Chapter Twenty-Three #2
Henry took his watch out of his pocket and clicked the case open. “Twelve forty-three,” he said, in unison with Ryan, who had picked up his phone.
“Nice watch,” Jason said to Henry. “Can I see that for a second?”
Henry turned it to him for a better view.
“He means, can he hold it for a minute,” Rose explained.
“Oh.” An impertinent request, but no one else appeared to think so. “Very well, I suppose,” he grumbled and handed the watch over to him.
Jason turned it in his hand and gave a low whistle. “Beautiful.”
“It is exceptionally well-made,” Henry said. “The watchmaker is a man called Breguet. He was—”
“He made the most famous watch in the world,” Jason said. “La Grande Complication, number 160 for Queen Marie Antoinette.”
“No, that watch was never finished,” Henry said, surprised that Jason had heard of it. “Because the queen—well.” It would be bad manners to speak of a lady’s beheading at the breakfast table.
Jason grinned. “It was. Breguet died in 1823, but his son finished the work.” He closed the case of the watch as carefully as though it were made of spun sugar.
“Be careful with that, Your Grace. You’re walking around with a million dollars in your pocket, easy.
” Rose’s eyes widened. As Henry put his watch back into his pocket, he supposed that a million dollars must be a lot.
“I’ve got to get going,” Jason said, leaving money on the table.
“Wait,” Rose said to him. “What I was going to ask before is, how many people are in your group, total?”
“Not enough,” Jason said dryly.
Emily nodded and reached for her purse. “We should get going, too.”
Ryan said, “I just have one other question.” He turned to Rose. “Horatio?”
“It was the first thing I thought of!” she protested.
Henry thought, Because you’re Charlotte.
He asked, “Rose, do you remember my middle name?”
“It’s Leighton. No, that’s part of your last name,” she corrected herself. “You never told me. What is it?”
“Is it weirder than Horatio?” Ryan asked.
Henry smiled. “I will decline to say.”
He would tell Rose later. Believing so many things could be coincidences, at this point, seemed more fanciful than the theory that Rose was his beloved late wife incarnated. This was why her spell had been able to draw him across time and space.
Rose left the balance of what was owed for the breakfast, explaining that it was also Jason’s money.
As they got to their feet, Ryan said, “Hey, Henry, I got you some books.” He handed Henry the canvas bag he’d been carrying.
“A few on quantum physics, one on the many-worlds interpretation, one on cosmology and particle physics…You don’t have to read them, but, you know. ”
Henry dug into the bag. “Thank you. These are different from the ones I got from the library. I wished I’d gotten more about quantum physics in particular.” Hopefully, this meant that Ryan didn’t completely blame him for getting Rose involved in a crime. “I will return them soon.”
“Whenever.”
As they moved toward the door, Griffin said to Henry in a low voice, “May I have a word?”
“Of course,” Henry said, and they fell a few steps back from the others.
“I understand that you have a strong attachment to our dear Rose. If you sold that watch, you would have enough to begin a new life here. That’s what I did with my armor.”
Henry wasn’t surprised at the suggestion. “I mean no offense to say that you and I are very different men.”
Griffin’s eyebrows raised. “I take no offense whatsoever. Nonetheless, like you, I once had a rank and station.”
“It is not just that,” Henry said, though he would’ve been lying if he’d said being the Duke of Beresford had no pull over him.
“I have many reasons not to stay here.” He did not care to belabor the fact, for instance, that if he had no hope of contributing to humanity’s store of knowledge, and was less capable than any man he met, he had no purpose.
Then he noticed Griffin’s gaze was fixed ahead of them. At the front door of the restaurant, Rose had turned back, and she had a stricken expression on her face.
There was nothing else for it. She’d have to come back to his time with him. His happiness would be far greater than ever before, and he would be the kind of husband he wished he’d been. The somber grandeur of Everly Park would become a sparkling paradise.
Her memories of their previous life were still inside her, somehow. Here and there, they showed up, like tendrils of ivy poking out between the stones of a wall. How could he make her remember?
—
After they got back to her apartment and Rose had shut the door behind them, Henry pulled Rose to him for a kiss.
He had her full attention immediately: she wrapped her arms around his neck and allowed him to part her lips and taste her with a languorous stroke of his tongue.
He cupped a gentle hand around the nape of her neck, savoring her kiss and her tiny sigh when he released her.
“Shall we go into your bedroom?” he murmured.
She nodded. Over the past couple of weeks, there had been a high-spirited quality to their lovemaking, a defiant exuberance, but there was nothing playful about her manner now.
The idea of parting from her was nearly unbearable to him, and he knew it weighed heavily on her, too.
It gave her a solemn look, despite her yellow dress.
Once they were in the bedroom, he tugged at it and she pulled it off easily over her head.
Not wanting a stitch of clothing between them, he undressed with brisk efficiency as she did the same.
Then he pulled her close, reveling in the feel of her warm, satin-soft naked body next to his.
He cupped the back of her head and kissed her again, in a way that would not let her doubt his passion and adoration.
She was running her hands over his upper arms and shoulders and down his chest. She had no idea how much he loved her touch.
How it made him feel strong and healed and whole.
He’d believed that love was forever lost to him. Then she’d plucked him out of time and space and set his soul alight. Now he needed to help her understand the most astonishing thing he’d ever learned, in all his studies of natural wonders: that nothing had been lost, after all.
She gently pushed him on the bed and, kneeling next to him, kissed him again, her sandy-brown curls falling on his naked chest and shoulders.
When he attempted to roll her on her back in order to do the many things to her that he had in mind, she resisted, reaching down to curve her hand over his cock.
It jerked under her touch and he took in a quick breath.
“This doesn’t have to be all about me, you know,” she murmured as she circled her fingers around it and stroked it, immobilizing him. Then she smiled. “Which I never expected to say in bed.”
Maybe it should’ve troubled him: the fact that she’d been with other men.
But even if she had once been Charlotte, she was thoroughly and completely Rose, a woman who hadn’t known him until recently and had owed him no loyalty.
And at any rate, she compared him favorably to the others—whoever they had been—and that was not especially his business, as long as he was the last.
All thought flew out of his head as she slipped a leg over him and straddled him, her slick heat flush against his cock.
She rubbed herself up and down it, and he let out an involuntary groan.
Was she going to mount him from on top? He had hardly expected it, and his body was more than willing, but he could not let this time go too quickly.
“Come up here,” he said patting the mattress right next to his head. “Kneel over me.”
Her eyes widened. “Okay, but I’ve never done that.”
“Are you sure?” He wanted to tell her that she had.
She shot him a wry look. “I think I’d remember.”
That gave him an ache of longing in his chest. “Well, you’ll remember this,” he said and patted the bed again.
“Why do I get the feeling that you’re right about that?
” she teased as she did what she was told, moving up and gingerly setting one knee on each side of his head, treating him to a superb view of her creamy thighs and rosy, glistening sex.
His neglected cock was hard and aching, but it could wait.
In the bedroom, as in his studies, patience and focus were his virtues.
He set about making her feel more at ease, reaching up with both hands to gently stroke the sides of her breasts.
“Were you aware, Miss Novak,” he said, kissing one of her satiny thighs, “that every inch and every angle of you is lovely?”
She gave a breathless giggle. “I wasn’t, actually.”
He kissed her other thigh, very high up, inducing a delicious squirm. Encouraged by that, he nibbled on her thigh, fully aware that his unshaven jaw was brushing against her folds. The scent of her lush arousal was enough to drive him half mad.
“It’s true,” he murmured. “I’m astonished that you’ve never noticed.” He pinched her nipples hard, making her squeak.
He paused. “Too rough?” So far she’d responded just as he’d expected at every turn, but he was still watchful for variances.
“No.”
He reached down between her legs and dragged the pad of his thumb across her most sensitive place, eliciting a needy sound from her that he loved.
Two of his fingers delved into her, and she sighed with pleasure.
She reached behind her to caress the side of his torso as his fingers worked her, and he reveled in her gasps and rising cries.
Then he transferred his hands to her hips and attempted to pull her to him. “Come down here to me.”
She resisted, half joking, “I’m worried I’m going to smother you to death.”
Who would’ve guessed that his modern libertine could be so timid? Amused, he said, “If one could choose a way to go…”
She laughed. “You’re not making me feel better!”
“How can I, if I can’t reach you?” he asked reasonably. “Just a little lower, please.”
She obeyed, neatly positioning herself just an inch from his mouth.
He lashed his tongue across her sensitive bud. She reflexively jerked, and he held her hips more firmly and did it again.
“Goodness gracious,” Rose breathed.
Rose did not say goodness gracious. He’d not heard anyone say it in this era, in fact.
But Charlotte did. He’d heard her whisper it and moan it countless times. His heart slammed in his chest. Maybe, with just the right nudge, Rose would remember.
He stroked his fingers inside her again and murmured, “Charlotte.”