last piece of machinery and closed up the box. “There!”
Alice blew her nose into a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes, a little miffed that Gavin wasn’t offering more sympathy, but also curious about the machine. “What is it?”
“I call it a paradox generator. But I can’t actually use it. Not directly.”
“What? Why not?” Alice drew back. “Will it destroy the world or something?”
“I hope not.” Gavin snagged a set of ear protectors similar to the ones Alice had seen Aunt Edwina use back in London. “But if it works, it’ll… Look, I can’t explain it. Let’s take it up top and I’ll show you.”
The wind on the main deck was fierce. It blew Alice’s hair and skirts straight behind her and roared in her ears. The disguised airship was the last and tallest car on the train, so there wasn’t even any shelter from the brightly painted boxcar ahead of them. Far up the track, a plume of black smoke blew from the engine’s stack backward over the rest of the train. Ash and cinders clogged the air. The little automatons, afraid of being blown away, stayed below. Gavin took Alice’s hand and brought her to a three-sided, roofed shanty that had apparently been erected on the deck while she had been asleep. The opening faced the leeward side, allowing them to stand out of the wind but still be outdoors. In the shanty was Dr. Clef, who was scribbling in a notebook. Click sat beside him, but he ran over to rub against Alice’s legs. Alice picked him up and cooed at him, eliciting his mechanical purr.
“So good to see you up and moving, my young treasure. I have kept your clicky kitty wound for you,” said Dr. Clef over his pencil. He face and hands were gray with soot. “I find the fresh air helps me think, don’t you?”
At that moment, a particularly thick cloud of cinders engulfed the shanty before being blown to shreds by the wind. Alice coughed over Click’s back into her much-abused handkerchief. “Fresh air. Hm. What are we doing up here, Gavin?”
