Chapter Twenty-Three
Twenty-Three
So this was Aaron Coleman, Henry thought, gripping his fork.
A chorus of overly cheery greetings came from around the table, and Aaron slapped Griffin on the shoulder, asking how married life was treating him.
Henry recalled that Aaron was somehow in the business of investigating stolen valuables, as if Henry needed another reason to loathe him.
Aaron froze as his gaze fell on Henry. The man had no doubt studied his portrait, and judging from the photograph Rose had shown him, it had been a very close likeness.
Aaron took a step toward him. “I don’t think we’ve met. Aaron Coleman.”
Before Henry could reply, Rose blurted out, “This is my friend Horatio!”
What?
Rose was wise not to introduce him as Henry, given the way Aaron was staring at him. But why had she chosen his middle name, which he had never told her? When she’d quoted Shakespeare at him before, it had not been a coincidence, he was sure.
“Horatio?” Aaron said. “There’s a name you don’t hear often.” His tone was magnanimous, but the way he was staring closely at Henry was unnerving.
If there was one thing Henry knew how to do, it was to put someone in their place. “I have heard it often,” he said coldly, “because it was my father’s name, and his father’s before that.”
“Right,” Aaron said with an apologetic smile. “What part of England are you from, Horatio?”
Henry reminded himself not to say Oxfordshire. “Birmingham.”
“Ah. Aston Villa fan, then?”
“No,” Henry said flatly, having no idea what the man had just asked.
Jason cut in with, “Aaron, any updates on the painting?”
“Yeah, I just came from the labs,” Aaron said. “I can tell you, because we’re releasing the info to the press. Like Daniela said, there’s nothing underneath that gray area in the middle. And it only contains pigments that existed in the early nineteenth century, including lead white paint.”
“Isn’t that banned?” Emily asked.
“In most countries.” Aaron’s gaze flicked to Henry as he talked.
Jason leaned forward eagerly. “Yeah, this is my theory. The artist painted more than one version, and this one’s incomplete.” He added to the group, “It’s like how we’ve got one version of Van Gogh’s Bedroom, and the other two are in the Van Gogh Museum and the Musée d’Orsay.”
“I thought of that, obviously,” Aaron said. “We took a sample of the lead white to carbon-date it.”
“I didn’t authorize that.”
“We didn’t need your permission.”
Jason held up his hands. “I just don’t want to compromise the integrity of the painting. If it’s an alternate version, it’s of real significance. It gives us a new perspective on the artist’s process—”
“We know what we’re doing. It’s not damaged,” Aaron said. He glanced at Henry again. “And that’s not even the weirdest thing. Did you hear about the theft at Victor Reuter’s mansion?”
Henry arranged his features into what he hoped was a mildly curious expression. The back of his neck felt hot.
But Jason’s impression of mild curiosity was flawless. “Yeah. An ancient sundial, right?”
“An astrolabe,” Aaron said. “One that looks exactly like the one that’s in the painting.”
Jason gave a bewildered huff. “That’s crazy. Hey, you want to join us? We can squeeze you in here.” He looked around as if for spare chairs.
“No, thanks. I was just heading out.” He cast another glance toward Rose. “So Rose, just curious, how did you and Henry meet?”
“Oh, we go way back,” Rose said, as an alarm sounded in Henry’s mind…and then he realized why.
“My name,” he said with all the hauteur he possessed, which was considerable, “as we just established, is Horatio.”
Rose’s mouth dropped open. “Didn’t he say Horatio?” She toyed nervously with the crystal at her throat. Henry could hardly wonder at her slip. No doubt she’d been mentally concocting a story about their acquaintance.
“It’s so loud in here!” Emily exclaimed.
“Sorry, I misspoke,” Aaron said.
“Yeah, we’re, like, very old friends,” Rose told him. “But I hadn’t seen him in ages.”
“Nice.” Aaron looked to Henry. “Well, enjoy your visit to Chicago.” To Jason, he added, “We need to talk more. Call you tonight?”
“Sure thing,” Jason said, raising a hand in farewell.
From where they all sat, they watched him out of their peripheral vision as he headed toward the door. “Eat and chat,” Jason prompted them while looking down, digging his fork into his omelet.
“Is he following one of us?” Ryan asked in an undertone, as Aaron Coleman, now far away from them, exited the restaurant without looking back.
Jason flattened his lips into a thin line. “It’s possible he happened to come here, if he came from the museum. But I don’t like it.”
“Next time, let’s meet by our house,” Emily suggested.
“I was just thinking it had been too long since I’d been to Schaumburg,” Ryan said, putting a dry emphasis on the last word.
“Shut up,” Emily said good-naturedly. “The suburbs are nice.”
“Have you ever been to the Woodfield Mall?” Griffin asked Ryan earnestly. “There are over two hundred stores under one roof! And many places to eat and drink.”
“That is remarkable,” Henry said. Then he noticed that everyone else was smirking at one another.
Griffin nodded. “And there are large lots of pavement, so when the stores are closed, I used to practice driving a car with my father-in-law.” He tilted his chin up proudly as he added, “Yesterday I passed my driver’s license test.”
Emily squeezed his arm and beamed.
“Oh, wow!” Rose exclaimed, looking surprised, as her brother said, “Dude, nice! I bet you crushed it!”
To Henry, crushed it did not sound like a favorable circumstance, when it came to those metal carriages, but he gathered that Griffin had become adroit in driving them.
It had not even occurred to Henry that he himself might be capable of doing such a thing.
But if this medieval knight could do it, certainly Henry would be able to.
“Congrats,” Jason said, raising his coffee cup to Griffin.
Henry found himself deeply curious about what Griffin’s car looked like. He was equally curious about this mall, which he imagined as a sort of Pall Mall that stretched for a few miles. What might so many different shops sell, and why did they share a common roof?
“I would very much like to go to Woodfield, if we meet again,” he told Griffin. “It sounds as though we would not encounter Mr. Coleman there.”
Griffin frowned. “I count Aaron as my good friend, and do not like concealing anything from him. I have told him plainly about my curse and how I came to life again, and he has come to believe me.”
“He almost believes you,” Rose said.
Ryan said sharply, “Well, you can’t talk to him about this.”
“No, I understand,” Griffin said heavily. “He has his duty, and I would not for the wide world cause trouble for Rose.”
“I think it actually helps that he knows her,” Emily said in an undertone. “He’s not going to think of her putting on a disguise and pulling off a heist. I’m kind of shocked, myself.”
Jason said, “And fortunately, because they arrested the wrong person before”—he pointed his fork at Emily in a way that would’ve been insufferably rude in Henry’s time—“and it cost them a ton of money and humiliated them, they’re not arresting anyone without very concrete evidence.”
Ryan said, “Okay, I know how you get the astrolabe to England.” All heads turned toward him.
“You’re going to take a good-sized clock.
” He held his hands about a foot apart. “With a thick case. Open it up, take the mechanisms, all the guts, out of it, and put the astrolabe in there. Then seal it up again.” He sandwiched his hands together.
“And you bring it in your carry-on. Even in the X-ray, it’s going to look like clockwork. ”
“You’re right,” Jason said. “I have the dimensions from the past auction listing, so I can find the right clock. It would just have to look like it hadn’t been tampered with.”
Emily smiled. “If only we knew someone who was really good at that kind of thing.”
Henry felt a keen sense of obligation to these people, still practically strangers, conspiring to get him back to his own time…and he still owed two of them an apology. He would’ve preferred to make it with only Rose there to hear it, but the time seemed right.
“Miss Porter, I should say that I have been uncivil in the past.”
“Forget it,” Emily said quickly, shaking her head.
“I have not forgotten it,” he said. “Nor have I forgotten my words to you, Mr. Beauford, for which I am most heartily sorry.”
Griffin grinned. He was not, it seemed, a man to hold a grudge. “No one understands better than I how perplexing this all must be.”
No doubt that was true. Henry said to Emily, “Rose has told me of your remarkable skill in restoring objects. I will be most grateful for your assistance and expertise.” Could he really say goodbye to Rose, though?
For good? The thought made him feel stretched thin, pulled between one century and another. He added, “Indeed, there is no rush.”
“There definitely isn’t. I can’t even work the thing yet,” Rose reminded them. “We went back in time for five minutes. And what if it glitches like before and leaves Henry in a totally different era? Or in that nothing-place?” She looked to Jason. “There wasn’t any hint in the painting?”
He shook his head. “I inspected the original, and I couldn’t find anything. But now that we know we’ve got the right astrolabe, we’re doing some more research. Maybe we’ll uncover something.”
Rose sat up straighter in her chair. “When you say we, like, how many people are you talking about?”
“A couple other people are researching,” Jason said, which, Henry noted, answered a slightly different question than Rose had meant to ask. “Is there anything you can do to, uh, have a revelation?” He grimaced at his own question. “I don’t know how you do what you do.”
“The problem is, I kind of don’t know, either,” Rose admitted. “But I’ll do a spell asking for inspiration.”
Jason nodded. “Hey, what time is it?”