Following Rose’s directions, Cassandra found her way to the ground-floor study at the rear of the Grosvenor Square mansion, knocked twice on the paneled door, and entered.
“Good morning, Miss Kelley,” the Marquess of Eastbourne said, rising from his chair behind a wide mahogany desk situated in front of a triple bank of impressive windows draped in floor-to-ceiling burgundy velvet. Her purse sat on the desktop, the contents placed in neatly spaced piles beside it. Marcus appeared to be as cool, as calmly collected, as he had been yesterday in the White Tower before their interlude in his sister’s bedchamber—before he had called her Cassandra and almost kissed her. “I trust you slept well.”
Slept well? Was he nuts? Cassandra was frightened. Frightened, and alone, and totally out of her element. Good God! Just a few minutes earlier she had cleaned her teeth with a laughable contraption Rose had called a toothbrush and then spent ten minutes explaining to that same servant that she could dress herself, only to learn that, thanks to the oddness of some of the garments, she couldn’t even put on her own underwear. She wanted nothing more than to sit herself down someplace and quietly unravel.
But she couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t do that. There was only one avenue open to her, and that was anger. Anger, and maybe a dash of bravado. Any other reaction could lead only to madness, a complete meltdown of her mental faculties. She sniffed contemptuously at Marcus’s fairly innocuous statement as she deliberately swaggered across the room, ruining the effect by tripping over the hem of her sprigged muslin morning gown and nearly ending up lying flat on her face. “Did I sleep well? How can you ask that, Marcus? Tell me—strictly as a conversation starter, you understand—do you think I’m stupid? Lamebrained? As you Regency fellows say—‘totally to let in the attic’?”
“No. Of course not,” he countered soberly, although she couldn’t miss the glint of humor in his eyes.
“ ‘Of course not,’ you say.” She flung her hands wide in mingled disgust and despair. “So how in hell can you possibly ask if I slept well? Only a complete idiot could be in my position—in this asinine predicament—and still—sleep well!” She looked around the room distractedly, noticing and just as quickly dismissing the glass jars filled with, as Perry had said, some particularly disgusting specimens. “Oh, God. I need to sit down.”
“Allow me,” Marcus said, motioning to a nearby chair. But Cassandra had rebounded, sighting two packs of cigarettes on the desktop. She had forgotten that a second, unopened pack had been in her makeup case. Close to forty marvelous, nerve-soothing cancer sticks lay just outside her reach.
“There is a God!” she exclaimed, sweeping past the marquess and lunging for the opened pack before he could stop her in the name of “science.” Grabbing the pack, she quickly rummaged through the remainder of her possessions, unearthing the disposable lighter. A moment later, her chin tipped up, her eyes closed in bliss, she exhaled a thin blue stream of smoke. “Oh, I needed that,” she said, turning to smile at Marcus, at least temporarily in charity with the world.
Her smile faded at the look of mingled horror and revulsion on his handsome face.
“What? And don’t tell me women in the Regency never smoke, because I won’t believe you. At least two of my writers’ heroines experimented with cigars.” She inhaled again, dancing out of his reach behind the desk, just in case he thought he was going to relieve her of the one pleasure she’d had since being dumped into this unbelievable mess.
She looked down at the desktop, slightly embarrassed to see that he had spread out all her private possessions and snatched up the slim pink plastic case that looked like a holder for a pocket comb, but in reality held something very different. A moment later the case containing her birth control pills disappeared into the pocket of her gown.
“I won’t tell you anything of the sort, Miss Kelley—Cassandra. But if I might broach a suggestion? If you plan to blow a cloud in public, be prepared to step lightly as you do, in order to avoid being toppled upon by the swooning matrons,” the marquess told her in his deep-throated, cultured English voice. His smile reminded her that Marcus Pendelton was one extremely handsome man. Real cover-art material, with slashing black eyebrows over his sexy emerald eyes, intriguing high cheekbones, aristocratic nose, and a bedroom smile meant to melt hearts. It was amazing. His teeth were so straight and white she couldn’t believe that orthodontics hadn’t yet been invented.
And that body! He was no Arnold Schwarzenegger, thank goodness, for Cassandra had never understood the fuss some women made over muscle-bound men, but he had broad shoulders and a narrow waist, and his pantaloons and skintight hose showed his long legs to advantage. Objectively speaking, she’d take him over any current thick-necked Hulk Hogan look-alike cover model without so much as a blink!
Cassandra inhaled a third time, only to realize that after three weeks without regularly feeding nicotine into her system, she was beginning to feel light-headed. Maybe even a tad nauseated. She crushed the cigarette out in a small dish that sat on the desk and collapsed into a chair. “There,” she said, glaring at the marquess. “I’ve put it out. Don’t ever say I never did anything nice for you. Happy now?”
“Ecstatic,” Marcus answered blandly, holding out his hand so that, hating herself for giving in, she could place the lighter in it. “And, if I may be so bold—the strange case,” he prompted, pocketing the lighter. “In the interests of science, you understand.”
“I’d rather die,” Cassandra retorted quickly, then spread her hands to encompass the remainder of the items lying on the desk. “You’re free to rummage through the rest of it I mean, hey—knock yourself out. I was lying. I don’t really have mace. But this case is mine. You—you haven’t examined it yet, have you?”
Marcus took a seat in one of the chairs placed in front of the desk. “Don’t you mean, am I aware that you are not a virgin, Miss Kelley? That is what those tablets are, isn’t it? A strange method of avoiding pregnancy. Lo Ovral, I believe, was the name I read on the printed paper inside the case. You cannot begin to fathom the length and breadth of the questions I have been contemplating since discovering that piece of paper.”
Cassandra didn’t know whether to blush or pick up the small silver inkwell and bean him with it. “So now I’m Harriette Wilson all over again, aren’t I? That’s a real open mind you’ve got there, Marcus. And you call yourself a man of science?”
“Then I’m incorrect? Shame on me. Forgive me for leaping to conclusions. You’re right, of course. I am not being scientific.”
Cassandra sighed, searching for the best way to attack the subject, not that anything she said could possibly make a dent in Marcus’s poor opinion of her, his poor opinion of the women of her time in general. “Look, Marcus—my lord. The world has changed a lot since your time. I mean—a lot!” She grimaced, knowing anything she said would be an understatement. “A whole lot. What seems normal to me has got to be so off-the-wall to you—I mean, so extremely peculiar to you—that it would take me years to explain it all. Oh, brother. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. I was sure I’d wake up this morning back in 1992. Rose blew that theory straight to hell when she showed up in my room with hot chocolate and a chamber pot. Thank God she told me about the new ‘water closet’ you’ve had installed. I quit the Girl Scouts because of the outhouses at summer camp. I’m just not the back-to-nature type. Of course, if I’m going to be lost in time, I guess I should consider myself lucky. I could just as easily have landed in prehistoric times, or popped up as the only female on a Greek freighter. Oh, God, Marcus, stop me. I’m babbling again.”
Marcus nodded, then rose and walked to a corner of the room where he pulled a cord, summoning one of the servants who must have been camped just outside the door. “Coffee for two, please,” he ordered, dismissing the servant before returning to sit in front of Cassandra once more. “You do have coffee in your time, don’t you? Many of our ladies prefer tea, but somehow I believe you might drink coffee. Perhaps I should write that information down as well. For Perry’s sake, you understand. I believe he harbors the thought that people in your time dine exclusively on chocolate and other delicacies. Spent most of last night telling me he thought he might enjoy living in such an enlightened age.”
Cassandra smiled weakly and then nodded, aware that he was giving her time to collect her thoughts. “Thank you, Marcus,” she said, in appreciation of both his offer of coffee and his kindness. She leaned forward, searching through the items on the desk top until she found a small tin of aspirin. “These are for pain,” she said, opening the tin. “I have a headache and I’m going to take two of these tablets when the coffee gets here. Don’t try to talk me out of it, okay?”
“I wouldn’t dream of such a thing,” Marcus answered. “Are you going to take one of the other tablets as well? You should, you know. The literature I read on the printed paper points out that you are to take the tablets religiously until they are finished.”
Cassandra’s laugh was more of a sniff. “Oh, yes, Marcus, you’re right. After all, you never know when I might decide to jump one of the footmen. We modern women are real animals.” She knew she was at the end of her cycle and that the remaining pills were all placebos, but didn’t think she owed the marquess that much of an explanation.
“You’re angry again,” the marquess pointed out needlessly. “Women of your time must be extremely volatile. I suggest that if we are ever to hope for a pleasant association we get this matter of morals out of the way. Now, please, Cassandra, tell me about the tablets.”
Before Cassandra could speak, the servant returned, placed a heavy silver tea service on a nearby table, then retired. Marcus quickly poured them each a cup of coffee, inquired as to whether or not she took cream, and then placed a cup in front of her. “Take your time, Cassandra. After all, we may have years and years together in which to discuss everything.”
“Years and years. Gee, thanks for cheering me up, Marcus,” Cassandra said bitterly, downing two aspirin with a sip of hot coffee. “That’s just the sort of news to make a girl want to jump right up and dance.” Replacing the cup in the saucer, she looked piercingly at the marquess, gauging his ability to understand what she had to say. “All right,” she said at last. “Let’s talk about women in my time. As I’ve already told you, things are a lot different. We can go to college. We live away from home —without chaperons. We work as teachers, politicians, secretaries, doctors, police officers, lawyers—solicitors, to you—why, I even have a friend who’s training to be an astronaut, not that you’d know what that is. In short, we can do anything a man can do—backward, and in high heels.”
“Hence the female PM,” Marcus cut in, his expression of dismay almost comical. “How endlessly fascinating. Do you fight in wars?”
Cassandra nodded. “In America women do almost everything in the services, and in some countries women fight in combat. American women will also go into all areas of combat soon, if we have our way. After all, if we’re going to have bombs dropped on us we should be able to fight back, right?”
“Amazing.” She noticed that the marquess had taken up a notebook and was busily scribbling in it. “Have you fought in a war, Cassandra?”
“No, not unless you count riding the subways. But we’ll leave war for another time, okay? It would only open another can of worms, what with smart missiles and nuclear weapons. Let’s get back to the women of my time. The majority of us don’t have come-out balls and Seasons and that sort of thing, and we wouldn’t want them. We go to work, at eighteen, or after college—at about twenty-two. We pull our own weight. We don’t marry right away either, at least a lot of us don’t.”
“Why not? All women wish to make an advantageous marriage. It is what they are raised to expect. My sister, Georgina, began planning her marriage in the nursery. Has marriage fallen out of favor?”
Cassandra’s head was aching behind her eyes. This was impossible. She couldn’t possibly explain her lifestyle to him. Not this morning. Not today. Not in the years and years he spoke of so glibly. No one could. “No, marriage has not fallen out of favor. We women still want marriage. But not right away. We have our careers to consider. Many women don’t get married until they’re in their thirties, then go on to have children into their forties.”
Her last statement seemed to have gotten Marcus’s full attention so that he stopped as he was about to dip his pen into the inkwell once more. “Their forties? But that’s positively ancient! Oh, Sally Jersey may have attempted it, but—Miss Kelley, I must insist you tell me the truth. It won’t do either of us any good for you to spite me by spinning fanciful tales.”
Cassandra instinctively reached for the opened pack of cigarettes, then thought better of it. “I am telling you the truth. We’re talking about one hundred and eighty years of progress here, Marcus. Thanks to modern medicine, people routinely live into their seventies and eighties. There’s plenty of time for marriage and children—although my mother has never agreed with that theory. She insists that I’m destined to be an old maid. Last summer, on my twenty-fifth birthday, she showed up at my party dressed all in black, saying she’ll never be a grandmother.”
“You’re five-and-twenty?” Marcus questioned, shaking his head. “That won’t do. That won’t do at all. We’ll have to keep your age our little secret, I’m afraid, as I’ve already informed my aunt that I wish to launch you into Society next month, as part of my experiments, you understand. But if Corny finds out you’re at your last prayers she’ll insist we put you in caps and seat you with the dowagers. We have been acquainted less than twenty-four hours, Cassandra, but I am already convinced that your place is most definitely not among the dowagers.”
Cassandra finally found something to laugh about. “Your aunt Cornelia and my mother would get along swimmingly, Marcus. Of course, your aunt would get a little upset when my mother started to talk about her idea of my becoming a single parent, as she has all but given up the idea I’ll ever marry. She read somewhere that I have as much chance of getting married as I do of being abducted by little green men from Mars.”
Marcus shook his head. “Stop, Cassandra. Please, stop. This discussion is getting out of hand. We are simply going to have to form some sort of agenda for speaking of individual subjects. This random accounting you are spouting is getting us nowhere at all. Now, if I accept the notion that women of your time do not marry until much later in life, can we get back to the discussion of those tablets hidden in your pocket? As an unmarried woman and, as you assert, a woman not to be lumped with the Harriette Wilsons of this world—why in blazes are you carrying those tablets?”
“You aren’t going to give up, are you, Marcus?” Cassandra took another sip of the now tepid coffee, then came to a decision. “All right. I’ll tell you the truth, even though I know it will blow your mind. You said I wasn’t to talk about anything but the pills, but I must tell you that we had a different sort of war in the last twenty or thirty years—my years, not yours. It was called the Sexual Revolution. Women figured out that barefoot and pregnant wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. We went to college, we went to work, we fought for equality, and—and you’re really going to have to pay attention now, Marcus—we decided that women can have sex without marriage just as you men have been doing since the beginning of time. We know all about sex. We teach it in school, as a matter of fact. So, no, Marcus, I am not a virgin. ‘Brad the Bod’ Renshaw took care of that little bit of my education during my third year of college. And surprise, surprise, it wasn’t all that great, so I gave it up. I take birth control pills—those ‘tablets’—because I live and work in Manhattan, and a girl could get raped living in Manhattan.”
Her speech completed, and her entire body shaking with nerves, Cassandra sat back in the chair and waited for Marcus to explode and maybe order her out of his house before she could contaminate the rest of the inhabitants, and to hell with his intention of “experimenting” with her.
But he surprised her.
“I see,” Marcus said after a long, pregnant pause. “I think I understand now, Cassandra. Women of your age—your time—have decided to be just like men. You go to university, you fight wars, and you live alone and work in places so dangerous that you must take preventative tablets for fear of being violated. And the name you give to all of this is ‘equality’?”
“Right.” Cassandra grimaced. “Only it doesn’t sound quite as logical the way you say it. Um—did I mention that we’ve gotten the right to vote in elections?”
Marcus laid down his notebook, “No, Cassandra, you have not mentioned that. My felicitations on yet another feminine accomplishment. But I think I’ve heard enough for this morning. Before I ask any more questions I will comprise a list from which to draw on. For now, I think we must prepare to introduce you to the rest of the family. You’ve already met Peregrine Walton, my good friend who has been living with me since his parents died, leaving him penniless. He is a good sort, but rather simple, so that I wouldn’t want you to tax his mind with too many stories of your time. I would ask the same consideration of my aunt Cornelia—actually, she is not my aunt, but I call her ‘Aunt.’ She would doubtless have a strong attack of the vapors if you were to apprise her of the truth of your circumstances.”
“Of course,” Cassandra answered automatically, watching as Marcus rose and began pacing the carpet, his hands clasped behind his back. Did he have to be so very handsome? Modern men could learn a lot from the way Marcus spoke and carried himself—and the way his pantaloons, or whatever they were called, clung to his shapely legs. “I won’t give myself away. I’m to be Perry’s American cousin. Nothing more.”
“Very good. It also goes without saying that Perry and I are to be the only two people who know the truth about you. It could be dangerous if the wrong sort of person were to discover the true circumstances behind your appearance in London. In order to be assured that you will not bring undue attention to yourself, thus putting all of us at risk of being declared insane and locked away in some asylum, you will spend the next few weeks under my tutelage, learning the ways of young misses in what you call Regency England.”
He stopped pacing and looked at her piercingly. “Why do you call it Regency England, Cassandra? What is England called in 1992?”
Cassandra felt herself beginning to relax. Marcus hadn’t liked hearing about her lack of virginity but, by and large, she believed he had taken the news rather well. “As I’ve explained, Marcus, I work as an editor. A book editor. Many of the books I edited—until my promotion, that is—were romance novels about England during this time. You know, like Jane Austen? She has been published by now, hasn’t she? Good. Anyway, these particular books are set in the time the Prince of Wales was Regent, from 1811 until he became king—around 1820, I believe.”
Marcus looked somber. “I see. So poor mad George does eventually die. There are many of us who have begun to believe he will live forever, locked away in his own world, unknowing of what goes on around him.” He was silent a moment longer, then asked, “But why would anyone write romantic novels about England in our time? Lord, woman, we’re at war!”
Cassandra smiled. “Yes, Marcus, but it was a romantic war. Any war one does not fight in personally is a romantic war, didn’t you know that? Besides, there were so many lovely things about the Regency Era. Your fashions; your wits and eccentric characters, like Beau Brummell and the others; the lovely lives you led, full of balls and parties; the great works of literature, with Byron, Shelley, and the rest—oh, I don’t know, Marcus. But they are lovely books in our Mayfair line, with lots of humor and, of course, happy endings.”
“Eccentrics. I believe you mentioned that word last night. You seem to have a fixation with the word. I agree that we have a few strange characters stumbling about the place. Poodle Byng. The Green Man. Romeo Coates. But doesn’t every age have its share of eccentrics?”
Now Cassandra laughed out loud. “We’ve got Michael Jackson and Zsa Zsa Gabor but, trust me, it’s not the same. Besides, you English are still full of eccentrics, even in 1992. Almost every story of eccentrics to make the news either comes from California—if it’s about aliens or weird religions—or from England. Yours usually have to do with pigs, oddly shaped vegetables, or crop circles. Marcus? May I meet your aunt Cornelia now?”
The marquess shook his head. “I told you I had spoken with her, but that was last night. Corny doesn’t rise before noon, and leaves her chamber at two or three. You’ll meet her later, before dinner. For now, I suggest we adjourn to Bond Street and a modiste I have favored in the past.”
“For your mistresses, Marcus?” Cassandra heard herself asking before she could think to guard her tongue. “Do you keep a Covent Garden warbler, or do you run with married women who have already given their husbands an heir?”
She watched, bemused, as Marcus’s face filled with color. It was obvious he had not flushed in embarrassment, but in anger. Righteous anger. “You impertinent little chit! Surely, if you have any knowledge of this time in history, you know that you should not speak that way to me. No—don’t interrupt. You cannot claim ignorance in this matter, even if, in your time, you consider yourself free to do or say anything your emancipated mind can conjure up. And if you were to say something like that in public! You would be immediately ostracized, which would do my planned experiments no good at all. But I refuse to allow your willfulness to defeat me. Perhaps I should send Perry out to bruit it about that you are pretty enough, but no more than an amicable dunce. It would certainly save me a lot of trouble.”
Cassandra felt her chin begin to wobble as both her courage and her bravado melted under the heat of Marcus’s anger, leaving only her fear. How could she be so difficult? After all, it wasn’t his fault that she had traveled through time and landed on his doorstep. It was her own stupidity, her own decision to break the rules, that had landed her in Regency England. At least Marcus seemed to believe there was some reason behind her trip through time. She needed him. She couldn’t cope with any of this without him.
“I—I’m sorry, Marcus,” she said, rising and walking around the desk to face him head on. “Truly. I’ve been an ass.”
“You don’t say ass,” he said from between clenched teeth, his green eyes flashing. “You don’t smoke those strange cigars, you don’t swear, you don’t let on that you know the war is going to end or that King George will die. You don’t yell ‘fire’ if you are standing in the middle of a blazing room. In short, you are to keep your mouth shut tight unless I am by your side, at which time you will speak only when spoken to and think before you so much as say ‘thank you’ when someone offers you food. Do you understand?”
“I understand, my lord,” Cassandra responded, nodding and trying desperately to keep from bursting into tears. She delved into her store of Regency phrasing. “I am to be a pattern-card Regency miss, a ‘milk-and-water puss,’ a well-behaved creature who has feathers for brains and has nothing more weighty on her mind than her outfit for the next ball and the wish to catch herself a suitable husband. God—and people think the Regency was romantic? I might as well be in jail!”
Marcus put a finger beneath her chin and tilted her head up to his, so that she felt an unexpected shiver climb her spine. “It will get better, Cassandra, I promise you. I will teach you. And in turn, you will teach me. And then, between us, we might be able to find some rhyme and reason for your presence in that room in the White Tower and, with that knowledge, find a way to send you back to your own time.”
Cassandra’s chin wobbled once more. “Don’t be too nice to me, Marcus,” she warned, trying to smile. “I think I can carry this off, if only you aren’t too nice to me. Otherwise, I might just start blubbering.” She took a deep, steadying breath, then continued, “Can we go to Bond Street now? Maybe if I were to have some clothes that fit I might feel more like the Regency miss you want me to be. I promise to be good—and quiet.”
Marcus bowed, then smiled in a most sympathetic way and held out his arm to her. “We’ll have one of the footmen fetch your cape and your abigail, my dear Miss Kelley, and be on our way.”
She longed to throw herself against him, weeping. Blinking back tears, Cassandra allowed herself to be directed down the hallway toward the foyer. “Marcus?” she questioned as they walked along. “Why do you call it the White Tower? It isn’t white, not in my time, and not now.”
Marcus motioned to one of the footmen, who sprang into action as if he knew exactly what his master required. “It’s simple, my dear. When William the Conqueror came to England, he ordered the tower erected to impress the local populace of his intention to stay as their ruler. Although the structure is of ragstone and limestone, and very impressive, once it was finished he had the whole thing whitewashed. He said that white would make the tower appear larger and even more imposing.”
Cassandra giggled as Rose appeared with a cape and draped it over her shoulders. “And old Willie was right,” she whispered to the visibly baffled marquess as they stepped out into the gray London day. “It’s the same argument I used on my mother last summer when she wanted to buy white slacks.”