Out of the Blue (A Regency Time Travel Romance) (5 page)

“No, I don’t think so, Miss Kelley,” Marcus
told her quietly and with enough conviction to make her long to
choke him. “Not just yet. If you dare to step outside in those
clothes, you’ll either be hauled off to the nearest guardhouse or
dragged away to Bedlam in your very own strait-waistcoat. Besides,
you need me. We may need each other. I have been working on a
scientific theory for quite some time now, and I think you may just
have proved it. Humor me for a moment, if you please, my dear, and
then I may allow you to leave. Tell me—what year is it?”

“What year is it?” Perry exclaimed in
disgusted astonishment, slapping his palm against his forehead.
“What
year is
it! Marcus—have you been drinking? It may only
be March, but everyone knows it’s the year of Our Lord, eighteen
hundred and twelve!”

What? Cassandra thought her head would snap
off, so quickly did she turn it about to gape at Peregrine Walton.
She opened her mouth to speak, looked at Marcus—at his
clothes—swallowed hard, and squeaked,
“
Eighteen
—eighteen—twelve? Say, Perry, Marcus—you two
haven’t been smoking any funny cigarettes, have you?”

Marcus reached out a hand to steady her, his
smile wide. He seemed to be extremely well pleased with her
reaction to Perry’s disclosure. “I’m right, Perry! It’s just as I
supposed! The ‘benevolent blue mist’ Green spoke of is the key,
although I don’t know why it appears when it does, or just how it
does
what it does. Green was right. Filthy Freddie was
right. The Princes didn’t die—they were merely whisked away to
another, safer time!”

The Princes? Cassandra’s head was spinning.
He had to be talking about the Royal Princes, the ones who had been
murdered in the Tower in—what had Miss Hammond
said?—1480-something? Yes, Marcus had to be talking about the Royal
Princes—only his theory was completely off the wall. Miss Smithers
had said something about Richard III ordering the murders, but
Stosh had argued his case for Henry Tudor—and she, fool that she
was, hadn’t seen a reason to care one way or the other.

Yet Marcus, the man now standing between her
and the rest of the world, seemed to believe the Princes had been
time travelers, and hadn’t been murdered at all. Who said history
was boring? Cassandra closed her eyes and put a hand to her mouth,
praying she was really in her hotel room, having a bad dream.

“This isn’t quite the time for a maidenly
faint, Miss Kelley.” Marcus was holding her by the shoulders again.
“Pay attention. You came into the White Tower today—or whatever day
it was—and then found your way down here, alone, to this room. I
wonder why. Perhaps some supernatural force brought you here. I
know I had the most overpowering need to come here today myself.
You saw the blue mist. We glimpsed faint remnants of it ourselves.
Are you listening, Miss Kelley? Am I right? You mentioned fog when
we first stumbled upon you. It was a thick blue fog, wasn’t it?
Wasn’t it?
” Marcus gave her a single, quick shake.

She nodded vigorously, unable to find her
voice. She’d have been sure she was dreaming, if Marcus’s strong
hands weren’t holding her so tightly.

“Quickly, Miss Kelley—what year do
you
think it is? It has to be some years in the future, as your clothes
are most extraordinary and unlike anything I’ve seen in any books.
Are you from this planet?” He turned his head to address Perry.
“There could be life on other planets, you know, Perry. I’ve
studied all the writings on the subject. Or perhaps the moon
although I doubt it.” He concentrated once more on Cassandra, who
was trembling violently under his hands. “A year, Miss Kelley, I
implore you—you must give me a year!”

“Humor him, Miss Kelley,” Perry suggested,
winking at her. “He never gives up, you know, once he has got his
teeth into something.”

Cassandra felt her head moving back and forth
in mute denial. Marcus was lying to her—he had to be lying. My God,
the man was talking about time travel! Nobody traveled through
time—not really. Sure, Michael J. Fox had done it, but that was
Hollywood magic, and she wasn’t even sure what a DeLorean looked
like! She couldn’t have traveled through time. Okay—
Sheila,
maybe, but
not
her!

Cassandra opened her eyes, praying Marcus and
Perry had disappeared. They hadn’t. If this was a dream, it was a
real doozy. “Take me upstairs,” she ordered weakly, determined to
find a way out of her nightmare.

She’d go up the steps, see the EXIT sign, and
the sign over the uncomfortable Elizabethan chair, and all the
signs out in the yard, and then she’d wake up.

“If that’s what it takes.” Marcus grabbed her
hand, pulling her along after him willy-nilly as all three retraced
their steps to the large chamber above them, Perry falling behind
halfway up the steep steps to lean against the wall and catch his
breath.

Once in the upper chamber, Marcus grabbed
Cassandra by the shoulders once more and pushed her toward a nearby
window. “If I’m correct, London should look different to you than
it does to me, even if the only difference could be that Nash has
finally stopped his infernal building from one end of the city to
the other. Tell me what you see, Miss Kelley. Then tell me if this
is what you expected to see.”

Cassandra looked behind her and saw that
there was no EXIT sign above the large archway, no second sign
above the ugly Elizabethan chair. “Oh, God,” she whispered, closing
her eyes. “This isn’t funny anymore. I
really
want to wake
up now.”

Marcus grabbed the back of her head and all
but slammed her face into the thick windowpane. “Take a good look,
Miss Kelley, and then tell me what year you think it is.”

“
Um,
Marcus,” Perry interrupted from
behind them, “don’t you think you’re being a trifle rough with the
girl? I mean, maybe she’s just a little confused—perhaps slightly
short of furnishings in her upper rooms? Possibly even dotty?”

Cassandra opened her eyes to look out at the
city of London beyond the walls of the Tower.

There were no bright red double-decker buses
wearing signs that said ENERGY IS OUR BUSINESS. BRITISH GAS AND
ELECTRICITY.

There were no racing black cabs, no Royal
Mail trucks with their golden crests.

There were no power lines, no traffic lights,
no skyscrapers, no garish neon signs blinking at her from
Piccadilly.

There was, in fact, barely any London, at
least not as she could remember seeing it sprawled out in all
directions as she had looked down from the airplane when they
circled the city.

There was a lot of smoke, and a quantity of
dirty snow, and a few carriages moving along the roadways.

Everything was different, very different. The
only things that remained the same were the clothes of the guards
and the number of squawking Tower ravens in the yard.

Cassandra pinched herself, hard. It hurt. It
hurt because she wasn’t asleep. She wasn’t dreaming. She was lost
in Regency England.

“Excuse me, please, but I think I’m going to
be sick,” she announced quietly, unable to tear her gaze from the
unfamiliar scene.

“No, you’re not, Miss Kelley,” Marcus
commanded, whirling her about to face him—just as if he could gain
control over her stomach. “At least not until you tell me what year
you believe it is.”

Wildly, with no rhyme or reason, Cassandra
remembered the first words Perry had spoken. “You don’t burn
witches anymore, do you? I mean, you’re past that over here, aren’t
you? I think we stopped sometime in the sixteen or seventeen
hundreds or so.”

Marcus leaned down to look deep into her
eyes. “We’re quite civilized for the most part, I assure you. Isn’t
that right, Perry? We don’t burn witches above twice a week
anymore.”

“Marcus, for shame,” Perry admonished,
collapsing into the Elizabethan chair and grabbing at the arms so
that he didn’t slide to the floor. “Damme, if this chair ain’t the
most uncompromising bit of torture I’ve seen since last I visited
my aunt’s ancient pile in Surrey. Marcus, you mustn’t tell such
clankers. No, Miss Kelley, we don’t burn witches anymore. Not
unless you want us to, that is, although it puzzles me why anyone
would want such a thing. It would have to be terribly
uncomfortable, I should think—burning, that is.”

“Perry is every inch the gentleman. He tells
the truth, for one thing and, even if he does sit in the presence
of a lady, he does it only because he is overcome with fatigue, and
then makes sure he won’t be comfortable.” The marquess slipped his
greatcoat around Cassandra’s shoulders once more, whether because
she was shivering in the cold or to hide her clothing from the view
of any passersby, she wasn’t sure. “I promise you, nothing bad will
happen to you. As of now you are under my protection. Now, please,
tell me what year you thought it was before you entered that
chamber.”

Cassandra looked up at Marcus, her head
reeling. It fit. It all fit. Marcus’s elegant speech. Perry’s
eccentricities. The scene outside the window. “It is—it
was
nineteen
—nineteen ninety-two.
March twelfth, nineteen
ninety-two,” Cassandra gasped quickly, just before she lost her
lunch of fish and chips all over the Marquess of Eastbourne’s shiny
black Hessians.

C
assandra sat on the
edge of her seat in the large black coach, her head darting from
side to side as she peered through the rapidly descending twilight
at the buildings lining the slushy roadway. She was still
frightened, for only a complete numskull wouldn’t be, but she
couldn’t help being intrigued as well. It seemed as if every
Regency novel she had ever edited had just sprung to life in full,
living color.

The scene outside the coach reminded her of
something out of a movie, except it looked more real than any movie
she had ever seen. The beggars wore real rags, and the few
well-dressed people she saw moved with regal grace, even as the
ladies’ hems dragged in the dirty snow and the men minced through
icy puddles in shiny boots that reached to their knees.

She saw a peddler on one corner, his head
topped by at least a dozen precariously balanced hats, and watched
while a young boy, his dirty feet bare, ran ahead of a well-dressed
man as they crossed an intersection, the lad sweeping a path clear
for his customer. The smell of roasting chestnuts and not-too-fresh
fish and a dozen other odors filtered into the coach. “Whew!”
Cassandra reached into her pocket, pulled out a tissue, and held it
to her nose.

Peregrine Walton, having been at last
convinced that Cassandra had been somehow brought to the Tower from
another time, was now totally fascinated by her and had been
staring at her unceasingly since they had departed some fifteen
minutes earlier. “Did you see that, Marcus? Huh? Did you see that?
Marvelous, ain’t it? It can
smell!
You know, I’ve just had a
thought. Strange you didn’t think of it, Marcus, you being the
smart one. Perhaps, in the interest of science, of course, don’t
you think you ought to begin writing these things down?”

Marcus sighed, adjusting his shirt cuffs. He
should have been shivering from the cold, with Cassandra still in
possession of his greatcoat, but he made no move to cover himself
with the blanket that lay on the seat beside him. “I’ll take your
suggestion under consideration, Perry,” he said quietly, then
added, “and, Perry—Miss Kelley is a young lady, not an
it
.”

Cassandra hadn’t heard the exchange, for she
had spied a woman bustling hurriedly along the flagway, wrapped
nearly head to foot in enough ermine to send the Animal Rights
activists screaming to their congressmen. A small footman in a most
outlandish red livery labored along behind, trying his best to keep
up with her, his arms full of packages. “Oh, look at her. She may
not be especially beautiful, but that fur had to cost a fortune. Is
she a well-known hostess?”

Marcus leaned forward to peer out the window,
then sat back, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth. “In a
manner of speaking, Miss Kelley. That is Miss Harriette Wilson.
She’s a—well, let me see—how can I put this delicately?”

“Harriette Wilson? You’re kidding!” Cassandra
pressed her nose to the glass as the coach moved past the woman. “I
remember her from one of the books I edited for Mayfair—that’s the
name of our Regency line, remember. And I’ve always loved learning
about your country—or at least most of it, when I wasn’t getting
confused on all your kings. I majored in English literature in
college, and minored in world history. Harriette Wilson. How about
that! She’s a courtesan, isn’t she? A strumpet—one of the
Fashionable Impure—capital
F,
capital
I.
She’s the
one Wellington told to ‘publish and be damned’ when she threatened
to write about their affair in her memoirs.”

“Memoirs?” Perry sat forward so quickly he
nearly toppled to the floor. “Harriette’s scribbling a book? Oh,
never say that, miss.” He turned to Marcus. “Good old Harry
wouldn’t really do anything so unsporting, would she?”

Marcus smiled. “I don’t know, Perry, but it
seems Miss Kelley does. Why don’t you ask her?”

Cassandra rubbed at her forehead, trying to
remember everything she knew about Harriette Wilson. It wasn’t
much. “It had to be some time after the war—once Wellington
returned from Waterloo—when Harriette needed money and decided to
write a book, only she wouldn’t write about anyone who paid to buy
her silence. That’s when Wellington said—”

“After the war? Marcus, did you hear that?
Miss Kelley says the war is going to be over.” Perry reached over
to tug at her arm, as she was already looking out the window once
more, her curiosity completely overriding her fear as with each
turn of the coach’s wheels more of the history of Regency England
rolled into her head. “Who won, Miss Kelley? Us or Boney? I’m
convinced we did—I mean we will, because we didn’t win yet, did we?
Lord, Marcus, but I’m confused.”