Now and Forever (41 page)

"A man's meal would be cold as ice before it passed his lips."

"A gentleman wouldn't comment on such a thing."

"Hot food should be eaten hot," he observed.

"Agreed," said Shannon, "but you don't have to look like a slob when you're eating it."

"A slob?"

"A pig," she explained. "An untidy person."

He lifted another forkful of eggs and ham. "Do all people comment thusly upon the dining practices of others?"

She thought of Ms. Manners and laughed. "Some people even make their living doing so."

"'Tis a strange world," he said.

"Stranger than you know." She rested her fork on the side of her plate. "I think a trip to the mall is in order."

He frowned. "A mall is a public promenade in the center of town."

"It's more than that today." She told him about the collection of enclosed stores and restaurants that comprised Bridgewater Commons.

"Such an enterprise is beyond my ken."

"Mine too," said Shannon, who had given up power shopping with her marriage, "but there's no hope for it. We're going shopping."

 
#

After their morning meal, Andrew watched as Shannon stacked dishes in a kitchen cabinet, poured liquid soap into the same cabinet, then closed the door. He was about to ask why she didn't put the dishes to soak in the big sink beneath the window but she pressed a few buttons and a horrific grinding noise and the sound of rushing water filled the room.

"What in bloody hell--?"

"A dishwasher," she said. "It automatically washes the dirty dishes."

He nodded as if a dishwashing cabinet were an everyday occurrence. A dish rag, hung from a peg, caught his eye. "And then you dry them with a rag."

"No," said Shannon. "The dishwasher dries them for me."

"That cannot be." He crouched down in front of the infernally loud dishwashing cabinet. "There are rags inside the cabinet?"

"Hot air."

"Say again, mistress."

"I'm not a mechanical genius but I think hot air circulates through the dishwasher and that dries the dishes after they've been cleaned."

"'Tis a miracle."

"No," she said, "'tis everyday life."

"You mock my speech?"

"Never that." Her lovely face seemed lit from within by her smile. "Your speech is delightful."

"You have no wish to change it?"

"I thought you were a Scotsman," she said, still smiling. "I imagine others will make the same mistake. Besides, there's great diversity in this country. You'll blend right in."

"You need not be so solicitous of my needs, mistress. I am most resourceful and will make my way through your world."

"Your friends who traveled back to your world," she said, smile fading. "Didn't they need your help?"

"A revolution is being waged," he said. "Danger is afoot everywhere. I did only what I deemed necessary to afford them safe passage."

"I can do the same for you. We're not in revolution, but I guarantee my world is more dangerous than yours could ever be."

He thought of smallpox and influenza, of childbed fever and the losses of wartime. Nothing Emilie and Zane had described to him could surpass those horrors and he strongly doubted Mistress Shannon could show him anything that would alter his thinking.

 
#

"You can open your eyes," Shannon said an hour later. "The worst is over."

"Nay, mistress." Andrew's eyes were still tightly closed. "I think not."

"I merged onto the highway and we're going along in our own lane now." He had accepted the existence of her car with remarkable aplomb. Merging onto Route 287 with an eighteen-wheeler jockeying her for position was another story entirely. "There's nothing to be afraid of."

The poor man looked positively green. Her heart went out to him as he slowly opened his eyes and looked about.
You're incredible,
she thought, drawing her own gaze back to the road. She wondered if she would exhibit one-tenth McVie's courage if the situation was reversed.

"We move with great speed," he observed, color returning to his face. "Is such rapid movement the norm?"

She gazed at the speedometer. The needle rested firmly on fifty m.p.h. "Actually we're in the slow lane. That guy in the red Porsche's probably doing seventy."

"I have no understanding of porshuhz or doing seventy."

She checked her side mirror and moved into the center lane. "I can go faster if you want to see what doing seventy is all about." What was a speeding ticket compared to showing off for a spectacular man?

He shook his head. "I see no benefit to moving faster."

"Most men would tell me to go for it."

He met her eyes. "I am not most men."

Oh God,
she thought as her heart seemed to slide into her breastbone. He has no idea how true that is. Not in appearance or demeanor or the overpowering sense of strength that seemed to emanate from every pore.

"I find myself wondering how it is you begged me stay."

"I didn't beg you to do anything."

"I heard the words clearly, mistress, from your own lips.
Don't go. Please stay.
Said in a tone of entreaty."

Was it truly possible that he'd heard her thoughts as clearly as she believed she'd heard his?

"Maybe we should forget the mall and take you to a doctor." She tried for a light and breezy tone of voice but failed miserably.

"I am not in need of a doctor's care."

She moved back into the right hand lane as they neared the exit to Bridgewater Commons. "Suggesting you stay on a little longer and begging are two vastly different concepts."

"There was deep emotion in your tone."

"What about you?" she asked, tires squealing as she took the exit faster than normal. "It's not like I tied you to a chair to keep you prisoner."

"There was logic to your reasoning. Common sense told me to heed your suggestions."

"Hah!"

"You mark me a liar?"

"You mark me for a fool if you think I'm going to believe that."

"You are a suspicious woman, Shannon Whitney. A most undesirable trait in a female."

"Now there's something that needs work," she said as she stopped for a red light in front of the mall. "That patronizing, paternalistic attitude of yours stinks."

"I am a man," he said. "And I treat women as women."

"In this century men treat women as equals."

"Women are not equal to men."

"The hell they're not."

"Your strength is inferior to mine."

"And my brain is superior to yours," she shot back. "It all evens out."

"We have not tested our intellects to know such a thing."

"Simple logic would bear me out," she said, falling back on male tactics. "My world is more advanced than your world. I am a product of my world. Therefore I am more advanced than you."

"I am a graduate of Harvard," he said.

"Sure you are," said Shannon heading toward the parking lot.

"And I practiced law in Boston."

She drove the car up onto the curb then dropped down again with a thud."Right," she said. "And I'm a nuclear physicist."

"You do not believe me."

"A lawyer?" She swung into a parking spot then looked him full in the face. "Do all lawyers dress the way you do?"

"I have not practiced law since my--" He stopped abruptly.

"Go on," Shannon urged. "You can't drop a bomb like that and not give me the details."

"The details do not matter any longer," he said, his voice gruff.

"I'd like to know."

"My past is dead. I look to build a new life here, in this time and place."

She thought of her own past, the painful details of her marriage, and something inside her gave way.
I've been there,
she thought.
I know how you feel.

She checked her lipstick in the rearview mirror then summoned up her best smile. "If you're looking to build a new life, you've come to the right place, Andrew McVie. There's nothing more American than the mall."

 
#

Andrew had the profound sense that he had just managed to elude danger. Not the type of danger that broke bones or drew blood, but danger of a more subtle and deadly kind. How close he had come to unburdening himself upon Mistress Shannon, telling her of Elspeth and David, letting the endless parade of his mistakes march past her until she knew his soul the way she knew her own face in the glass.

Nay,
he thought, casting a glance at her lovely profile. To reveal himself to her would be a mistake of colossal proportions. One he did not intend to make.

He managed to unsnap the bonds that held him in his seat then pulled the silver handle that opened the door. Zane had done an admirable job of describing an automobile. He remembered the night Rutledge had drawn a picture in the dirt of a square box that rested atop inflatable wheels. Accepting that as a possibility had not been difficult, but then Rutledge went on to tell him that the box, called a car, was not drawn by a team of horses but powered by a series of sustained explosions deep within its own self.

"Does everyone own one of these cars?" he asked, taking in the endless rows of such things lined up in the open field behind the enormous building called a mall.

"Almost everyone." Shannon shut her own door.

"How can you find your own amidst the crowd?"

"It's not always easy."

"There are no horses?"

"Sure there are." She started walking toward the mall and he fell into step with her. "But it's expensive to keep a horse."

"And it is not expensive to drive a car?"

"Depends on the car and the driver and the insurance."

"Insurance?"

"Against accidents."

He thought of the thing she had called a truck and the damage it could have inflicted upon his person had they collided. "I do not wish to hear any more, Mistress Shannon. I have seen many a serious carriage accident in my time. I can but imagine the result among cars."

He heard a sound behind them and turned to see a group of children of perhaps sixteen laughing and looking in his direction.

"See what I mean?" said Shannon, glancing sternly in their direction. "Those clothes have got to go."

Andrew stopped in his tracks and watched the children pass. "Surely such attire as theirs is not commonplace in this world."

"Biker pants, tank tops, Doc Martens," said Shannon. "Just your average everyday teenagers."

He was not familiar with the word
teenagers
but its meaning was clear. The only thing about their attire that made him feel comfortable was that the boys wore their hair in much the same fashion as Andrew himself.

"I will not wear those trousers," he said, walking again toward the mall.

"I promise I won't ask you to." They approached the wall of glass doors leading into the mall itself. "You're going to see a lot of strange things, Andrew. I'll do my best to explain them all to you but it would serve us both well if you let me do most of the talking."

"'Tis not natural for a man to let a woman lead the way."

"And it's not natural to sail through the centuries in a balloon. You're in my world now. Let me help you."

Her words were based on good common sense, but they went against the grain. She had seen him in a way no woman should see a man, needful and uncertain. He was accustomed to dominating situations, not looking to others for direction. He was a man and as a man it was his lot in life to lead.