Clockwork Heart: Clockwork Love, Book 1 by Heidi Cullinan Read Free Book Online Page B

himself by poking around behind the dry leather tomes, hoping to discover an illicit hidden gem. Maybe something erotic or at least mildly titillating? After several searches to no avail, he began to read the report volumes out of sheer boredom, and this was when he found the dictionary.
    It was tucked inside some dry book of law, and it tumbled to the floor when Conny removed the volume which housed it. Dictionnaire Français-Allemand , the title read, and Cornelius delighted to see this was precisely what it was. An old, battered thing with pages missing and all manner of notes scribbled in the margins and sometimes across whole words, but it was a dictionary , a means by which Cornelius could communicate more easily with Johann.
    Conny tucked the slim volume into his pocket and took it home with him.
    Johann was as excited as Cornelius at the discovery, and they spent the better part of the evening expanding each other’s vocabularies. Conny rather enjoyed learning some of Johann’s language too. Over the next few days, it helped improve Johann’s progress by leaps and bounds. When Cornelius went out or performed surgery with Master Félix, Johann practiced writing and reading aloud, and when they worked together, Cornelius corrected Johann’s pronunciation, trying to teach him a native French accent. He assumed Johann would have more questions once he had more language capability, but the only one he did ask took Cornelius entirely by surprise.
    “Conny.” Johann pointed to one of Master Félix’s old journals they were using for reading practice. “This says conne , but others call you this too.”
    “An abbreviation for Cornelius, yes.”
    Johann frowned. “But is bad. Conne means…” He trailed off, blushing.
    Conny lifted the corner of his mouth. “It means idiot, bitch, and it’s feminine? Yes. The first night Valentin met me, he didn’t like me, and he christened me with it. He thought it was funny, because my name is English, and my natural French nickname is such a terrible insult. My mother wasn’t thinking things through, I’m afraid, when she Anglicized my father’s middle name. But I’ve never been proud, and alas, sometimes the description is terribly apt.”
    Johann’s frown deepened. “Pardon me, but I do not understand.”
    Such a dear , adorable man. Conny sighed and winked. “I don’t mind the name.”
    Johann seemed mildly relieved. “Is good?”
    “Is quite good. You may use the name as well, if you like.”
    “I call you…Conny?”
    What had been an innocent exchange became immediately charged. Conny was long used to a state of constant arousal around Johann, but in that moment he went past longing into his increasingly common delusion that perhaps Johann fancied him too.
    Clearing his throat, he popped to his feet. “Let’s take a stroll, shall we?”
    They took a great many strolls, the two of them, more and more often as Conny became increasingly desperate to escape the close confines of his bedroom with a handsome man he could not under any circumstances allow himself to seduce. Johann seemed to enjoy going out, sometimes speaking to strangers now that he knew enough French to get by. He liked to do the ordering at the market as well.
    Once, while strolling down a crowded street with his protégé, Conny saw Savoy lurking on the other side of the street, observing them. Cornelius pretended not to notice, but he worried the rest of the day he’d return to the shop only to find the horrid little physician waiting for him, following through on his promise to bring trouble into Cornelius’s already amply complicated life.
    Alas, it was not Savoy waiting to turn the world on its head. When Conny and Johann returned to his apartment, they discovered the door unlocked and Valentin waiting for them inside.
    He was holding the French-German dictionary.

Chapter Four
    “What the devil isthis?” Val waved the book at Cornelius, loosening one of the pages. “ Why do you have