Free The Constantine Affliction by T. Aaron Payton Page A

the edge of decency anyway. Perhaps if she wrote it as a fiction…
    Keep your head, Eleanor , she scolded herself. In times of extreme stress her mind tended to spin and whirl, addressing everything except the problem at hand. When she’d gotten word of David’s death in India, all her thoughts had gone to practical matters: how to assist the family with funeral arrangements, the difficulty of conducting those arrangements when his remains were impossible to recover, making sure his mother and sisters had all the support they needed, and so on. It was weeks after the services before the grief finally caught up with her, a wave of sudden loss that had had made her knees buckle in a millinery shop. The shopgirl had assumed Ellie was swooning. Alas, no. She was entirely conscious the entire time. That was the problem. Those who fainted in the extremity of emotion were lucky. Ellie was awake and aware to experience everything.
    The door opened, and Ellie willed herself to lay still. Her concubine hadn’t reacted until Ellie touched it, so there was no reason she herself should react to the sudden entry of a lantern-jawed man in an ill-fitting suit—“Crippler” Crippen.
    Crippen looked behind the drapes, but paid no more attention to Ellie than he would to an ornamental vase or an ottoman. He crouched and looked under the bed, and Ellie tensed, lest he discover the men’s clothing and false mustache and make the connection. But apparently a wad of discarded clothes was no reason for alarm in this establishment, for he rose to his feet and turned toward the door.
    Then he paused, and looked down at Ellie, and grunted.
    She did her very best not to tense, or to flicker her half-lidded eyes. Crippen leaned over her, openly ogling—and why not? She was a machine; she had no dignity or modesty to protect. That was the point . Still, his gaze made her skin crawl, and it was so much worse when he extended a hand toward her bosom—
    “Here, now, no time to play with the dollies,” said a gruff voice from the hallway. “I checked all the rooms on the other side, and the bloke’s nowhere to be found. Must have slipped past the mechanical dollymops before we got upstairs. The old man’s going to be furious, he is.”
    “Who cares if some toff’s poking a rubber doll anyway?” Crippen prodded Ellie in the ribs sharply with his forefinger, as if by way of illustration, and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out.
    “What, you don’t know? That man with the funny goggles isn’t just any old knight of the realm, Crippler. He’s got the Queen’s ear.”
    “Ha. Just her ear, then?” Crippen said. “None of her other parts? Maybe he comes here because Vicky doesn’t satisfy—”
    To Ellie’s surprise, the other man stalked over to Crippen and snarled. “Here now, don’t go disrespecting our sovereign. She’s our mum, ain’t she?”
    “She’s got nine children, but I’m not one of them,” Crippen said. “I didn’t know you loved her so.”
    “Just watch what you say,” the man said darkly, and stormed out of the room. Crippen chuckled and pulled the door closed after them, leaving Ellie alone.
    She’d survived that, at least.
    Now what?

    ***

    “Charles!” Ellie bellowed, slamming open a door, and startling the man inside. He was in his fifties at least, pale as a fluffy cloud, and with a similarly amorphous body shape. He fell off the clockwork woman he’d been riding and landed on the other side of the bed, where he cowered. Ellie stomped on to the next room, brushing a length of blonde hair out of her face. She’d done the best she could, dress-wise, though the most modest thing she’d found to wear in the courtesan’s room was a satin evening gown better fitted to a ballroom than a boudoir, and there were a few small stains on the skirts she chose not to contemplate too deeply. Who knew the fantasies of men were so elaborate ? The dress didn’t fit her terribly well, and she had