Chapter Four #2
His features settled into a stony expression. “Whatever news it is that you have to impart to me, I can guarantee you that I have already heard much worse.”
His words and something in his dispassionate voice touched her heart. She wanted to ask him what terrible news he’d received in the past…but as he’d just pointed out, they didn’t know each other well.
She took a deep breath. “You’ve traveled forward in time.”
“Forward?” he demanded.
“I’ve got to say, I thought you’d be way more surprised at the time travel part than the forward part.” He just stared at her. “But yes. Over two hundred years into the future.”
He laughed, shaking his head. It was the first time she’d seen him do anything but glower, and she felt a tingle of awareness at how handsome and endearing he looked.
“Damnation,” he said. “I am dreaming.” Then he sketched a quick bow. Until that moment, Rose hadn’t known that anyone could bow sarcastically. “Forgive me, dream lady, for my shocking language.”
That confused her for a moment. “You mean ‘damnation’? That’s so cute.”
He raised his hand as if this proved his point. “Why should a figment of my over-fertile imagination be offended?”
“I’m not a figment of your imagination,” Rose explained. “And I grew up in Cicero, so I swear in English and Spanish. And Czech, thanks to my grandma.”
“Aha! See?” he asked, pointing at her. “This is a dream. ‘Check’ is not a real language.”
“They used to call it Bohemian.” She added lightly, “I’m a little bohemian in more than one way.”
Henry didn’t appreciate her little joke, or even seem to hear her, as he finally sat down. “I suppose it’s more of a nightmare than a dream. Why would I dream of traveling to the future, when my heart yearns day after day for the past?”
Her own heart squeezed a little at this. He must’ve lost someone. She knew how hard that was. Well, he wouldn’t have been a duke if his father had still been alive.
“I’m afraid it’s my fault you’re here.” She squirmed. Goddess, this was going to be so embarrassing to explain. And would he even believe her? “The thing is, I’m a witch, and I did a spell.”
He snorted. “That is like saying I am Oberon, the King of the Fairies.”
“Well, you did appear out of nowhere. Until tonight, I thought I could only do small charms.”
“Any charms you have are definitely small,” Henry grumbled.
Wow. Her cheeks flooded with heat. Whoever this guy was, he was not The One.
“You don’t have to be such a jagoff,” she said.
“What did you call me?” Henry demanded.
“It means jerk. More or less.”
“That in no way enlightens me.”
“Quit being unkind,” Rose said, meeting his gaze. “Is that clear enough?”
He blinked. “It was a jest.”
“Jests are supposed to be funny.”
“I am sorry you were distressed by it.”
“And that’s the classic non-apology. You want to try again?”
Henry rolled his eyes. “Miss Novak—”
“Yeah, a sincere apology always starts with an eye roll,” she said. Maybe it was just as well that he didn’t like her. She wasn’t sure she liked him, either.
She gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “Never mind. We need to figure out—”
“Miss Novak, if I met you in reality, and in less strange and terrify—” He caught himself. “Less trying circumstances, I have no doubt that things would be different.”
She peered at him. He’d almost said terrifying. He wasn’t just grumpy; he was scared.
“I’d be scared, too,” she realized aloud.
“If I woke up a couple hundred years in the future, I’d be curled up in the fetal position, hoping I wouldn’t get exterminated by robots.
” He stared at her as though she were speaking another language.
“Anyway, this is reality. I mean, when have you ever had a dream this vivid?”
He frowned, seeming to give the question serious thought. “Perhaps I am unconscious. That might make it possible to have very detailed dreams, because it would be more difficult to wake.”
She tilted her head. “Why would you be unconscious?”
“The turpentine. The artist said that if I breathed too much of it, it might make me faint.”
Rose shivered at the weirdness of this. “The artist who painted your portrait?”
“Yes. Walter Wilke. Well, as far as I remember, he had not painted me yet. There was a gray shape with a few lines, where I was meant to be—”
“Is that what you were doing before you came here?” she asked. “Getting your portrait done?”
“Yes. The last I remember, I was in the library, talking to the artist.”
“I saw that painting of you tonight,” she told him. “I work at the big museum here in Chicago, and they just bought it.”
“That’s impossible. I was not even in it yet.”
“You are now. I’ll show it to you tomorrow.” She snapped her fingers. “The painting!”
“I beg your pardon,” Henry said.
“It probably wasn’t just my spell that brought you here. I bet Jason acquired that painting because it’s magical!”
Henry scoffed, stood up, and walked over to the window again, as if to put some distance between him and the crazy lady. “Magic does not exist.”
“Says the Mr. Darcy dude in my living room,” Rose quipped.
He turned to look at her as if she was an idiot. “Miss Novak, I have told you my last name is Leighton-Lyons.”
“Not a Jane Austen fan, I take it.”
“I know nothing of a Miss Austen, nor of her fan. Speak plainly.”
Rose got to her feet and joined him at the window. “Look out there. What do you see?”
He shrugged. “There are those locomotive carriages or what have you, and many bright yellow lamps, and over there I see foreign words spelled out in blue and red light.”
“Libros en Espanol. It’s a bookstore,” Rose said. “Does this look like something you’d dream?”
A shadow seemed to fall across his face. “Perhaps not,” he said in a quieter voice, staring out the window again. “Perhaps I have…taken leave of my senses.”
“Oh. Oh, no,” Rose reassured him.
“It is certainly possible,” he said, almost to himself, as though he hadn’t heard her. “A man may lose his ability to perceive the world around him, substituting his own bizarre fantasies.”
“I mean, that can happen,” Rose allowed, “but—”
“How can I know? Where am I, truly, at this moment?” He shook his head, an agonized gleam in his eyes. “Am I standing in my library, talking to myself, while my butler and the painter and God knows who else witness my humiliation?”
That would be a horrible situation. Well, for Henry.
If something like that happened to her, she could laugh it off later as a bad shrooms trip or something.
Not that she’d ever done shrooms, but the truth was, nobody would be surprised if she did.
He was a duke from another era. For him, losing control would be much more serious.
She got up and walked over to join him where he stood near the window. “This is really happening,” she said gently, willing him to trust her, to believe her. “You never had any, um, delusions before, did you?”
He cast her a condescending look. “No, but only a fool believes himself immune to weakness and travail. I have slept so little, and worked so much, and spent so many hours in isolation.” Rose felt another pang of sympathy for him.
Why hadn’t he gotten married? Everyone must’ve wanted to marry a duke, even a grouchy, workaholic one. But what had he been working on?
He went on to say, “We all know what can happen, even to a brilliant man of science.”
“No impostor syndrome here,” Rose couldn’t help but note.
“What?” He frowned at her. “I was saying, a man may go mad when he becomes obsessed. Like Victor Frankenstein in Byron’s new novel.”
“Um,” Rose said. “I don’t think that’s Byron’s.”
Henry looked at her in surprise. “You know of the book? There are only five hundred copies.”
That made her smile. “There are more now. And it’s by someone named Mary.” The writer’s last name escaped her.
Henry shook his head. “A female? No. It was published anonymously, but everyone knows that scoundrel Byron wrote it, for his good friend Percy Shelley wrote the preface.”
“Mary Shelley!” she said, snapping her fingers. “That’s the author’s name.”
“Hmm.” He looked doubtful. “At any rate, it is a warning against trying to achieve the impossible.”
She took a step closer to him, filled with curiosity. “What were you trying to do?”
He gave her a searching look. “I suppose there is no harm in telling you, as this is all no doubt a fantasy.” He turned back to the window, staring at nothing. “What I want to do more than anything else. Turn back time.”
A shiver went through Rose. Had his intentions somehow been a part of this magic? But how could they have been? He’d wanted the opposite.
“Like I said, you must be here because the painting is enchanted,” she told him. “Something like this happened already. There was a stone statue, and it came to life, and my best friend got married to him tonight.”
His eye roll didn’t offend her this time.
“Okay, I know,” she added quickly, holding up her hands. “It sounds nuts. But I should text Emily. She’ll know what to do.”
She went to the coat hooks by the door where she’d hung her purse and grabbed her phone. As quickly as she could, she typed out,
Sooo an old-timey duke from a painting is in my apartment
Then her thumb hovered over the send button. After the FBI investigation of the sculpture last year, she should be more cautious. Henry came up from behind her, making her jump.
“What are you doing with that thing?” Henry asked, peering down at the screen.
“Oh! This is how I send a message. Like a letter. This’ll go to my friend in another part of the city. Like, instantly.”
He surprised her by chuckling. “Wouldn’t that be convenient?”
“I can’t text her, though,” she said, deleting the message letter by letter. “This is her wedding night.”
“Her wedding night with the statue?”
“He’s not a statue now. I’ll text Jason.”
Henry was still staring at her phone. “And who might he be?”
“Jason Yun. He’s the curator at the museum, and he’s part of a, I don’t know, secret society. They study magical art and artifacts.” The key part of that was secret. She shouldn’t be blabbing about it. Then again, who would Henry tell?
She texted Jason.
WE NEED TO TALK AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
Then she looked at Henry and laughed. “That sounds like I’m breaking up with him.” He merely looked perplexed, so she explained, “It sounds like we’re, uh, romantically involved.”
A line appeared between his brows. “Might I be so impertinent as to ask if you are?”
“No! I’ve only talked to him a few times.” And only one of those times had been a long conversation. After Griffin had come back to life and the FBI had cleared Emily of stealing him in statue form, Jason had interviewed Rose about the stone she’d used in a spell for Emily.
She pondered for a moment, then added to the message,
And there’s someone you need to meet.
Henry said, “Perhaps I could do with a cup of tea.”
She looked up to find his intense gaze on her, setting off a burst of sparks somewhere inside her.
That was…dangerous, considering they didn’t really like each other.
Maybe she did know a little about electricity, after all.