Time to Control (11 page)

Eddie knelt in front of me, taking
my hands and smiling broadly, the crinkles around his eyes showing.

"Why do you have that goofy
grin on your face?
 
I just told you
why I want you to go away."

"That's called love,
Schroeder."

"What?
 
No."

"Yes."
 
He squeezed my hands.
 
"You don't need analyzing," he
sang softly in a rich tenor that surprised me.
 
"It is not so surprising / That you
feel very strange but nice / Your heart goes pitter patter
 
/ I know just what's the matter /
because I've been there once or twice /
 
....you're not sick you're just in love."

"Irving Berlin
non-withstanding, how do you know?
 
You sing beautifully, by the way."
 
Beautifully was an understatement -- he
was turning me on again.
 
Damn
hormones.

"Schroeder, I've been in love
with you since the moment I realized Schroeder Kelly was most emphatically
female."
 
His eyes watched my
barely covered chest heave with my almost sobs.
 
"You're strong, intelligent,
confident, snarky, beautiful, and I love you."

I was crying in earnest now.
 
"Then why haven't you said it until
now?"

"Because you weren't
ready."
 
I gave him an
inquisitive look, which I was impressed he could read through the tears.
 
"I call you sweetheart, baby.
 
You call me Eddie.
 
You weren't ready."

"Oh."
 
I blushed, not having realized I didn't
call him by any nicknames.
 
"I'm sorry, baby.
 
Sweetheart.
 
Honey.
 
Babe.
 
Hon."

"Shut up," he told me
lovingly, and kissed me.
 
I wrapped
my arms and legs around him, and he carried me to the bed to demonstrate his
love.

***

At the free breakfast bar in the
hotel the next morning, Eddie brought up the topic I was avoiding –
Henry.

“We have to find him,” Eddie said,
once confirming no one was listening to us.

“It's impossible,” I insisted.
 
“Seriously, how do you propose to go
about finding one man in London, when we don't even know when to find him?”

“We have plenty of clues,” he said
with a mouthful of waffles.
 
He
swallowed, then continued.
 
“Charles
said he died building the Globe, and we've been there.
 
There's a ton of workers around.
 
We ask if he's there, and if he is, we
'jump ahead' until we get to a time that he's dead.”

I sighed.
 
“We have one opportunity, per day, and
who knows how many days this will take.
 
It may be the right thing to do, but...it just feels that we're wasting
our gift.”

“A gift that wouldn't exist without
Charles.
 
His intention was to save
Henry, and I think we owe it to him.”
 
Eddie had his stern, gruff face on, and I didn't have the heart to fight
more.
 
I didn't have a chance of
convincing him otherwise, and didn't have a clue of what arguments to even use
that wouldn't sound selfish.
 
I
nodded, and we finished up our meal and went back upstairs to change into a new
set of costumes and 'travel' privately.

***

The now-familiar stench of
Elizabethan London filled my nose -- we definitely arrived at the Globe
Theater.
 
One of these days I wanted
to try the other side of the river, where people of a higher class lived.
 
Maybe over there I wouldn’t need to
worry about scraping filth off of my shoes before we returned.

I looked expectantly over at
Eddie.
 
“Where to, my Lord?”

He rolled his eyes at me.
 
“Smart ass.
 
Charles wasn’t specific about what Henry
was working as, so I figure just ask around until we find someone who knows
him.”

I let Eddie do the asking, since I
didn’t expect to get a great reaction as a female in this time period.
 
The first few men didn’t have any awareness
of Henry, and just pointed us around the theater.
 
We almost walked around the perimeter
before finding two laborers -- roofers, maybe, with the straw bundles under
their arms -- that knew Henry.

“Aye, he the fella that died a few
months back,” one told the other.

The man with no front teeth spit on
the piles of refuse at our feet.
 
“Sure enough.
 
Worked with
Jamie on the stage.
 
Hard worker,
but not verra good at it.
 
Got ran
over by a carriage during the Queen’s visit.”

“Nay, right after.
 
I remember him carrying on about one of
the Queen’s aides.”

We got pointed towards Jamie, and
thanked the men for their assistance.
 
I could tell they were looking for a few coins for their information,
and realized we had no local currency.

Eddie gave them a nod and led me
away, and I told him about my thought.
 
“How do we get money here?
 
It’s not like your wallet came back as a coin purse.”

He thought for a minute.
 
“I guess buy some from an antique
website in our time.
 
I don’t know;
we’ll want to think about that.”

We had a lot to think about.
 
I hadn’t even broached the whole concept
of whether or not we could save Henry’s life.
 
What sort of ripples would that make
throughout history?

Thankfully, we needed no bribery to
get Jamie to give us Henry’s old address.
 
I would get my wish to cross the river -- Henry’s rented apartment was a
fair hike away.

Wandering London in modern times
without a map isn’t easy.
 
Doing it
in Elizabethan London is even worse.
 
It’s hard to not be distracted -- we were seeing sights that no one in
our time period would imagine.
 
Depending on the road we were on, the cobblestones might be
viewable.
 
I did keep lifting my
skirts out of the muck, even though most other women out and about strode
straight through without a concern.
 
Dogs of indeterminate breeds -- I didn’t even know what breeds existed
then -- fought children for scraps in the street.

The buildings made the ones at the
Renaissance Festival look high class.
 
Some were barely past shanty, and it was obvious building codes didn’t
exist yet.
 
Housing was built
literally on top of stores, more like an add-on in later years than intentional
at time of initial construction.
 
In
addition, with no zoning laws like our modern times, a house may have a tavern
on one side, and a merchant on the other.
 
The streets were crowded; not just from the towering shops on each side,
but shoulder-to-shoulder people.
 
Or
rather, hip to hip.

The ladies’ fashion was padding
around the hips, not all the way around like hoop skirts, but just left to
right.
 
The fancier the dress the
woman wore, the wider it got -- one lady that almost ran me over had easily a
foot on either side.
 
I think one
woman even had a wheeled contraption keeping the skirt up.
 
With all the extra space needed by each
female, walking down a nice street was like walking through a moving maze.
 
I’d been to concerts that were less
crowded.

We finally reached Henry’s
flat.
 
He had the second floor above
a smith’s wares shop.
 
It made sense
to me -- he probably used his father’s reputation, or his own skills from
growing up helping his dad -- to get an in with the shop’s owner to rent the
apartment.
 
Having set the location
in our mind for future travel, we ducked down an empty alley and I pulled the
ring off of my finger.
 
I may have
given a longing look towards the pewter bowls in the shop, wanting to be sure
to bring currency on our next trip.

An email from Alan's personal
account was waiting in my inbox when I got to the office, with no subject
line.
 
He never used a subject line
– drove me crazy.
 
I
considered deleting it without looking, but clicked on it anyway.
 
It was just one line -- “you're going to
pay, bitch.”
 
I shuddered.
 
What a pathetic man.
 
My mouse hovered over the delete button,
but ended up moving it to a documentation folder in my mailbox, just in
case.
 

Matt, a sales rep friend of mine,
came into my office during break and shut the door behind himself.

“The guy in the suit walking around
– he one of the investors, right?”

“Technology consultant.
 
Hired by the investors, but not an
employee of them.”

“So why were you eating burgers
with him last night?
 
On the other
side of town?”

My jaw dropped.
 
I hadn't anticipated being seen.

“Um, we were talking shop.
 
I was giving him the scoop on Alan.
 
Hey, did you hear Alan got fired
finally?
 
Got escorted out by
security and everything.”

“Don't change the subject.
 
I'd buy your story a lot more if I
hadn't seen you kiss him.
 
Now
what's going on?”
 
He sat back in
one of the chairs smugly.

I sighed.
 
The cat was out of the bag, and we
hadn't even developed the story yet.
 
“I don't have time to get into details--”

“I'm not asking for details.
 
What's the bottom line?”

I brought my left hand into
view.
 
“We're married.”

It was Matt's turn for the jaw to
drop.
 
“Okay, was not expecting
that.”
 
He shook his head, trying to
clear it. “Married?
 
Didn't we just
start working with him a few weeks ago?
 
How long have you known him?
 
Is this why you went to New York?”

“Matt, no.
 
No details.
 
And this stays between us, you understand?
 
We're going to make an announcement, and
if it gets out before then, I know it's you.
 
I'll beat you up.”
 
Matt was six five and two hundred fifty
pounds of solid ex-college football player muscle.
 
No one was beating him up, and I knew
that.

“Congratulations, then,” he wished
me, and left.
 
I stared at the
ring.
 
No one was going to believe
we knew each other before last week.
 
I had never been to New York, and certainly never met with a technology
consultant before.
 
And getting
married in three days just seemed, well, silly.

My phone rang with a bug report,
and I was off working again, and lost my train of thought until Eddie came in
later in the day.

“Enjoying your visit, sir?”

“You know,” Eddie told me
offhandedly, “it’s a good thing you live in Dallas.
 
Plenty of rich people here.”

“Um, you’re welcome?”
 
I didn’t know what to make of his
bizarre, and rather random, statement.

“Well, I was thinking about what we
talked about in London.
 
We need
money.
 
Buying antique coins was my
initial plan, but that’ll get cost-prohibitive.”
 
I cocked an eyebrow at my millionaire
husband.
 
“What?
 
I live relatively frugally.
 
No reason to spend more than I need.

“Anyway, raw materials are
something that have historically held their value.
 
Gold and silver are too heavy, but gems
are perfect.
 
We can buy some uncut
gems here, take them back, and sell them.
 
Small, lightweight, and very portable.”

I nodded, catching on.
 
“That could work.
 
Would it be reasonable for us, in our
costumes, to have so much in jewels?”

Eddie made a face.
 
“I don’t want to lose out on a bad
‘exchange rate.’”

“What about we just bring a few
back initially.
 
Change them out,
knowing we’ll be taking advantage of.
 
Don’t bring the nice ones, just enough to get us started.
 
Use the money from the sale to buy fancy
clothes, so that we are authentic.
 
Then, go to a nicer shop to sell the rest of the gems.”

“That’s...rather genius,” Eddie
admitted to me.
 

“Those of us lower down on the pay
scale tend to get creative with our methods,” I said, smugly.

He kissed my forehead and headed
towards the door.
 
“You, work.
 
I'm off to buy sparkly things.”