“That’s even worse! You expose yourself to high risk every time you jump, and I know something about that. I know what it’s like to head into battle time after time. The more times you do it and get to breathe afterwards, the more you let down your guard. You get casual.”
Aran crossed his arms. His eyes were narrowed but he wasn’t angry. “How did you get around that?” he asked, his tone one of curiosity. “How did you stay ready every time?”
“That’s beside the point—”
“You’re the one who drew the parallel between battles and jumping, so answer the question. I’m trying to make a point. How did you keep your edge sharp?”
She pointed at him. “Just that. It’s an edge. You keep it honed.” She pushed her hands through her hair. “Training. Preparation. Ritual.” She dropped her hands. “Remembering the fallen,” she added softly.
Aran nodded. “And how would you prepare your unit for time travel?”
She tried to think it through. “I guess…there really isn’t a training program, is there?”
“Except jumping itself,” Aran added. “And listening to those who also jump.”
“But you’re never there to listen to them.”
He scowled. “I had over twenty years of it, growing up. I could repeat all their adventures to you verbatim.” He gripped her elbow and drew her toward him, which made her body thrum. “You really think I’d put you at risk?” he added, his voice low.
Her middle jumped. As he put his arm around her back, she scrambled to find something to say in response.
“I wouldn’t risk anyone,” he added. “Not even me.”
The let down was almost physical. She dropped her gaze as time took them, glad of the black nothingness that dropped over them, halting all her thoughts.
Chapter Eight
It took a moment to regather her thoughts, and sound was the first thing to register, but the stench of something unspeakable registered even before she identified the clop of horses, somewhere behind her.
Jesse wrinkled her nose. “My god, what is that?”
Aran stepped away from her. “A dog died in this alley a few days ago. It keeps people away. That’s why I used it.”
Not being squashed up against him let her hear the ambient sounds clearly. But she forgot to listen to the charming sound of horse hooves and the jingle of harnesses, as she took in Aran’s appearance
He wore…well, it was a suit, but not any suit she’d ever seen on a man except in the movies. “Victorian?” she guessed.
Aran looked down at himself. “Close,” he said as he lifted the front of the dark jacket to examine the shirt and vest beneath. He wore a tie and a collared shirt, but the collar was rounded and the tie was matte black, not the silky multicolored ties she was used to. “Edwardian.”
“Where are we?” She twisted to look behind her. Already, the aroma of the poor unfortunate dog was fading in her awareness. Her twisting was halted by a rigid pushing against her breasts and hips. She gasped and looked down at herself and brought her hand up to her waist.
Aran chuckled. “They still wore corsets in 1906.”
“That’s where we are?” She prodded and felt stiffness beneath the woven jacket she wore. The jacket was a plain light blue color, with a darker blue braid stitched in swirls and flourishes along the hem and up both sides of the front. The jacket was buttoned to her neck, and she could feel the soft scratch of lace under her chin. She was wearing a shirt beneath the jacket, too. Lace peeped at the edges of the jacket sleeve. The sleeve of the jacket had the same piping swirls over it as the hem, but narrower.
Jesse tried to bend to look at her feet, but her waist didn’t move and the corset dug into her hips. Bending made her conscious of the light weight on her head. She felt there, and discovered a small hat was pinned to her hair, which was piled upon the back of her head in loops and curls.
“Bend from the hips,” Aran advised her gravely, although she could hear his amusement. “Or don’t bend at all. Ladies don’t, as a rule.”
“I want to see what I’m wearing,” she muttered, and bent experimentally. It was awkward, but she caught a glimpse of a skirt that fell to nearly brush the dirt she stood upon. More flourishes decorated the skirt. Folds of the skirt fell forward as she bent, swirling around her feet. “God, there’s yards of this thing!”
“You look very nice,” Aran assured her. “Check your pockets. See if your gloves are there.”
“My…” She felt around her hips and discovered there were pockets in the skirt. She felt inside them. More lace. She withdrew the fragile looking gloves and put them on. That was when she discovered the plain gold ring on her left hand.
She stared at it, her heart thudding.
“Mmm…fortunate window dressing,” Aran murmured. “Young unmarried ladies don’t traipse around New York on their own, here and now, and I was going to pass as your husband, anyway.”
“My…” She realized dimly that she had repeated herself. “You really have to be my husband?”
Aran’s expression didn’t change. He was clean-shaved, she realized with a jolt. “It makes everything a lot easier if I am. Trust me. You’ll soon understand.” He pulled a fob watch out of his pocket, flipped the lid open and checked the time. “It is just gone nine-thirty. A good time to check their new stock, before anyone else gets there.”
“Huh?”
“You say ‘excuse me’. No one grunts here.” He held out his elbow.
“Really?” Jesse said, looking at it.
“Really,” he assured her. “It’s not a game, Jesse. This is real. Take my elbow.”
She slid her lace-covered fingers beneath his arm and followed him along the alley. They stepped out on to a New York street unlike any she’d ever seen.
Her first impression was that streets were wider in this time, but after a few steps, she realized that it was simply that the buildings were not all high-rises, here, turning the street into a canyon. She could see lots of blue sky overhead…and no smog.
The traffic along the street was louder than modern New York, but it was a completely different sort of loud. Horses with carriages and carts behind them, and horses bearing riders in their saddles trotted and cantered along the road, which was an ochre-colored dirt. Jesse itched to access a computer and research what the surface really was. It wasn’t simply gravel.
Down the middle of the street were two sets of train lines. Then she saw what travelled upon them. Trams. Street cars. They were painted a dark brown, with cream colored roofs. A tram passed by them as she watched a man run over to it, put his foot upon the rear step and swing himself up into the vehicle.
And everywhere, high overhead, there were wires. They crisscrossed the street and ran down the center of it. The center ones were used by the trams to draw power through the mechanism that ran along the wires. More wires connected to buildings and ran from pole to pole.
Most of the people moving along the sidewalks were men, wearing suits of a similar vintage to Aran’s. The few women Jesse spotted were with men, holding their arms just as she was.
It was reassuring that Aran was familiar enough with this time to know how to behave and guide her, too. She relaxed enough to gaze about her with some interest. She was familiar with New York, enough to recognize the building ahead of them, and that one over there on the right…
“Why, this is Canal Street!” she said softly. Most of the buildings she knew from modern day Canal Street were missing, and there was a great swathe of open land ahead. But the two she had spotted were still there, over a hundred years later. “Why did you bring me here?”
“Canal Street and Bowery, just down there, is the center of the jewelry trade.”
“The Diamond District is on 47th Street.”
“In the year we came from, yes. It moved there, moves there, in a few years. But in 1906 it is here.”
A man passed them, wearing a suit as clean and neat as Aran’s, while all the other men Jesse had s
een were more slovenly and wrinkled. The man touched his fingers to his hat brim as he passed.
So did Aran.
His familiarity with the environment let her relax a little more. “And we are here, why?”
“To buy a diamond.”
“I don’t have my credit card on me.” She didn’t actually own a credit card, but that wasn’t the point.
Aran tapped his jacket with his spare hand and she heard the same little jingle she’d heard when he’d pulled the suede bag out from behind the logs, back in England.
Jesse nearly stopped right there on the pavement. She made herself keep walking, her fingers digging into his arm. “How can you have that here and now?” she hissed, lowering her voice. “We’re wearing local, contemporary clothing, which means this is a linear jump, which it can’t be, because neither of us was alive in 1906, and you don’t get to take things back with you on linear jumps.”
“It’s not linear, it’s compound,” Aran said.
“You mean this isn’t even our own world?”
“It is. This is a different sort of compound than the one you’re thinking of.” His tone was infuriatingly calm. “We jumped back in time, but instead of jumping straight back using someone’s memories for bookmarks, I used the timescape to make the jump.”
“What, you invented a whole new type of jump?” Her voice was getting squeaky.
“I didn’t invent this one. Sydney did.” Aran even sounded amused, damn him. “How do you think she got Liberty back to her own time?” He glanced at her, his eyes beneath the brim of the hat dark and glittering with amusement. He was laughing at her.
“I…” Jesse shut her mouth. She’d heard the story about Sydney’s jump back to medieval Egypt more than once. She tried again. “I guess I never actually catalogued that she’d done something different.”
“You got stuck on the risk she faced when she got there, and how hard it was for her to make the jump to go right.”
Jesse realized she was squeezing his arm again. She made her fingers relax. “Yes,” she admitted. Was this the difference, then? She absorbed the warnings inherent in the stories, while Aran deconstructed them like…like teaching manuals. “But that’s the whole point of your family telling us about those jumps, isn’t it? It’s what stories are all about. Even fairy stories were warnings to little kids not to wander about the forest by themselves.”
“Or how to wander the forest and not get found by the wolf,” he added. “Or how to recognize the wolf even if he’s wearing grandma’s clothes.”
Jesse gave up. “You are incorrigible, Aran.”
“So I’m told.” He smiled, not looking even a little bit upset by the judgement.
Just then, Jesse spotted a car. An automobile, she corrected herself as she stared at the vehicle as it putted by. She wasn’t the only person staring at it, she realized. It was black, upright, with a canvas roof and enormous wheels. She watched it, dazed.
“Here we are…” Aran murmured. A building with storefronts was just ahead of them, with pretty awnings over the sidewalk, and very clean windows beneath.
He headed for the door of the store in the middle of the building. As they reached the door, a man came out and nodded at them.
“Good day, sir,” Aran said, his tone polite.
“It is, indeed,” the man replied. “Ma’am.” He nodded at Jesse.
Jesse froze, her mind blank. It didn’t matter that she’d watched dozens of historical movies and read and researched history for her own books. Now she was actually here, the right thing to say in response to a simple acknowledgement deserted her. She couldn’t think of a damn word.
The man turned away, apparently unconcerned that she couldn’t unchock her mouth and speak.
Jesse swallowed and glanced at Aran, who held the front door of the store open for her. He was laughing at her again. She could tell, even though he wasn’t smiling. It was in his eyes.
She made herself stir and move into the store. It was a small place, with glass counters holding jewelry and watches and other expensive baubles she couldn’t begin to identify. The air was very still, in here, and smelled faintly of dust, although she couldn’t see any dust. Somewhere, a clock ticked heavily and, it seemed to her, slowly.
Two other customers were already in the store. The man and woman stood at the largest counter while the store clerk behind it displayed trays of jewelry for the lady. The lady was impeccably dressed. At least, Jesse assumed she was. She had layers and ribbons and lace, a hat with a brim that turned up at the back and another ribbon dangling from that over her abundant dark curls. She rested a gloved hand upon the top of a parasol handle as she examined the jewelry without bending her back to peer at the trays. She had a small handbag hanging over the wrist of the arm propped upon the parasol, dangling against the parasol’s neck.
The back of her skirt and her jacket were voluminous. It wasn’t a bustle. There was just extra fabric there, hanging in folds and giving both garments a very feminine flare.
Jesse realized her own skirt was similarly fashioned. Deliberately, she mimicked the woman, straightening her shoulders and keeping her head up. The corset stopped digging into her hips.
Another man in a sober black suit and tie hurried up to Aran. “How may I help you this morning, good sir?”
“I would like to speak to Mr. Einaudi when he has a moment to spare.” Aran spoke more precisely than he normally did, properly forming his words. His tone was very polite, but there was an implied expectation there. He wasn’t asking to speak to Einaudi. He was demanding to.
The man gave a short, almost-bow with his head and shoulders. “Would you care for refreshments while you wait for Mr. Einaudi?”
Einaudi was clearly the man behind the counter, showing the lady the jewelry.
“My wife would like a cup of tea, thank you,” Aran replied.
Jesse blinked. He hadn’t asked her if she wanted one.
You’ll understand.
The clerk barely looked at her. “At once. Would you care to step this way?” The clerk moved out of the way and waved toward an area at the back of the store. A round table sat beneath a low light, a dark tablecloth over it, and a potted plant with dark green, glossy leaves in the middle of it. Chairs were arranged around it. The clerk pulled out one of the chairs.
Aran ignored the chair, withdrew another and held the back of it.
Jesse realized she was supposed to sit there. She sank onto the chair and remembered to scoop up the yards of skirt and petticoat, so when he pushed in the chair, she didn’t end up sitting on the hems.
She felt very inelegant with her arms akimbo. No wonder someone else had to move the chair for women in these times. There was no way to scoot forward by yourself and not end up skewered by a chair leg.
When she was finally settled with her back straight, Aran sat in the chair the clerk held for him, with a murmured thanks.
The clerk moved through a curtain into a room at the back of the shop. Presumably, to arrange tea.
Jesse found herself watching the woman at the front of the store. While Mr. Einaudi held the trays, she swayed toward the other man—her husband, Jesse guessed—and murmured in his ear.
“The emerald pin,” the man told Mr. Einaudi.
The woman wouldn’t speak directly to Mr. Einaudi, apparently.
She looked effortlessly graceful. Jesse studied her, the way she was standing and holding herself, and how she moved.
When the man came out from the back room, he put the tray he was carrying on the table. A round white china teapot sat upon it, and two cups with saucers.
Jesse turned to Aran. “May I have cream and sugar, please.” She made her voice emerge the same way his had, to make the words a demand, not a question.
Aran looked at the clerk. “Cream and sugar, thank you.”
The clerk gave another bob of his head and went back into the back room and returned with two china pots, one holding sugar and one a beaker bearing what appe
ared to be actual, thick lumpy cream.
She could drink tea if she had to, as long as it was sweet enough to disguise the rusty flavor. She made herself sit still while the clerk poured tea for her and Aran added two spoonfuls of sugar and cream, stirred the cup and put the cup and saucer in front of her.
The pair in the front of the store were winding up their business, the man speaking softly to Mr. Einaudi, while the woman had already moved over to the door, a bored look on her face as she waited.
Jesse picked up the china cup and sipped the tea and was surprised to find that it was stronger than she’d ever tasted and flavorful, too. She sipped carefully, for it was also hot.
A few minutes later, Mr. Einaudi came around from behind the counter and presented himself at the table. “Mr. Gallagher, you are ever timely in your return to my store.”
Jesse blinked. They knew each other?
Aran stood and held out his hand and the two shook. “I heard the Sheminsky arrived from South Africa yesterday and thought I’d stop by and see what you acquired.” He sat once more.
South Africa? Diamonds.
Einaudi clasped his hands together. “I have not had a chance to begin to examine what we received, Mr. Gallagher, let alone arrange for their cutting, and I presume, as you have brought your wife with you today, that you are looking for a finished gem, yes?”
Aran shook his head. “Uncut. Perhaps three carats. I have some sapphires tucked away that can form the setting. An heirloom, Einaudi. I’m sure you’ve looked through the shipment and know exactly the potential of every stone in it. You have an eagle eye, which is why I continue to return.”
Einaudi beamed modestly. “I may have just the thing, if you will excuse me for a moment…?”
Aran inclined his head and the man hurried into the same back room the clerk had disappeared into.
Jesse lowered the cup. “I don’t understand,” she murmured. “Why are you buying a diamond back here and now?”
“You’ll see,” Aran replied in the same low voice. “This entire jump is a demonstration that will make sense once you get to the end of it.” He smiled as Einaudi reappeared with a small black velvet bag in one hand, and a velvet cloth hanging over the other arm.
Kiss Across Chaos Page 9
