The Time Travelers, Volume 2 (10 page)

No. If an American jilted him, he would go back across the Atlantic in the morning and never associate with Americans again. In fact, if Devonny jilted Lord Winden, it would ruin everybody’s chance of grabbing a title. Eunice became angry at Devonny. What a wretched thing to do to the rest of them! Devonny was so selfish.

“Where is Flossie?” Eunice whispered to Constanza.

“Between you and Elizabeth,” whispered Constanza, irritated. Wasn’t this delay awkward enough without Eunice being a fool?

Constanza looked up and down the semicircle to be sure she was correct that Flossie stood between Eunice and Elizabeth.

There was no Flossie.

Constanza studied the entire line. Flossie was not among them. How very peculiar. Had Flossie felt too faint to march in? Or had Flossie joined the search for Devonny?

From the back came a huge bellow, a voice that seemed too large even for the large body of Hiram Stratton. “My daughter! My daughter has been kidnapped! I was warned! But I did not take it seriously! My daughter has been kidnapped!”

The most difficult thing Hugh-David Winden had ever done was to walk back down that aisle … without a bride. He smiled courteously at the guests, ignored their hot gossipy eyes, said nothing to the barbed taunts they meant him to overhear. He made it out of the sanctuary and into the parlor, where Hiram Stratton was shouting to the police. “A man snatched her. Right from my arms!”

“Are you sure she didn’t just leave?” said a policeman sternly. “Jilting a man has been done, sir. Done a lot more than kidnapping.”

Hugh-David wondered which he would prefer. To be publicly humiliated—a man so undesirable that a lady had to flee the church rather than be united with him—or to have Devonny’s life in jeopardy.

“It’s true!” cried the florist. “She was here and then she wasn’t!”

“I saw him!” shouted Hiram. “It was kidnapping!”
He was red in the face, strangled by his collar and his fury. “He took my daughter’s arm and snatched her! I should have hired more police! Why didn’t you stop this heinous event?”

Miles and Gordon had followed Lord Winden out of the church. Now Miles pressed up against Hugh-David. “We must leave,” he whispered. “I knew this Stratton fellow was so abominable only the worst could happen.”

Miles and Gordon would take this humiliation home with them. They’d dine out on the story for years. How amused his mother and brothers and cousins would be. It hardly bore thinking of.

“No money is worth this, Hugh,” said Gordon. “Cut your losses and quit.”

Devonny was a bet, and I lost, thought Hugh-David. Time to fold.

The bridesmaids had joined them, sobbing and crying out, their huge gowns rustling, the thorns from their roses poking and stabbing. “Do you really mean it?” came their cries. “A threat against Devonny? How could you not have told us? How could you let this happen, Mr. Stratton?”

In the midst of Hugh-David’s anger and humiliation came a splinter of fear. The girls were genuinely afraid for Devonny. If she were jilting me, he thought, she would have confided in one of them. Or in all of them. But she did not.

The police rushed senselessly around the church, as if a bride in a flowing white gown had slid behind a pillar or was resting in the chapel.

Hiram Stratton could not describe the kidnapper or the kidnapper’s clothing. He could not explain how his daughter had been taken from him without a fight.

He insisted the kidnapper was alone. But how could one man, wondered Hugh-David, no matter how strong and determined, lift a bride whose gown was so heavy the bride herself could not move? The Devonny who had beaten him in golf and tennis, who had ridden a horse and a bike, who had talked back and argued—wouldn’t this Devonny have resisted? Surely at least she would have dropped her flowers; she would have screamed.

Hiram Stratton was having a tantrum, pounding a heavy carved oak chair on the stone floor.

It’s Hiram Stratton who demanded speed, thought Hugh-David. Hiram Stratton who set the wedding date for one month from my request for Devonny’s hand. I was in no rush. After all, my bills have not been paid in months, some of them not in years. Let my creditors wait longer, I don’t care.

Is it Hiram who now does not want it? Could Hiram Stratton himself have arranged a kidnapping? But to what end? No man wants scandal involving his daughter. And if he wanted to call off the wedding, he would never have done it in front of his own guests.

The police found nobody outside the church who had seen the bride. A dress described as vast, ornate and glittering? A thousand onlookers could not have missed Devonny’s exit.

They began a grim search of cellar and belfry, back stairs and offices, classrooms and kitchens. Plenty of places to drag a girl—perhaps smothered by a drug, perhaps strangled by a wicked hand and plenty of places to have a carriage waiting.

Hugh-David thought of what could happen to a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl in the hands of thugs.

“Kidnapping!” exclaimed Gordon. “It’s so American, so vulgar. You cannot have this scandal attached to your name.”

“It is not attached to my name,” said Hugh-David. “It is attached to Miss Stratton’s.” She would be ruined. No one would marry a girl who might have been raped. No one. Including Hugh-David.

Hugh-David found himself comforting the mother, the real mother, the first Mrs. Stratton. The poor thing was sobbing uncontrollably. “What will become of me now?” she said over and over.

What will become of
you
? thought Hugh-David, shocked. How could the woman think of herself instead of her daughter?

Gordon muttered, “Come, Hugh. It is unthinkable that you should have anything more to do with this Stratton crowd.”

But they had forgotten Hiram Stratton, and his great bulk, and temper, and power.

“There is no crowd of Strattons,” said Hiram. “There is one Stratton, and I am he.” He smiled a terrible smile, his lips stretched like cords. In his jowls a muscle twitched, making his beard jump. “And you, Hugh-David Winden, will stay. My innocent name is at stake.”

Your
name? Hugh-David was stunned, for he had thought Devonny surrounded by love. But Devonny’s father and mother had no more regard for Devonny than Hugh-David’s father and mother had for him.

“Really, sir!” said Gordon coldly to Mr. Stratton. “There is no need to behave like a ruffian on a frontier.”

Hugh-David remembered himself in the garden at the mansion by the sea, playing games with her—this very young girl about to become his wife—and saying to her, “I do not have a heart, my dear.”

She is alone and terrified in the hands of evil, thought Hugh-David,
and knows better than to expect anything from me
.

The man who had Devonny was the most shocked of all. He had not had a master plan; if he had, it would not have included bringing Devonny into his time, wearing a dress the size of a school bus, carrying
enough flowers for two funerals, and sobbing from behind a veil.

“My mother!” she cried. “How will I save my mother? She will be held responsible! Father will keep her alive in the attic for decades! She will suffer so! Where is this? Where are we? Strat must be here! Do you have Strat? He will know what to do, you don’t know anything! Why are you wearing a shirt with a hog on it?”

Tod was offended. He had a large collection of college team sweatshirts, and razorback hogs were the best. She had just insulted his favorite sweatshirt. “I told you before, I don’t have Strat!” he yelled back.

“Then take me home!”

“How am I supposed to do that? Throw you at the pump handle? Toss you in the sea? What are you doing in that ridiculous dress? I can’t even fit you through the car door.”

“You came to rescue me, now rescue me!”

“What am I supposed to do with you?” he yelled.

“You ’re supposed to help me find my brother!”

He stopped yelling because he was giving himself a sore throat, but also because runners were approaching. It was too late in the year for sunbathing or sailing, but runners never knew when to quit.

To his disgust, Tod knew the runners: four girls in his high school who were on the varsity basketball
team and thought they were perfect. They were wearing designer spandex, tighter than skin, and designer sneakers, and designer sweatbands, and as they ran up to him, laughing hysterically at the sight of Devonny in her wedding gown, they came to a halt but continued running in place.

“What is
this
?” shrieked Tory, giggling at Devonny.

“What a hoot!” said Jill, poking at the skirt, which appeared to be covered in jewels. Tod could not imagine how they got jewelry to stick to the skirt. There had to be a million little pearls on there.

Tod hated being laughed at. And to think he had worried about her and let himself get involved! Women!

“This is Annie’s friend, Devonny,” said Tod with dignity, “and we are participating in a contest. You guys are ruining it for us. After all we’ve gone through, now we’re going to lose! Get out of the picture.”

“Are you being filmed?” said Tory, horrified that she might be ruining a movie.

“Of course we’re being filmed! Do you think she would dress like this and yell at me like this for any other reason? Beat it!” yelled Tod. “You’re supposed to be runners. Run.”

The girls were smart enough to see there were no cameras around, no film crews. But there had to be, or why would this woman be dressed so weird? Embarrassed
and uncertain, they jogged out of range of whatever was going on.

“Get in the car, Devonny,” Tod muttered. He could hardly budge her. The gown weighed more than all his gallons of water. He shoved her toward his ancient station wagon. Nobody drove station wagons anymore; his parents had bought the thing for Annie, and this year Tod inherited it. It was immense and tanklike. Mr. and Mrs. Lockwood said if a car accident happened, the other guy would be squished like a tuna fish can, while Annie or Tod would drive away with nothing more than a scratch on the bumper.

But it was impossible to stuff Devonny in. First of all, she would not cooperate, and second of all, her dress wouldn’t crumple up enough. “That dress has gotta go.” He yanked a pair of blue jeans from the backseat (Tod did not believe in doing laundry; he just stored used clothing wherever he might need it), snatched up a T-shirt he used to clean the windshield, and thrust them in her face. “Wear these. We gotta look normal. I gotta think of something to do with you.”

She had taken off her veil, at least, and now turned her back to him. “You’ll have to unbutton me.”

Fifty-six teeny-weeny little buttons he could hardly get his fingers around. Tod could not believe this was happening to him. He refused to turn around to see how the runners were behaving.

Underneath the huge gown she had another gown, satiny, with a definite resemblance to something from the inner pages of the Victoria’s Secret catalog. Whoa, thought Tod. Devonny tried to stuff the gown down into the jeans.

“Zipper goes in front,” said Tod. “Gimme the bottom dress, you can’t wear that either. I’m not looking, I’m busy folding up your dresses. Put on this T-shirt.”

Devonny was facing the strange, bounding females in that hideous clothing, which clung to their very outlines. Did they think they were mermaids? Men were not supposed to know what girls looked like. It made her so uncomfortable to think of Tod viewing these things.

Now he wanted her to take off her undergarments! Summoning her courage, Devonny peeled them off. Tod had lied and was looking after all.
“What is that thing?”
he said, horrified.

How could he be horrified by a perfectly sensible corset and not even notice a woman wearing a purple skin? But then she remembered that Annie had not known what a corset was either. Annie had had on the strangest little connected flowery cups instead. Devonny pulled the white shirt on. It was not clean. She could not believe she was wearing a shirt with filth on it.

“I can’t wear so little clothing,” she whispered,
starting to cry. Tod peeled off his own shirt—a bizarre heavy thing without a front or back opening—and yanked it down over her head.

Devonny had certainly never imagined the moment would come when she would wear a picture of a pig on her body. But the long heavy sleeves felt good, sort of fleecy, and she felt safer inside it.

Tod crammed the entire wedding gown into the back of his motor car, and she shuddered, thinking how it might rip or acquire a stain, and then she remembered that she did not care about this gown, nor the occasion for which she had worn it.

“Get in front,” he ordered her, but she could not locate the door, and Tod had to stuff her in and then encircle her with straps to hold her down. “I won’t go anywhere,” she assured him.

“I can’t believe this is happening to me,” he said. He twisted a key near his lap and the vehicle roared. Devonny screamed. “It’s okay,” he shouted, “I just need a new muffler. Not to worry.”

The vehicle leaped away. Roaring, it flew down roads that did not exist on Devonny’s estate. And yet she was on her own estate, her summer cottage, even though her wedding had been in New York City. How had this happened? How had Tod come for her, all the while keeping his feet on the ground here? She did not feel rescued. She felt as if things were a hundred times worse.

She had to believe that Strat was waiting for her; that wherever Tod was taking her was a place where Strat had been, and would be again, and Strat would know what to do.

Tod’s motorcar faced right at other vehicles, not one of which had the same shape or color, but all of which roared and rushed and glittered. He did not smash any of them, but it was not for lack of trying.

She covered her eyes and tried not to sob. What have I done? thought Devonny. How can I undo it?

She peeked between her fingers. They were leaving her estate and hurtling at incredible speed toward the village. She recognized a building here and there, but was badly shaken by the number of houses. Not an inch of farm or meadow. Houses, houses, houses.

“Do you have to go so fast?” she whispered.

“We’re crawling. We’re doing forty.”