Twisted Tale of Stormy Gale (3 page)

“You pretend that being called the Loony Duke doesn’t bother you, but it does. In fact, it’s been the source of a lot of pain for you,” I heard myself say.

Well, where the hell did that come from?
Way to go Stormy. That should put him in a real festive mood.
I stared at him, shocked at my own audacity, and waited for him to walk out.

He looked back at me for what seemed like an eternity. “And you,” he said finally, his voice filled with quiet understanding. “You like pretending to be someone you’re not, because you don’t trust anyone enough to just be yourself.”

I sucked in my breath hard as his words crashed over me like an icy wave. How could he know that about me?
I
didn’t even know that about me until he said it.

The air between us trembled with tension, as if what happened next hung on a precipice, teetering first one way, then the other.

I struggled to regroup and then said, too loudly, “Your birthday is in May.”

He looked at once relieved and disappointed. “Your favorite color is blue.”

“Wrong. I don’t have a favorite color, because they’re all too pretty to choose just one!” I shouted gleefully, holding my hand out for my prize. I was happy to have bested him, but even happier the super awkward moment had passed.

“You win,” he said with a crooked smile, and reached into his pocket to pull out the watch. “So what now?”

“Well, what else do you have to wager?” I gave him a saucy smile.

“I have a small sack of coins tied to my belt. But if I’m to wager that, I require more than a dance.” His dark eyes burned into mine.

“And what would you consider a fair bet?” I tried to keep my tone light despite my pounding heart. He was finally going to reveal himself to be the smarmy low life I knew he was by suggesting a quick bonk or a knob-slobbing. Shame on me for feeling a little bit let down.

“A dance…and a kiss,” he said with a slow smile.

“A…a kiss you say? All right, then. A kiss and a dance it is.” Why did I feel perpetually off-kilter with this odd man?

He stopped me before we began the game, and raised his cup high. “To new friends,” he toasted with a warm smile.

“To new friends,” I parroted and drank, the wine suddenly tasting sour, like vinegar on my tongue.

“Let’s play a different game now. How about three-card monte?”
Not invented yet, genius
. I quickly covered my blunder. “Here’s how you play—I’ll push around three cards facedown, and you try to locate the queen. Then vice versa. Whoever has the best results after ten games will be declared the winner,” I improvised. Anything that got us away from the intimacy of the previous game but still held his interest would have seemed like a big improvement. But more importantly, I was a seasoned card mechanic and it would be near impossible for him to win any card game against me.

To my surprise, as play commenced, I began to enjoy myself. We laughed and teased and shouted as the game wore on. A few times, I got so caught up that I forgot to cheat, and ended up winning the match by the skin of my teeth.

I jingled my newly acquired bag of coins playfully and did an impromptu I-won-so-suck-it jig. The duke seemed impressed with my moonwalk, and I spent a solid ten minutes trying to teach it to him. “A new dance from the Orient,” I explained.

As we sat, breathless and chuckling, a young woman called into the tent, “Hello? Will you be finished soon? I’d like my fortune told, if you would.”

The duke met my eyes and started to stand. “I really should let you take some other patrons instead of hogging all of your time. I will stop back by before I leave. What do I owe you for the reading?”

“No, please stay. I’m having such fun. One more game,” I begged him, realizing with a sharp blast of fear that I was in danger of blowing it. “I’ll tell her to come back a little later.” I walked over to the flap and did just that.

I returned to the table and grabbed the cups, focused enough to realize that if he hadn’t yet passed out from the first dose of the drug, he wasn’t going to. I added the second dose of powder to his wine before turning back to him.

“I have nothing left to wager except a few more coins for a meal,” he said, with a rueful chuckle. “You’ve already won almost everything I brought.”

Half of my mission was complete, then. I’d robbed him. I tried to brush off the hollow feeling that accompanied that thought, assuring myself that joyful vengeance would follow once I got the TTM back. Now for the important part.

“Nothing?” I asked, starting to feel a little desperate.

“Well…” He hesitated. “There is one more thing. But you’ve been so lucky, I’m not sure I want to risk it.”

Am I finally going to catch a break?

I tried to keep my voice calm. “And what thing would that be?”

“Well, it’s almost surely one of a kind, and I’d hate to part with it so soon after acquiring it.”

Convince him to show it, to risk it. Make him an offer he can’t refuse
.

Hoping against hope that it wasn’t too good to be true, I took a deep breath for courage, then sauntered forward and put my hands on the duke’s broad shoulders, pressing him back into his makeshift seat. I bent low, my face level with his. “This is all going the same way, win or lose. I want you as my lover tonight. But I’m having too much fun to quit. Won’t you play one more game with me? This time, I wager all my clothing, along with the dance
and
the kiss,” I said with my very best siren’s smile. As I waited, I said a silent prayer that my “siren” was more convincing than my “coquette.”

It seemed not, as he peered at me through narrowed eyes. His voice was curiously cold, completely at odds with the heat of his gaze as he nodded. “Intriguing,” he said grimly. “But I’d like a taste first. Just to see if it will be worth it, you understand.” He reached up and wrapped his hand in my hair, pulling my lips to his. The kiss was no gentle taste, but a searing clash of lips and tongue.

I whimpered, shocked at the pressure building fast and low in my belly, shocked that I wanted to continue kissing this man, my enemy. He pushed me away and it was over as quickly as it had begun. The tent filled with the sounds of our labored breathing. He stared at me with raw need and something else I couldn’t define.

“That will do. It’s a wager. Let’s drink on it.” He turned to face the table once again and held his glass up.

I clinked mine to his and we drank.

“I want to play the guessing game again. And I want to go first this time,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. He turned and set his empty cup to the side.

“Fine.” It didn’t matter if I won or lost. He had the TTM on him and I would win it now or take it once the second dose of the drug took effect. Then I would go get Bacon, head off to the copse of trees near the beach, don my alternate perception goggles, locate the wormhole and the two of us would blow this place for good.

“Guess number one,” he said, his face suddenly impassive. “You are a liar and a cheat.”

“What do you mean?” My voice trembled as gooseflesh rose on my arms and the master plan came to a screeching halt.

“Who are you really?” he asked, his icy gaze drilling into mine. “And remember, if you lie, you lose.”

I swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump that had formed in my throat. “Dorothy Gale. Fortune-teller. Rorn and braised in Bratt’s Pottom. Pratt’s Bottom.” My tongue felt like a fuzzy, fat caterpillar and my head had begun to swim. Everything seemed to flicker before my eyes like a silent film from the twenties and I struggled to stay alert. The last thing I remember is Leister reaching into his pocket and pulling out Bacon’s TTM, with a shake of his head.

“You lose, Dorothy.”

Then my world went black.

Chapter Three

A chilly breeze swept over my bare shoulder and roused me from my stupor. I gingerly opened my eyes only to slam them shut again as the light bum-rushed my pupils. My head pounded in protest. An oil slick of nausea roiled in my belly. Where the hell was I? Hospital? And where was Bacon?

I reached a hand to my aching head but met with resistance halfway. Again, I struggled to open my eyes and fought through the pain and nausea until my pupils adjusted to the light. When I saw the chain around my right wrist, I almost wished I’d just left them closed. The events of the previous night came flooding back to me.

I’d been duped. The con artist had been conned, the pirate pirated. I tried to piece together what had happened. Somehow he had obviously switched the cups, but when? I had poured in the second dose and it was only a few minutes later—ah, the kiss. Had the kiss been nothing more than a distraction? Maybe he saw me adding the powder to his drink and decided to take action? Maybe he’d been looking more closely the second time? Maybe I was too obvious in my quest to find out if he had the TTM and he’d gotten suspicious? Or maybe—
Holy shit. My TTM.

Sitting up as much as the chains would allow, relieved to see I still had my clothes on, I scanned the room. I nearly passed out with relief as I spied my carpetbag in the corner. OK, at least there was a chance, albeit a small one, that he hadn’t looked through the bag yet. To my everlasting shame, I realized that I owed Bacon an apology. Obviously the Loony Duke was a formidable foe if he had outfoxed me too.

Poor Bacon. He was probably waiting for me all night at the room and worried sick. Not only that, but if I couldn’t escape, he’d be stuck here forever without a TTM.

I tried to focus, calling upon my steely time-pirate resolve to figure out how to get myself out of this mess.

First things first, I needed to free myself from the chains. I pulled my shackled arm until the chain was taut and I could I trace it back to its origin. Drat! It was anchored by a thick iron plate on the wall behind me. Less than optimistic, I grabbed the chain just above my wrist with my free hand and gave an experimental tug to see if there was any give to the plate or the chain. My suspicions were quickly confirmed. It was as strong as, well, iron, and I stood no chance of breaking it.

I held out my wrist, turning it this way and that, trying to see how much room there was between chain and skin. While I was able to move it around, there was no slipping free from it.

I moved to swing my legs over the side of the bed but was stopped short by the yank of a chain on my ankle.
Fanfuckingtastic
.

Stringing a litany of curses together in frustration, I began plotting my revenge on Leister while scanning the space for anything I might use as a weapon. The words died on my lips as I truly looked at the room for the first time.

The walls were adorned with various lengths and sizes of whips, chains and cat-o’-nine-tails. A rack along with branks, an iron bridle of sorts to hold one’s head immobile, sat in one corner of the room. A chair with leather straps at the arms and feet sat in another. A torture chamber. I was in a bloody torture chamber. Footsteps rang outside the doorway and I froze. Sick with dread, I started to shake. Tears sprang to my eyes.

Stop it, you stupid girl!
I bit my lip hard and took a deep breath. I’d promised myself sixteen years ago that I would never allow anyone to make me feel helpless, afraid or weak again. On a dime, my terror turned to anger. If he was going to try to break me, it was going to take a lot more than intimidation.

Bring it.

A lock tumbled and the door swung open. Leister stood with a key in one hand and a tray of tea in the other, a grim expression on his face.

I glared at him, furiously blinking back the unshed tears

“I’ve brought some tea,” he said, closing the door behind him.

“Why, thank you,” I cooed, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“No need to be tart. I’m the one who was wronged here, you know.”

“I don’t know what you’re referring to, but whatever your plans are with me, skip the tea and get on with it. But know this sir—whatever sick thrill you get out of torturing people, you won’t get it from me. I won’t make a sound.” I lifted my chin and turned away, attempting to project an air of disinterest. In truth, I didn’t want to face him, but I didn’t want to look at anything else in this room of horrors either.

Something sounding like a strangled chuckle issued from his side of the room and I turned a suspicious eye on Leister, but he remained stone-faced under my scrutiny.

“Before we begin with the torturing, why not have a little talk first, eh, Dorothy?”

As serious as his face was, and as angry as I knew he was, my Spidey senses were telling me that he was tweaking me somehow. No matter, because, despite my brave little speech, I was all for stalling the torture portion of our show, so I assented with a nod. “So talk.”

“All right, then, I’ll start.” He set the tea tray down on the night table and moving to sit on a velvet-covered chair a few feet from the bed. “Why were you trying to poison me?”

“I wasn’t trying to poison you. I was trying to make you take a nice little nap, is all. Obviously that much is true, since you switched the cups and I’m still alive after drinking it. What tipped you off?”

“You weren’t exactly subtle about it, now, were you? I had no idea until I started to feel odd, drowsy, much more so than I should have after a few cups of wine. Once I noted that and how focused you were to see what else I had to wager, I started paying close attention. The wine had tasted a little strange after you had come back from closing the tent flap and refilled the glasses. When we kissed, I switched the glasses, figuring if I was wrong, then there would be no repercussions. If I was right, well, I would have caught a rat.” He shook his head in disdain. “And look what the cat dragged in. But I’m not the one under scrutiny here. Why did you feel you needed to knock me out?”

I had already decided that sticking with half-truths was the best way to go. He wasn’t stupid, so there was no point in trying to pretend I wasn’t guilty of
something
. I just had to throw out a big, fat red herring so he wouldn’t figure out what, exactly, I was guilty of.

“To rob you,” I told him truthfully.

It may have been a trick of the light, but for a moment he looked a little sad at my admission. I pressed on. “Do you know how difficult life for the less privileged can be? As a duke you can have no real idea what it’s like to want, to go without.” I was ad-libbing now and less than thrilled with the results. Effective? Possibly. Way too revealing? Probably. Painful? Definitely.

“So you’re a down-on-your-luck fortune-teller with an American, British and I don’t know what kind of accent, who decided to rob the Loony Duke. Is that it?”

“Pretty much.”

“All right, even if I believed that part, which I don’t, you were winning every game we played and had already won my watch and my purse. Why the laudanum? What were you going to do, take my clothes and leave me naked in the tent? Surely I would be found, and you would be hunted down. And you had already succeeded in robbing me. It makes no sense.”

I pondered his remarks and opened my mouth to speak, only to have him save me the trouble.

“Unless, of course, you wanted to steal something particular. Is that the case, Dorothy? Do I have something you want?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper.

The blood rushed from my cheeks as I realized, more due to his tone than his words, that he knew. Dammit,
he knew
.

It was showtime. Taking a deep breath I worked up some tears, satisfied as they scalded a path down my face. I let out a loud snuffle for good measure, “M-m-my br-br-brother lost a g-g-game of cards to you a fortnight ago. And w-w-when he did, he lost our father’s timepiece. It was a f-f-family heirloom and I n-needed to get it back,” I wailed between Oscar-worthy, body-racking sobs. Again, pretty close to the truth, way closer than I liked, but I was out of ideas. Maybe he’d feel sorry for me.

“Bacon is your brother?” he asked, disbelief coloring his voice.

“Yes.”

“You look nothing alike. He is a flaming redhead.”

“Well, he takes after our mother, you see. And she was a bit of a tramp, if you must know. So we’re only half brother and sister.”

I began to sob anew, hoping he would feel guilty for forcing me to divulge another painful “family secret.”

Unmoved, he barked, “Stop that, this instant.”

I did.

He stood, moving until he stood over the bed, peering down at me. “You’re a good actress, I’ll give you that.” He shook his head in disgust. “Must be hard on your lovers. How could they ever know when you’re telling the truth? Poor bastards.”

“I have no lovers. There’s just me and Bacon. He’s all I have now, and I need to get back what you stole from him. Take the watch, take the money. I just need the timepiece. If you believe nothing else that I’ve told you, believe this—it is a matter of life and death.”

That was as honest as I could possibly be without revealing the true nature of the TTM.

“Now, that, I do believe. Let’s lay our cards on the table, shall we?” He reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a disassembled TTM and a pair of alternate perception goggles.
My
TTM and
my
APGs.

Bile rose to burn my throat. He’d already gone through my bag, and now we were sunk. He had it all, and Bacon and I had no way to get any of it back. The wormhole would be closing within the next forty-eight hours and we would be stuck here, possibly forever. Not to mention, the duke had all the pieces to my TTM including the mercury pin, and once he compared it to Bacon’s, he would easily be able to reverse engineer the thing and put mine back together into a usable, working time machine.

I scrambled, and went for a Hail Mary, knowing it was a long shot, “If you do not release me this instant, I am going to scream my head off until someone comes. Everyone already knows you are a loon, and now you have kidnapped and chained a woman to your bed. Don’t think your meaningless English title will save you here. This is America, dude. You will hang for this!” I bellowed.

He looked at me, a rather bored expression on his face. “The staff was given a two-day holiday and won’t be back until late tomorrow. The estate lies on fifteen acres of land and the next house is a mile away, and town is another mile from that. Scream until your heart is content. No one will hear you.

“And as for kidnapping, everyone at the fair saw us leave together. Granted, you were slung over my shoulder, but everyone assumed you’d had too much to drink. I left to a chorus of boisterous encouragement. As I laid you over the top of my horse, I gave your bottom a hearty slap and let everyone know that you wouldn’t be sleeping for long.”

He continued on. “It’s not often that people take the word of a fortune-teller seriously, and regardless of my alleged mental incapacity, I’m still a nobleman. No, you are well and truly stuck here, and the sooner you accept it, the sooner we can move on to more important things. Like you telling me how to work this thing.” He shook the pieces of the TTM lightly in his hand.

“Work it?” I cocked my head to the side, treading carefully.

“
Work. It
. How do you make it go? I have studied the gears and the hands intensively since having acquired Bacon’s. It’s genius, truly genius, but I haven’t yet been able to make it work. There’s something missing. Once I sit and put yours together, I’ll find it. It would be much easier on the both of us if you just tell me.”

A little thrill coursed through me at his words. So maybe he hadn’t found the tiny mercury pin at all. It was hidden in an inside compartment of my carpetbag and was small as a matchstick, so it was certainly possible he’d overlooked it.

I buried my relief, affecting a concerned expression. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m afraid you may be having one of your loony spells. These are a pair of timepieces, albeit very expensive timepieces, that mean the world to my family and have been passed to my brother and me. They were given to our great-great-great-great grandfather by Leonardo Da Vinci himself. We were in a very bad way financially and had sold them to a buyer in France. We’d been traveling to deliver them when you stole them from my brother. Those pieces are all that stand between us and complete financial ruin. Are they important to me, life or death? Yes. But beyond that, this talk of making them work, I don’t understand.” I eyed him pityingly.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said, his voice icy. “And I suppose the goggles are just newfangled eyewear, then?”

I didn’t respond, still staring at him, nonplussed.

“Have it your way, then, wench. You can stay here until you decide to tell me. I have spent my life trying to figure this out, and the answer is at the tip of my fingers now. Believe that I will not easily let it slip away from me.” He turned to go, then stopped. “I must know, though, why do you keep saying that I stole it?”

“Bacon told me. He wouldn’t lie to me.”

“Hmm. Well, in this case, I’m afraid you are incorrect. I won the item in question during a card game. Whist, if you must know.”

“Yes, he told me that. But he also said that you tricked him into betting it. And that you cheated at cards to win it. To my mind, that is no better than stealing.”

“Not quite. It would seem that your brother is just a terrible card player. There was no need to cheat. I won fair and square. I do admit, however, that when he began drunkenly waving the timepiece around, I was determined to win it from him. I would have stolen if I had to.” His tone was matter of fact.

“Why?” I wanted to bite the word back. Some part of me, deep down, knew that his answer was going to change everything.

“Why? So I could find you, Molly.”

I suppose I should have been grateful that there was nothing in my mouth, but my “glass half-full” mentality flew out the window as I began to hyperventilate for the second time in twenty-four hours.