Odette Speex: Time Traitors Book 1 (23 page)

Chapter 26

“She can’t perform!”
David Garrick practically screeched, his beautiful baritone distorted with indignation. He stood amidst construction of a forest backdrop for the third and final act of
Espiruti
, their new ballet. All work had stopped as the artisans and dancers on stage looked nervously at their outraged leader.

“Yes, I’m sorry,” Cara answered calmly. “She is terribly ill. The fever and muscle aches have left her too weak. It is very unlikely that she will be able to debut in just a few days time.”

She watched as he struggled to control another outburst. He eventually took her by the arm and steered her down the hallway to his office. He closed the door behind them and said through gritted teeth, “How am I to stage this ballet without my star attraction?
And
for that matter,” he added furiously, “who is to take her place? Much of the choreography is her own improvisation.”

“Jean knows the steps, and Mariah is an excellent understudy,” she replied firmly. Then added placatingly, “David, you know Odette would drag herself here sweating with fever if she could. But that would jeopardize the entire company.”

He threw his hands in the air with exasperation and turned to the window. “We can’t delay the premiere,” he said with an exaggerated sigh.

“She wouldn’t want you to,” Cara assured him. “The doctor says another few days and then some to gain back her strength.”

“A week? Two?” he asked.

“A week, perhaps ten days.” She nodded.

“She
will
recover?” His face was creased with concern.

“Oh yes!” Cara exclaimed. “Apparently a summer fever or something like. Doctor Tannen has seen many cases these past weeks, particularly among the young.”

He nodded and sighed again. “I guess there’s some advantage to growing older.”

Just then the office door burst open to admit a dramatically gesturing Eva Garrick. “David! The news! I just heard! How can this be?”

Cara beat a hasty retreat and emerged from the theater into the late morning sunshine. Ignatius had wanted to wait and drive her back to Exeter Street, but Cara dismissed him with a warm smile, saying, “Thank you, Mister Harris, but it’s a beautiful morning and I would like to walk.”

In fact, she was exhausted. It was evident from the strained compression of her lips and the tiny crow’s feet that she would normally have never allowed to crease the outlines of her fine green eyes. Nursing Odette had left her feeling hollow and burnt-out. Days and nights she had sat on the window seat barely breathing, listening to Odette’s feverish mutterings. Now she needed to move and stretch her muscles. Walking at a leisurely pace, she turned down Bridges Street.

Cara had let no one else tend Odette. As much as she appreciated Wu’s nursing abilities and Fancy’s devotion, Cara’s fear was too great to leave Odette—even for a moment.

While much remained the same between eighteenth-century London and Cara’s own time, medical science, at least, had progressed somewhat in the intervening two hundred plus years. Sterile technique and anesthesia were only a couple of the important advances that had saved so many lives. But at this point in history they had yet to be discovered, or at least, widely used. Cara knew there was very little anyone could do for Odette but relieve her symptoms and wait.

After two days, Fancy finally convinced her to call Doctor Tannen. Odette’s fever and terrible headache had abated, but she was still listless and disoriented. Doctor Tannen’s skill had saved Fancy’s life, but Cara was suspicious of the dangerous and superstitious beliefs that permeated the medical profession.

So she was relieved and grateful when Doctor Tannen proved equally competent with Odette’s illness as he had with Fancy’s injury. He didn’t spout nonsense concerning bad humors or suggest bloodletting but merely nodded and said, “Well, you really don’t need me now. The worst is over. This type of fever is short lived but can be very debilitating. She will need several days of rest and good food.”

Cara practically cried with relief and asked, “She
will
recover?”

Doctor Tannen, seeing the stress and worry on her face, patted her hand comfortingly. “Of course, of course. These illnesses are not so unusual in the young. She is strong and should recover fully.”

Cara realized now that she had panicked. Just the thought of losing Odette was crushing. But the loss would have been compounded by the isolation of living outside her own time. Not to mention the magnitude of the mission before them.

She shook her head and firmly squared her shoulders. Unequal to the task she may be, but she wasn’t going to wilt like a cut rose. There were many years between her and the teenager who had packed her belongings and fled an impoverished island to seek her fortune. But Cara still remembered the girl she once was. She smiled to herself at the risks she had taken, the bold decisions that had led her to a life of comfort and caution. Well, she had landed on her feet then. She could do it again.

“Miss Mills,” the clipped, precise speech of Hershel Gordon interrupted her reverie. “May I join you?”

She turned to see him beside her, his sharp features as impassive as ever. He was only a couple of inches taller than she and slightly built.

“It’s a weasely man he is, to be sure,” Cara had fumed after they were comfortably ensconced in a large suite of rooms at Lady Caroline’s mansion. The attack had left them all shaken, but for Cara it was Hershel Gordon’s questions and obvious suspicions that were unforgivable.

“I like him,” Odette had declared perversely. She smiled sidelong at Cara and added, “And I think you’re just a little peeved he hasn’t succumbed to your charms and fallen at your feet.”

“Indeed,” Cara said disdainfully, “The man isn’t worth—”

Odette pokered-up her face and held up a hand in an imperious gesture for silence. “Please, Miss Mills, your beauty does not distract me—”

A pillow landing squarely in her face had effectively changed the subject.

Confronted now with the man, Cara admitted to herself that his high-handed dismissal of her during their last meeting had pricked her vanity. She was unused to such indifferent treatment by a man. Maybe he’s some kind of idiot savant she thought and then smiled at her inflated self-image.

“Have I said something to amuse you,” he asked, seeing her smile.

She raised her eyebrows. “How could you, Mister Gordon? You have hardly said anything to me at all.”

He pressed his lips together and nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid the confines of my profession require me to maintain an objective distance.” He paused and then added, “Wherever my partialities may lie.”

They had been walking down the street together, but this made Cara stop abruptly and face him. “Am I to interpret your meaning as a partiality to
me
?” she asked, incredulous.

“Yes.” He sighed. “I was sure you had noticed.”

She was flabbergasted. “Why… why… no, Mister Gordon. I had no idea.”

He nodded resignedly. “I have tried to hide it.”

“And done a masterful job, I assure you,” she replied with feeling.

They resumed their walk. His demeanor changed very little, but the difference was noticeable to Cara. The impassivity of his features relaxed ever so slightly to reveal weathered creases around his eyes and a rather winsome smile. His typically ramrod-straight back and shoulders loosened to move more naturally with his purposeful stride. Cara imagined him like this around family and friends, people he loved and trusted. But her? She could hardly credit it.

“My father was a vicar,” he explained, breaking the silence. “He always bemoaned my ability to lie convincingly.”

“And what lies have you told me?” she asked.

“You?” He looked stunned. “Why none. I grew out of lying but learned to…” He was momentarily thoughtful. “…to dissemble. In my line of work, it is important not to let on what you may know or suspect.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because this…” He waved his hand around to indicate everything. “…is all wrong. I told your Miss Swanpoole as much from the beginning. People who should be interested in what has happened to you, are not. People I know and respect. Also,” he added firmly, “you are not telling me the truth.”

She started to speak, but he cut her off. “Please, I am not here to force your confidence or whatever story you feel obliged to tell me. But to warn you. There is a storm gathering. And you and your friends are at its very center.”

*

“Of course, he has no idea why we would be at the center of a vast conspiracy. And I told him nothing. But Hershel believes that all this may involve even the King.” Sitting on the edge of the bed, Cara spoke to the room at large. Odette was propped up on pillows and while she looked drawn and tried, a smile played about her mouth.

“Does Hershel think so indeed?” she replied teasingly.

“Yes, indeed he does,” Cara answered, choosing to ignore her tone. “Either the King or someone very close to him.”

Odette nodded seriously, but it was Wu who responded. He sat on the window seat with Fancy, both of them elegantly dressed for an evening out.

“We know someone other than Drake is the mastermind, someone powerful, someone desirous of maintaining aristocratic rule. Therefore, Mister Gordon’s reasoning is not without merit,” he said.

“Why the King?” Odette asked. “He
is
the King, after all. The American Uprising hasn’t even begun. Why would he feel threatened enough to try and preserve the aristocracy for centuries to come? He must believe the monarchy secure. Why even listen to what must sound like madness?”

During her convalescence, Odette had thought long and hard about who was truly behind the plot. She had come to agree with Fancy. It had to be someone from the future, or rather the prime timeline. But why?

Drake’s motivations she understood. The impoverished descendant of a once powerful family, his sense of entitlement made him the perfect tool for a more ruthless intellect. But the man in the shadows? Was he also the product of a noble family fallen on hard times? This didn’t ring true. It was too simple for someone clearly smart enough to recoup lost wealth and status without changing the course of history.

To Odette this was all beginning to feel oddly personal. Someone had a grudge, and it chilled her to the bone to imagine the sick mind that would punish the whole world for it.

Hardly able to form a coherent theory of her own, she didn’t voice her particular concerns to the others. Instead she smiled and said, “I wish I had a camera. You all look so fine.”

Fancy stood and shook out the skirts of her deep blue dress. She wore a modest powdered wig to cover her short hair. The pearl pendant necklace Odette had given her that first day on the street was clasped about her neck. Wu had retrieved it from the old pawnbroker who had given her less than half its worth. He waved aside her thanks and demands to pay him back. After several days, she gave up trying and wore it as a token of good luck, even under her boy’s clothes.

“What’s a camera?” she asked, looking up from a critical inspection of her high-heeled slippers.

“It is a mechanical device that takes pictures,” Odette explained, “A kind of instant painting. Except it shows exactly what we see. If you took a picture of Wu with a camera, it would show exactly what you see before you.”

Fancy shook her head in disbelief. But her quick mind caught on to at least one of a camera’s many uses. “Wouldn’t that be just the thing for spyin’!”

Odette smiled again and sat up straighter on the bed. The premiere of
Espiruti
was tonight, and she had insisted they all go without her.

“It’s important you’re there to support the company,” she maintained earlier when Cara questioned the wisdom of leaving her alone. “Caroline’s guards are still here. So I won’t be unprotected.”

She now shooed them from the bedroom with a cheerful wave of her hand. “Memorize every step so you can give me a full account.”

The women left in a flurry of perfumed kisses and rustling silk. Last to depart, Wu stopped at the door. He wore a black waistcoat and knee-breeches. His hair was now fully grown in, albeit still unfashionably short. He had eschewed the use of a wig, and Odette thought it a wise choice. As it was, the simple, austere evening wear suited him and acted as a counterbalance to his exotic features.

He looked at her in his calm way. “Be careful,” he said before following Cara and Fancy out the door.

Odette frowned at the empty doorway, momentarily irritated at his inexplicable perception. She sighed, swung her legs over the bedside, and walked to the window. Cara, Fancy, and Wu emerged from the cottage into the garden. Odette smiled watching Fancy practically dance around the other two in excitement. She looked lovely in her gown and elegantly coiffed wig. Odette was glad that, instead of the pit, Fancy would be enjoying the ballet from a center box.

One of the many injustices of this crime against history was to keep women such as Fancy in their places as drudges and whores. This thought steeled Odette’s resolve as she walked to the wardrobe and removed her boy’s clothes from the shelf.

Fifteen minutes later, she easily slipped past the guards by climbing through her bedroom window onto the roof. From there she jumped to the back garden wall and dropped into the neighboring yard of a local tavern. She stood for several minutes with her back against the stone wall and tried to catch her breath. The illness had sapped a good deal of her strength, and she felt unaccustomedly weak. Still, this was the most physically demanding part of her plan. The wall being too tall to scale without assistance, she had already resigned herself to returning through the front door. The fact that her little adventure might be discovered was a price she was willing to pay.

Easier to ask forgiveness than permission and all that, she thought wryly.

Odette pushed herself away from the wall, straightened her waistcoat, and pulled her hat further down over her face. She heard the revelry from inside the tavern and skirted a prostitute conducting business as she traversed the alleyway out onto Tavistock Street.