Chapter Five #2
“Come on!” Rose called to him, ducking and leaning in the window, showing off the globes of her breasts to great advantage. She seemed blithely unaware of the impression she was making, but any single man, deprived or not, would find that a delectable view.
He walked stiffly over to the window. As he swung his leg over the sill, he felt a glimmer of the joy and freedom he’d known when he was a boy.
He hadn’t known such feelings were still inside him anymore.
Whether or not one could turn back time, perhaps one could coax out those past selves, those different boys and men one had been, and invite them to play.
The roof was flat. She settled herself, cross-legged, in the square of light from her window.
He came over and sat next to her, not too close, in the darkness.
Buildings surrounded them, three and four stories high, and he couldn’t place the continuous rumble he could hear in the distance, like the sea.
“I always come out here when I can’t sleep,” she told him. “Look, the moon’s going to set in an hour or so.” She pointed down the street to where it hung low and large, partly blocked by the top of a single tree.
“Yes. But where are the stars?” He peered at the sky above them. It was not black or deep blue, but a murky violet-brown.
“The city lights are too bright,” she explained.
He’d never considered that such a thing might be possible. “It is unsettling not to be able to see them.”
“I suppose. But you know they’re still there.” She had a wistful look in her eyes. Was she thinking of a former suitor, perhaps?
He stared up at the starless sky again. “Have there been any scientific discoveries here about time? Experiments? Something that might have created an anomaly, to account for my presence here?”
“Not that I know of. But like I was saying before, I’m a witch, and—”
A blare of music from nowhere startled him. Rose dug out the little tablet—her phone, she’d been calling it. “Oh! It’s Jason.” She touched a button on the phone and held it up.
To Henry’s utter astonishment, a man’s face filled the screen. He had unruly black hair, threaded with silver, and slightly bleary dark eyes. A frame in the corner held Rose’s own reflection.
“Hi Jason!” Rose said. “Sorry to bother you so late. Or early.”
“Hey,” the man said around a yawn. “What’s up?”
Henry stared at Rose. “You are a witch,” he realized aloud. He’d heard of them viewing others from a distance, by means of crystal balls.
“What?” She turned to him. “Oh, no, this is FaceTime. It’s, uh, science.”
“Who’s with you?” Jason asked Rose.
Rose smirked, scooted closer to Henry, and angled the phone. He could see himself next to her in the corner frame. “This is Henry Leighton-Lyons, Duke of…” She cast him a questioning look.
“Beresford,” Henry said—and Jason said it with him, his eyebrows raised.
“Uh, wow,” Jason added. “Welcome.” He grinned, as though Henry’s presence were a delightful surprise, instead of a calamity that threw everything they knew about the workings of the natural world into question. What was more, the man had not even bothered to properly introduce himself.
“Mr. Yun, I believe,” Henry said stiffly. “You are from the East, I take it?”
“The West, actually. California.”
“He’s American,” Rose said quickly.
“Call me Jason,” the man on the screen said. “Rose, thanks for being discreet in the text. How’d he get here?”
Henry bristled. He did not like being spoken about as though he were not present.
Rose exhaled, blowing out her cheeks. “I did a love spell.”
In all the confusion before, Henry hadn’t thought to ask her what the aim of her so-called spell had been.
“A love spell?” Henry repeated. “To summon me?”
“No! I mean, I saw the portrait of you earlier, and it crossed my mind, but I wasn’t trying…” She shrugged.
Henry shook his head. “This cannot be why I have been wrenched out of time. For some foolish feminine fancy.” There had to be another explanation.
Jason said, “Rose, just tell me what happened.”
“Fine.” She adjusted the phone again, taking Henry out of the frame, and seemed to be avoiding his gaze. “I got home from Emily and Griffin’s wedding, and they seemed so happy, and I saw Aaron Coleman there. Who I’m still annoyed with, by the way.”
Who was this Aaron Coleman, Henry wondered, and why had he troubled Rose?
“Since it was a Friday and a full moon in Libra, I thought I would do a spell to get an old-fashioned gentleman to fall in love with me. I didn’t mean a literal old-fashioned gentleman, obviously!”
Could it be true? Henry frowned. “It was Friday and a full moon in my time. And in Libra, according to my watch…not that I give any credence to such twaddle.”
Jason’s eyes were bright with excitement. “This is fantastic. Can you go through everything you did?”
“I think so…Actually, hang on, I’ll go get the stuff.” She abruptly handed the phone to Henry, hopped to her feet, and scampered back toward the window. To Henry’s dismay, he was left staring at this stranger.
Jason said, “This must be pretty strange for you.”
“Strange? It is unimaginable. Abominable. I am in another time and place. Do you know how I might return to where I belong?”
“Uh…not exactly, but we can try to figure it out.”
Below, a red light hanging over the intersection extinguished, and a green light shone in its place.
One of those metal coaches, pulled by no horses, sped down the street.
This was no dream or delusion. He had nothing in this world.
He understood little of it. To be at the mercy of strangers, and common ones at that, was humiliating.
Rose climbed out to the roof again, straddling the windowsill with her bare legs, cradling some items with one arm against her chest. Henry looked away quickly.
Jason said, “Your Grace, would you be so good as to tell us exactly what happened before you crossed over?”
At least someone knew how to address him properly. And Jason’s request was a sensible one. The first step in solving any conundrum was to make sure one had all the facts at hand.
“Very well,” he said, as Rose again took her spot next to him…or was she sitting closer this time? She deposited a jumble of cards and trinkets in front of her.
He must not get distracted. “I was in the library of my home, Everly Park, talking to the artist. He’d finished the background of my portrait, but needed to add me. I laid my hand on the astrolabe, sitting on the—”
“Yes!” Jason said, in the tone a man used when the horse he had bet on won. “I knew it!”
“I beg your pardon,” Henry said.
Rose said, “Wait, if Henry didn’t finish posing for the painting, why do we have it? How did it get finished?”
That was a good question, Henry had to admit. “Perhaps it is because I will return directly.”
Rose snapped her fingers. “Or maybe we don’t still have it! But then…would I still remember seeing it?”
“You and I both still remember it,” Jason pointed out. “Have you ever read about the Novikov self-consistency principle?”
“The what now?” Rose asked, but Henry perked up. This sounded like scientific theory, rather than occult nonsense.
Jason explained, “Basically, the theory is that if you change an event in the past, the universe rearranges events to make sure the present stays as much the same as possible.”
“Oh, wow,” Rose said.
Henry had hoped to return to his past and change it.
There was no complete cure for Charlotte’s weak heart, as far as he knew; he had never imagined being able to grow old with her.
But if she was in the care of a more skilled doctor, and if Henry could better safeguard her against bumps and jolts, such as distressing stories in newspapers, overwrought plays at the theater, and marital quarrels, which had been rare but heated, her sensibilities might be less strained, and she might live just a few years longer.
But what Jason spoke of sounded like destiny. If Henry had found his way back to Charlotte, would his efforts have been in vain? Would she have died anyway, at the age of twenty-six? If not from heart failure, then from some other cause—consumption, or a spooked horse?
Even so, it would be worth it to relive those days with her, and to be a better man.
Jason shrugged. “Who knows, though. We’re dealing with magic here, not physics.”
Henry balked at this. “However remarkable my presence is, all scientific discoveries seem miraculous at first. There is a logical reason for me to be here.”
Jason said, “Even in this century, all we have is theories. We haven’t built a machine that can travel through time.”
“Perhaps I would have,” Henry said, “if I had been left alone to do my research.”
“Sorry, but no,” Jason said flatly. “Your knowledge was so far behind ours. Even if you worked your whole life, you couldn’t have done it all on your own.”
This opinion landed like one of Dunton’s punches. There was no ill intent behind it, and yet it had the painful sound of truth.
Jason added, “So why don’t you tell me everything you know about the astrolabe?”
Rose asked, “Is that the gold thing? Looks kind of steampunk?”
Jason nodded. “Where did it come from?”
“I don’t believe it’s any of your business, sir.”
Jason made a steeple of his fingers. “Your Grace. I’m trying to get you home.”
Well, there was that. “If you must know, it was a birthday gift from my wife, not long before she died.” He still had the sentimental note that had accompanied it, which had included one of her favorite quotes.
Rose’s mouth fell open, and she gazed at Henry as though seeing him for the first time. “Oh my Goddess, that’s right,” she murmured.
She knew? Henry’s pulse pounded in the side of his neck.
“You asked if I was married,” he said, setting the phone down in front of him. “Yet you know about Charlotte? Is this some kind of game?”
Rose blinked. “No, I didn’t know you were ever married. That just reminded me of something…” Her brow knitted, and she shook her head. “It’s nothing. I’m so sorry about your wife.”