Clockwork Heart: Clockwork Love, Book 1 Read Online Free PDF Page B

Cornelius had just said he must stay with him. He let out a ragged sigh. “ Merci, Cornelius. ”
    Cornelius drew their joined hands to his mouth and kissed each of Johann’s sets of knuckles. Then he rose and brought Johann to his feet as well before handing him his cane. “Come. We go outside. Together.” He tucked Johann’s arm into his. “I will help you walk.”
    They walked together out the door to Cornelius’s room, into a narrow hallway, then down a set of open stairs leading to a small kitchen, where a young lady was bent over a kettle of laundry. She scolded Cornelius in angry French, but she regarded Johann warily. As far as Johann could tell, she was demanding to know who Johann was and where he had come from.
    Cornelius responded breezily, calling Johann pirate and repeatedly putting a hand on Johann’s chest. It felt nice, and he was sorry when Cornelius stopped touching him and urged him out of the kitchen and through the workshop.
    There was a tiny tinker shop in a larger village near Johann’s back home, but it was nothing like the one he walked into now on Cornelius’s arm. Shelves towered over him, stuffed full of clockwork. There were a few mechanical body parts here and there, but not many. Most were tools, household gadgets and several things Johann couldn’t imagine a utility for, like a clockwork mouse.
    A man stood at a workbench in the middle of the room, an old man with a long, shaggy white beard and thick spectacles—they had some kind of extended lens on them which reminded Johann of his false eye. When the old man saw Cornelius, he took off the spectacles and greeted him warmly. As he noticed Johann, his expression went still, an unreadable mask. “Who is this?”
    “My pirate friend,” Cornelius said, leaning on Johann’s arm. “He’s staying with me.” Cornelius gestured from the old man to Johann. “Johann, this is Master Félix. Master Félix, Johann.”
    Félix began to rattle on in French, until Cornelius let him know Johann didn’t speak much. “A foreign pirate?” Félix clucked his tongue. “You will get into trouble.”
    Cornelius winked and placed a hand on Johann’s chest. “Trouble is so much fun,” he said in a saucy voice that made something tingle in Johann’s groin. Though that may have been because of the wink.
    The tingling sensation lingered as Cornelius led Johann out of the shop. Johann still walked clumsily with his mechanical legs, but the wooden stump was even clumsier to maneuver, and he feared knocking over the delicate clockwork, equipment spilling over every available surface. He told himself fear made his insides feel funny, not the lingering memory of the way Cornelius had looked at him. The wink. The tone of his voice.
    Johann had no idea what that had been about. Cornelius touched him all the time, but something about that touch, that look… what had that been for? And why did thinking of it make Johann feel like his one real knee would go out? Why did it make his guts tangle in a way that made him ache for Cornelius to look at him again?
    Cornelius didn’t look at him, though. In fact, as they descended the steps of the emporium to the street, Cornelius seemed especially subdued, almost blushing. He wore his velvet top hat and a natty jacket with a silk scarf wrapped around his throat, and he seemed to shrink into them both, until someone he knew greeted him, at which point he became flirty and touchy again.
    Cornelius was very pretty, Johann thought. The fine clothes suited him.
    Uncharacteristically, however, Cornelius didn’t chatter, not even a little bit. Something was wrong, but Johann had no idea how to fix it. As they rounded the corner onto a main street, Johann stopped under a gaslight and put his good hand on Cornelius’s shoulder.
    Cornelius startled, jumpy as a cat. “What’s wrong?”
    That was what Johann was going to ask Cornelius. He indexed his French for a different query. “You are not happy. Sad. Afraid.