“Alexa? What are we doing?” Jemma spoke sleepily from the passenger’s seat, sitting up straighter from where she had been almost dozing off. She had been doing that a lot lately; the chemo was taking its toll.
When Alexa glanced over at her, it hurt to see that she was already dwindling into a shadow of herself. Her once-vibrant sister had lost weight and the color in her cheeks had drained away. Dark bags were developing under her eyes, and her hair was thinner.
Looking at her, Alexa was overcome with a feeling of guilt. “I—I don’t know,” she stammered, and felt worse for lying.
She’d set out that morning for the simple purpose of taking Jemma on a relaxing drive and getting her out of the Netherfield’s house for a bit before her next treatment. But as she drove, she’d found herself veering further and further off her planned course, taking two exits that had nothing to do with getting them back to Billy’s house.
Jemma smiled weakly. “Sweet Alexa. Always ready for an adventure.”
Alexa managed to smile. “More like ‘deranged Alexa, always ready to get into trouble.”
But there was no way she was going to tell her that that ‘trouble’ involved Damian Pemberley. He had left the Netherfield’s house abruptly after that day two week ago in New York, but Billy had mentioned the street Damian grew up on: Darcy Street. And it was no accident that that was exactly where Alexa had ended up.
Hating herself, she punched the navigational code for Meryton, New Jersey into the car’s self-driving system and pushed her foot on the accelerator to get it moving. And nothing happened.
Alexa felt a sinking feeling in the mechanical pit that should have been her stomach. She tried it again with the same result. “You have got to be joking me,” she said.
She and Jemma tried for a minute longer to coax the car into moving, but it wouldn’t budge, and they were blocking traffic.
“You stay here,” Alexa said, as she jumped out of the car to inspect it. But it didn’t take much mechanic’s know-how to diagnose the problem: the tire on the front driver’s side was rapidly deflating, and the car’s many sensors hadn’t even given her a signal to warn her. The perfect storm.
Alexa growled and turned a frustrated circle. But she didn’t have long to throw a tantrum. A movement out of the corner of her eye grabbed her attention, and she jumped when she turned her head to find a camera an inch from her nose.
“Having trouble, dearie?” said a cheerful voice with a distinctive British accent. It was coming from a speaker somewhere behind the lens. “Why don’t you step inside the house, darling? I can whip up some lemonade, and my master can take a look at that tire in the meanwhile. He’s an excellent mechanic!”
Alexa blinked, taken aback by both the camera and the odd invitation from a stranger. “Umm,” she said.
But before she could think of a response, the passenger’s door burst open and Jemma jumped out with more energy than Alexa had seen from her in over a month. “Yes, please!”
“Jemma!” Alexa hissed.
“What?” Jemma shrugged. “This is a safe neighborhood. And I love lemonade!”
“This is how people get kidnapped!” Alexa said, to no avail.
Jemma was already skipping happily toward the house the camera was extending from. Like many of the houses on the street, it was a towering Victorian that seemed to loom over the road.
Alexa shook her head and followed her sister.
The gate opened as they approached, giving way to a neat footpath that led up to the wrap-around porch and a front door with stained-glass windows. If worse came to worse, Alexa figured she could break them and escape with Jemma in tow. Not that she deserved it!
The door opened to admit first Jemma and then Alexa, who was right on her heels. Behind them, it closed again with a soft click.
Alexa found herself blinking to adjust her eyes in a dim entry hall. Even in the summer heat, the room was cool, and it was strange-looking for a Victorian. It had looked dark and imposing from the road, but the effect was twice as strong inside. The walls were made of stone like some medieval fortress and hung with old-fashioned weapons like swords and shields and stiletto heels.
“There!” sighed the mysterious voice that had invited them in. “Now, don’t you feel better already?”
Alexa turned to get a look at their host—and immediately startled. Standing there next to the door was a rough approximation of a humanoid. Alexa had only ever seen pictures of the old class of robots—the kind that were still legal because they were easily recognizable from a living human—but she knew one when she saw it: Oversized head, hollow eyes, a metal barrel of a body, and wheels for feet.
Alexa remembered not to stare.
The robot rolled sideways on her wheels. “You girls can follow me to the sitting room. My young master will be down any minute. He’s been keeping to himself this last week or so.”
“Young master?” Alexa repeated. It was disconcerting to hear a bot talk like that.
“Yes, Miss,” said the robot, misunderstanding the question. “Young indeed, but very responsible! He’s been keeping things up around here since the old master and his wife’s passing, bless their souls. There’s the little girl, too. She’s still far too young to be without parents, so the young master looks after her as if she were his own. I expected no less of him, of course. A saint, he is, and always has been—and I’ve known him since he was a child, mind you. That’s him there on the wall. He was a bit younger then but the same good boy.”
Alexa looked where the robot pointed…And felt herself freeze. A noise like a strangled gasp tore from her breathless insides. A tiny robot was sponging the glass frame, and his face was a little younger and rounder, but there was no mistaking the person in the photo.
Jemma saw it, too. “Isn’t that—?”
But she didn’t have time to speak the name of Damian Pemberley before he appeared at the top of the stairs. “Annie? I hope you’re not bothering—” He stopped short when he looked down and saw them.
The terrible silence was interrupted by a bark and a fit of giggles. A yellow Labrador burst out onto the landing, followed by a little girl in curly pigtails and a mint green jumpsuit. “You’ll get it all over the floor and Annie will be mad!” the girl said, just before the Labrador shook himself, spraying mud and water on the walls.
That was enough to catch Damian’s attention. “Gigi! Take him to the tub!”
“He won’t let me!”
Alexa grabbed Jemma’s arm clumsily, so humiliated she was barely able to see. “We’d better be going,” she muttered.
“No! Wait!” Damian said, hurrying down the stairs. “Please. I—You’ll have to excuse my sister and her dog.”
“He’s your dog,” the girl—Gigi Pemberley?—chimed in.
Damian ignored her. “I’m glad you two are here!” he said, with a smile that looked only a little forced. “You’ve met out housekeeper, I see—Annie. She’s just like a member of the family. That’s my sister Gigi up there with our dog, Jaxon. And that’s Doolittle.” He pointed up at the tiny robot, which had finished polishing his picture and moved on to a sword. “He gets in the hard-to-reach places.”
Alexa was speechless, and Jemma must have been, too.
“So you already know these young ladies! Wonderful! Now, about that lemonade and the tire—”
The next hour was like something out of some bizarre human dream Alexa had never been subjected to. Damian saw them seated in the sunny parlor before he hurried out to check the tire. When he came back, he reported that it had had a splinter but he’d changed it and parked the car in the garage. Jemma offered to pay him, but he refused. Damian spent the rest of the time hosting them. He talked in a friendly way with Annie and Jemma and showed the guests around the house. He was all sweetness with his sister and laughed when his dog jumped up to lick his face. Alexa could feel a bewildered Jemma trying to catch her eye, but she avoided it. No one could have been more surprised by Damian’s house and the sudden change in him than she was.
It was almost noon before Alexa found a reason to excuse themselves. Annie insisted on sending them off with sandwiches and to-go cups of pink lemonade, and they all came outside to the porch to watch them leave.
Alexa rolled the window down when she realized Damian was saying something. “Nice to see you again, Jemma. And Alexa.”
Their eyes met for the first time all day, and Alexa was startled to see a look of true sadness there.
She rolled the window up and backed out of the driveway.
Her last image of the Pemberley’s was of Annie by the front door in her apron, Jaxon hopping around a smiling Gigi who was trying to pet him, and Damian standing slightly apart in his black leather with his hands at his sides.
Jemma stayed awake for the rest of the drive. Between bites of sandwich, she couldn’t find enough to say about the visit: about Annie’s kindness, the change in Damian that proved, perhaps, that he wasn’t all bad, after all, and, of course, the delicious lemonade.
But Alexa said very little. Her mind was spinning a million miles an hour, but it was fueled by thoughts she couldn’t share, not even with Jemma. About Winston’s accusations against Damian and the Pemberley’s. About that day two weeks ago in New York that she had tried so hard to forget ever since. About the way her fingers sparked when she looked at Damian and how the memory of his lips seemed to have become permanently embedded in every molecule and wire and circuit of her being. More than anything, though, she thought about how the Pemberley household was run almost entirely by loyally devoted and outdated bots and how no parts dealer would have thought twice before cutting them to pieces.
