The Lamplighter's Love

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An Excerpt From: THE LAMPLIGHTER’S LOVE

Copyright © DELPHINE DRYDEN, 2011

All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.

“Mary?” Nicholas spoke from behind the mirrors, and Mary flushed to realize she’d been speaking out loud.

“Nothing. I’m here, whenever you’re ready.”

“Good. It’s calm now, let’s get you strapped in.” He raised an eyebrow at her as she swung the screens aside. “I want to show you something new today.”

After their odd moments of connection yesterday, Mary was keenly aware of every touch, every brush of his skin against hers as he buckled her hands into place. Had he always taken such care, she wondered? Or was she just more sensitive to it now that she’d allowed these foolish notions to enter her head? His fingers seemed to leave trails of sensation behind them, pulling shivers from her that she tried desperately to resist.

With the mirrors back in place, she saw that things were indeed calm at the moment. The early traffic had abated, the ship channel was quiet and no disasters seemed imminent.

It was all running like the clockwork it mainly was, and she saw nothing that wasn’t familiar, long since mastered.

“You said there would be something new,” she said, puzzled.

From beyond the mirrors Nicholas spoke, his voice sounding closer than she’d expected. Mary squinted through the brass hinges between two panels, but could see nothing beyond the screens.

“There is, but it isn’t on the viewers. I want to talk to you today, to explain something. And I want to make sure you listen and think.”

She nodded. Then, realizing he couldn’t see her, she spoke her agreement. “All right. I’m a captive audience now anyway, I suppose.”

“About that. It has occurred to me that you’ve probably already deduced the guild’s plans for you. You’re nothing if not smart, Master Mary Cross.”

It was still a thrill to hear that title. “I have given it some consideration. I can’t quite believe it’s what I think.”

“I believe they’d like me gone with the New Year. And I have reason to believe the guild currently favors you for my replacement.”

“But Amberherst and I have only just started taking longer shifts. I thought you still had another year to go at least,” she protested.

“I’m almost thirty, Mary. I can’t keep the pace up much longer. No one could, the guild knows that all too well.” He sounded resigned, but Mary heard a note of bitterness as well. “It will be a splendid retirement, of course. Land, money, a title. A voice in Parliament if I care to exercise it.”

That was the well-known reward of the Lamplighter, to be showered with such benefits. In part this was recompense for the fact that, after their unique service, many Lamplighters suffered crippling arthritis and loss of vision before reaching even nominal old age. But the prize was still tremendous. And with the recent reforms, even a female Lamplighter could look forward to holding land and taking a title after retirement. At nineteen, this all seemed a goal too high to even be dreamed for Mary, whose parents were stolidly middle-class.

“Will you keep horses? I’ve always fancied having horses,” she admitted, though she knew it sounded childish next to the idea of a seat in Parliament.

Nicholas chuckled. “I expect so. I’ll be an earl, after all. But Mary, more important are the things I won’t have.”

He must be standing—no, kneeling, she realized—right before her knees. She felt a distinct warmth where his body blocked the chill from reaching her forelegs. Mary was hyperconscious of the bared skin of her neck and chest, the hint of cleavage she knew was on display right at Nicholas’ eye level. She was glad for the mirrors that blocked her blush from his view.

“Is the channel still clear, Mary? The storm yesterday threw the shipping schedule off.”

Wrenching her mind back to the information before her, Mary focused on the leftmost screen, a third of the way down. Arrivals and departures, via teletype from the port authority, and a descending column of potential differences indicating the precise times at which certain actions must be taken if event “x” occurred at moment “y”. All the possible futures calculated, then excluded one by one as the minutes ticked by.

“All clear.”

“Good. Keep an eye on that. But listen. Because of all the things I’ve told you over the years about this position, what I have to say now is undoubtedly the most important.”

“All right.”

“When I leave here, it’s true I will receive a great many things. And I’ll have the means to purchase anything else I might ever desire. Lamplighters are too well known by the guild rank and file to kill us all off, is the problem, but we know far too much about how the city works to risk our disgruntlement.”

“Kill you off? They would never!”

Nicholas chuckled but Mary saw little humor in his eyes. “I hope not. Some of the guild’s historical records make me think it’s been considered from time to time over the years though. Especially after Bristol. The politics of the guild are not always as neutral and benevolent as they would have the public believe. Or perhaps I’ve just spent too long in the dark, and it’s made me tend toward dark thoughts. You’ll have to forgive me a touch of cynicism. The point, however, is that the Crown seeks to appease us this way, with money and a title to ensure our fidelity. They have for the past sixty years or so. What none of us ever get back, Mary, is the one truly important thing we’ve lost, and that is time.”

“Time? But you’re only twenty-nine, that’s not so old.”

“Old enough,” he snorted. “But it isn’t a question of starting a bit late, Mary. It’s all that I’ve missed during that time. I’ve spent most of the past ten years in this room. One hour off at noon and six each day, seven hours of rest and sleep just upstairs. Do you know I was your age, nineteen, the last time I saw the sun? The last time I shared a meal with my family. The last time…”

She waited for him to resume, but instead of words she felt a touch, featherlight against her knee. Through the heavy work skirt she felt it, and then a firmer tug on the fabric.

“Sir? Nicholas? What…what are you doing?”

“The guild leaders are old fools, Mary. They think they can change human nature by simply ignoring it. And they think if they appoint a young woman as Lamplighter, she won’t give them half the trouble of a man. Because if she’s been sheltered enough, she simply won’t know what she’s missing. But I don’t think that’s right. Or fair. You should know what you’re agreeing to give up. Amberherst already does, God knows.”

“Nicholas,” she repeated, now breathlessly, “what are you doing?”

She knew what he was doing. He was unbuttoning the front placket of her practical skirt, the better to sweep it aside. And now he was pushing her thin petticoat out of the way to look at her nearly bare legs. And now he was pushing his body between her knees, parting them and finishing the destruction of her modesty as the gusset in her drawers spread open.

She jerked at the restraints on her wrists, feeling for the first time in years a sense of claustrophobia in the confines of the Chair. But with her hands as good as shackled, and her head boxed in by the mirrored framework, she could not escape.

Nor was she quite sure she wanted to.