“No, she didn’t know about that. Actually, she doesn’t know I’m here now. I hired some of the people who’ve worked for me in the past to build a portal as quickly as possible―as soon as I knew you had come here. This isn’t a long term plan I had: to abduct you. I only realized I might pull it off when she told me you had gone with James to 1598.”
Cassandra looked around at the other diners. What would they think if they could truly hear this conversation? However, they had all gone back their own meals and discussions, paying the arguing couple no more attention. The full horror of what Nick had done was sinking in. He had taken away any hope of getting back to James or the portal. She blinked back tears and mechanically began to eat again as if from sheer survival instinct. With almost numb objectivity she noticed the fork in her hand. How long had it been since she’d used one, or a butter knife or teaspoon? The people in the room were of course dressed in the quaint style of the twenties, but everyone and everything looked so modern in comparison to where she’d just come from. The early twentieth century had almost everything one really needed: telephones, electricity, cars, airplanes. The culture shock rose up within her with terrible force. With a small gasp she gulped desperately from the water glass now clutched in her hand like a life preserver.
Unaware or uncaring of her state, Nick called for the bill, and the waiter gave him the check to sign. Cassandra finished her food and folded her napkin neatly by her plate.
“Shall we?” Nick stood and she followed his lead. He guided her out of the dining room to the elevator, instructing the operator to take them to the penthouse.
The suite was luxuriously understated: accommodations for the rich who didn’t need to flaunt it. She raised an eyebrow. “Do you live here?”
“When I’m in town, yes. Anyway, take your time, nap, take a bath, whatever you want. Then we’ll go shopping. We need to get you a complete wardrobe.”
“I assume we’ll be staying awhile?”
“A long, long while,” he replied.
Certain items in the room caught her attention: the brocade sofa in front of a marble coffee table on which rested a heavy, glass candy dish; a side table with a Tiffany-style lamp on it; a small, bronze, Art Nouveau statue of a woman next to that. “Does this mean I won’t ever see James again?” she said, casting her eyes down and purposefully letting them fill with tears.
“Look at it this way,” he said gently. “If Elizabeth had had her way, you’d be headed for Austria right now with no way to get back to James or the portal or the future. Who knows what would have become of you? I saved you from that fate.”
“I suppose you’re right,” she whispered.
“Come on, let’s sit down a minute,” he said. He took her hat off her head, and the coat from where she’d draped it over her arm. He set them on a chair.
She took a seat on the sofa and he sat by her side. He looked into her eyes. “When did I stop being your knight in shining armor?”
“When you hurt the people I cared about.”
“I’m sorry, Cassandra. I truly am. Jealousy has been a terrible fault of mine, I admit it. But I’m ready to change. I’m ready to be the man you deserve.”
“I don’t know if that’s possible, Nick.” This was a game she had no choice but to play. “It will take a lot of proving.”
“I’ll do anything you ask.”
“Then let me go back to 1598 and help James. And then let me go home.”
He laughed. “Anything but that.”
She took another deep breath, as if resigned. “Well, at least for now, won’t you satisfy my scientific curiosity and tell me how you arranged a portal to this era from 1598?”
He eyed her for a moment. “I had been developing what I call a tri-destinational portal. It can be used to go to more than one time period without having to go back to a future point to reset the year. This was finally my chance to put it to practical use. But I had to find a location that had remained intact throughout the centuries, which was problematic in a place like London. The cityscape has changed radically over the years because of things like the Great Fire, and the bombings during World War II. My team definitely found it a challenge, more so, because I had to find a place that has retained a similar incarnation from 1598 to 1923, and on into our own time.”
“Right.” She took a second to let that information sink in. “Still, what I don’t understand is how it allows you to travel from one point in the past to another point in the past without going back and resetting the year.”
“It’s preset. The last time I left 2125, I had the portal set to take me to 1598, and automatically revert to 1923 the next time it was accessed.”
In spite of herself she was impressed. “So, when you found a house that you could use for each time period, you must have rented out the room for several weeks, both in 1598 and 1923, and set up the portal exits there. Kind of amazing that it was being used as a boarding house or an inn in each of the years you needed it to be.”
“Let’s just say that the one in 1598 isn’t exactly a boarding house or an inn.”
The man was visibly preening!
“Anyway, it took some very fast work, I can tell you that, but I am the preeminent expert in the field now. So far ahead of Carver he will never catch up with me.”
She had to admit, that appeared to be true.
“The only problem with it is that now I can only travel between 1923 and 1598, I can’t go back to 2125 from that portal.”
“You…we…can never return to the future?”
“Don’t be silly. Of course I have another portal here in London. That one goes directly between now and the future.”
“The one you’ve been using to elude the authorities. And you have someone running it?”
“Yep. That’s what they’re paid to do.”
“Do the people running it know you intended to kidnap me?”
“No, not at all. And frankly, they’re paid very well not to ask.”
“How long is that portal going to remain open?’
“For five years. The team that’s running it has got a pretty cushy job. They just have to be ready to bring me back when I show up at the portal exit.”
“What happens after five years?”
“We’ll return, choose another time period to travel to, and reset the portal. We don’t want to be here when the Stock Market Crashes, or during World War II for goodness sake.”
“But then your people will find out you’ve kidnapped me.”
“Kidnapped is such a pejorative term,” he said offhandedly. “By then, you and I will be a team. You’ll be so in love with me that you won’t consider yourself ‘kidnapped.’ You’ll come with me willingly wherever I choose to go.”
The man really was delusional―obviously counting heavily on the effects of the Stockholm Syndrome. “You said Suhan didn’t know you were planning to abduct me, so at least she’s innocent of that. But wasn’t she at all disturbed by your crimes in Siena?”
“Truth be told, she was, at first, but we spent some time together and I…assuaged her concerns.”
“You mean you used her love for you to convince her that you had some kind of higher purpose in it all.”
“You must admit, the bedroom is one of my areas of expertise. I used my talents to persuade her.” He moved a little closer. “Remember how great we were together?” He leaned in and kissed her.
Instinctively, she pulled away. He put his arm around her waist and pulled her back. This time, she allowed the kiss, even pretended to enjoy it.
“My love,” he murmured. “Isn’t that better?”
“Mmmm,” she sighed. She reclined, scooting herself nearer the side table. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him on top of her, kissing him deeply. He pressed his hips into her, his excitement evident. She moaned and writhed beneath him.
“Oh, Cassandra,” he whispered, coming up for air, “I knew you were still in love with me.”
She kept one arm around his
neck as she kissed him again, and raised the other over her head. He took it as a sign to caress her breast. She let him do it, holding him down, his lips on hers as she continued to reach out until her hand closed around the bronze statue. Then she raised it and brought it crashing down on the back of his head.
He cried out and tumbled to the floor. Blood flowed from his skull. “Son of a bitch!” he yelled.
Now Cassandra was in action. She grabbed the glass candy dish from the coffee table with both hands, and in one motion smacked it full force onto the wound. This time, he fell back, passed out, silent. She leapt up, grabbed her coat, and stuck her hat on her head. She flew out the door and down the hotel stairs, not waiting for the elevator.
She slowed her pace before she reached the lobby, and forced herself to appear calm. She walked to the front desk and asked the clerk pleasantly, “Excuse me, but is it possible to walk to Southwark from here?”
The man gave her a puzzled look. “It would be a long walk. Hardly one for a lady such as yourself.”
“I understand,” she laughed lightly. “However, would you mind giving me general directions?”
“It would be better to call you a cab, ma’am.”
“Certainly. Yet, it is such a pleasant day. I thought I would walk for a bit, and then hail a taxi before I cross the river.”
“Of course. Let me jot down the way.” He wrote some instructions on a piece of hotel stationery and handed it to her. She should tip him, but with what? An Elizabethan coin? She threw him her most beguiling smile and hurried out of the hotel.
Who knew how long Nick would be passed out, that is, if she hadn’t killed him? If she had, the police would be after her, but it would probably be hours before a maid checked in on the room and found him. In the meantime, it would take Cassandra an extraordinary amount of luck to find the portal, as she was sure the house she woke up in that morning must be. She had no choice but to try.
Following the clerk’s directions, she hurried through the upscale neighborhood to Westminster Bridge, about a forty-five minute walk. In spite of the overwhelming sense of desperation hanging over her, it was impossible not to marvel at how different London was in 1923 from 1598: so clean, so many solid looking buildings and homes of brick and stone. She walked past Buckingham Palace: the tourists flocking around just as they would in the future, and through St. James Park toward Big Ben, Westminster Cathedral, and the houses of Parliament, comforted to see the buildings that were like old friends, and without which Elizabethan London seemed so foreign. This was the city in its most classic period with the great landmarks that were the defining jewels of the city, before the damage from World War II and its subsequent rebuilding, and long before the huge skyscrapers that would one day inundate it.
On the other side of the bridge, the long, narrow County Hall building that ran alongside the river gleamed white in the sunlight, its bell tower bright copper, rather than the oxidized blue it would someday be, as if it had just been built. The structure, with its row upon row of windows and columns, marked the entrance to Lambeth, a promising welcome to the neighborhood. Yet once she ventured farther, into the environs of Southwark, the area deteriorated, and it became clear how fruitless the search for the boarding house would be. The place was just as chaotic and jumbled as it always had been, except the buildings were somewhat newer. All she had to go on to locate the house was the impressions she’d gotten the night before, on horseback, in the dead of night. And that was three hundred years ago. Almost nothing, except apparently that house, and the small portion of St. Thomas Street where her own portal exit would someday be, remained of Elizabethan Southwark.
It wasn’t safe to wander the streets by herself, and she had virtually no money and nowhere to go. She turned around and began walking back the way she’d come. Maybe she could locate a coin shop that would buy her gold and silver pieces. They had to be worth quite a bit. Maybe even a bank would be interested.
It was tough going on the cobbled streets, but the shoes Nick had bought her were surprisingly sturdy and comfortable. She could have never gone so far in the flimsy slippers she’d been wearing in Elizabethan times. As she traversed the streets leading back to Westminster Bridge, she noticed a sign on a wooden building that said, SOUTH BANK THEATRE. Nick had said the woman who owned the boarding house might sell her clothes to a theatre company. If that were the case, and she could find out who bought them, maybe she could discover who the owner of the boarding house was and find it again. It was a long shot, but her options were growing increasingly slim. She went to the door and tried it. It was unlocked so she crept inside, finding herself in a rather shabby lobby area that had a box office booth and a bar for selling cocktails. She pushed open a pair of swinging double doors into a small theatre with rows of worn velvet seats and a stage at the back, where a young woman stood looking up into the rafters. Dusty gold curtains were tied back at either side of the proscenium.
Cassandra cleared her throat. “Excuse me.”
The woman looked around. She had a pleasant, round face, and dark hair worn in a bob. She wore a dark navy dress in the low-waisted twenties style, with a sailor collar and tie, and a baggy cardigan thrown over it all. “Hello,” she replied. She squinted her eyes and peered at Cassandra. “Patsy, is that you?”
“Um, no―”
“Oh, sorry. I thought you were someone else. Well, auditions aren’t until tomorrow.”
“No, I’m not here for an audition. I just had a question.”
“Alrighty.” She tilted her head expectantly.
“I’m wondering if you buy costumes. Elizabethan costumes in particular.”
“Are you selling them?”
“No, no. I’m looking for one…” She hadn’t had time to make up a story.
“You want to buy a costume? We don’t have any for sale.”
“Um, no…”
“Are you an actress?”
“No, I’m a…costume designer.”
The woman laughed in a friendly way. “Well, I’ll be square with you, if you’re looking for work, you’ve come to the wrong place. We can’t afford to hire anyone right now.”
“I see. Do you know of any theatre company who does a lot of Shakespeare in particular?”
“Well, sure. There’s the London Shakespeare Theatre, but they already have a full time staff. I doubt they’re taking on new designers. Also, you don’t seem to be from London. Did you come here looking for work?”
“No, it’s more complicated than that. Do you suppose they buy costumes from other sources?”
“Probably not. They have an enormous collection already. As a matter of fact, some of the smaller theatres buy their cast offs for cheap. However, we don’t do Shakespeare here. We do the modern playwrights and original works―the Avant-garde, you know.”
“Oh, yes. Well, thank you.” She turned to go, panic gnawing at her chest. If she couldn’t find the portal house, she’d be stuck here forever, possibly a wanted fugitive. Maybe it had been a mistake to flee from Nick, but going back now was definitely not an option.
“Wait a minute, there’s also the Rude Mechanical Players up in Cheapside. They do a lot of the classical stuff. When you came in, I thought you were the lady who runs the place with her husband. You look just like her. Anyway, you might check with them.”
“Can you give me the address?”
“Yes, come up here.”
Cassandra hurried up the stairs and onto the rickety stage.
“I’m Molly, by the way. I own the theatre.” She smiled, revealing a mostly straight set of teeth except that one of the front two slightly overlapped the other, lending her pretty face a bit of goofy charm.
“Cassandra.” She accepted the girl’s offered handshake.
“You’re deathly cold, kid.” She covered Cassandra’s hand with both of hers, looking down at them. She slowly looked up again. “Are you alright?”
“Yes, why?” The look on Molly’s face alarmed her.
&nb
sp; “Is that blood on your shoe?”
Cassandra hadn’t noticed before, but a dark red stain soiled the top of one of her tan leather shoes. “I―I don’t know.”
“Listen, are you in some kind of a jam?”
“Well, it’s just that, my husband―”
“He hurt you?”
“He tried to.”
“Men! Such bloody bastards!”
Cassandra’s eyes grew wide.
“Pardon my French. But we’ve been fighting for our rights a long time and we still don’t have the vote. They’ll keep us down as long as they can, in the kitchen, knocked up, doing whatever they say. And the moment we stick up for ourselves, they pop us one in the face and then they’re out the door to get zozzled.” Molly’s blue eyes blazed.
Cassandra had run into a genuine suffragette. “Yes, you’ve got it,” she finally managed. “This time though, I didn’t let him hit me. I hit him first, with a lamp. He passed out and was bleeding. So I ran, and got the first train to London, fearing if he came to, he’d be trying to find me. Now though, I’m afraid the police might be after me.”
“That’s a tough break. Where are you coming from?”
“Um, Stratford.” The first town that sprang to mind.
“Golly, that’s far! You’ve really been through the mill today.”
“Yes, it’s been a long morning.”
“The Royal Shakespeare Company is there. Do you sew for them?”
“Yes I do! Anyway, I don’t work for them full time. Really, I’m just a seamstress.” She reflexively touched her hand to the fabric of her coat. A mere seamstress could never afford such a luxurious garment. “It’s just a hobby really. I don’t need to work; I just make a little extra money sewing for them when they need help. I had recently finished a beautiful costume, and they were waiting for it. But my husband stole it and brought it to London to sell, at least that’s what he told me when he got back this morning. He had been gone for days.” Did any of this sound plausible? “He told me what he’d done and laughed. He said he got a lot of money for it, but he would give me none. I got angry and we fought. That’s when it happened.”
The Time Duchess (The Time Mistress Book 4) Page 15