Looking Glass Foes

By Mikala Ash

Could the handsome Peter Smythe be the one? Elizabeth is mightily attracted to the dedicated and brave journalist and faces the struggle of balancing her duty to save the empire with nurturing a budding relationship.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth is on the brink of finally bringing her arch nemesis Vladimir, the Russian agent responsible for her husband’s death, to justice. But the past has a habit of nipping at her heels and with it the risk of bringing everything she has achieved crashing down.

Set against the backdrop of a steam-driven world, our story begins with an airship-led commando raid and takes Elizabeth along a twisted path of betrayal and villainy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Changeling Press
• Release date: Jun 25, 2021

Book preview

Chapter One

The Asylum

Midnight gave way to another day. The pause between the apex of night and dawn’s first gleaming is magical, when time assumes the consistency of treacle, and on a whim the Fates decide, as the shadow of the day traverses the stony dial to either provide your heart’s desire or deliver your greatest fear. That particular morning I was reminded of poor King Lear, lamenting the cruel jests of the gods who toy with us for their amusement, like wanton boys torture helpless flies.

The doleful clouds parted, and for a brief moment the moon’s silvery beams caressed the ropes that fell from the rounded hull of the great airship. I was struck with the inescapable impression that a great jellyfish was hovering over the crenelated walls of the asylum, ready to enfold the edifice with its poisoned tentacles.

Grove Hall, the object of the assault, was silent and dark. Tendrils of fog, dimly lit by gaslights lining the surrounding streets, writhed and twisted between the main hall and the cluster of outbuildings. The last light from the outfacing windows had been extinguished an hour before, and it had taken that long for the airship HMAS Prince Albert to silently manoeuvre into position. The mighty craft had stopped its engines and had coasted in under the influence of the light breeze. With deliberate intent it had simultaneously lost altitude, dropping silently through the slowly shifting clouds. The captain’s deft piloting was, according to the general, worthy of inclusion in a midshipman’s aeronautical textbook.

Fingers of anticipation, almost sexual in nature, strummed every cell in my body. The ruination of Vladimir, the Russian agent responsible for the death of my beloved Jonathan, was at hand. I had sworn to destroy the fiend, and now, finally we were poised to strike! All my plans and machinations were at last coming to fruition. My setting a trap in Upper Brook Street had lured Vladimir’s monstrous patchwork man to attempt my abduction. The horrific chimera, an amalgam of mismatched body parts somehow stitched together by perverted science, had been imbued with Vladimir’s malignant nature. After an electrifying stalemate I had seen the creature off, and with no little difficulty we had tracked the monster to his master’s lair.

The general and I were standing on a raised platform by the East London Water Works, a half mile north of Grove Hall with the railway between. I gasped in wonder as the airship restarted its engines to combat the wind and maintain its position over the asylum. Tiny shadows emerged from the airship’s grey hull like ants hurrying from their nest. The dozen members of Her Majesty’s Royal Aerial Marines took to the ropes and descended with consummate skill toward the sleeping asylum. It took them no time at all to reach the sloping roof, and a dozen heartbeats later the uppermost windows of the institution’s main building.

While the airborne assault had been making its indefatigable progress, elements of the Queen’s Light Infantry, with silent efficiency, barricaded the surrounding streets and encircled the asylum, while specialised ground forces made their way across the darkened grounds ready to breach the doors at zero hour.

The general checked his watch. Only a minute now.

The enterprise had taken the general an amazingly short time to arrange. Of course, the military had been in a state of readiness for months given the threatening situation across the channel. Russia was ever threatening after the humiliation the Czar had suffered in the Crimea, Napoleon the Third of France was in an expansive mood after his success in the same conflict, and the Austrian Empire was mobilising, watching our global trading empire with envious eyes and dreaming of world domination. The prospect of all-out war had been building like a storm cloud, and the expected deluge would be heavy indeed.

Such was the backdrop of our world in 1860. It was only the scientific and technological advances such as the airship Prince Albert that we had made over the last decade which kept our homeland and empire safe. Our ambitious competitors were catching up. However, their endeavours had taken a darker turn, as evidenced by the horror of the patchwork man, and the use of soporific gas that could confuse and render harmless a whole city.

Vladimir was just one of our malevolent foes. The question this morning was how violently would he and his murderous minions resist capture? I said a silent prayer for the Queen’s men risking their lives tonight. I had brought them here, and I would bear responsibility for whatever happened. That was a heavy thought indeed.

Butterflies, the flighty children of fear, skittled about in my belly causing me to doubt the success of our enterprise. For reassurance I glanced over my shoulder. Standing behind the general and I were men on whom I placed the greatest of trust. Felix, who helped Archie at my Investigations Bureau, but was much, much more, and my fellow Agents of the Queen, Bisby and Oxley.

Missing this momentous morning was Archie, my husband’s batman, and the son we never had. He was at home caring for Marianne, his fiancé of only a day. Brave Marianne had been instrumental in bringing us to Vladimir’s den, risking her life and had, for her impetuousness, been held hostage by a patchwork man. Not surprisingly she was having trouble dealing with the horror that had so nearly cost her life, her exhausted sleep racked by night terrors. Archie chose, and rightfully so, to remain at her side.

Felix, his handsome face hidden by the upturned collar of his coat and scarf, noticed my gaze, for I saw his gleaming teeth as he offered me a supportive smile. My body responded instinctively. How often had he given me that smile as he lifted my body to the heights of sensuality with gentle and expert caresses I could not tell. His natural allure, together with the skills gained from his experience as a prostitute, had attracted me like a flower lures a bee.

My first sight of him had ignited the dormant woman within, as if my true self had fallen into a sort of death with Jonathan’s passing. For five years I had been a walking corpse, cold and withered, but with hot blood still bubbling deep within, demanding expression. Felix possessed the key to its release. Meeting him had been a striking revelation. I immediately longed to have his arms about me, desired his lips upon mine, needed his fingers stroking my flesh, and demanded his hardness within. Though I felt guilty, as if I were betraying Jonathan with this almost uncontrollable craving, I hired Felix as my tutor in bedroom diversions. With tender care he resurrected my carnal nature. Though my desire was strong, he coaxed me out of my initial timidness and skilfully guided me, transforming me from cold widow into a true wanton, where I became the uninhibited leader taking us both to exquisite release. Though it had been months since our last intimacy I still longed for his sultry gaze which could bring my nipples to aching hardness in a moment, and his gentle lips and knowing tongue upon my quim causing it to tingle and pulsate with hot desire.

An image of him kneeling between my thighs flashed through my mind’s eye. His expert fingers parted my other lips, and for a moment I imagined his tongue licking my inside flesh and coaxing the bud to tremulous agonies of pleasure. I squeezed my thighs to quell a sudden need and answered his smile with my own. I owed Felix so much. He had reawakened the woman I had been with my darling Jonathan. It was a gift I could never repay. I own that my treatment of him was selfish. Felix was more than a hired practitioner of erotic technique. He had hidden depths of character which I had once been keen to discover, but he now had his own love, the sensuous Nurse Sarah Bramble, and so my curiosity would have no relief.

My newfound liberation left me insatiable, and my indiscriminate desire soon landed on Dr. Jack Baudry. Though lust drove me, our developing connection was the closest I have come to true love after losing Jonathan. Baudry, I had quickly learned, was an honourable and brave man, like my Jonathan, and exemplar for the male sex. He had saved my life on more than one occasion, but recently was beset by conflicting loyalties, duties he wished to bestow to me and those he believed he owed to his half-sister, who had been condemned to death for spying. She only lived by virtue of Baudry giving himself up to servitude as an Agent of the Queen. As one tribulation is heaped upon another his new responsibilities had forced him to betray my affections with our fellow agent, Miss Clayton, a woman of dubious morals. She had pushed him into sexual relations with herself and another woman, Fleur Cumberland, as well as the scientist’s husband, Horatio, and if that was not enough, with a female automaton. Honour is fundamental to Baudry’s character, and the guilt he felt was great. His duties as assistant to Miss Clayton had recently taken him overseas, and I found our estrangement hard. I missed our almost daily lovemaking on the rug before his fireplace. I wished I had been there, our bodies entwined, instead of this freezing observation post.

Standing off to one side was Peter Smythe, whom I had met only two days before. He impressed me as a man of honour too, one who was prepared to risk himself for justice. Out of necessity we had shared a bed, albeit chastely. A journalist investigating a series of kidnappings and hideous murders in Wapping for his newspaper, Reynolds’s, Peter had glimpsed me while I changed cabs. He had been fleeing Vladimir’s thugs who were behind the crimes but had been intrigued by my seemingly odd behaviour. We met again at Wapping Old Stairs. He had been injured, and as we fled his attackers he was dunked in the Thames. I had saved his life by knocking a treacherous boatman overboard. Later in my rooms in Upper Brook Street I had warmed his frozen body with my own. It was when a patchwork man attempted to abduct me that Peter had been introduced to the existential threat hanging over the empire. Proving his bravery he had stood with Archie, Felix, and Bisby against a sniper in the Wapping High Street.

His handsome face was hidden by his hat and the raised collar of his coat. I conjured from memory the easy boyish smile, the untidy thatch of sandy hair, and his intelligent blue eyes. His beardless face, firm jawline, and strong chin signified a determined character which impressed and attracted me. My heart warmed at his encouraging smile, and my confidence was restored.

I returned my