Chapter X: Plot & Bothered

 

The couple of days leading up to my night with Alonhall were a flurry of activity, relatively speaking. Rumors that the two of us were already lovers ran rampant, as was to be expected, though fortunately none of the people I knew personally believed it. I didn’t really see it as a date, of course, though I was open to the possibility that it might turn into one if I liked her enough. Regardless of what it was, I had to get ready.

After much cajoling, I agreed to wear a corset to the exhibition, and I was assured that it would be loose and comfortable and all that stuff. The morning after the invitation arrived, I was dragged out of bed, forced across the manor, and measured with downright annoying thoroughness by the Halflance’s personal tailor. Meanwhile, Aisha became even more insistent in her lessons, to the point where even I had to remember at least some of what she told me. By the time I stepped out of the door on the day of the party, I at least knew the correct way to greet a woman based on her titles, which fork went on the far left, and even how not to look like a complete idiot while approximating a dance.

I was driven to the Alonhall’s townhouse by one of the manor valets, a woman I hadn’t met before. We made awkward small talk, while I got used to wearing a corset. It wasn’t painful or even all that unpleasant, a light pressure all over my torso. It did indeed enhance my figure slightly, which was something I wasn’t even used to having, let alone having enhanced.

The first thing that hit me as the steam carriage pulled up at the Alonhall home was how much smaller it was than the Halflance’s, though built in the same “Cassandran” style of ribbed iron. I hopped out of the side of the carriage, checked the dinged-up old pocket watch that Sir Margaret had given me, and thanked the valet with a small copper coin. From there, I passed Lady Alonhall’s exuberant collection of hedge sculptures to arrive at her front door. I took hold of the lizard-shaped knocker, hesitated for a moment, and then used it. The door creaked open, revealing Lady Alonhall herself completely ready to go. I suddenly felt under-dressed.

Lady Alonhall’s dress style was, in a word, fabulous. Her trademark entirely-too-tight pants had returned, to my annoyance. This time they were paired with a dark green blouse, low-cut to show off her near-total lack of a bust, and with long loose sleeves that wrapped around her arms as if they were her most scandalous part. She had let her hair grow out a bit since the last time I had seen her, almost two weeks earlier, so now the clean red locks fell around her ears. Her makeup was different somehow, subtle pigments arranged to make her features look almost strikingly masculine, except around the eyes where the colors exploded into something resembling a peacock at a pride parade. By contrast, I was wearing a white suit with some turquoise bits.

“Darling, it’s so very good to see you again! You’ll be happy to hear that my leg is healing well after that damned assassination attempt. How have things been for you?”

“Uhhhh…” I said, still trying to process her outfit. “There was another assassination attempt, so that was terrible. Someone really has it out for Lady Halflance, I can tell you that. Besides that, things have been a bit boring to be honest.”

“Well, I’ll certainly do my best to change that.” Lady Alonhall pulled a large brass watch out of her shirt and flipped it open. I had to do a double take, because for the life of me I couldn’t figure out where she had been storing the thing. It was the size of a calculator, but much thicker. Was she a secret time lady or something? With that outfit, the answer was a definite “maybe”. 

“…which means it’s about time for us to get going!” finished Lady Alonhall. Apparently she’d been saying something.

“It’s time?” I asked.

“Of course, darling, we don’t want to be late.” With that, Lady Alonhall grabbed me by the arm and started pulling me away. She dragged me back through the hedge sculptures and out to a side garage. Sure enough, she had a steam carriage ready and waiting, with a rather well-dressed valet waiting for us. She was less boyish than many of the other outdoor servants I had seen, with a short skirt over trousers, and prominent makeup. 

“The Leyrender estate, Lady Alonhall?” asked the valet.

“Of course, Synthia. You know the exhibition is tonight, don’t you?” said Alonhall, flicking her wrist demonstratively.

“Of course, of course.” Synthia suddenly grinned, turning to me. “And who is your guest. She’s quite the treat if you ask me, an excellent choice of accompaniment,” she said. Her eyes flicked down, seemingly looking at something behind me.

“Of course she is, Synthia, I wouldn’t have gone with her if she wasn’t. Now get in the carriage, we have places to be,” said Alonhall. By this point I was starting to get flushed from the attention. I had been to parties before during undergrad and high school, but rarely had I ever been actively invited as a plus one. Synthia leapt up into the driver’s seat of the carriage, while Lady Alonhall helped to pull me up into the passenger compartment. Damn me and my short legs.

The carriage ride passed mostly in silence, as it was short and I was feeling a bit too awkward to say much to Lady Alonhall. The carriage brought me towards the city center, for the first time in my time on Selene. The massive warren of towers which I had so far seen only from afar grew larger and larger within my sight, threatening to swallow me up like a steel spider’s web. The exhibition itself was not within one of those high towers, however. It was in a squat little building nestled in between two of the skyscrapers, kept perpetually in shadow by a high bridge connecting the towers on either side of it. With the exhibition apparently being a popular event, the streets around it were clogged with parked carriages, forcing the two of us to get off a couple minutes away. Truly, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

“Lady Alonhall, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you…” I said, trying to postpone asking her.

“Emma, I’ve invited you to dinner with me,” said Lady Alonhall, fluttering her eyelashes. “Please, call me Joyce.”

“Joyce…” I stopped, rubbing my throat. No Adam’s apple, still had to get used to that. “…a lot of people seem to think that this is a date, and we’re dating. And I’m not sure if you think that’s what this is, too.”

“Of course dear,” said Lady Alonhall. “This is whatever you want it to be. Now come on, these boots are made for malingering, not walking.” I wasn’t certain that she was telling the truth about that. But I decided to take her at her word. Lady Alonhall took me by the hand, a purely platonic gesture of course,  and led me towards what she explained was the world-famous Leyrender workshop. Lorraine Leyrender had been a dark horse in the world of engineering, emerging from an unremarkable middle-class background before stunning the academic establishment of Bluerose by being the first to solve the seemingly intractable Palmira Conjecture, which Lady Alonhall began to try to explain to me. I was too busy staring upwards. There was no way those towers could be real, even though I knew they were. They were at least a hundred yards tall each, an absolute impossibility given the technology of this world. The sheer weight of them, pressing down -- they looked like spikes piercing upwards into the milk-clouded sky…

“Emma darling. If you wouldn’t mind looking forwards when we’re walking into a building?” said Lady Alonhall.

My attention snapped back down to earth. We were indeed almost at the entrance of the workshop. There were several other women filtering in, including a few couples. Surprisingly not all of them were as finely dressed as myself and Lady Alonhall. I suppose that, as an exposition, the doors were open to some of the slightly less wealthy echelons of society. “So what does Lady Leyrender do, exactly?” I said, while Lady Alonhall pushed open the frosted glass double doors.

“Oh... everything?” she responded, absentmindedly. As I stepped into the open main floor of the workshop, I saw that she was correct. Before the main unveiling, Lady Leyrender had set up a bunch of demonstrations of some of her previous creations. Immediately by the entrance was a machine the size of a microwave, sitting on a pedestal, with a horn sticking out of the top and a wire extending out of the back. It was, as I learned, basically a crude telephone. Unimpressive. Off to my right was a demonstration of a new kind of cloth, supposedly made of fibers so tough as to be impossible to cut with a knife. Given how many times Nemesis has tried to kill me in the last two weeks, something like that sounded downright useful. Unfortunately it wasn’t for sale, no matter how much Lady Alonhall asked. I was oddly flattered, assuming that she was asking for my sake. I didn’t know Lady Alonhall that well at that point.

“So, Joyce, tell me a bit about yourself,” I said, trying to find something to fill the time. “What do you... do?”

“Oh please, darling, I’m the least interesting person in the world to ask that question about. I haven’t worked a day in my entire life, and I spend most of the rest of the time soaking up gossip like a sponge,” she responded, with a dismissive flick of the wrist. Then she turned to look right into my eyes, grinning mischievously. “Now you, on the other hand, I simply must know more about.”

I turned away from her gaze, instead focusing on a nearby machine: an advanced astronomical calculator, capable of predicting eclipses and syzygies from years beforehand. I started fiddling around with it, saying “What are you talking about? I’m not that interesting.”

“Oh darling, don’t be so modest, you’re incredibly interesting. A woman appears out of nowhere two weeks ago, with no memory of who she was, and is then taken in by the absolutely scandalous Halflance family? I simply must know more about you,” said Lady Alonhall.

“I mean, for one thing... the Halflances don’t seem all that weird from the inside. At least I don’t think they are, I don’t really have a frame of reference there,” I said. I was starting to realize that there were fewer planets coded into this machine than I was used to.

“I suppose that makes sense. But tell me, what is it like having no knowledge of your own past? I’ve always wondered what that would be like; you seem to be handling it incredibly well all things considered,” she said, smiling at me.

“Well... there’s something that a lot of people don’t know about. I don’t actually have amnesia. I had a life before, in a different world, with a different body, before I came here somehow.” I straightened up, not bothering to mess around with the astronomy machine anymore.

“Are you saying that you were transported between worlds somehow?” Lady Alonhall came in a little closer. “Am I speaking to a traveler from another plane of existence?” she said in a hushed tone.

“‘Traveler’ is a bit of a strong word there. I got struck by lightning and woke up in a ditch,” I said. I didn’t want to think about what had happened in between those two events. The voices, the person standing over me. I didn’t know what to make of it. Honestly, I was hoping that it was just a hallucination. Then I realized something. “Hold on, you believe me?”

“Of course I believe you, Emma. Why would a sweet young thing like you lie about something like that?” said Lady Alonhall, fluttering her eyes dramatically

“Isn’t it hard to believe? This kind of thing isn’t common, and frankly if I hadn’t done it, I’d say it was impossible.”

“Stranger things have happened, Emma. Uncontrolled dimensional exchanges are recorded in the theories of half a dozen philosophers and occultists whose work I am familiar with. But that doesn’t matter. What I want to know is what it was like in the other world, what was your life like?”

I hadn’t expected that question. I started walking off, lips pressed together in thought. Lady Alonhall took hold of my arm, resting her close-clipped pink fingernails on my shoulder. “Well, I was... fairly normal. I was in graduate school, working towards a master’s in physics, at a university in this city called Chicago. It was mostly laboratory work, a lot of programming and computers, a bit of hard math here and there.”

“I see. That would explain your interest in all of Leyrender’s machines. I’ve always been a bit of a student of the sciences myself, though I simply never had the time to devote myself fully to it...”

“Yeah...” I scanned my eyes around the workshop floor. One display in particular caught my eyes. “It’s a lot different on Earth -- the other world I came from is called Earth, by the way -- than it is here. It’s generally more advanced; the computers all run on electricity and they can store billions of pieces of information in this little machine the size of a book.”

“Incredible! All of this stuff must look like child’s play to you. Goodness, I hope I’m not boring you, darling,” Lady Alonhall said, smirking.

“Of course not,” I said. Lady Alonhall smiled.

“But do tell me; you seem to be taking this all so well, and yet... You must have had friends, family back in this other plane. You aren’t the least bit sad to leave them behind?”

It was a question I had been asking myself over the last two weeks. I paused for a second, and decided to answer honestly. “I did, yeah. But I never talked to my family much after moving out. I didn’t have many friends either, and it feels like I had fewer and fewer each time I moved. I always had a lot of trouble connecting to people, and all the stress of my job did not help on that front, let me tell you.”

“So you don’t miss anyone from Earth at all?” asked Lady Alonhall, tiling her head to the side. 

“Well, no, I miss some people, a little bit,” I said haltingly. “I wish I could still talk to my sister, my friend Aliyah. But at the same time, I’ve managed to make new friends here, closer than some of the people on Earth even.”

Lady Alonhall relinquished her grasp on my shoulder. “I fully understand, darling, living in the moment is basically my motto. Good food and pretty girls, that’s my life.”

“Yeah, honestly. I don’t know what it is about this place, but I feel like I’ve changed.” Obviously I had changed. I glanced down at my more-substantial-than-previously chest to confirm that. “I haven’t felt this alive in a long time.”

It was just then when the two of us reached the far corner of the workshop, where the thing that had caught my eye was. It was a statue or mannequin, carved out of light wood, in the shape of a woman. It wasn’t detailed, having no face and the hands being rough mitts, but the wood was shaped well enough to imply toned muscles, a dancer’s figure. Attached to the statue by a cable dragging along the floor was a large cabinet-sized analytical engine in a clear glass case, all of the countless cams and gears visible but stationary. Stuck into the back of the statue, between the broad shoulders, was a gigantic key, being slowly wound up by a servant. The whole area was roped off. 

Standing in front of the roped-off square was a young woman wearing blue-lensed glasses and an engineer’s uniform. She was small and scrawny, with her clothes being slightly loose. Her hair was a mousy brown mass, and her skin was pale even by Amrinval standards. Her lips were cracked and split, revealing flawless teeth. To my relief, she was almost the same height as me.

“Greetings, who will I be having the pleasure of showing off in front of this fine evening?” she said as we approached.

“Lady Joyce Alonhall, Baron of Crossel, at your service,” said Lady Alonhall. She bowed exaggeratedly, extending her hand to the engineer.

“Well, salt the earth,” said the engineer, shaking Lady Alonhall‘s hand enthusiastically. “I’ve heard of you, Lady Alonhall. I see you’ve brought a companion.”

My face got warm. “Oh, please. I’m just a friend. Emma, Emma Farrier, no title.” I extended my hand in turn.

“My name is Esther Nettle, an apprentice to Lady Leyrender.”

“That thing, it looks...impressive,” I said. “Did you build it yourself?”

“Indeed I did. And I believe we should be ready to show you what this thing can do in just a moment. Cassie, is it fully wound?” Esther said, turning back to look at the servant. Cassie nodded, before stepping back from the mannequin to adjust the controls on the analytical engine.

“Darling... er, Esther, was it? What does this thing do?” said Lady Alonhall.

Esther turned and stepped back, standing aside the statue. She quickly surveyed the half a dozen people who had gathered to watch her, before beginning. “Well then, ladies, it seems that we are ready to begin. No doubt many of you with a mind for the fields of engineering and automation will remember Edsel Incorporated’s ‘Dancing Doll’ mechanical from a few years back,” she said, keeping a high volume but not quite shouting. She paused, turning to the mannequin and grabbing it by the wrist. “Since then , it seems as if anyone and their mother has been able to build a mechanical that can dance,” she continued, taking off her glasses and folding them into a pocket of her uniform. “But it is my understanding that nobody has ever been able to build a mechanical which can dance with a partner. Cassie, begin!”

With that, Cassie flipped a large switch on the side of the analytical engine, and the mannequin sprang to life, standing upright and placing a hand on Esther’s shoulder, while she wrapped her right arm around its back. Then, after a moment’s pause, music began to play from the analytical engine. It was slow classical movement, perfectly suited for a waltz. And so, with the music, Esther began to dance with the mechanical woman.

It was more fluid than I would have expected, though a bit unsteady. Esther especially tended to wobble a bit, and yet each time she did so, the mechanical woman kept with her, before returning to the dance. I also noticed, based on my crude understanding of dance that I had picked up, it seemed like Esther was in the lead role, moving the mechanical woman around the square.

Lady Alonhall leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Goodness, I wish there was a dance floor here. I never got to dance the last time we met.” 

An image suddenly flashed into my mind entirely of its own accord, an image of myself and Lady Alonhall dancing together, pressed chest-to-chest and swaying across a dance floor. It was a shockingly detailed image as well, complete with the warmth of her hands around mine and the shuffling sound of her shoes on wood. 

I glanced down at Joyce’s body. Even though she was skinny and lanky, she still had a bit of curvature to her, fat or muscle I couldn’t tell. My eye began to flick even lower, but before I reached even more attractive climes, I caught myself. What the hell had I been doing? I forced myself to focus back on the dance in front of me.

After a couple of minutes, the dance of flesh and metal came to a climax. With a single swift movement, Esther dipped low, and the mechanical woman followed, balancing one one leg and bent over backwards. As a final touch, Esther planted a kiss on the blank face of the mannequin. Then the two straightened up, and Esther took a bow, to polite and quiet applause. 

“I was...” began Esther. Suddenly, she was overwhelmed with a coughing fit, forcing her to clutch at her face and sending tears to her eyes. She caught her breath for a couple seconds, before saying: “I was very lonely when I came up with that one, I’ll admit. Either way, thank you for watching.”

Then Lady Alonhall grabbed me in real life, dragging me towards the dining room. Apparently dinner was about to be served, and she was not about to miss that.

A servant in a fine suit pointed us to an empty table in a back corner, and we seated ourselves. I asked the woman next to me, an older woman in an austere dress, what the plan was; apparently the climax of dinner would be the new analytical engine. Now that science had given away to gossip, Lady Alonhall was back in her element. In a minute flat, she was embroiled in one of her fanciful stories from her time in the army. This one was a quick drama, about her liaison with an innocent young woman whose sister turned out to be a Cassandran spy. It was a bit awe-inspiring seeing how much she got into it, her eyes glinting as she told the tale to perfection. It honestly felt for a moment as if she had forgotten that I was even there. That wouldn’t do.

“That’s amazing, Joyce,” I said. She was just finishing her monologue when I stepped in. “Is there any, uhh... Is there any good gossip going around. I want to hear something juicy.”

She turned to me, stretching her back in a slick motion calculated specifically to puff out her chest like a bosomy cobra. I didn’t look at anything, I swear. “Hmmm, let me think about the most recent news,” said Lady Alonhall. She paused for a moment. “Well, one of the kitchen servants in the Sterreton family says that she thinks that Lady Sterreton is trying for a baby, because...”

I interrupted her. “I have no idea who that is,” I said.

Lady Alonhall quickly rolled her eyes. “Sir Danforth, the one from Siltval, has been making several more visits than necessary to the house of one Lady Creamfold. They say she’s trying to steal her butler.”

“Mhmm,” I said, trying to sound interested. I think Lady Alonhall saw through it.

She put a finger to her lips, staring off into the distance. For a few seconds, she didn’t say anything, and I could only hear the sound of quiet conversation and clinking silver from the other tables. Then she perked up, adjusting her seat to come closer to me. “There’s a story coming around that Victoria Halflance, that would be Lady Halflance’s youngest sister, has taken a sudden interest in fencing lessons,” she said. Even sitting down, Lady Alonhall was substantially taller than me, almost but not quite as tall as Lady Halflance herself. She was inching closer to me as she talked, almost looming over me. It was a bit intimidating, but not in a scary way.

Lady Alonhall lowered her voice into a breathy whisper. “The story is, and I cannot confirm this, but the story is that she’s become interested in dueling Lady Halflance for the title of Count. It’s a last resort measure, but when the family despises you that much, I suppose it begins to sound reasonable.”

“Seriously?” I said, glancing back up to Lady Alonhall’s face. “They’re going to risk death to steal from her, just because of her religion?”

Almost immediately, Lady Alonhall furrowed her brow, confused. Then her eyes bulged, her jaw falling open in a dawning horror that turned on a dime into a wide grin. “Oh good God, she didn’t tell you. I wouldn’t either, given the circumstances, but I can’t believe she didn’t tell you.”

“Didn’t tell me what?”

“The reason why her family hates her, of course. You’ve been living with her for two weeks; frankly, you deserve to know,” said Lady Alonhall, limply gesturing her wrist at nothing in particular.

“Well... I’ve been trying to figure it out. Nobody seems to want to talk about it.” I suddenly felt a bit guilty about wanting to know about it. It was probably something really private, and there had to be a reason why she kept it such a secret. Then again, it seemed like everyone else knew...

“Okay then. Do you know how old Lady Halflance is?” asked Lady Alonhall.

“She’s fifteen years older than me so… 39?” I said.

“Exactly, and do you know how old Parker Halflance is?” she continued. I shook my head no. “She’s twenty-two. Now do the maths.”

I did the math. “Oh. Wow.” Teen pregnancy wasn’t something I had much experience with, so I wasn’t doing well on the whole ‘words’ thing. “So who was the fa--, er, second mother?”

“Well that’s the thing, you see,” said Lady Alonhall, sipping from a glass of water. “Nobody knows except for Lady Halflance, and she’s not telling. What we do know is that she was long gone by the time the baby came to term, and hasn’t shown up since.”

Then something else hit me. I really didn’t want to have to ask, but I had to. “Ummm… how did Lady Halflance have a baby?”

“What do you mean how?” said Lady Alonhall. “Did people on Earth never invent sex?” 

I’m pretty sure I turned bright red at that, especially because I was certain that some of the other dinner guests had heard her say it. If they did, they didn’t show much of a reaction. “No, we did, I just… Normally it requires a…You know what, never mind. So everybody hates her because she got pregnant as a teenager?”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Lady Alonhall, setting down her glass. “It’s damned irresponsible, especially without marrying the second mother, or at least staying with her. It’s more than that, of course. One mistake at a young age can be tolerated, but Lady Halflance persisted. Her mother rewrote her will to cut Sarah Halflance out of most of her fortune in favor of Ginger and Victoria, of course, but when the woman tried to pass the Countdom on to Ginger, Sarah brought them to court over it, and even won! Then when she began to realize that being a count requires money, did she give in? No! She marched right off into the Katanak Hinterlands and found herself the daughter of a Jaleran industrialist that she could marry! For the past two decades, she has done nothing but spit in the face of everyone who has tried to put her in her place, with the ferocity of a Miranian bloodlion.” 

As Lady Alonhall spoke, she maintained an even measure, and raised her voice only slightly. And yet she built up momentum as she spoke, running faster and faster like an out of control locomotive. There was clearly a lot of passion behind what she said, and I could only imagine the countless screaming matches and endless debates that had taken place over this topic. I understood why Lady Halflance didn’t like talking about it.

“I think I understand now. Do you hate her? I mean, if you did, I don’t know why you’d be inviting someone who’s effectively her adoptive daughter to dinner,” I said, running my mouth out of shock.

Lady Alonhall looked around languidly, presumably searching for the waitress. Always on task, Lady Alonhall. “Honestly, I kind of admire her,” she said, with a voice like someone who had just spent a long night drinking and had forgotten where she was or who she was talking to.

“Well, it’s nice to know that someone is on her side. Then again, maybe she deserves it,” I said. Three gunshots echoed in my memory.

Lady Alonhall raised an eyebrow at me, but decided to ignore what I had said. “You wanted to know why I invited you?”

“I guess so.”

“Well, I simply needed to know more about you. It’s a fascinating story, really; the scandalous Halflance family takes in a mysterious amnesiac waif for seemingly no reason, the girl in question scarcely speaking or having an opinion on her first outing. And the story only becomes more complicated when, on said outing, said waif proceeds to save the life of one Joyce Alonhall, who would otherwise have been crushed to death, in spite of having never met her before,” said Lady Alonhall, gesturing idly with her off hand.

In all of the confusion of that first night, I had almost forgotten that I had saved her at all. “Yeah, I guess that’s what happened.”

“You’re welcome, darling. I suppose this is also a thank you, of sorts, for not letting me die. Not to mention, I simply cannot pass up a dinner with someone as--”

“Joyce, what are you doing?”

“Maria?” said Lady Alonhall, looking up at the woman who had interrupted her. She was heavy-set, with a substantial chest and round cheeks, face framed by wavy black hair. Her large blue eyes were beginning to tear up, and her fair skin was flushed with anger.

“What are you doing with this young woman, you pig!” shouted Maria, drawing awkward looks from all of the other dinner guests.

Lady Alonhall was pale, and leaning back in her seat as far as she could, as if her upper half were trying to escape while her lower half froze. “I’m taking her out for dinner at an exposition of the sciences, as you can plainly see.”

“I’m sorry, is there something I should know?” I said.

“Maria is a former paramour of mine, nothing more,” she said, turning back to me. “Why she has chosen to make an appearance now is beyond me.” Her voice was laced with subtle and oh-so-hateful venom.

“You said you would be with me forever!” said Maria.

“We were drunk! We said lots of things we didn’t mean,” said Lady Alonhall, gradually cringing in on herself like a demolished building.

“I wasn’t drunk.” Maria crossed her arms.

“Fine, I was drunk. I called myself the Count of the Sun, don’t you remember that? Our time together was wonderful, but it ended, Maria.” Lady Alonhall looked pleadingly up into Maria’s eyes. Maria’s expression didn’t change.

“And I was supposed you be your eternal Moon Princess, that’s what you said!” said Maria.

Lady Alonhall looked down, grimacing. Then she felt at her side, and stood up from the table. As she did so, she stretched her shoulders and straightened her back out to her full height. For a moment she reminded me of Lady Halflance, a dominant and imposing presence that strongly contrasted her usual foppish demeanor. Then she pulled out her oversized pocket watch and flicked it open in a single swift motion. For a few seconds she stood there, staring at Maria and absentmindedly stroking the inside of the watch. Maria looked back at her, expectantly.

Lady Alonhall glanced down at her watch. “Would you kindly leave us be?” said Lady Alonhall. Her voice was measured, but I could feel the force behind it. Maria looked momentarily confused. Then, sheepishly, she turned around and left. With that business done, Lady Alonhall sat back down and looked back at me. “Now then, where were we?”

“That was pretty weird, so I don’t really remember,” I said. 

“Indeed...” said Lady Alonhall. She looked down and to the left, momentarily worried-looking. “Darling, your lipstick is a bit smudged. Do you mind if I fix it?” she said. I shook my head no. She reached over at me, rubbing at my upper lip. I looked into her eyes. Her makeup was flawless still, beautiful and enchanting blues and greens in a winged arrangement. She pursed her lips and squinted at me, like an artist looks at a sculpture. She reached up and started brushing some of my hair behind my ears, gently and slowly.

“Has anyone ever told you that you are beautiful?” she said. Oh. Oh goddess. Oh shit. Oh no. That compliment hit me right in the nothing, sending me reeling with sensations in places I hadn’t even realized I had yet. I had never been called beautiful, of course I had never been called beautiful before because I had never been beautiful before! And now there was a woman staring into my eyes and telling me that I was beautiful.

“Ths...faa...erg...hm?” I said. I have no defense for my statements. You would do it too if your heart was halfway to breaking out of your spine.

“I’ll take that as a no, then,” she said, smirking slightly. She started running her hand down the side of my face, down my neck. I’m normally not a fan of people touching me, but I was really not in any position to object, staring slackjawed at her. I glanced down at her hand, right at my collarbone, getting a good view of my own cleavage. Oh my god, Lady Alonhall has the hots for me. She wanted it, from me, preferably soon. Before Lady Alonhall made it to second base, she pulled her hand back, slightly abashed.

“Um, Joyce? Is there any place we can go to speak in silence?” I could swear I saw her eyes literally sparkle.

“I don’t know for certain, but we can find something,” she whispered. We both stood up, and after a bit of finagling around the servants, we were able to slip off into the back corridors of the workshop. They weren’t as well-decorated as the main lobby had been, for obvious reasons. For a minute or two Lady Alonhall and I hurried around the back halls, with all of their plaster walls and plain wooden floors. Then we found a room whose door was unlocked. We slipped inside and closed the door behind us. For a few seconds, we stood there, letting our eyes adjust to the half-darkness of the room.

And then I grabbed Lady Alonhall by the ribs and pressed her against the wall.