Free Hot and Steamy by Jean Rabe Page B

thought perhaps it might be prudent for you to accompany me. Away from the schemes of your father and his enemies. Somewhere you could determine your own course.”
    â€œWith you?”
    â€œIt would honor me to accompany you.” Most women concerned themselves with the attentions and fortunes of available men and their standing in society. She was a woman of deep reflection. A woman of no discretion, as proud of it as she was difficult. A woman who preoccupied his thoughts.
    â€œWould there be horses? I love to ride.”
    â€œSurely we could find a horse for you.” He donned his top hat, and then tugged at the vest that covered his white shirt left open at the neck.
    â€œYou carry on like a brooding old man.”
    â€œI have enough vitality left in me to keep up with you.”
    â€œCome on then.”
    The Tejas Express slowed as it pulled into the Indianapolis station. Its gears ground and clanged as the rattletrap box of their car shook. Winston directed his soldiers to carry Lady Trystan’s belongings from the train and gave his number two a message to give to Sir Anthony upon their arrival in Chicago. Lady Trystan also gave him a note to pass along, informing her father of her decision to go her own way. That pursuit of her would only put her in further danger, though he shouldn’t worry. She’d be in touch soon and in the meantime, she was in perfectly safe hands. Winston spied the father who he stopped from beating his son. As they both disembarked at the same stop, he gestured that he would have his eye on him. Finally, he turned to Lady Trystan.
    â€œDo you believe in love at first sight?” she asked.
    â€œOnly inasmuch as I believe in the tooth fairy and leprechauns. It is the domain of fanciful schoolgirls and bored housewives.”
    â€œYou are quite the romantic.” She crossed her arms and turned her head in a feigned pout.
    â€œIndeed I am. I believe in love, deep and unbridled, not the turn of a pretty phrase, polite gestures, and barely engaged feelings which pass for courtship. I believe in putting in the work for love than contenting myself with the dream of romance.”
    â€œYou still manage to turn the pretty phrase, nonetheless.”
    â€œI have my moments.”

CLOCKWORKS
    Jody Lynn Nye
    Jody Lynn Nye lists her main career activity as “spoiling cats.” She lives northwest of Chicago with two of the above and her husband, author and packager Bill Fawcett. She has published more than thirty-five books, including six contemporary fantasies, four SF novels, four novels in collaboration with Anne McCaffrey, including The Ship Who Won ; edited a humorous anthology about mothers, Don’t Forget Your Spacesuit, Dear! ; and written more than a hundred short stories. Her latest books are A Forthcoming Wizard , and Myth-Fortunes , co-written with Robert Asprin.
    R osa sighed as the last man passed her by to dance with another young lady. She knew the chances were slim that any of these handsome gentlemen in black tailcoats and crisp white shirtfronts would reach for her hand and draw her out onto the dance floor—not when doing so meant being followed by a large, whirring, gasping device on wheels. You could have set a timer going as each man cast eyes upon her: how pretty was her shining black hair swept high on her head. How lovely her large brown eyes. Her pert, pointed chin had attracted many a whispered compliment that she was careful not to show she had overheard. Her graceful neck turned into a charming décolletage swathed modestly in her best lace wrapper. Then the large black disk attached just above the bodice of her pale blue dress caught their attention, drew it along the flexible brown umbilical to the bronze and steel machine, and the gentlemen, sometimes blushing at their own fears, would nod politely to her and pass along with somewhat indecent haste. Like the clockwork that kept her alive, the reactions were