Free There Will Be Phlogiston by Riptide Publishing Page A

take care of her for me.”
    “I will,” he said, grave again.
    They were quiet awhile, Rosamond tossing stones idly
into the pool. After a moment or two, Jones passed her a handful of
smooth, flat pebbles and showed her how to make them fly across the
water. It was childish sport, but she found it satisfying and grew
rather accomplished at it. Her greatest attainment was seven
consecutive bounces, though Jones maintained it was six because the
final one barely arced at all.
    “Why aren’t you frightened of anything?” It was
something she had often privately wondered as she watched him (not
that she watched him, most certainly she did not), but she had
never imagined she might have the opportunity to discover his
secret. She rather hoped it might be something simple. Something
she could use herself.
    “Only madmen and monsters aren’t frightened of
anything.”
    “But you don’t care what other people think.”
    “I care what some people think.” He glanced her way,
eyes holding hers for a moment, unflinching. “I don’t want to be
alone.”
    So she flinched for him. It was such a blunt, naked
thing to say. “What do you mean?”
    “There hasn’t been much room in my life for
companionship. I want to know what home feels like again.”
    Rosamond’s time had been spent mainly in Gaslight
and a little bit at finishing school. “Does it feel like
anything?”
    Jones nodded. “Yes. You always know.”
    She thought of her father’s house. Grandeur and the
scent of roses. A library where nobody read now that her half
brother had fled. “What’s it like?”
    “It’s been a long time. Not since I was a nipper,
back when my mothers were still alive.”
    “Your mothers ?”
    “Aye, whores both of them. Raised me right though.
Never doubted love or happiness or what family meant till the
dustlung took them.”
    Rosamond didn’t know what to say. All she could
think of was, “I’m sorry,” but it seemed so hideously banal she
barely saw the point of uttering it. The reality of his life was
very distant just then, whoever and whatever had made him who he
was, this man who had come from nowhere and made a fortune from the
sky. It was hard to imagine he had ever been young or uncertain.
Harder still to understand the things that drove him, must have
driven him still: ambition, loss, poverty. Things she had never
known.
    She climbed off the rock and walked slowly away from
the waterfall. The leaves turned under her feet, cracking like
carapaces, fresh red flashing from beneath their dull-gold
backs.
    She didn’t want to go home.
    Anstruther Jones fell into step beside her, hands in
his pockets. “Did I do it after all?” he asked. “Make you think
less of me?”
    She stopped, turned, closed the sliver of distance
between them until she was flush to his body. Gazed into eyes
softened by sunlight. “You should kiss me now.”
    “I should, eh?”
    “Yes, and also remove your coat.”
    His laugh was a little shaky. “Why?”
    “You should kiss me because I want you to kiss me,
and you should remove your coat because I wish to see you in your
shirtsleeves again.” Her lips felt a little dry, so she moistened
them. “You have very pleasing arms.”
    The coat landed on the leaves with a flump. And his arms were even better than she had remembered, all the more
so because she could admire them at her leisure, without fear of
censure. Touch them even. She ran her fingers up to the crook of
his elbow. The linen was soft, his forearms tough and sinewy
beneath. She wondered what his skin would be like. Smooth, perhaps,
on this side of his arm. Rough, hair-stippled on the other. “Will
you kiss me after I am wed?”
    His eyes had closed beneath her touch. “I . . . I
don’t know.”
    “Lots of married women have affaires .” She
spanned her hands across his biceps, enjoying the reflexive
tightening of muscle beneath her palms.
    “Aye, but—”
    “What? Or do you think I will belong to my