Out of the Blue (A Regency Time Travel Romance) (30 page)

“Poor Aunt Cornelia,” Cassandra remarked,
smiling as she watched Aunt Cornelia and the butler leave. Then she
frowned. “Whoa! You and Perry? Hold it just one darn minute here,”
she exploded. A moment later she was on her feet, her hands jammed
down on her hips—a now familiar warning that she was about to do
battle. “Haven’t you forgotten someone, Marcus? What about
me?
What am I supposed to do—sit here twiddling my thumbs
while you and Perry rescue Perceval? Well, think again, buster. I’m
going with you!”

Marcus smiled as he put his hands on her
shoulders, pushing her back down in her chair and kissing her
heated cheek. “Of course you are, my darling. I wouldn’t dream of
leaving you behind—at least not unless I had personally tied you to
your bedpost with a stout rope.” His smile faded, to be replaced by
a knowing frown. “You’d only sneak out of here the moment I was
gone and hire a hack to take you to the House of Commons, and
arrive just in time to ruin everything.”

“Well, I guess you might have a point,”
Cassandra admitted, wincing. “But I couldn’t stand being left
behind. This is too important. It means everything, Marcus. It
means your life!”

“Precisely,” he answered, picking up the
soldiers once more and rescuing another of the carrot columns from
Perry’s fist. “Now, might I suggest that we get on with it?”

I
t was raining, and
the fog was nearly impenetrable, more of the soggy gray mist
creeping into the lobby each time the large double doors opened.
The foul, damp weather was not an unusual occurrence in early
morning London, but Marcus, who had taken up his position just
inside the doors, cursed it anyway.

It gave him something to do.

Peregrine leaned against one of the nearby
columns, his hand raised to his mouth as he stifled a yawn. Marcus
had been up all of last night, figuring and refiguring how he would
go about this business of altering history, but Peregrine, who had
promised to attend Lady Hertford’s ball, had not straggled in until
after three, to fall asleep in one of the chairs in the study. Even
now, still clad in his evening dress and flat-heeled black
slippers, he was hardly an imposing sight in this most august of
foyers.

And yet, Cassandra having told him all about
the battle of Waterloo, Marcus could only ask himself how many of
the soldiers had been attending the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in
Brussels and had raced to the battlefield still dressed in their
finest evening clothes? His countrymen had won that battle, hadn’t
they?

“Of course,” he mumbled under his breath,
“dear, good-hearted, dimwitted Peregrine is most probably not
destined to fight at Waterloo.”

Marcus looked to his left, where Cassandra,
clad in the underfootman’s Sunday best, was surreptitiously shoving
a stray lock of her short, dark hair back under her cap. His gaze
slid to her legs, her shapely calves revealed by the much-mended
hose, and he swallowed down hard on the apprehension rising in his
throat. How had he let himself be talked into allowing her to don
men’s clothing? Better still, why had he not tied her to the
bedpost, leaving her behind entirely?

She looked at him, her violet eyes wide and
alert, then ran her index finger down the side of her nose, a
silent signal she had explained to mean that everything was “aces,”
that things were going as planned.

Marcus returned the gesture, then passed it
along to Peregrine, who seemed inordinately pleased to repeat the
movement, going so far as to perform the signal twice, as if for
emphasis.

It had just gone eight of the clock, and
gentlemen were beginning to enter in small groups, shaking the rain
from their hats and greatcoats as they moved through the foyer and
speaking quietly so that their words would not echo in the
high-ceilinged chamber. Several of the men recognized the marquess
and nodded solemnly in his direction, some of them frowning, for
they knew his place was in the House of Lords, not that he had
graced that hall in weeks. Not since Cassandra Kelley had come into
his life.

“My Lord Eastbourne, good morning,” a
gentleman Marcus recognized as one of Perceval’s aides said. The
man approached him, bowing as he removed his hat. “You’ve shown a
marked interest in this foyer these past days. Is there something
the Prime Minister should know?”

“No,” Marcus answered, looking past the man
as Perceval entered the foyer, surrounded by a group of
solemn-faced men. “Just an Englishman’s healthy interest in
government, my good man.”

The man bowed again, then followed the Prime
Minister, looking back over his shoulder as the group disappeared
into the former church of St. Stephen’s to go about the business of
governing the people.

Wishing he were not so tall and so readily
recognizable, Marcus breathed a sigh of relief, then signaled to
Cassandra and Peregrine that they could relax. Perceval would not
be back in the foyer until noon at the earliest. He leaned against
the column beside him, prepared to remain on guard all day, his
blood running hot, his hopes high.

He slipped his hand into the pocket of his
greatcoat and felt the comforting solidity of the pistol that he
had put there that morning. It was all right. Everything was going
to be all right.

The day they had waited for all these weeks
had at last begun.

~ ~ ~

Cassandra’s feet hurt. The underfootman’s
heavy wooden clogs were a good three sizes too big, but that didn’t
mean that her toes, pushed forward in the shoes, weren’t throbbing.
She shifted her position slightly as she stood tucked out of the
way in a corner of the foyer, waiting for Perceval to appear,
hoping she wasn’t developing blisters on her big toe. It seemed a
shame that such a mundane complaint should mean anything today,
when they were about to save a man’s life, but facts were facts,
and her feet were killing her.

She slipped a hand into her pocket to pull
out her watch and covertly peeked at it only to learn that no more
than five minutes had passed since the last time she had checked
it. Eleven o’clock. God, would this morning never end?

She hadn’t felt well when she awoke this
morning, alone in the big tester bed for the first time in over a
week as Marcus had never come upstairs. As it worked out it was a
good thing, though, for her stomach had turned and she had
prudently run for the never-before-used chamber pot within seconds
of lifting her head from the pillow.

Nerves,
she had told herself as she
rinsed her mouth a few minutes later. It had to be nerves.

She felt perfectly fine now—she had shunned
her morning chocolate for a cup of tea and a few pieces of dry
toast—but if Marcus had found her sick he would have jumped at the
chance to keep her at home, away from the action.

And that she could not have borne. This day
was so important, the most critical day of her life, for today
would tell her whether or not they could change history, and to
hell with all the book proposals she had read that said it couldn’t
be done. What did those writers know? All they had going for them
was imagination. She’d bet none of
them
had ever blundered
into a blue mist and been transported to Regency England!

She sneaked a look at Marcus out of the
corner of her eye, loving his erect, alert posture, the tired lines
under his eyes, even the intensity with which he approached this
most crucial project.

She had teased him unmercifully these past
days, pretending to make light of all his plans to save Perceval,
but she’d felt she had no other choice. If she didn’t tease him,
divert him, the entire household would be thrown into gloom,
especially poor Aunt Cornelia, the lady with the steely outside
that hid a center of softest marshmallow, whom Cassandra had
discovered one morning in the music room, sniffling into a
handkerchief.

Marcus, Cassandra had learned as Aunt
Cornelia struggled to speak through her tears, had just left her
after telling her that he had prepared a letter to his solicitor
providing for her in the event of his untimely death. He had
mentioned that she was already named in his will, but he felt the
need to make additional arrangements in the event he left no
heir.

“Which is totally ridiculous,” Aunt Cornelia
said, struggling to control herself. “Richard is only thirty, and
quite odiously healthy. He has yet to marry and set up his nursery,
however, and Marcus has entreated me to travel to Richard’s country
estate next week, to convince the boy it is time he gave some
thought to his own heir. Oh, Cassandra, this is terrible. Just
terrible! Marcus’s son should be the next marquess—Marcus’s and
your son—and not that odious Richard. He’s such a country bumpkin.
Imagine, he has yet to come to town for a Season! However shall I
go on, having to deal with such a green goose? He’s so mad for
hunting that I wouldn’t be the least surprised if he insisted upon
mounting me on one of his smelly horses and taking me haring across
country, chasing some mangy fox—as if I would, because I wouldn’t,
not even if Marcus refused to provide for me and I ended by
sleeping under the hedgerows.”

Cassandra smiled now as she attempted to
picture the straight-backed, straitlaced Aunt Cornelia bouncing up
and down atop a rawboned horse as they galloped across the
countryside. Poor Corny. She had been a brick thus far, even going
so far as to give Marcus and Cassandra her blessings, although she
would much rather have had their engagement announced in the papers
and begun planning a hasty wedding.

“You’re nothing but an old romantic,”
Cassandra had said teasingly, hugging Aunt Cornelia. Although it
didn’t seem exactly proper, the older woman said, she would turn
her head and pretend she did not know what was going on under the
roof in the mansion. Still, she could not understand how Marcus,
usually such a rational man, could have allowed himself to become a
part of a clandestine liaison.

“Must be my bad nineteen-nineties influence,
Aunt Cornelia,” Cassandra had suggested, kissing Corny’s papery
cheek. And that had been the end of it.

Cassandra looked across the foyer at
Peregrine, who was inelegantly propping up one of the columns, his
eyes half closed. Now Peregrine, her dear “cousin,” had been
another story. He had bruited his blood ties to Cassandra about for
so long in Society that he seemed to have begun to believe his own
lies. He had taken Cassandra aside after dinner only a few days
earlier, scratched his head, told her he knew she had been
“compromised,” and asked if she thought he’d really have to
challenge Marcus to a duel.

“Wouldn’t like it above half, Cousin, you
understand,” he’d told her. “Marcus is a deadly shot, and not too
bad with his fives, now that I think on it, especially for a man
who speaks Greek. But I’m honor bound to avenge your lost
virginity, you see, so I suppose I shall just have to do it.
Especially since Marcus says he ain’t going to marry you because
you’re going to take a flit soon. Disappointed me, that did, on
both heads. I will miss you, Cousin, but I have to support you in
this time of trial. You won’t mind my dying for you?”

It had taken Cassandra some time to convince
Peregrine that he did not have to defend her honor, or the lack of
it, as he seemed to see it, and he had given up his plans to die
for her only when she explained about Brad the Bod.

Rather than be disenchanted with her on
learning that she hadn’t been a virgin for some time, Peregrine
seemed to take heart at the news—a circumstance that was
understandable, since it saved him from having to challenge his
best friend to a duel. “But if you have your heart set on killing
someone for me, Perry,” Cassandra had said to him half-jokingly,
“maybe you could try traveling through time with me at the end of
the month. I’m sure we could find Brad’s home address in my alumni
directory. Would you like that?”

Cassandra watched now as Peregrine’s eyes
closed for a second and he nearly slid to the floor. Abruptly he
awakened and scrambled to right himself, casting his eyes nervously
in Marcus’s direction. She remembered how he had paled at her
suggestion. “Go with you? No, no, I don’t think so,” he answered
hastily. “Not that it wouldn’t be jolly good fun and all, seeing
the airplanes, even if Marcus has reminded me that I don’t much
like my feet off the ground. But I think I should stay here. Got a
mare running at Ascot soon, I do, and I’ve already promised Harry
Atwood I’d make up one of his party this fall. Going to Scotland,
you know, to chase salmon or some such thing. Couldn’t disappoint
Harry. No, no. Couldn’t do it. Sorry.”

Cassandra’s stomach rumbled, bringing her
back to attention (reminding her that she hadn’t really had
breakfast), and she chanced a look around. Seeing the foyer was
nearly empty, she walked over to where Marcus stood, his eyes fixed
on the front entrance. “I’m hungry, Marcus,” she confided quietly,
speaking out of the corner of her mouth as he had said they
shouldn’t look as if they were together. “Did you bring us anything
to eat?”

He spoke without looking at her. “Goodfellow
is stationed outside in the coach. He has a hamper on the box. I
suggest you apply to him, my dear. Take your time.”

“Oh, sure, take my time,” she retorted, stung
by his detached tone. “You’d just love that, wouldn’t you? It’s
almost noon. You’d be in here, making a national hero of yourself,
and I’d be outside, gnawing on a chicken leg. Well, no thank you. I
can last as long as you can. Longer!” She glanced at the doors to
the chamber. “Shouldn’t he be coming out soon?”

“Between noon and one, if he keeps to his
schedule,” Marcus answered, glancing down for a moment so that she
saw he held his pocket watch in his left hand. “Perry!” he
whispered loudly, “Stay alert.”