Knowing I had entered all the data correctly, I wasn’t even mildly interested in what he was doing, and didn’t even bother to pick my head up to see.
By the time he was done and the machine started whirring and flickering, I had almost fallen into a white-noise coma. I was so entranced by the sound of the clicking keys that, when all went quiet again, it was jarring. My eyes popped open and I saw two separate numbers flashing. The one on the left side of the screen read 6 and the one on the right read 10.
I turned to look at Bacon questioningly, and he peered back at me, that wide, guileless smile wreathing his face.
With a shaking hand, I reached out and clutched the mouse, dragging it to scroll downward. As I read the data he’d entered, I flicked my eyes to Bacon again.
“You sure?” I asked, the weight of this decision heavy in those two words.
“Are you kidding? Of course I’m sure,” he replied without hesitation.
And if there was even the slightest doubt in my mind about my feelings for Dev and what I wanted, it fled as pure joy coursed through me. I leaped to my feet and grabbed Bacon’s hand in mine as we engaged in an impromptu and most excellent dance-off, falling into a gasping, laughing pile on the floor somewhere between the twist and the robot.
Chapter Eight
Lordship, Connecticut, October 31, 1836
The “Farewell to 2010” Buffalo chicken salad and diet cola, followed by a shared pint of Cherry Garcia, had seemed like a good idea at the time. But as I walked up to the front door of the estate, eh, not so much. I felt like I was going to blow chunks. Granted, even if I’d sipped weak tea and eaten toast, I probably would have felt that way. But if I did boot, the fallout of tea and toast would have been much less heinous than what was potentially coming up the pike after Bacon’s and my epic binge.
Bacon stayed back at the inn, waiting for the verdict. He was pretty optimistic, but since that’s his general state of being, it didn’t give me much comfort.
Despite my initial euphoria, during the week of planning that had followed Bacon’s offer, I had gotten progressively less confident about the outcome of this trip. I was still happy that I had a shot at least, but as the look on Dev’s face at the beach that day played like a loop in my mind, I had to wonder—how many times can you hurt somebody before they stop caring? And had I used up all my chances?
I took a deep breath, summoning every last bit of my steely time-pirate resolve, and knocked sharply on the door. A full two minutes passed, and I knocked again, harder this time. And still, another couple minutes later, nothing.
Having gone through the gamut of emotions and working myself up for this moment for two weeks, I was panicked at the thought of walking away. Even if it was just to come back later or the next day. On top of wanting, needing to see Devlin’s face, I also needed to know the ending to the story. If it was a yes, I needed to hear it. And if it was a no, well, I needed to hear that too. I was putting it all on the line. And until I had his answer, I was like an armadillo with its belly exposed—totally vulnerable.
I knocked harder.
Under my pounding fist, the door popped opened and swung wide. I leaned forward and peeked in but saw no one. Where were his servants? And where was Dev?
Almost in answer to my question, a loud banging sound echoed down the long hallway in front of me. It was coming from the workroom.
Trembling from head to toe, I stepped into the foyer and shut the door behind me. As I marched slowly down the hallway toward the bang-bang-banging of a hammer, my apprehension was so great that I felt dizzy. If someone took that opportunity to shout, “Dead man walkin’!” it would not have seemed out of place.
A moment later, I stood in front of the door of Devlin’s workroom. Either the banging had stopped or all the arteries in my brain had exploded from the pressure, and I could no longer hear. I cleared my throat to check which option was the most likely. A loud bang from the other side of the door let me know my brain was in one piece. “Mary?” shouted Devlin.
The panic I felt at the sound of his voice almost sent me tearing ass over teakettle down the hallway and out the door, but the feeling was quickly outweighed by a surge of jealousy. Who the hell was Mary?
“I told you, you didn’t have to come today, I am just going to have some of that cold pie and a—”
The door swung open, and there he was—Devlin of Leister, love of my life, staring down at me in shock. He was a mess. A gorgeous, sexy mess, but a mess nonetheless. His hair stood on end, dark circles ringed haunted eyes and his clothes hung off him as though he hadn’t eaten since I’d seen him last.
Bacon and I had tried to come back to the day after we had left, but the wormhole on the beach had closed, and the best we could do was two weeks later. By the looks of it, it had been a tough two weeks on Devlin. My heart broke just looking at him. I opened my mouth to speak, but he beat me to it.
“Come back for the rest, did you? Do you want me to pack it up for you?” he asked. He shocked me. His tone was so cold. It was if he was someone I had never known.
“No…I just wanted to—”
“What? What did you want to do, Stormy? Bugger up my life some more? Because I think you’ve already proven you’re a smashing success at that.”
At that, my eyes began fill. I turned to walk away, burning with shame and regret. He had every right to feel the way he did. I had screwed it up and now it was too late.
I was halfway to the door before his voice, the one I knew so well, stopped me.
“I won’t tell anyone,” he said softly. “If that’s why you came, I won’t tell anyone. As soon as you left, I burned it all. The blueprints, the notes, everything. Your secret is safe, so you can tell your…benefactor that you did your duty.”
I turned to face him, but he was already turning to head back into the workroom.
My heart thundered at the implications of his words. This wasn’t a definite rejection. He really didn’t know why I was there. So maybe I still had a chance? When I thought he had rejected me just a moment before, it had been so hideously painful that I hesitated for a second, wondering if I could risk putting myself through it again. And then I thought of what Devlin had gone through for me, and what my life would be like without him in it, and I ran toward the workroom door, catching it just before it closed.
“I…I love you,” I stammered at his retreating back, “and I want to stay here with you. Well, not necessarily here, but anywhere, with you. I’m sorry I hurt you. I tried to come back sooner, but the wormhole was closed and I couldn’t get back, and if you forgive me, I’ll, well, I’ll do anything, Dev. Anything. And even if you don’t, I want to tell you what happened that day, and about my life and about time travel,” I finished breathlessly, the words tumbling out of my mouth coming to a halt as he froze, then turned to face me.
I strained to hear him over the pounding of my heart, but he just stood there with his eyes closed, not saying a word. So I kept talking. For the better part of an hour I talked. I told him about Gilly and about his life and his death. I told him about time travel and how it worked and about places I’d been. I even told him about my mother and how she left me. I was terrified to stop, in case he stayed silent. That would be the death knell, the nail in the coffin, Taps bleating from the trumpet. But eventually, I ran out of both steam and saliva, and silence filled the great hallway, nearly suffocating me with its weight.
A long moment passed; then, to my great relief, he spoke.
“Do you want to play a game with me?”
“What kind of game?” I asked, trying to maintain my composure despite the sudden urge to faint.
“A game of guessing.”
“Yes, I do.” I said without hesitation.
“What do you have to wager, then?”
“Well,” I said thoughtfully, trying to sound nonchalant as my entire world clicked into place with an almost audible snap, “I have this emerald ring. It’s got a latch and a secret compartment, i
n the event that you need to poison someone.”
“Sounds intriguing. But I’d rather have the skirt.”
“The skirt I’m wearing?” I asked, feigning shock.
“That’s the one,” he said with a smile. But the smile faded, as he moved to stand in front of me. He reached out to cup my chin in his hand. “Eu te iubeste pentru totdeauna.”
“What does it mean?”
“I will love you forever. And I will, Stormy.”
“I’m not wearing dresses and corsets everyday, I’ll tell you that right now,” I began to babble. “And you can forget all that ‘obey’ stuff too. That’s not how I roll. I can’t cook either. So don’t say I didn’t war—”
“Oh, for the love of God, would you shut up?” he asked. It was a rhetorical question. He pulled me tightly to his chest and planted a searing kiss on my lips.
A long while later, I pulled away. “I will love you forever too, Dev,” I said, my voice shaking. Sucking in a deep, shuddering breath, I allowed the last of the fear and panic that had been my constant companion for the past two weeks slip away. I worked up my best siren’s smile and asked him, “Now, how about that game?”
Epilogue
And so it went that we soon became the Loony Duke and Mad Duchess of Leister. Through with running away from our problems, we moved back to London. With me around town in my britches, hair flying loose, my new nickname was a reasonably good fit. Even so, the locals have really come around to treat us as more of an eccentric novelty than with the previous cruelty they had shown to Dev as a youngster.
To address our desire to effect real change in people’s lives, we opened a safe house for children. They can stay, learn a trade, get a hug, eat three squares and sleep in a warm bed at night. We can’t save them all, but we do our absolute best.
I also finally uncovered the mystery to Devlin’s torture chamber back in Lordship. Once he had inherited his parents’ fortune, he had used much of it to purchase an old asylum. He had stripped it of its outdated, miserable treatment devices and made it into a real hospital where people could go and be safe while doctors tried to learn more about their patients’ psychological disorders.
Devlin kept the items in the hopes of using them to demonstrate the cruelty many mental-health patients were forced to endure. He felt certain that if people saw them and were faced with the brutality of it all, they too would be spurred into taking action. Already, we have two hospitals in England agreeing to try alternative and humane treatments.
I’ve used my goggles once a year for a time-traveling adventure. When we travel now, we go to the past and do a little “collecting” for Gilly’s House. The trips keep my instincts sharp and the coffers full when we have a lot of mouths to feed.
We never go to the future. We’re exactly where we’re meant to be, and the lure to stay would be too strong. In the interest of full disclosure, however, we did go to 2010 one time, right in the beginning. We didn’t stay long, just long enough for me to stock up on a lifetime supply of essentials like Advil and chocolate. Devlin got to try pizza and ice cream. He also got a look at automobiles, television, an airplane and porn. He is infinitely curious about all things twenty-first century. I spend a lot of time sewing lingerie to model for him, drawing pictures of various inventions like the iPod and explaining why anyone would pay money for a bottle of water or a sweater for a dog. The conversations typically go something like this:
“So a person buys a dog?”
“Right.”
“And then they get the dog’s fur cut?”
“We call it ‘groomed.’ But yup.”
“And then they buy a sweater for it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But it sort of came with a sweater right from the start.”
“True.”
“So why did they shave it in the first place?”
“Great question. But sometimes even if they don’t even shave it, they just get the sweater anyway in case the dog gets chilled.”
“Oh. So they treat them like people.”
“Bingo.”
“What’s ‘Bingo’?”
And then it starts all over again.
Our days are pretty full with the children, and any spare time is spent inventing. Our Magnificent Flying Contraption is almost complete.
Devlin also built us a glorious bath for two, and I must say showers are overrated. In fact, when we were testing out our new tub for the first time, we created a miracle. Our daughter Molly will be one-year-old next month. With her father’s soulful eyes and mop of curls, and her mother’s sense of adventure and steely time-pirate resolve, she is trouble with a capital T. Her uncle Bacon adores her and the two of them spend hours playing games together. I only wish Gilly could have met her. She would have stolen his heart for sure.
Bacon’s met a lovely young girl named Catherine and they are fast becoming an item. They help out with the children and we have a lot of laughs together. Bacon never was a very good time pirate and he was happy to give it up for good. A simpler guy cut out for simpler times, I think, and far too guileless to be a good pirate, in any case.
I don’t know what the future holds. Scratch that. I guess I actually kind of do. But I know there are no guarantees in life, and that’s okay with me. Devlin, Molly, Bacon, Gilly’s House, they’re all worth the risk. And even though sometimes I crave a mochaccino desperately, I know my namesake had it right. There’s no place like home.
About the Author
Christine Bell is one half of the happiest couple in the world. She and her handsome hubby currently reside in Pennsylvania with a four-pack of teenage boys and their two dogs, Gimli and Pug. If she gets time off from her duties as maid, chef, chauffeur or therapist, she can be found reading just about anything she can get her hands on, from young adult novels to books on poker theory. She doesn’t like root beer, clowns or bugs (except ladybugs, on account of their cute outfits), but lurrves chocolate, going to the movies, the New York Giants and playing Texas Hold ’Em. Writing is her passion, but if she had to pick another occupation, she would be a pirate…or, like, a ninja maybe. When she isn’t writing steampunk romance, she’s writing erotic romance under her pen name, Chloe Cole. Christine loves to hear from readers, so please contact her through her website, www.christine-bell.com.
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ISBN: 978-1-4268-9152-6
Copyright © 2011 by Christine O’Neil-Bell
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