The Rembrandt Engine and Its Lubricants

Rosalyn, a street-smart washer woman, is recruited to seduce a railroad baron using a "new" transmission device that Dr. Hegel had developed. Wires wrapped around her body and in her private crevices serve as antenna hooked up by radio waves to his sophisticated "Rembrandt Engine," a robot that doubles as a recording device, and also ... a physical doppelganger for his secret sexual fantasies.

But Rosalyn has more power than technology at her disposal--she's dark-skinned, practically invisible to the upper classes and usually submissive (unless she needs something from them). And knows the power of her own sexuality. When she goes to the baron's house and discovers the wife is the one who holds the purse strings and the decision-making power, Rosalyn knows who she should really seduce. Even as the wife uncovers secrets--political and sexual--of her own.