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Present Day
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HONESTLY, HOW WAS SHE supposed to identify a Daimler beyond recognizing the name as a defunct hyphenation of the Chrysler Company?
Finding the first car had been easy enough. Brontë simply followed the maid’s directions to the mews tucked on a side street adjacent to the circle and waited for a footman bearing a trunk over one shoulder to pinpoint the correct garage and hence the car. He’d dropped the trunk at the rear of a long vintage-looking car with another steamer already set on the back and left, providing her the opportunity she’d needed to do what it took to stop Henry Burnham’s imminent departure.
What that something was momentarily stumped her.
Aila had been right. Brontë’s recklessness left her wholly unprepared for her task beyond the need to act. Her plan of attack had centered around an abstract imagining of horses and a wagon of some sort. Not a car. She’d seen a few gurgling, backfiring automobiles on the walk over from the theater. On the other hand, there’d been equal numbers of carriages. Faced with disabling a motorized vehicle rather than perhaps cutting a few harnesses, she’d been nonplussed by indecision. As a teen, her dad had insisted all his daughters know how to change a tire and add major fluids, yet somehow, he’d neglected detailed instruction on the mechanics of early engine function.
She’d been fumbling with the latch to open the hood when approaching conversation had forced a more primitive — not to mention, criminal — tire slashing. When they changed one tire with the spare and left to fix the other, she’d struck with the fait accompli of skewering the remaining two. And it had worked. She’d hid around the corner, pleased by the delay and considered her mission accomplished... until the option of alternate vehicles was mentioned. Frantic, she’d raced off in search of the other car until she realized she had no idea what kind of car she was looking for.
Honestly!
With no internet connection to help her out, she fished the time travel device out of her purse and pressed the pulsing center of the glowing circle that she’d learned would return her to the moment in time that she left, praying they hadn’t expanded the mews outward over time. Blinking away the blinding white flash and ignoring the churning of her stomach, she leaned against the modern reincarnation of the mews turned houses, took out her phone and waited for her cell service to reconnect. Googling the car style was easy enough. The Daimler was basically a more compact version of the long, early-era mom-mobile she’d already disabled. A few doors back in the garage she’d seen a blue one just like it. Blue. The color had struck her as unusual. Her impression had always been that all old cars were black.
Obviously not.
For extra credit, she zoomed in on the picture until she could determine where the hood latched in case there wasn’t a sharp, pointy tool handy again. Pulling a bottle of water from her purse, Brontë took a sip and rubbed her stomach. This time travel thing had a way of upsetting her stomach. If she’d known, she would have brought an antacid or taken something for motion sickness. Something to remember next time she needed to invade the space-time continuum.
Rolling back the dial on the device once again, she added on a few extra minutes to vandalize the alternate vehicle and locate the optional carriage as well. Just in case.
* * *
APRIL 9, 1912
He’d blinked. That was all.
A long blink, obviously. There was no other explanation for the woman’s sudden disappearance other than he’d imagined the whole thing...
An alternative Tris was beginning to consider with some seriousness. Long strides driven by bewilderment and curiosity carried him down the mews to where she’d been. He searched the immediate area and found no trace of her.
With a shake of his head and a mental reminder that time was wasting, he turned back toward his own garage. Andy and Ambrose were no doubt on top of transferring the trunks, but it wouldn’t hurt to make certain. He’d load them himself if need be to move things alon...
For the second time in as many minutes, his jaw fell as reached the door only to be greeted by the sight of a feminine bum bent under the open hood of his father’s Daimler. The same woman he’d seen but moments ago some fifty feet away straightened with a fist full of cables raised like a trophy under her triumphant smile.
How had she gotten around him?
He took in the pile of wires and hoses on the ground by her feet.
How the hell had she had time to do all that?
“What the bloody hell do ye think ye’re aboot?”
The woman started at his incredulous bellow, whipping the collection of auto parts in her grasp behind her back like a naughty child caught sneaking a sweet. As if hiding them might belie what he’d witnessed. For a heartbeat, time seemed to pause as he absorbed her. She stilled as well. A Highland deer with its nose to the wind, she gaped at him from beneath the brim of her hat with wide eyes of such an unusual blue they almost seemed lavender. Absurdly thick black lashes made them appear even larger, and he was struck by the thought that she looked familiar.
That could hardly be the case as he was unfamiliar with members of the criminal element. Female or otherwise. The reminder spurred time back into motion.
“Speak, lass!” he commanded loud enough that she jumped and finally blinked.
“Who are you?”
Her accent was familiar to him. A couple of his aunts hailed from the other side of the pond. Henry’s wife originally did, as well. What an American woman would be doing here was far more difficult to decipher.
“I’m the son of the man whose property yer vandalizing. And who the bloody hell are ye to be coming in here making mischief on unsuspect...” The thought trailed away as another replaced it. “Ye’re the one who damaged Lord Burnham’s tires, aren’t ye?”
She opened and closed her mouth, drawing his attention to her full pink lips. Her bottom lip then drawn between her teeth, the gesture expressing indecision. Of confessing her sins, Tris reminded himself, denying the unwilling attraction that stirred within him.
Aye, the lass was a bonny one. Deep set, hypnotic eyes balanced by dark, arching brows. High cheekbones with a hint of a blush and a pert nose, her skin was luminous. And those rosy lips, the top one slightly fuller than the lower were tempting beyond explanation.
“Gi’ me those,” he demanded, holding out his hand. She shuffled another step back. His temper boiled at her hesitation, rousing the Scot in him. “I willnae bring charges against ye if ye hand them over.”
He could see it — the minute shake of her head, the more obvious denial in her eyes. She wouldn’t give up the parts she’d torn from the auto back willingly. Every delay cost him a potential fortune and his sanity, as well.
“Give them to me.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Her voice was soft with regret. “Sorry. It’s nothing personal.”
A beauty she might be, she was also a miscreant of the worst order. A roadblock between him and his destination with a fistful of evidence in her hand. That made it personal to him. Unfortunately, a gentleman didn’t brawl with a lady or he’d force her to give them up.
Or perhaps he wasn’t as much a gentleman as he thought.
She retreated as he stepped forward, rightly sensing the threat he represented. Anger and impatience drove him toward her again and she skittered back out of his reach.
Blood raced hot through his veins and Tris lunged at her, reaching for the cables. She danced to the side, rotating to keep them out of reach.
“Bugger it, lass, ye’re going to make me miss my train.”
To his utter disbelief, she nodded. “Yes, and when I’m assured that will happen, I’ll happily return them.”
Her brazen gaze drifted over his shoulder and turned wary. Tris turned to find Andy and Ambrose hovering at the door, each with a trunk hoisted on his shoulder. Uncertainty filled their expressions but there was no hesitation in Tris.
“Drop those and help me detain her,” he commanded. “She’s the vandal who punctured his lordship’s tires.”
Both men stared at the woman in shock... and doubt. As if such a bonny lass couldn’t possess such criminal inclinations.
She, too, seemed perturbed by his accusation. “You realize my presence here doesn’t automatically incriminate me in any other incident.”
“Incident?”
With a growl, Tris took another step toward the unsuspecting suspect. Like a startled rabbit, she sprang away and ran past the two agape servants who continued to hold the trunks. Out the door he chased her as she sprinted down the alley. He’d give her kudos; she was a nimble thing. With her ill-gotten booty still clutched in one hand, though, she couldn’t lift her skirts to run as fast as he. He caught her shoulder and spun her around as cables flew into the air like confetti around them.
Gentlemanly instincts ran deep, dash it all. Tris let the precious wires fall to the ground and caught the thief around the waist before she did the same and hurt herself. With a gasp, she grabbed his shoulders for support and stared up at him.
By God but she was lovely. Up close her eyes appeared even deeper blue-purple. Like hyacinth. Damn if she didn’t smell as sweet. Her heart pounded against his chest, hard and fast. Her breath hitched. A potent rush of lust seized and shocked him so thoroughly, his reflex was to drop her like a hot coal.
He did precisely that.
She fell to the ground with a gasp and an audible squish of mud.
“Dear Lord, Tris, what is going on? I could hear you shouting from down the street.”
Tris tore his eyes away from the woman prostrate at his feet to look at his friend as he strode down the alley toward them. “This woman punctured your tires and sabotaged my father’s motor car. There’s not a chance we’re going to make our train now.”
“Yeah? Well, you dropped me in the mud. I mean, look at my dress!” She lifted herself out of the puddle and glared at Tris before turning to Henry. “Obviously his offense lacks the same magnitude but if we’re going to lay out accusations, there you go.”
Henry gazed at her for a long moment, his expression more curious than angry. “What do you have to say for yourself, miss?”
“Christ, Henry,” Tris exclaimed. “The lass is a vandal.”
“Henry? Henry Burnham?”
She looked at him as if he were the bloody king of England. The disparagement served to ratchet Tri’s fury another notch. “We need to summon the authorities!”
“Do we?” Henry’s expression softened further as he studied her. “We are indeed going to miss our train and by extension the sailing of our ship tomorrow morning. Have you nothing to say?”
The woman bit her lip again, her contrition in the face of his friend’s rebuke far more evident than it had been when Tris accused her of the same. “Only that someday, rather soon, you’ll thank me for it. Henry.”
“Thank you for it?” Tris repeated in disbelief while his friend shared a smile with the perpetrator of his business deal’s demise. “I’m appalled ye can stand there and say such a thi... Wait, where are you going?”
He ran after the woman as she bolted, but once he rounded the corner of the mews, she was gone again.
Vanished.
How did she do that?
* * *
PRESENT DAY
One of the up sides of being a costume designer was that Brontë knew how to clean clothes as well as make them. Down side, it took hours of careful work on the purple dress to remove all the mud stains and see it back to its original condition.
Good thing. She’d probably lose a friend if it hadn’t come out.
All those hours later, through the laundering of the borrowed gown and the evening performance of Cyrano, her hands shook uncontrollably. In her entire life she’d never been subjected to such a maddening series of events and the corresponding emotions.
Anxiety. Exhilaration. Triumph.
Her great-great grandfather. Though she’d spent less than a minute in his presence, that had been something.
Then there was the other guy.
The whole thing had shaken her so thoroughly, she’d almost forgotten to stop her other self from intervening. All the bouncing back and forth in time hadn’t helped to calm her nerves either.
“Who was he?” Aila asked after Brontë completed her recounting of what happened.
Or rather, after Aila nearly fainted when she’d finally strode into the theater, muddy and wet, over a half an hour after she’d vanished from the costume shop. While there was some thrill in that, a perfectly executed plan would have seen her disappear and reappear in a blink. In nearly the same spot. Instead, she’d been forced to stroll through present day Edinburgh’s city central wearing an Edwardian era dress and be stared at by curious passersby.
All thanks to that guy.
Her friend read from the diary while Brontë scrubbed the dress and they determined the mystery guy was Henry Burnham’s lifelong friend, Tristram MacKintosh, who’d accompanied Henry on the trip to New York.
“Tristram?” Aila repeated. “What kind of name is that?”
“Henry called him Tris.”
“I’d have a nickname, too, if I were him.
“Keep reading. Did they miss the Titanic?”
Aila skimmed the page and flicked to the next. “Aye. She writes that both men were most disheartened,” — she emphasized the words with a grin — “I like that. ‘Most disheartened to have missed the inaugural sailing of such a notorious ship but were able to catch a smaller liner out of Liverpool a day later. Something Henry and his steward had been arranging since they heard about the mysterious tire damage to his car.’”
That explained why Henry hadn’t been as angry as Tris over her sabotage. He’d already come up with a Plan B. The level-headed sort. She’d sprung from a farsighted gene pool for all her careless planning.
“Sounds like ye liked this other fellow, too,” Aila said when Brontë paused in her description of him.
Laughter sprung from disbelief. “Like him? He didn’t exactly gallop in on his white horse to sweep me into his arms. Isn’t that the standard we’re looking for?”
“Nay, we determined nae man was going to do that.”
“Oh, right. I stand corrected.”
Aila was right, though. She had — perhaps not liked exactly but been fascinated by — the more mercurial Tris... in retrospect, at least.
When he’d first surprised her, her impression had been of a man as starchy as his stiff collar. Dark hair slicked back. Unflappable in his proper gray wool suit with shirt buttoned high, tie tight, vest form fitting down his lean body. Regardless, he was striking enough to take her breath away. Then she’d been struck by how stoically handsome he was. Fierce, yet composed. His jaw set, teeth clenched. Eyes hard. Body tense with purpose. His passion — for his cause, as it were — had stirred a dash of admiration in her.
When the damn had burst on his temper, releasing that sweet Scottish brogue and bringing a flash of heat to his deep olive-green eyes...well, she’d found surprising pleasure in that moment. Pleasure mixed with fear when he’d chased after her, and when he’d caught her and held her against him, she could have sworn she saw a hint of a different sort of heat in his eyes.
Obviously, she’d been mistaken.
“He dropped me in a mud puddle. I get we agreed a girl can’t hope for a white knight, but I would hope we can wish for more than that.”
Whatever he’d done, her relief that he hadn’t been related by blood to her had been palpable and surprising. And she was woman enough to admit that unleashing the beast within had provided a wee bit of a thrill.
Brontë inwardly cringed at the thought then grimaced at her reaction. Was she so fundamentally broken that she couldn’t look into the moody green eyes of a handsome man and acknowledge that finding him attractive and sexy wasn’t a terrible thing? Attraction was healthy. Normal.
Perhaps her joking comment to Granny wasn’t far off the mark. Her loins had been ignored for far too long. She might be wanting a man more than she’d imagined. This wasn’t that man.
“Even if I were interested in dating, you know I don’t go for guys younger than me,” Brontë reminded her friend. “They’re too immature, mentally and emotionally.”
Tris hadn’t come across that way. Though thinking back, she decided he had to be a few years younger than her. Such self-possession was unusual in a man so young. Maybe they raised them different back then.
Maybe it didn’t even matter.
“This could be yer trickle-down man. Did ye think of that?”
“Yeah, right.” The notion summoned a choked laugh. “It’s not as if I’ll ever see him again.”
“Yet ye’re still talking about him,” Aila pointed out. “He must’ve been a proper hottie. Was he?”
Dark hair, those deep green eyes? If he unbent a bit, yes Tris MacKintosh could be a certifiable hottie. “He was handsome enough that any woman would stop to take a second look,” she allowed. “I’m only human.”
“Good. I was beginning to wonder.”
Fine, she’d been attracted to him. There, she admitted it. It still didn’t matter.
“My mission’s accomplished. Henry didn’t die aboard the Titanic.”
An electric shock raced through Brontë.
Nor had Tris.
Gratification followed in a heartbeat. Rather than being consigned to an icy grave, Tris MacKintosh had survived along with Henry. That vital, dynamic man lived on. She was thankful for that.
She hadn’t saved one life. She’d saved those of Henry’s friends and the servants that had accompanied them as well.
Would that she could have saved the whole boatload of victims. Unfortunately, she could think of no way to convince someone in a position of power that the unsinkable Titanic would flounder after all. Yet.
For now, she’d take her win and be content with it.
“So, what next?” Her best friend was now a true believer in the power of the time travel device. “If ye’re done with it, I’ve got a tidy notion or two I’ve been toying with while ye were gone.”
Brontë clutched the gadget protectively. Immediate plan or not, she wasn’t giving it up any time soon. Not to Aila or even Donell.
She might never give it up.
“I’m not sure yet,” she hedged. “On to Hyacinth, I suppose. First, I can’t wait to read about the rest of the changes my visit made.”