The Bride of Time (24 page)

“That is of no consequence,” she replied. “I want to make an example of her. It’s my right!”

“Where do you live, miss?” the bobby asked Tessa.

“She lived here,” Miranda Poole spoke up. “But no longer. I’m well shot of her. Look at her! Look at the scandalous clothes on her! She never owned anything but black bombazine when she was in my employ. She’s evidently found someone else to steal from, or robbed a brothel. I have never seen the like. Look at the ring on her hand. Where did you get that? Who did you steal
that
from, miss, hmm?”

“Will you let the gel speak?” the bobby said, clearly out of patience.

“This is my wedding ring,” Tessa replied, fingering the gold and iolite band. “I have never stolen anything in my life.”

“She is lying! She had no suitor. She’s a thief, plain and simple, and I want her jailed!”

“Where’s your husband, then?” the bobby asked Tessa. “If you’re married, like you say, he should be able to speak for you.”

“H-he can’t,” Tessa lamented. “H-he isn’t here. He’s away…on business in Cornwall.” What else could she say? She certainly couldn’t tell the truth, which only reminded her of what she’d left behind. Her heart sank. Giles must be beside himself with worry, and there was no way she could ease his mind. She couldn’t even try to retrace her steps. She was caught, and though Giles would surmise what had happened, there was no way she could tell him where she’d gone.

“A likely tale!” Miranda Poole shrilled. “Do you see? She’s a liar! I demand her arrest! I mean to press charges.”

A crowd had begun to gather. Jasper Poole had come out of the house, his countenance disapproving. There was no hope; the diabolical child had led her into the corridor that took her back to the very steps of Poole House. The truth would not serve her here, except to see her locked up in Bedlam and forgotten. The clothes, the ring Giles had bought in Bond Street, all damned her. Her only chance lay in the mercy of the magistrates, who she prayed would show leniency since the brooch had been recovered.

The bobby blew a shrill blast on his whistle and seized Tessa’s arm. “All right!” he shouted. “She goes to the lockup at Old Bailey till it opens for business in the morning. We’ll let the magistrates sort her out. You want to press charges, madam, that’s where you’ll do it. It needs to be in writing. Come ’round first thing in the morning and see to it, or she goes free, cause she ain’t done nothing that I can see to cause me to lock her up. If she stole from you, I can’t see why she’d come back
’round here to your very doorstep to risk getting herself nabbed.”

Tessa’s heart leapt. Was this a ray of hope after all? If the bobby believed her, if he put in a good word for her, might there be a chance?

“I want her jailed!” Miranda Poole carped.

“Now, now, mother, you have your brooch back,” her husband said.

“It’s the principle, Jasper. She must be made an example of before the others. I want them to see what happens to thieves at Poole House, or that lot below stairs will rob us blind.”

“All right, then, off she goes,” the bobby said. “ ’Tis a misdemeanor, so they’ll hold her over for the Sessions Court to sort out.”

“And how long will that take?” Miranda Poole snapped.

“They only meet eight times a year here in Town. They ain’t due again till next month.”

“Next month?” Tessa cried out. “I cannot stay locked up until next month.”

The bobby laughed. “You should have thought of that before you stole from these nice folks here.” He blew his whistle again, attracting the notice of a passing hackney cab tooling out of the fog. “Come on then,” he said, propelling her along toward the carriage.

“Where to?” the driver hollered.

“The lockup down ’round Old Bailey,” the bobby replied, shoving Tessa into the cab despite her tearful protests. “I just come on duty,” he said to the driver, with a wag of his head and a humorless chuckle. “Looks like it’s going to be a long night.”

A sennight passed, and nearly another, and still there was no sign of Tessa or the boy, though Able and Giles in their turn haunted the highways and byways of
Cheapside. Though the coachman made no protest, nor did he press for an explanation, Giles knew poor Able had to know something untoward was afoot. He would have to be a cretin not to have guessed the hushed tales of lay lines were true, and Able McGowen was far from simple. Still, the stabler cum blacksmith cum coachman was owed an explanation that Giles was loath to give, because to give the truth substance with words would be to make it true, and that he could not—would not—do, else he run mad in the streets.

Brandy blunted the edges of his futility, but no matter how much he consumed, he couldn’t manage drunkenness; he didn’t dare in any case, if he was to be alert for the miracle he prayed for, the miracle that would give him back his Tessa. There wasn’t much time. The moon was waxing full. A few more days and the wolf inside him would surface again. The last place he wanted that to occur was in the middle of London Town at the height of the Little Season, that extra spurt of social whirls for those diehards who refused to abandon Town life before winter cancelled the gaiety again until the spring.

Having excused Tessa by fabricating a family emergency, Giles stayed on as the Prince Regent’s guest, until Prinny decamped for Brighton before the winter snows. After bidding his patron good-bye, Giles returned to the coaching inn at Charing Cross, secretly hoping that Tessa would come to him there. But that was a dream dredged from the dregs of the brandy he’d begun to hate, the drink that blunted the edges of his reason yet did nothing to ease his pain.

When time grew short, he sent a special messenger to Foster at Longhollow Abbey, entreating him to seek out Moraiva, the Gypsy. He was desperate for any insight she might impart, for he had exhausted all his options. He dared not return to the framer’s establishment.
Edwin Tatum didn’t care a whit that Giles was Prinny’s protégé. The outraged framer threatened him with the guards from the Watch, or the Bow Street Runners if he didn’t take himself off and stay gone, citing that Giles’s presence was chasing his customers away. The man was right, of course, but that did not keep Giles from monitoring what went on at the framing shop from a discreet distance. He haunted Threadneedle Street like a wraith in the mist, day in and day out, taking turns with Able.

In between, Giles would drag himself back to the Golden Cross, while Able took his place. Soot still belched into his room just as it had the night he’d first arrived there with Tessa. The innkeeper hadn’t bothered to have the chimney swept, since Giles went straightaway to Carlton House, and the malodorous black fog hanging over the room irritated Giles’s eyes and clogged his nostrils. He had the man’s word that a chimney sweep would be hired, but Giles had given up expecting one.

Four days before the moon would wax full, Giles exchanged places with Able early. It was scarcely dusk when he returned to the coaching inn and collapsed from exhaustion on the bed without undressing. It had been a long day, made longer by a stubborn drizzle that turned bitter cold, threatening hail, and the coachman had brought him back early, fearful that Giles would come down with pneumonia if he stayed out in such dirty weather any longer.

As was always the case when he was exhausted, Giles’s passions heightened. Dreams came, soft, radiant dreams of Tessa in his arms, of her supple lips pressed against his own. He could taste her honey sweetness. He could feel the satiny smoothness of her skin, of her gentle fingers wrapped around his sex, bringing it to life, making
it hard, making it ready for her silky wetness to envelop it like a sword by its sheath.

He groaned as the bittersweet torture brought him nearer to climax, and yet release would not come, even though he could taste her skin, feel her nipple harden beneath his tongue as he laved it erect. His artist’s eye was seeing her now—every contour, every slope, every plane as it was etched in his mind. He cursed the eye that had emblazoned it there, for he had lost her, and the image was sheer torture. It gave him no peace, not even in the sanctity of his dreams. Try as he would, he could not make her materialize before him. He could not give the wraith she had become corporeal substance. He could not breach the time that separated them. He was still denied access to the corridors. Why? What had he done to offend the gatekeepers? Or was it that they just did not see him, would never see him no matter how he tried?

His desire was all-consuming, and he ached for release. Her scent was all around him, in him, ghosting past his nostrils. The violet tussie-mussie he’d bought her on their wedding day had shriveled and died, yet he couldn’t bear to part with it. Instead, it lay upon the mantel, where the heat rising from the hearth could spread its scent. It filled his consciousness and his subconscious with Tessa’s very essence. It taunted him waking and sleeping, like now, when he reached out with his arms and his very soul to embrace her, but all he clutched to him was empty air.

A knock at the door bled into his dreams. It came again, louder, but it didn’t seem real. He heard it as if through an echo chamber, just another torment to keep him from Tessa, to keep him from embracing her, from releasing in her, from bringing her to climax and himself to ecstasy in those exquisite arms. He would ignore
it, and did…until his name accompanied the infernal hammering. The voice that delivered it was a man’s voice, a careless voice. It sat Giles bolt upright, unfulfilled and unrelieved, and his eyes slowly focused upon something being slipped under the door.

Giles rubbed his eyes to clear the cobwebs of sleep; nothing could slow his heartbeat or erase his disappointment that he lay in that bed alone. Swinging his feet over the side of the pallet, he marveled that he was still wearing his turned-down top boots. No matter. He got to his feet, staggered to the door and snatched up the missive. Recognizing his own seal sobered him, and he broke the wax and ripped the parchment open to reveal Foster’s flawless hand:

Sir,

You must return at once! The boy has not been found,
and the Watch has been by. Your absence has fed fuel to
the fire that you have done for him. They are threatening
to send word to Town to run you to ground. You
must return, or it will be the worse for you.

I have spoken with Moraiva as you wished. She, too,
says you must return. She told me to tell you this,
though I do not presume to understand it: “Leave her
to find her own way. Tax not the gatekeepers. Avoid
St. Michael’s churches until we speak.”

Yours faithfully,
Foster 
               

Chapter Nineteen

Giles had the hostler saddle a horse, and he rode out in search of Able. He would leave the coachman behind to continue the search for Tessa, but he could hardly leave without telling him where he was going and why. It was time to tell Able more than he’d hoped he would have to. Whether the faithful servant believed or not, he would have to know what Giles believed.

Despite an oilskin borrowed from the coaching inn stables, Giles was soaked through when he reached Threadneedle Street. He hadn’t eaten, and his stomach roiled for want of food, which did little to resurrect his good humor, something long lost since Tessa disappeared in the fog on their wedding day.

He’d made several passes by the frame shop and cruised Cheapside for a good half-hour before he spotted the brougham. There were several public houses nearby, and Giles directed Able to one he’d often frequented when in Town—The Spotted Falcon, off Cornhill near Lombard Street—that afforded privacy and hearty food for its customers.

It was busier than usual, the rain having driven customers in. The two men settled at a table in a recessed alcove, where Giles could speak to the coachman as
confidentially as was possible in such a setting, and ordered tankards of porter and plates of savory rook pie.

“Ya should be abed,” the coachman grumbled, taking a swig of the rich, dark brew. “You’re courtin’ pneumonia or consumption goin’ about in such tempests as this.”

“It’s starting to slack,” Giles observed, craning his neck toward the window. “By the time I set out at first light, it’ll have stopped altogether.”

“Set out, is it? Where are we goin’, then?”

“Not ‘we,’ Able; needs must that I go alone. I want you to remain here and keep searching.”

The coachman froze, his fork suspended. “All due respect, sir, but could it be that she don’t want ta come back? It appears ta me that—”

Giles waved him off. “Able, things are not what they seem,” he said. “You must know by now that something untoward is afoot here. I don’t presume to know exactly what that something is, but I do know that…I know that Tessa came to us out of the future. Unless I miss my guess, that little demon led her right back to her own time.”

The coachman looked surprised. “And where did he go, then?”

“I have no idea, but I don’t think he went with her. He’s here somewhere; I’d stake my life upon it. He wanted to get shot of her, just as he got shot of all the others. They were easy. They were afraid of him. Tessa was not.”

“I heard tell o’ lay lines hereabouts. The Gypsies say they exist, but…” The coachman shook his head, unconvinced. Yet it wasn’t necessary for Able to believe, just to be aware.

“You picked her up that first night,” Giles reminded him. “She tried to tell you she wasn’t who you thought she was; she tried to tell us both. She was fleeing pursuers
in her time when she crossed over, and now she’s gone back among those who mean her harm. I am half-mad with this, Able. You don’t have to agree with me, just obey. I’ve had a missive from the Abbey. The Watch thinks I’ve done for the child and that I’ve run. I must return to Cornwall at once…but I cannot leave Tessa.”