HerOutlandishStranger

Her Outlandish Stranger

Summer Devon

Blush sensuality level: This is
a sensual romance (may have explicit love scenes, but not erotic in frequency
or type).

In 2310, Jazz White is one of few
surviving soldiers of a hated regime. Now “reprogrammed”, stripped of many of
his memories and killing skills, Jazz is an outcast until he’s summoned by the
government’s elite time-travel agency and told he must journey to the 1800s.
His mission—to protect Eliza Wickman, an English woman trapped in war-torn
Spain. Once he arrives in the dreadful place, it becomes clear he’s been
tricked. His
real
mission—Jazz must father her child, who will prove
important to the future of civilization.

Guilt-ridden by his deception, Jazz
must keep Eliza safe while he escorts her to England, all the while fighting
his attraction to her innocent eroticism. But an agent from his time has other
plans, and does his best to sabotage Jazz’s efforts. As the connection between
him and Eliza grows, the agent could be the least of Jazz’s worries. His
biggest fear is far more personal—what will happen once Eliza learns the truth?

Ellora’s Cave Publishing

www.ellorascave.com

Her Outlandish Stranger

ISBN 9781419937682

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Her Outlandish Stranger Copyright © 2012 Summer Devon

Edited by Grace Bradley

Cover design by Dar Albert

Photography: Fillip Fuxa, Photo Creative, Astra Potocki,
Anetta/Shutterstock.com

Electronic book publication March 2012

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Her Outlandish Stranger

Summer Devon

Chapter One

2310, ten years after The Way of Truth war trials

They showed up one autumn morning. Jazz worked inside,
ignoring the soft, clear weather as he plowed through a stack of formulates for
CRs, communication receptacles. The contractor wanted the CRs done yesterday.

When he heard the shout of excitement outside, he glanced
down at the screen of one of his own external CRs.

The sleek white vehicle drew to a silent stop outside his
door and two uniformed agents of the Department of Historical Undertakings
stepped out. Real DHUies, right here on his block.

Jazz managed to hold back his own excitement.

He flipped the CR he’d finished onto the board and reached
for another.

This wasn’t the first time the DHU had contacted him, but so
far he’d managed to ignore them. The government posed no threat to him—Jazz had
paid his debt to society. He simply wanted to be left alone and was annoyed the
authorities had bombarded him with messages marked “urgent”.

Their messages pleaded that they had some information to
pass along to him. No deal. He didn’t need any information from them and had
nothing to say. He only wondered what he’d have to say or do to get rid of this
pair.

He flicked his CR a few times to watch the people who lived
on his block crane their necks to stare, open-mouthed. They pointed at the
DHUies, who ostentatiously ignored the attention.

Though the Department tried to keep a low profile, any idiot
could recognize a flashy Department of Historical Undertakings vehicle. A kid
on a cyke, the same one who rode by Jazz’s house to gawk at him, stopped to
watch the two people. Jazz heard the kid yell, “Eh, are you real DHUies? Can I
have your autograph?”

The uniformed duo, a man and a woman, sent a psunder message
to Jazz announcing their arrival. The message echoed around his brain.
Urgent.
He pushed back his chair to watch them on the screen for a minute before
dumping the CR and opening his door.

“Jazz White?” the woman asked politely.

Jazz didn’t bother to answer. He folded his arms, leaned
against the doorway and waited. Since he was tall, he could stare down at her
with the look that usually worked when he wanted to keep his less-tolerant
neighbors at bay. His mouth tightened in surprise when he noticed the insignia
on her uniform was of a high-ranking official. This was no plain message
bearer.

She looked up and their eyes met. The woman cleared her
throat. “Mr. White, I’m afraid I have to insist that you participate in the DHU
meeting we have arranged for you.”

“Insist? Yeah?”

“We’ve sent verbal, written and psunder messages to you, Mr.
White. You must understand this is DHU business. It is also extremely
sensitive. You must participate and your participation must be in person.”

Jazz fished around in his pocket for another CR to work on.
A tiny psunder brain unit. Huh. He’d have to find a much smaller instrument to
use on it.

“’Scuse me.” He reached back to yank a minute demagnetized
needle from the sheet on the work bench.

Without looking up from the CR, he said, “I don’t know how
you did it, but you’ve got the wrong guy. I’m a techno and I’ve got no
connection to the Department of Historical Undertakings. There’s no possible
way I’d be summoned. It’s not like I’m a trained DHUy or something.”

“Yessir, I know. But you will be.”

That got his attention. His hands froze and he looked over
at her. She studied him with a wide-eyed expression Jazz could only interpret
as veneration, or maybe physical attraction. That seemed unlikely. He chose to
take antidotes against that sort of thing. Whatever had changed in her
expression, it made his skin prickle with something—maybe even fear.

He dumped the needle, the CR, and the nonchalant act. “No.
Not possible. You guys pick out DHUies from day one. I told you, I’m just a
tech. I’m a normal person.”

He knew he didn’t imagine the significant silence after that
last stupid remark, but Jazz forced himself not to look away or attempt to hide
his forearm and the scar. No point in trying to conceal that obvious bit of
evidence. He’d already noticed both agents’ furtive glances at the spot inside
his arm where the chip once lay. The chip and the tattoo were gone but his skin
still bore the mark of shame he was forbidden to remove.

Hey, the DHUy knew all about him before she showed up at his
door. And maybe for once he was simply being paranoid when he read disapproval
into the official’s silence. Maybe there was none, because when she answered
she had no trace of judgment or irony in her voice.

She even smiled. “Sir. I understand it’s extraordinary that
a member of the general population was selected to be a DHUy. In fact, I
believe no ordinary citizen has had that honor.”

He hissed with impatience. “Honor? No thanks, not
interested. I’m thirty. Too da’ old.”

The woman’s smile seemed sympathetic. “Sorry, Mr. White.
It’s really out of your hands. Ours too, for that matter. This is straight from
the director himself.”

The man next to her shifted slightly. For the first time,
Jazz noticed that this other agent was huge, even taller and broader than he
was, and armed with a weapon. Jazz instantly understood the man had come along
to take charge if Jazz didn’t cooperate.

“What are you doing?” he demanded of the two DHUies. “You
think you’re agents of the Way?”

The woman grimaced at his tasteless reference to that old
evil. The malevolence Jazz had helped rise to power. But when she answered, her
voice was calm. “Of course not, sir. We are here in the middle of the day. We
are not going to drag you off to a camp. Merely to a meeting…ah, and we’d rather
not drag you.”

Jazz rubbed the back of his neck. “Nah. Sorry. You’ll have
to drag me. I’m not coming. Not even if Madame herself asked.”

The woman glanced ’round at the other, lower-ranking DHUy.
As if on some kind of signal, the man took a few steps away, pretending to
check on the vehicle. The official slipped all the way into Jazz’s home, an
entirely forbidden move.

She leaned even closer and spoke quietly so the other DHUy
could not hear her words. “Mr. White, odd that you should mention her name. The
director hinted that if you were completely reluctant, he might involve Madame
Blanro. Your involvement is so secret that even I don’t know the details, but
you are being called upon to somehow save the only person who could bring us
from under the Way of Truth. I do not exaggerate when I say that I believe our
civilization depends on you, sir.”

She delivered this ridiculous speech then looked up at him.
Staring back, Jazz waited for someone to jump out and say “just fooling!” but
he could see that she was entirely serious.

At that instant, he understood he was about to become an
agent of the Department of Historical Undertakings.

* * * * *

Ten other people sat at the large round table. All heads
turned toward Jazz. So many stares fixed on him at once, so many people in the
same room. Gah, it reminded him of the bleary half-awake nightmare time just
after the war.

He could almost hear the word as they looked at him.
Truthie. That was the name for people like him, the ex-soldiers of the Way.

He ran his hand over the table. It was wood, a substance he
rarely encountered. When he concentrated on the feel of the warm, satin
surface, he could control the urge to leap up and flee.

He’d given up protesting to the Departmental upper rankers,
after hearing a dozen patient explanations of the situation.

“No, no one has made a mistake,” an agency bonks at the
table told him. “We have much more refined instrumentation these days and
developed a foolproof system for fossilized DNA checks.”

Years earlier the director had discerned that at least one
DHUy traveler would appear at a particular spot, among some rocks on a
desolated plateau in Spain. They’d developed new systems, discovered it had to
be a specific DHUy, not just any qualified agent. When they ran the DNA, it did
not match any of their agents, so they had to look into the general bank. It
turned up Jazz White.

The formal meeting at the round table included the DHU
Director of Transport himself, a ridiculously young man with a slight stammer.

Jazz wondered if the director had staged the whole episode
as some kind of elaborate joke on his DHU staff. The director wore the
bright-eyed expression of a reckless, unreliable child. At least he looked like
an intelligent brat.

The director interrupted someone’s long, technical
explanation of the detection process. “I da’ well wish we could have been able
to give you the standard nine years of training. Of course there are some
p-parts of training, self-protection, for instance, that you won’t need—”

The director coughed to cover up the faux pas he’d almost
made by mentioning Jazz’s past. Everyone made a point of not looking at Jazz’s
arm.

A uniformed man, an actual DHUy and not just an admin, spoke
up. “I think, sir, you’ve stressed that this is an important assignment. Perhaps
I should at least have one session with Mr. White?”

The director nodded. “Right.” He waved a hand at the man.
“That’s Steele, a top agent, and our trainer for self-defense. Yeah—some hours
with Steele, then.”

Steele, a big, stocky dark-haired man a few years older than
Jazz, nodded and eyed him grimly.
Oh she-yit
. Steele wore the tattoo of
a Way martyr. Part of his hand was missing. He’d been a prisoner in one of the
worst camps and proudly advertised the fact.

The director went on, “The point is, we gotta work fast,
White.” He glanced down at the report. “It appears f-from that hand print, you
will be aged thirty-one years, one month and two days at the time. So, Agent J.
White, it seems that you will be traveling in only…four months from now. And unfortunately
it is an extended assignment and we can’t exactly tell when you return. But I
gotta say I have confidence in you. You’ll do the trick.” He gave a broad
smile, but everyone else in the room looked uneasy.

He stopped Jazz as the others trooped out of the room and
pulled him aside.

“To keep you safe, only three of us know the nature of your
assignment. So keep your mouth shut, okay?”

“Keep me safe from what?”

The director opened his mouth but the official guide had
joined them.

Without looking at Jazz, the director only gave one of his
sly smiles and said, “If you run into situations you do not understand, use
your instincts. Get me? Hey?”

Jazz nodded. Less than a day after he had been summoned,
Jazz was shoved into the bowels of the DHU.

He spent the next four grueling months being turned into a
trained time-traveler, one of those heroic and—usually—well-trained members of
the most famous, most elite corps in the world.

Almost before he had chance to draw breath, he ended up on
some godforsaken hill in some old country called Spain.