“Where am I, and what the hell am I doing here?”
Undine stood arrow straight against the closed door, hands behind her on the knob, unmoved by his demand. “Keep your voice down,” she said in a heated whisper.
“Keep my voice down?! I’m trying to keep my lunch down.”
“He’s just outside the door.”
“Good, because if you try anything else, I’ll want help. What is this? Where am I?”
She sighed. “You’re in the home of Colonel Lord Bridgewater.”
“Colonel Lord Bridgewater?” For an instant, a potential explanation appeared in his head. “So this is a costume party?”
“A masque?” She chuckled. “No, but the metaphor is apt. No one here is who they truly seem.”
“Do you mind telling me what I’m doing here?”
“I’ve told you,” she said. “You are here to prevent him from marrying me.”
“Have you considered just saying no?”
“Aye,” she said archly. “I have.”
The woman was infuriating. “And?”
She shifted. “This is what needs to be done.”
“Oh, well, if this is what needs to be done, then by all means, make use of me however you see fit. Your wish is my command.”
“Sarcasm is not an attractive quality in a priest.”
“How’s anger?”
“You have nothing to be angry about,” she said. “You’ll perform your duty to me, which is to say not performing your duty at the altar, and you shall be returned unscathed.”
“I have already been ‘scathed,’ madam. What was in the potion?”
“’Tis of no concern to you, and I warn you not to repeat the word.”
“You’re quite the taskmaster. I think I like my odds with the cravat guy better.” He reached past her for the knob.
She jerked backward, trapping his hand against a captivating bottom.
They stood eye to eye. “I suggest,” she said, unblinking, “you move that.”
He considered several responses—verbal and isometric—before tugging his arm free. He adjusted the burlap of his sleeve. “You do realize, I hope, I am entirely capable of moving you from the door.”
“The Barbary sun is a hot one.”
A knock sounded, and she started. If it was Bridgewater, she didn’t just dislike the man. She was afraid of him.
“Undine,” a voice called. It was Bridgewater.
She looked at Michael, and neither replied.
“How long does he think a confession takes?” Michael said under his breath. “Sixty seconds?”
“I’m sure the only times he’s confessed, it’s been a lie.”
“Undine?” Bridgewater repeated. “Are you there? Undine?”
“Jesus,” Michael said, “what is his problem?”
Undine rolled her eyes. “Love.”
“Undine.” The knob rattled harder. “Answer me.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Michael lifted her by the waist and placed her to the side. Then he opened the door, blocking Bridgewater’s entry with his body. “The walls of the confessional may not be breached, sir,” he said hotly. “What do you want?”
Bridgewater looked as if he’d been slapped. Michael wished the man felt as if he’d been slapped as well.
“I beg your pardon.” Splotches of indignation appeared above his lordship’s cravat.
“’Tis not my pardon you must beg but the Lord’s! We are deep in the work of unblackening her soul. Pray give us the time we require.” Michael shut the door with a bang.
“Well done,” she said when the footsteps faded. “Though ‘unblackening’ was a bit much.”
“Says the woman threatening Barbary dehydration. I could have invited him in.”
“There’s no need to be rude.”
“Rude? You think I’m being rude? I have no idea where I am or why I’m here.”
“Are you a bit slow?” she said. “We’ve covered this ground before.”
“Yes, I know I’m somehow supposed to keep you from your fiancé, though why, I have no idea. And I know you drugged me with the”—she gave him a piercing look—“liquid. But I don’t know why you picked me for this or where we are or—most important—why I should put up with any of it.”
“Father, this will no doubt violate every belief you have about the world, but I offer no apology for upending those narrow-minded views. I am a naiad—to the simpleminded, a witch—though if you repeat that to anyone, you’ll regret it.”
Michael needed to sit, but his legs wouldn’t bend. His only experience with witches was with the perennially overacted ones in Macbeth and the hay fever–suffering Corelza in Trevor Quince, Boy Wizard, the movie franchise which had funded his early retirement. None of them looked like a Greek fury crossed with Grace Kelly.
He rubbed his forehead. “A witch?”
“Naiad, if you please. And you are in 1706.”
He felt as if he were standing on a spinning carousel with no pole to cling to. The world spun with stomach-churning speed, and no matter how he turned, he couldn’t find a way to get his feet under him. 1706? 1706 was Congreve and Queen Anne, garters and frock coats—
Oh God, I am in 1706.
He looked at the burnished desk and gilded wallpaper and rococo plasterwork. The house meant nothing. There were homes that could pass for 1706 all over England. But not that gown. And not her in that gown. If twenty-five years in the theater had taught him anything, it was that, no matter how accomplished a costume designer was, it was impossible to fully capture the look of clothes from another period. The fabric was different, the thread was different, the trim was different, even the way seamstresses held needles was different. All of it added up to a costume that might be award winning but would never be mistaken for a real gown of the time.
He looked at Undine in that resplendent silk—the intricate pleats, the tiny pearls, the understated color—nothing like the oversaturated synthetic dyes used today.
Not today. Today—the “today” he woke up in—was three hundred and some years from the year in which he found himself now.
And even more than the gown was Undine herself. No one in any land would ever mistake that smoldering-eyed, alabaster-skinned, unyielding seraph for a woman of the twenty-first century. Was she even a woman of this earth?
“Then this is London…in 1706?”
“Coldstream,” she corrected. “In a lodge house by the Tweed that straddles the bloody border.”
Coldstream, Scotland? Home of black-faced sheep and palace guards? His eyes went to the horizon beyond the windows, where a band of azure water snaked through the patchwork fields. He’d gone from the National Rose in London to the borderlands in the blink of an eye. His father would have called it a step in the right direction.
“Where’s your parish, Father?”
Still reeling, he gazed at her blankly. Then it dawned on him. The woman, the naiad—Good Lord, was he really saying that?—actually believed he was a priest. She’d brought him here with the potion but apparently didn’t know the specifics of the time or place he’d come from—or really anything about him if she thought he was a priest. Had she simply tossed a line into the sea of time and reeled in whatever bit? Not the most flattering way to snare an acting gig.
“Father?”
“Oh, yes, er…Bankside. My parish is in Bankside.” Well, the National Rose was, and that was about as close to a parish as he was going to get.
She screwed up her face. “’Tis rather a tawdry place, isn’t it? Full of cutpurses and actors, isn’t it?”
“You get used to the cutpurses.”
“Well, you needn’t worry about your bishop. I promise you, he’ll be fine.”
“You have a pretty high regard for clerics, madam, if you think we spend much time worrying about our bishops.”
A curve rose at the corner of her mouth. “I’m heartened to see you becoming acclimated to your circumstances. Shall I explain what you need to do for me in order to earn your return to Bankside?”
He brushed his palms as if removing the detritus of his situation. “No.”
She cocked her head. “No?”
“No. I have no interest in serving as your unwitting slave. If you’d like my help, you may convince me to do it, as a reasonable person might.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Two words: beg me! Otherwise, you can—and I hope you’ll excuse my language—pound salt.”
Her mouth fell open. “Have you forgotten the Barbary sun?”
“You threatened me at the door a moment ago. I picked you up.” He made a magician’s flourish in the area of his midsection. “Balls still here.” There were a few things he’d learned playing Orlando Brashnettle, senior wizard, in the Trevor Quince movies, and a convincing flourish was one of them.
Her eyes narrowed into gamma-ray slits.
He began to sway his hips, humming and doing a hula as he turned in a circle. “Not a care in the world. Like a pair of monkeys swinging through the jungle.”
“Father.”
“I can’t hear you…”
“Father.”
He wheeled around.
Bridgewater was standing in the open doorway, lips white with anger. “I see the confession is over. Perhaps we can adjourn to the chapel now.”