Out of the Blue (A Regency Time Travel Romance) (34 page)

There were no questions. Not really. There
were only facts—or at least as many facts as the editors of the
guidebooks knew. History books, even the guide at the White Tower,
declared that the Princes had died in the Bloody Tower, and
Cassandra and Marcus both knew differently—or at least they had a
darn good reason to doubt that particular theory.

And so, taking the guidebooks and the
theories and the hopes and the promises all a step further—there
would be a happy ending for Marcus and herself.
Bottom line,
Kelley,
she told herself, beginning to smile.
It’s time to
cut to the chase. Where’s your problem, lady? You, and Marcus, and
your baby, are about to pack up and get the hell out of
here!

“Marcus?”

“Yes, Cassandra?”

Her bottom lip began to quiver, partly
because she was crying again, but mostly because the whole thing
was so ludicrously funny. He looked so adorably guilty, not at all
the imperious marquess. He was just Marcus—her sweet, adorable,
fallible
Marcus. God, how she loved him!

“Marcus,” she said, her smile wide as she
began shaking her head in wonderment at her good fortune, at the
lucky star that had appeared out of the blue just when all seemed
lost.
Out of the blue. What a lovely thought!
“I love you,
Marcus Pendelton.”

His frown disappeared, to be replaced by what
she could only call a boyish grin. “That does make it convenient,
my dearest imp, as I positively adore you.”

She pressed the back of her hand against her
mouth, ineffectually trying to stifle her first escaping giggle. “I
know,” she said, delighted. She felt herself about to dissolve into
hysterical laughter. It might not be the best time for laughing,
but, hot damn, it sure beat the hell out of crying! “I love you.
You love me. We’re going to have a baby—conceived in 1812 and born
in 1992. Technically, I’m about to have the longest pregnancy in
history. Isn’t it
marvelous?
”

Marcus took hold of her shoulders and gently
pushed her down on her back on the mattress, swinging her legs onto
the bed before stretching out his length beside her. “No, darling.
You’re
marvelous,” he said, smiling as she laughed and
reached up to muss his hair. “You cannot know the times I have
wanted to tell you all that I knew, all that I’ve hoped, but I
foolishly held back, not wanting to raise your expectations in case
I was wrong. For all my education, all my study, there are times,
my sweet, when I can be remarkably obtuse. Can you ever forgive
me?”

“That depends,” Cassandra said, pulling at
one end of his already disheveled neckcloth. “What’s the Regency
opinion on lovemaking during pregnancy?”

He frowned momentarily, then brightened. “I
don’t know. I could trot downstairs and beg all the pertinent
information from Aunt Cornelia, I suppose, but is such a trip
really necessary?”

“
Beep,”
Cassandra replied, hooking one
index finger beneath the knot of his neckcloth and pulling him down
so that his face was only inches from hers and his warm breath
caressed her cheek. “Wrong answer, Marcus. Sorry about that. Would
you care to try again?”

“Indeed, yes,” he replied, his smile so
devilish that Cassandra knew he was enjoying their game as much as
she. Maybe more. With his lips just above hers, he murmured, “As a
matter of fact, I’m willing to try all night.”

He got it right the second time.

And the third time.

And—being a very apt student—he even got it
right a fourth time, just before dawn.

“O
kay, okay, that’s
it! Now don’t move.” Cassandra closed one eye and squinted into the
viewfinder, making sure she wouldn’t be cutting off Aunt Cornelia’s
and Peregrine’s heads as she usually did when she took photographs,
She had a whole album of pictures at home in Manhattan, full of
feet, legs, torsos—but no heads. “Now say
cheese!
”

“Cheese?” Aunt Cornelia repeated in disgusted
accents, stepping away from Peregrine and out of range of the
viewfinder. “It is enough that I am standing here—more than
enough—posing for a portrait that you have sworn will be magically
painted within that little black box. I absolutely
refuse
to
spout gibberish while I do so.”

“It’s a camera, Aunt Cornelia,” Cassandra
repeated for, she believed, the tenth time in as many minutes. “I
had forgotten that I had stuck it in my purse that fateful day, but
I promise you, it works. When Marcus and I get to my time, we just
take the film inside it to any drugstore—apothecary, to you,
Corny—and come back the next day to pick up the finished pictures.
Now, come on, be a good sport and let me do this, okay? Marcus and
I want to have something to remember you and Perry by after we’re
gone.”

The older woman’s chin quivered and Cassandra
sighed, knowing she had said precisely the wrong thing by reminding
Aunt Cornelia of Marcus’s imminent, and permanent, departure from
Regency England. “Gone! My dearest Marcus—gone forever!”

Aunt Cornelia pulled a lace-edged
handkerchief from her sleeve cuff and dabbed a corner of it at her
tear-bright eyes before glaring at Cassandra and Peregrine in turn.
“Never again to see my Marcus, never to see his little child—left
behind here in the dithering, incapable hands of
this
grinning idiot. And it’s all your fault, girl!” she ended, pointing
an accusing finger in Cassandra’s direction.

Cassandra lifted the camera once more,
tempted to snap a candid photograph of Aunt Cornelia at her most
memorable—her mouth open and her temper at full boil—then thought
better of it. The woman was genuinely upset, and with good reason.
It hadn’t been easy, informing Peregrine and Aunt Cornelia that if
all went as hoped, they would soon be bidding a final farewell to
both Cassandra
and
Marcus—and their unborn child.

Even now, two days after Perceval’s
assassination, Cassandra was having difficulty comprehending that
she and Marcus might be heading toward an actual happy, if somewhat
bittersweet, ending after all. Especially now, with Marcus gone off
into the country, to attend the funeral of his cousin and onetime
heir. Left alone in the mansion, even though Peregrine and Aunt
Cornelia were still in residence, she was feeling very much alone,
and terrifyingly nervous. A happy ending might be in sight, but it
was still more than two weeks in the future. She doubted she would
truly believe it until she was back in the White Tower, Marcus by
her side, reading the EXIT sign that hung above one of the stone
archways.

But it would be exciting, seeing her own time
through Marcus’s eyes. No wonder he had been intrigued to hear her
reactions to Regency England. She could hardly wait until she could
introduce him to the myriad wonders of the twentieth century. Their
first stop, if she had anything to say about it, would be the local
McDonald’s, where she would pig out on hamburgers, jumbo fries, and
Coca-Cola—and the hell with cholesterol and saturated fat.

She watched helplessly as Aunt Cornelia tried
to recover her composure. Although the fact that the old lady had
perversely taken to wearing black these past two days—“and
not
in consideration of that neck-or-nothing fool, Richard,
either”—was a tad disconcerting, Cassandra’s heart still went out
to the woman.

Laying down the camera, Cassandra went to
Aunt Cornelia and put an arm around her shoulders. “Won’t you
reconsider Marcus’s offer and come to the White Tower with us for a
final farewell, Corny? Marcus feels you’ll better understand what
is happening if you can be there to see it. You’ve already read the
guidebook, so you know this has to be done, and would be done
whether I had dropped in for my little unexpected visit or not. If
Marcus and our child are to survive at all, we have to leave.”

“Yes, come along, do, Aunt Cornelia. I’ll be
there to see them off, you know. Wouldn’t miss it,” Peregrine broke
in, picking up the camera and looking through the viewfinder,
frowning at what he saw. “Now why would anyone want to paint a
portrait of a fireplace, I ask you?” he questioned as he turned
about slowly, still squinting into the viewfinder. “Or a chair? Or
a mirror—I say, I can see m’self! Ain’t that above everything
wonderful? I could have this box make a portrait of myself,
couldn’t I, Cassandra?”

“Peregrine, put that down—keep your finger
off that button!” Cassandra warned, without any real hope of being
heeded. She was proved correct a moment later when the flash told
her Peregrine had indeed just taken a picture of himself taking a
picture.

“I did it! Just the same way you did it when
you painted Rose’s portrait this morning, Cousin Cassie—I made
light!” Peregrine smiled sheepishly as he placed the camera in
Cassandra’s outstretched hand. “Well, I did,” he asserted,
thrusting out his bottom lip, just like a child who has been caught
doing something naughty but who still feels proud of the
accomplishment. “And I don’t know why you think it is so wonderful
that this box can paint portraits, when it can make light. I should
think
that
would be more important by half.”

“Perry,” Cassandra said, leaning forward and
giving him a quick kiss on the cheek, “I am going to miss you so
much. You’re the younger brother I never had.”

Peregrine frowned. “
Younger
brother,
Cousin Cassie? I’m the older by at least five years.”

“Ten, you dolt,” Aunt Cornelia remarked,
stuffing her handkerchief back into her sleeve cuff.

Cassandra hid a smile, knowing the woman was
correct. But to Cassandra, Peregrine would always be young, at
least in his heart. And, soon, in her memories of him. Her
wonderful, poignant memories of this extraordinary time in her
life. “My apologies, Perry. You are just so handsome that I
sometimes forget how truly ancient you really are.”

“That’s better!” Peregrine returned with a
decisive nod of his head, then frowned. “Stap me, I think I’ve just
been insulted.”

Aunt Cornelia walked past him, cuffing his
ear. “Really, Perry? Then there may be hope for you yet, you
paper-skulled twit. I can see that I shall have to devote my
declining years to making something out of you—if I don’t wish to
end up begging pennies on some corner after you’ve frittered away
Marcus’s funds. The man must be daft, thinking to put you in charge
of his fortune.”

Peregrine grinned. “A lot you know, Corny.
Cousin Cassie has that all fig—” he began triumphantly before
Cassandra cuffed his other ear, reminding him to keep his mouth
shut. There’d be no holding Marcus back if he knew what she had
done before she told him.

Cassandra picked up the camera, determined to
give it one more try. “If you don’t want to say
cheese,
Aunt
Cornelia, would you be agreeable to standing beside Perry and
smiling when
he
says it? I’d take separate pictures of you,
except I have only twelve exposures—half of them gone—and I want to
make them all count. We’ve already wasted one today,” she added,
winking at Peregrine to take the sting from her words.

“Exposures?” Aunt Cornelia looked at her
cautiously. “These portraits you insist you are making of us,
Cassandra—do they include clothing? I won’t be painted like some of
those odiously forward foreign ladies, exposing myself for the sake
of art—lying on a bed, nibbling fruit. And I don’t even
like
apples!”

A mental vision of Aunt Cornelia, her
uncovered form reclining nude, an apple stuck in her mouth, nearly
cost Cassandra her “photo opportunity,” for she could barely keep a
straight face as she assured the woman that she would, indeed,
appear fully dressed in the “portrait.”

A half hour later, once Aunt Cornelia had
changed her funereal black for her favorite gown and turban
(“Marcus has always said he likes me best in blue”), Cassandra
succeeded in capturing her stern, unsmiling face and Peregrine’s
happy grin for posterity.

But she might have cut off their feet. She’d
know once she got the pictures developed.

~ ~ ~

“
25 May 1812

“
Being sound of both mind and body, I,
Marcus Aurelius Octavian Pendelton, Fifth Earl of Eastbourne,
declare this to be a true, accurate, and binding statement of
intent.”

“Marcus Aurelius Octavian Pendelton?”
Cassandra interrupted from her seat on the other side of the desk,
her chair placed between Peregrine’s and Aunt Cornelia’s. “You’ve
got
to be kidding!”

“It is a fine family name, girl,” Aunt
Cornelia broke in haughtily. “All the Pendeltons have Latin names.
My
full name is Cornelia Augusta Horatia.”

“Yeah, well,” Cassandra countered, giggling
as she pointed to her still-flat stomach. “If you’re thinking this
kid is going to be christened Julius Caesar, you’re all in for a
sad disappointment.”

Marcus, who privately shared his fiancee’s
dislike of ancient Latin names, hid a smile with his hand and
pointedly cleared his throat, looking at Cassandra, Aunt Cornelia,
and Peregrine in turn. “If I might continue? Or is anyone else
determined to contribute something to this conversation?”

Peregrine tipped his head to one side.
“Actually, Marcus,” he said thoughtfully, “I was wondering why you
have Rose locked up in the sewing room these past days. Nice girl,
Rose. As a matter of fact, I’ve been liking her more and more each
day. Taking this whole business very well, worlds better than
Goodfellow, who’s been walking round with a Friday face, barking at
all the servants. Seems a shame to lock her up.”

“Rose isn’t locked up, Perry,” Cassandra
whispered fiercely before Marcus could answer. “She’s making Marcus
some clothes for the
trip.
I drew her some pictures and
she’s doing a splendid job, although we don’t know what to do about
shoes—unless we cover his boot tops with his slacks. After all, we
can’t have him walking around in pantaloons and a neckcloth. People
will notice.”