It drooled through a grin. "Galvanism. Hit me again. I almost felt that."
"Mr. Jevon! What on earth— Did Father put you up to this? Stop that at once!"
"That he did, young Miss Liz."
"Can't you see that she is bleeding? And not a healthy color, either! Almost black!"
"Our guest is your father's ward, Miss. Not yours."
"Mr. Jevon, I shall have sharp words with him later! You know he can't refuse me anything since Mother passed."
"Miss, I shouldn't like to come before your father, student untutored—"
Hands raised. Not a surrender, a temporary retreat. A door opened. A door closed.
A rustle of skirts. An unthinkable wealth of natural fibers. The woman peering at it was, like it, wrapped in the ransom of a city.
"Father tells me you are called Daisy," she told it. "I'd have named you 'idiot'; you haven't the sense to tell men what they want to hear… Is that laudanum? Give it."
She tipped the contents of the amber bottle between thin, pale lips. Her posture slackened a telling fraction.
"Oh, it seems I haven't left you any! Too bad. Listen, Daisy, I've seen your hell machine in the stables. Want it back?"
"Yes," it growled. "'Call-me-Rodney' has the ground crew safety interlock key."
"My father. Yes. Good, you want something. I want something too: Fiona got her highlander arse married off, and now I'm down my best girl toy."
"You're close enough. Understand?"
"Luckily for you, I don't need you to. Can you follow orders?"
She straddled it, ground a knee between its legs.
It growled. She snatched a razor from the counter, held it to its shoulder.
She cut, a thin hot trail with an ancient tool, blunt and no more sterile than its wielder.
"You're only so defiant without that machine. Father didn't see it but I do. The place you came from, they broke something in you? Or were you always like this? And you want to go back?"
"Yes, you want to go back, or yes, you're like this, or yes, they broke something, or yes, you'll do as I tell you?"
She cut again, shallow, below its neckline, following the sternum.
"Yes. To all." It clarified: "Handler."
Elizabeth smiled. "Dear Daisy. We shall be the best of friends."