Edmund looked down at the heavy ring upon his finger. It was not for his father, but for his eldest brother, Robert, gone these six years. His father’s ring, Edmund had been forced to sell already to pay Geoffrey’s debts. Perhaps he should sell the ring he wore for Robert as well, which might in turn pay for smaller rings of a lesser metal for the most honored mourners. Ready-made ones, perhaps, rather than the elaborate customized rings they’d ordered for their father and Robert. The goldsmith kept a ready supply of rings with skulls, if Edmund recalled aright.
Skulls would have pleased his lordship, thought Edmund, smiling. Heaven knew he had failed to please his grandfather in other ways. Edmund had neither sired an heir nor even married. He preferred reading and riding to life at court. Well, riding was necessary, was it not? How else was he to see to his grandfather’s estate? To learn what he must learn in order to run it himself, as now he must do?
He sighed. His father ought not to have died. His grandfather ought not to have hurried after. Ought not, especially, to have left Edmund with the rearing of young Geoffrey. Profligate, degenerate, only-just-eighteen Geoffrey, who spent every penny he had, and many he had not, on brothels and ale and good seats at whatever play or hanging or cockfight was to be had in nearby London. Perhaps a wife would tame Geoffrey where others had failed. But who would unite his daughter to the younger brother of an impoverished earl who avoided court life?
The improvements to the manor for Her Majesty’s visits, the foodstuffs and wines, and the gifts to Her Majesty and her favorites had left the first Earl of Shaftsbury with debts he could never in his lifetime repay.
These, too, would fall upon Edmund’s shoulders. Small wonder Edmund’s father had hurried off from such a life to take his chances in the next. Edmund might still read of voyages to the New World, devouring anything he could acquire upon the subject, but his dream was hopeless, now that his grandfather was gone. Edmund must look after the estate and those who farmed it. Brother Geoffrey certainly would not.
The slow shuffle of a pair of slippers roused Edmund from his gloomy thoughts, bringing him back to his gloomy present. He greeted the midwife who’d delivered him, his siblings, and his father. He listened to her lamentations that it should come to this, “My lord gone so soon after his son.” Edmund found himself in the odd position of comforting the midwife regarding the cause of his own sorrows.
Having at last pointed out the linen shroud, Edmund left her to wash and wind his grandfather’s body while he chased down his brother. Geoffrey had left the room a quarter of an hour ago, plenty of time in which to make mischief rather than help his mother as Edmund had requested.
But when Edmund sought out his mother, he learned Geoffrey had, indeed, left on an errand at his mother’s command.
“I sent him to town,” said his mother. “We must have rings and gloves for the mourners.”
Edmund felt a pinch of alarm. “Good my lady mother, didst thou supply him with ready payment?”
“Aye. I gave him the ruby and pearl pendant your grandfather gave me when I wed your father.” She swiped at a tear. “I never cared for it overmuch.”
Edmund frowned. All who knew his lady mother knew she had treasured the pendant. That she should have given it to Geoffrey? Edmund had to chase down his brother at once. How could his mother be so blind to Geoffrey’s habits?
“I must ride into town as well, my lady.” Concealing his distress as best he could, he kissed his mother and departed.
In the stables, he had two horses prepared, intending to take the stable hand Jem along with him, uncertain what state Geoffrey might have drunk himself into by the time they recovered him. As they rode away from the manor, Edmund glanced mournfully at the elaborate cupolas and chimneys adorning his home. Chimneys might keep his family and servants warm come winter, but cupolas would feed no one.
On the small chance that his brother had gone for rings, Edmund and Jem rode to Cheapside, but none of the goldsmiths or silversmiths of Goldsmith Row had seen his brother. It was as Edmund had feared, then. His stomach soured on two accounts. Firstly, Edmund had more important things to do than chase down his reprobate brother. Secondly and more urgently, the estate had no coin to spare, and Geoffrey could spend coins faster than a lover seeking his mistress’s favor.
Edmund breathed out an angry sigh. Geoffrey likely was buying gifts for the latest strumpet to catch his eye. Edmund knew no one who craved admiration more than his brother. Nor did he know anyone more ready than Geoffrey to believe admiration could be purchased instead of earned.
Resigning himself to the inevitability of loss, Edmund had a choice to make: Shoreditch or Southwark? Both teemed with brothels, gaming houses, and theaters. Edmund had overheard people in the lane discussing the baiting of a famous bear to commence at noon in Shoreditch. Geoffrey liked bear baiting. Edmund turned east and then headed north, passing up Bishopsgate along with his stable hand until they reached the vicinity of the Curtain—the theater most likely to house the bear baiting. Upon arriving, however, they learned the match between dogs and bear had been postponed, as the dogs had torn one another to pieces, allowing the poor bear yet another day to draw breath.
Edmund frowned. “Perdition take him,” he muttered, looking about as if in hopes Geoffrey might suddenly appear. But his brother was most likely in a dark hole and not the open street. “Know you which brothel houses my brother favors?” Edmund asked of Jem.
Jem shrugged.
Edmund’s fists clenched, yearning to knock someone’s pate. Geoffrey deserved a lashing, and Edmund was ready to apply it. Indicating that Jem should remain with the horses, Edmund dismounted, turning into the rank lane in which the brothel stews were housed. As he rounded a corner, stepping with care to avoid noxious midden heaps, he felt a faint tug at his waist. Reaching down, he noted he’d been relieved of a small wallet of food.
Fists at the ready, Edmund turned and spied a child running with haste. In three heartbeats he had the child in his grasp. The little thief was already devouring a chunk of brown bread. His breath drawn to rebuke the urchin, Edmund lifted the boy with two strong arms.
And saw that he was a she. She was scrawny, with large dark eyes. Something about the terror in the thief’s eyes as she looked at him took the reprimand from his mouth. She had the look of his sister Susan, buried just after her seventh birthday.
“Please, sir, I’m sorry, sir,” whispered the child.
He could feel her trembling in his grasp.
Cursing softly, he set the girl down. “Dost thou know the punishment for thievery?”
“I was hungry,” she murmured, an anxious glance at the food still held tightly in her filthy fist.
“Where is thy mother?”
“In the ground, sir.”
“And thy father?”
Her eyes dropped. “The same.”
“Hast thou no relations living?” asked Edmund, his voice more gentle than before.
“No, sir. I begged a farthing from a gentleman earlier, and I mistook you for him. I thought perhaps you would not mind, but I see you are not him.” She hung her tiny head in shame. “It was wrong, but a boy stole my farthing, and I was so hungry.”
“Thou saw’st a gentleman who had my look?” asked Edmund, his pulse quickening.
“Aye. The one as gave me the farthing. He wore black gloves trimmed in yellow.”
Geoffrey. Edmund felt relief alongside mounting anger. The yellow-trimmed gloves had been their grandfather’s.
Edmund withdrew a penny and placed it in the child’s free hand. “Canst thou tell me whither this gentleman went?”
“Aye, sir,” replied the child. “He would go to the theater, he said, though the bear fought not today. He was in hopes to game with the players.”
Edmund rose from his crouched position and looked toward the theaters, as if expecting to see Geoffrey down the lane. Instead of seeing Geoffrey, however, Edmund saw Jem approaching, without the horses.
“Jem,”
cried Edmund.
“The horses are safely held, my lord,” Jem said hastily. “Young Geoffrey is gone to the theater—”
“Aye,” said Edmund. As an afterthought, he added, “If Geoffrey means to gamble, he must have coin yet remaining.” The thought was steadying.
Jem was staring at the urchin beside Edmund. Edmund was sore tempted to send the child on her way, but how should an orphan fare in such a part of the city? The child was courteous, or at least knew enough to address a lord as “you” and not “thou.”
She’d finished the bread but looked no less hungry than before.
Edmund sighed. He would not leave the wretch to the fate that awaited her hereby. He addressed Jem, “A moment.”
Then, squatting, Edmund spoke to the girl. “What is thy name, child?”
“I am called Nan.”
“Canst thou brew or bake or mend?”
“I can mend, sir.”
“And wouldst thou promise never more to thieve, were I to find thee a place of employment?”
Her round eyes grew larger still. “Aye, sir.”
At this, Edmund stood and spoke to Jem. “Bring this child home. Take her to Marjorie, and see she is fed, clothed, and given work.”
“Aye, my lord,” replied Jem. “Right away, my lord.”
“Stay—where hast thou bestowed the horses?”
“At the Shorn Sheep, lord. The ostler is brother-in-law to my wife. He will see they are kept safe.”
Edmund nodded, then turned to the girl. “Godb’ye, Nan. I shall come visit thee in a few days’ time to see thy needlework.”
“An’ it please you, sir,” Nan said to Edmund, “You are best to go round the side of the playhouse. The door to the side doth not latch aright.”
Edmund nodded, wondering if the theater, when empty, was where the child had sheltered since losing her parents. He took off on foot, striding swiftly to make up for lost time and aiming for the two great theaters lying side by side in Curtain Road. In truth, he knew not which was the Theatre and which the Curtain. It had been many years since Edmund had been idle enough to waste two hours of daylight and the pennies it cost to hear a play. He determined to try the closer of the two houses.
When Edmund arrived, the little side door was unlocked as the child had said, so he walked inside, seeking out the backstage tiring-room, where he thought the players might be found at dice.
Unfortunately, the entire backstage area was empty. Edmund made his way onto the stage itself, jumping down to the straw-strewn floor and looking this way and that for any living soul. The place was empty. Cursing, Edmund turned to exit.
As he strode away, there came a great thumping noise and a sound like that of someone having the breath knocked clean from them. Was it Geoffrey, falling dead drunk from the raised stage? Edmund turned in fearful hope, but saw instead the fallen form of a youth dressed in the oddest shift and petticoat ever worn by a boy playing women’s roles.
Edmund crossed back to the figure to make certain it was not Geoffrey. Overhead, a casement window hung open. Frowning, he overlooked the figure. It was a pretty youth, but it was not Geoffrey, and Edmund had no more time to waste on London’s riffraff. Edmund made to go, but then he paused. He looked once more upward to the window casement. ’Twas a fall of two stories. The youth might be dead. Or dying. Cursing the ill timing of the youth’s fall, Edmund bent to check.
He noted a rounded softness of breast. This was no boy, but a girl. A girl of rare beauty. He felt a sudden desire for pen, paper, and time to copy her likeness. Her skin was of a color out of the common way, warm and brown. From Araby or Afric, perhaps? Her dark brows arched high over closed eyes. Was she concussed or dead?
Placing his ear and cheek over her mouth, he attended for any sign of breath.
5
• HALLEY •
The first thing Halley noticed after she’d been frozen in place between the Tesla coils was a warming sensation. Gentle, like when the Santa Ana winds blew in from the desert. The sort of warmth that put a smile on your face. But within seconds Halley felt as if she’d stepped into an inferno.
And then, even more suddenly, all heat vanished. Halley didn’t feel hot. She didn’t feel cool. She felt . . . nothing. The absence of sensation. She couldn’t tell anymore if her limbs were frozen in place. There was nothing left to feel. The nothing stretched over several long seconds.
And then, without warning, her senses were flooded. Blinding light assaulted her eyes. Noise pummeled her ears, the sound thrumming through her breastbone. She could feel the air leaving her lungs. She was falling, falling, falling, and then she seemed to land with a thud, toppling backward. The fall knocked the breath right out of her.
Several seconds passed before she could suck in a breath. What had just happened? Was she . . . alive? Her heart raced. If she had a heartbeat, she had to be alive. But what had happened? Another quake? Had something hit her head? Had she passed out? Slowly she blinked her eyes open. A man’s face, in profile, filled her entire field of vision. He was hovering over her, checking to see if she was breathing. That was one exquisite profile. Chiseled. Perfect. She might be dreaming. . . . She blinked to see if the vision would disappear.
The face above hers shifted from profile to a frontal view, and she found herself staring at a perfect brow. And into a pair of anxious eyes. Eyes a feline shade of amber, flecked with brown, encircled with a dark outline. They were the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen. Above the most beautiful mouth. And cheekbones carved from . . . what was it? Alabaster? She had to be imagining this. A vision brought on by trauma to the head.
The face exhaled. Or rather, the man exhaled. Okay, so he was real. Definitely real. Still impossibly beautiful, but very, very real.
She blinked a couple of times. The exquisite face receded, and that changed what was in her field of vision. Where the basement ceiling ought to have been, she saw a clouded sky. Which was . . . disturbing. She didn’t remember leaving the basement.
At least she didn’t feel pain anymore. She wiggled fingers and toes. Everything seemed to be working fine. Had she imagined the pain? She must have been unconscious for a while, because if she couldn’t remember leaving the basement, that meant someone had dragged her out, unconscious.
Suddenly the handsome face hovering over hers made sense: he must be a paramedic. Or a fireman. Halley shifted her head. The ground seemed to shimmy, and she groaned, squeezing her eyes tightly shut.
“Drink, mistress,” said the handsome fireman or paramedic or whatever he was.
Mistress?
Halley put her lips to some kind of leather water pouch and sipped.
She swallowed and then sputtered. That was not water. Unless her taste buds had gone crazy, it was some kind of sweet wine.
The heck?
The wine burned as it slid down her throat. She propped herself up on one elbow. For half a second, the earth seemed to spin. She was in the dirt, looking at a wooden wall that formed one side of a tall, jutting deck attached to a building. The building was of an architectural style that didn’t match the rest of the professor’s estate.
“Tudor revival,” she murmured to herself, recalling the term from the freshman architecture class DaVinci had insisted they all take. Tudor revival had been big in Montecito in the 1920s. She took in all of this in a moment before the wine had finished burning down her throat. The world was still spinning, so she closed her eyes again.
She still couldn’t figure out why she would have been moved to whatever part of the professor’s estate this was. Who would move her? And why? Unless . . .
Had there been another earthquake? Had the ceiling somehow collapsed?
“Did the basement tumble down on me?” she murmured to the man beside her, opening her eyes just a crack. Wow, was he gorgeous. Maybe it was a requirement for working in the fire department. She closed her eyes again. She wished the world would stay still for a minute.
The fireman spoke. “The . . . cas
ement? Tumbled thou from the casement?”
“Basement,” she corrected, but then she wondered if maybe there was something wrong with her ears. She’d heard “thou.” Maybe he’d said “down”? He had a strange accent. Or maybe the loud noise from earlier had damaged her hearing. She felt the dizziness receding. Cautiously, she opened her eyes. As abruptly as it had started, the dizziness was gone. She glanced up and then swung her gaze around in a 180-degree arc. Wherever she was, it wasn’t just a Tudor revival outbuilding. It looked like she was in some sort of Tudor-era theater replica. She’d definitely been moved. She wondered who’d called emergency services on her behalf. If the building had collapsed, it might have set off alarms.
How long had she been unconscious?
Halley struggled to sit upright. Her head felt only a little fuzzy now. At this point she noticed what the fireman was wearing: it wasn’t fireman clothing.
“You’re not a paramedic,” she said. She glanced around at her surroundings and thought of the pictures of the professor standing with costumed actors. Maybe the professor’s estate had its own theater. Although, who had their own theater?
“Montecito,” she muttered with an eye roll. Montecito residents were generally fabulously wealthy, and “Montecito,” uttered like that, stood as the generic excuse for any extravagance. But then her heart sank. If the professor was a theater aficionado, maybe he didn’t have Hollywood connections after all. The pictures could have been from productions at this theater.
She looked back to the man beside her. “Are you rehearsing here? Are you an actor?”
The chiseled face grew haughty and cold. “Mistress, mistake me not for a player.”
A player? “Player,” “playhouse,” “playwright” . . . The words came back from some class or other. She frowned at the man. When she’d worked on costume crew last year, Halley had met actors who wouldn’t step out of character when they had a costume on. She’d always thought it was a pretentious drama geek thing, but maybe it was just an actor thing.
A Thief in Time (Thief in Time Series Book 1) Page 4