The Blushing Bounder (An Iron Seas Short Novella) by Meljean Brook Page A

was I to compete and to find employment if I did not?” A frown creased the young woman’s brow, as if she were uncertain how Temperance could have missed an obvious point. “I was apprenticed to the guild shortly after the revolution, but who would hire me when my stitches were so much slower? When they were sometimes uneven? I would hardly be useful in any of the shops, and a burden upon my guild house.”
    The need to be useful, the fear of becoming a burden. Temperance understood both very well. “I see,” she said.
    “I understand why this surprises you, but it was a necessary step, and all to my benefit. My machine is more advanced than the Horde embroidering devices are—and my fingers function as all fingers do, so the apparatus is still useful when I’m not working. There are many older ladies who only have the use of one hand.” Miss Lockstitch’s eyes narrowed, evincing a shrewdness that Temperance hadn’t seen within her before. “Without this, I could never have advanced within the guild. I could have been named seamstress, but my voice would never carry as much weight, and my purse would always be light.”
    She spoke so blatantly of money? Such vulgarity. But perhaps this was the way of London, too—and hadn’t Temperance once done the same, confiding in Edward Newberry about her expectation of a small inheritance? Was not her openness the cause of his deception and her current situation? She could not condemn this woman for vulgarity without also condemning herself, and Temperance refused to take the blame for Edward Newberry’s actions.
    Still, it was uncomfortable to hear such plain speaking.
    With her face coloring again, Temperance nodded and shifted her legs on the sofa, rearranging the thin cotton blanket over them, hoping the activity would also serve as a break in the conversation. She no longer wanted to pursue this topic.
    The clicking paused. “Are you in need of assistance?”
    “No.” Temperance smiled and leaned back against her pillows again. “I was only adjusting my blanket.”
    Miss Lockstitch hesitated. Her teeth pressed against her bottom lip before she admitted, “I ought to have told your husband when he asked me to sit with you, but I am not…I am not entirely familiar with illness. If ever you need something, please ask it of me. I might not know to do it, otherwise.”
    And here was the simplest way to be rid of her, Temperance realized. She only had to say that the woman would be of little help when her consumption worsened again, and Newberry would have to find someone else. Perhaps someone without an unpleasant contraption fixed to her hand and leg.
    But Miss Lockstitch herself wasn’t unpleasant, and Temperance’s horrid husband would probably find someone awful to visit with her, simply as punishment.
    “There’s not much to be done now, anyway,” Temperance said. “If the coughing begins to take me again, there are compresses and poultices that can ease the strain. But we will speak of these at a later date.”
    Miss Lockstitch’s smile was soft and grateful. “Is it very difficult, this illness?”
    Difficult? It was killing her. She could not cross a room without feeling winded, without her heart fluttering like a weak bird— she could not, though her sisters had once nicknamed her Temperance the Tireless. Her hands, once so steady and strong, could not hold a sketching pencil for more than ten minutes without shaking. Her fingers had thinned to twigs, and she could not bear to look in the mirror, to see the hollows in her cheeks, her sunken eyes, her pale skin. At night, she awoke shivering in her own sweat, out of dreams where she watched herself slowly waste away to nothing.
    But she only smiled faintly— did she appear ghastly yet when she smiled? —and said, “It is tiring, sometimes.”
    Relief softened the other woman’s features. “I am glad to see that it is nothing like bug fever. My guild mate Jenny came down with that after a