by Louise Allen
‘What is this? Who is this?’
I blinked at the handfuls of cash. ‘Money. That is the Queen, Elizabeth II. And that’s Elizabeth Fry the prison reformer on the back of the five pound note. That’s a fiver as well, the new one with Winston Churchill.’
‘This is Adam Smith.’ He peered closely at the back of the twenty, then examined the coins, one by one, holding the plastic five pound note with its transparent window up to the light. ‘Garrick, either this lady has been to an incredible amount of trouble in order to deceive us, employing technology of which I am quite unaware, or she is from the future.’
Strangely it was his acceptance of it that convinced me that this was real, that I wasn’t dreaming, or hallucinating or feverish. It was a huge relief to know I wasn’t sprawled on the kitchen floor dying of a brain haemorrhage, or losing my mind, but… How am I going to get back? I will, I told myself firmly and, somehow, I found I believed it. I had arrived here and whatever mysterious mechanism had achieved that would send me back. Blind faith or my desperate need to convince myself? Either would do, because sheer panic was not going to help.
The valet said, ‘Bloody hell, my lord. Er, I beg pardon, Miss Lawrence.’
‘No problem,’ I said vaguely. Bloody hell was considerably milder than any of the expressions running round my brain at that moment.
‘Thank you, madam. But how are we going to get you back?’
Quite. I do like a man with a grasp of the essentials.
‘And how did you get here?’ The Earl scooped up the rest of my scattered things and put them on the desk, then picked up the lamp and came to hunker down in front of me, studying my face. He was really remarkably cool about this, unless, like me, he was having a screaming fit internally. Then his face changed, his eyes narrowed.
‘It is you.’ Lord Radcliffe shook his head as though half-stunned.
I shared the feeling. For a moment I was back in that moment in the kitchen when I had seemed to see a vision of a man turning, poised, elegant, dangerous. I rubbed my fingers over the still-sore scratch on the back of my hand.
‘I knew I had seen you before, but your face is the wrong way round.’
‘What?’ I scrambled off the sofa and staggered to the over-mantle mirror. ‘No it isn’t. This is what I look like.’ It was definitely me, looking as though I’d been thrown through the air into a filthy alleyway, been involved in a fight and scared half out of my wits. Not a good look.
‘Your hair is shorter than I remember.’
‘I had it cut this afternoon.’ I poked at my dark blonde bob. The critical blue gaze was definitely mine.
‘And that,’ he pointed to the small scar at the corner of my right eye, the result of a fall out of an apple tree, aged nine. ‘That is on the wrong side.’ He stood behind me, topping my reflection by a head. The light wasn’t brilliant, but I could have sworn he went paler. ‘Unless you were looking out of the mirror at me and not reflected in it.’
‘Which mirror, my lord?’ Garrick asked. ‘One here?’
‘No, unfortunately. It is at Almack’s, at the end of the refreshment room.’
‘I did not get here through a mirror.’ It was disconcerting having the Earl looming so close behind me so I turned, which of course, only made it worse. But, being the perfect gentleman, he immediately moved back. ‘Have you had your portrait painted, my lord? A miniature of you, so big –’ I held up my index fingers, five inches apart. ‘Wearing a dark blue coat and with a stickpin in your neck cloth, one with a blue, oval stone?’
‘Last year. A gift for my mother.’ Yes, he had definitely gone paler.
‘I bought it in an antique shop yesterday. I think it triggered whatever it was that happened to me. One moment I was in the kitchen, the next, falling through the air and then I landed in that revolting alleyway in the middle of a fight.’
He raked his fingers through his hair and stood up. ‘We cannot solve this mystery now. And I am keeping you talking when you will want to bathe and change. Garrick, surely the water should be hot by now?’
‘Yes, my lord. I will fill the tub directly. But what is Miss Lawrence to change into? It is past two in the morning and I doubt I will be able to purchase raiment for her until at least nine.’ They were both studiously keeping their gaze above the level of my collarbone.
‘If I could borrow a shirt and a dressing gown?’ I suggested. Now a bath had been mentioned I was beginning to twitch with the recollection of what I had been rolling about in.
‘Of course, Madam.’ Garrick effaced himself – it was fascinating to see him do it, just as all the best butlers did in novels. Only he was a valet, so presumably they had effacing lessons too.
‘Which does not solve the problem of where you are to stay. None of my female relatives are in Town at the moment, and besides, how am I to explain you?’
‘Have you a spare bedroom?’
‘I have, but you can hardly stay here.’
‘Why not? Where I come from – when I come from – men and women who are not related and who are not in a relationship share apartments perfectly respectably.’
His eyebrows arched up in surprise.
‘And, to be frank, I just want to have a bath and go to bed and try and sleep. Perhaps when we wake up in the morning we will both find this was a dream.’
‘I doubt it, Miss Lawrence. I have never had such a delightful dream before.’
You’re a real charmer, aren’t you? I thought as I lowered my smelly, bruised body into a large copper bath tub that had been set in front of the fire in the room Garrick told me was the spare bedchamber. Delightful dream, indeed.
But there was nothing to be done until the morning – unless I woke up in the night to find I was home in my own bed – and meanwhile a shirt, a heavy silk dressing gown and towels were draped over a chair by the fire to warm and arnica for my bruises and a hair brush and comb had been set out on the dressing table next to my bag. Garrick had told me to drop my own clothes outside the door and had nodded seriously when I had told him that the laundry instructions for the yoga pants and top were sewn inside.
I spent twenty minutes soaking and scrubbing and getting the panic under control. Either this was a dream and I would wake up, or it was real and somehow I would get home. I had got here, after all. Perhaps the Almack’s mirror would work as a door if I was on this side of it. That seemed logical, if anything about this did. The Earl had seen me in it, it had to be some kind of portal.
I got out at last, towelled myself dry and put on the shirt. It didn’t open all the way down so I had to dive into it, flapping about until it was hanging right. I climbed into bed, and let out an involuntary yelp as it tried to swallow me. A feather mattress, I realised – no coiled metal bedsprings. Yet despite all the evidence, I couldn’t quite believe it, that this was 1807. I was going to wake up in the twenty first century, I told myself as I drifted off. Would I even recall this dream?
I woke to the sound of a polite cough. More super-efficient valeting, I thought as I surfaced and fought my way up onto my elbows, batting ineffectually at the heaps of bedclothes. I was definitely still there… then… not now. Or was this now now? The anxiety rose up making me feel sick, then I pushed it back down. I had to keep calm, at least until I got out of this. I could have the screaming habdabs afterwards.
‘There is hot water on the washstand behind the screen, Miss Lawrence.’ Garrick was just inside the door, his gaze fixed firmly on the far corner of the room away from me. ‘If you will excuse the bath remaining here for the present, I will remove it once you are having breakfast which will be served in half an hour. Your garments are on the chair. Might I suggest you retain the robe as well?’
‘I think I will be warm enough, thank you, Garrick.’
Another polite cough. ‘For his lordship’s peace of mind, Miss Lawrence.’
He slid out in approved Jeevesian manner and I got out of bed and considered the most pressing issue – if one ignored the over-ridi
ng problem that I was still in the early nineteenth century. There was a chamber pot in the washstand behind the screen, but that meant some unfortunate servant, Garrick perhaps, would have to deal with it. On the other hand, the night before he had shown me a dark little cupboard with a flushing loo of sorts tucked into a cupboard between the drawing room and the dining room. A bizarre location, but presumably handy for the gentlemen during long after-dinner drinking sessions. I shuddered to think what happened after the flush, which involved energetic pumping with a handle at the side, but it couldn’t be worse than assorted privies I had encountered when backpacking around Europe on my gap year.
Garrick had made an excellent job of my clothes. Wrapped in the robe, which trailed exotically behind my bare feet, I tiptoed along the passageway – the apartment was all on one level – until I found the door to the drawing room. The walls were thick and the sets of doors double, so at least there wasn’t the embarrassment of sound carrying and I didn’t have to sing while I used the facilities.
When I tiptoed back a door opposite the drawing room was ajar and voices were audible. I stopped. Eavesdropping isn’t nice, but I would be a fool to ignore the opportunity to gather any information I could.
‘… appears to have passed a peaceful night, my lord. I have to say, on examining the garments that I pressed this morning, I am unable to account for their manufacture and construction without considering them further proof of Miss Lawrence’s belief that she has travelled here from the future.’
‘My God.’ The deep, drawling voice could not hide the undercurrent of excitement. ‘What a stir this will cause at the Royal Society.’
For a moment I was amused at the thought of the Earl solemnly producing my sports bra as evidence of time travel to an audience of the great and the good of Georgian scientific society. For a moment.
They looked up as I burst in. ‘No! You can’t do that – don’t you see, you can tell no-one about me.’
Chapter Four
Lord Radcliffe shot to his feet. ‘Miss Lawrence. Good morning.’ After one look he averted his gaze. It was a damn good thing I hadn’t been pottering about the kitchen first thing in the morning in my underwear when the time vortex, or whatever it was, had struck. They’d both have had apoplexies.
‘You can say nothing and do nothing.’
‘Why not?’ The Earl sat when I thumped down onto a chair. The realisation that was dawning on me meant my legs were not going to hold me up. ‘This is fascinating. Babbage and Walpole are both in town – they will be beside themselves.’
Scientists? I thought vaguely, not awake enough for this. Babbage was early computers, wasn’t he? But Walpole?
‘Everyone will want to talk to you, explore this. We know so little about space and time – I was at a most challenging lecture about that only last week. We cannot attribute this to supernatural phenomena – this is the nineteenth century after all. There must be a physical explanation. Why should we not learn to navigate in time as we are learning to navigate across the globe?’
‘Because this is the past and if you do anything differently as a result of my presence here you will change the future! The slightest thing could have a profound effect. You cross the street five minutes later than you might have done and a carriage is held up and two people do not meet, or do meet. A fight happens, or not. Someone is killed and never lives long enough to give birth to a child who … Oh, I don’t know… starts a war, stops a war, finds the cure for cancer. I suppose,’ I added bitterly when they both just stared at me, ‘if I suddenly vanish it will be because in the new future I will never have been born.’
‘But these changes are happening already,’ the Earl pointed out. He was almost glowing with excitement and enthusiasm, swept up in the rush of a scientific discovery when all I could think about were the possible consequences. To me.
‘I was to have gone out riding before breakfast. Garrick would probably have walked along to the porter’s office and chatted for a while. You may well have saved my life back in that alleyway. The attackers have injuries they would not have had, thanks to you, Miss Lawrence.’
‘Cassie,’ I said and ran my hands through my tangle of bed-hair. ‘Oh hell, I suppose there is nothing to be done about it. I am here and we can’t change that until we get into Almack’s and see if I can walk into a mirror and vanish. It seems the only possibility for getting back, unless I stand around in that ghastly alleyway.’
Silence. When I looked up the Earl said, ‘Cassie?’
‘When I come from everyone uses first names, Lucian.’ I waited for the explosion but he simply raised one eyebrow.
‘How very informal. Everyone?’
‘Friends, acquaintances, work colleagues, many employers and employees. It depends upon circumstances.’
He cocked his head to one side and studied me until I could feel my cheeks beginning to heat. ‘Your accent is changing, Miss Lawrence.’
‘It is?’ Then I caught on. ‘I’m a linguist, I am used to picking up new accents.’
‘Which languages do you speak?’
‘French, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian and I am working on Mandarin, which is hellish. But never mind that. What are we going to do about not changing the future?’
‘Not tell anyone about where – when – you come from, for a start. Certainly not the Royal Society.’ There was real regret in his voice and I could imagine he would start making copious notes, just in case he could produce an earth-shattering revelation for the Society after all. ‘And we will try and keep our curiosity about the future in check. Other than that, I cannot see what there is to be done about it.’ He shrugged. ‘This must have happened before, do you not think? The world has not come to an end thus far.’
‘True. But which world? We wouldn’t know what might have happened if some other time traveller hadn’t landed somewhere. Somewhen.’ I just wished I didn’t have that itch between the shoulder blades that was warning me that I might cease to exist at any moment. ‘I will go and get dressed.’
They both went blank again.
‘When I come from mentioning bodies and seeing people with not many clothes on is quite normal. I’m not embarrassed. Couldn’t you both pretend I’m male?’
Garrick choked. Lucian bit his lip. ‘No.’
They were arguing when I came back in my clean, beautifully pressed clothes, without the robe over the top. If I ever got out of this time I wanted to take that robe with me. Simply touching the heavy silk made me want to purr, but I couldn’t trail about in the thing all day and Lucian (if I kept calling him that I might manage to forget he was an earl) and Garrick had to get used to me as I was.
‘You must go out and purchase suitable clothing for Miss Lawrence,’ Lucian was saying. ‘I can hardly walk into Almack’s with her dressed in whatever it is she arrived in.’
‘But, my lord, it might not be safe for you to go out, not after last night.’ Garrick sounded agitated. ‘Those were not normal footpads by the sound of it.’
‘I am damned if I am going to skulk in here. A young lady has vanished, Cottingham’s out of his mind with worry about his sister and Selbourne’s under a cloud of suspicion thanks to Cottingham’s hysterical accusations. If that attack last night means I am making whoever has taken her uneasy then I cannot let it drop. Even if I have no clue what they think I might have discovered. Whoever they are. Miss Lawrence.’ He was on his feet again.
‘Cassie. Please sit down.’
‘Tea, Miss Lawrence? Or coffee? Hot chocolate?’
‘I suppose it is impossible to get you to call me Cassie, Garrick? Coffee, please.’ I wasn’t going to risk more tea that tasted like the Earl Grey, and I needed some caffeine. Urgently.
‘Coffee, certainly. And most certainly I could not bring myself to address you so, ma’am.’
‘What may I give you, Miss Lawrence?’ Lucian was lifting the covers over the chafing dishes on the sideboard. It looked marvellous and the smell was even better. Bacon, eggs
, sausages, a pile of toast, butter, pots of preserves – it was the kind of breakfast that is supposed to guarantee a heart attack on a plate. Heaven.
‘Cassie. And bacon, eggs, toast, please. Oh, and a sausage.’ I’d had no dinner last night, I realised as he put the plate in front of me and went back to load his own. ‘Thank you.’
Lucian sat down and reached for the mustard pot. ‘I cannot call you by your Christian name.’
‘Because we haven’t been properly introduced?’ I enquired with, doubtless, unbecoming sarcasm.
‘Because you are a young lady to whom I am not related.’
‘Think of me as your long-lost cousin.’ He gave me A Look. I wasn’t certain whether it was his in particular, or whether all earls looked at time-travelling females in that way.
‘Very well, Cousin Cassandra. We will go to Almack’s just as soon as Garrick has obtained suitable raiment for you. I will get the doorkeeper to let us in with a story about you having lost an earring the night before. We can say that the last time you noticed it was when you looked into the refreshment room glass. If we are fortunate whatever it is about the mirror will be working and you can step through it and be home.’ Lucian put down his knife and fork and rubbed one hand over his eyes. ‘I cannot believe we are having this conversation. Garrick, are you quite sure we are not both drunk?’
‘I am not, my lord,’ the valet said grimly. ‘Unfortunately. And I believe you to be perfectly sober. If you will excuse me I will go out and deal with the shopping.’
‘But he doesn’t know my size and there are no ready to wear shops, are there?’ I asked as the front door closed with a muffled thud.
‘A good valet can judge size by eye and he has laundered your garments.’ Lucian was decidedly tight-lipped. Talk about garments and body size, I supposed. Time to change the subject.
‘Tell me about the woman who has vanished and why that might be related to the attack on you last night.’