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

steamcoach crushed her leg, and she was like a furnace to touch, with boils all over her face, and they had to put her in ice just to keep her alive. The physician said her bugs were working so hard to heal her that they all but killed her.”
    Bugs.Temperance didn’t know how she spoke so casually of the tiny machines living within her body, especially as they were called bugs . How could she not spend her day scratching at her skin, trying to get them out?
    Even worse, knowing that those bugs had been used by the Horde to control everyone in England until the revolution—and after they were dead, turned them into monsters.
    How could Miss Lockstitch bear it? Though Temperance supposed that never becoming sick would be one small benefit. “So you’ve never taken ill?”
    “No.” Miss Lockstitch shook her head. At her knee, the embroidery machine began clicking again. “I don’t know anyone who has been, aside from yourself.”
    “But there are physicians?” Temperance should probably contact one, before too long—though she didn’t know what a London physician could do for her. What would he know of consumption?
    There was little to be done anyway. Her husband had pressed the idea upon her that she might let herself be treated with the bugs, but she could not—she would not—become the monstrous thing that the infected became after they were dead. She would not allow her body to transform into a ravenous walking corpse, like those that had devastated all of Europe.
    The nightmares of becoming a zombie came as often as the nightmares in which she wasted away to nothing—and in them, she hardly looked any different.
    “There are physicians,” Miss Lockstitch confirmed. “Problems arise now and again when a girl in the house delivers a babe.”
    From Miss Lockstitch’s easy tone, Temperance gathered she was speaking of problems other than it being an unmarried girl delivering the babe.
    Yet another difference between London and Manhattan City—perhaps the biggest difference of all. After one forced kiss, Temperance had been shackled to a lying lecher, yet no one here thought anything of an unmarried woman bearing a child.
    “And then, of course, the babe will need to be infected with bugs,” Miss Lockstitch continued. “It’s always best for a blacksmith or physician to make the blood transfusion. In fact, the physician who infected Molly’s last babe is father to the jade whore paired with your husband.”
    Shock slapped Temperance, made her mouth drop open. “Father to the what ?”
    Two pink spots appeared high in Miss Lockstitch’s cheeks. “Perhaps that isn’t kindly said. I’m speaking of the inspector, Mrs. Newberry—the woman your husband has just been assigned to assist during her investigations.”
    “Detective Inspector Wentworth?” Temperance hadn’t realized the inspector was a woman.
    This wasn’t jealousy catching at her throat. Her husband was welcome to a wh…a woman like that. Perhaps it explained why he’d never pressed his attentions upon her—Temperance ought to be thankful he’d found someone else to force his giant body upon, even if he likely used her inheritance to pay the woman. And it wasn’t the pain of disappointment, either. She couldn’t possibly be more disillusioned in Newberry’s character than she already was.
    It was only a cough that formed this ache in her chest, a cough waiting to start up again and wrack her body apart.
    “Yes, that’s her name,” Miss Lockstitch said. “My Thomas tells me that the superintendent considers it a personal favor that your husband agreed to assist the inspector, and that Newberry will himself advance to inspector sooner because of it.”
    Temperance didn’t care what he did. “Will he?”
    “My Thomas says so. There was a time, we considered waiting to be married until my Thomas made inspector, too, but he couldn’t tolerate the thought of escorting that woman.” She shook her head, as if to express her