The night in the forest passed without any interruptions. The following day nothing happened either. This was an excellent place to hide, Cordelia thought, with the implicit consequence that it was insanely boring. The group had gone for a walk, but after a while of seeing nothing but trees, they returned to their camp. For a while they told stories to each other, about things they had seen and done. Cordelia kept herself on the background a bit with that. Most of the things she had seen and done would confuse the others, to say the least.
The Duke tried to find out more about her in a roundabout way. For example he would tell something about his work as the Treasurer of the Household and he would drop a few names of facts, and he would look at her to see if she would show any sign of recognition. For once Cordelia was grateful that her meetings with that man in Location C were so confidential. She didn't even know that man's name.
David entertained the children with some stories about the work on the farm he had done. After he was done talking, the Duchess asked how David and Cordelia had met, because they sounded so very different. David looked at Cordelia. He clearly left that explanation to her.
Cordelia told them the story they had come up with for their first date; how David had arrived on a ship from America and how they had met there. She didn't want to go into too much detail as that might complicate things later.
"That is very interesting, isn't it, Henry. It sounds far less 'arranged'." The Duchess's voice betrayed she envied Cordelia and David a little, even though she seemed quite satisfied in her current position.
"Things are how they are, my dear," said the Duke. He looked at Cordelia as she got up, taking the Skreller-gun. "Is something wrong?"
"No, far from it, that's why I am going to store this in a safe place again." Cordelia didn't want this thing lying around longer than necessary, and in a short while they would return home anyway.
After storing the Skreller in the cabinet, she calculated when would be the best time to return. She found out that it would be safe already. The family would not have gained or lost more than a few hours if they were to go now, and by now there should be a note from Mr Barting letting her know if it was safe for the Duke to return, and if so, where to.
"I hope you are all ready to leave this forest," Cordelia said as she left the STAR. "It is time to return to England, although there might be a little waiting time before you can go home. I will only know this after checking a few things."
Everyone was glad to get away and they all made their way into the STAR's limited space. Cordelia and David made sure there were no traces of their stay left behind. The future would be confused at least and perhaps even changed if they forgot something.
Once they were all inside the STAR, Cordelia explained what would happen.
"We're leaving soon. Once we have arrived, I will go outside to look for a letter. If the letter is there, I will know where to take you."
"And if there is no letter?" the Duke asked.
"Then we have to wait until it is there," she replied. "This is not in my hands." No one had any more questions so she set course for her own cellar, in the evening two days after picking up the family.
~
The forcefield fell away. Cordelia stopped the systems and turned to the family. "You have all been very brave," she felt compelled to say, so as to assure the children. It was amazing how well they had all held themselves together, even after the ordeal with the pirates. "I am going outside for a moment. I'll be back. David will stay with you." She looked each of the 'guests' in the eyes, even the Duke. The man nodded.
"We appreciate what you are doing, Miss Lexington. And you too, Mr David."
As Cordelia left the STAR, it occurred to her that she hadn't taken the time to introduce David properly. Perhaps it was better. She climbed the stairs and walked to the front door in semi-darkness. There were not one but two envelopes. How surprising. One of them had the Royal seal on it. That was important. She took the envelopes into her kitchen where she dared to make light.
"Everything is safe. Stop. Please return the Duke and family home. Stop."
"Okay. That's good. That's really good." Cordelia looked at the other envelope. There was no writing on it. She would deal with that one later.
Back in the STAR, she told the good news to everyone and wasted no time in setting the coordinates for Alnwick Castle.
"Hold on, everyone. The last trip for you and you'll be home." She pressed "Go".
Less than ten seconds later, the STAR arrived in the courtyard of the castle in Northumberland. David opened the hatch and helped everyone out of the time-machine. Cordelia had activated the outside lights so no one would stumble. They all had to be emotionally exhausted so they needed all the help they could get.
"Miss Lexington..." The Duke stood in front of her. "I cannot express my gratitude for everything you have done. I will inform Her Majesty about your work and..."
"I would rather that you didn't, sir," she interrupted him. "I am grateful for the gesture, but it is best for me and this machine to remain secret weapons. Just as I should remain a secret 'weapon' for the empire."
"I understand... And speaking of weapons..." The Duke looked at the cabinet where he knew the Skreller-gun was hidden. "You have amazing weapons. Maybe, some day, you will be able to present one of those to me. Again, my gratitude, Miss Lexington. You and your secrets are safe with me and I will see to it that my family knows this." He solemnly shook her hand, made a short bow and then left the STAR.
Cordelia felt for the man and his family. She hoped they would recover quickly from this ordeal. Her mind was taken off the Duke and his family when David came back in.
"They are inside their house, which someone assured me is safe now," he said. "I am ready to go home now. With you."
Cordelia got up and hugged him. "So am I, David. This was quite the adventure and I can do with a bit of peace and quiet now." She sat him down in the pilot's seat and showed him how to set the coordinates for 'home'. "They are preset under this button, so all you need to do is enter this code to unlock the system, press this button, wait for the ready-lights to come on - see, that's yellow which means ready - and then you press this button marked 'Go'."
"You should sit down then," he said, worry sounding in his voice.
"Hah, I can handle a jump standing," she assured him. "Go, hit the button, because the coordinates will reset and ready will go off after ten seconds, which is a built-in safety." She held on to him as he pressed the button. Soon they were in the cellar.
"That was exciting," David said as he watched her switch off all the systems. "Did I really make us move to the cellar?"
"You did, my dear. I will teach you more about this machine as time goes by." Cordelia decided to leave the Skreller-gun in the compartment. She took the remaining food packets. "Here's dinner, if you can call it that." They laughed and left the STAR.
After a long and very much deserved bath, Cordelia and David lay on the bed when she suddenly recalled the second envelope she had found near the door. She mentioned it to David, who said he would go to the kitchen and fetch it.
"You don't have to..." Cordelia started to say, but he was already on his feet and almost out the door.
He soon returned with the envelope. She appreciated that he hadn't opened it yet.
"Let's see what this is..."
As soon as she touched the sheet inside the envelope, Cordelia gasped. This was something from her own time, nothing like the rough material from here.
"Cordelia? Is anything wrong?" David looked worried as he had seen the expression on her face change.
"I hope not but..." Slowly she pulled the sheet from the envelope. "This is grellum. It's what we use as paper in the future." She explained that grellum was wordplay on the old, Latin word vellum which meant paper. "The 'gr' in front is because it's made from a graphene derivative."
"What is graphene?" he asked.
"That is hard to explain. Maybe later," she said. "More important is what's on this." Cordelia unfolded the sheet, which it did so almost by itself. The surface was its normal light-grey. "Cordelia Lexington," did she say to the sheet. A corner lit up for a moment. "Damn it... Cordy Brown." Immediately words formed on the sheet.
"Miss Brown. We are sorry that we did not get to speak to you in Mississippi and instead encountered a rather unpleasant welcome. It is important that we meet as your life is in danger. The Branson family has put a price on your head and a bounty-hunter is travelling through TS to locate you. If you find this note, please meet us on the following coordinates, on October 22nd, 2200, at noon."
"What..." Cordelia stared at the sheet and read the words again.
"What is this, Cordelia? And what is TS?"
"Time-Space," she automatically replied as she tried to wrap her mind around this letter. Was there really someone after her? Were the Bransons really that determined to get to her? Or was this some cheap trick so she would show herself and make it easy for those two agents to arrest her? And why would they warn her about this? Why were they after her if they wanted to keep her safe from a bounty-hunter?
"Is there something I can do?" David looked at her as he reached out and touched her shoulder. Cordelia looked at him and smiled as she shook her head.
"No. Not yet anyway. This is a surprise for me as well, so we first need to figure out what's going on." She voiced to him the questions that had flooded her mind.
"And why did you say a fake name just now?" he asked after that. "Cordy Brown."
"Actually, that is my real name. Cordy. Short for Cordelia. My last name is really Brown, not Lexington." She explained that she had taken that new name to avoid this, and they had located her despite that precaution. "So now I have more questions than I have answers to, and you can bet your last dollar that I'm not going to run to their coordinates before I have some more information." She realised that the house they were in now wasn't safe any more. The agents knew where she lived so they could come for an unannounced visit at any time. That thought made her fall back on the pillow. She really didn't want to pack up and run off now. The past few days had taken enough out of her; she wanted to sleep and wake up in a bed, have a proper breakfast and spend some quality time with David. She looked up at his worried face and told him to lie down. "We should get some sleep, David. I'll go down to Norbert and tell it about the letter. It will let us know if someone tries to come in uninvited."
He nodded. "All your mysterious machines keep surprising me."
Cordelia kissed him, then got out of bed, slipped into a coat and went to the cellar to talk to Norbert. As an additional safety she took the Skreller-gun with her as she went back to the bedroom.
~
Waking up was a battle. Cordelia hadn't slept much and the moments during which she did sleep had been restless and light. More than ever did she feel the need for coffee after getting up, but again she would have to make do with the strongest tea in the house. David was surprised she didn't have coffee but didn't comment much on it.
"We will find something," was all he said to her lamenting and that was that as far as he was concerned. After breakfast he asked what they were going to do.
"Nothing, for now," Cordelia said. "There might be customers for pick-ups or drop-offs in the morning so we'll have to wait for them. Which gives us time to think about the invitation to come to 2200. Come to think of it..." Cordelia took her navigation module and entered the location coordinates. She was curious where the two agents wanted to meet her. If it was somewhere that put her in a tight spot, she would certainly not go. "Oh. That seems to be on top of a mountain in China. It could be worse." She felt David's eyes on her.
"You are a mystery," he said as soon as she had turned her attention to him. "You have told me about your past which is in the future. When I heard that, it sounded strange and impossible, but your machine told me there had to be something to your story. Now I have travelled with you, to the castle of the Duke, to an island and to a forest. I thought that was unbelievable. But now I hear you talk about going to a mountain in China, over 300 years from here - I mean now - and you don't even blink at the idea while I can't even imagine what that implies."
"I am really sorry, dear David," she said as she got up. "If you stay with me a while longer, you will learn a lot more." A loud sound coming from the front door made both of them look up. "Let me see who that is..."
Cordelia went to open the door to find Mr Brown waiting.
"Miss Lexington." His shabby hat had gotten another beating, she saw. "Would you be able to collect one of my objects either today or tomorrow?" The man handed her a piece of paper. That too had seen better days, like when it had still been in her notebook.
"Of course, Mr Brown." Why did it always feel so weird saying that name? It was her own. Well, had been. "I shall have it ready for you by tomorrow afternoon. Let's say around one o'clock?"
"That would be nice, Miss. Thank you so much." The man doffed his hat again and walked off while Cordelia closed the door.
"Mr Brown? Family of yours?" David looked at her as she came in. Had he listened at the door, she wondered.
"Not that I know of, and hopefully not since he's in lots of shady kinds of business." She unrolled the paper. The coordinates meant nothing to her, though. He must have left that delivery with her quite a while ago. "I think we should go on a trip this afternoon, David, to make a pick-up for this gentleman." Cordelia already planned to let him set the coordinates and direct the STAR. If he was to be with her more (and hopefully forever) it was important he knew how to use the machine. "But first I think we have another errand to run..."
~
"Miss Lexington!" Mr Grimwald beamed as he saw her and David come in. "And am I correct in assuming this is the fine gentleman for whom you had acquired the black attire?" The man looked David over and seemed to approve of Cordelia's company. David himself was a bit taken aback by Mr Grimwald's behaviour, even though she had warned him of the two. "We still have that here, Miss Lexington. The damage has been removed."
"That is wonderful, Mr Grimwald. We'll take it with us..."
"Oh no, we'll have a young man deliver it to your home. I can't let someone like you walk the streets carrying something like that."
"But I'm here too," David said. "It wouldn't be a problem for me."
"Maybe you should wait with that, David," Cordelia said and turned back to Mr Grimwald. "Would you have the grey suit still for sale?"
The tailor seemed to shrink. "Alas, Miss Lexington... We had to part with it a few days ago when someone bought it. But we can create a new suit, even better than the one you saw, and made to measure."
"That would be wonderful, Mr Grimwald..."
The couple spent quite a while at the tailors' shop, but when they left, David wearing the black suit, carrying his own clothes in wrapping paper, Mr Grimwald and Mr Wilson had promised to make the most amazing suit they had ever seen.
"Cordelia," David said.
"David, it's my pleasure, you don't need to thank me."
"No, it's not that. Well, not just that. You can't keep paying for me all the time, Cordelia."
She looked at him and smiled. "Of course not. As soon as you have your share of our profits, you can pay as well, but until then you'll have to suffer my desire to make you look good." Cordelia hated that they were in the middle of a busy street. She really wanted to hug and kiss him, right then and there, but she had to suppress her urges until they were home. Luckily, that didn't take them very long.
After all the hugging and kissing Cordelia decided they should leave to fetch Mr Brown's belongings. It was a bit strange still to think of it that way, because he had probably wasn't the rightful owner, but he had brought it to her for safekeeping.
"I'm curious where this is," she said to David as they went down to the STAR. "I'll be able to tell you after I get my notebook out."
"Notebook? You use a notebook?" David had seen enough of her already that he guessed that she would use machines for everything, including notes.
"I do. I have to. There isn't that much data storage space inside the STAR so I have to be careful with that." After explaining the concept of data storage space, she took the notebook from the small shelf and paged through it until she found the location. "Oh. There. Wow. That's long ago."
"I thought you said you had been here for only a few years. How can something be long ago?" David still had to get used to her expressions and the implications some of them could have.
"Oh, no, not long ago in that way. He brought it about a year ago," Cordelia said as she showed him the notebook entry. "Which means it was quite a hot piece if he waited that long to have it retrieved." When she saw another question appear on his face, she explained that a hot piece was something expensive so it was searched for with a vengeance. "The longer it is hidden, the more people will forget about it. So it 'cools down'."
"Your way of speaking deserves a complete study, Miss Lexington."
Cordelia got up and made him sit in the pilot's chair. "Lesson 1 in using a STAR," she said after closing the hatch securely. She gave him the paper Mr Brown had handed to her and then, taking her time, she talked him through the pre-jump checks and made him repeat them a few times because this was crucial. After that, she explained her system of writing down space and time coordinates. She knew it would take time before he fully understood it and that he was able to enter them into the jump-system with ease, but usually she'd be with him. Most of the time, speed wasn't of the essence, like this time.
Slowly, waiting after each keypress for her approval, David entered the coordinates for the when-and-where they were going.
"That's good, David. See this marker here? That shows I've been there before, which is a nice check to see if you got it right. As long as it is that one, you're safe. If it goes red, you won't be able to go there unless you know a few special things. Red means you've already been there at that time, and we've always learnt not to show up in one place twice at the same time."
He simply nodded, taking her word as truth.
"Great. Well, it looks like we're all set so I'll do this the right way." Cordelia sat down on one of the passenger seats and took the safety straps in her hands. "And now we're ready. You can press Go."