He grabbed her by the arms abruptly, his fingers digging in. He leaned close, so she was staring into his eyes, as if he wanted her to see his soul. His words were hard and filled with a finality she’d never heard before. Did he hate her now? “Never use that word to describe my attentions again. A whore is a woman a man fucks and leaves. He gives her a coin and he uses her for his pleasure, happy to let the next man have her. He could pass her on the street and not notice or care. She could die in a gutter and all he would do would be step over her. A mistress, however, for a man like me, you would be everything to me, Helen—”
“My time is not like your time,” she said, having to say something; no way could she let him say more without becoming a big ball of hormonal estrogen and promising to do all sorts of stupid things like cook dinner or needlepoint.
He shook her and cut her off. She struggled against him, breaking free easily when he released her. His voice was relentless, his vowels sharp and his tone low and deep. “But you’re here now. In my time, and I am doing all I know for you. I offered you everything I was capable of offering.”
“And I don’t fucking want it! I don’t want to be your whore! I don’t want you to fuck me and go home to your wife! I’m sorry I came here. This was stupid. I’m alive. Thanks! Thank you very much and now I have to go.” She whirled around, ready to leave, and he grabbed her arm again.
“What are you doing, what mission?” he asked, voice scratchy and flat. She couldn’t look at him, unsure what she’d see on his face with that careful tone. He was not her priority. She could not safeguard his feelings. “You need help,” he said, with so much certainty that she wanted to smack him.
Helen took in a deep breath and for a moment felt lightheaded. Stupid corset. “People, Edward, look around, even in the rain there are people. What will they say about this? What will your fiancée do if she finds out? Let me go and leave me alone. I am done with you,” she said, and miraculously he let her go. She walked quickly, desperate to run, to look behind her and see if he were there. If he was really letting her leave. But she didn’t and the rain kept coming, blinding her all the way home, washing away her tears as quickly as they formed.
Chapter 8
Helen came home and found Mary sitting on the floor in men’s trousers and a sweater. She was so relieved to see Mary up and better that tears filled her eyes and clogged her throat. She stood there for a moment in dumb silence processing the joy of her friend being alive. Then she ran forward and gave her a hug. “How are you? You look good! Do you feel good?”
Mary hugged her back, a smile on her face, her cheeks pink in a healthy blush. “I feel fine! Better than fine. Weirdly good. But I can’t remember crap. What happened? I know we went to the opera. And then…did your guy show up? Am I imagining that?” the opera. And then happened? I know we went to the opera. And then y blush. "rvive b/c E takes her from there. . M shows up,
Helen blushed. “He was there. Umm, we tried to leave, you were sick as a dog, Edward helped carry you to a hackney and then we came here. I gave you some drugs I found on a dying German.”
Mary laughed, apparently deciding Helen was joking. The look on Helen’s face stopped her. “Wait. Are you serious?”
“Yes. It was either give you strange Nazi drugs or watch you die. I gave you strange Nazi drugs. You’re welcome.”
Mary swallowed, “What kind of drugs?”
Helen shrugged and sat down next to her. “Don’t know. Any question you ask about it, I really don’t know. The Germans take it when they come through to fix cellular decay. They were all bleeding to death.”
Rather helpfully, Mary’s stomach growled. “Okay, let’s go get some food and you can tell me about Sir Hotness,” Mary said.
“Actually, it’s his grace. His grace hotness… which doesn’t have the same ring.” Helen laughed weakly. Thinking about Edward was a downer.
“What?”
“He’s always correcting me, telling me to call him ‘your grace.’ It makes him sound like a pompous douche. And now I’m doing it.”
Mary was studying her intently. “You really like him—”
“It’s just lust,” she said flippantly.
“Helen, you can’t have anything to do with him.”
“I know! I am not. He found us, that was nothing to do with me.” Helen cleared her throat and started tidying their small apartment.
She could almost hear Mary thinking. “Where were you just now?”
Helen flushed deeply, going so red she thought she might pass out from the rush of blood. “Well, okay, yeah, I just came from him. But nothing happened. And I won’t see him again. It’s over. Really.”
Mary snorted indelicately. “Yeah, it seems really over.”
She folded the blanket they kept on the couch. It was weird having a couch and a blanket and no TV. Books were her TV now. And there was never enough sex in them. “He’s not mine. When this is over…I think I have to go away from him. He’s in every damned paper on any given day. It would be better if I left. And we have each other,” she said.
“What would you give to go back?” Mary asked quietly, picking at the stitching of her blue bedspread.
“I don’t know. I try not to think about it. It’s a one-way trip so what’s the point.”
“It’s all I think about.” She pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “I wonder why me. I wonder if I had continued to sleep with Daniel if maybe he wouldn’t have sent me.”
“Well, I don’t know if it helps or not, but he told me before I left that he put us at the end; that he tried to protect us for as long as he could.”
Mary rolled her eyes. “You’re so gullible. You believe everything people tell you.”
“Hey! That’s not true. And it’s not very nice either.”
Tears filled Mary’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry,” she said, burying her forehead against her knees.
She’d never seen Mary cry, and she sure as hell didn’t want to start now. “Whoa, there! It’s not that mean. It’s not like you kicked my puppy or sent me back in time. You know what you need? An icee. They have them here. We’ll go get something sweet and it will perk you up. But we have to get you changed. I can’t imagine what people would think if you showed up in trousers.”
“I like trousers—pants. I like pants,” she said weakly.
“I know. I do too.” Helen turned a little, wanting to showcase her hourglass figure. “But have you seen my tiny waist? You have to admit that’s not bad either. It hurts like a son of a bitch by the end of the day, but it looks fabulous. Maybe this is why women have not taken over the world; men keep putting us in fashions that hinder us. Like foot-binding.”
Mary just sat there, looking up at her. “I do feel better, really. Whatever you gave me, it helped. Thank you, Helen.”
“Oh fuck, don’t thank me. You would do the same thing for me. Now let’s go eat. I can’t take this sappy crap. I feel like I should punch you in the arm or slap you on the back for good measure.” Mary dressed, and just as they were getting ready to leave there was a knock on the door, from a filthy boy who’d come to tell them about a body they’d found on the bank of the Thames.
Chapter 9
The combined smell of fish and sewage was enough to knock a person out. Helen scrambled down the muddy bank as quickly as she could, following the boy as he led them to the…body. Just thinking it made her shudder. And she couldn’t get over the sense of déjà vu that being here gave her. When she’d materialized on this riverbank, close to death and naked, friendless and…it had sucked. She pulled her mind away from dwelling on it; it had sucked. She had survived, thanks to Edward giving her money, and now she was here. In a way, right back where she had started.
Funny, that.
“Perhaps we might mention to the boys in the future that their arrival location blows,” Mary said through gritted teeth.
Helen could see the man she’d negotiated with standing on the bank nex
t to a bulky, naked body. She blinked, stomach wanting to heave; it reminded her of a battlefield. When the dead were stripped for their clothes and anything valuable. He was holding a torch up, the sky darkening.
It was almost sunset, but not in a nice pink and orange kind of way that made one happy to be alive and all that jazz; this was an industrial London sunset which meant it was gray and dark and generally unwell. Like the sun was sick and was going to bed early.
The body became clearer. “A man?” Mary repeated, surprised. The boy looked at her like she was a weirdo.
Helen made a noise in her throat. “I guess they fixed that problem. The Germans have been able to send men through.” The man on the ground was, in fact, alive; his whole body shivering in the cold and undoubtedly feeling the hangover-like effects of time travel.
“Too bad we only brought the dress,” Mary said, voice carefully bland. Helen walked around him, looking into his face as she squatted down, trying to ignore his naked body.
“Welcome to London… Sir,” Helen said, not knowing what his rank might be. “I’m Helen Foster and this is M—”
“I want… to get… the hell... out of here,” he said through chattering teeth, fumbling over the words.
“Okay. Introductions later. Can you stand?”
His eyes squeezed shut and opened again. He rolled to his side. “Clothes,” he said and then he threw up, retching on the ground next to him.
The boy swore, and the man waved his lantern at her. “I’ll be taking my money now,” he said. Helen fumbled in her pockets, looking for the money she’d brought. “Will you be wanting the cart or is he alive enough for you?”
“No thanks, we can take him,” Helen said and put several coins into his grimy hand. He wandered away, the boy trailing behind him.
After a few more moments of retching, he looked up at them. “Did you really only bring a dress?”
“You could tie the shift around your waist…like a Roman miniskirt,” Mary said, and Helen frowned at her, unable to tell if she were serious or not.
“Fine. Give it to me.” He sat up slowly and groaned, then stood, one side of his body covered in mud. Helen handed him the shift, trying very hard not to look down at his exposed tackle.
He tied the material into a knot on his hip, and it did indeed look like a white linen miniskirt. Helen didn’t dare look at Mary in case she started laughing.
They scrambled up the riverbank and into the carriage, and Helen was filled with questions – desperate to ask him everything. What he was doing there, what her and Mary were supposed to do next. Hell, she even wanted to know what his rank was. But as soon as they got in the carriage he fell asleep.
It was an hour later when they pulled up to the house. There was the third bedroom, but it was fairly small. Would he want to live with them? Helen had the servants put on hot water so he could wash, leading him into the kitchen where it would be easier to get all the grime off of him.
“I can’t believe I fell asleep,” he said twenty minutes later when he emerged from the kitchen. Ever resourceful, the housekeeper had managed to come up with clothes, and he wore a shirt, open at the throat because it was too tight around the neck, the seam straining at the shoulders. And his pants were too short. The hem had been taken out, but they were still several inches up his calves. He was tall, over six feet with blond hair and cornflower blue eyes. Handsome, Helen thought, if one was into the modern man thing.
Helen and Mary stood to attention the moment he came in. If the military had finally been able to send a man back, of course he was going to be higher ranked than them, right? “At ease,” he said. “You must never do anything like that again; if the wrong person saw, it could be a disaster.”
“So what do we do?” Mary asked.
A funny look crossed his face. “I guess you just call me `Jonathon’.”
Helen blinked. “No offense, but what’s your rank?”
From what Helen could tell he wasn’t that much older than her or Mary. “Lieutenant. Lieutenant Jonathon Turner.”
“So how did you get the short end of the stick?” Mary asked.
“Wow, you really are going with this informal thing, huh?” Helen said, still at attention. It just seemed wrong to relax…although he didn’t look like any LT she’d ever seen.
Mary shrugged. “That’s what he said! I’m following orders! Aren’t I?”
“No, you could be court-martialed in the morning,” he said gravely.
Mary’s eyes widened.
He frowned, “Kidding. It’s just the three of us. We have to stick together, and we have to act natural. And let me tell you why I’m here. I’m here because I have an eidetic memory.”
“Doesn’t that mean that you remember everything you read?” Helen asked.
“Or hear,” he said and took a seat on the couch.
“And do you have…special training?” Helen asked, studying him closely.
He smiled sheepishly, expression innocent. “History,”
“Just history?” Helen asked. Cause if she were in charge and had someone with an eidetic memory, she didn’t think she’d waste him in the past, would she? Did they need a historian in the past? One chance to send somebody back and they get a historian? They sent me back and I was no prize.
“Well, I speak seven languages if that’s what you mean,” he said, smile fixed, gaze looking at her, and she had the sudden urge to call bullshit, to ask what the rest of the story was. Something wasn’t right. So said her gut.
“As far as the brass is concerned, the most important thing is having someone here who can see the changes, and hopefully anticipate the Germans next move so that we can stop them. Have a seat, we have a lot to go over,” he said. “And Helen, I have a special task, just for you.” Helen’s heart sped up, anticipation rising. A mission? A distraction from brooding over Edward? Halle-fucking-llujah!
Chapter 10
Edward could hear the servants whispering outside his library. And it was annoying. Edward had gone about his day, attended various meetings like he was supposed to, but he had not gone to his club for supper, a break in his routine that had surprised and seemingly horrified his servants. Everyone was trained to his routine, the slightest change creating domestic chaos. And so he locked himself away in his study, the dark room feeling a little gloomy. Which was fine. He was gloomy. Morose even. He scowled. Morose? Him? He wasn’t some dandy who would become despondent over a woman.
Well, apparently he did a little. He went to the shelf where his journal was and stared at the tan leather binding, almost afraid to touch it. How did it work, her coming back in time? If he took it off the shelf and threw it in the fire, would Helen die? She had told him—in a rather bland and offhand sort of way—that him placing a newspaper clipping in this book had saved her life. The clipping had been found, and her friend had been sent back to prevent Helen’s death.
It was mind-boggling. He had the strangest feeling that he needed to guard the bookshelf for the next hundred years. The future wasn’t fixed. Could she still die by drowning if the book was removed? He put his hand out, bracing himself against the shelf, the idea of it dizzying and horrifying.
She’d been at the opera. It had been her. The place had erupted in chaos, women fainting and screaming, men thundering down the aisles in fear as an assassin and his Helen dueled for the safety of the realm and the future. She had stood there, braced against panic, her body tall and straight, pointing her gun at an assassin and firing without hesitation. That had been the real her. Fierce and deadly. Unflinching. A wave of lust swept through him. He wanted her, he knew that. But he feared it was worse than that.
He was obsessed with her. It wasn’t infatuation or something bland – it was all-consuming. Helen was alive. And he had let her go. He had let her dismiss him.
He supposed that had been sensible. She had important things to do, and was undoubtedly risking her life at this very moment while he was…hmm. Helen was out changing the world, an
d he was sitting in a dark library contemplating getting drunk by himself and guarding a book for the next few decades.
“That can’t be right,” he said aloud. And then the door opened. He saw his sister framed in the doorway. She looked around the room, taking in the darkness and him with his drink in a glance. She frowned and came into the room.
“No knocking?” he asked, reproach in his tone.
“Why? You’re locking me up for life so get used to it. I’ll wander around and open doors all the time, since I’ll have nothing else to do.”
“Amelia,” he said warningly.
“I’m leaving. I’m going to Somerton,” she said and crossed her arms defiantly. It was the home they grew up in.
“Come inside. Close the door.”
Amelia came in, shutting the door loudly. “You know there’s a man out there, don’t you? Your Pinkerton fellow, undoubtedly waiting to give you a report on some—what happened to your face?” she asked, abruptly changing topic as she moved closer.
“It’s fine,” he said, and caught her hand as she reached up to touch him. He gave her hand a gentle squeeze, wishing he could go back and undo the argument they’d had. “You are still concerned for me, even after the way I behaved?”
A Lady Most Dangerous (Helen Foster) Page 6