An Earl Out of Time: Time After Time Book One (Time Out of Time 1)

by Louise Allen

Lucian’s arm tightened around my shoulders, but all he said was, ‘What poetic justice if he ends up there himself as criminally insane.’

  ‘Will Arabella be all right? This will be a terrible scandal if word of what happened and what her step-brother intended gets out.’

  ‘If we can keep Cottingham’s plans for her secret, then it should not affect her too badly. The story to stick to is that Cottingham had an insane hatred of Selbourne. Everything after that can be admitted – the false elopement, agreeing to de Forrest marrying her to keep her, as Cottingham saw it, safe from Clem. The attack on us can be explained as his over-reaction because he thought we were in league with Clem to snatch her back. There is no need for there to be any mention of Cottingham’s real intent. Or for Arabella to ever know of it,’ he added grimly.

  ‘Will I have to give evidence?’ The bang on the head must be affecting me, I thought. Garrick’s solid figure seemed to waver and for a moment I could not feel Lucian’s arm around me. Perhaps it was simply the shock.

  ‘No. We will keep you out of it. The last thing we need is for you to have to stand up in a court of law and pretend to be my cousin.’

  Garrick wavered back into focus and my head cleared as he closed his eyes and leaned back into the corner of the carriage, cradling his injured arm in its sling. After a moment he began to snore softly.

  ‘I am going to take you back and put you to bed,’ Lucian began.

  ‘And join me?’ Where the certainty that was what I wanted came from, I don’t know, but I was suddenly very sure.

  He bent and kissed me, long and slow and tender until I was shivering with need for him. For more.

  After a long while he lifted his head. ‘I must stop or I will do something I should not, with you so knocked around.’

  ‘And you,’ I pointed out. ‘How did you recover from the carriage crash?’

  ‘James.’ Lucian pointed out of the window. ‘See, there is the wreck. They are lifting it off the milestone now. It would not have been so serious if we had not hit that.’ We were driving along one of those stretches between Kensington village and Hyde Park Corner that I had noticed had no houses, only market gardens fringing the southern edge. A carriage, wheels splintered, had crashed into a milestone that had stove-in the side. We were past it even as I shuddered.

  ‘James had been at Tattersall’s to look for horses for his new curricle. He had found a pair that he liked, and he was trying them out by driving them along to Kensington and back. He came across us about ten minutes after the crash. Some workers from the gardens had run to help and were laying us out on the verge. I was just about conscious by then and I sent him to fetch Selbourne while I got one of the gardeners to run to Kensington to bring the doctor, the magistrates and the constables.

  ‘I was expecting to find you, bored and cross in that spinney. When I realised that you had gone and we saw the gates were open with fresh wheel tracks, I feared the worst.’ Lucian stopped talking and his arm tightened painfully around me. I didn’t complain.

  After a minute he cleared his throat. ‘We went up the drive and I saw your signal, which meant we could go straight to the right floor once we had broken the doors down. The rest you know.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘Have you any idea how remarkable you are, Cassie?’

  ‘I am not. If you allowed women in this time to have the education and the freedom and the opportunities we have in mine, then they would surprise you far more than I do.’

  Lucian did not reply, only shook his head and held me as we passed Hyde Park Corner and began to drive along Piccadilly. I was glad, because the world was shifting out of focus again and I felt distinctly peculiar, almost as peculiar as I had in those seconds before the miniature had spun me out of my own time into this. Then I realised what was happening.

  ‘Lucian, I need to go to Almack’s.’

  ‘What? Now?’ Lucian straightened up and turned to stare at me. On the opposite side Garrick stirred and opened his eyes. ‘You have gone very pale, we need to get you home. We are almost there.’

  ‘No, Almack’s now.’ I clung to him, desperate not to let him go, frantic with the need to do just that. ‘Lucian, I think I am about to leave this time and I have no control over it. What will happen if I begin to spin out of this time without the focus of the mirror though which you saw me? I could end up anywhere, anywhen. Or nowhere.’

  ‘Stay,’ he said fiercely even as he nodded at Garrick who leaned out of the window and shouted up to the driver.

  ‘Almack’s. Spring ’em.’

  ‘Stay, I need you.’ He kissed me, his mouth hard on mine, then moving to kiss my eyes, my temple, the angle of my neck. ‘Don’t go, Cassie.’

  ‘How can I stay?’ I was holding him just as desperately, kissing him too, any part of his face I could reach, his hands, The carriage lurched as it made the turn down Duke Street and we broke apart. I think I was crying, he looked desperate.

  ‘Lucian, you know I can’t remain here, now, for ever. I’ve a home and family. Friends and work. Obligations. A damn cat. And they are two hundred years away.’ Was what I saw in his eyes what I thought I saw, or just my wishful thinking? Did I want him to think like that about me, to need me?

  I told myself that I didn’t want to feel anything for him because it would hurt too much. Because I was leaving, going home, or into some timeless void. My focus blurred again, but there was nothing to see beyond Garrick’s wavering figure. No familiar flat, no twenty first century. I tried to concentrate on the here and now, but I could feel a breeze on my face now, there in the closed carriage. ‘Hurry.’

  The carriage skidded to a halt and Lucian hauled me out, stumbling across the pavement and up the steps. He shouldered through the half-open door, scattering a squawking, protesting gaggle of servants who were chatting in the hallway around a pile of cleaning implements, and made for the stairs.

  There were cries of alarm as scummy water spilled across the shiny marble floor but Lucian kept going, almost carrying me now as my shaky legs began to give way. He passed a smartly-dressed man with an air of authority about him who opened his mouth to protest and was left reeling as we barrelled past. ‘I say, my lord! Stop, sir!’

  Then we were in the refreshment room, empty thankfully, although the stacks of freshly-pressed table linen suggested that someone would be back soon. We skidded to a stop in front of the mirror, its surface dull and dead in the shuttered gloom.

  Lucian took me by the shoulders and stood me between him and the glass, a few steps back. Distantly I could hear raised voices and the rumble of Garrick’s voice as he calmed things down.

  ‘Can you see anything?’ Lucian’s breath stirred my hair and I stared at our reflections, both of us dishevelled, battered, breathing hard. At least we were alone and still together. He reached for my hand and I curled my fingers into his, feeling the horseman’s callouses, the thud of his pulse.

  ‘No. I can see nothing.’ Only you. Only you. It was a lovely old mirror, that was all.

  He bent and I watched in the glass as he kissed my neck, the exposed angle where throat met shoulder and my frieze coat and old shirt was pushed back. I shivered as his warm mouth opened against my skin. I wanted to lean back. Turn back. Then the image in the glass shimmered as if it was water and a breeze had touched it.

  I stepped forward, out of his arms, reached out and my hand went into the surface of the glass, into cool, dry air. The draft was strong, almost a wind rushing over my fingers.

  ‘Cassie. Stay.’

  I looked back over my shoulder, hesitated, began to step back.

  Then Lucian dropped the hand he had reached out to me. ‘No. You must go. I understand that. Will you come back? Will I see you again? Cassie, I – ’

  So I stepped through, not looking forward, my gaze still on Lucian’s face. I could hear nothing now, not his words as his lips moved, only a rushing sound like a great wind. Had he said – ? No, I did not want him to say that, feel that. It was hard enough without this
half-formed, untested sense that this was the man I was destined to be with. This, the one man I could not possibly have.

  One more step and I was through. There was a snap like a latch fastening and the wind caught me, spun me, tossed me into darkness.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Just as it had before the jarring, tumbling ride lasted seconds before I hit solid ground with a thump that rattled my teeth. I lay there for a while, just breathing, not certain that I could believe what my senses were telling me. Then I opened my eyes and found I was millimetres away from the naff faux-wood vinyl flooring that I had been promising myself I would replace with slate tiles just as soon as I could afford a new kitchen floor.

  When I lifted my head, wincing at the bruises that had made the journey with me and the new ones from the impact of landing, I saw the handwoven rug I had brought back from last summer’s holiday in the Greek islands. I could smell chilli.

  Someone was swearing inventively in Cat. I levered myself up into a sitting position and there was Trubshaw, glowering at me as he muttered, his tail twitching.

  ‘You don’t look too bad for a cat who has been abandoned for nine days,’ I told him and he got up, ginger bottlebrush tail aloft, and stalked off into the living room.

  ‘Pleased to see you too,’ I muttered and got to my feet. Lucian’s portrait was lying on the floor under the table and I reached for it, relieved to see there were no teeth marks on the frame. It felt quite cool to the touch and the man in it looked back at me haughtily, nothing more than a skilful creation in paint.

  Had I dreamed it all? Fallen and knocked myself out and hallucinated the whole thing? I went to my PC. It was still on-line and I glanced at the date and time in the bottom of the screen. An hour had passed since I last recalled looking at it. So that was it. A fall, concussion, a dream concocted from that portrait, my few weeks of celibacy, police work and too many Regency romance novels.

  I straightened up and wondered whether I should go to casualty and find out if I had concussion. Perhaps a check of my pupils first before I wasted anyone’s time would be sensible. The bathroom mirror reflected back perfectly normal-looking eyes and no blood from my ears or nose and… a coat and shirt and Belcher neckcloth that were straight out of the 1800s.

  I reeled back and into the bedroom and the long mirror on the back of the wardrobe door. There I stood, looking as though I had been dragged through a hedge backwards while wearing my black trainers, breeches, a tail coat and a man’s shirt.

  It hadn’t been a dream or an hallucination. I looked round for my bag and that, of course, was nowhere in the flat. It was back in 1807 in an apartment in Albany along with my phone and my wallet and my Special Constable’s ID and my best mascara. And the man I… cared about.

  There really wasn’t anything I could do about any of it, not at this time of night with my brain and my emotions and my sense of reality all scrambled like eggs. Under it I felt blank, unable to think, unable to plan. To feel.

  A shower washed away the grime of the day’s adventures. I picked up the shower gel, one of Sophie’s expensive and luxurious gifts, put it back again and just used the plain soap I had bought especially not to quarrel with the gel. I wasn’t sure I wanted to replace 1807 with the scent of the twenty first century, not quite yet.

  When I woke up I was back in 1807. Of course, I had never left, I realised sleepily, my nose buried in soft linen smelling of the soap that Garrick used on Lucian’s shirts. It had all been a dream after the shocks and terrors of rescuing Arabella.

  Then something landed on my stomach with a thump and I sat up to find Trubshaw, purring rustily as he made heavy-footed circles on the duvet. I let go of Lucian’s shirt that I had been clutching and stared at him. Trubble made that complicated sound that translates roughly as, ‘Where’s my breakfast, you sorry excuse for a cat owner?’ in feline, jumped off the bed and made for the kitchen.

  I followed him, with a stop at the bathroom for a few moments of gratitude for modern plumbing. Then I dragged on jeans and an ancient tee shirt that said something vaguely obscene in Croatian.

  The boiling water had just hit the tea bag when the doorbell went. Who the hell was that at – a quick glance at the clock – nine o’clock on a Saturday morning? If I was being cold-called I would use some of my newly-acquired Regency street slang, because I had no time for this and no mental capacity for dealing with other human beings.

  But it wasn’t a cold caller. There were three of them and they stood in a row in order of height like out-of-season carol singers. One lanky red-headed twenty-something with a big nose and a hipster beard, one medium sized brunette with a big grin and one stocky guy with brown hair, brown eyes and a big black box he was peering over the top of.

  ‘Miss Lawrence?’ they chorused.

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted warily.

  ‘I’m John Polworth.’

  ‘Lucy Prendergast.’

  ‘Frank Ponsonby,’ the box carrier finished.

  ‘From Polworth, Prendergast and Ponsonby. In the High Street. Solicitors. You know?’

  ‘Only we aren’t the senior partners,’ the brunette confided, in case, presumably, I thought that the oldest firm of solicitors in the town – and probably the county – was now headed by a trio just out of law school. ‘That’s Daddy and Uncle Francis and Cousin James. Only we pleaded so hard they let us come and deliver it. We’ve been waiting more than two hundred years, you know.’

  ‘Not personally,’ Polworth assured me. ‘The firm.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I asked when they finally subsided, beaming.

  ‘This.’ Ponsonby junior held out the box which I realised was one of those black tin deed boxes you see stacked in the corner of solicitors’ offices. I’d assumed that these days they were just for show.

  ‘Come in,’ I said. I took the box and carried it into the living room to put it down on the table. On the side it had my name, address and the date in neat, white-painted lettering. The script was curling, ornate. Nineteenth century. I felt the breath begin to catch in my throat.

  ‘We are dying to know what’s in it,’ Prendergast told me. ‘Only we realise it might be confidential. It has been there since 1807 and all anyone knows is that it has to be delivered today and no-one must open it except for you.’

  The lid lifted with a creak and I looked in. A small package wrapped in tarnished silver foil lay on top of a larger, flatter one. Keeping the lifted lid between me and the three Ps I opened the top parcel. My neat blue cross-body bag. I pushed the bigger parcel with a fingertip. It was soft. My cashmere yoga pants and top, at a guess.

  ‘The story in the firm is that this aristocratic gentleman came in 1807 and paid an indecent amount of money and left the instructions,’ Polworth explained.

  ‘And no-one opened the box in more than two hundred years?’

  They looked shocked. ‘Those were the Client’s Instructions,’ they chorused in tones suggesting that those were holy writ.

  ‘It is Great Great – I forget how many greats – Aunt Cassandra’s diaries,’ I explained, desperately scrabbling for something that would satisfy them. ‘They were so shocking that they could not be read in her day so she left them to her descendant, trusting that her name would be handed down.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Ponsonby. ‘Cool.’ I made a mental note not to engage him if I ever had a court case requiring complex verbal reasoning. ‘But how did she know you would be here?’ Ah, not so dim after all.

  ‘Old family property,’ I said, thanking my stars that the flats were in a converted Georgian house. ‘And the name Cassandra has been handed down, generation to generation, just like the story of the diaries. I am really sorry, but I can’t ask you to stay for coffee. I was just about to go out.’

  ‘Of course,’ Prendergast gushed as they made for the door. ‘Perhaps we can talk when we bring the other boxes. It is very exciting, waiting for when the dates come due – Ouch!’

  ‘We’re not supposed to
say about those,’ scolded Polworth in a whisper as they piled out onto the landing. ‘Good bye, Miss Lawrence.’

  It took me a moment after the door closed behind them for that to sink in. There were other boxes with different dates at the solicitor’s office. Which meant that I would leave other things behind me in the past. I was going back.

  I was going back.

  About the Author

  Louise Allen lives on the North Norfolk coast close to the 18th century seaside town of Cromer. She is a passionate collector of late Georgian and Regency ephemera and prints and is the author of over fifty historical romances and non-fiction works, mainly set in the Georgian and Regency period. She also blogs about Georgian life at http://janeaustenslondon.com/

  Full details of all her books, including extracts and buy-links, can be found at www.louiseallenregency.com

  I do hope you have enjoyed this book – and I would be very pleased if you would leave a review. Every review helps me connect with readers and make the next book just that bit better.

  Thank you.

  Time Into Time

  An Earl Out of Time is the first in a series. Book Two featuring James Franklin and continuing Lucian and Cassie’s time-travelling story will be available in 2018.