Cassandra awoke in her own bedchamber, Marcus’s face hovering just above her head. “What happened?” she asked, struggling to sit up, only to find herself unpleasantly surprised by a roiling wave of nausea. “Oh, God,” she groaned, one hand to her mouth as she slowly sank back against the pillows and willed her stomach to behave.
“You fainted,” Aunt Cornelia trilled happily, appearing at Cassandra’s left. “I wonder why.”
“Of course you do, dear Aunt,” Cassandra heard Marcus say. His voice sounded slightly fuzzy, as if she were on a trans-Atlantic call and the connection was bad. “You run screaming into the drawing room, announce that Richard broke his neck fox hunting, and you can’t understand why Cassandra fainted? Perhaps I should take you downstairs and explain, but I fear I haven’t the time right now. You will forgive me this lapse, won’t you?”
Cassandra sliced a look toward Marcus, surprised at his sarcasm, and saw the telltale tic working in his cheek. Suddenly she remembered everything. Richard, Marcus’s little-known and obviously not-very-much-lamented heir, was dead. The guidebook had been correct. Marcus’s title, Marcus’s entailed estates, and everything he had that he could not dispose of through his will would revert to the Crown at the time of his death—May 31—exactly twenty days from now. In less than three weeks, Marcus would die. They didn’t know how, they didn’t know where, and they didn’t know why. But they surely did know when. And there was nothing anybody could do to change it.
She reached up, clutching his forearm. “Marcus,” she pleaded, “could we be alone? Just you and me? Please.”
Aunt Cornelia sniffed indelicately, turned, and stomped toward the door. Cassandra smiled, realizing that if nothing else, Aunt Cornelia really knew how to make an exit. Her smile faded, however, as the older woman turned around just as her hand touched the doorpull and announced flatly, “I don’t require a red brick to fall on my head. I know when I’m not wanted. Very well, children, I will leave you alone for a while. Heaven only knows you can’t cause any more damage, nephew. But you’ll have to marry her now, to give that child a name.”
“Child?” Marcus and Cassandra asked together, exchanging startled looks.
“Oh, the innocence of the pair,” Aunt Cornelia lamented theatrically, raising her gaze to the ceiling as she opened the door and addressed only she knew (or cared) whom. “I never before saw the like.”
“Precisely what is Aunt Cornelia talking about, Cassandra?” Marcus asked once the door had closed behind the older woman. He seated himself on the side of the bed and took her hand in his. He looked at her searchingly, as if seeking outward signs of impending motherhood, as he might search for spots if Corny had mentioned the word measles. “You’re pregnant?”
Cassandra fought down a sudden rising panic. “I don’t know. Let me think.”
“You’re pregnant?” he repeated, his tone one of mingled amazement, and what else? Surely it couldn’t be anger. Could it?
Cassandra’s mind was whirling—rather like her stomach. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut as she performed some simple mathematics in her head. She had entered Regency England on March 12 while she was in the placebo cycle of her birth control pills. Okay, so she’d take it from there. Her fingers moved in Marcus’s grasp as she mentally counted out the weeks from her last menstrual period until the night Marcus had first come to her bedchamber. The dates matched. Then she counted the days since her last period and discovered that that was exactly what it had been—her last period.
“Uh, Marcus?” she said after a few moments, wincing as she opened her eyes to look up at him. She took a deep breath and said quickly, “Do you remember those pills I was taking, but I’m not taking anymore because I didn’t have them to take anymore even if I wanted to take them? Well, by rights I’m not supposed to be able to get pregnant right after. I stop taking the pills, but I think I might have made a liar out of whoever wrote that package insert you read—at least if tossing my cookies this morning and fainting this afternoon mean anything, which I guess they do, if Aunt Cornelia thinks they do, although how she found out about any of this I’ll never know. Wait a minute! Yes, I do. Rose told her. It’s just like Rose to tell her. Well, how about that? Marcus—do you remember the first night you—um—you, well, you know what I mean—that first night? As close as I can figure, I was ovulating that night. Damn. It looks as if we might have had that earthquake after all.”
“You’re pregnant?”
Couldn’t he think of anything else to ask? You’re pregnant? You’re pregnant? God, he sounded like a broken record. Bristling, she pulled her hand away from him “Maybe,” she said forcefully. “But I didn’t do it alone—so stop looking at me as if I never warned you. I told you that all hell breaks loose every time I try to bend the rules.”
And then she smiled. “Like I said—how about that? A baby.” She looked up at him, her heart melting, happy tears stinging her eyes as she saw that he was smiling too—even if he did look as if someone had just told him his pantaloons were on fire. “Marcus, we’re going to have a baby!”
~ ~ ~
A baby.
Cassandra lay awake in the half-light that marked the imminent approach of night, Marcus lying beside her, as he had been all the rest of that fateful afternoon. Both of them were sans shoes but still dressed in their street clothes. She couldn’t sleep; and she was fairly certain that Marcus wasn’t sleeping either. Not that they had spoken much since he took her into his arms and held her, telling her how proud and happy he was that she carried his child.
Yet what else could they say to each other? There was nothing to be said. They were going to have a baby.
No. She corrected her own thinking. She was going to have a baby. And Marcus? Nobody knew what was going to happen to Marcus.
She and her unborn child would travel back to her own time on the last day of May, or if not then, sometime soon. She had to believe that. She just had to. There was no record of Marcus’s heir in that guidebook. Just that afternoon, as Spencer Perceval had lain dying on the floor of the foyer of the House of Commons, they had learned once and for all that they couldn’t alter history. And if they couldn’t change history, their child could not survive in Regency England.
Their baby would have no future.
Oh, sure, the baby could be a girl, and that way there would be no mention of her in the guidebook, as she couldn’t inherit. But this baby was a boy. She just knew it! She was carrying Marcus’s son.
Cassandra stuffed a corner of the pillow into her mouth to stifle a sob. Marcus’s son. Oh, God. What happens now? Where’s all that happy ending stuff that miraculously comes together in the last chapter of romance novels? This isn’t fair. Love is supposed to conquer all, damn it!
“Cassandra? Darling, are you awake?”
She turned on the bed to face him. He was so wonderful, so gloriously handsome, so caring. And she loved him so much her heart ached. “I’m awake, Marcus. Would you like me to ring for something to eat? We haven’t had much of anything all day. Rose is probably hovering outside right now, wringing her hands and worrying. And, to tell you the truth, I think I’m hungry. You haven’t invented peanut butter and marshmallow yet, have you? Pity. I know it’s only psychological, but I think I’m having my first craving. Thank God you guys have pickles and ice cream.”
She bit her bottom lip, realizing that she was babbling. Again. She shouldn’t be babbling. She was going to be a mother. Mothers didn’t babble. Her mother didn’t babble. Nagged, maybe—but she never babbled. “Oh, God, Marcus,” she howled, throwing herself into his arms, giving in to her mounting hysteria, “this is too much for one person—especially if that one person is me. I can’t do this alone. I just can’t!”
He made soothing sounds while she wept, while she hated herself for falling apart. But she seemed to have absolutely no control over her emotions. It was as if a sappy-switch had been flipped on in her brain, turning her into a mass of conflicting feelings. She wanted this baby, truly wanted it. But she wanted Marcus too. She wanted the life they had begun to build together, wanted the happiness they shared to go on and on, wanted the marriage she knew would be a happy one.
“Hic! Oh, damn,” she wailed, sitting up and wiping her tears with the back of one hand. “Now I have the hiccups. It, hic, it figures. I never was an eloquent crier. Sheila’s a great crier. She has tears the size of quarters, and looks adorable; her eyes are all sparkling and sympathetic. My nose runs and, hic, I get the hiccups.” Her chin began to wobble again as Marcus smiled and handed her his handkerchief. “I’m, hic—oh, I’m a mess!”
“You’re going to have my child, Cassandra,” Marcus said in a teasing voice, interrupting her runaway train of self-pity just as she was getting up a full head of steam. “Therefore, I forbid you to be a mess.”
She lustily blew her nose in the handkerchief, not caring if she didn’t seem delicate or even particularly feminine. How dare Marcus interrupt her pity party? She had every right to feel sorry for herself, and he wasn’t helping. And she had thought he was sensitive? Hah! Where was Alan Alda when a girl needed him?
“Oh, yeah, sure,” she countered. “That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one having this baby. What if I’m trapped back here in Regency England? I told you all about that breathing business to help control labor pains, but I’ve never really bought that theory. Nope. Not for a minute. I want drugs, Marcus—painkillers! And I want an obstetrician, and a first-rate hospital, and a million nurses, and—and Blue Cross and Blue Shield! What happens if something goes wrong? Is some ignorant Regency quack going to tell me to bite on a stick? Well, fat chance, buster!”
Cassandra slipped from his embrace and then from the bed itself. Jamming her hands on her hips, she confronted him, her tears replaced by a nearly white-hot anger. “I know I’m being unreasonable here, Marcus, but humor me, okay? I’m pregnant. You may have donned your damned English stiff upper lip now that we couldn’t save Perceval, and accepted your fate, but I’m an American, and we Americans never give up. There’s got to be some way to save you, to save this baby, to save us. There just has to be!”
Marcus slid from the bed on the far side and stood some distance from her, a small smile playing around his lips. She longed to hit him. Boy, being pregnant sure brought out the bitch in her, as well as the tears! But she didn’t care. She had something to say, and she was going to say it. He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off.
“See this hand?” she challenged, raising her right hand and wiggling her fingers. “It’s not just a hand, you know. I can teach ‘hand.’ That’s simple. But how do I teach hand, palm, finger, thumb, nail, knuckle? And eyes!” she continued, nearly jabbing out one of her own. “What about eyes, Marcus? They’ve got upper lids, and lower lids, and lashes, and an iris, and a cornea—how in God’s name am I supposed to teach a child all of that alone? Sesame Street doesn’t cover everything, you know. And I haven’t even gotten to mouths yet, with teeth, and gums, and a tongue, and lips and—”
“Cassandra, I think I have a plan—” Marcus began, taking a step toward her, but she didn’t hear him. She was too involved in her own thoughts.
“And what if it’s a boy? I love baseball, but I can’t play second base. I don’t want him to be a sissy. A boy needs a father, Marcus, he needs—what did you say?”
He stepped even closer. “I said, I think I have a plan that will solve all our problems.” He smiled, adding, “Except this business about Sesame Street and second base. Much as I love you, my pet, I haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about.”
Cassandra, immediately suspicious, narrowed her eyes and glared at him, glared at his gorgeous yet faintly mocking smile. “Never mind all that now, Marcus. You said you have a plan. What plan? When did you form it? Why don’t I know anything about it? Damn it, Marcus—if you’ve been keeping secrets from me—”
He took hold of her elbow and steered her back to the bed, helping her to boost herself up onto the high mattress. “I was planning to tell you about it—eventually,” he explained, his calm rationality making her ache to punch him.
“Go on,” she said from between clenched teeth. And she loved this man? This man was going to be the father of her child? She might have been making great inroads with Marcus since she’d landed in Regency England, but she sure had a long way to go. “Tell me about this plan you didn’t want me to know about. I’m all ears, my lord. Truly, I am.”
He sat down beside her, nodding his agreement, openly humoring her—and innocently setting her teeth on edge. “Very well, Cassandra,” he said, “but I will have to preface my plan with some explanation.”
“You’ve got that in one,” she retorted belligerently, folding her arms under her breasts. “And you’d better make it good.”
He kissed her cheek lightly, then retreated when she held out her hands and glared at him, warning him off. “You remember what I read in one of your guidebooks?”
She grimaced at the memory, the damning evidence that had set them off to change history by saving the Prime Minister. Only they hadn’t saved him, and now those words in the guidebook hovered over them all like a sentence of death. “You told me that you read that the fifth Marquess of Eastbourne died on the last day of May in 1812. How could you think I’d forget?”
Marcus smiled, sheepishly. “I hadn’t thought that you did, my sweet,” he said, taking hold of her hands as if she might want to slap him. “However, if you remember, I did not show you the page in the guidebook.”
Cassandra frowned for a moment, then raised her eyebrows as she looked at him searchingly. “That’s right. You never did show me the book. I remember thinking about that at the time. Are you trying to tell me that the guidebook did spell out how you’re supposed to die? Is that your plan? To try again to change history?” Her heart sank to her toes. It wouldn’t work. It hadn’t worked today. What on earth made him believe it would work on the last day of May? Marcus had admitted he knew nothing about baseball. Obviously he also knew nothing about football. This wasn’t the time to try what had already failed. It was time to drop back ten and punt! “Marcus—”
“I don’t die, Cassandra, I disappear,” he said quickly, so that her mouth remained open as she gaped at him, suddenly speechless. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up earlier, which was why I tried to save Perceval—for Perceval’s sake, yes, but mostly to keep you occupied—but I may not die on the last day of May I think—I hope—that I, you and I both, travel through time on that day.”
“Travel—travel through time?” Cassandra’s head was spinning. So was her stomach, but she ignored it. This was too important a moment to interrupt simply because of a little nausea. Her mind still slightly muzzy, she opened her mouth and asked the obvious. “Marcus? Are you telling me that you’re about to become a time traveler too?”
He released her hands and slipped an arm around her shoulders, drawing her against him. “If my theories are correct, yes, that’s precisely what I’m telling you. As you might recall, I had been investigating time travel for nearly a year, and had finally centered my research on that room in the White Tower just weeks before you arrived so conveniently to prove my theory. I believe—and again, this is only another theory—that I was about to make an important breakthrough when you came to England unexpectedly.”
“Well, it wasn’t my idea,” Cassandra interrupted him, beginning to hope. “All I was looking for that day was the way out of the place. But go on. I’m all ears.”
“And quite lovely ears they are, imp. I have always been partial to them. But to continue. If you’ll remember, you’ve already told me that you planned to be in England at the end of May. But you arrived early, upsetting all the preset schedules, and we were drawn to each other out-of time. Using your calculator, I attempted to ascertain whether the intervening one hundred and eighty years affected the calendar, but the figures didn’t quite add up. Rather than science, I believe our fates drew us together, our combined destinies, if you will, if you don’t mind a descent into the poetic. And so, again, if I am correct, rather than to travel through time alone, madam, I will have the pleasure of my affianced wife and unborn child as my companions for the trip.”
Cassandra was quiet for a long time, although she could feel Marcus’s eyes boring into her.
He was waiting for her answer.
So was she.
She was numb. Completely and absolutely numb. She couldn’t move—although her mind was racing at the speed of light. Marcus wasn’t going to die on the last day of May. He was going to travel through time. To where? Would he travel to 1992 with her and their baby, or was his destination some other time, some other era? What if he were to zoom forward to 2057 or something, and meet her again when she was old enough to be his mother and his son was older than he? No. That wouldn’t happen. Marcus appeared to be convinced their fates were intertwined. He would come back to 1992 with her. He had to.
But there were other questions.
Had they made love for the first time before or after he had told her about his impending death? And if it was after, wasn’t he guilty of playing with her mind, her emotions? No. She had been falling in love with Marcus almost from the moment she’d first opened her eyes to see him standing in front of her, looking at her as if she was everything he’d always wanted for Christmas.
But he had lied to her, the rat! She wasn’t going to forget that in a hurry. He had told her that he was going to die, then laughed when she immediately began making plans to save his life. No wonder he had thought she was so funny—he already knew he wasn’t really going to die. Unless she killed him. That seemed like a pretty reasonable option at the moment—and she felt sure that there wouldn’t be a jury in the world who’d convict her.
And then there was all that business about the Reverend Mr. Austin and Lady Blakewell, and that pompous nerd, Reginald Hawtrey. Had Marcus really been worried about her, or had he been scared that they might stumble onto his own secret, his own plans to experiment with time travel?
She was so confused! What did a person do when confronted with such a confounding mixture of righteous anger, astonished bewilderment, and blessed relief? On the one hand, she could kill Marcus for having kept a secret from her, while on the other hand, she had just been given new hope that they could have their “happily ever after” after all. Was she going to look a gift horse in the mouth—good Lord, but she was using a lot of trite sayings to examine her emotions—or was she going to grab at this new chance with both hands (yes, yet another cliche, but she was past editing herself), and the hell with placing blame or holding grudges?
Silly question, Kelley, she told herself, peeking through her lashes at Marcus. He was still staring at her, awaiting her reaction. Perceval was dead; her London guidebook’s report of his demise had been neither faulty nor premature. Marcus’s cousin Richard was dead, as implied by the second guidebook. And Marcus was going to disappear on the last day of May.
There were no questions. Not really. There were only facts—or at least as many facts as the editors of the guidebooks knew. History books, even the guide at the White Tower, declared that the Princes had died in the Bloody Tower, and Cassandra and Marcus both knew differently—or at least they had a darn good reason to doubt that particular theory.
And so, taking the guidebooks and the theories and the hopes and the promises all a step further—there would be a happy ending for Marcus and herself. Bottom line, Kelley, she told herself, beginning to smile. It’s time to cut to the chase. Where’s your problem, lady? You, and Marcus, and your baby, are about to pack up and get the hell out of here!
“Marcus?”
“Yes, Cassandra?”
Her bottom lip began to quiver, partly because she was crying again, but mostly because the whole thing was so ludicrously funny. He looked so adorably guilty, not at all the imperious marquess. He was just Marcus—her sweet, adorable, fallible Marcus. God, how she loved him!
“Marcus,” she said, her smile wide as she began shaking her head in wonderment at her good fortune, at the lucky star that had appeared out of the blue just when all seemed lost. Out of the blue. What a lovely thought! “I love you, Marcus Pendelton.”
His frown disappeared, to be replaced by what she could only call a boyish grin. “That does make it convenient, my dearest imp, as I positively adore you.”
She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, ineffectually trying to stifle her first escaping giggle. “I know,” she said, delighted. She felt herself about to dissolve into hysterical laughter. It might not be the best time for laughing, but, hot damn, it sure beat the hell out of crying! “I love you. You love me. We’re going to have a baby—conceived in 1812 and born in 1992. Technically, I’m about to have the longest pregnancy in history. Isn’t it marvelous?”
Marcus took hold of her shoulders and gently pushed her down on her back on the mattress, swinging her legs onto the bed before stretching out his length beside her. “No, darling. You’re marvelous,” he said, smiling as she laughed and reached up to muss his hair. “You cannot know the times I have wanted to tell you all that I knew, all that I’ve hoped, but I foolishly held back, not wanting to raise your expectations in case I was wrong. For all my education, all my study, there are times, my sweet, when I can be remarkably obtuse. Can you ever forgive me?”
“That depends,” Cassandra said, pulling at one end of his already disheveled neckcloth. “What’s the Regency opinion on lovemaking during pregnancy?”
He frowned momentarily, then brightened. “I don’t know. I could trot downstairs and beg all the pertinent information from Aunt Cornelia, I suppose, but is such a trip really necessary?”
“Beep,” Cassandra replied, hooking one index finger beneath the knot of his neckcloth and pulling him down so that his face was only inches from hers and his warm breath caressed her cheek. “Wrong answer, Marcus. Sorry about that. Would you care to try again?”
“Indeed, yes,” he replied, his smile so devilish that Cassandra knew he was enjoying their game as much as she. Maybe more. With his lips just above hers, he murmured, “As a matter of fact, I’m willing to try all night.”
He got it right the second time.
And the third time.
And—being a very apt student—he even got it right a fourth time, just before dawn.