She wrapped her fingers around the portrait, feeling weak. “This is him. This is the man I saw upstairs.”
Chapter 2
Ashford stood rooted to the spot, clinging to the brick wall in front of him, fighting the heart thumping panic that made him want to flee recklessly into the night. He never panicked, but the siege taking place around him shattered his normal reserve. He ducked into an alley and squeezed his eyes shut as another crash reverberated somewhere east of him, far too close. The sirens set his teeth on edge, such an ungodly sound, and after several breathless moments, he made his way stealthily back toward the house, where he prayed he’d finally find an exit from this hell.
For more than two weeks, he’d been stuck in 1940. He’d been several years ahead before, so he’d seen the aftermath, the heartbreaking remains of the city he’d grown to love, but being smack in the middle of it getting torn to shreds was an entirely different matter. He didn’t like it one bit.
He should have stayed in the house after the effort he’d made in convincing the two remaining retainers that he was a long lost family member from Scotland, which was technically the truth after all. Thankfully, they’d believed him and let him move in, though it was clear they thought he was thicker than mud for coming to London from the relative safety of Scotland, when his aging antecedents and current owners of the house had fled to the country weeks ago. That was fine with him, as it always gave him chills to see someone he might have been directly responsible for being alive.
He only had a block to go, but he’d run out of comfortingly dark alleys to scuttle along. The rest was open boulevard, then the freakishly long driveway. There were no lights save the terrifying explosions that seemed to fill the sky like a frightened pack of rats scuttling in a sewer. He shouldn’t be here, and the fact that he was worried him more than the bombs, and the bombs worried him quite enough. As far as he knew, his house never got hit, but just being here could change things. It wasn’t his planned destination, it wasn’t even on his schedule, so why was he here?
He sat down under a boarded up window and leaned against the grimy shop wall, staring at the vast expanse of open space he’d have to cross to get home. The lovely trees that lined the street didn’t seem like much cover. He hoped he could make it, not just to the house but to where he needed to be. He had people counting on him …
A dreadful droning whistle led to another crash, this time further away. He looked up to see the eery white lights raining down into a glowing ring of pink and orange. Something was on fire. He watched until the area darkened again, shaking his head at the thought of the poor souls who had to live in this time, rushing to put out the flames. The possibility of being stuck here made his blood run cold.
It might have been coincidence that he ended up in such a hellish point in time, but the fact that he couldn’t get out after nearly three weeks, and he was beginning to feel put upon. What little he could remember of his mother, she always told him to think the best of people, and never assume malice. But the one person he knew who could possibly tamper with the portal was nothing if not malicious.
Solomon Wodge had been wanting him dead for years, and since the slimy bastard wasn’t clever enough to find him and face him like a man, could he have done something to muck up his schedules? Wodge was the reason he’d ventured out of the house, thinking if the madman was here in this same time with him, he could perhaps draw him out, see what he really wanted once and for all.
Ashford had gone looking for someone he knew from a previous visit to 1912, see if he’d been approached by Wodge, but the old contact was dead some years now. He’d tarried too long in talking to the man’s widow, and got stuck out after dark.
It was one thing for Wodge to inconvenience him, and possibly get him buried in rubble, but he needed to get a teacher who found himself stuck in 1671 back to his proper time, and poor Miss Saito had been waiting none too patiently for more than a year to get back to hers. All the unfortunate people who found themselves lost because of his cursed house were his responsibility.
Ashford felt the weight of Belmary House and its strange time portal as if he held all its chimneys on his own shoulders. Standing up, he pulled his knit hat low on his brow, tucked up the collar of his dark blue pea coat, and stuffed his hands into his sleeves. Taking a deep breath to shove down the unfamiliar feeling of panic that threatened to burst open his chest, he put his head down and ran.
No sooner had he left the false security of the alley, another crash reverberated behind him. Certain if he turned back he’d see a gaping chasm where the closed up shop had been, he ducked lower and kept racing toward the gates to his house. He swore he felt flames licking at his heels and almost laughed at his absurd imaginings, except with a renewed wail of sirens starting up, it didn’t seem so absurd.
The second he got in through the kitchen entrance, he slammed the door behind him, pulled all the shutters closed and sank to the shiny tiles. He let out a stream of curse words and tossed his hat across the room. It landed with an unsatisfyingly soft plop on the stove. After a moment, his heartbeat returned to normal and the loneliness of the dark kitchen began to weigh on him. He hoped the servants were safe, wherever they were. Heaving himself to his feet, he headed upstairs, praying the portal would open soon.
He’d had to cajole and finagle the housekeeper for the use of the bedroom, since throughout the ages, it had always been kept closed up, some years they didn’t even bother to furnish it. He doubted anyone knew the reason anymore, but he was glad they stuck to tradition, certain he’d go mad if guests were allowed to stay in it, to get hurtled through time left and right. Quite enough managed to go astray as it was, due to clumsiness or nosiness or sheer bad luck.
The sparse furnishings were barely visible in the dim light of his one candle, well shaded at the end of the bed. To make sure even that tiny bit of light wouldn’t show from outside, he double checked the blackout curtains, then changed into his own familiar clothing. He didn’t mind the sturdy, loose trousers of this time, and he thought zippers were fantastic, but it made him feel more hopeful with his own clothes on. As if he had a better chance of getting back to his own time if he kept something from then close.
He sat on the floor and leaned against the footboard. So far the bombs hadn’t hit anything too close to his family house, but he could still hear the crashes, and the droning of the planes as they passed each night. He wanted out. With gritted teeth he peered at the notebook that held his schedules, the dates and times he’d been meticulously recording for almost fifteen years now, and that had never failed him before.
If a portal was open at a certain time, it was always open at that time. He’d been moving relatively effortlessly through the ages since he was fifteen, all thanks to his notebook. And now it had failed him. Or rather, it hadn’t failed, he merely didn’t have any good data leading to or from this time, which made it all but useless. He’d have to wait for an opening and step into it blind, something he hadn’t done in a while.
What was even more disconcerting was that there hadn’t been an opening at all in three weeks and if he didn’t get to a time he could navigate from, he’d lose his chance to help the teacher stuck in the seventeenth century. As it was, with all the time lost here, he’d have to do some serious jumping around in order to get back on track. His frustration level rose to the point he nearly cracked a tooth he was grinding them so hard, and he stood up to work the kinks from his back.
A sudden drop in temperature lightened his dark mood and he stood still, letting the sensation of an impending portal opening wash over him. As he tugged on his boots, he felt a bit bad about the two servants who’d think he was lost in the blitz, but couldn’t help grinning with anticipation as he hurriedly snuffed the candle. He stepped into the corner, and out of hell.
He opened his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose to drive off the slight headache he got every time. And then he swore, long and viciously. Moonlight streamed through the ope
n curtains to reveal a nearly empty room.
He knew instantly he was in the twenty-first century by the electric light switches and lack of furniture. Poking his head out to see boxes stacked to the ceiling along the entire length of the hallway confirmed it. He hated this time.
There was nothing for it but to find out the exact date, and he stomped downstairs, knowing the place would be empty at such a late hour. For some unfathomable reason— he was never able to stay long enough to figure it out— his family had lost the house and it was now in this shocking state. He knew people came during the day to paw through the things, and some of them dressed up as if they were from his era, which amused him to no end. But no one ever stayed much past dark, and by the look of the sky, it was quite late.
A few lights glowed at the bottom of the stairs and he slowed his steps, irritation almost canceling his relief to be out of the warzone time. Tiptoeing past the lit room, he saw a studious looking fellow hunched beside one of the ubiquitous glowing boxes, a velvet tray of miniature paintings at his side. Bugger. Who could that be, at this hour?
The man never glanced up and Ashford slipped into the next room, silently closing the door behind him, and rushed over to the computer there. He liked computers, they were quite convenient, but he hadn’t worked one in a while and it took a moment of poking before it hummed to life. As usual, he was amazed at how quickly the information he desired was right in front of him. He would love to find a way to take one back with him, but he’d have no way to run it, sadly.
As soon as he saw the time and date in the corner of the screen, he snapped open his notebook and found a path to where he needed to be, then made his way stealthily back to the bedroom. He was filled with relief that he could still get to the teacher, and wouldn’t have to hide out here. In fact, he needed to hurry, or he’d miss the portal opening. As he raced up the stairs, he felt the relieved smile that spread over his face. His luck, which he’d been certain had completely run out during the nightmarish weeks in 1940, seemed to have returned in force.
“Nice try, Wodge,” he muttered, the thought of the man making his smile disappear.
If it had been Wodge who tried to end him by trapping him in a time that rained bombs, his cowardly duplicity had failed. Ashford hadn’t seen or heard from the weasel in so long he’d relaxed his guard, and while it could have been poor luck and not anything shady on Wodge’s part, he didn’t believe it. He’d been using the portal too long, too many times, to get stuck like that.
He was so busy brooding over what Wodge might have done, he didn’t notice he now shared the hallway with an alarmed looking woman. She was dressed in a very small, form fitting black dress and it made him feel like a cad, but he swept his eyes slowly up her long, creamy legs, tamping down the rise of lust that swept over him. Bloody twenty-first century. This woman probably wasn’t dressed out of the ordinary in any way, these probably weren’t even her underthings.
Her face went from shock at his own appearance to a mildly annoyed acceptance of how he was dressed. It hit him that this must be Miss Saito, whom he needed to escort back to her own time. He squinted in the dim hallway. Dark hair, medium height, pretty. That was all he really recalled of the desperate woman he’d met only once, as he’d tried to explain to her what had happened and that she would be stuck in this time for a while until he could get her home.
He’d never seen her since, though he’d been able to leave messages for her in the few minutes he was able to occasionally grab in this particular year. The woman standing before him fit the description perfectly, and he didn’t relish what he was about to do.
According to his notes, it was too early, unless he dragged her through at least four different years over the course of several months. She’d been waiting so long to get home already, as much as she’d hate him for leaving her now, it would be better to stick to the original plan and come back for her at the agreed upon time.
He apologized and got past her into the room before she could raise a fuss. He could already feel the portal, and could tell he needed to hurry. He got into the corner just as it was closing, the chill feeling colder than usual and the headache hitting him sharply in the temple.
“Bloody hell, that was a tough one.”
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes as he stumbled forward, hitting his shin and nearly tripping over a brocade ottoman.
A few blinks brought everything into focus and he swore again, clearly not in the right time. Based on his knowledge of his house’s furniture throughout the ages, he was more in the late eighteen hundreds. Which wasn’t right at all. He flung open the thick drapes to find it was daytime, and studied his book in the sunlight. He hadn’t calculated wrong, and the portal had been open when it said it would be, but hadn’t led him to the time it said it should.
He could almost hear Solomon Wodge’s obnoxious laughter and used all his self control not to smash something. It wouldn’t solve anything, and as tired as he was, he had to keep moving. He could feel the portal and knew he could try again, but he hated traveling blind.
“Stay or go,” he said, pacing around the room, looking for clues. “Should I stay or should I go?”
A frightened scream made its way through the door and he sighed, the urge to break something almost undeniable. He looked wistfully at the corner of the room, then against his better judgement, made his way toward the shrill sound.
At the end of the hall he turned to the main stair landing to see a young housemaid being ruthlessly beaten by a drunken idiot. One of his, no doubt, the current owner of the house. He barely paused to wonder how someone related to him could be so repulsive, then noticed the girl’s split lip and nose gushing with blood. He knew this girl, she was a sweet lass. There was nothing she could have done to warrant a stern tone of voice, let alone this beating. He also recognized the butler, Harris, who ineffectually tried to get the lout to stop, but he merely ignored him and hauled her up by the collar of her dress, silencing her wails by throttling her.
“I say, that’s quite enough.” Ashford clapped his hand on the man’s shoulder and shook him.
“Who the bloody blazes are you?” The man kept his grip on the girl’s neck, but turned his unfocused eyes on Ashford.
Even if he belonged here, the man was so drunk he wouldn’t have recognized him. With another sigh, Ashford punched him sharply in the nose, unable to stop the tiny bit of satisfaction he felt when the man’s eyes rolled back and he slumped to the ground with a heavy thump.
The girl stumbled back sobbing, and Harris threw his arms around him. Ashford clapped him on the back, filled with happiness. He loved this particular time. He had a window of six years where he knew all the people who worked in the house, and they were remarkably helpful and unafraid. Sometimes, in the rare instances when he explained his situation to people, they became suspicious, fearing he worked directly for Satan. A good lot of the time he wasn’t completely certain that wasn’t the case, due to all the misery his strange ability caused.
“What year?” he asked through the bone crushing hug.
“`92, and perfect timing, Lord Ashford,” Harris said, letting him go at last and pumping his hand. “I thought Adelaide here was a goner for certain this time.”
Adelaide let out one last sob, kicked her unconscious employer in the ribs, then rose to curtsy to Ashford. Ashford nodded a greeting and tipped her chin back to inspect her injuries.
“He made advances again,” she hiccupped, looking like she wanted to aim another kick. “Usually he’s so drunk he just passes out and I run away, but he was tenacious this time. And I’m not that sort of girl.”
“Of course you’re not,” Ashford said. “Go ahead. It’s not like he doesn’t deserve it.”
“That and more,” she said, slamming her booted foot twice into his soft bits.
As Harris and Adelaide roughly hauled their drunken master to his bed, Harris asked Ashford how long he would be staying.
“I don’t know.
My schedules don’t seem to be working as of late. I just spent three weeks in a time that would keep you awake the rest of your days if I told you the terrible things that happen.”
“Then don’t tell us,” Harris quickly said.
Adelaide crossed herself, swollen eyes wide with fear. They refused to hear a thing about any of the futures he saw, though sometimes the girls asked if certain expensive styles stayed in fashion long enough to warrant buying.
“That’s not normal about your book, is it?” Adelaide asked shyly, as they left his embarrassment of an antecedent passed out on his bed.
“Not normal at all, and I’ll admit it has me concerned,” he said.
They made their way downstairs to the kitchen where he greeted the cook, who was delighted to see him and began plying him with food and tea. He set to work cross referencing dates and times, absently munching on the food that kept appearing before him, and answering their curious questions.
“You haven’t seen a weaselly man nosing about, have you?” he asked, wondering if Wodge had been here recently. “Skinny and mad-eyed, dresses a bit bizarrely?”
It disconcerted him that he’d gone wrong three times in a row now. Of course there were other reasons things could be wonky, but Wodge was his first choice to blame when things went really off-kilter.
The cook dropped her knife with a clatter, her face turning red as she leaned over to pick it up. “Indeed, such a man visited with the current Lord Ashford a week ago.” She looked apologetic to have to use his name in reference to the sot upstairs. “I only laid eyes on him at all because Lord Ashford, er, the other one, made such a clamor in tossing him out, that I had to see for myself what it was about.”
Ashford silently blessed her nosy nature and nodded encouragingly for her to continue.
“He was just as you describe, with tartan trousers and a wild red coat, and the strangest boots I ever did see. They had laces and a star on them. And as agitated as the master was, this man was completely calm, as if all the venom spewed at him didn’t bother him at all.”
Belmary House Book One Page 2