Christmas Past

by Susanna Fraser

  She raked his back lightly with her fingernails, drawing a growl of pleased surprise from his throat, and he began to thrust, slowly at first, but building a faster rhythm when she arched to meet him.

  She came first, but he wasn’t far behind her. As they lay together in a breathless heap with him still inside her, she smoothed his wildly curly hair and ran her other hand down his back, exploring the interplay of bone and muscle beneath smooth skin.

  You could stay, a small voice in the back of her mind suggested. You could be careful and not tell anyone else anything they shouldn’t know yet.

  No. That was crazy. She couldn’t let herself get so caught up in good sex with an attractive man that she forgot the Protocol, forgot everything she believed. Maybe this night hadn’t been such a good idea after all—it was much too dangerous for both of them.

  Her emotions must have shown on her face, for Miles stared down at her, brows drawn together in a slight frown. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing at all,” she hurried to reassure him. She wanted to hang on to this moment as long as she could. Soon enough it would be over, he’d fall asleep, and she’d…she’d have to do what she had to do.

  “Oh, good.” He pulled out of her and rolled onto his side. Resting the palm of his hand against her cheek, he smiled. “Happy Christmas. I’m almost certain it’s past midnight by now.”

  Despite herself, she smiled back. “And a Merry Christmas to you, too.”

  His smile twisted into a wry grin. “I don’t usually spend Christmas Eve like this.”

  “Well, neither do I! Maybe you think since I’m not a virgin—”

  He cut her off in mid-sentence, shaking his head. “No, no. I wasn’t—I don’t know what it’s like in your time—it isn’t my place—oh, hang it all, if you were home in 2013, what would you be doing now?”

  “Going to sleep alone in my old bed in my parents’ house, most likely. I had my own apartment, about ten miles from them, but they like to have Brian and me back in the house for Christmas. Since Brian got married, he has to split Christmas with Katie’s family, but they live just over the lake in Bellevue, so it’s not too hard. This year they were going to do Christmas Eve with Katie’s parents and Christmas morning with us, and the first thing I was going to do after I got home from—from here, was go shopping with Mom to get everything for Ava’s Christmas.”

  “Your niece?”

  “Yes.” She couldn’t bear to say another word about Ava, so she changed the subject. “What about your family? Do you have any nieces or nephews yet?”

  “No, but my sister was married last summer, so I suspect I will soon.”

  “There’s only the two of you?” Families of this period were usually larger, with broods of six or ten or a dozen children.

  “Yes. My father married late, and my mother wasn’t precisely a young bride, either.”

  “If you’re the only son, I’m surprised you’re in the army. Wouldn’t you inherit his estate?”

  He chuckled. “There is no estate. My father owns a brewery.”

  Getting ready for this trip, she’d learned that the officers in Wellington’s army weren’t as aristocratic a group as her beloved Regency romances made them out to be, but she’d had Miles pegged as at least a country gentleman’s son.

  “Are you disappointed? Did you think I was a lord’s son or something of the sort?”

  “Of course I’m not disappointed, but…” She frowned, searching for a way to explain her impression without it sounding like an insult. “Your accent, your manners, …”

  “…are those of a gentleman?” he finished. “Ha! Father would be pleased to hear the education he bought for me worked so well.”

  “That’s good, I guess…but, wait, wouldn’t you inherit the brewery, just as much as you’d inherit an estate if your father were a lord?”

  “I might’ve done so if my father were a different sort of man. But he was always determined to see Charlotte and me rise in the world. He wasn’t rich enough to buy her a title, but her husband is a squire’s eldest son, so she’s solidly established in the gentry. He bought me a commission to see me set up likewise.”

  “But—wouldn’t he give you anything else? And what will happen to the brewery?”

  “Oh, he assures me he means to leave me a tidy enough sum that I can set up as a quiet country gentleman should I wish to do so when my fighting days are done. As for the brewery, Father has a young partner he means to sell his share to when he’s ready to retire and Jemmy is ready to have the full management of the place. He was born a tenant on the same earl’s estate Father originally came from, so he’s almost like another son to him.”

  “So, having pushed you and your sister into the gentry, he’s helping this Jemmy rise from a servant to a wealthy tradesman who can push his sons and daughters into the gentry.”

  “Exactly.”

  Sydney smiled. “God bless England,” she said. “But—did you want to go into the army?” Off his puzzled look, she added, “I’m sure you’re a fine officer, but didn’t you want to follow in your father’s footsteps? Or, I’ve seen your sketches. You could be an artist—or a scientist.”

  Even more than his looks, it had been a glimpse of his drawings that had tempted her into paying more attention to Miles than the Protocol approved of. The very first day she’d met him, she had been so impressed by how well he drew that she’d complimented him before stopping to think. He’d grinned and insisted upon showing her the rest of his sketchbook. He’d told her he’d used the years of army travel that had taken him halfway around the world and back to draw every bird, flower, or beast he’d run across that he never would’ve seen in England.

  “I suspect if I’d shown a true hankering for the brewery, my father would’ve overcome his desire to push me into the gentry,” he said, “but I was always more interested in what my tutors taught me, and in going exploring for plants and birds I’d never seen before, than in hanging about the brewery watching my father work. So when I was old enough, he bought me a commission. He said he expected I’d meet the right sort of acquaintances here.”

  “And have you?” she asked.

  He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “I do meet fascinating people.”

  Sydney laughed softly.

  “I suppose it answers my father’s purpose,” he said. “He can talk of his son the captain, and if I survive, in due course, the major and the colonel.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you, that he sent you into a career that’s so dangerous, just so he could brag about his son the gentleman?” she asked. As much as she’d studied this era before coming here, it didn’t always make sense to her.

  He blinked, as though the idea had never occurred to him before. “But I wanted the army or the navy,” he said. “They seemed to offer the best chance of seeing a great deal of the world, and being as much of a naturalist as I could. So Father hopes to see me command a regiment someday, I hope to be Colonel Griffin, Fellow of the Royal Society, and then we will both have what we most wish.”

  “Oh.” Put that way, it made sense. “I think if you keep up your work, you’ll make an excellent contribution to the Royal Society. You were born to be a scientist.”

  She bit her lip. Was she changing the course of history, just by encouraging Miles to pursue his dream? She shouldn’t have done this, not when she knew she couldn’t stay. She’d certainly never heard of a naturalist named Miles Griffin, and she knew her nineteenth-century scientists fairly well. She shook her head and yawned. She’d spent hours arguing the timeline with Jessica and Cody back home, but she couldn’t make any sense of it now.

  He settled the blankets over them. “You should sleep,” he said.

  She didn’t intend to. She meant to stay awake until he was solidly asleep. But the stress of the day caught up with her, and soon she found herself drifting away, safe within the arms of her very own rifleman-scientist.

  …

  Miles awoke from a sound and
happy sleep to a dim sense that the bed had gone too cold. He patted the mattress beside him and found it empty. He shouldn’t be alone, he shouldn’t have let himself fall asleep, but for several slumber-fogged seconds, he couldn’t remember why.

  Good God, Sydney. Sydney, whom he’d meant to dissuade from self-destruction, only she’d distracted him into talking about himself, and then she’d been so lovely and peaceful in his arms that he’d gone to sleep himself to keep her company.

  He sat bolt upright and found himself alone. In the dying embers of the fire and the first glimmers of dawn, he saw that Sydney’s dress and underclothes from last night still lay scrambled with his where they’d fallen on the floor. But her trunk stood open, and her cloak and half-boots were missing.

  He leapt to the floor and flung on his uniform. As he jammed his feet into his boots, he peered out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. But he only saw a few Portuguese women stepping over their thresholds to greet the holiday morning and a pair of redcoats stumbling drunkenly down the street.

  Never mind. He knew exactly where to find her, if only he wasn’t too late. He took the stairs two at a time and charged up the same streets where he’d walked yesterday with Sydney on his arm, talking of the distant future and her unborn city on the far side of the world.

  He found her outside the deserted stone barn laying a slow match fuse. “Sydney!” he called.

  She stood, brushing at her skirts, and grinned at him. She looked perfectly at ease, and the happiest he’d ever seen her outside of the heights of passion. How had he missed her subtle tension before, the way she’d held herself aloof from a world that wasn’t quite hers?

  “Good morning, Miles. I’m sorry I sneaked off like that, but I thought I had to.”

  He shook his head and reached for her hands. “But you don’t. Please don’t do this. Stay with me.”

  “I have to destroy the time machine. I can’t leave that kind of technology around for anyone to find. But that poison I was going to take? I left it right next to the gunpowder barrel. I’m staying.”

  He caught her up in his arms and gave her a hard kiss. “You are? Thank God. But—what changed your mind? What about your Protocol? Was it…was it for my sake?” His heart hammered. He hadn’t expected to marry until the war was over, and this was all happening so very quickly. But it was worth it. She was worth it.

  Her gray-blue eyes sparkled at him. “Not exactly. But if you hadn’t talked me down yesterday afternoon, I would’ve gone through with it then and there, so thank you. I get to live.” She pulled away from him and spun in a circle like a happy child. “Merry Christmas!”

  Miles rubbed his eyes. He rejoiced that she’d changed her mind, but he wasn’t sure that she hadn’t run mad in the process. “Sydney. I’m thankful beyond words, but I don’t understand. What happened?”

  She sobered, insofar as she left off dancing, though she still looked giddy enough to float away. “I came back here meaning to blow up the time machine and take my poison, but I decided to try one last time to start it. Just in case it worked this time, you know?”

  “But it didn’t.” If it had, she’d be two hundred years away.

  “No. But this time I finally realized what it means that only the temporal engine is broken.”

  He spread his hand, inviting her to continue. It certainly didn’t mean anything to him.

  She drummed her fingers against her thigh. “Hm, how to explain? Think of…think of 2013 and the lab back in Seattle as a magnet that pulls the time machine home. The temporal engine is the part that’s drawn to the magnet. It’s only an analogy, but does that make sense?”

  “I think so.” He didn’t so much need to understand as to be confident that she did, and would not be changing her mind.

  “Everything works but the temporal engine. It’s not a bad connection or any kind of simple mechanical problem, because I’ve checked all that over and over again. And it finally hit me this morning, when I tried it one more time, that if the engine is dead, it means that magnet isn’t there anymore—that sometime while I’ve been here, the timeline changed enough that time travel wasn’t invented in 2013, at least not in a form my machine can recognize and anchor onto.”

  Why was she taking it so calmly? “But doesn’t that mean that everyone you know is…gone?”

  She shook her head, though her expression grew troubled. “No. They’re still there. I just can’t get back to them, and when I think of Mom and Dad, waiting to welcome me…” She shut her eyes, took in a long breath, then opened them and continued, this time in a brisker, more academic tone. “I doubt this will make sense, but we believe in multiple parallel universes. Whatever changed here in the past few weeks doesn’t undo that world, it only creates a new one running in parallel.”

  Miles realized his mouth was hanging open and snapped it closed.

  “I realize it sounds crazy, but bear with me. The other thing I realized is that I’m not the one who changed the timeline—at least, I’m ninety-nine percent certain of it. You see, my time machine has a built-in failsafe that’s meant to pull me back to the present if I’m in any danger of changing the past enough to create a new timeline. I trust the auto-recall. I tested it myself. But if some other traveler is here, somewhere in the world, and disabled their auto-recall, I’d be stuck here, with no way to get back to my version of 2013.”

  He seized the only part of her explanation that made sense. “But why would anyone do that?”

  “Any number of reasons. It’s like I told you yesterday—anyone who isn’t happy with the present might try to change the past to fix it. We—they—do their best to keep tight control on who has access to time travel, to keep anyone that unstable or that idealistic from going back, but all it takes is one wrong person slipping through, and, well, here I am.”

  “What would they change?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows? There were some important people born in the last year or two, so maybe someone wants to kill them before they grow up and change the world. But that’s just one possibility. If it’s something or someone I’ve heard of, I may eventually figure it out. Anyway, I’ll be damned if I kill myself for someone else’s crime. I believed in the Protocol, but it doesn’t exist in this world.”

  “I’m sorry for all that you’ve lost,” he said slowly. “But I’m glad you decided to stay.”

  He offered her his hand, and she took it in a brief clasp. “Want to help me blow this thing up?”

  When she bent to the match, her meaning became clear enough. He crouched beside her and examined the long fuse leading into the stable and the barrel of gunpowder inside her time machine. When he pronounced her work good, she lit the fuse, and then they jogged together to a spot about a hundred yards away.

  “I’m surprised you know so much about gunpowder,” he said.

  “Oh, they made us practice this, just in case we got stuck,” she said. “I didn’t let myself think much about why we were learning it—”

  At that moment, the charge went off with an echoing boom. Half the stable’s roof collapsed, and several pieces of burning rubble catapulted onto the grass.

  Sydney pumped her fist in the air and laughed. “See? It’s fun. Though of course we’ll have to watch and make sure the fire doesn’t spread.”

  He wrapped his arms around her, so tall and blond and splendid and alive. “Sydney, if you’re going to stay here, you’ll need to be careful. The way you speak—”

  “Oh, I can be a lady when I must,” she said in her English accent. “But you, you know who I really am.”

  “I do.” He gave her a quick kiss. “What do you intend to do, now that you’re staying?” he asked.

  “Well, I suppose I could go on nursing soldiers,” she said. “I don’t have much money, but if I save—”

  “From the looks of it, you’d be better suited to the artillery,” he murmured.

  She grinned unrepentantly. “No, I’d rather try to cure people than kill them. Explosi
ons are only fun when they don’t hurt anybody.”

  “You could stay with me.” At her wide-eyed, startled look, he added, “As my wife, of course. I wouldn’t offer you lesser coin.”

  This only made her gape at him more. “But we haven’t known each other long enough! I know the rules are different, in this time, about sex—that is, bedsport—but I’m neither a lady you must marry because now I’m compromised nor a—a fallen woman.”

  “I believe you, but if you’re going to stay here, you must realize that most men won’t see you that way.”

  “I’m not going to marry you after one night! I mean, it was a very good night—I’d be happy for a repeat—but that’s too great a commitment.”

  He smiled at her and kissed her hand.

  “What? I said I just wouldn’t marry you.”

  “Not exactly. You just said you wouldn’t marry me after one night. That makes me think a second or third might change your mind.”

  “That’s not long enough, either. I mean—I’ve only known you for three weeks. You might get tired of me.”

  He couldn’t imagine Sydney ever ceasing to fascinate him. “How long, then? I can be patient when I must.”

  She laughed helplessly. “Oh, okay, then. If you still want this when the army leaves Lisbon—and I still want it, too—then I’ll marry you.”

  Miles grinned. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me how long that will be.”

  “Just this once, I’ll tell you your future. A few months, I think. Early spring.”

  He looked back toward the stable. The fire was dying down, and he reckoned that anyone who came to investigate—as undoubtedly someone would, since the explosion had hardly been quiet—would conclude that some stolen or forgotten cache of ammunition had caught fire by accident. If there was an investigation, he’d do his best to help draw it to such a conclusion.

  “Let’s go back,” he said. “To your rooms, or mine. I know what I want now, and I don’t think three months will change my mind.”