Out of the Blue (A Regency Time Travel Romance) (3 page)

Once the last tourist had disappeared up the
spiral staircase, Cassandra lowered herself gingerly into the
chair, sighing as the action relieved some of the pressure on her
throbbing toes. She shivered; the air inside the large stone
chamber was cold even on this sunny day in what passed for an early
English spring.

As the footsteps of another small herd of
tourists echoed from below, Cassandra stood, looking for one of the
neatly printed Exit signs, sure that the guide would frown on her
plan to go off on her own. It was no good; the exit was also the
entrance, and in a moment a new group would be upon her. Turning
about, Cassandra saw a narrow hallway cordoned off by a velvet
rope, a sign above the door stating that entrance was not
permitted.

Cassandra hesitated. If she stepped around
the rope she could hide in the hallway until the approaching tour
joined her own group upstairs in the chapel, and then sneak out the
way she had come. The plan seemed feasible—for Sheila Cranston, her
friend all through grammar and high school. Sheila had possessed
just the correct mixture of daring, larceny, and panache to carry
off any sort of harebrained scheme.

But, Cassandra had learned to her sorrow, a
person had to be born with those dubious virtues. They could not be
learned. She always got caught. When she had skipped school to go
to the local fair, the Ferris wheel had broken down—with Cassandra
sitting in the highest gondola. When she had smoked her first
cigarette in an alley behind Feinstein’s Bakery, Father Burke had
walked by, out on an evening stroll with his dog, Judas—who had
shown his resemblance to his namesake by barking loudly until she
had been forced from her hiding place to listen to a ten-minute
sermon from the good priest, who then, not bound by the laws of the
confessional, had damn near broken the sound barrier racing back to
the rectory to telephone her mother.

Her luck hadn’t gotten any better as she grew
older. Hell, the night she had slipped Brad Renshaw into her dorm
room, the damned building caught fire!

She shook her head. She wasn’t ten anymore,
or sixteen, or even twenty. She was twenty-five years old, had been
living on her own in Manhattan for nearly four years, and had just
been made a full editor at Wilmont, for crying out loud. She could
do whatever she wanted! Cassandra made a face, knowing she was
getting carried away. Well, maybe she couldn’t do everything—like
Sheila, who was training to be an astronaut—but she should at least
be able to manage hiding in an out-of-bounds hallway without
setting off an international incident.

With a toss of her head, done in imitation of
Sheila, whose long, sleek, naturally blond hair did much more
justice to the motion than Cassandra’s cropped black curls, she
hopped over the velvet rope—and nearly tumbled headfirst down the
curving flight of stone steps hidden behind the first quick turn of
the short hallway.

“That was very good, Grace—a daring acrobatic
move accomplished with all your usual flair for the stupid,” she
grumbled as she looked down at her ruined pantyhose and scraped
knees, then righted herself by bracing her hands against the narrow
stone walls. Her voice echoed slightly in the depths below her and
she leaned forward, trying to see into the darkness.

She took a single step ahead, then moved back
two, her heart pounding. The staircase had a nearly overpowering
appeal that she could not explain, especially as it was nearly
pitch-black and she wasn’t a particular fan of the dark.
Remembering that curiosity—and horny “Brad the Bod” Renshaw—had
gotten her put on probation for a whole semester, she fought the
sudden, nearly overwhelming need to descend the staircase and see
what lay at its end.

Behind her, she could hear the tour guide
giving the new group of tourists the same word-for-word spiel as
her guide had done earlier, waxing poetic over the Elizabethan
chair that had, while Cassandra sat in it at least, proved to be
extremely uncomfortable. No wonder those Elizabethans had had such
good posture. It was impossible to slouch on such a hard chair
without sliding ignominiously to the floor.

She could hear the group moving on toward the
steps to the chapel. In just another minute she would be free to
make her escape. She slowly counted to ten, nervously tapping one
foot. “—nine, ten,” she ended, willing her feet to move. She looked
down at her toes. “Hey, fellas, I
said—ten.
”

It was no use. She was going somewhere all
right, but it wasn’t
up.
She had to know what lay at the
bottom of this staircase.

Plunging a hand into her canvas bag, she
pushed aside her two recently purchased guidebooks, her wallet,
three lipsticks, a small zipper bag, two candy bars, the stale,
opened pack of cigarettes she still carried in case she had a
nicotine fit, and several miscellaneous items she was too lazy to
sort through and discard, and finally located her lighter. She
flicked it on, held it high above her head, and, her free hand
braced against the rough stone, began the descent.

The narrow staircase turned in a tight circle
to her right, with the stone steps coming out at an angle from the
inside wall. Cassandra shivered in her vee-necked sweater and
miniskirt as each step took her farther into the belly of the White
Tower, away from the sunlight, and wished she hadn’t left her
jacket behind at the hotel. Her scraped knees stung with each step
she took, but she had to go on, just like the courageous,
dim-witted female in every bad Gothic novel she had ever read; the
heroine who, all alone, and while the reader screamed “No! You
idiot,
don’t go in there!” holds up her candle—or, in this
case, her cigarette lighter—and enters the prerequisite
forbidden room.

“When you get home, Cassie, you’d better make
an appointment to see Mother’s shrink,” she told herself, speaking
out loud in order to calm her racing heart, “because this is
definitely getting
weird.
”

The lighter grew unbearably hot between her
fingers and she let it go out, plunging herself into complete
darkness. Anyone with a brain, she told herself, anyone with a
single drop of common sense, would turn back now, locate sweet Miss
Smithers and a couple of Band-Aids, and suffer through the rest of
the tour.

It was impossible. She had to go on. The
stairway had, ridiculously, become a small mountain to climb, on
Cassandra’s quest to prove to herself that she could at last get
away with breaking the rules. At least that’s what she told
herself. She certainly wasn’t going to dwell on the growing feeling
that
she
was no longer the commander of this particular
expedition.

Bracing her hands against the walls, her
steps unsteady as she fumbled for footholds on the narrow, uneven
stones, Cassandra continued her descent until, to her great relief,
she detected a soft bluish glow somewhere below her, lighting her
way. Her relief was quickly tempered by the realization that
someone had to have turned on the light and that, once again, she
was going to be caught doing something she shouldn’t be doing.

“So, what else is new?” She gave another
defiant toss of her head and pushed on. No one was going to yell at
her, or clap her in irons in the dungeon next to the rest rooms.
After all, she was an American, and everyone knew Americans were
just a little crazy.

The blue light grew brighter, but it didn’t
hurt her eyes. It was a soft, nonthreatening blue, not in the least
harsh, and it seemed to rise around her from all sides rather than
shine up at her. She felt warmed and comforted by the light, yet
strangely excited.
How New Age,
Cassandra thought wildly.
Shirley MacLaine would love it.

Looking down, she realized that she could no
longer see her feet, for the light had somehow changed to a cool
blue mist.
I must be near the water,
she told herself,
searching for an explanation that wouldn’t send her screaming for
Miss Hammond.

Cassandra took three more steps before
realizing that she was no longer on the stone staircase but had
reached a small, oddly shaped room that had no windows. She looked
about for one of the handy-dandy signs that would tell her where
she was, but the mist had risen above her head and she couldn’t see
anything but blue.

Oh, God, I’ve really done it this time.
Shirley might get off on this stuff Cassie, but your knees are
rattling—so if you’re going to get hysterical, now’s the time.
She drew in a quick breath, not daring to move as the mist invaded
her nose, her mouth, her ears, smothering her.

And then she was floating, no longer able to
feel the hard stone floor beneath her feet. Clapping her hands over
her eyes, and fighting the impulse to call for her mommy, Cassandra
Louise Kelley, twenty-five-year-old woman of the world, threw back
her head and
screamed.

P
eregrine Walton
stood stock-still, his fists jammed on his hips. “Marcus, you’re
insane. Totally insane. You
do
know that, don’t you? I mean,
I just thought—seeing as I’m your best friend and all—I believe it
behooves me to point out that sad fact to you. Besides, it’s too
demmed cold to be ghost hunting. What’s it doing, snowing in March?
It shouldn’t snow in March.”

Marcus Pendelton, Marquess of Eastbourne,
never broke stride as he hastened toward the White Tower, his
greatcoat billowing around his tall body in the damp breeze that
blew off the Thames. “Of course I’m insane, Perry. We’ve both known
it for years. Though, of course, that guard over there may still be
sadly unenlightened. Perhaps you should repeat your declaration.
Only this time, bellow it. The fellow might be hard of hearing.
Now, are you coming with me or are you going to run back to the
coach, and huddle beneath a blanket like some thin-blooded old
woman, a hot brick at your toes?”

Perry sighed deeply, his sensibilities sorely
abused, and broke into a half run to catch up with his friend. His
short arms waving wildly, he persisted: “All right, Marcus, all
right. So you found this diary of your ancestor’s—old Ferdie. That
was months ago.”

“
Freddie,
one of Edward IV’s most
loyal Squires for the Body,” Marcus corrected, lightly bounding up
the wide shallow stairs. “And it was last Christmas at Eastbourne,
more than a year ago.”

“Freddie,” Perry amended, beginning to
breathe heavily, for he was a half foot shorter and three stone
heavier than his friend, and all this hustle and bustle was
beginning to wear on him. “Whatever his name was, his diary
certainly isn’t some heretofore undiscovered Gospel. My God,
Marcus, three fourths of the thing is devoted to a recitation of
his drinking and wenching—and the fact that be believed regular
bathing a sacrilege to be avoided at all costs. They must have been
a smelly lot back then. Just because he included some drivel he
supposedly heard from a drunken guard—I mean, think on it,
Marcus!”

The marquess nodded to the guards outside the
doors before passing into the White Tower, his long strides eating
up ground as his heels echoed hollowly through the cavernous
chambers. He was a frequent visitor, permission for his
explorations having been given by the Regent himself, so he was
unchallenged as he bounded up a stone stairway, his destination
firm in his mind. “I have thought on it, Perry. Green, the guard,
wasn’t drunk—he was dying, all but delirious with some terrible
brain fever, and a fervent convert into the bargain. It was a
deathbed confession of terrible guilt, the memory of which had
brought him low. A man in his condition loses the ability to
lie.”

Perry wasn’t convinced. “All right, so this
man, this Green—this bloody
saint
—was about to stick his
spoon in the wall. But what about your ancestor,
mm?
How
about Filthy Ferdie?”

“Filthy Freddie,” Marcus pointed out
automatically, his long strides again leaving Perry behind.

“Ferdie, Freddie—the man was a sot—and, out
of his own mouth, a smelly sot at that! Everyone knows Richard had
the Princes smothered. Their bones are lying in Westminster ever
since King Charlie had them dug up. I can’t believe this claptrap
about Henry Tudor and this man Green and his cohort—this Woods
fellow—”

“Not Woods, Perry. Forest.”

“Woods—Forest. And what’s it to the point
anyway, I say. Don’t interrupt. You can’t really have swallowed
this faradiddle about them killing two servant boys and stuffin’
’em in a trunk in order to save their own necks? Blue lights in the
White Tower? Disappearing Princes? Where did they disappear to, I
ask you? Can you answer me that? I’d sooner think the Earth
revolves around the sun.”

Marcus, his darkly handsome face splitting in
a grin, turned to his friend. The perspiring, red-faced Perry stood
just behind him, wiping his forehead with a large white
handkerchief, exhausted from the necessity of being forced to talk
and climb at the same time. “Much as it pains me to point this out,
Perry, the Earth does revolve around the sun.”

Perry
harrumphed,
then plopped heavily
into a large brocade Elizabethan chair that stood against a wall in
the upper chamber and began fanning himself with the handkerchief.
“Stap me, Marcus, of course it does,” he declared importantly. “I
knew that. I was just trying to make a point. There’s no need to
get huffy.”

The marquess wasn’t listening. Looking around
the room only to assure himself that it was empty—for his many
trips to the Tower had made him familiar with all its buildings—he
proceeded to the small arch marking a rude, narrow hallway leading
to a circular staircase.

“This has to be it, Perry. The strange
passageway. I decided it months ago. Its the only one I can think
of in the whole of the Tower that serves no real purpose, has no
easily defined use. There’s nothing below here save a single, oddly
shaped room.”