Cecil looked in her direction at the sound of her voice. Through the crowd, he saw her. He furrowed his brow as if he doubted what he was seeing. She turned her face away.
“Cassandra!” She heard him cry. “Ganymede!”
People laughed. He was silly, they must have thought, mistaking a real person for a character in the play. She climbed up on the carriage step. It was irresistible not to have one last glance. She looked his way. Their eyes met. She threw him a smile, and a tip of her hat, then told the driver to go, and closed the door.
Now, to go home and get Professor Carver, James, and the MIT Board to agree to her next journey.
Epilogue
Tuscany had barely changed in the hundred years since Cassandra had time traveled to Siena. The industrial age was still a long ways off, and little else would make a mark on the Italian landscape before that. She looked out over the city of Florence: its red tile roofs, Brunelleschi’s Duomo the dominant feature, topping off the magnificent Basilica of Santa Maria del Fiore. Next to it rose the tower of Giotto, another green and red marbled Renaissance marvel. Other grand churches punctuated the skyline, amongst those she recognized, Santa Croce and San Lorenzo, as well as the enormous Palazzo Vecchio in the Piazza della Signoria, and of course, Santa Maria Novella, which had been her starting point.
It was generous of her son and her boss to agree to let her do this. The Board hadn’t been hard to convince as soon as they realized she would pay for the building and maintaining of the portal in Florence herself. However, the two most important men in her life hadn’t been so keen on the plan. She wanted a year, she’d told them―for the portal to stay open one year while she went to Florence to be with Lauro. She promised she would come back by the time the year was out. If she didn’t, they were to assume she was dead and close the portal. That wasn’t going to happen though. It wasn’t her destiny to die in Renaissance Italy.
The women of Florence sported much the same fashions as the English at that time: the snug, flat bodices, the ruffs, the wide skirts held out by farthingales―or at least, the wealthier women were dressed that way. Cassandra was attired as someone of the lower class: a bodice that laced up the front over a chemise with long, blousy sleeves, and a full skirt with petticoats beneath. She wore a scarf tied over her hair. Her fair complexion stood out, as did her beauty, but she’d kept her head down and walked quickly as she’d traversed the city with purpose, her few belongings in a covered basket on her arm, her money sewed into her undergarments, and a knife at the ready in her pocket. She’d been whistled at and propositioned more than once in the twenty minutes or so it took her to get from the portal exit in the hidden alcove at the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella to the Arno River. However, after crossing the Ponte Vecchio, she’d asked an old lady for directions to Bellosguardo, and the woman had pointed her to a nearby road that led up a hill. As Cassandra ascended, making her way past the patchwork farms and fields with wildflowers blooming and the scent of jasmine in the air, a feeling of calm overtook her. She was now able was able to look back over Florence with the relief of having made her way through it without incident.
Opposite the city, at the top of the hill, she spotted the villa: a pinkish-tan stone building with arched doorways in the front and a square tower in the middle. It was surrounded by olive orchards and vineyards. A man stood in the field in front of the house, working with some kind of tripod apparatus. She would recognize his broad shoulders, his long, dark hair, and his chiseled features anywhere. He appeared to be looking through a telescope on top of the tripod. He swung it from left to right, and, as its scope took her in, he stopped and looked up with his naked eye. He stood motionless. He looked in the telescope again, and looked up again.
“Cassandra?” he yelled.
“Lauro!”
“Is it possible?” he shouted in Italian. “Is it you, my Contessa?”
She ran to him, dropping her basket on the grass. “Lauro,” she cried again.
He galloped down the hill and threw his arms around her, folding her into his embrace. “You’ve come back to me,” he laughed into her hair, “you’ve come back!”
She brought her face to his and their lips met. They kissed long and deeply, a kiss filled with the passion only separation could know.
Finally, he drew back. “But how?” he whispered.
“I have much to tell you,” she said in his language. “But first, tell me, do you want me? May I stay?”
“What are you asking me?” he said with a chuckle, his voice soft. “Here, sit.” He drew her to the ground where they sat close amid the foot-high grass.
“I am here for one year, if you’ll have me, and, that is, if I will not interfere with your work or…anything else in your life.”
He smiled. “There is no woman in my life, if that is what you want to know.”
She breathed a deep sigh of relief. “Yes, that is one thing. And I hope to be a help to you, not a hindrance. But if Galileo would not approve of my being here, I will go.”
“He is in Paris indefinitely. I am sure not to see him again for many, many months. I will write him though, and tell him about you. That is to say, I will tell him something. He will be happy I have found love. He is my good friend and we confide many things to each other.”
“I am certain you did not tell him about your journey to the future,” she teased.
“No, that I did not.” He took her hand and traced a design with his finger. “Just a year? That is all I have with you?”
“Yes. I am not prepared to leave my life behind forever. But the time we had together before was not enough. I needed more. Perhaps I am being selfish to think I could come and disrupt your life for a year and then leave you again, but it’s all I have. Can we do it? Can we be together for that limited time and then part again?”
“To have you in my life, even for that brief time, is more than I ever dreamed possible. I cannot believe I am looking into your eyes again, my dearest love. Yes, stay with me, if only for a year.”
He leaned in and kissed her again, gently pressing her to the ground. The sun was sinking, and the sky began to glow pink. She wrapped her arms around his neck and welcomed his caresses. Though she couldn’t be with him forever, she could be with him for now. All other thoughts faded as she melted into the kiss and his embrace.
In his arms, she was home.
The Time Mistress Series
Book One – The Time Baroness
A romantic, time-travel adventure set in Jane Austen's England. This is the first story featuring Dr. Cassandra Reilly, a scientist from the year 2120, as she embarks upon a journey to England of 1820.
Book Two – The Time Heiress
Dr. Reilly is surprised to find herself time-traveling again, this time to New York of 1853, accompanying the internationally acclaimed artist, Evie Johnston
Book Three – The Time Contessa
An adventure to Siena, Italy, 500 years into the past and 100 years into the future. Something has gone wrong with an historical timeline, causing a famous painting to disappear from the world’s conscious memory, surfacing only in people’s dreams.
Book Four – The Time Duchess
Sometimes, time travel isn’t all it’s cracked up to be as James Reilly discovers when he journeys to Elizabethan England to solve a long debated question: Did Shakespeare really write the plays attributed to him? When his investigation leads to nothing but a violent confrontation between him and the Bard, he returns to the future to ask the most renowned time-traveler of the day, who also happens to be his mother, Dr. Cassandra Reilly, to go with him to London of 1598 and use her charms to make inroads where he has failed.
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The Time Duchess (The Time Mistress Book 4) Page 25
