Out of the Blue (A Regency Time Travel Romance) (19 page)

Cassandra pushed aside the question with an
impatient wave of her hand as she watched an enormous black
carriage pass by and tried her best to catch a glimpse of its
occupants. “Later, Marcus, later. It’s my turn to ask
questions.”

“Ah, the ‘liberated female.’ Her exemplary
manners are an unending delight,” Marcus said, easing his equipage
into the line of vehicles that were making their way down the
route du roi,
that name long ago corrupted to Rotten Row.
“What is it you wish to know, imp?”

With the tip of her tongue poking through her
lips, Cassandra concentrated on the people moving toward them. She
scanned each passerby anxiously in the hope she might see Beau
Brummell, or the Green Man, or even another Fashionable Impure.
Living in Manhattan, where it wasn’t unusual to see famous people
walking the streets or even jogging through the park, Cassandra had
become marginally blasé about celebrities. But these people weren’t
just celebrities—they were the stuff of which history had been
made! “Who’s that?” she asked eagerly, pointing at an extremely
handsome young gentleman astride a large gray horse. “Is he
anybody?”

Marcus turned and waved at the man, who
smiled broadly as he passed by. “That, my dear, is the Marquess of
Anglesey. I’ve heard that he is off to join our troops next week.”
He shook his head. “So many of our best are leaving, and Anglesey
is one of our brightest.”

Cassandra’s smile slowly evaporated and her
head drooped toward her breast as she abruptly lost much of her
enthusiasm for the ride. “The Marquess of Anglesey. Marcus—he loses
a leg at Waterloo,” she said dully. “I still remember his name
because he had the leg buried on the battlefield and then wrote a
poem about it. One of my authors used it in her book about the
battle.”

She looked up at Marcus, tears standing in
her eyes. “It was a great poem, Marcus—funny and optimistic. I can
still remember the last stanza. ‘And now in England, just as gay as
in the battle brave, he goes to rout, review and play, with one
foot in the grave.’ Damn! I don’t think I like this anymore. Can we
go home now? Marcus?”

“In a moment, my dear,” he answered, his
voice tight, his light touch on the reins urging the horses forward
along the drive. Obviously her information had disturbed him. “It
will take some time to get free of this traffic.”

They rode in silence for some minutes.
Cassandra’s delight in a scene filled with rotund, rouged dowagers
in turbans and elegant dandies wearing outlandish greatcoats that
sported buttons as big as dinner plates was dampened by the
knowledge that everyone she saw—each man, each woman, and even the
occasional child—was already dead. Their fate had been decided more
than a century before Cassandra had been born. They would die in
battles that might have been prevented, from simple diseases for
which there was not yet a cure, or as a result of natural disasters
about which they had no foreknowledge. Their lives, their hopes,
their dreams, their sorrows—they were all nothing more than dry
data recorded in books. These people weren’t alive. Not really.
They were history. They just didn’t know it.

Like the handsome, smiling Marquess of
Anglesey. If only the English and their allies had guarded
Bonaparte better on his first island prison—then he would not have
escaped, and there never would have been a Waterloo. Think of the
lives that could have been saved!

Cassandra laid a hand on Marcus’s arm. “Can’t
we change any of it, Marcus? Isn’t there anything we can do?”

“I don’t know,” he answered solemnly “I just
don’t know. That’s the most damnable part about this entire
business. I don’t really know why you’re here. I don’t know why I
seem to have been chosen to become a part of your adventure. Are
you here to change history—or to become a part of it? Or have we
merely met by accident, inexorably drawn to each other over the
centuries? I would like to believe that, but it might be too
simple, too selfish on my part.” He looked at her, his dark eyes
troubled. “I just don’t know.”

Cassandra felt herself becoming mulish—or at
least that was the expression her mother used whenever she saw
Cassandra’s lips compressed into a tight line and her eyes narrowed
into slits, “You know what, Marcus?” she asked, looking across the
park to where the Marquess of Anglesey was conversing with a pretty
young thing dressed from head to toe in sunny yellow. “I don’t
care. Oh, I
did.
But not now, not anymore. I just don’t give
a good goddamn about any deep-seated reason behind my presence. I’m
here, Marcus—and as long as I am, I’m going to try to help these
people.”

“Is that so, Cassandra?” Marcus’s face had
also changed—he had tilted his head belligerently and raised his
brows in question. “And how do you propose to go about ‘helping
these people’? I confess, I am at a loss as to how to begin.”

Cassandra could barely contain herself. Idea
after idea exploded in her brain, then took a number and got in
line to announce themselves out of her mouth. “I could tell them
about how stupid it is to go around bleeding people who have
already damn near bled to death. I could teach the women Lamaze—I
edited a book on Lamaze, you know—and maybe teach physicians to
wash their hands so there wouldn’t be so many women dying in
childbirth. I could get them started on experiments with moldy
bread, so they could discover penicillin. Marcus, you remember what
I told you about modern medicine, don’t you? I could even help them
set up a Social Security system that would give them money for
their old age; then so many soldiers and older people and sick
children wouldn’t have to live on the streets. I could explain that
war is no real answer. I could—”

“Enough!”

Cassandra looked at Marcus, and saw that he
was very, very angry. What was the matter with him? He had
questioned why she was here. Well, now she was telling him.
“Enough? It’s not nearly enough. I’m just getting started! For
crying out loud, Marcus, can’t you see? Don’t you understand? I
could
save
these people! Me, little old Cassandra Kelley
from Edison, New Jersey! God, Marcus—this is terrific!”

“Are you quite through?”

Cassandra shrugged. “For the moment,” she
said, wondering why she had never noticed how stern Marcus could
look—almost more imposing than her high school principal, and that
guy could freeze lava at fifty paces. “What’s the matter,
Marcus—jealous? I mean, you’ve got all those bottles and books and
theories back in your study, and so far you haven’t been able to do
anything to change the world. Does it bother you that I can do what
you can’t?”

Marcus pulled the phaeton out of line and
stopped it beneath a tree, using one booted foot to press on the
wooden brake lever before turning to her, a tic working in his left
cheek. “You ignorant, insufferable little chit,” he ground out from
between clenched teeth. “Haven’t you learned anything in the weeks
we’ve been together? And it was you who told me that time travelers
can’t change anything.”

Cassandra rolled her eyes in exasperation.
“Is that all? That was in the movies, Marcus. Nobody has ever
traveled through time before—not really. Anything I said about
changing things comes from books or movies.
Fiction,
Marcus.
But this isn’t fiction. We’re talking
facts
here, buddy. I
was born in 1967 and I’m living in 1812! This is a first—a
breakthrough.”

“And the Princes? Have you forgotten the
Royal Princes, the reason I was investigating that room in the
White Tower in the first place?”

He almost had her stumped, but Cassandra
rallied. “Okay, so maybe I’m not the first—if that really happened.
I mean, except for that old diary, you have absolutely no proof the
Princes really traveled through time. Surely there would be some
other evidence somewhere. And two bodies were found buried beneath
the stairs.”

“Two bodies, yes,” Marcus argued reasonably,
“but two bodies that were never actually proved to be those of the
Princes. Remember my ancestor’s diary, Cassandra. According to it,
the bodies were of two innocent servant boys the gaolers killed in
order to cover the fact that they’d bungled their mission that
night. Think about it a moment, Cassandra. Can you truly envision
Green and Forest reporting to their superiors, saying that—just as
they were about to do the dirty deed—a strange blue mist came
rolling in and whisked the Princes away? Oh, yes. Oh, yes, indeed.
I can certainly see how their superiors would have taken that bit
of news. No! Green and Forest valued their necks too much to try to
fob anyone off with such an impossible story.”

“Yeah, well, maybe,” Cassandra admitted,
hating his rationality in the midst of her euphoria. “But that
doesn’t really prove anything. I still think I can change history.
And I still say you’re
jealous!
”

“I will not dignify that assertion with a
denial, Cassandra. But I will ask you a question, if I may. While
you were indulging yourself in your juvenile ranting and raving,
you mentioned something about being able to help the elderly, the
ill, and—was it the soldiers? Yes, I believe it was the soldiers,
such as those we passed on the way to the park, men who have lost
limbs or eyes in the war and have been reduced to living in the
gutter. Are you saying that your generation, your age, has
succeeded in solving these problems? There are no hungry walking
your streets, no children begging on the corners, no wandering men
without homes?”

Why did Marcus always have to be so
nit-picking, so quick to poke at every little detail? “No,”
Cassandra countered angrily, “I’m
not
saying that we’ve
solved all of those problems—but at least we care, which is more
than I can say for most of the people in your time. At least we
know it’s wrong to allow innocent people to suffer just because
they’re old, or sick, or... or—oh, you know what I mean.”

Marcus raised his gaze to the sky, as if
seeking an answer to his questions there. “I see. People in your
time are still suffering. But they are better off than the same
sort of people are in
my
time, because more of your populace
care
for the plight of these distressed individuals. And
does
caring
fill their bellies, Cassandra? Does
caring
give them their own hearth and home? Does
caring
provide them with medicine? Or could it be that your
age and mine share many of the same problems and that in nearly two
hundred years of progress, you have taken no more than one step
forward—multiplying the
care
you feel for these
unfortunates—yet, in reality, changing nothing.”

“God, you’re insufferable!” Cassandra longed
to hit him. Not simply because he was insufferable, but because he
was sharp as a tack. “Oh, all right,” she admitted at last, “so
maybe we haven’t got all the answers. Maybe we’re not perfect. But
if we could go back—start earlier—maybe 1992 would be different.
Maybe, if I can change history in 1812, the problem will have been
solved
by 1992. Now do you understand, Marcus?”

He frowned. “I’ll consider it,” he said
stiffly, his back still so ramrod straight that she knew he was
still angry. Whether he was angry with his own confusion or the
fact that she had dared to argue with him wasn’t clear to her. All
she really knew was that their kisses in the music room now seemed
to have taken place a long time ago. “But for now, we should be
heading back to Grosvenor Square. You must be chilled to the bone
now that the sun is fading.”

Cassandra smiled, moving on the seat so that
she snuggled closer to his shoulder. “Only my nose, Marcus,” she
said, laughing. “The rest of me is warm as toast. I like a good
argument.”

“I would never have guessed it,” Marcus
answered, his tone dry, his intention obviously sarcastic, so that
for the first time since they had left Grosvenor Square Cassandra
felt a distinct chill in the air. He lifted the reins to prompt the
horses into movement, then dropped them. “God’s teeth!” he
exclaimed feelingly. “Damn and blast! Here come Lady BIakewell and
that idiot Austin. Cassandra, if you have a modicum of
sense
left in your argumentative head, for the love of heaven,
keep
your mouth shut.
”

“The Reverend Mr. Austin?” Just what she
didn’t need. Cassandra groaned as she looked to her left and saw
the minister approaching on foot, his long strides all but chewing
up the ground, his pencil-thin body wrapped in a voluminous black
cloak. He looked like one of the Tower ravens, only hungrier.
“Who’s Lady Blakewell?” she asked directing her attention to the
almost grotesquely fat woman doing her best to keep up with the
vicar. Her painted face and outlandish purple cape and matching
turban reminded Cassandra of the guy who played the dancing bunch
of grapes in one of the Fruit of the Loom underwear commercials.
“Is she another old lady trying to buy her way into heaven?”

“If it were only that easy,” Marcus said,
already removing his hat and doing his best to bow from a sitting
position. “Lady Blakewell is a renowned hostess, most probably
because it is easier to appear at one of her functions than to
discover the next morning that your absence made you her latest
target for gossip. And she is highly ambitious. I believe she has
her eye on becoming the Regent’s next inamorata. He likes them old,
you see, and plump. Now be quiet, Cassandra, and we may yet get out
of this with a whole skin.”

“My
dear
marquess!” Lady Blakewell,
visibly struggling to regain her breath, rested one gloved hand
against a wheel of the phaeton and smiled up at its occupants. “How
perfectly coincidental to have found you here, just as the good
Reverend Mr. Austin was telling me that you have a stranger under
your roof. Is this she? Lovely child. You must bring her with you
tonight when you come to my little party. But first you must
introduce us. Come, come, my dear man. Do the pretty as your dear
late mother taught you.”