Odette Speex: Time Traitors Book 1 (22 page)

How Cara had uncovered his secret he could not fathom. He was sure that no one had ever guessed his predilection. If so, Sir Brandon would not have recruited him. He was also sure that Cara would never reveal him, no matter what. She had played her part well, but she was no blackmailer. The disgust he had seen on her face was all for herself. She intrigued him. What kind of person saw nothing amiss in what he was?

He shook his head disbelievingly as he entered the hallowed portal of White’s. He would keep his own council for now. But he owed his allegiance to King and Country. And not for all the compassion in her eyes would he spare Cara if she were their enemy.

Chapter 25

The two men
were obviously father and son. The same thin-lipped mouth and hooded eyes gave them away. They wandered seemingly aimless around the massive ancient stones. Their knee-length capes flapped in the cool summer breeze giving the impression of two very large crows. The older man stopped at certain spots in the large circle to shield his eyes and look up into the sky.

“Do you think it is some kind of religious monument as the innkeeper suggested?” asked the younger man.

“It’s hard to be certain, Billy,” his father replied. “The people who built this left no written records. Though I feel confident that there is some celestial significance to all this.” He gestured wide to include the entire stone circle. “However, this does not negate a religious intent. Ancient man was known to imbue the physical world with supernatural meaning.”

Clouds scuttled past the sun casting giant shadows across the grassy interior. Other than their horses tethered a short distance away, they were alone on the vast plain. William felt the chill and shivered drawing his cloak around him. He could easily imagine bearded and long-haired men in rough-spun robes presiding over a ritual. Perhaps even a human sacrifice. He shivered again, this time with unease.

“It is so isolated,” he observed. “There would have to be a special reason for people to come here.”

“An excellent point, my boy,” his father approved. “I do not believe they have discovered any ancient villages or towns close by.” He sat down on a large stone and resting an arm across his stomach brought his other hand up to lie against his cheek. “The location is clearly meaningful.”

William smiled fondly. He was well used to that thoughtful pose. His father was a man of uncommon brilliance. As a child, William believed that almost every important event hung in the balance, waiting for his father to take action. From the political and civic to the scientific and philosophical, Benjamin Franklin had made vital contributions to them all. Even as a man in his late middle years, his father was still a force with which to be reckoned. Thus, his selection as Pennsylvania’s representative to England. No one was better suited to argue the colonists’ case and not make more adversaries in the process.

Benjamin Franklin rose to his feet and settled his hat more firmly on his head. “An odd place this,” he mused. “Even if we unlock the puzzle of these stones, the meaning, its significance to the people who built it may never be clear to us.” He smiled down at his feet and looked up again at his son. “Will our accomplishments stand hundreds of years from now? Perhaps a mystery to those who come after us?”

William laughed at his father’s uncharacteristic flight of fancy. “Considering the sheer magnitude of your writings, I can’t imagine you being a mystery to anyone.”

His father laughed with him and ruffled his hair like he was a small boy but added seriously, “Time, Billy. I think this place is about time. About beginnings and endings. About understanding who we are and reaching out to find our origins.”

“So shall we set up camp here, father?” William teased. “You can study the true nature of time and discover our beginnings.”

His father clapped him on the back and steered them toward the horses. “Someday perhaps, my boy. But for now, Duty calls. And she is a demanding mistress.”

“Don’t you mean
he
is a hard taskmaster?”

Benjamin Franklin shook his head decisively. “No, Billy. No man loves his master.”

*

“He’s here?” Odette had been sitting half asleep in the sun but was now fully awake.

“Aye,” Wu said and then swiftly corrected himself when Fancy giggled. “I mean, yes, he is.”

They were in the garden of their lodgings on Exeter Street having returned from a brief sojourn at Lady Caroline’s elegant mansion on Grosvenor Square. The two days spent under her roof were an interesting mixture of luxurious idleness and frenetic activity. Surrounded by a small cadre of devoted servants, the four battered refugees barely lifted a finger to meet their physical needs. But instead spent hours in discussion and planning with Lady Caroline and Aamod.

It surprised everyone to learn that Lady Caroline was the Hindu mystic Master Yuan had visited before his disappearance.

“You? But, Aamod…?” interjected a startled Cara, voicing the group’s assumption that he must be the mystic in question.

Caroline smiled enigmatically. “Aamod is my fellow student, helpmate, and teacher.” The warm look she cast his way convinced them that she was leaving out another important role he played in her life. They all looked uncomfortably around the room until she spoke again.

“Master Yuan was fully aware of the time disruptions.” She looked at Wu. “He was intending to bring you here, to us. He believed your sensitivity as a precept would lead to the source of the rift and its resolution.”

“I don’t understand how any of this works,” Fancy complained.

“Neither do I, my dear.” Cara patted her hand sympathetically.

“Master Yuan sought me out,” Caroline continued. “He met my guru in India many years ago when the disturbances first occurred.”

“This has happened before?” Odette asked in disbelief.

“Yes. Over twenty years ago,” she replied. “It was small at first, but the distortions have built over the years.”

“How?” they all breathed at once.

“My dears, I can only speculate,” she explained. “But I believe that once the timeline is disturbed, even a small event can create disruptions up and down the spectrum. It then becomes hard to know what event precedes another. Master Yuan believed it would take someone outside of time, so to speak, to set it straight. Only this person would have the ability to re-set time.”

They all looked thoroughly confused.

She smiled wryly and shook her head. “It is hard to explain. I believe this person cannot exist in the prime timeline. Only then can they move through time without undue disruptions.”

“How can that be?” Odette exclaimed. “How does a person completely unknown to time just come into being?”

“I don’t think we can even begin to answer that,” Aamod stated in his low, calm voice. “It is most likely a chance occurrence, a mathematical anomaly.”

“However it happened, this is what brought Master Yuan to London. He believed this to be our best chance to restore the timeline,” Caroline concluded.

Sitting now in the early morning sun, Odette could hardly credit the wild flights of speculation during their marathon discussions in Lady Caroline’s exotic parlor. Even though it was she and Cara who had traveled back in time, Odette was amazed at how fully the others entered into the belief that history had actually been altered.

“When did he get here?” she asked them.

“Only a few days ago,” Fancy answered excitedly. “Wu and me heard about it at the coffeehouse.”

Odette couldn’t help returning the girl’s broad smile. Fancy was a revelation. She looked like a typical London street urchin. Her coarse woven trousers and sack-like jacket effectively hid her feminine curves. She had successfully adopted the free-swinging gait of someone who had never known the constraints of long skirts. Her initial confusion with the contradictions of time travel had given way to an active curiosity and an interesting observation.

“This person,” Fancy pronounced during one of their exhaustive debates, “the mastermind-like, wouldn’t he have to be from the future then?”

Odette had never given much thought to where in time this unseen enemy had originated. “We know Drake is from the prime timeline, because he gave Odell the money to develop the Temporatus,” she had responded.

“Well, this Drake, he ain’t the one callin’ the shots, right?”

“We don’t think so,” Wu answered her cautiously. “There must be another, someone higher up. But he would have to be from this time, Fancy. Or else he wouldn’t have access to the nobility.”

She shook her head matter-of-factly. The only time Odette had ever seen her disagree with Wu. “No, Wu. He has to be from the future or else he wouldn’t know about the time machine. Maybe he’s even someone Mister Odell knows.”

Wu looked skeptical. “He could be someone Drake recruited once he got here.”

She shook her head again. “No, that don’t feel right cuz I was shot before Drake arrived. Before he even got here, Odette was a threat to someone.” She looked decisively at Odette. “It seems to me the number of people who could mess with the timeline, or even think about it, is pretty small. This mastermind person is someone who knows your brother.”

Wu looked at her with respect. “True. Drake kept Odell imprisoned so he wouldn’t have seen anyone else.”

“I don’t care how smart you are,” Cara had disagreed. “People will think you’re crazy if you talk about time travel and changing history. Drake’s partner or puppet master or whatever he is has to be from this time. And he must be very powerful. There is no other way the aristocracy would listen to Drake.”

And so they went back and forth, unable to arrive at a decisive conclusion. Yet Odette felt the truth of Fancy’s theory. This person must have known Odell was working with time travel. That could only mean a select group of people. But Odell himself had believed Drake to be the ringleader.

Odette rubbed her eyes and stood up. Impulsively she reached over and embraced the girl saying, “I am so grateful you haven’t run screaming from this loony bin out into the street.”

Fancy stepped back, her cheeks warmly flushed. “I’d rather live in crazyland with you than out there where I was.”

Odette hugged her again then released her and headed back into the house. She nodded a greeting to one of the guards Lady Caroline had insisted on hiring for their protection. She knew it was necessary, but it felt like an intrusion. This small, shabby cottage with its hidden gem of a garden was her refuge. More importantly, the people in it were her family.

Wu and Fancy, each mature beyond their years, were nonetheless children. Their evenings together in the tiny sitting room were filled with laughter as they regaled Odette and Cara with stories of their often aimless rambles. Each of them tried to outdo the other in witticisms and absurd observations. They were fortunate in that the follies of the
ton
provided fertile ground for absurdities. But on many other occasions she knew the risks they took were unacceptable. She felt weighed down with the need to keep them safe, knowing all along that it wasn’t in her power.

Odette poked her head into the dining room to find Cara hard at work on yet another costume. The broken hutch had been removed and a smaller cabinet put in its place. The little room was once again organized and tidy. The wood shards and broken crockery swept away.

“Benjamin Franklin is in London,” she announced.

Cara looked up and mumbled through the pins in her mouth, “Yes. The children told me.”

“Let’s hope he likes the ballet,” Odette replied listlessly.

Cara straightened up from the table and removed the pins from her mouth. “Everybody who’s anybody will be there. If this Mister Franklin is the man they say he is, he will at least be curious.”

Odette nodded and walked slowly back toward the staircase. Her legs and arms felt heavy. She almost couldn’t care less whether he was there or not. This harebrained scheme was putting everyone she loved in jeopardy.

Even Cara. Cara, her best friend, more of a mother than her own had ever been. Her involvement was an accident, an unfortunate happenstance and yet she was steadfast in her resolve to see this through. The friendly competition with Wu was just a cover for her anxiety. Odette had seen it before to a lesser degree when Cara dealt with her noble clients. Always fearful that her Irish roots would be discovered, she veiled her insecurity in bravado and haughty self-assurance. Odette had always believed that Cara’s meticulous grooming was a form of armor as much as it was a disguise to fool her clients. The beautiful face, the beautiful gowns, inspired admiration and kept people from looking too closely—from getting too close. From her vantage point, Cara watched and listened. She had seen Ethan Graham for what he was and had reeled him in, nabbing for them an important ally. Cara was her rock but a fragile one. She could be hurt. Just thinking about it made Odette’s throat constrict.

Then there was Gabriel. Disheveled and worried, he had arrived at Lady Caroline’s house on the evening of their first night under her roof. Odette’s landlady, Mrs. Cheever, had told him of the attack.

With his friend Cyril in tow, they had rushed to Grosvenor Square. When they entered the parlor, the tension in his face shook Odette to her core. But no more than his crushing embrace and gruffly mumbled words of relief. A lighthearted admonition from Lady Caroline and laughter from the assembled group recalled him to his senses. Odette’s heart skipped a beat remembering his flushed cheeks and sheepish grin.

All discussion of time rifts and villainous masterminds was suspended while he and Cyril were present. But their news was grim enough. Drake was recruiting and finding the upper reaches of London society fruitful hunting ground.

They had laughed as Gabriel, with amusing asides from Cyril, recounted his covert infiltration of White’s. For Odette, it was a moment of blinding clarity. He had done it for
her
. He had put himself in harm’s way for her.

She turned up the staircase. Her head hurt and tears built behind her eyes. She took the steps laboriously. Gabriel’s overheard conversation between the two footmen was confirmation that so much more was at stake than just one man. No matter how extraordinary.

The American Upraising, the Enlightenment. Benjamin Franklin was only one part of their plan. And she didn’t even know how or when he was killed. She only knew he had died in London in 1757—a footnote to history.

She reached the landing and entered her bedroom. Odette lay down and pulled the covers over her, burrowing into them. She felt weak and helpless. Somehow she would have to find her courage but not just yet. Now, she just wanted to sleep.