Chapter Seven #2
So how was he to account for the way this fey creature roused his body and his senses? Or for his own alarm when she’d been pale and overcome with nerves, after the dog had run out on the roof? He’d felt that he could not bear to see her unwell.
Her manners were coarse, she swore like a fishwife, she had no fortune or family of consequence, and by her own blithe admission, the flower of her maidenhood had been plucked long before.
True, almost any man would’ve been roused by her careless manner of dress, her voluptuous charms, the peal of her laughter, her fine blue eyes, and her disarming honesty…
but all of that was not the point. He was not almost any man.
Perhaps it was her free spirit, or her nurturing nature.
Or perhaps traveling through time had scrambled his faculties…which seemed altogether likely.
He emerged from the bathroom carrying himself stiffly.
Well, one part of him was not stiff, at least, and he meant to keep it that way.
He half feared she would be staring at that particular part of him.
The fact that she’d been bold enough to mention it aloud before still shocked him… even if he was glad to understand it.
She was in the kitchen, and her gaze didn’t drift downward as she asked, “Do you want some coffee? I made some. Or would you rather have more tea?”
“I will take some coffee. Thank you.” He didn’t drink it as a habit, but some academics swore it sharpened their wits, and he supposed he needed every possible advantage.
She poured him a mug and handed it to him. “We’ll have a big lunch at the restaurant. I’ll just cut up some fruit now, if that sounds good?”
“Yes,” he said, sitting down at the nearby dining table. It was still strange to be in a household so humble it did not employ even one servant. “That would be most satisfactory.”
She reached into a deep basket and pulled out a large pineapple.
Henry couldn’t help getting back to his feet to gawk at it, his chair scraping on the floor. How on earth had a lady of such limited means gotten her hands on one? The thought crossed his mind that she might’ve stolen it.
She lay it on its side on a wooden board. Surely, she didn’t mean to actually—
She raised a large knife.
“Stop!” he thundered.
She jumped and gave a little shriek, the large knife falling from her hand and clattering onto the counter.
“What the hell!” she demanded, whirling around. With a shocked laugh, she added, “You scared the shit out of me!”
“Forgive me, madam,” he said, as though his civility might balance out her vulgarity. “But you cannot mean to cut up that pineapple and eat it?”
Merriment danced in her eyes. “What else would I do with it?”
“Why, set it in the middle of the table and admire it. It must’ve been rashly expensive.”
She shrugged. “It was on sale at the Jewel.”
“You exchanged a jewel for it?” he asked, to clarify.
“No. That’s the name of a grocery store.” She turned around and chopped off the grand leafy crown.
Henry startled as though he’d witnessed some lesser form of execution. “Now you’ve ruined it. Even I, a duke, would not cut up and eat a pineapple.”
She shot him a perplexed look over her shoulder. “Why are you being so weird?” Then she turned back and sliced away a length of the spiny rind.
He expected the fruit to be brown. People often kept them and displayed them until the leaves shriveled and the fruit grew soft with rot. But no. Her knife revealed golden, juicy flesh.
“You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to,” she told him as she cut away more of the rind. “I’ve got grapes and strawberries.”
An incredible scent filled the air; the scent of indulgence itself. Almost involuntarily, he drew nearer to watch her cut the fruit into chunks. Juice soaked the wooden board.
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” he said. “What is it like?”
She looked up, startled and slightly breathless. “What?”
“The fruit…” His mouth was watering now.
He was standing right over her, so near that the tropical fragrance of the fruit mingled with the warm scent of her skin, and his awareness of her tempting curves made him feel like he’d been sleepwalking for the past two years, and had just woken up again. He swallowed. “It looks so succulent.”
She was perhaps affected by their nearness, too. Her bosom heaved with a deep breath. Or was it that she was still startled from him shouting at her? He had never wanted to upset her nerves.
Tilting her head, she asked, “Are you telling me you’ve never tried pineapple?”
“I don’t know anyone who has. It costs as much as a good horse.”
“Seriously? I buy a couple of them a month. They cost about as much as…I don’t know, three or four apples?” Rose’s eyes danced in delight. “I guess I do have some luxuries you don’t, Fancy Man. Like running hot water, and pineapple.” She picked up a chunk and held it out to him. “Here.”
He was aware that ordinarily, he would’ve balked at taking a piece of fruit someone was handling. But an image flashed through his mind of not only eating the pineapple right from her hand, but then licking the juice from her fingers.
He took the chunk of pineapple from her, put it in his mouth, and bit down. Flavor exploded in his mouth. Tartness, sweetness, sunshine.
“My God,” he marveled, once he’d swallowed. “It’s extraordinary.”
She gave him a teasing look. “Well, I’m glad you like something here. I’ll fix you a bowl. Do you want strawberries, too, or—”
“No. Pineapple.” He’d had strawberries a hundred times or more.
She filled a good-sized bowl to overflowing, grabbed him a fork, and handed it to him. Still a bit stunned by the largesse, he sat down with it. She took a transparent box out of the cabinet that he had already discovered kept a wide array of food chilled.
“How does that cabinet stay cold?”
“Uh, it’s refrigeration. It uses electricity, and…honestly, I have no idea.”
She sliced a few strawberries and put them and the rest of the pineapple into a bowl for herself, then sat down with him. After he’d eaten a couple of bites in silence, he realized he might reasonably be expected to make at least a polite effort at conversation.
“I am accustomed to taking my meals alone,” he said, by way of explanation.
“Oh.” She frowned doubtfully. “I guess you can take your bowl to the guest room.”
“I—no, I did not mean it was my preference.” Although he supposed it had been, in the past couple of years. “I only mean that I am out of practice with conversation.”
“Oh!” She looked a bit relieved as she laughed. “Well, good news, we’re all out of practice now. We just stare at screens and type at each other. It’s horrible. You’ll love it.”
But as they ate their fruit and drank their coffee, Rose chatted easily about the size of various cities in the United States, and the state of modern London—they had built a large clock tower, which Henry could not help but approve of—giving Henry the opportunity to learn while admiring her captivating countenance.
He told himself that it would be well to remember that, if what she’d said was true, he’d been ill-used by her. She’d cast a spell, like a mythical siren singing across the waves, and had wrecked the steady ship of his life upon her shores.
But he did not believe in magic. Surely, there was some other explanation.
Before they left the apartment, Rose persuaded him to leave his walking stick at home, explaining that it would look strange with his modern clothes. They went down the stairs and stepped out onto the street, greeted by sunshine and a cacophony of growls and whines and beeps.
“What is that smell?” he asked Rose.
She took a sniff. “Italian beef.” She pointed to the shop across the street advertising sandwiches.
“No, the acrid smell.”
“Uh, exhaust, maybe? From the car engines?”
“How do those engines work?”
She laughed. “I have no idea. Aren’t there bad smells in London, in your time? And in the country?”
“Of course.” London smelled much worse than this city, mainly of cesspools, and the pastures and stables in the country had the expected odors. “But they are stenches I can name.”
Redbrick buildings a few stories high, some with bright signs and messages, lined both sides of the streets, along with those steel coaches—cars.
The only things of beauty were the trees, growing in squares of earth along the paved pathway.
He looked up at the foliage, and a movement in the blue sky caught his eye.
He stopped and touched Rose’s arm. “What is that? Some sort of kite?” It was narrow, with wings, so it was not a hot air balloon.
She grinned. “That’s an airplane. Like a ship that flies through the sky.”
He peered at her. “What do you mean, a ship?”
“Uh, there are a couple hundred people on there, and it’s flying to another city.”
“That cannot be true,” he muttered, and stared up at the plane again. “How does it stay up?” He waited for it to plummet from the sky at any moment.
“I have no idea,” she admitted again. “But I’ve been on them a bunch of times.” The mere thought of that made him feel dizzy, and he looked down at the sidewalk.
“Children still play Scotch-hoppers,” he realized aloud, seeing the sequence of squares chalked there.
“We call it hopscotch,” Rose said, and to his surprise, she hop-skipped the boxes. As a mother pushing a little girl in a sort of little cart passed, they both looked at Rose and smiled. Rose beamed back.
Henry felt a smile twitching at his own lips. Perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised to learn that she was reckless enough to fly through the sky.
Several men and women stood in line in front of an establishment a few doors down.
A few of the women wore scarves that covered their head and shoulders.
They looked down at Henry’s good shoes, exchanged a look, and giggled among themselves.
Clearly, Rose had been correct about his inappropriate footwear.
A short woman of middle age opened the door of the establishment as they passed, flipping a sign on it to read Abierto and Open. Rose waved at her, and the woman’s eyes widened.
“Tu nuevo novio?” she asked Rose as she waved customers inside.
Rose shook her head, smiling. “Solo un amigo.” Henry’s curiosity must’ve shown on his face, because she told him, “She asked who you were, and I said you were a friend.”
As he continued with Rose down the sidewalk, he asked, “Were you two speaking Italian?”
“Spanish. It’s common here, especially in this neighborhood.” She gestured with her thumb back at the restaurant. “Those tacos are halal. That’s why they get a lot of Muslim customers.”
Tacos? Halal? Were these English words?
“Do you speak Spanish fluently?” He had met ladies and gentlemen from France, an Italian, and a Bavarian, but never a Spaniard.
She shook her head. “I only know the basics. A lot of my neighbors spoke it when we lived in Cicero, and I studied it at college.” She glanced up at him. “Did women go to universities, in your time?”
“Rarely. But do not suppose, Miss Novak, that I have never before met an educated female. I will have you know that I am acquainted with two different female scientists.”
“It’s two more than I would’ve expected,” she admitted.
He paused to stare at a large mural, depicting a grinning embellished skull, with living eyes in the sockets, surrounded by flowers.
“Isn’t that amazing?” Rose said.
“It’s terrifying,” he snapped. “Is this meant to be art?”
She glanced around them and then stepped closer. “That’s rude. You’re going to get your ass kicked.”
He snorted. “I do not have an ass.”
A mischievous smile curved her lips upward again. “Oh yes you do.”
“I have four thoroughbred stallions in my stables, and I might be riding one across Everly Park right now, had it not been for your fecklessness.”
He felt a twinge of regret when her smile extinguished. But he was a man of truth, and what had he said that was not true?
“I already told you it was an accident,” she retorted.
“Yes, well—you are provoking me excessively with your nonsense.”
She sighed and looked back at the wall. “Seriously, we’re proud of our murals.”
Henry gestured again toward the skull, wreathed in flowers. “But it is blasphemous.” A mockery of those who had buried loved ones. “She is a dead woman, and yet she lives!”
Rose gave a little shudder, and Henry felt vindicated. “See?” he asked. “It sends a shiver down your spine, too.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she protested. “I just had a weird feeling for a moment. But this celebrates Día de los Muertos. Day of the Dead. It’s big in Mexico, and other places, too.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” Henry admitted.
“It’s when you remember the people you love who have died. You set out their favorite foods and drinks on altars, or by their graves. In this neighborhood, they have a parade, and some people paint their faces like that.” She gestured at the woman on the wall.
“This is a painting of a live woman?” He considered it again. “I suppose that is a bit less gruesome. But remembering the dead is not festive.”
She gave him a sympathetic smile. “I know what you mean. But maybe it’s a way of remembering that the people we’ve lost are still really with us.”
“They’re not,” he said shortly.
“Agree to disagree. Come on, we’re late.”