The Girl with the Windup Heart

Jack arched a brow. The expression made him look somewhat sinister. Lucifer before the fall. Such a fascinating story. “Where did you learn the word doxy?”

She scowled as she took a peppermint from the crystal bowl on her nightstand and popped it in her mouth. “I heard one of your friends say it, so I looked it up in the dictionary.” She’d started reading the huge books for something to do, in order to learn, but words were easier to learn when a body had examples to which to apply them. “And don’t talk to me like I’m an imbecile or a child. I’m neither of those things.”

His gaze flickered over her before glancing away. Was he actually flushed? That was an indication of fluster. Jack Dandy was never flustered. “No, you certainly are not.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry you...overheard. That was wrong of me. You shouldn’t be subjected to such things.”

It was fortunate she couldn’t frown any harder because her eyes would disappear under the onslaught of her lowered forehead. “Now you’re talking like I’m some sort of fine lady. I’m not that either.”

His head tilted to one side as his gaze came back to her. “What are you, then, poppet?”

Sometimes she hated that damn pet name. It was better suited to a small child. And she hated that condescending tone, as though he knew her better than she did. She might still be new, but she was the one who spent time in her own head, not him. “I’m a girl, Jack. I might have started a machine, but I’m still a girl, and I’ve got a girl’s mind and a girl’s heart....” She stopped. What was she saying? “I’ve got a girl’s pride and a girl’s feelings. If I was up here banging the headboard against the wall with some bloke, how would you like it?”

Jack’s jaw hardened, as did his gaze. “That’s never going to happen.”

“Why not? You have your doxies, why can’t I have mine?” How had their conversation taken this turn? Mila didn’t know and she didn’t care. A fight was just what she was spoiling for, and she knew Jack was game to give it to her.

“You will never, ever have a man in your room, Mila. I forbid it.”

Forbid? Heat rushed to her face. Indignation was stronger than common sense, because the look on his face should have silenced her. She should have at least wondered why he looked as though he’d kill anyone who touched her. “You’re in my room.”

“That’s different.”

“So, it’s not having a man in my room that’s the issue. It’s having a man in my bed.”

He leaped to his feet and moved toward the door. “We’re not having this discussion.”

Mila followed after him. “Why not? Why can you do it and I can’t?”

“Because no one is going to treat you that way.”

“But you treat girls ‘that way.’”

That stopped him—just a step or two away from the door. He froze as though she’d tossed a bucket of ice water on him. “Yes, I have,” he murmured. “But that doesn’t mean it’s right. And no one’s going to do it to you.”

“That’s a bit of hypocrisy, don’t you think?” She’d just learned that word yesterday. What a perfect time to use it! “And it’s stupid. If you can have such ‘friends’ I should be able to, as well.” But she didn’t want those sort of friends. She wanted...

She wanted Jack.

Mila recoiled as though someone had punched her in the chest. That’s why she was so upset over Jack and his girls. Why she got so angry. She was...what was the word? Jealous. She didn’t want Jack to be with other girls because she wanted him for herself, and she didn’t want to share him.

“I know it’s hypocritical,” he explained, oblivious to her epiphany (another timely word!), “but it’s the way of the world. Girls are expected to behave with more propriety than fellows. Feminine virtue is something to be respected and saved for marriage, which is a load of rot, but it should at least be reserved for someone you love. Someone worthy.”

Virtue. She had heard the word before, but wasn’t clear on its meaning. “You mean virginity? I’m not even sure I have one of those.”

“Oh, bugger.” Jack ran a hand over his face. Were his cheeks actually red? “That’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

“The point is that you deserve better than a meaningless tussle. You’re worth more than that.”

“What am I worth, Jack?”

He turned on his heel. She stepped toward him, closing the distance so that their chests were almost touching. He was maybe four or five inches taller than her own considerable height. There was something in his eyes she couldn’t comprehend, but it made her want to grab him by the shirtfront, haul him close and press her lips to his—press her everything to his. Maybe make a little noise of their own. A wave of warmth rushed up her neck.

“You’re worth more than I am, poppet. Worth more than any bloke, and don’t ever let anyone tell you different. You deserve a good life and a good man.”

“What if I don’t want a good man?” She knew from remarks he’d made during their time together that Jack thought of himself as the very opposite of good. He sometimes seemed to wear his underworld connections as if they were badges of honor, something to be proud of.

His eyes widened. “You’re obviously still drunk. We’ll discuss the floor and whether or not you’ll apologize when you’re sober.”

“Jack.” He kept walking toward the door. His hand closed around the crystal knob, started to turn it.... “Jack!” She moved fast—incredibly fast—and slammed her palm against the heavy oak. The wood groaned under the impact—splintered just enough to poke the tender flesh inside her hand.

He didn’t look at her, didn’t speak, but they both knew he wasn’t getting out of that room until she allowed it. He was no match for her physically. Emotionally, however, was a different story. When he finally turned his head, his eyes were like glistening pools of darkness that cast a soothing spell over her, tugging her deeper and deeper into their depths until she’d do whatever he asked.

The bounder.

Mila shook her head, clearing the fog Jack had created. He’d almost had her—almost made her open the door. Jack had a talent for getting his way.

“Not fair,” she said from between clenched teeth.

“No less than you using your strength against me. Open the door.”

“No.”

He drew his shoulders back, anger tightening his features. “Mila, open the damn door. I’ve had enough of your sulking and pouting. Sober up and I’ll take you for an ice. We can do whatever you want.”

She stared at him. He thought she was pouting? And did he truly believe a bloody ice would fix it? “You really are stupid, aren’t you?”

Jack’s brows lowered. “What the devil is wrong wit—”

Mila didn’t think, she just wanted to shut him up. She grabbed him by the shirt and lifted herself up on her toes.

And then she kissed Jack Dandy. And it was wonderful.

Chapter Four

Three weeks earlier...

“I need you to explain something,” Mila announced as they left the little theater. They had just seen a production of An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde.

Jack buttoned up his long, black frock coat. “All right.”

“Why didn’t the wife just tell her husband she’d gone to visit his friend? Why was it such a terrible thing?”

“Because he was a single gentleman and she called upon him at night without a companion.”

She shook her head. “That still makes no sense.”

“Ladies aren’t supposed to call on gentlemen at their homes, and certainly not without a chaperone.”

“Can a gentlemen call on a lady without a chaperone?”

“Yes, but he shouldn’t if he really likes her. People might think ill of her.”

Mila kicked at a pebble with the toe of her shoe. “That’s stupid.”

Jack laughed. “It is.” He shrugged. “But, that’s how it is.”

“But why?” She knew she asked a lot of questions, and Jack had been very good about answering them, but the world was just so bloody confusing. Sometimes she didn’t think she’d ever understand.

“Because a lady’s virtue is her greatest possession, apparently. And a gentleman might lose control of himself and take advantage of her.”

Virtue. That was pureness. It was a synonym for virginity, as well. “Do men usually lose control of themselves?”

He opened the door to his steam carriage for her, so that she might climb in. “I’d like to think that they do not, no.”

She waited until he’d walked around and climbed in the other side. “You have ladies visit you.”

Jack paused, and she knew he was trying to think of a way to lie to her. He did that sometimes. “That’s different.” That was what he always said when he didn’t want to talk about it.

“Do you take advantage of your ladies?”

He made a strangled sound as he ignited the engine. “No.”

“What do you do with them?”

“That’s really none of your business, poppet. Not something you need to know about.”

“Do you have intercourse with them?” She’d read about intercourse in a book she’d found underneath the sofa.

His head turned, and he looked at her with an expression of...surprise? Horror? Bloody hell, she couldn’t tell! “How do you know about that?”

If she told him, he’d take the book away. “That’s really none of your business.”

“It is so my business!” Jack’s eyes were wide and black in the dim light.

Something in his tone made her fold her arms over her chest and glare out the window. “I don’t like how there seems to be separate rules for girls and boys. It’s not fair.”

Jack steered the carriage out into traffic. An old-fashioned carriage pulled by four automaton horses, their brass gleaming, raced past them. “No, it’s not. But it’s the way of the upper class.”

“Then, I don’t want to be part of the upper class.”

“I don’t think you’ll have much choice. That’s the sphere into which His Grace will introduce you.”

“I don’t understand why I can’t stay with you.”

“Because I’m exactly the sort of fellow a girl like you should avoid. Someday you’ll see that.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced at him. “But you said you don’t take advantage of those girls.”

He kept his gaze on the road. A muscle in his jaw flexed. “I don’t, but that doesn’t mean I’m a good man, poppet.”

“But you’re the best person I know. I love you.”

The carriage swerved. Jack yanked on the steering mechanism to correct it again. “You don’t know what love is.” He didn’t say it meanly, but she resented it all the same. She couldn’t argue, though. Maybe she didn’t know what love was. But Emily had told her that love was when you cared about someone very much, and she did care about Jack. He was her whole world. The idea of being without him scared her.

“Do you know what love is?” she asked.

He shook his head. “And I don’t want to. I’ve seen what love does to people.”

“What?”

Jack sneered—it was an awful expression on his lovely face. “It makes them weak. Makes it easy for other people to hurt them, use them and toss them aside.”

“Did that happen to someone you know?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer her—that meant that a conversation really was over. “My mother. She thought my father loved her, but he didn’t. Unfortunately, she loved him, and it ruined her.”

Mila didn’t quite grasp the depth of his mother’s disappointment, but she knew when Jack was upset, and when he was angry. That his father had been mean to his mother upset him and made him really angry, and that was a bad thing. “I’m sorry.”

He flashed her a slight smile before returning his attention to the street. “You’re sweet, you know that? You’re probably the nicest person I’ve ever met.”

Warmth blossomed inside her. It was like pleasure, but more—as if her heart were being blown up like a balloon. She smiled—and then remembered her manners. “Thank you.”

“That’s why I’m going to make certain you are never in a position to be dependent on a man. You’ll never go hungry. No one will look at you as less than what they are. No one will ever take away your sweetness.”

She looked at him. “Like your father did your mother?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand. Why would you even want me to marry someone of the upper class, then?”

“They’re not all awful. His Grace is all right. I want you to be comfortable and taken care of.”

“I can take care of myself,” she said, as the lamps of the carriage illuminated familiar streets. They were almost home.

Jack chuckled. “Physically, yes. But there are still a lot of things you need to learn about the world, poppet.”

“Like what?”

“Like that people lie. They steal. People can hurt you emotionally as well as physically. It’s worse than being hit.”

Mila frowned. “Who hurt you, Jack?”

For a moment, there was an odd vulnerability in his eyes, but then it was gone. “No one.” He reached across the leather seat and took her hand. “I promise you that I will never hurt you—not intentionally. No matter what happens now or in the future, you can always come to me. I will always be here for you. Do you understand?”

She nodded. “I understand.”

But she didn’t, not really. If she had, she would have known that Jack was lying again.

* * *

For the first time in the two decades he’d been alive, Jack Dandy couldn’t think.

Jack could always think. Thinking—plotting, playing out every scenario—was what had kept him alive and built him a fortune. He started thinking the moment he woke up and sometimes he even thought in his dreams. Certainly no girl had ever interfered with the process before.

Not even Treasure.

Mila’s lips turned his brain to gruel. No thoughts, only instinct, and instinct told him to enjoy this a little while, even though his conscience screamed in protest. His arms went around her waist, pulling her tight against him. His hands splayed across her back, feeling the movement of her muscles beneath cloth and skin. She was warm and soft and tasted like peppermint.

And he was not a good man.

Her fingers twisted in his shirt, tearing through the soft cotton as if it were nothing more than candy floss. She could easily crush his bones with those hands. The thought vanished as quickly as it had appeared—nothing more than a flicker in his mind. One of his hands came up and fisted in her wild hair—it felt like silk against his skin.

A loud shredding noise filled the silence—she’d torn his shirt completely open. Warm fingers found their way beneath to touch his chest, roam over his stomach and ribs. He shivered. Her hands moved up to his shoulders, shoving the ruined garment down his arms.

Mila was trying to undress him. Mila.

Mila, who he had first found in a box—not even fully formed. She’d been monstrous and heartbreaking. Guilt had made him take her in and look after her, but something else made him let her stay. Responsibility was only part of it. Watching her grow and change made his head spin, it had all happened so fast. He tried to keep up, but he had to constantly remind himself that, while she was childlike, she grew in maturity by leaps and bounds. She was gorgeous and looked like a young woman. Pretty soon she was going to be just that, but not yet. And he had no right to take advantage of her curiosity.

Logic and sense returned with a vengeance. It didn’t matter that she felt and tasted like a dream. Didn’t matter that she made his heart pound or his limbs tremble. She was his ward. His responsibility. It was his duty to protect her, not to treat her like one of his girls. She was so much better than that. Better than him. She was naive and sweet and good. He would not be the one who ruined that.

But bloody hell, he wanted to.

Jack put his palms against her shoulders and pushed. Her metal skeleton made her heavier than she looked, and stronger, too. Still, he managed to put a couple of inches between them, which was just enough to break the kiss. The moment his lips left hers he felt a profound sense of loss that was both awesome and terrifying. Damnation, what was that feeling?

“Stop, poppet.”

“Don’t call me that.” She tried to pull him close again, but he stepped back, and she ended up with nothing but a strip of his shirt in either hand. She looked at him, eyes wide and full of hurt confusion. She didn’t understand, did she? No, of course she wouldn’t. So smart in many ways, but the subtleties of humanity still escaped her grasp. She wouldn’t understand that he couldn’t treat her like that; she would only know that he’d pushed her away.

“We can’t do this, Mila,” he told her. “Do you understand that?”

“But I thought you liked it.”

A strangled laugh lurched in his throat. Liked it? Liked didn’t even begin to describe how he felt, which was all the more reason to walk out of this room right bloody now.

“It doesn’t matter what I like. What matters is what’s right.”

She frowned and shook her head. “I don’t understand. You liked it. I liked it. How can that not be right?”

He swore to himself. How could he make her understand when she hated all the bollocks about rules and expectations? “You’re right, you don’t understand, and I don’t know how to make you. I just can’t.”

“You could with your doxy.”

“You’re not like her.” No, she certainly wasn’t. “You’re not the same as those girls.” She had the world laid out before her. He could make sure she had an education, employment if she wanted. And when the time came, he’d pay all the right people to make certain she found her way into good society and caught the eye of a man who might someday deserve her.

Mila nodded. “No, I’m not. It’s all right, Jack. I understand. I’m sorry about your shirt.”

His shirt? He didn’t care about his shirt. He had other shirts. He cared about her. “It’s all right, poppet. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you, with all these changes that have been happening in the past weeks.” She’d gone from machine to human—a miracle in itself. She couldn’t possibly understand it all. “I know very little about womanly...things. I’ll ask Finley to talk to you about...how these things work.” He had to assume that by now Treasure’s relationship with His pain-in-the-arse Grace had progressed to a certain level. Not long ago that would have made him jealous enough to drink. Now he hoped for it. Hoped that Finley would know how to make Mila understand that he respected her too much to use her.

Something sparked in her eyes but quickly disappeared. “I wouldn’t want to bother her.”

“It would be no bother.” Besides, Treasure owed him a favor or two. “I’m going to let you rest now. We’ll talk about this more later, all right?” Truth was he was a top-notch coward, running away from the situation because he had no bloody idea what to do or say. His gut told him one thing and his conscience told him another. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he wanted to kiss her again. He wanted it very badly.

She just watched him with those big sad eyes. “Goodbye, Jack.”

“It’s not really goodbye, poppet. We’ll see each other at dinner.”

Mila nodded. “Right.”

Jack walked over to her and kissed her forehead. “It’s all going to be fine.” And it would be. He’d do everything in his power to make certain she had the best life she could ever have. She was not going to be tossed aside like he had been. He would care for and protect her until the world wasn’t such a danger to her.

Only then would he let her go.

* * *

A trip to the library was not what Finley had in mind when she followed Sam from the cellar laboratory. It was not the sort of room that invited violence.

“Is this a new form of fighting?” she asked, glancing around the familiar room. She remembered when she’d first come there, Griffin smiling down at her from the balcony that ran along each wall. That day she’d thought him the finest thing she’d ever seen.

Floor to ceiling was shelf after shelf of books, and the ceiling was very, very high. Griffin had more books than her stepfather’s shop, and he was a bookseller! Large, multipaned windows provided ample reading light during daylight hours, and gave the room an almost churchlike feel. Of course, that might just be her imagination, having grown up believing that knowledge gleaned through reading was close to godliness. “Are we going to throw books at each other?” Of course, she was joking. She’d never risk harming a book by throwing it at Sam’s thick skull.

“Funny,” he replied dryly. “I wouldn’t do that to a book.”

Finley blinked. Sometimes she and Sam were uncomfortably alike. “I didn’t know you read.”

He shot her a sour glance. “Emily helps me with the big words.”

Heat flooded her face. Sometimes she deliberately needled Sam, poked at him like a slumbering bear, but it was never her intent to offend him. Not really. “I mean, I didn’t think you enjoyed books.”

He shrugged before making his way to one of the shelves. “Depends on the book. Em likes to read, and she likes it when we can talk about a story. I like making her happy, so I read. Jane Austen’s not exactly my cuppa, but that Dickens bloke is all right enough. No more Shakespeare, though. Not even for her. That’s just rhyming nonsense to me.”

She couldn’t help but grin—and it was all right because he wasn’t looking. “The things we do for love, what?”

Sam pulled a leather-bound book from a shelf by his head, his expression droll. “Like risking your own death? That’s mad.”

“You’re a fine one to talk. If the suit fit you, you and I would be duking it out to see who got to go after him.”

He paused, then turned to face her, certainty etched into his rugged features. His dark gaze was blunt and clear. “No, we wouldn’t.”

Right. Because, if it was Emily who was missing, she wouldn’t even try to stop him from going after her. In fact, when Emily was kidnapped, Finley had known Sam had to take the lead on bringing her home. She hadn’t dreamed of getting in his way, even though Em was her best friend and she was worried sick about her. She played her own part, but let Sam do what he felt was best.

The big lad’s understanding of this made her turn her gaze away, to the shelves of books before them. She didn’t like that her feelings for Griffin were so transparent. It didn’t matter that they shared a bedroom, feelings were so personal. Private. Love made a person terribly vulnerable, and vulnerability was a state Finley despised. That he understood this made her want to punch him, and then perhaps give him a hug for being more of a dear than he had any right. “Why did you bring me here, Sam?”

He grabbed another book from a higher shelf—one she would have required a step stool to reach—and took them to the large desk at the front of the room. “These are books on the Aether.”

Finley was skeptical. “The Aether was only discovered a decade ago, give or take. Those books look ancient.” Really, one of them looked about ready to fall apart from its bindings.

“This one is,” he replied, pushing the less battered one toward her. “The other was written a century ago by a husband and wife who interviewed people who died and came back to life. Griff and I used to play with it as kids, that’s why it’s in such a state. Boys aren’t taught to be gentle.”

She didn’t care what boys were taught. Girls were lucky if they were taught to read. “I don’t want to read about people who resisted going into the light, or saw God or all their ancestors. I want to save Griffin, and you’re wasting my time.” So much for him being a dear.

“Remember when you told me I was smarter than I looked?”

She might have done that more than once. It certainly sounded like something she might say. “Yes.”

“Well, you’re dumber than you look. The Aether is where the dead go on the first leg of their journey. This book details what those people who came back experienced there. The Aetheric dimension is one of energy, and there are a lot of strange and dangerous things there for people who don’t belong.”

He was right: she was dumb. She should have thought of that—she’d seen enough bizarre things from the Aether to know better. “Like people whose souls are still attached to their bodies.”