HerOutlandishStranger (25 page)

Jazz showed him to the door and thanked him.

A few minutes after he returned to the room and settled to
wait, the horrendous noise from the bed stopped in the middle of a rattling
gasp. The doctor slept but Jazz didn’t need the doctor to make an examination
to know Steele had died. He got to his feet and looked down at the body, and
waited for familiar pangs of guilt but nothing came but pity and a familiar
weariness.

With Steele gone, Jazz doubted another DHUy would come after
him. The man had probably broken all sorts of laws to stalk Jazz through the
long months. Others might have helped Steele but no one else at the agency
would be as reckless. No one else there had lived through the hell of the Way’s
camps. Steele had been one of the few high-functioning survivors.

Had he ever noticed that similarity between them? Jazz’s
scar and his tattoo that marked them both. Jazz touched the already chilled
forehead. “Goodbye,” he whispered.

After he roused the dozing doctor, Jazz went to find Eliza.

She stood at the dining room window, staring out at the fog.

As he walked into the room, she started and turned. “Mr.
Steele is…?”

“Dead.”

Jazz wanted to touch her, pull her close, but Eliza sank
into a chair and folded her hands on the polished surface of the table.

“I would be a hypocrite if I said I was sorry,” she said at
last. “But perhaps it is a loss for someone.”

“I don’t know.” He felt the loss.

“You know so very much, and it’s time to tell me more. Go
on.” She gave a weak laugh. “Start with my future. You and Mr. Steele know the
name of the man I am supposed to marry in this future you’ve mapped out.”

Jazz walked to the other side of the table to stop himself
from grabbing her. “No one maps anything. I promise you.”

“Oh I think I understand that much.” Eliza smiled up at him.
His insides did a few somersaults at the brief smile that lit her face.

As she tilted her head, a curl brushed her neck and she
impatiently tucked it into her complex hair arrangement. A flower petal floated
to the table and she rolled it between her fingers. “I must admit I will be
glad to be shed of the name Peasnettle with which you saddled me. Who is this
mystery man of mine?”

Jazz tilted against the wall and crossed his arms, setting
off the tingling in his scar. Blast any long-forgotten rules. No, he reminded
himself, these were rules that hadn’t even been imagined yet. She deserved a
glimpse into her own happiness.

“You already know him. You will marry a man you’ve known and
admired since you were a young girl. Your sister introduced you to him. He’s a
good man, really. Awfully respectable.” He cleared his throat in an attempt to
choke off the sneer from his voice before he continued. “He even gains some
kind of royal honor or whatsit later on. He’s James Sandton, and eventually
he’ll become a baron or baronet or some such thing.”

Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t her reaction. She slammed
her hand down on the table, causing the vase to rattle. And then she gave a
startling whoop of laughter. “Of course I will marry him! My own, my darling
James Sandton. Now I wonder, how on earth did your seer ever find that out?”

“Eh?”

“As you would say, ‘the good old baronet’,” she said,
shaking her head and lapsing into a fit of giggles. “Naturally I shall marry
Sir Sandton. That has always been the plan. For most of my life, anyway. Oh,
Jane would be pleased.”

“Because she introduced you? Eliza, why didn’t you tell me
he’s back in your life?”

“No, the question is why in heaven’s name did you and your
ridiculous seer not tell me this earlier?” Her giggles turned into gusts of
laughter bordering on the hysterical. “And Mr. Steele believed it too. Did he
carry a seer as well? He was a great fool also.”

He felt more dismayed than annoyed. “Why are you so amused
if you knew you were always going to marry this baronet? Who is this person
anyway? I’ve looked and looked and I know you’ll marry the man. But it’s hard
to track down any information in this da’ place with no central source. Oh
c’mon, Liza, please stop with the laughing fit and answer me. You’re beginning
to worry me.”

She hiccupped, wiped the edge of her eye, and began in a
voice still quavering with laughter. “I do not know how you stumbled on that
name. You must be magical. The Baronet Sandton, is—was—a figment of my sister’s
imagination.”

Jazz frowned. “Eh?”

Eliza’s laughter died away. She still smiled but not at him.
“My sister was very romantic. Do you recall when I described the games she and
I would play? She loved to grant herself imaginary suitors. She’d amuse herself
by cutting up letters and arranging them into likely names. One day she
invented a baronet for me using her letters. She loved titles, you see. We had
an enormous row about it since I informed her I would settle for nothing less
than a prince.”

“She announced that Lady Eliza Sandton was good enough and
she called me Lady Eliza from that day forward. I remember that when I was
eleven I discovered she was wrong and I would be plain Lady Sandton, but she
refused to admit she could ever be mistaken about something so all-important as
a title.”

She pulled out her handkerchief, wiped her eyes and blew her
nose. “Mr. Steele and your seer are very impressive if they can land upon that
name. I have not heard it since I was a child.”

Chapter Nineteen

“Eh, no. Damn it. I get it now. I see. He doesn’t exist.
Eliza.” Jas strode over to her and with one long finger touched the curve of
her cheek, and then a blossom she’d tucked into her hair.

He stared at her hair or perhaps her ear. Suddenly intense,
he reached for her hand and clutched it so tight her fingers hurt. “Eliza. Rose
gardens.”

She wondered if he’d sustained a blow on the head. Alarmed,
she tightened her grip on his hand. “Jas?”

But he interrupted. “Oh my God. Those things on the table
and in your hair. They’re roses? Are those roses?”

She was startled by his fierceness about flowers. And when
did her lover start using conventional epithets and call upon God? But then Jas
tended to startle her with most of his turns. How she longed for his strange
ways. “Yes, they are. Why are you so agitated? Do they offend you?”

“Not at all. The opposite,” he said in a strangled, slow
voice. “I think they’re wonderful. Not as exquisite as you…Eliza, but I
understand at last.”

He scowled and spoke as if to himself. “If you agree, well,
I have no idea how we’ll solve the name dilemma since there’s Cousin Ann,
blasted Cousin John, Wimble and the rest, but that must not matter. It always
seems to work in the end, eh?”

Eliza growled and tugged at his arm. “Jas will you explain
yourself or must I empty the vase of roses over you?”

He knelt by her chair and she caught her breath when she saw
the yearning in his eyes. “Oh God, I hope I do understand…Eliza, love, please,
will you consider marrying me?”

She felt the borderline hysterical laughter that still
simmered in her throat and chest. What on earth had suddenly changed the man?
Roses? If she had known that, she would have plucked flowers long ago, and
flung them at him, thorns and all.

She witnessed the transformation before her eyes, but didn’t
begin to understand, then again, perhaps she didn’t care—after all, what was
one more mystery about the man. Certainly nothing to keep her from holding back
her answer. “Oh! I shan’t be so coy as you were when I begged for your hand.
Yes, Jas, please yes.”

She leaned forward to embrace him, but his strong hands
clasped her shoulders and implacably held her off. With an unusually grave
expression shadowing his face, he watched her for a moment.

“Wait. It isn’t so easy. I can’t live with you unless you
know all of it. Everything.”

“At last,” she couldn’t help chiding him. “You share your
dark corners.”

“Yes. If you believe me, perhaps you’ll agree to marry me.
If you don’t, well, at least don’t try to cart me off to that stinking Bedlam.
I will leave. I’ll promise to disappear if you want me to. Maybe even the way I
originally planned. No matter what happens now, Jazz White will be gone
forever. Okay?”

He was silent, and at last she understood he was perfectly
serious and waiting for her answer. She could only nod and murmur that it would
suit.

He pulled out the seer from his pocket again. For about a
minute he stared down at the seer as he flicked and smoothed his fingers over
it. She blinked and leaned forward. What had been a block of carved wood now
appeared to be a slender, oval-shaped bar of silver.

“This begins a long time from now,” he said, then paused and
cleared his throat carefully, as if he were gathering himself for some kind of
dangerous act. “A long time from now, in my past.” And he told her everything
that was impossible but—and on this she had no doubt—was true.

As he spoke, Eliza felt wave after wave of familiar shock,
but no surprise. The stories he told sounded too recognizable, the lurking
suspicion she tried to suppress had been with her too long.

She put her hand on his shoulder, the reassuring muscular
warmth that had shielded her through long nights in Spain. Her Jas. “Your war
is the worst of it. That the dreadful and bloody myth will be as real as the
war we saw in the Peninsula. For some peculiar reason this cuts up my peace
more than the fact that you and Steele are from another century.”

“Remember what I told you about the camps where so many
people died?”

She nodded.

“Steele was one of the few survivors of a camp.”

She pushed her chair back and, standing, opened her arms
wide.

He came to her at once, wrapping his arms tight around her.
The scent and feel of him woke parts of her body she’d forgotten. The kiss he
gave her was as startlingly wonderful and new as their very first. Except she
knew his mouth now, loved the feel of it.

But then he pulled back and she understood. “You have more
to tell me.” She settled back into her chair and tried not to examine him from
the neck down.

He dropped to the floor next to her chair. “Yes. I suppose I
do, about what happened after the war.”

“After your memory was erased by Madame Blanro’s machinery?”

He slanted an eyebrow. “Nothing wrong with your memory. I
can’t believe you recall all the things I’ve told you.”

When he shifted closer to her, rested an arm along the seat
of her chair, she again became acutely aware of his physicality. He wore only a
thin muslin shirt and she had a good view of his smooth skin and well-defined
muscles of his shoulders and chest. Her gaze traveled to the tousled hair and
his potent blue eyes that so often played havoc with her heartbeat and breath.

She realized she’d been staring and raised her eyebrows in
what she hoped was a sophisticated manner—and ruined the pose with a blush—but
he didn’t seem to notice her reaction. He was too intent on talking about the
strange horrors and marvels of his world.

Eliza reached for his hand as he described the contraptions
that once lay beneath the skin of his arm. She rested his arm on her lap, palm
up. With a gentle finger she traced the edge of the peculiar pink rectangle of
a scar. His voice faltered at her touch. She glanced up to see pain in his
eyes.

“They put in some other things to replace these chip items?
Does it hurt still?”

He shook his head, but seemed unable to speak. She leaned
over and carefully kissed the palm of his hand and the scar on his arm, then
let him loose.

After a moment’s pause, he collected himself, cleared his
throat and continued with his story, ending rather awkwardly with the moment he
discovered he was the first stranger because of a dark knit hat and some
strange cloak of his. She suddenly remembered the strange wording he once used
when he said that the night in the cave “had to happen”.

He handed her the seer, no CR, he called it, then watched
her in tight-lipped silence, clearly holding back more words as he waited for
her outcry or her questions.

She turned the CR over and over in her hands, too dizzy to
concentrate and think. The object felt lighter, colder and smoother than the
piece of wood she remembered. She recalled the expert way he’d touched it, all
of his supernaturally exact predictions, and his recitations of perfect Latin
she had heard during their travels. She gave the peculiar thing a tentative
little push, but nothing happened.

Jas—no he said his name was spelled with a double Z—this
very strange man, Jazz White, reached for the object he’d carried for all those
weeks. “It’ll only respond to my eye, touch or voice.” He leaned forward again
and showed her a few shifting pictures and words. A piece of music, clear and
sweet and very strange, came floating from the object as he handed it back to
her. She listened to the music, but thought of all of his past words and
actions. Everything he had done slipped logically into a sensible progression.

After a long time, she spoke. “If you are mad, then I must
be also. For I find…I must conclude you are telling me the truth. I can think
of no other answer, except an extremely elaborate prank that ended with one of
the pranksters dead upstairs in my spare bedroom.”

She couldn’t fear the bizarre facts about him when he stood
near her. This was Jas, the utterly natural, strange love of her life.

“Here, please, take back this……object. Turn it back to a bar
of wood.”

He looked into her eyes for a long moment. She saw the
question and answered. “I have already said I would marry you but there is one
thing I do wonder.” She didn’t want to ask him, but knew she had to. “Do you
truly wish to stay with us? Can you bear to not return to your age of miracles?”

His laugh was incredulous, as if her question was absurd.
“Hell yes, I want to stay with you. I believe it’s all I’ve wanted since I
first laid eyes on you. Jazz White is dead, Eliza. He must stay dead.”

“Long live Jas Sandton,” she said softly.

He took the CR from her and after a few moments of smoothing
its sides, shoved it back into his pocket.

“It…the seer still looks magical and silver to me,” she
said.

“I’ve reset it, though. Anyone else will think it is a piece
of wood. Even Steele wouldn’t have recognized it. I was good at my work.”

She nodded. He could tell her that he would soon sprout a
pair of wings or turn into a platter of Stilton cheese and she’d have to
believe him.

* * * * *

Wimble, looking weary and rumpled, came to the dining room
to announce that the undertaker had arrived. “The coroner has a few questions
for you, ma’am. I neglected to mention Mr. White’s presence here. I said that
the friend of the family had helped and then departed earlier.”

Eliza nodded gratefully. “Yes. It’s best to end this ugly
episode quickly. Thank you.”

She met the gentlemen in her sitting room where one held his
exquisitely polished elaborate top hat. Even at this hour of the night the
undertaker bothered with the black plumes.

After offering them refreshments that were politely
declined, Eliza sat at the edge of a chair and managed to prevaricate and tell
near lies, starting with denying knowledge of the man’s real name. “He called
himself Iron or perhaps Steele, but I believe he was a madman who’d been stalking
me. He came to me with strange stories and when I asked him to leave, he rushed
out of the house into the night. A man passing by discovered him and I asked
him and my late husband’s friend, Mr. White, for help.”

No one questioned her story and the body was quietly removed
from her house.

After the house emptied and the servants at last retired to
bed, Jas left the library where he’d waited. He fetched his waistcoat and
jacket from the spare room.

Eliza met him at the front door. “Where are you going?”

“It’s foggy, but I should be able to find my way back to the
inn.”

“No, stay. Please. It is rather too late for you to make
protests about appearances. Come to my room and remind me why I would marry an
imposter who dropped in from the future.” She tried to adopt a light tone,
though she was in desperate need for the security she only felt in his arms.

Jas’ hands, which had been buttoning his waistcoat, stilled.
“And have Molly find us in bed in a few hours? That’s not a good idea.”

“We shall bolt the door. Come, sir. Revert to your old ways
for this one night. We’ll get a special license as soon as may be. I’m wealthy
enough to purchase several.”

As they made their way up the stairs, Eliza remembered all
the steep hills they’d climbed on the peninsula. Her heart filled with the urge
to sing or laugh aloud or behave in some other absurdly exultant manner. She
suddenly stopped and turned to him.

“Wait.” She leaned toward his ear and, unable to restrain
the glee, whispered, “I believe it’s best if you’ve been Mr. Sandton all along,
but had to take the name White. Perhaps you’ve been working secretly for Arthur
Wellesley—Lord Wellington, now. Perhaps the real British agents might take
exception to such a tale? Hmmm. It is a plausible fiction, but we could not brunt
it about, could we? A shame since certainly Cousin John would adore it.

“Ah! If you don’t like that farradiddle, perhaps you took
the name White because…oh, because a primitive tribe from the continent you
were visiting have put a bounty on your head and you must lead your life in
disguise… No? I daresay sometime before teatime tomorrow we shall find a story
that will do the trick.” She couldn’t stop the perverse impulse that made her
add, “You shall have to adopt that daughter of yours of course.”

Ignoring the awkward angle, he dragged her to him for a
kiss. Oh it felt so perfect to touch Jas again.

Jas pulled away with a small sound of regret. He shook his
head. “Damn. I was going to say something but you’ve made me forget what it
was. The feel of you—just the sight of you, Eliza, wipes my mind clean. Good
thing I’m about to be a new man altogether, eh?”

She returned his grin and then quickly climbed the stairs.