Chapter 5

 

 

Vic wandered into the enormous bedroom Malcolm showed her and sat down on an ornate armchair. She looked around. Wood-paneled walls with odd portraits of a scenic landscape, castle, or unfamiliar face of some noble-looking type surrounded her. To her right, brocade curtains draped around the mountain of a four-poster bed. Her gaze fell on the fireplace and the lavish carvings surrounding it. Fresh ash sat in the hearth. She stared at it in bemusement. Gauze curtains diffused the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the window.

Her shoulders slumped in despair. 1740! How in the name of Almighty God did I wind up here? She was out on the edge of nowhere in a time of violence and upheaval. She wasn’t even in England or any civilized country. She didn’t even know for sure where the Orkney Islands were. How could she get back to her own world?

As she contemplated Boyd’s promise to help her find out what this was all about, a light tap sounded on the door and startled Vic out of her reverie. “Come in.”

A young maid tiptoed into the room. She curtsied to Vic but didn’t raise her eyes from the floor. “Begging ye permission, Miss. I’m to be yer maid, Maisie. The Master ordered fresh clothes and bathwater sent up.”

“Of course,” Vic replied. “By all means, bring them in.”

The maid retreated into the hall and came back with three equally young and docile girls, all dressed as maids. One of them laid out a set of clothes from a huge wardrobe across the room while the other two set up a large wooden tub in the center of the room. After that, they fluttered in and out, filling the tub with pitchers of steaming hot water.

When everyone else had finished their work and disappeared, the first maid bobbed another curtsey. “When ye’re finished, Miss, just ring that bell beside the bed and I’ll come back to help ye dress.” With yet another curtsey, the girl left Vic alone in the quiet.

With nothing left to do but get cleaned up and change her clothes, Vic crossed to the mirror over the washstand first. She took the dish of soap and scrubbed all the makeup off her face. She rubbed so hard her cheeks turned bright red, but at least she looked presentable for the times.

She hated to look at her own face without her makeup on, but she wasn’t in Kansas anymore. She had to do what the locals did. She could go back to wearing makeup when she got home, and no one would ever know she’d fallen so far.

She peeled off her suit and folded it neatly, laid her handbag on top of the stack, and shoved the whole pile under the bed. Then she stepped into her first bath in over twenty years. Usually in a hurry to get to work or ready for a date, she’d always taken showers because they were faster. She reclined back in the tub and rested her head on the edge. Closing her eyes, she relaxed into the blessed heat. She’d never really understood the appeal of baths before, but as the delicious warmth seeped into her bones, it softened every hard corner as never before. Maybe there was something to this after all.

She wasn’t an executive of a chemical company anymore. She wasn’t a chemist or even a businesswoman. In a way, she was on a glorified vacation. She’d barely missed a day of work in all the years she’d been involved with Primary. Even though she’d threatened to walk out on the company, she hadn’t yet actually gone that far. She hoped Ree and the others didn’t mistake her absence for her abandoning them without warning. She’d never do that to anyone, let alone lifelong friends and business partners.

Having said that, the bath did feel kinda nice…

She even enjoyed cupping hot water onto her face. It washed her clean and made her feel fresh and alive. She couldn’t remember feeling this good in a long time. What had she been missing?

Maybe she was always just too busy to notice how tense and rushed she was. She never took a day off work. None of the five friends did. They’d all been equally driven since high school when they first joined forces to build this company from the ground up.

Lying there in the tub gave her the first opportunity to really assess the situation back home. Ree had come up with the original idea to start Primary Industries, and she and Ellen became the driving force behind the company. Not one of the five friends slacked off an inch, and Ree and Ellen became obsessed with the company’s success after Ree’s accident. Everybody knew why, but no one ever talked about it. Ree lost her leg, and Ellen lost the love of her life when Ree’s brother Gavin died. The unspoken tension between the two of them ignited a mania for work that no one could match. It kept up for years—right up until the day Ned Lewis walked into the boardroom.

First Ree, and now Ellen too—they’d changed. They’d exploded out of their cocoons of grief. They’d come alive for the first time in years, and all the driving energy that had kept them going collapsed.

It didn’t collapse, though, did it? It changed too. It morphed into some strange and unexplained fixation with the Prometheus formula. Nothing else mattered—at least, nothing else mattered so much.

Where in all this could Vic find fault in their abilities to run the company? When she took the situation apart piece by piece, she couldn’t find anything noticeably wrong. Ree and Ellen still attended to the company’s other business, kept the other contracts on schedule. Their passion for the rest of the company couldn’t be worse, though. Underneath it all, they cared about the Prometheus project and nothing else. Anybody could see the way their eyes lit up when they talked about it. Anybody who knew them as well as Vic did would understand this change spelled disaster for everything the friends had worked to achieve.

And now this. Spontaneous time travel. Around the world. Scotland. 1740. How was this possible? Should have paid better attention in Geography or History classes in school… She didn’t believe in coincidence. Her scientific mind didn’t allow it. There had to be some connection between whatever was going on with Ree and Ellen and her current situation.

Vic stayed in the tub until her skin tingled all over with intoxicating warmth, then stepped out onto the carpet and dried herself with the towel. Moving over to the bed, she turned her attention to the clothes. A beautiful wine-colored dress lay spread out on the bed next to a bunch of white things she didn’t recognize. She wrapped the towel around her body and rang the bell.

The little maid must have been waiting outside the door because she appeared almost instantly. She went to work in a flurry of activity. She took the towel away and left Vic standing naked. Maisie kept her gaze focused on the clothing item as she picked up what looked like a white cotton nightgown and slipped it over Vic’s head.

What happened next sort of blurred into a dizzy whirlwind of garments. Vic lost track of what Maisie did with what and what went where, not wanting to bother memorizing how to put these clothes on. She didn’t plan to stay long enough to need to dress herself.

When Maisie gave the corset strings their first vicious yank, Vic cried out, “Aaargh! What are you doing to me?”

Maisie kept pulling them tighter and tighter as she shook her head and clucked her tongue. “Ye’ve let yer figure go, Miss. Hold on to the bedpost, and I’ll try to pull ye in tighter.”

Vic’s heart sank as she gripped the bedpost and Maisie went at it harder than ever. The little maid cinched the corset so tight Vic couldn’t breathe or move, then it slipped loose enough for short breaths as the girl tied it off. Vic hoped it would loosen a bit more as she finished dressing.

At long last, Maisie draped that magnificent dress over Vic’s head and laced up the front, making it conform to her now-slender waist. Vic followed Maisie to the dressing table and sat so the little maid could fix her hair. As Vic looked at herself in the mirror, she didn’t recognize herself.

She looked exactly like she belonged in this time. It was her face shining out of the glass, and her mountain of hair dangling curly red ringlets that bounced around her cheeks as Maisie worked, and her white chest sloping smooth and pearly to her lacy bodice. But Vic had never dreamed she could look like this. That beautiful lady she saw in the mirror had lived underneath her skin all these years, and Vic never knew it. She never would have believed she could be this person.

Which was the real Vic Doyle? Did she really want to wear those bright-colored clothes and wear all that thick makeup? She never questioned it before. If she could be this, would she really want to? This lady gazing back at her didn’t need makeup or bright clothes. Her beauty shone out of her heart, through her sparkling eyes. Not all the makeup or clothes in the world could make her more attractive.

For the first time in her life, Vic saw herself as beautiful. She was curvy and sensuous and feminine, and she was all those things without a speck of makeup on her.

Finished fussing with Vic’s hair, Maisie stepped to the side and curtsied again. “If there’s nothing else, Miss. It’s past two o’clock—I just heard the clock downstairs. The Master’ll be waiting for ye in his apartment. He gave orders as ye should be shown there as soon as ye’re ready.”

“All right,” Vic replied. “You can take me there now.”

Maisie conducted her out of the room, down the grand staircase, and through a narrow hall leading to the far rear of the Guild House. The richest paintings, furnishings, and statuary packed every nook and cranny of the place. Crystal chandeliers hung from every ceiling. Every stick of furniture gleamed in the light coming through the windows.

Maisie halted in front of an inconspicuous door that slid back into the wall. “This is it,” she whispered. “Ye’ll find him inside.”

“Aren’t you going to tell him I’m here?” Vic asked.

“Och, no, Miss!” Maisie breathed. “I never go inside. I’m no’ permitted. Only the Master’s personal manservant is allowed inside. It’s Guild Law.”

Maisie hurried away, leaving Vic standing there alone. She hesitated to go in. If the place was so all-fired sacred, she probably didn’t belong there, either.

All at once, the door slid back and Boyd Gunn stood before her. He smiled down on her and gave her a sweeping bow. “How charming ye look now! Come in. Please. I’ve so looked forward to this.”

Vic took a deep breath and stepped into the room, and the door closed behind her.