I fully intended to make only brief notes, but once I got started, it seemed important to get down every bit of what I had seen and done, lest I forget about this amazing trip to the past.
I shook my head at myself as I wrote, murmuring, “I still can’t believe how well I’m coping with both time travel and a hunky vampire. I seriously need an award or something.”
What seemed like a few minutes later, the footman Robert came into the room to deliver a tray with a beautiful teapot and accompanying accoutrements.
“The lady Imogen, she says you will take the tea,” Robert said, setting it down rather carelessly. I grimaced, my eyes on the delicate teapot.
“That sounds lovely, and be careful! That’s an antique!”
Robert’s perfectly plucked eyebrows rose almost to the hairline of his wig as he glanced at the teapot. “It is not. The monseigneur, he had it brought back with him from Paris a few years ago.”
“Well, in my view it’s an antique, and a very nice one, so be a bit more careful of it.”
Robert rolled his eyes dramatically and, with a spin that would do a model on a catwalk proud, sauntered to the door.
“What time is it, do you know?” I asked, stretching. I was surprised to find I was slightly stiff from sitting at the writing desk.
“It is half after five of the clock. Lady Imogen desires to know if you will be taking supper with her.”
“Five thirty? Holy time sink, Batman! I’ve spent four hours in here?” I looked down at the stack of papers splotched and smeared with ink, and admitted that I’d done just that. “Boy, time gets away with you when you’re writing. Um… Imogen wanted to know about dinner? No, I don’t have time for that. I have to go search the woods for my swirly thing. But first, I need a potty break. Please tell me there’s a contraption downstairs like the one in that tiny room upstairs?”
I gave a little shudder at the memory of my time at the toilet upstairs…. It was more like a camping toilet than a real one, with some sort of a wooden cabinet built around a chamber pot—complete with lid—but evidently flush toilets hadn’t yet been invented. I wondered what else hadn’t been invented yet. Indoor plumbing and electricity, obviously. But what about important things like health care? Did they even have real doctors at this time? The one I’d been going to see when I thought I was deranged had turned out to be a vet. What if they still used leeches to cure people?
I shuddered again at just how perilously close I had been to being leeched. That was just one more reason to find the swirly time-travel portal.
“Contraption?” Robert asked in a wholly uninterested voice. “I do not know this contraption.”
“The toilet. Or…um…chamber pot. Is there one downstairs?”
“Oui. There is the privy next to the kitchen garden. There is also the chambre du convenience in the rear of the stairs. Lady Imogen prefers that to the privy, since she says Master Benedikt has the aim most terrible.”
“Now, there’s some TMI fodder. Thanks, I’ll find it.” I tidied up the papers as best I could, hoping Imogen wouldn’t notice the ink splashed all over the leather top of her writing desk. “And now, I should go find the swirly thing.”
I’ll gloss over my experience with the convenience (you may thank me now). When I was done, and had the one-handed maid Elizabet help me readjust all those skirts—and make me incredibly thankful that I had turned down Imogen’s offer of a corset, preferring to stick with my own bra instead—another half hour had passed, and I was fast running out of time to search the woods.
“Right,” I told myself as I marched with determination down the hall. “Time to get to business. First, I’ll get a horse. Then I’ll start with the woods near the spot that Nikola said I ran into his carriage. Then, I’ll make sure the swirly thing is there, and after that…”
My words trailed away, my feet stopping at the same time, leaving me standing in the middle of the hall. What would I do if I found the woods and the swirly portal? Would I just pop through it to my time without so much as a good-bye to Nikola?
That didn’t seem right. I might not want to sleep with him—my mind skittered over that lie without so much as pointing it out—but that didn’t mean I was happy to leave him at the mercy of his brothers. What if Imogen didn’t tell him about their intention to kill him? What if she did tell him, but he, being a man and thus prone to the stubborn belief that he knew best, either didn’t believe her or didn’t take action in time?
What if he died and it was my fault?Robert swished his way into the hall in a swirl of dirty lace, a faint halo of pinky orange powder around his giant wig.
“Just the person I wanted to see. Do you know where Nikola is?” I asked, hurrying toward him.
He backed away from me with one hand daintily clutching a scrap of linen to his nose.
“Mais oui, of course I know. The monseigneur is where the monseigneur always is at this time of the day—in his study with the tools astronomiques, and the bodies of the things most dead, and the little cow maid whose cream he favors.”
“Cow maid whose cream…” I squared my shoulders, outrage inexplicably filling me. Dammit, I would not allow myself to care if he was scarfing down the cow maid or her cream. Nikola might be Mr. Historical Sexy Pants, but that did not mean I had to give in to those urges that had already led me astray three times with him. “I refuse to give him that satisfaction! Not again, anyway. I have standards, and it’s about time I start standing by them. Just where is this den of iniquity?”
“Study, not den. It is directly above us,” Robert answered, dismissing me with a disinterested wave of his hankie before he continued his way through the room.
“Seriously, the world would be better off without such a dawg,” I growled to myself, firmly intending to march out to the stables to ask for a horse.
Which would explain why I was so surprised when I found myself not only upstairs but standing in front of a door that I assumed led to Nikola’s study.
“Fine,” I told the door. “I’ll just tell him what I think of him dining at Café Io when he has a cow maid on tap. So to speak. Then it’s back on track, and to the stable for a horse before going off to the woods to find my way back home to sanity.”
The door opened just as I was reaching out to knock at it. Nikola leaned against the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest. “Do you always talk to people through doors?”
“I was talking to myself, thank you very much,” I told him with a scowl, looking past him into a dimly lit room. “Where’s your cowgirl?”
“Ah. I, on the other hand, find it much more efficient to speak to someone while she is in the same room as me. No doubt you, having been raised in the colonies, will view that as an odd method of conversing, but I can assure you that it is a standard practice in civilized countries.”
“What part of ‘talking to myself’ didn’t you understand?” I asked him, a bit annoyed at his attitude. “And for the record, in my time the U.S. is a major world power, so you can just knock off the condescending tone, buster.”
“My name is Nikola, not Buster. You seem to have difficulty remembering that.” He tipped his head to the side in a way that made my knees melt. Once again I was overwhelmed with the urge to fling myself on him and kiss the living daylights out of him. “I wonder if that is due to a personality flaw, or if it’s something that you’ve picked up from living with savages?”
I took a deep, deep breath, and was preparing to blast him when he gave a little wave of his hand. “It is of no matter. Since you are busy conversing with yourself, I will return to my studies. Good day.”
He shut the door in my face. I gawked at it for a moment, unable to believe he’d done that. A little titter from down the hallway had me glaring at Elizabet, who held a coal scuttle with her good arm.
“He’s crazy as a loon, you know that, right?” I asked the maid.
She grinned. “We’re all a bit daft here, Mistress Io. Even my own da says I’m not right in my head for leaving England and coming to a foreign country to work for the baron, but I say it’s how you’re treated that matters, and the baron treats us like people, not animals what don’t have no feelings.”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t a good employer, just that he’s not going to be awarded a Sane Person of the Year award.” I took another deep breath—just because I felt I needed one—and, without knocking, opened the door and entered Nikola’s study.
Instantly, I felt as if I’d stepped into another world. Which I had, given the whole time-travel thing, but this…“This is amazing,” I said on a long breath, gazing in wonder around the room. It was L-shaped, with the short end to my left, while to the right ran the long side, sunlight pouring through the tall windows, illuminating intricate Middle Eastern carpets that dotted the floor. There were numerous tables of all sizes, from petite round ones to long, solid-looking desks bearing stacks and stacks of papers, books, and odd bits of equipment. A mechanical bird perched in a black iron cage sang as I stumbled forward, too intent on seeing everything to watch where I was walking. A marble mortar and pestle nestled up against a sphere depicting the constellations, which in turn sat on top of mechanical sketches that looked very familiar somehow. I headed toward them, my eyes widening even further when I extracted the top sheet of sketches, and recognized it.
“This is a da Vinci drawing of an airplane,” I said, showing the sheet to Nikola, who sat behind a monstrously large ebony desk crowded with even more books. “A real da Vinci!”
Nikola looked up from where he was tinkering with a three-foot-tall mechanical statue of an African, complete with turban and spear. “Oh, it’s you, is it?”
I walked over to him, weaving my way around stacks of books piled on the floor, a tray with tea things, and two ginger-colored cats who were curled up together in front of a fire. “It’s a da Vinci, Nikola.”