Steel Kisses Read online

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Praise for Laura Strickland

  Steel Kisses

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Books by Laura Strickland

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  A word about the author…

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  She smiled at him. “How would you like to begin?”

  “I don’t rightly know.”

  She reached for the buttons on the front of her dress, sewn of pearl-colored silk. “Most of my clients like to see what they have paid for. Would you like me to strip?”

  He swallowed convulsively. A dull flush rose to his cheeks.

  “Have you ever visited with one of Landry’s Ladies before?” Maybe he did not know what to expect, thought she would not look or feel like a human woman. Unless he touched her in certain places, he should not be able to tell the difference.

  “No. No, I haven’t.”

  She wondered how to put him at ease. She abandoned the buttons and reached for her hairpins instead. “Would you like me to take my hair down?”

  “I would. I’d like that very much.”

  A scratch came at the door, and then it opened to admit the little mechanical maid with a tray holding whiskey and one glass.

  The client leaped away, but as soon as the maid left, he filled the glass with whiskey and gulped half of it down.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” He extended the glass to Lily. “Will you take some?”

  “I cannot drink.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head. Her loosened hair fell down around her shoulders in separate tendrils, and he took a step closer.

  “My God, you’re beautiful.”

  Praise for Laura Strickland

  Laura Strickland’s novella FORGED BY LOVE won first place in the short historical category of the International Digital Awards.

  ~*~

  “The world building is phenomenal.”

  ~Daysie W. at My Book Addiction and More

  ~*~

  “Laura Strickland creates a world that not only draws you in, but she incorporates it…seamlessly.…the kind of book that keeps you awake well into the wee hours, and sighing with satisfaction when you’ve finished the very last page.”

  ~Nicole McCaffrey, author

  ~*~

  “As I read I became so involved with the story, I found it difficult to put down the book. …Definitely …an author to watch.”

  ~Dandelion at Long & Short Reviews

  Steel Kisses

  by

  Laura Strickland

  A Buffalo Steampunk Adventure

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Steel Kisses

  COPYRIGHT © 2017 by Laura Strickland

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Diana Carlile

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Fantasy Rose Edition, 2017

  Print ISBN 978-1-5092-1399-3

  Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-1400-6

  A Buffalo Steampunk Adventure

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  For Mike Reynolds and his Lily

  Books by Laura Strickland

  available from The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  Dead Handsome: A Buffalo Steampunk Adventure

  Off Kilter: A Buffalo Steampunk Adventure

  Sheer Madness: A Buffalo Steampunk Adventure

  Steel Kisses: A Buffalo Steampunk Adventure

  ~*~

  Devil Black

  His Wicked Highland Ways

  Honor Bound: A Highland Adventure

  The White Gull (part of the Lobster Cove series)

  Forged by Love (sequel to The White Gull)

  Words and Dreams (sequel to Forged by Love)

  The Hiring Fair (part of the Help Wanted series)

  Awake on Garland Street

  Stars in the Morning (part of the Landmarks series)

  ~*~

  The Guardians of Sherwood Trilogy

  Daughter of Sherwood

  Champion of Sherwood

  Lord of Sherwood

  ~*~

  Christmas Short Stories

  Mrs. Claus and the Viking Ship

  The Tenth Suitor (also appears in Brides of Christmas, Volume Four)

  ~*~

  Valentine Short Story

  Ask Me (a Candy Hearts romance)

  Chapter One

  Buffalo, the Niagara Frontier, July, 1884

  “There he goes again, the fool,” mocked Sasha Belsky in his gruff, thickly accented English. “Once more on the run. It must be eight-fifteen.”

  Belsky’s voice chased Reynold Michaels out the rear door of McMahon’s coffin shop and into the alley that led to Niagara Street, closely followed by that of Reynold’s boss, Liam.

  “Ah, leave the lad alone, will ya? There’s no harm in it.”

  “But what a simpleton he must be! He thinks—”

  Reynold lost track of their conversation then. The alley cut between two buildings and ended in an iron gate that faced the busy street beyond, one of the main thoroughfares of the city. He had no key for the gate, so he wrapped both hands around the metal bars and pressed his face against them like a man in a prison cell.

  Here came the tram—slowly, slowly, stopping along the way as it did every morning and puffing steam. It eased to a halt across from Reynold’s gate, and a number of people streamed off—men, women, a child or two. Reynold watched for only one, the others all but invisible to him.

  And there she was. All in blue today, dressed in a stylish outfit with a short, fitted jacket that hugged the contours of her perfect figure. Slender waist; high, pointed breasts. Legs that moved gracefully under the tapered skirt. She wore a matching hat, also—Reynold’s mind, which worked at its own particular speed
, groped for the name of the color: peacock. Peacock blue. It contrasted with hair the color of spun gold, and the angle at which it sat on her head suited her delicately featured face.

  She did not look in his direction; she seldom did. He doubted she even saw him there, gaping like a gargoyle, and he didn’t care. He needed but to see her, to watch as in the company of several other young ladies from the tram she walked off up the street in the bright morning sunshine, until the brick corner of the building next door cut off his view.

  Not a lot. Not much to live on for a day and a night—or longer on Saturday—but enough. He released the breath pent up in his lungs on a wave of bliss.

  “Is that her? The one with the blonde hair—the little dove?”

  Reynold started and swung around as Sasha spoke in his ear. The man could move as silently as a ghost when he chose; Reynold never guessed Sasha had trailed him down the alley, though he should have smelled him. From the reek, the fellow must eat garlic at every meal.

  And now he’d gone and ruined the moment, spoiled the picture Reynold meant to carry through the long day.

  But no—nothing could spoil it.

  “Leave me alone,” he said even though he knew Sasha wouldn’t relent. Sasha never did. For some reason he reveled in tormenting Reynold every chance he got.

  True to form, a big grin split Sasha’s face. It showed off his stubby little teeth and squinted-up eyes like those of a devil. Reynold longed to punch him in the face just to make that look disappear, though he never had in the past and doubted he ever would.

  Sasha, built thin like a string bean, must figure that, or he wouldn’t keep prodding the way he did. Reynold had several inches on him in height and probably fifty pounds in muscle. Toting corpses around the city tended to build a fellow up.

  “Hey!” Pete appeared at the other end of the alley, calling to them. “Liam says get back to work.”

  Liam McMahon, who had pretty good instincts about trouble, would have sent the fourth member of the crew to avert any discord. Pete, a mere stripling and still in training, had been half raised by Liam’s wife, Clara—one of the many waifs she’d taken in off the street.

  “Tell the big boss to hold his horses,” Sasha called back. “We are coming.” He laid a hand on Reynold’s shoulder. “Our friend here has had his little glimpse of heaven.”

  “Get off me.” Reynold shrugged the hand away before pushing past Sasha and hurrying back down the alley in Pete’s wake.

  Liam gave him a measuring look when he came back in through the rear door. The big Irishman had bought the coffin shop from his former employer, Franz Hengerer, two years ago—just before Reynold came to work for him. They’d relocated and expanded to include a showroom and now offered services other than the mere manufacture of coffins. For a small fee, they’d willingly collect the deceased from hospitals or scenes of the crime and deliver them on to wherever the bereaved wished, decently enclosed, of course, in new coffins.

  That was Reynold’s job—the collecting and delivering. He had a special cart he used for the task, and he did it well, not minding the company of the dead. They never badgered him the way Sasha did and for the most part provided peaceful company.

  He had a sudden, sharp vision of Sasha Belsky lying in one of Liam’s coffins, his hands folded neatly on his chest, silent at last.

  “All right, lad?” Liam had a rich brogue, straight from the old sod.

  Sasha, entering on Reynold’s heels, answered for him. “Oh, yes, he has seen his—what do you call it?—so virtuous maiden. He is set for the day.” Mockery still filled Belsky’s voice. Reynold couldn’t understand why. What was it to Sasha if Reynold watched a beautiful girl pass by?

  “Leave it,” Liam told Sasha in a sharp tone. As a boss, the Irishman was usually pretty easygoing. He asked their best of them and that they work as hard as he did—pretty hard. But he was fair and had a streak of kindness under it all.

  Sasha walked to the coffin on which he’d been working before he dashed out in Reynold’s wake. He picked up his sanding block. “But can you believe how stupid the lummox? He does not even know what she is.”

  Liam and Pete both shot Reynold sharp looks. Reynold didn’t understand what Sasha meant, and he hated when Sasha called him stupid, which seemed to happen on a daily basis, couched in a variety of ways. His thoughts might move differently than other people’s, as his ma used to say, but he wasn’t stupid and resented the label.

  Anyway, what could Sasha Belsky possibly know about the woman in the blue dress that he, Reynold, didn’t? She was just a beautiful girl who passed by each morning.

  The first time he’d seen her—oh, that remained burned into his brain. He’d been bringing back a corpse on his cart, an early pickup all decently covered, for as Liam said, the good citizens of the city didn’t need to see a stiff trundled past. He’d picked the fellow up at one of the taverns following a night brawl and had waited for the tram to pass before crossing the street. But the tram stopped right in front of him to disgorge a bunch of passengers. The beautiful woman—his woman, as he now thought of her—had been among them.

  He’d been closer to her that day than ever since. And that time she’d looked right at him, her heavenly eyes—blue but far paler than the dress she wore today—meeting his for an instant before sliding away. Something in the stillness of her face, its quiet perfection, captured him then and had not let go.

  Now he rounded on Sasha, facing the sullen man down. “Right, then—what is she? Best tell me, since you want to so bad, and know so much.”

  A series of expressions chased their way across Sasha’s face—glee foremost among them.

  “Sasha,” Liam began.

  But Belsky ignored him. He leaned closer to Reynold and in a false, confiding manner said, “She’s a prostitute.”

  “She is not.” Reynold had no hesitation in denying it. In all his twenty-four years he’d never beheld a woman so perfect, so pure and unsullied. “You’re lying.”

  Derisively, Sasha asked, “Are you sure? Do you even know what it is, a prostitute?”

  “Well, sure. What do you take me for?” He’d been drunk enough a few times to visit the girls down on the waterfront. They held no more resemblance to his goddess than a candle flame to the sun. And because he always wound up feeling so sorry for them, he had stopped going.

  “I know what I take you for,” Sasha retorted. “A babe in the woods. An innocent.” He raked Reynold up and down with his gaze. “Your little dove is just a high-priced whore. She and her sisters get off that tram and march right down to the Crystal Palace up the street. Haven’t you ever seen?”

  Reynold hadn’t. It seemed tawdry to follow her, even for another glimpse.

  “Isn’t that the place run by Dr. Landry?” Pete piped up. “The one Clara says is an abomination?”

  “The very same,” Liam agreed unhappily. “Now, Sasha, button it. Do I pay you to stand around jawing?”

  Ignoring him, Sasha said, “I know what we should do. Take up a collection among us, and send him down to the Palace, where he can pay for her favors—scratch his itch, as they say. Maybe then he will be able to tell what she is.”

  “Drop it,” Liam snapped, sounding angry now. Easygoing he might be, but when he lost his temper he went all Irish.

  “What?” Sasha spread his hands. “That is charity, nyet? And, boss, you are always preaching charity.”

  “I’m also after preachin’ getting orders out on time. There’s someone waiting for that coffin you’re supposed to finish.”

  “Let them wait. The dead have no feelings, after all. Just like prostitutes—and automatons.”

  Chapter Two

  “She can’t be a prostitute,” Reynold whispered to Mr. Kowal, whom he’d just loaded onto his cart quite tenderly. The old man had died at the home of his daughter, who’d been caring for him in his last days, Mr. Kowal’s wife being too aged for the task. But now the deceased’s wife wanted him home for the viewing.
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  Reynold would cart him back to McMahon’s, where he’d be fitted for his coffin, washed down, and dressed. The deceased’s daughter had placed all that in Reynold’s hands along with a set of clothes, probably the best Mr. Kowal owned, declaring herself and her mother unfit for the task.

  “Don’t you worry,” he assured her earnestly. “We’ll take good care of him.”

  More and more families had begun to avail themselves of the service, though most still preferred to tend the departed on their own. When called on to do so, Reynold sponged them down in the room at the back of the shop. He didn’t mind any more than he minded their company.

  He didn’t talk a lot to living folks. The dead were different.

  He considered the frail Mr. Kowal, now lying in the cart with his neatly-folded clothing on his chest. White hair, wasted limbs—the fellow had been easy to load. Hard to believe Mr. Kowal had ever been a robust man earning a living and fathering at least one child.

  Liam always said Reynold’s size and strength made a great advantage. He rarely had trouble shifting the corpses he was sent out to fetch. He’d had to move them from some challenging spots, such as tiny garret bedrooms accessed only by narrow staircases. And the bereaved did not like seeing their dear departed manhandled roughly, no matter the situation.

  Reynold always employed the greatest respect, as now, when he spread the leather cover over the top of the open cart, saying as he did, “Just a little ride and then I’ll take care of a few things before you go home to your wife.”

  For the last time.

  Reynold didn’t add that part. He couldn’t say but the dead heard the words he spoke to them. From time to time he almost believed so. And there’d been that one…

  He’d been called to a charity home where an old woman lay dying. When he arrived, she hadn’t yet passed, and he waited outside the dormitory while a nurse tended the patient, him looking in through the door. He’d seen a curious thing—at one moment a hazy mist like white film had trailed up from the body. Only then had the nurse come and told him he could take the corpse.

  Either way, Mr. Kowal might be listening, and he had no one else to tell. He got the cart moving with a mighty push and trundled off down the street.