by Nichole Van
And then they both spoke at once:
“You’ll have to talk to James—”
“You ask your phone a question, and it tells you the answer? Does this Google person know everything?”
Miss Fleury broke off with a delighted laugh. It was a beautiful sound, clear and bell-like. Bringing to mind spring flowers and summer breezes.
“Yes. Google does know everything,” she chuckled. “But it’s not a person. It’s a computer . . . or more like the aggregated repository of all human learning.”
Well, that was certainly . . . useful, was it not? He sternly told himself that he did not find the concept endlessly fascinating. No. He did not.
He would focus on the task at hand.
“Could this Google tell me about the portal then? I need to understand the mechanism for triggering it.”
Miss Fleury sighed and set down her pencil on a small table near the canvas.
“Google knows a lot of things, but it’s not much help with the portal, unfortunately. Trust me. We’ve looked over the years . . .”
Timothy gestured. Pray continue.
And so she did. Timothy had to force his emotions down, down, down as she spun a tale about the universe as an ocean and bonds that could be created through time, allowing one to travel centuries in the blink of an eye.
“I really wish I had answers for you, Timothy.” Her shoulders sagged. “But for others who have passed through the portal, there was a reason. Someone they needed to meet or something they needed to do or realize. Once you have done that, the portal will work, and you will return home.”
“And until that point?”
She shrugged. “You need to figure out what you must do.”
Timothy started to pace, back and forth, back and forth in front of the doorway. It was a frustrating lapse in control, but his feet needed to be moving. His hand sought the gear in his pocket.
Emotions kept surging against the wall of calm he had built around himself. Forceful, panicky things. He didn’t know what would happen if they broke through. He needed to remain . . . anesthetized.
Kinningsley was a factory in this age. Some tragedy had forced his estate to make a degrading descent into trade. That was why he was here. He had to prevent this horror from ever occurring. Preserve his heritage.
The portal . . . the universe as a whole . . . had set this task for him.
Deep breath. He forced his feet to stand still. He turned back to face her, spine perfectly straight.
“Well, Miss Fleury, my path is clear. I will borrow the car and visit Kinningsley.”
His words lingered in the small room. Jasmine cocked her head, trying to understand the non-sequitur.
At least he had stopped his pacing.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
He seemed energized. As if he had shaken free of his stage-one-grief-denial thing.
Which probably wasn’t a good thing. Because he wasn’t moving on to Anger, so this probably represented a regression of sorts.
And, on a completely unrelated topic, could she just get him a beard trimmer and convince him to keep the stubble? There was nothing sexier than a hot guy in expensive Italian threads with dark stubble on his cheeks.
You add in a pair of pale silver eyes and boo-yah—
“Kinningsley. My estate in 1815,” he explained. “I tried to go there yesterday, but the gate was closed. There was a sign upon it—Helm Enterprises. Their headquarters are on the grounds of my estate.”
Yeah, that stubble really had to stay. It so made his eyes pop. Uh—what had he just said?
“A company is headquartered at Kinningsley? And that’s . . . bad?” Her head listed even farther to the side.
“Of course.” Aaaaaand, he was pacing again. “How could this happen to my estate? It is a complete desecration of everything my ancestors fought and died to maintain.”
He had a hand in his hair now. Man, he was definitely cuter when he was a little agitated. And if she had to hide every razor in this part of Britain to keep that stubble, she—
“Wait,” she said as his last words caught up with her. “Your ancestors fought to not own a business? Cause owning a business which earns lots of money is . . . not good?”
He paused and then slowly removed his hand from his hair, staring at it. As if he were appalled his fingers had done something so gauche as to touch his head. He returned his hand to his side, again holding himself utterly still.
“Miss Fleury.” His voice a model of restraint. “A finely bred gentleman, particularly a Linwood, does not dabble in trade.”
“That makes . . . no sense. How could you be anti-money? Isn’t that the definition of an aristocrat? Like if I said, Okay Google, define aristocrat. Google would come back with—Aristocrat: Arrogant person who has cartloads of money earned from the blood and tears of serfs. Or something like that.”
He froze. Fixed her with that look of his. One part condescension mixed with two parts contempt and a dash of how-can-you-possibly-be-so-stupid.
“My family has never owned serfs. The nineteenth century is perfectly civilized—”
“My bad. Child factory workers then?”
Uhmm, okay. Make that three parts contempt.
And given how wide his eyes went, she had probably gone a teensy bit too far. But seriously, what was the problem here?
“The point, Miss Fleury, is that my legacy has been overtaken by merchants intent on trade. Merchants work. Gentlemen do not. That is what constitutes the difference between the classes.”
“Work?”
“Precisely.” There went The Look again. “If Kinningsley has become the headquarters for a large business, then my family must no longer be gentlemen. Can you not see the dire nature of this tragedy? Surely this is why the portal summoned me through. To cleanse this ghastly stain from my good family name. Someone, somewhere made a terrible decision and allowed Kinningsley to be raped in such a manner. That decision needs to be unmade.”
Whoa. Had he really just used the word raped?
Ooookay.
“Fine, Timothy. We can try to go to Kinningsley. But let me just warn you. One of the facets of the portal is its determination to protect the space-time continuum.”
He blinked. “The what?”
“Space-time continuum—the sequence of cause and effect which forms the basis of our reality. The portal—or rather, the universe in general—will not allow you to see or hear or learn information which might alter past events. At no point, in all of our dealings with the portal, has anyone changed the course of history. It’s actually astonishing you were able to learn that Kinningsley had become the headquarters for some international conglomerate—”
“Are you stating there is nothing to be done about it? Even if I learn where, when and how the change occurred?”
“I’m saying it’s extremely unlikely the universe will allow you to find that information. And if you do learn those things, you will not be able to affect the outcome. We can try to visit and learn what we can, but chances are, our efforts will be thwarted.”
“What definitive evidence do you have which supports this hypothesis?”
Jasmine blinked. Man, this conversation had suddenly become way too technical.
“Well . . . no one has been able to yet, so—”
“Just because it has not happened up to this point, it does not signify that such a change is impossible.”
Silence.
“True,” Jasmine said reluctantly, though the idea felt wrong.
“As you admit, by permitting me to see the potential destruction of Kinningsley, Fate has already shown me more than others have been able to see. Why would it therefore follow that I cannot do more? It would make more logical sense that I have been sent here specifically to correct this situation.”
“I’m not so sure . . .”
But Timothy seemed convinced. He nodded his head decisively. “Righting the wrong which has been done to Kinningsley is my purpose here. I am sure of it. We
will leave now to visit my estate. I will drive the car—”
“No.” Jasmine shook her head in exasperation. This she for sure knew the answer to. “No, you won’t. That will not happen.”
Did the man ever listen to anyone other than the delusional voices in his head? Besides, what were the chances James’ car insurance covered snotty nineteenth century viscounts?
“If the automobile only cost three thousand pounds, James most certainly will not begrudge me its use.”
“You’re totally missing the point—”
“Miss Fleury, you clearly do not understand the seriousness of this situation.” He stared at her with those steely gray eyes.
“You aren’t driving.” She lifted her chin, fixing him with her firmest look.
A beat.
“Very well,” he said. “I will permit you to play coachman for me just this once. I will await your presence downstairs. You have three minutes.”
And with a curt nod, Mr. Snotty Pants turned and left the room.
“I thought you said you knew how to drive one of these things.”
“I do.”
“Then why are you doing it so poorly?”
Jasmine resisted the urge to smack Timothy’s sexy-stubbled arrogant cheek.
If only she could get a hand free . . .
“Careful. You are driving too close again.”
“So help me, you touch my steering wheel one more time, I will personally cut off your finger.”
Again, once she had a free hand . . .
Stupid clutch. James had to go and buy a stick shift. Cause having everything backwards wasn’t already bad enough. She had to deal with manual, left-handed shifting too. She had reached to shift with her right hand over a hundred times by now, almost opening the car door more than once. Not to mention the windshield wipers and the signal indicator—also both on opposite sides. The windshield was exceptionally clean now—
Worst of all, the BMW was a stallion of a car. She could feel the power of the engine underneath the gas pedal. It wanted to go really fast. Was practically begging for it.
Timothy nudged the steering wheel, subtly correcting the car. Again.
“You nearly hit those stationary vehicles.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Are you sure?” Timothy asked. Jasmine could see his clenched jaw and wide eyes in her peripheral vision. That, and the death grip he had on his door handle. His knuckles as white as hers. This was probably not the best introduction ever to riding in a car.
“Look. As I explained to you, I learned to drive in the U.S. where everything is opposite. So cars drive along the right side of the road, not the left. And the steering wheel is where you are currently sitting, which means that my sense of distance is all off—”
“Why would Americans choose to drive on the opposite side of the road? Britains have always driven on the left. It makes sense because other vehicles pass to your right. How can this feel unnatural to you?”
Jasmine gritted her teeth. “Simple. It’s opposite of everything I’ve ever known. Like trying to write correctly while looking in a mirror. Or like if you had to drive a carriage backwards with the horse behind you, sitting on the opposite side, but the reins were somehow in front of you and suddenly everything was reversed cause you were looking over your shoulder and trying to drive . . . ya know, like that . . .” She trailed off, biting her bottom lip.
A loooooooong pause and then—
“You do realize that, given the trajectories involved, what you describe is physically impossible? It makes no sense on any level.”
“People take a whole year to learn how to drive one of these things. So I figure I got at least another three hundred and forty-seven days to master this. It’s a process.”
She swerved around a parked car, wheels squealing faintly, edging a little too close to an oncoming lorry. The trucker honked loudly.
Timothy tightened his grip on the door. “Assuming we live that long.”
In the end, Jasmine successfully navigated the few miles between Duir Cottage and Kinningsley, Timothy pointing left and right, helping her remember which side of the road to stay on. His huge sigh of relief when she parked the car summed up his feelings about the experience.
But she had done it! She had driven in Britain for the first time. And the BMW was still shiny and scratch-free.
So far so good.
Getting out of the car, they crossed the street to a white metal gate, a sign blazoned with Helm Enterprises hanging from it. It only took a moment to realize the gate was locked. There was no call box.
After staring at it for a few minutes, Jasmine dug out her phone and googled the company’s website.
What do you know? It was down.
So predictable.
She resisted the urge to give Timothy her most smug smile. This was what always happened when they went digging where Fate didn’t want them to be. Seemingly simple tasks became impossible.
Another Google search and she found a company phone number.
Disconnected.
Again, predictable.
By this point, Timothy was seething. Pacing and with a hand in his hair.
Practically coming unglued. At least for Lord Linwood.
Well, she had tried to tell him this would happen.
Finally, one of those huge lorries chugged up the road, the gate slowly opening automatically. The driver pulled beside them and rolled down his window when Jasmine waved him down.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said, pasting on her flirty smile. “We were wanting to speak with a manager, if we could.”
The man scrubbed a hand over his bald head. “Oy, that’s not gonna happen, miss. Been too much goings on with the corporate espionage case. No one is allowed to talk without speaking to lawyers first. Would be me job to talk to you, much less send you on to a manager. Terrible sorry.”
And with a nod of his head, he drove through the gate which closed behind the lorry with clanging finality.
Yep. This was definitely the universe preventing them from seeing anything more.
“Was that man speaking English? I could barely understand him.” Timothy stood beside her, hands on his hips, hair mussed from his fingers.
“Look, Timothy—”
“Lord Linwood,” he growled, pale eyes snapping.
Uh-huh. Definitely coming unglued. The anger phase was going to be awful.
Or . . . spectacular. Kinda depended on your point of view.
“Look, Timothy, I told you.” She loved a good I-told-you-so. Hah! “The universe won’t allow you to see beyond this point. For some reason, you were to learn that Kinningsley has been turned into some company’s base of operations. But beyond that, you won’t be able to change anything. What’s done is done. The path has already been determined.”
He shook his head, hand going into his hair again. “No! I refuse to accept that answer. Why else would I be here but for this?” He waved a hand toward the estate in question.
“Don’t look at me. I’m just telling you how things work—”
“Well, you obviously do not understand what is at stake.”
He whirled away from her and stomped over to the gate, grasping the metal bars, hanging his head between his arms. Shoulders heaving, as if he had just run a marathon.
“I will not accept this!” He lifted his head and surveyed the tall gate. And then he pulled on his hands, lifting himself up, climbing the metal railings.
Jasmine gasped.
“No, Timothy, don’t!”
This wasn’t going to end well.
And sure enough, he had only gotten three rails up when a horrendous squall exploded out of the seemingly cloudless sky, pelting them both with blinding rain.
Lightning cracked. And then cracked again. Thunder boomed, vibrating the ground with its force.
“Get down, you idiot,” Jasmine screamed. “You’re going to get us both killed.”
Another flash and loud bang.
Timothy clung to the gate. Stubborn fool.
Desperate, Jasmine ran to him and jumped up, grabbing his pant leg, tugging him downward.
Crack. Boom.
Another jump and tug.
Finally, he let go, dropping the few feet to the ground. Snatching his arm, Jasmine dragged him back to the BMW. Away from the gate. Away from temptation.
Before she even unlocked the car, the sun reappeared. Bright and shining. As if nothing had happened.
Timothy leaned his back into the car door, hands on his thighs, head bowed, panting.
“See.” She gestured toward the gate. “Could the universe have made this any more clear? Kinningsley is a no-go-zone. We don’t investigate. We don’t ask questions.”
“Like. Hell.” He lifted his head, eyes full of steel. “This is my family you negate—my honor. The very blood which pumps through me.”
“Timothy, there is some other reason—”
“No! This”—a finger pointed toward the dripping gate and estate beyond—“is why I am here. If only to understand what needs to change in the past.” Jaw clenched, hair dripping wet.
“You’re wrong, Timothy. The only question to ask is this: Why would the universe ensure you knew your estate had been turned into a hotbed of merchant activity? Ask yourself that question, Lord Linwood.”
Chapter 12
Duir Cottage
The guest bedroom
March 22, 2015
Why did he need to know that Kinningsley had become the very thing he had been taught to despise?
Certainly, it was so he could correct the problem before it happened. That was the only logical explanation. Knowing this, he would return to 1815, marry Miss Heartstone and ensure that future generations could not betray the family name. Tie up the entail in such a way that his descendants would be unable to fracture the family heritage.
His path seemed self-evident. Except Miss Fleury insisted that was not the case.
Timothy stared at the ceiling. As he had been for the last three hours.
The bedside clock proclaimed it to be three twenty-three in the morning. The glowing red letters, searingly bright, left a ghostly impression when he looked away.