Out of the Blue (A Regency Time Travel Romance) (6 page)

Cassandra looked at Peregrine Walton, then at
Marcus. “Should I say?” she asked. “I mean, what if I shouldn’t be
telling you what’s going to happen? I might change the course of
history, or blow up the cosmos or something. I can remember what
happened in
Back to the Future
when Marty McFly messed
around with history. Everything worked out pretty well for him, but
I might not be so lucky. After all, it’s not as if I have a
scriptwriter here with me, do I? I’m kind of winging it—God! I
still can’t believe this is really happening!”

Perry threw up his hands, clapping them over
his ears. “Ask a simple question! There she goes again, Marcus,
spouting gibberish. She’s not going to be sick here in the coach,
is she? I don’t think I’d like that above half.”

Cassandra reluctantly sat back in her seat.
“No, Perry, I’m not going to be sick again. Why should I? I’m lost
in the past, with no money, no clothes, and no way of getting back
to where I belong.” She shivered violently. “Lost in the past—it
sounds like a book title. A
bad
book title. I still can’t
believe it. Even if I do somehow find my way back, I’m sure to miss
the Book Fair—which will cost me my job—and if I were so stupid as
to tell anybody the reason I missed it was because a blue fog
landed me in Regency England, I’d be locked up somewhere where all
I’d get to do all day is weave baskets and rat on my mother about
my supposedly dysfunctional childhood.”

She dropped her forehead into her hands. “Oh,
God, I really think I don’t feel very well.”

Marcus turned to look at his friend. “Happy
now, Perry? All in all, Miss Kelley has enough on her plate without
your questions. I suggest you do your best not to upset her
further.”

“
Me?”
Perry exploded, grabbing at his
chest with both hands. “
I
upset her? Is that right? And I
suppose I’m the one who whisked her out of the Tower and into this
coach without so much as a by-your-leave, jabbering nineteen to the
dozen about how you were taking her straight back to Grosvenor
Square to
examine
her? I’ve seen the things you keep in
those horrid bottles in your study, Marcus. I’m surprised the girl
ain’t fainting with fear.”

Cassandra lowered her hands, “No, I was
wrong. I’m not feeling sick. I think I’m actually beginning to feel
hungry. I’d kill for a hamburger and fries, but I don’t suppose you
have those yet, do you? Never mind, of course you don’t. Wait a
minute—I’m sure I have a couple of candy bars in my purse. Pass it
over to me, would you?”

Marcus shook his head. “Your satchel remains
with me for the moment, Miss Kelley. I will want to examine and
catalog everything inside it, in your presence, of course. In the
interests of science.”

Cassandra’s stomach grumbled in protest. “In
the interests of science, or in your interest? Now, look, Marcus,
old sport—I mean, my lord—don’t you think you’re carrying this
examining business a little far? It’s only a Hershey
bar—
chocolate candy,
for crying out loud—not a microfilm
showing our missile bases in Western Europe.”

Perry seemed to have taken in only as much of
Cassandra’s last statements as interested him, and quickly leaned
over to make a grab for the canvas bag. “Candy, you say? Chocolate?
You know what, Marcus, I don’t think it would do any great harm if
we each take a taste of it. I’ll even go first.”

Marcus pulled the purse out of Perry’s reach.
“Control yourself, Perry. Goodfellow will have our supper waiting
when we reach Grosvenor Square.”

Cassandra slumped into the corner, the fur
wrap that had so excited her when she had first seen it pushed
under her chin. “Nine to five it’s baked eels in parsley sauce or
some other weird Regency dish I’ve read about. I should have done
my time traveling in Versailles. At least the French know how to
cook,” she grumbled, earning herself a commiserating smile from
Perry, whose family’s French chef—the one his late mother had been
forced to let go years earlier when her husband ran off to the West
Indies with that hussy—had had a real way with sauces.

A sooty darkness began to settle over London
as the coach turned yet another corner and finally halted in front
of a tall white portico, flambeaux burning at either side of the
wide doorway of the Eastbourne mansion. After a liveried servant
put down the steps, Marcus alighted from the coach and reached up a
hand to assist Cassandra in her descent to the flagway. She moved
to step down and the greatcoat parted to the waist, exposing her
bare legs to the servant, whose eyes all but popped out of his head
as he breathed, “Now ’ere’s a treat!” and broke into a wide,
appreciative grin—doing wonders for her ego.

A moment later the trio stepped inside the
black-and-white-tiled foyer of the mansion. Marcus barked orders to
a gray-haired man who began busily snapping his fingers at several
young footmen already hastening to help the gentlemen with their
hats and gloves. Cassandra, busily inspecting the chandelier that
hung above a large round table in the center of the foyer, thought
that it looked like the ones that hung in her favorite department
store in Manhattan—and immediately opened her mouth and said so.
When one of the footmen approached her, Marcus dismissed the lot of
them, telling only the gray-haired butler, Goodfellow, to
remain.

“This is Miss Kelley,” he told the butler
before turning to stare intently at Perry as he rushed through the
lie he had concocted on their way home. “She is Mr. Walton’s
distant relation who has just arrived unexpectedly from
America—having escaped to one of our ships through the blockade—and
she has had a most terrible accident, costing her all of her
luggage as well as her chaperon, and leaving her without a single
change of clothes.”

Goodfellow bowed to his master. “How terrible
for her, m’lord,” he offered.

The marquess, Cassandra noticed out of the
corner of her eye, had the good grace to blush. “Yes, well, thank
you, Goodfellow. I assume my sister did not haul everything off
with her when she married that mincing ignoramus and left for
India? Good. In that case, I shall escort Miss Kelley to Lady
Georgina’s room and get her settled. I would like Rose to attend
her within the hour.”

Cassandra felt herself being guided toward a
long staircase that led up to the first floor. Turning back to look
at the butler, she added, “And please have Rose bring me something
to eat—cold sliced beef and some bread, so I can make a
sandwich—and also something cold to drink. Don’t forget the salt
and pepper if you have it, and some butter, since I don’t know if
you have mayonnaise.
Please
,” she reiterated sincerely as
Marcus’s hand pushed at the small of her back.

“Sir?” Goodfellow questioned, clearly not
about to take orders from a woman, and a very strange woman at
that.

“Do as she says, Goodfellow, please—and
quickly,” Marcus commanded tightly. “Impertinent little piece,
aren’t you?” he asked a moment later as they ascended the
staircase.

“When my stomach’s involved, yes,” Cassandra
answered, knowing she had probably shocked the butler, but she was
still stinging under Marcus’s refusal to hand over her Hershey bar.
She allowed herself to be propelled along the hallway and into a
room that appeared so achingly feminine that she fell in love with
it on sight. She walked around the room, touching a Dresden
figurine that sat on a side table, then peeked out one of the
windows that overlooked the Square before turning back to Marcus,
her dark eyes twinkling. “This belonged to Georgina—to your sister?
It’s lovely. We have our antiques in museums, and re-creations of
this sort of furniture in my time, but nothing beats the real McCoy
up close and personal, does it? I’ll say one thing, my lord, I seem
to have lucked out meeting you. I mean, just think of it—my first
encounter could have been with a chimney sweep. This mansion. All
those servants. You’re filthy rich, aren’t you?”

Marcus closed the door and locked it. “And
you’re unbelievably outspoken and vulgar, my dear, not to mention
being most unbecomingly obsessed with money,” he said pleasantly
enough, walking toward a large cabinet that sat in one corner. “I
can see that woman’s basest human nature has been allowed its head
in your time. Tell me, when was it that my sex so foolishly let go
their grip on the reins?”

Cassandra longed to hit him. “And what makes
you think you men were doing such a swell job? Two world wars,
Korea, Vietnam—” she began heatedly before realizing that she must
seem very forward to him. She wasn’t a complete idiot—she knew she
was a far cry from an ordinary Regency miss, from someone like his
sister, Lady Georgina, who had probably grown up spending her days
water painting and embroidering slippers and going for long walks
with her governess.

She bowed her head, counted to ten, and tried
again. “I’m sorry, my lord. I must have sounded like some
money-grubbing monster, but I didn’t mean it. I never did make a
good first impression. I know a lot about you—about your time, I
mean—but you don’t know anything about me, or about my time. Women
are considered the equals of men in the twentieth century—although
we are still dealing with that ‘glass ceiling’ business and equal
pay for equal work. As a matter of fact, England has even had a
woman prime minister—and a damn good one, even if she did seem to
have a schoolgirl crush on Ronnie Reagan.”

Marcus’s head snapped back as if he had been
slapped. “A female PM? That’s preposterous! A woman attempting the
enormous job done by our Spencer Perceval? We Englishmen would
never allow such ridiculousness. Miss Kelley, we can’t help each
other if you refuse to be serious. And here”—he tossed her a gown
he had found in the cabinet—“go behind the screen and put this on
before Rose comes knocking on the door. Servants talk, and I don’t
want word of your bizarre appearance to become the topic of
conversation at every dinner table in town.”

Cassandra deftly caught the sprigged muslin
gown and held it up in front of her. It was typical of the time,
she knew, a high-waisted, ankle-long concoction that would have
looked more at home in a museum, or at a costume party. “Would you
look at all those buttons? Zippers haven’t been invented yet, have
they? How am I supposed to do them up by myself?”

“Zippers? What are zippers?”

Cassandra sighed, wishing she had kept her
thoughts to herself. She was beginning to feel like a walking
encyclopedia, and she didn’t much care for the feeling—especially
on an empty stomach. Besides, her sore feet had traveled with her
through time and she’d soon be willing to kill in order to be rid
of her shoes. She walked over to Marcus, her hands going to the
side zipper on her miniskirt. “Here. Watch this—the amazing
Cassandra,” she said, keeping the single button closed as she
lowered and raised the zipper, laughing as Marcus bent down to
examine the thin, plastic-toothed invention. “Opened—closed.
Closed—opened! Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?” she asked, stepping
back as she closed the zipper one last time.

Marcus reached out to grab her arm. “That
will be quite enough, Miss Kelley.” He had seen the zipper move,
opening and closing magically as she drew it up and down. He had
also been given a brief glimpse of two small patches of soft white
skin and a thin wisp of some silky material stretching crosswise
seamlessly halfway between them. “I’m no prude, but I must suggest
you step behind the screen before I am convinced the world you have
come from consists solely of degenerates.”

Too late, Cassandra realized what she had
done: lowering the zipper had momentarily exposed her nearly bare
hip and skimpy underpants.

Ready to apologize again, she stopped,
knowing it would be a mistake. If Marcus was upset, that was his
problem, not hers. Her French-cut swimsuit covered no more than her
panties, and no one had ever found anything wrong with her
swimsuit. If he insisted upon talking about degenerates, maybe he
should look to his own time, an era that branded a woman an outcast
if she dared to steal a single kiss in the gardens—while all the
men paraded their mistresses at the opera.

She looked at Marcus levelly, recognizing for
the first time that the dark-haired, green-eyed marquess was an
extremely good-looking man. A real Regency hero. “Don’t talk to me
about degenerates, my lord. You’re not even supposed to be in
here,” she told him coldly. “This
is
my bedroom—I mean, my
bedchamber—now isn’t it?”

“I want your clothing.” Marcus uttered the
statement from between clenched teeth, convincing Cassandra that
she had at last succeeded in embarrassing him. “If you wish me to
believe you are a lady, you’ll go behind that screen and get
undressed.”

Cassandra cocked her head to one side,
considering this latest order. He had been giving her orders ever
since they met, as a matter of fact, and she was beginning to
resent it. If, as she believed the Regency phrasing went, she hoped
to “begin as she planned to go on,” Cassandra knew she had reached
an important moment in her relationship with Marcus Pendelton. For
however long she might be trapped in this ridiculous time warp, be
it a few hours or forever, their relationship would be based on
this first important confrontation.

“All right, Marcus,” she said sweetly,
lifting her hands to her waist. “You want my clothing?” She tugged
the sweater off over her head and threw it at him. “Here you go,
sport—knock yourself out!”

~ ~ ~

Marcus caught the sweater automatically, then
looked at Cassandra. She stood in front of him, the high swell of
her breasts barely covered by a thin wisp of pink silk that left
her stomach bare above the ridiculous scrap of wool that didn’t
reach as far as her knees. His mind took in the exquisite form of
her body—her firm, high breasts rising above the strange, shortened
chemise, her slim waist—and he smiled his appreciation.