Chapter 36 Sensation

She pressed her mouth tightly closed. “Good. A little more,” Gustav said, his voice tight. She felt his hand burrow into her drawers, and let out a gasp. “Shh,” he said, laying his other, mechanical hand on the small of her back. “I’m just checking.” It was enough, she thought, to be lying half undressed in the crepuscular, squalid studio. Enough that she had shared her most shameful and abominable desires with him and found herself trapped in a cage of her own making. That he would now lay his hands on her— “Stop,” she said, suddenly. With no little difficulty, she pulled herself upright. Her bodice was awry and her clothes crumpled. Yet her defilement had not made her a mewling wreck, at least. A hot coal burned in her breast. This feeling was familiar. Violet was angry. “Sir,” she said. “This has gone far enough. I cannot tolerate you mocking me any longer.” Gustav stood, his face a mask. “I do not mock,” he said. “I came here,” Violet said, standing and pulling at her clothes, trying vainly to cover herself though everything seemed to be slipping. “I came here because I needed something from you.” “And I have made it,” Gustav said. “Haven’t I fulfilled the brief?” Violet looked down at the chair, which was still buzzing, gently. Its curves suddenly seemed treacherous, its embrace just another cage that sought to trap her. “You don’t understand,” she said. “How could I have thought you ever would?” To her fury, tears rose up to accompany the words, spilling generously from her eyes. She turned her head away. Gustav sighed. “I believed I was providing you with a machine to service your needs, my lady.” “No. More than that.” Violet fixed her eyes on the closed doors of the furnace, behind which burned the engines that kept the buildings running. She had never fully understood the exact workings of the city, the giant burning columns that provided the power harnessed from the steam, the railways that crisscrossed the streets, carrying coal and wood, the curious and complicated machinery that converted that power into useful apparatus—she knew only that when she needed something, it appeared. Her every wish, dream or fancy, instantly fulfilled—just so long as it was approved by her mother, father, the gentlemen of the court, and the unwritten and unbendable rules of etiquette that governed her everyday life and it seemed, by some unarguable and inexplicable logic, kept the world running smoothly. “I needed something to sate my wants,” she said, her voice flat and dim. “A machine that would assuage my frustrations—” She bit her lip.