Cassandra sat propped against a half dozen pillows in the middle of the big tester bed and wiped away the tears that she couldn’t seem to keep from falling on the yellowed sheets of paper in her lap.
Peregrine had left his letter behind the picture in the upstairs hallway, just as he had promised. The letter was quite lengthy, begun in 1812 and added to over the years until 1853, and it told of many things, many wonderful things, that had happened since he had returned from the White Tower once she and Marcus had “done their flit.”
But Peregrine was gone now, as were Aunt Cornelia, and Rose, and Goodfellow, and even Jacques—although it seemed strange to walk through the rooms of the Grosvenor Square mansion and not see them, not hear their voices.
She did have her pictures of them, of course, the pictures she had picked up only that morning at a small shop around the corner in Providence Street.
Their lives had been good, at least according to Peregrine, who had wed Rose a scant year after that fateful May night. Rose’s main attractions, according to Peregrine, had been that she seemed to love him, and that she didn’t expect him to learn to dance. Besides, he loved her too. It had only taken a year for most members of the usually prickly high-in-the-instep London Society to learn to love her homey good nature as well, and their life together had been good.
Jacques, Peregrine had written, had returned to France after Waterloo and had become the head chef for some French prince in Paris. Peregrine, or so he said, planned to mourn the man’s loss until his own dying day.
To Cassandra’s delight, Goodfellow and Aunt Cornelia had wed, although it had taken Corny nearly five years to unbend enough to post the bans with the Pendelton family butler. Aunt Cornelia had mellowed with the years (or at least as much as that dear lady could mellow), and had stayed on in the Grosvenor Square mansion even after she was eventually widowed, to alternately nag and dote on Peregrine and Rose’s only child.
Cassandra already knew that Peregrine’s son—he’d named the child Marcus Charles Walton—had gone on to found a dynasty in the railroads, an empire that later expanded to include the airline industry. Smart man, her “Cousin Perry.” He had followed her directions to the letter, so that the Walton name, now carried by more than three dozen proud Englishmen, had become a real force in the world.
She took up the letter again.
It took a long time before people stopped speculating as to what happened to you, old friend, but in the end Aunt Cornelia took care of everything. According to Corny, who swore she had received a personal letter from you two years after your disappearance, you married Cassandra in America before the two of you went off to deepest Africa and discovered a lost civilization. Made you their king, this lost civilization did, and Cousin Cassie their queen. It has been forty years, and I still hear it talked about in the clubs, although the story has grown. You now are said to have discovered a lost diamond mine, rather than a lost civilization, and everyone is quite sure that one fine day one of your descendants will be back, to claim this house and all your lands. Oh, and by the by, Prinny refused to vacate the title, saying that he was sure you’d return, although I think it’s probably that little bag of emeralds you had me drop into his lap that made him so charitable. I told him you found them in the White Tower, just as you said for me to do.
Anyway, considering as how I also told Prinny a couple of things I learned from dearest Cousin Cassie, and being as how those things came true, our dearest Majesty (may he rest in peace) allowed for a little fudging of rules, dear Marcus. Thanks to Prinny—and some fancy footwork by a grateful friend—if your male descendant (and you know just whom I mean!) was to arrive in Grosvenor Square anytime before 5 June 1992, wearing a certain ring (yes, I confess that I bribed your solicitor and had a copy made, then presented it to the King’s Royal Treasurer), that male descendent is to be named the Sixth Marquess of Eastbourne. Just think, Marcus, you have defied all the laws of nature you are so proud of—you have succeeded yourself!
I dislike closing this letter for the last time, for it will mean that I have to say my final good-bye to my dearest friend, but I am old now, and Rose says it is time. We adjourn to the country this week, so that I may putter about in the garden, or whatever it is old men do. As Corny said that last night, “Godspeed,” Marcus and Cousin Cassie. You are the best of people and the best of friends!
After reading the letter for a third time, Cassandra refolded it and tucked it in a drawer in the nightstand and lay back against the pillows, turning the ring on the third finger of her left hand round and round nervously. It wouldn’t do to let Marcus see that she was still so emotional.
Her dear, sweet Marcus. How frightened she had been when she couldn’t find him in the blue mist! But then, just as she thought she would lose control completely, the mist had cleared and there he was, smiling at her, his arms spread wide, saying simply, “Come, my love. It’s time to go home.”
Together they had crept up the stone staircase and joined a tour group that was just then descending from the chapel, Marcus’s smile wide as he pointed to the sign describing the history of the Elizabethan chair. Cassandra walked up to one woman and began to make an offhand query as to the date, saying that she always lost track of the days when on vacation, then exclaimed, “Miss Smithers! I don’t believe it! It’s as if I never left!”
“Why, yes, my dear, of course it is,” the librarian from Omaha had answered. “We were only upstairs for a few minutes. So sorry you missed it. Are you feeling better now?”
“Better? Oh, oh yes, of course. I’m so much better you just wouldn’t believe it! You will excuse me, won’t you, Miss Smithers? I’ve, um, I’ve met a friend, and he has invited me to his home.”
And what a home (by Marcus’s quick count, one of only three original buildings left in the Square) they had come back to—a perfectly preserved, fully staffed Regency mansion, except for the fact that it was stocked from cellar to attic with VCRs, compact disc players, microwave ovens, dimmer switches for the chandeliers, and a wide-screen television set that Marcus immediately had moved upstairs into their bedchamber.
As to how she had left Regency England on the last day of May and still ended up back in her own time as if she had never left it, Cassandra had no idea. Marcus, however, said that he “had a theory,” although he hadn’t gotten to tell it to her before she silenced him with a kiss.
Cassandra smiled, remembering that she still had missed the London Book Fair, and would most probably be fired once she phoned the office in Manhattan—which she would do any day now. Yep, any day now. Or maybe next week.
But she couldn’t care about her job anymore. She was through editing other people’s work. She was going to write. Fiction. Lots of fiction. Really nifty historical romance fiction. As a matter of fact, she had a great idea for a time-travel romance!
“Daydreaming again, my love?” Marcus asked, walking from the dressing room that had been converted to a bathroom. A snowy white towel was about his hips and he used another to rub at his shower-wet hair. “I will never tire of that contraption, you know,” he told her, grinning. And he was right. He was in the shower so much, Cassandra had teased him that his toes had become webbed.
“There are lots of things you don’t seem to tire of, darling. Except to eat, I don’t believe I’ve been out of this bed in three days. I wouldn’t be surprised if our son ends up being born here.”
“Our son,” Marcus said, his expression so proud she would have teased him, except that she was just as proud as he about their child, the heir to the title Marcus had never had to relinquish. “Peregrine” might not be a Latin-based name, but she was going to get it into the list of middle names for the Seventh Marquess of Eastbourne if she had to wedge it in sideways!
Shrugging into his dressing gown—an exact replica of the dressing gown he had worn that first night when he’d come into her room—Marcus sat down beside her on the bed and used the remote control to switch on the television set. It still annoyed her that he had mastered the remote in a matter of minutes, when she still couldn’t program the VCR in her apartment in Manhattan. But that was Marcus. He could fit in anywhere.
And he would. Although he could content himself being the marquess, and spend his days jet-setting around the world, Marcus had already told her that he planned to enroll in college as soon as they’d gotten his official passport and paid a visit to her parents—her parents, who phoned daily—her father, to ask about “this man you plan to marry,” and her mother, whose conversation centered more on layettes and baby showers.
“Are we going to watch television again?” she asked now, pouting.
“Is that a complaint, my love?” Marcus asked, turning onto his stomach and propping his feet against the headboard. He flipped through the stations, finally deciding on a variety program being telecast on the BBC. “Or were you about to suggest an alternate means of entertainment?”
She pulled her feet out from beneath the covers and joined him at the foot of the bed, resting her chin on her forearms. “What do you think, darling?”
Putting down the remote control, he lightly pushed her onto her back, bringing his mouth down on hers, then untying the satin sash at her waist, inviting her back into the world of love they had rarely left these past few days.
From across the room the announcer’s voice could be heard, introducing the next act on the program. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, the newest singing sensation to hit this marvelous island, and the proud holders of three platinum records—their album has just gone platinum as well. Allow me to introduce to you the medieval answer to rock ’n’ roll—Ned and Dickon—The King’s Boys!”
Marcus raised his head, a lock of dark hair falling forward onto his forehead. “Ned and Dickon?”
The mood broken, Cassandra pushed him off her, turned onto her belly once more, and looked across the room to where two handsome, long-haired boys in their mid-twenties were playing guitar and singing hard rock lyrics that had something to do with “treachery in the forest.”
“Marcus?” Cassandra asked, looking at him. “Do you suppose? I mean, could they possibly be—?”
He looked at the set, frowning, then looked at Cassandra. “Nah! That’s impossible!” they said together—but then, without another word, they turned their heads back to the television set and watched until the song was over.
The End
If you enjoyed Out of the Blue, I would be honored if you would tell others by writing a review on the retailer’s website where you purchased this title.
Thank you!
Kasey Michaels