The Twisted Tale of Stormy Gale
By Christine Bell

I’m a time pirate—born in 1810, now a 21st-century woman. I
travel through time trying to right wrongs without disrupting the
fragile balance between what is and what can never be.

That’s why it’s vital that I go to 1836 and find the man who
conned my brother out of his Time Travel Mechanism as quickly
as possible. If the technology falls into the wrong hands, it could
change the world as we know it. The notorious Duke of Leister
definitely qualifies as the wrong hands. An amateur scientist of
the slightly mad variety, he’s bound to figure out how to use the
TTM sooner rather than later.

I knew this wouldn’t be easy. But I wasn’t counting on him being
as sexy as hell. Or winding up chained to his bed…

25,900 words

Dear Reader,

A new year always brings with it a sense of expectation and
promise (and maybe a vague sense of guilt). Expectation because
we don’t know what the year will bring exactly, but promise be-
cause we always hope it will be good things. The guilt is due to all
of the New Year’s resolutions we make with such good intentions.

This year, Carina Press is making a New Year’s resolution we
know we won’t have any reason to feel guilty about: we’re going
to bring our readers a year of fantastic editorial and diverse genre
content. So far, our plans for 2011 include staff and author ap-
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activities for readers. We’re also cooking up several genre-specif-
ic release weeks, during which we’ll highlight individual genres.
So far we have plans for steampunk week and unusual fantasy
week. Readers will have access to free reads, discounts, contests
and more as part of our week-long promotions!

But even when we’re not doing special promotions, we’re still of-
fering something special to our readers in the form of the stories
authors are delivering to Carina Press that we’re passing on to
you. From sweet romance to sexy, and military science fiction to
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4/94

Dedication

This one is for you, Gram. I was so privileged to have had you in

my life and I miss you…every single day.

Acknowledgements

First, I want to thank my editor, Jessica Schulte. If you don’t
have a Jessica Schulte, you should go out and get yourself one.
She’ll make you feel important and funny and brilliant, while
simultaneously slicing, dicing and molding your work into
something so much better than you ever dreamed it could be. I
still have to pinch myself because she picked me. There aren’t
enough words to express my gratitude.

A big thanks to Angela James for her willingness to take a chance
on me and this book, despite the fact that I was a total noob and
cried when she called me with the contract offer.

I also want to thank Ally, Donna, Kristina, Lisa, Melinda and Wy-
anne for their priceless input and unflagging support. They are
the best CPs a girl could ask for.

Last, I have to thank my sister, Nicole. She’s long insisted that
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is an allegory for life, and if you
look hard enough, you’ll see it everywhere. I found it cropping
up, unbidden, time and time again in this book. So, a nod to my
sister, and all the respect in the world to Mr. L. Frank Baum for
creating a timeless and magical masterpiece that enthralled me
as a child.

Contents

Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Epilogue
About the Author

Chapter One

Lordship, Connecticut, October 18, 1836

A blast of sunlight punched through the persistent blackness,
backlighting my eyelids in a hazy wash of red. I took a deep,
steadying breath as the vague sense of weightlessness abated.
Following protocol, I didn’t open my eyes until there was ground
beneath my feet.

Sand. A cool gust of wind sucked the air out of me as I took in

my surroundings with a practiced eye.

The beach was deserted, and it seemed as if we’d ended up ex-

actly where we intended. Fabulous. But the real mark of success
was whether we’d made it to when we intended. I looked down at
the time-travel mechanism in my palm and waited as the wildly
spinning hands slowed to a halt.

“Well, shit,” I muttered under my breath, prying my hand

from Bacon’s too-tight grasp.

“When is it?” he shouted. The whipping wind plucked the

words from his mouth and sent them sailing down the stretch of
beach, but I’d gotten the gist through lip-reading.

“Saturday the eighteenth,” I yelled in reply.
“Bollocks.”
Yep, bollocks about covered it. The whole trip had the mak-

ings of a major cluster-fuck. One that Bacon was directly re-
sponsible for. Already cranky at having to make the journey in
the first place, being rushed on an important mission made me
want to really lay into him.

To be fair, our arrival date wasn’t his fault. It’s a tricky pro-

position, time travel. Once in a while you nail it, balls on, and get
where you want, when you want. Most times, it’s a little more hit
and miss than that, and we were lucky we’d done as well as we
had. The reason for the trip itself, however, was all his fault.

See, a few months prior, Bacon had lost his time-travel mech-

anism to the Loony Duke of Leister in a drunken game of whist.
Needless to say, it had been priority number one to get it back
from him as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, by the time we’d
located his residence and come up with a viable plan, the bastard
had left the country. We had finally tracked him down in the Un-
ited States. And, after weeks of planning, we had come to get it
back.

We’d intended to arrive three days before the harvest fair

began. Early enough to set my plan into motion and take care of
some details, but not so early that we’d have stay in the nine-
teenth century for very long. Ostensibly, because the longer one
stays away, the trickier it becomes to find one’s way back. But, if
I’m being honest, I have an unholy obsession with hot showers
and Starbucks coffee that keeps me motivated to limit the dura-
tion of my trips.

My career has taught me to be a roll-with-the-punches kind of

girl, so despite the setback and my mood, I got down to work. I
methodically disassembled my handheld time-travel mechanism
and stored the various pieces into different compartments of my
ever-present carpetbag.

Time travel rule number one: always immediately disas-

semble one’s TTM. This holds true even for an experienced time
pirate such as myself. One might think that, given the nature of
my occupation, being prepared for a quick getaway would take
precedence over all other concerns. I’ve found, however, that it’s
much better to be stuck somewhere reassembling for a few extra
minutes than to be caught unawares when the village idiot steals

9/94

your intact TTM and winds up in 1929 Siberia. Been there, done
that, and spent almost a week chasing him through time to get it
back. Talk about a time suck.

For this particular recovery mission, I’d chosen to travel light

(aside from being saddled with Bacon, who was necessary in or-
der for me to secure lodgings during this sexist time period). The
only thing I carried with me was my carpetbag stuffed with a
change of clothes needed to execute my plan. For the trip in, I’d
opted for an unfortunate mutton-sleeved blue dress over a suf-
focating corset, and a wickedly starched petticoat. I am a jeans
girl through and through so the look was out of character for me,
to say the least, but I had long since accepted the costumes as
one of the necessary evils of the job. The only concession I al-
lowed myself was comfortable shoes, as being fleet of foot was a
requirement. To that end, I had added a pair of supple, low-
heeled calfskin boots to complete the ensemble.

Once our gear was packed away and we’d slogged through the

sand to reach the road, we hotfooted it to Mariner’s Inn about a
mile from the beach. Bacon spoke to the proprietress and a short
while later we were secure in our quarters.

With Bacon’s back to me, I shucked the “proper lady” costume

as fast as possible, pulling off the hideous gown and undergar-
ments. I replaced them with a full cotton black skirt adorned with
brightly colored hand-stitched poppies, and an off-the-shoulder
black blouse that knotted at my waist. Then I adjusted “the girls”
so that they were displayed to their best advantage—because, re-
gardless of what the magazines may say, breasts never go out of
fashion.

Releasing my dark hair from the elaborate chignon, I turned

my head upside down and shook it out. When I’d righted myself,
a mass of curls hung loose down my back. After lining my navy
blue eyes in black, I added my twenty-first-century MAC lip gloss
in Rockin’ Red. I’d finally begun to resemble a Gypsy fortune-

10/94

teller. I inserted large gold hoop earrings into my lobes and slid a
gold ring on every finger, including my thumbs, for good meas-
ure. With a last quick look in the mirror, I was satisfied to see
that Stormy Gale was nowhere to be found, and “Madame Bap-
tiste” was ready for action.

Missions accomplished, I stuffed the Victorian Miss uniform

back in my bag and called to Bacon. “Okay, ready.”

He turned to face me and grinned. “You look great.”
“Thanks.”
His broad smile drooped at my clipped tone. I looked away, a

little ashamed, but still not ready to forgive him for getting us in-
to this mess. “We’ve got one hour. Let’s rock and roll.”

By the time we got to the fairgrounds, evening had stolen over
the little town, and the night had that witchy aura exclusive to
Octobers in New England. A swollen harvest moon hung heavy in
the sky, its light casting a golden hue over the field. “Lots of
people already,” Bacon said, scanning the crowd as we walked.

“Wow. Keen observation. You should be a private detective,” I

replied.

He shot me a hangdog look, then turned his face away and

mumbled, “I said I was sorry. I don’t know what else I can do.”

I sighed. “It’ll be fine once we get it back. Until then, I’m go-

ing to be a little on edge. You can’t blame me for that. It’s really
serious this time, bro.”

He nodded grimly and that made me feel even worse. Bacon

always owned up to his mistakes. It was one of his finest qualit-
ies. I just wished he didn’t make them quite so often. At nineteen,
he was trusting and optimistic to a fault. Although, I couldn’t for
the life of me figure out why. We’d been filthy little urchins living
on the streets of London eating garbage and begging for money
until Professor Gilbert Green came and took us away with him

11/94

thirteen years ago. Life was peachy after that, but those early
years had leeched the optimism right out of me. The things we
saw…Well, you can’t unsee them, and I honestly don’t know how
Bacon managed to hang on to his innocence through it all. Need-
less to say, the big, nasty world took pleasure in trying to strip
him of it, chewing him up and spitting him out on a pretty regu-
lar basis. But damned if he didn’t always dust himself off and
keep smiling.

This time he’d really stepped in it, though. And despite the

fact that his starry-eyed innocence often confounded me, the
thought of him losing it made my stomach pitch.

The smell of roasted meats, toffee apples and yeasty bread in-

terrupted my thoughts. It was so tantalizing, we stopped and
purchased two fat loaves stuffed with sausage bits.

We nibbled on the crusty loaves as we scouted the fairgrounds

for a good location to set up shop. After some deliberation, I
chose a spot toward the middle. As much as I liked the idea of be-
ing on the fringe for a quick getaway, it was imperative that I set
up in the thick of things so that the duke wouldn’t pass me by.

“I’m going to try to get that space over there,” I said to Bacon.

“Wander around and see if you can find me a few candles and a
couple jugs of wine. Keep an eye out for the duke. And make sure
you leave your hat on and wear it low over your eyes. He won’t be
looking for you, but we don’t want to risk a run in and him recog-
nizing you. Meet me back here when you’re done.”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” he said with a salute, then headed off.
Unfortunately, as I approached the chosen spot, I saw that an

old had woman beaten me to it. She was setting down a rickety
cart filled with baskets of apples, pears and corn to sell. When
she saw me coming, she scowled.

“Hello there!” I called and then flashed my teeth in hopes of

dazzling her with my smile.

12/94

“Move along, witch. Tart! Strumpet!” she snarled, flashing her

tooth in a grimace, which was far from dazzling.

I leveled her with a menacing glare and wiggled spell-casting

fingers in her direction. A childish satisfaction warmed me as her
face paled and she backed away.

Forced to abandon my intention of making a deal with the

hag directly, I took my leave. After a few minutes of searching, I
located the groundskeeper. He agreed to move the woman down
a row and to give me her spot in exchange for the ruby ring I
wore on my left index finger and a gander at my tatas. Not
thrilled about the latter part of the deal, I stood before the fat,
greasy tosser as he licked his fleshy lips in anticipation. Eyes
closed, I took a deep breath, calling upon my steely time-pirate
resolve. Then, cursing Bacon roundly, I gave the pig a quick flash
of the goods. Upon his leering promise to have a tent erected for
me in short order, I stifled a gag and fled the scene, eager to for-
get the incident.

Not one to cry over spilled milk—or in this case, bared

breasts—I threw myself headlong into preparing for the evening’s
activities. Making the rounds of the other tents, I was able to pur-
chase some brightly colored cloth, herbs, a rickety little table and
a decorative orb made of delicate green blown glass. By the time I
was through, I’d made some friends, gained some admirers and
doled out quite a few bribes. In return, some of the merchants
agreed to try to get a message to me should they notice the Loony
Duke of Leister had arrived.

And when he did? Well, “Madame Baptiste” was going to con

him out of the TTM he had stolen from Bacon, take the rest of his
valuables and get the hell out of Dodge.

13/94

An hour later, the tent was draped in gauze and smelled of
beeswax candles. Complete with “crystal” ball, it looked appro-
priate for the purpose.

The general public had started trickling in, so I sent Bacon

back to the inn to wait for me rather than risk him blowing my
cover. But as concerned as I was that the duke might recognize
him, I was even more concerned about how I was going to recog-
nize the duke.

Bacon had been very vague on details as far as the duke’s ap-

pearance was concerned. He’d estimated Leister was in his
thirties and recalled that he had dark hair and had worn a dapper
suit. Beyond that, Bacon remembered very little else about him
or that drunken night. The only other thing we knew for sure was
that he was a Brit and a recent transplant to the States.

Despite my recon earlier that evening, I had learned little else.

None of the merchants I had chatted with had met him as of yet.
The only additional information they could offer was that he’d
just arrived in the area a month ago and purchased a large estate
on the outskirts of town.

Well, that, and the fact that he was bat-shit crazy.
Apparently the “Loony Duke” title had been with him since he

was a young man in London, and it had followed him to America.
During the short time he had been in Lordship, the working-class
folk of the town had built Leister up into some pre-Mary Shelley
type of mad scientist. Everyone expected that the fair would be
his debut of sorts, and gossip was rampant.

No matter how cracked his Liberty Bell might be, I still had to

get the job done. I decided my best bet was to focus on his mode
of dress and his accent to help me identify him in the crowd of
Americans. With that in mind, I stood out front with my eyes
peeled, eavesdropping as people streamed by.

14/94

In an effort to seem authentic, I halfheartedly called to pass-

ersby, offering fortune telling and good luck charms. Inevitably,
there were some takers, and I did my best to put on a good show.

My first customers were a charming ginger-haired young man

and his sweetheart. They entered the tent, sharing nervous
smiles with each other as they sat down. He didn’t even glance at
my cleavage, and she hung on his every word. They were ador-
able together. After consulting the spirits I quickly assured them
that they would have a long and happy life together. They
grinned at each other, and some of the tension knotting the back
of my neck dissipated.

As the evening wore on, people trickled in and out, their mer-

riment rubbing off on me. I actually started to have a good time
hamming it up as Madame Baptiste, ad-libbing a Romanianish
accent and all. I would be the first to say it wasn’t exactly spot on.
Growing up on the streets of London in the 1800s, moving to
America in the late twentieth century when I was thirteen and
spending my life flitting through time, it’s been difficult to settle
into one mode of speech. That said, who was going to question
my Romanian? So I went with it.

I’d just handed a bundle of herbs to a lovely woman hoping

for a grandchild when I noticed a tall man, half a head above the
rest, looking at me from a distance. I found my gaze drawn to
him as well, not because of his size, but because of the intensity
of his stare. Holding my gaze with his own, he walked toward me
until he stood only a few feet away. He shook his head briefly but
didn’t speak.

Hello, tall, dark and handsome. I cleared my throat. “Hello

there, sir. I haf come all the vay from Romania to bring the
secrets of the Romany to the Americas. Vould you like to see vhat
your future holds?” I said in what I hoped was an enticing,
spooky voice. I’d laid it on a little thick and grimaced inwardly.

15/94

“Why, yes,” he replied, sounding surprised at his answer.

“Yes, I believe I would.”

A Londoner, I surmised, although the crisp accent had

flattened somewhat, sort of like that of a person who’d lived in
the States for a long time. Even so, I wondered for a moment if
this might be the duke. I dismissed the thought as soon as it oc-
curred to me as I took in his workman’s clothes with a sweep of
my eyes.

His lips kicked up at the corners as I completed my inspec-

tion, and so I headed into the tent, making sure to keep my face
turned away until some of the color had faded. Presented with
this stunning batch of man candy, I was feeling a bit unnerved
and uncharacteristically shy.

I grabbed the jug of wine and poured myself a small cup, hop-

ing to quell my nerves. After chugging half of it down in one huge
gulp, I took a deep breath and turned around to face my hand-
some patron. I started in surprise as our bodies bumped. The
sneaky fellow had rolled up right behind me.

“Oh, I bek your pardon! Von’t you seet down?” I backed away

while motioning toward a crate that was acting as a chair. I took
a seat on the opposite side of the rickety little table and waited
for him to join me.

He sat and continued to look at me intently. I was starting to

wonder if this guy ever blinked. A trickle of unrest snaked up my
spine. Had my libido gotten the better of me? Sure, he looked
great, but if he planned to cut my head off with some old-fash-
ioned lopping shears or make a dress out of my skin, it was so not
worth it.

An irrational panic had started to build, its insidious fingers

brushing up the sides of my neck. What with the music and noise
from the festivities, if I screamed, would anyone even hear me? I
looked to see the tent flap still laying wide open as it had been all

16/94

evening, and was about three seconds from lobbing a beeswax
candle at him and running out screaming, when he spoke again.

“I’m sorry, I just…You remind me of someone. I don’t mean to

stare, but it’s quite uncanny.”

Okay, so I looked like someone he knew. The panic began to

subside.

“I promise you, sir,” I replied with a purr, on solid ground

again now that I felt reasonably reassured that he wasn’t serial
killer, “I vould remember you if ve’d met.”

He didn’t smile at my flirtatious tone as I’d expected. Instead

he pinned me with another heated gaze. My heart beat faster at
the stark sensuality in his face. His dark eyes slid away from
mine, down to my mouth. My breath fell short and my lips parted
of their own accord. Suddenly it became very warm.

Gathering my wits, I pasted a smile on my face. “So what…er,

vhat do you vant to know, handsome? About money, maybe? Or
a voman? Just ask it, and Madame Baptiste vill give you answer.”
I tried for a faux cheery tone that, to my chagrin, came out
sounding rather shrill,

“All right, Madame Baptiste,” he replied, his eyes never leav-

ing mine. “Sa dansezi cu mine?”

My stomach dropped at his response, for two reasons. Mostly,

because the man’s knowledge of what I assumed was Romanian
did not bode well for me. It felt like a bad omen. Of all the gypsy
joints in the world, the guy who speaks Romanian walks into
mine. Some fortune-teller I was—I never saw that coming. But
rounding out a close second was the effect that husky voice com-
ing out of that sensuous mouth seemed to have on me.

A little shaken, I realized he was watching me, waiting for a

response. For a brief moment, I debated brazening it out in
hopes that this was some one-off Romanian phrase he’d learned,
but dismissed the idea. The comfortable way the words just

17/94

poured out of his mouth along with the smooth way he rolled the
r led me to believe that he was fluent.

Fluent in Romanian! What are the frigging odds? “Uh, vhat

language is thees you speak?” I asked, feeling like a huge idiot
but not quite ready to concede, on the off chance that he was
speaking Greek or something and I might be able to salvage my
image.

“Why, Romanian, of course. Don’t you speak, Madame Bap-

tiste? O singura limba nu este suficient. Wouldn’t you agree?” he
asked, a nefarious dimple flashing on his right cheek.

I almost rolled my eyes then. Of course he had a dimple. Like

he wasn’t distracting enough without it.

Deciding that something resembling honesty was in order, I

let out a long but ladylike snort and slammed a hand on the
table. “All right, you got me. I don’t speak Romanian. Happy? It’s
just, no one takes me seriously if I tell them that I’m a gypsy from
Pratt’s Bottom.” Rallying, I pressed forward. “So what did you
ask me? I can still tell your fortune, you know.”

“I asked you if you wanted to dance with me,” he replied, his

expression solemn once again.

“And what else?” My throat felt a little tight.
“I said, ‘One language isn’t enough.’ Don’t you agree?” His

gaze swept down the column of my neck, skimming along my
shoulders, then lower. He ran his tongue over his lips before he
met my eyes again. “One language to tell a woman like yourself
just how beautiful she is would be a hindrance. Vos yeux sont
beaux comme la mer,” he murmured.

Ah, French. This one I knew. But what’s a girl supposed to say

when a gorgeous stranger tells her that her eyes are more beauti-
ful than the sea? “Merci, Je suis flatté.” It was true, I was
flattered. Worse than that, I was crushing on this fellow hard. It
had been a long, long time since I felt this way about a man. But I
couldn’t allow myself to be sucked in by his charm, no matter

18/94

how droolworthy he was. I needed to tell his fortune and send
him packing so I could get my focus back.

Find the duke. Retrieve the TTM.
In truth, I was probably being overly cautious in my efforts to

recover it. Neither Gilly nor I had ever let Bacon walk around
with all the pieces to his TTM anyway. It had always been our
habit to remove the mercury pin upon arriving at our destination
without his knowledge. We didn’t want to demoralize him, but at
nineteen he was easily distracted, and anything from a pretty girl
to a juicy steak could make him lose focus. The responsibility of
keeping the technology a secret was a heavy one, so it was really
best for everyone if he didn’t have to bear it.

Without the mercury pin in it, from the duke’s perspective,

what he had on his hands was probably just some sort of elabor-
ate timepiece. A curiosity to be sure, but certainly not a time ma-
chine. If I left well enough alone, things would probably turn out
all right. And it would give me some free time to spend with the
hunk before me.

So. Tempting.
Still, if by some miracle the TTM should get into the hands of

a real scientist or bright young inventor, and he or she got
lucky…Well, I couldn’t take that chance.

Time travel is inherently fraught with risk. The technology is

so volatile that in the wrong hands, it could destroy the world as
we know it. In order to maintain balance and harmony, it needs
to be regarded with reverence, if not a little fear. Every time we
travel forward or back, something changes. Even with the risk in-
dex module we use to measure how much impact each trip could
potentially have, nothing is guaranteed. And still, governments
would kill for it, hoping to undermine other governments. Grief-
stricken people would riot for it, hoping to undo tragedy and
awaken the dead. None of them would care or understand the
ramifications of their actions.

19/94

Nothing is more important than protecting our secret.

Nothing.

Flirting with this sexy man was a pointless endeavor in any

case. There was no room for a relationship in my life. Once again
resolute, I sat up straight, steeled myself against his diabolical
dimples and the intimacy of the candlelit space and pressed
forward.

“All right, then, sirrah, what would you like to know about

your future?” I asked him, hoping he would pick up on my newly
brisk tone.

His sharp eyes took in my countenance and he cocked his

head. Not willing to let me off the hook so easily, he asked,
“Might I know your real name first, chéri? Surely it would be silly
for me to continue calling you ‘Madame Baptiste’ now that we
have peeled away that guise?”

With his head at that angle, for a split second, he did look

oddly familiar. And for some inexplicable reason, with his eyes
locked on mine, suddenly I wanted him to know my real
name…wanted to hear him say it. I licked my lips and croaked,
“Dorothy. But my friends and family call me Stormy,” wondering,
even as the words spilled from my mouth, why I was telling him
the truth. Well, half the truth, anyway.

My family does call me Stormy, but I don’t really have any

friends. It’s hard to have relationships, or keep them at any rate,
due to my lifestyle. At a certain point, people always start to ask
questions. And the odd thing about me is that, even though my
profession often requires me to lie or pretend to be someone I’m
not, I actually don’t like lying to people. I justify it by reminding
myself that what I do is for the greater good. I take from the rich
and give to the poor. I rob the undeserving and redistribute their
wealth to those who deserve it more. I travel through time trying
to right wrongs without disrupting the fragile balance between
what is and what can never be. It’s important work, my life’s

20/94

work, and if I have to deceive people to do it, so be it. But I draw
the line at lying to those I care about. If someone trusts me, it’s
my responsibility to be worthy of that trust. So, I’ve found it easi-
er to just have casual acquaintances rather than best buds, a rare
tryst rather than a boyfriend. Always making sure they know
from the start that I’m not going to play house with them or
marry them or have their babies. That kind of life just isn’t in the
cards for me.

“And do you have a surname, Stormy?”
I purposely ignored his use of my nickname, knowing full well

he was trying to bait me and answered, “Gale. My name is
Dorothy Gale.” Again, it was the truth. Since he wasn’t familiar
with The Wizard of Oz or moving pictures at all, I was saved from
having to answer the questions that typically follow that pro-
nouncement—a bonus, since answering truthfully there was not
an option.

“Dorothy Gale” had been my own choice. My adopted father,

Gilly, had been a Scotsman, a scientist, an inventor and the creat-
or of the time-travel mechanism. On one of his earliest journeys,
he found himself in London, circa 1823. Bacon and I attempted
to pull a pickpocketing scam on him. Rather than turning us in to
the constables, he bought us bread and cheese. He spent a few
days in London taking care of some business but made sure to
see us each day and give us food. Upon preparing to go back to
his twentieth-century life in America, he found he could not just
walk away, so appalled was he by the conditions in which we
lived. When he offered to take us with him, we didn’t think twice,
and we never looked back. Life before Gilly was…Well, I don’t
like to think about that. My life began at the age of thirteen when
he found me.

Gilly was an indulgent sort, as if it was his job to make up for

all the misery we had endured in our young lives. So when I told
him we wanted to forget our past, to start fresh, he suggested

21/94

that we come up with new names for ourselves. I pondered for
weeks, tossing around this name and that, until I saw The Wiz-
ard of Oz on television. Breathless with exhilaration and flushed
with excitement from the spectacle, I told Gilly from that point
on, he should call me Dorothy Gale. He later nicknamed me
Stormy because of the color of my eyes—at least, that’s what I tell
myself.

I often wonder if Bacon wishes he had taken a little longer in

picking his name. He’d only been six at the time and still awed at
the prospect of eating three meals a day, so it shouldn’t have
been a surprise that food came into play for part of it. Gilly had
gotten down on one knee and said, “Well, little master, what do
you think? You can be called anything, whatever pleases you
most.” At this direction, Bacon chose the things that made him
happiest, and there you have it: Bacon Frogs.

I shook off the memory, trying not to smile, because I was still

really pissed at Bacon. He’d allowed himself to be suckered out of
his TTM during a drunken game of cards. Once again, his trust-
ing nature made him an easy target for a charlatan. The bastard
Leister had chosen his victim well. And sometime tonight, justice
would finally be served.

“Dorothy Gale,” my luscious patron murmured thoughtfully,

dragging me from my reverie. “Hmm, I think Stormy might be a
better fit.”

“Probably so, sir,” I said, trying to ignore the tingle that ran

through me as he said my name. I busied my hands, popping a
lemon drop into my suddenly dry mouth, offering him one as
well, which he declined.

“Now you know all about me. Let’s find out about you. For

starters, what shall I call you?” I prompted, pulling my seat
closer to the table and holding both hands over the green glass
ball in an effort to get things back on track and moving along. It

22/94

seemed long past time to end this dalliance so I could get outside
to find out if my intended victim had arrived.

“Well,” he replied with a sardonic twist of his heavenly mouth,

“The name’s Leister, but to be honest, most people just call me
the Loony Duke.”

23/94

Chapter Two

He stared at me in abject horror as I promptly began to hyper-
ventilate, huffing in frantic gasps like a landed carp. The lemon
drop I’d been sucking on was vacuumed into my windpipe, where
it lodged like a little sweet-tart life stopper. The noise that es-
caped from between my lips sounded like a cross between a leaky
tire and a choked gasp—sort of squeaky “pffffttpp” ending with a
“gack.”

My eyes teared and my vision blurred as I struggled for air,

working my throat in a futile effort to dislodge the dastardly little
nugget. I’m not too proud to admit that there may have been a
fair amount of drool and eye bulging as well, which must have
tipped the duke off to the seriousness of the situation.

He leaped to his feet, crossing the distance between us in a

single stride. Standing behind me, he pounded my back soundly
with his hand. Once, twice, three times a charm. With an audible
pop, the candy careened out of my mouth with impressive velo-
city and smacked directly into my fake crystal ball, shattering it
on impact.

For a full minute I sat drawing sweet air into my lungs. My

brain was reeling—the very duke I’d been looking for was here in
my tent.

It wasn’t until the sound of my own harsh breathing began to

quiet and my panic began to subside that I realized he was rub-
bing my back in a gentle, comforting rhythm.

I stood up and moved away, picking up my cup of wine and

taking a sip to soothe my burning throat. I scrambled to call
upon my infamous, steely time-pirate resolve, but came up

empty, taking another gulp of wine in hopes of soothing my
frayed nerves.

“Thank you,” I said with as much dignity and grace as could

be expected after unwittingly enacting what could easily have
been a scene from I Love Lucy.

“Are you all right?”
“Yes, fine,” I replied stiffly. I was pretty pissed at myself and

more than a little worried that my Spidey senses were on the
fritz. How could I not have known that the man before me was
the duke? Instinct is everything in this job, and mine had barely
made a peep. When this was over, I needed to reassess a few
things. First on the list? How not to be swayed by a pretty face.

Looking into said pretty face, I put my worry aside and

grabbed onto the silver lining; the Loony Duke of Leister was in
my tent. Despite things not going exactly the way I had planned,
the result was optimal. Buoyed by the thought, I moved my focus
to getting the TTM.

Game on.
“Sorry, the drop just went down the wrong pipe is all. Hap-

pens all the time. I have a condition—erm…spastic windpipe dis-
order. Since birth. Irreparable, you know. We’re just lucky it
wasn’t a boiled egg or a chicken leg. Anyway, you were just telling
me about your funny little nickname and then we were going to
do our reading,” I reminded him with a smile.

He squinted at me, obviously confused by my response to the

near-death experience and my ever-shifting moods. Then he
turned and eyed the shattered crystal ball pointedly.

“No problem,” I said, taking the gaiety down a notch, as it

may have been overdone the first time round. “We’ll just do a
palm reading instead. Madame Baptiste is an excellent palm
reader.”

25/94

I’d hoped the banter would relax him and maybe he’d chuckle

at my self-deprecating humor. He did not, and continued to stare
at me as if I were some strange creature.

Pasting on an encouraging, non-judgmental smile, I said, “So,

do tell me how you earned your moniker and why you’re dressed
like that if you are a duke.”

I needed to get him to let his guard down again, and maybe a

heart-to-heart chat would do some good. Leaning forward to give
him a good view of my cleavage, I began clearing glass from the
table, glancing up surreptitiously and noting with satisfaction
that he was enjoying the view as he contemplated my request. I
wrapped the shards in a cloth and put it aside, looking at him
expectantly.

“It really isn’t all that intriguing, the story not nearly as juicy

as the nickname would imply,” he replied in a measured tone.
“I’m something of an inventor, and spend quite a bit of my time
creating gizmos and things. I’m afraid there are times that I get
lost in my work and don’t adhere to the social norms. If I’m on a
particularly interesting project, servants will often see me pacing
in circles, talking to myself, maybe tossing gears and bits out the
window in frustration. I’ve been that way since my teenage years,
and after a while the name just stuck. I wanted to get out of the
house and enjoy the fair, but knew I would get no peace if every-
one in town spotted me. Needless to say, they’re curious about
the Loony Duke, so I made sure my attire allowed me to blend
in.”

My Spidey senses chose that moment to come back to life, as I

knew with utmost certainty that he had not told me the whole
story. I guess it takes a phony to recognize a phony. And while it
wasn’t news to me that he considered himself a man of science,
this reminder combined with the fact that he mentioned inven-
tions specifically did reinforce the need to get back the TTM

26/94

ASAP. He epitomized the type of person we couldn’t chance hav-
ing it.

“Well, the name does have a nice ring to it, but if you don’t

mind, I’ll just call you Leister, then.” I decided to let the matter
rest rather than pressing him on the details of his past just to sat-
isfy my own curiosity. “Why don’t I get you a nice cup of wine
and we can have a drink together while we contemplate the pos-
sibilities of the universe and your illustrious future?”

He nodded. “Fine, that might be nice. You’re sure you’re all

right after your choking spell?” he asked again, his expression
troubled again.

The man was good, I had to give him that. He actually seemed

genuinely concerned about me, but the false sincerity only served
to strengthen my conviction. I turned to grab the second mug,
filling it from the wine jug.

Plan A was quite simple, as most good plans are. First, I

would get the duke addled. Then I would con him out of his valu-
ables and try to ascertain whether he had the TTM on his person.
If he did, I would deliver the coup de grâce, knocking him out
and taking it from him. If the TTM wasn’t on his person, I would
have to move toward the more complex plan B. Since it was just
the backup plan, the details hadn’t exactly been worked out. In a
nutshell, I would somehow have to break into his estate the fol-
lowing evening, then search the premises. Needless to say, that
course of action was fraught with problems and uncertainties, so
I sincerely hoped that my instincts were right and he had it on
him.

I handed the duke a cup of wine and sat down again, holding

both hands out to him. He reached out and clasped them loosely,
pausing to gaze into my eyes before grazing his thumbs over the
pulse points in my wrist. A bolt of heat jolted through me at his
touch, and I gasped, struggling not to pull away. His pupils
dilated, his grip tightening almost imperceptibly.

27/94

He’s a fiend, I reminded myself and slapped a casual smile on

my face to mask my reaction. “No, silly, yours need to be palm
up.” Tugging my wrists from his grasp, I turned his hands over to
lie flat on the table.

“Now, then, here is your lifeline.” I traced the crease that led

from beneath his index finger in a curved vertical line almost to
his wrist. The urge to follow it with the tip of my tongue hit me
like a train, but I tamped it down.

“It appears that you will live long and prosper,” I said, realiz-

ing only after the words left my lips that I’d been quoting Mr.
Spock from Star Trek. I really had to stop watching so much TV.

“How can you tell that?” he asked, arching a cynical brow.
“Well, the line is long and deep. And your money line is also

very pronounced,” I replied, tracing a crease running from be-
neath his ring finger parallel to the first.

I’d read a short booklet on the basics of palm reading for au-

thenticity’s sake, and what I told him was mostly true, if you be-
lieve in that kind of stuff.

“And what about love?”
His voice had dropped to a husky whisper. I swallowed hard

and traced another line, deciding to take him down a peg for toy-
ing with me. “I see love here, yes. Oooh…” I looked up and gave
him a pitying shake of my head.

“What? What is it?”
“Well, it’s a bit too vague with only a palm, but I foresee some

trouble in the area of love. Really, I shouldn’t say more. It
wouldn’t be proper.” I dropped his hand and turned my face
away in faux modesty.

He picked up his wine and took a slug, setting it back down

hard, sloshing it over the sides of the cup. “Out with it. Come on
now, you can’t start telling me something like that and then stop.
It’s only the two of us. You’re a fortune-teller and I’m a loon.

28/94

Why the need for propriety?” he asked. He stared at me again,
this time with a challenge in his eyes.

Cocky bastard. “All right, then, sir, if you insist. It’s your

money after all. Is everything…erm, working down there?” I
flicked a pointed glance below his waist.

“What do you mean?” he sputtered. “Of course. Absolutely.

It’s never been a problem.” His brow furrowed. “Is it going to be?
A problem, that is.”

“Can’t say without my crystal ball. Palm reading is much less

accurate. Oh, but I do have another method we could try! How
about pulling some cards? I have a deck around here some-
where.” I turned to rifle through my bag.

I dropped the deck of cards on the table between us. My goal

was to get him talking, drinking and making merry so he
wouldn’t notice the slightly bitter taste when I drugged his wine.
To that end, I decided that to let him off the hook and cease my
efforts to unman him. I would just redouble my efforts to charm
the pants off him.

I spread the cards out over the table and advised him to

choose four. He did, and with a flourish, I flipped them over.
“Ahh, I see now. The queen of hearts. Beautiful. Love is on the
way for you, good sir. Oh, and your palm was misleading!” I gave
him a broad wink. “Jack of spades only surfaces for the most
virile of men.”

He sat back and let out a sigh of relief. “I wasn’t really wor-

ried, but one never knows.” That damned diabolical dimple
flashed like a bloody beacon as he leveled me with a grin, then
finished the rest of his wine.

I stood and picked up his mug, refilling it. As I poured, I

flicked my thumbnail against a catch on the emerald ring that ad-
orned my third finger. The stream of powder that trickled out
was imperceptible in the dim candlelight but I kept up the anim-
ated chatter to distract the duke just in case.

29/94

I set the cup in front of him and filled my own glass in turn,

sans the mickey. “Let’s have a toast, shall we, Leister? To impro-
priety,” I trilled.

“To impropriety,” he answered, clinking his mug against

mine.

Following my lead, he drank it down.
“Do you happen to know what time it is?” I asked, relieved

when he seemed to take no notice of the subtle difference in
taste.

“I do.” He rifled through his pockets. To my disappointment,

he pulled out a gold pocket watch and glanced at the face. “Half
past eight.”

Of course, it would have been way too easy if he’d just pulled

out the TTM. It did keep perfect time, but the way my luck was
going, it lay hidden in his house locked in a safe somewhere.

“Say,” I ventured, my tone conspiratorial. “It’s still fairly early

and I’m really enjoying your company. Would you care to play a
game with me? Mayhap we can be really improper and do some
gambling. I would wager this ring.” I pulled the sapphire off my
pinky. “What will you wager, handsome?”

I lowered my gaze and fluttered my lashes, trying my best at-

tempt at the seductive coquette.

“Do you have something in your eye?”
He leaned forward, all concerned, to get a closer look.
“Er, no, no, just a little smoky from the candles.” Note to self:

brush up on flirting techniques.

Changing tactics, I leaned toward him again, relying on old

faithful to reel him in. It worked, as his attention strayed to my
breasts.

“All right, a game might be nice. I’ll wager my watch, then,”

he responded, still watching my breasts as if in a trance.

I rose again to fill the mugs. I felt a tiny bit tipsy, but nothing

I couldn’t handle, and it was far more important to make sure he

30/94

kept drinking. The powder he’d ingested was a mild drug that
would lower his inhibitions a bit and, mixed with alcohol, would
cause him to pass out. He was much larger than I’d anticipated
when I measured the amount, though, and now I doubted if the
one dose would do the trick. A second ring on my left hand held a
similar dose, but I didn’t want to overdo it. I decided to hold off
and see how things progressed.

“What shall we play? How about a game of guessing?” I

suggested.

“Guessing? And what would we guess?”
“We’ll use our powers of observation to determine things

about one another. I’ll tell you something about yourself and if
I’m right, I win that round. Then, you do the same to me until
one of us is wrong when the other is right, and declared the win-
ner. But we have to tell the truth or else it wouldn’t be fair.”

“All right. But as a fortune-teller, I think you have the advant-

age,” he teased. “And truly, I’ve no need of your possessions. Let
us make it more interesting, shall we? What say we shut the flap
to the tent and play for something I want more than your ring.”
His voice dropped to a husky tone that gave me shivers. “How
about a dance?”

I was totally taken aback, but shouldn’t have been. What he

was suggesting was a little risqué for the time period, but he was
nicknamed the Loony Duke, for God’s sake. And really, what was
a dance? I had nothing to lose except my reputation. And as a
traveling gypsy fortune-teller in the 1800s, it really wasn’t all that
valuable at any rate. More importantly, I’d convinced him to stay,
and that was all that mattered.

Moving toward the front of the tent, I untied the knot secur-

ing the flap and rolled it closed. “You’re on!”

I added a little extra sway to my hips as I walked back to my

seat. “I’ll go first.”

31/94

I took a moment to look at him, sizing him up, as if mining his

visage for information. It didn’t hurt that I had a limited dossier
on him and already knew some basic facts that I could use. I
opened my mouth to “guess” the month of his birth—May—when
I stopped short, mesmerized by his pretty brown eyes.

“You pretend that being called the Loony Duke doesn’t bother

you, but it does. In fact, it’s been the source of a lot of pain for
you,” I heard myself say.

Well, where the hell did that come from? Way to go Stormy.

That should put him in a real festive mood. I stared at him,
shocked at my own audacity, and waited for him to walk out.

He looked back at me for what seemed like an eternity. “And

you,” he said finally, his voice filled with quiet understanding.
“You like pretending to be someone you’re not, because you don’t
trust anyone enough to just be yourself.”

I sucked in my breath hard as his words crashed over me like

an icy wave. How could he know that about me? I didn’t even
know that about me until he said it.

The air between us trembled with tension, as if what

happened next hung on a precipice, teetering first one way, then
the other.

I struggled to regroup and then said, too loudly, “Your birth-

day is in May.”

He looked at once relieved and disappointed. “Your favorite

color is blue.”

“Wrong. I don’t have a favorite color, because they’re all too

pretty to choose just one!” I shouted gleefully, holding my hand
out for my prize. I was happy to have bested him, but even happi-
er the super awkward moment had passed.

“You win,” he said with a crooked smile, and reached into his

pocket to pull out the watch. “So what now?”

“Well, what else do you have to wager?” I gave him a saucy

smile.

32/94

“I have a small sack of coins tied to my belt. But if I’m to

wager that, I require more than a dance.” His dark eyes burned
into mine.

“And what would you consider a fair bet?” I tried to keep my

tone light despite my pounding heart. He was finally going to re-
veal himself to be the smarmy low life I knew he was by suggest-
ing a quick bonk or a knob-slobbing. Shame on me for feeling a
little bit let down.

“A dance…and a kiss,” he said with a slow smile.
“A…a kiss you say? All right, then. A kiss and a dance it is.”

Why did I feel perpetually off-kilter with this odd man?

He stopped me before we began the game, and raised his cup

high. “To new friends,” he toasted with a warm smile.

“To new friends,” I parroted and drank, the wine suddenly

tasting sour, like vinegar on my tongue.

“Let’s play a different game now. How about three-card

monte?” Not invented yet, genius. I quickly covered my blunder.
“Here’s how you play—I’ll push around three cards facedown,
and you try to locate the queen. Then vice versa. Whoever has the
best results after ten games will be declared the winner,” I impro-
vised. Anything that got us away from the intimacy of the previ-
ous game but still held his interest would have seemed like a big
improvement. But more importantly, I was a seasoned card
mechanic and it would be near impossible for him to win any
card game against me.

To my surprise, as play commenced, I began to enjoy myself.

We laughed and teased and shouted as the game wore on. A few
times, I got so caught up that I forgot to cheat, and ended up win-
ning the match by the skin of my teeth.

I jingled my newly acquired bag of coins playfully and did an

impromptu I-won-so-suck-it jig. The duke seemed impressed
with my moonwalk, and I spent a solid ten minutes trying to
teach it to him. “A new dance from the Orient,” I explained.

33/94

As we sat, breathless and chuckling, a young woman called in-

to the tent, “Hello? Will you be finished soon? I’d like my fortune
told, if you would.”

The duke met my eyes and started to stand. “I really should

let you take some other patrons instead of hogging all of your
time. I will stop back by before I leave. What do I owe you for the
reading?”

“No, please stay. I’m having such fun. One more game,” I

begged him, realizing with a sharp blast of fear that I was in
danger of blowing it. “I’ll tell her to come back a little later.” I
walked over to the flap and did just that.

I returned to the table and grabbed the cups, focused enough

to realize that if he hadn’t yet passed out from the first dose of
the drug, he wasn’t going to. I added the second dose of powder
to his wine before turning back to him.

“I have nothing left to wager except a few more coins for a

meal,” he said, with a rueful chuckle. “You’ve already won almost
everything I brought.”

Half of my mission was complete, then. I’d robbed him. I tried

to brush off the hollow feeling that accompanied that thought,
assuring myself that joyful vengeance would follow once I got the
TTM back. Now for the important part.

“Nothing?” I asked, starting to feel a little desperate.
“Well…” He hesitated. “There is one more thing. But you’ve

been so lucky, I’m not sure I want to risk it.”

Am I finally going to catch a break?
I tried to keep my voice calm. “And what thing would that

be?”

“Well, it’s almost surely one of a kind, and I’d hate to part

with it so soon after acquiring it.”

Convince him to show it, to risk it. Make him an offer he can’t

refuse.

34/94

Hoping against hope that it wasn’t too good to be true, I took

a deep breath for courage, then sauntered forward and put my
hands on the duke’s broad shoulders, pressing him back into his
makeshift seat. I bent low, my face level with his. “This is all go-
ing the same way, win or lose. I want you as my lover tonight. But
I’m having too much fun to quit. Won’t you play one more game
with me? This time, I wager all my clothing, along with the dance
and the kiss,” I said with my very best siren’s smile. As I waited, I
said a silent prayer that my “siren” was more convincing than my
“coquette.”

It seemed not, as he peered at me through narrowed eyes. His

voice was curiously cold, completely at odds with the heat of his
gaze as he nodded. “Intriguing,” he said grimly. “But I’d like a
taste first. Just to see if it will be worth it, you understand.” He
reached up and wrapped his hand in my hair, pulling my lips to
his. The kiss was no gentle taste, but a searing clash of lips and
tongue.

I whimpered, shocked at the pressure building fast and low in

my belly, shocked that I wanted to continue kissing this man, my
enemy. He pushed me away and it was over as quickly as it had
begun. The tent filled with the sounds of our labored breathing.
He stared at me with raw need and something else I couldn’t
define.

“That will do. It’s a wager. Let’s drink on it.” He turned to face

the table once again and held his glass up.

I clinked mine to his and we drank.
“I want to play the guessing game again. And I want to go first

this time,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. He turned
and set his empty cup to the side.

“Fine.” It didn’t matter if I won or lost. He had the TTM on

him and I would win it now or take it once the second dose of the
drug took effect. Then I would go get Bacon, head off to the copse
of trees near the beach, don my alternate perception goggles,

35/94

locate the wormhole and the two of us would blow this place for
good.

“Guess number one,” he said, his face suddenly impassive.

“You are a liar and a cheat.”

“What do you mean?” My voice trembled as gooseflesh rose

on my arms and the master plan came to a screeching halt.

“Who are you really?” he asked, his icy gaze drilling into mine.

“And remember, if you lie, you lose.”

I swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump that had formed

in my throat. “Dorothy Gale. Fortune-teller. Rorn and braised in
Bratt’s Pottom. Pratt’s Bottom.” My tongue felt like a fuzzy, fat
caterpillar and my head had begun to swim. Everything seemed
to flicker before my eyes like a silent film from the twenties and I
struggled to stay alert. The last thing I remember is Leister
reaching into his pocket and pulling out Bacon’s TTM, with a
shake of his head.

“You lose, Dorothy.”
Then my world went black.

36/94

Chapter Three

A chilly breeze swept over my bare shoulder and roused me from
my stupor. I gingerly opened my eyes only to slam them shut
again as the light bum-rushed my pupils. My head pounded in
protest. An oil slick of nausea roiled in my belly. Where the hell
was I? Hospital? And where was Bacon?

I reached a hand to my aching head but met with resistance

halfway. Again, I struggled to open my eyes and fought through
the pain and nausea until my pupils adjusted to the light. When I
saw the chain around my right wrist, I almost wished I’d just left
them closed. The events of the previous night came flooding back
to me.

I’d been duped. The con artist had been conned, the pirate

pirated. I tried to piece together what had happened. Somehow
he had obviously switched the cups, but when? I had poured in
the second dose and it was only a few minutes later—ah, the kiss.
Had the kiss been nothing more than a distraction? Maybe he
saw me adding the powder to his drink and decided to take ac-
tion? Maybe he’d been looking more closely the second time?
Maybe I was too obvious in my quest to find out if he had the
TTM and he’d gotten suspicious? Or maybe—Holy shit. My TTM.

Sitting up as much as the chains would allow, relieved to see I

still had my clothes on, I scanned the room. I nearly passed out
with relief as I spied my carpetbag in the corner. OK, at least
there was a chance, albeit a small one, that he hadn’t looked
through the bag yet. To my everlasting shame, I realized that I
owed Bacon an apology. Obviously the Loony Duke was a formid-
able foe if he had outfoxed me too.

Poor Bacon. He was probably waiting for me all night at the

room and worried sick. Not only that, but if I couldn’t escape,
he’d be stuck here forever without a TTM.

I tried to focus, calling upon my steely time-pirate resolve to

figure out how to get myself out of this mess.

First things first, I needed to free myself from the chains. I

pulled my shackled arm until the chain was taut and I could I
trace it back to its origin. Drat! It was anchored by a thick iron
plate on the wall behind me. Less than optimistic, I grabbed the
chain just above my wrist with my free hand and gave an experi-
mental tug to see if there was any give to the plate or the chain.
My suspicions were quickly confirmed. It was as strong as, well,
iron, and I stood no chance of breaking it.

I held out my wrist, turning it this way and that, trying to see

how much room there was between chain and skin. While I was
able to move it around, there was no slipping free from it.

I moved to swing my legs over the side of the bed but was

stopped short by the yank of a chain on my ankle.
Fanfuckingtastic.

Stringing a litany of curses together in frustration, I began

plotting my revenge on Leister while scanning the space for any-
thing I might use as a weapon. The words died on my lips as I
truly looked at the room for the first time.

The walls were adorned with various lengths and sizes of

whips, chains and cat-o’-nine-tails. A rack along with branks, an
iron bridle of sorts to hold one’s head immobile, sat in one corner
of the room. A chair with leather straps at the arms and feet sat
in another. A torture chamber. I was in a bloody torture cham-
ber. Footsteps rang outside the doorway and I froze. Sick with
dread, I started to shake. Tears sprang to my eyes.

Stop it, you stupid girl! I bit my lip hard and took a deep

breath. I’d promised myself sixteen years ago that I would never
allow anyone to make me feel helpless, afraid or weak again. On a

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dime, my terror turned to anger. If he was going to try to break
me, it was going to take a lot more than intimidation.

Bring it.
A lock tumbled and the door swung open. Leister stood with a

key in one hand and a tray of tea in the other, a grim expression
on his face.

I glared at him, furiously blinking back the unshed tears
“I’ve brought some tea,” he said, closing the door behind him.
“Why, thank you,” I cooed, voice dripping with sarcasm.
“No need to be tart. I’m the one who was wronged here, you

know.”

“I don’t know what you’re referring to, but whatever your

plans are with me, skip the tea and get on with it. But know this
sir—whatever sick thrill you get out of torturing people, you
won’t get it from me. I won’t make a sound.” I lifted my chin and
turned away, attempting to project an air of disinterest. In truth,
I didn’t want to face him, but I didn’t want to look at anything
else in this room of horrors either.

Something sounding like a strangled chuckle issued from his

side of the room and I turned a suspicious eye on Leister, but he
remained stone-faced under my scrutiny.

“Before we begin with the torturing, why not have a little talk

first, eh, Dorothy?”

As serious as his face was, and as angry as I knew he was, my

Spidey senses were telling me that he was tweaking me some-
how. No matter, because, despite my brave little speech, I was all
for stalling the torture portion of our show, so I assented with a
nod. “So talk.”

“All right, then, I’ll start.” He set the tea tray down on the

night table and moving to sit on a velvet-covered chair a few feet
from the bed. “Why were you trying to poison me?”

“I wasn’t trying to poison you. I was trying to make you take a

nice little nap, is all. Obviously that much is true, since you

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switched the cups and I’m still alive after drinking it. What
tipped you off?”

“You weren’t exactly subtle about it, now, were you? I had no

idea until I started to feel odd, drowsy, much more so than I
should have after a few cups of wine. Once I noted that and how
focused you were to see what else I had to wager, I started paying
close attention. The wine had tasted a little strange after you had
come back from closing the tent flap and refilled the glasses.
When we kissed, I switched the glasses, figuring if I was wrong,
then there would be no repercussions. If I was right, well, I would
have caught a rat.” He shook his head in disdain. “And look what
the cat dragged in. But I’m not the one under scrutiny here. Why
did you feel you needed to knock me out?”

I had already decided that sticking with half-truths was the

best way to go. He wasn’t stupid, so there was no point in trying
to pretend I wasn’t guilty of something. I just had to throw out a
big, fat red herring so he wouldn’t figure out what, exactly, I was
guilty of.

“To rob you,” I told him truthfully.
It may have been a trick of the light, but for a moment he

looked a little sad at my admission. I pressed on. “Do you know
how difficult life for the less privileged can be? As a duke you can
have no real idea what it’s like to want, to go without.” I was ad-
libbing now and less than thrilled with the results. Effective?
Possibly. Way too revealing? Probably. Painful? Definitely.

“So you’re a down-on-your-luck fortune-teller with an Amer-

ican, British and I don’t know what kind of accent, who decided
to rob the Loony Duke. Is that it?”

“Pretty much.”
“All right, even if I believed that part, which I don’t, you were

winning every game we played and had already won my watch
and my purse. Why the laudanum? What were you going to do,
take my clothes and leave me naked in the tent? Surely I would

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be found, and you would be hunted down. And you had already
succeeded in robbing me. It makes no sense.”

I pondered his remarks and opened my mouth to speak, only

to have him save me the trouble.

“Unless, of course, you wanted to steal something particular.

Is that the case, Dorothy? Do I have something you want?” he
asked, his voice almost a whisper.

The blood rushed from my cheeks as I realized, more due to

his tone than his words, that he knew. Dammit, he knew.

It was showtime. Taking a deep breath I worked up some

tears, satisfied as they scalded a path down my face. I let out a
loud snuffle for good measure, “M-m-my br-br-brother lost a g-
g-game of cards to you a fortnight ago. And w-w-when he did, he
lost our father’s timepiece. It was a f-f-family heirloom and I n-
needed to get it back,” I wailed between Oscar-worthy, body-
racking sobs. Again, pretty close to the truth, way closer than I
liked, but I was out of ideas. Maybe he’d feel sorry for me.

“Bacon is your brother?” he asked, disbelief coloring his voice.
“Yes.”
“You look nothing alike. He is a flaming redhead.”
“Well, he takes after our mother, you see. And she was a bit of

a tramp, if you must know. So we’re only half brother and sister.”

I began to sob anew, hoping he would feel guilty for forcing

me to divulge another painful “family secret.”

Unmoved, he barked, “Stop that, this instant.”
I did.
He stood, moving until he stood over the bed, peering down

at me. “You’re a good actress, I’ll give you that.” He shook his
head in disgust. “Must be hard on your lovers. How could they
ever know when you’re telling the truth? Poor bastards.”

“I have no lovers. There’s just me and Bacon. He’s all I have

now, and I need to get back what you stole from him. Take the
watch, take the money. I just need the timepiece. If you believe

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nothing else that I’ve told you, believe this—it is a matter of life
and death.”

That was as honest as I could possibly be without revealing

the true nature of the TTM.

“Now, that, I do believe. Let’s lay our cards on the table, shall

we?” He reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a disas-
sembled TTM and a pair of alternate perception goggles. My
TTM and my APGs.

Bile rose to burn my throat. He’d already gone through my

bag, and now we were sunk. He had it all, and Bacon and I had
no way to get any of it back. The wormhole would be closing
within the next forty-eight hours and we would be stuck here,
possibly forever. Not to mention, the duke had all the pieces to
my TTM including the mercury pin, and once he compared it to
Bacon’s, he would easily be able to reverse engineer the thing and
put mine back together into a usable, working time machine.

I scrambled, and went for a Hail Mary, knowing it was a long

shot, “If you do not release me this instant, I am going to scream
my head off until someone comes. Everyone already knows you
are a loon, and now you have kidnapped and chained a woman to
your bed. Don’t think your meaningless English title will save
you here. This is America, dude. You will hang for this!” I
bellowed.

He looked at me, a rather bored expression on his face. “The

staff was given a two-day holiday and won’t be back until late to-
morrow. The estate lies on fifteen acres of land and the next
house is a mile away, and town is another mile from that. Scream
until your heart is content. No one will hear you.

“And as for kidnapping, everyone at the fair saw us leave to-

gether. Granted, you were slung over my shoulder, but everyone
assumed you’d had too much to drink. I left to a chorus of bois-
terous encouragement. As I laid you over the top of my horse, I

42/94

gave your bottom a hearty slap and let everyone know that you
wouldn’t be sleeping for long.”

He continued on. “It’s not often that people take the word of a

fortune-teller seriously, and regardless of my alleged mental in-
capacity, I’m still a nobleman. No, you are well and truly stuck
here, and the sooner you accept it, the sooner we can move on to
more important things. Like you telling me how to work this
thing.” He shook the pieces of the TTM lightly in his hand.

“Work it?” I cocked my head to the side, treading carefully.
“Work. It. How do you make it go? I have studied the gears

and the hands intensively since having acquired Bacon’s. It’s
genius, truly genius, but I haven’t yet been able to make it work.
There’s something missing. Once I sit and put yours together, I’ll
find it. It would be much easier on the both of us if you just tell
me.”

A little thrill coursed through me at his words. So maybe he

hadn’t found the tiny mercury pin at all. It was hidden in an in-
side compartment of my carpetbag and was small as a match-
stick, so it was certainly possible he’d overlooked it.

I buried my relief, affecting a concerned expression. “I don’t

know what you mean. I’m afraid you may be having one of your
loony spells. These are a pair of timepieces, albeit very expensive
timepieces, that mean the world to my family and have been
passed to my brother and me. They were given to our great-
great-great-great grandfather by Leonardo Da Vinci himself. We
were in a very bad way financially and had sold them to a buyer
in France. We’d been traveling to deliver them when you stole
them from my brother. Those pieces are all that stand between us
and complete financial ruin. Are they important to me, life or
death? Yes. But beyond that, this talk of making them work, I
don’t understand.” I eyed him pityingly.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said, his voice icy. “And I sup-

pose the goggles are just newfangled eyewear, then?”

43/94

I didn’t respond, still staring at him, nonplussed.
“Have it your way, then, wench. You can stay here until you

decide to tell me. I have spent my life trying to figure this out,
and the answer is at the tip of my fingers now. Believe that I will
not easily let it slip away from me.” He turned to go, then
stopped. “I must know, though, why do you keep saying that I
stole it?”

“Bacon told me. He wouldn’t lie to me.”
“Hmm. Well, in this case, I’m afraid you are incorrect. I won

the item in question during a card game. Whist, if you must
know.”

“Yes, he told me that. But he also said that you tricked him in-

to betting it. And that you cheated at cards to win it. To my mind,
that is no better than stealing.”

“Not quite. It would seem that your brother is just a terrible

card player. There was no need to cheat. I won fair and square. I
do admit, however, that when he began drunkenly waving the
timepiece around, I was determined to win it from him. I would
have stolen if I had to.” His tone was matter of fact.

“Why?” I wanted to bite the word back. Some part of me, deep

down, knew that his answer was going to change everything.

“Why? So I could find you, Molly.”
I suppose I should have been grateful that there was nothing

in my mouth, but my “glass half-full” mentality flew out the win-
dow as I began to hyperventilate for the second time in twenty-
four hours.

How could he know? How could he possibly know? My lungs

burned and my head spun as I tried to regain some control. Easy,
slow, long breaths.

Okay. So he knew who I was. Maybe Bacon had somehow

slipped up in conversation? That had to be it, how else could he
know? No one else in the world knew.

“Molly?” The duke’s voice penetrated my fog.

44/94

“Don’t call me that,” I responded dully. My breathing had be-

come more regular, and rather than embracing the panic, I had
retreated into a numb shell of denial. I was totally adrift, clueless
and hating every second of it.

“I know you’re confused right now. But I need you to look at

me. Do you truly not remember me?” His voice was gentle, so
gentle.

I lifted my gaze to meet his, and looked at him hard. Surely I

would remember such a handsome face. Such warm chocolate
eyes, such lovely dimp—

Blood rushed to my ears as my brain finally located the file,

locked away, deep, deep down in the dungeons of my past. In my
mind’s eye, I saw a much younger, almost gangly version of the
man in front of me.

I’d met him when I had just turned thirteen, not long before

Gilly had taken us. He had been a teenager then, and his face
hadn’t grown into those large, soulful eyes yet. His gait had been
awkward, like that of a colt not used to its legs. A loaf of bread
under an arm, a kind smile ever present, he would come and give
us street kids a coin and food. He would tell us a funny story and
talk with us like we mattered. And although he looked sad upon
leaving, he never treated us with anything but dignity and re-
spect, never eyed us with pity or disgust.

On the rare occasion that I allowed myself to hope and dream

during such a hopeless time, I invariably hoped and dreamed of
marrying a man like him. So when he asked me my name, I’d told
him the truth. And in that other life, my name was Molly.

“Master Dev?” I asked in shock, startled to feel the warm

splash of genuine tears against my shoulder.

“Yes Moll, it’s me.”
“How…” For once in my life, words escaped me. How had he

known it was me after all these years? I’d been just a child. There
were so many questions. I didn’t even know where to begin.

45/94

He sank down on the side of the bed, the last remnants of an-

ger leaving his face. God, how could I have forgotten that face? I
had adored that face. It was one of the few in my childhood that,
upon seeing me, would alight with a smile rather than twist into
a snarl of fury. He held his hand out to me now, one of the few
hands that had ever reached out to me in kindness rather than to
administer pain.

Exhaustion, despair, relief and fear coalesced and, falling for-

ward, I pressed my head against his big, warm shoulder and
began to sob in earnest.

46/94

Chapter Four

I don’t know how long we sat there, but the afternoon light was
fading by the time I stirred against him. I lifted my face to his
and tried to figure out what the hell to do. How do you continue
to lie to someone who has shown you such kindness? Yet my alle-
giance had always been, had to be with Gilly, and I promised him
that I would never tell. There were so many questions I needed
answered, too. How had Devlin found me, or even known it was
me when he did? More importantly, why had he even been
looking?

He stared back at me, lifting a hand to my hair and tucking it

behind my ear. Leaning close, he pulled my face to his and said,
“I missed you, little one.” Then he laid the softest of kisses on my
lips.

It was as though a dam had burst within me at that touch. I

grabbed the back of his head with my free hand and brushed my
lips against his, nipping at his lower lip. His response, a delicious
moan, told me everything I needed to know. With my heart in my
throat, I said, “I need you, Dev. No more questions, no more lies.
I’m so very raw right now. I just need to not think. What do you
say to a truce? Just until morning.”

“Truce,” he replied, giving me a wicked grin that I needed so

very much at that moment.

He traced my lips with his finger, and I bit it gently. I

struggled to move closer to him, but the jangle of the chain
stopped me short.

“Wait. Why all this?” I gestured to the creepy stuff all over the

room. It was just to satisfy my curiosity by that point. Now that I

knew who he was, I knew for certain he would never hurt me, or
anyone else, for that matter.

Dev chuckled, although for some reason it sounded a bit

forced. “This room was here when I moved in. The gentleman
that lived here before me had odd collections of things in every
room of the house. I just hadn’t gotten around to emptying this
room out yet. When I…took you, I thought it would be the perfect
spot to put a little scare into you. That, and it’s the only room
with shackles.” He gave the offending chains a rattle. “Now, to
address that issue.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the
key.

He unlocked my wrist first, then slid down to unlock my

ankle. I felt the chain fall away, then the heat of his breath, the
brush of his lips. I squirmed in delight as he kissed and nibbled
on my ankles, moving his way up my calf. His fingers traced a
devilish path on the soft skin on the back of my knee as his
mouth continued its journey to my thigh, bunching my skirt
higher as he went. I forgot to breathe as he pressed his lips
against each of my hips in turn.

He stood then and reached his hand out to me, pulling me up

to stand in front of him. Spearing his hands through my hair, he
urged me onto my tiptoes and bent low to kiss my forehead, my
cheek, the tip of my nose, each corner of my lips, then finally my
mouth. Gentle kisses this time, filled with longing and tender-
ness. I moved closer, until our bodies were flush, my hips
cradling his thighs, his hard length pressing against my stomach.

“I want you so much right now,” he whispered into my mouth.
I moaned in response and pulled him tighter to me.
His hands left my hair and slid slowly down the sides of my

neck, brushing my bare shoulders, slowly sliding my formfitting
blouse further down my arms. He watched in the dim light, mes-
merized, as my breasts came into view. Finally they spilled for-
ward, aching for his touch. He continued to push the shirt

48/94

downward, catching the waistband of my skirt as he went, pulling
it down too until both garments lay in a puddle at my feet. He
straightened, nuzzling my breast for just a moment as he paused,
and looked at me.

“Wherever did you get that diaphanous undergarment?” he

asked, his voice like gravel.

I glanced down at my barely there, sheer black lace, string

bikini panties, the likes of which he had certainly never seen.

“France,” I told him.
“Je l’aime.”
He liked it.
With one finger, he traced the string. He was almost reverent

in his concentration. His face was intense and focused, so in the
moment. Just watching him was making me crazy. Part of me
wanted to shout, “Hurry up!” while the other part just waited,
suspended in a sensual haze.

He gripped my hips for a second, then shifted his hands lower

and around to cup my ass. A rush of warmth spread between my
legs as he squeezed. I bit my lip, and still he stared.

“God, you are so beautiful.”
“You too, Dev. You too,” I whispered back. And I meant it.
Suddenly desperate to feel his skin against mine, I hastily

pushed off his waistcoat and reached for the buttons of his shirt
to undress him. I could feel his heart pounding underneath my
hands and it thrilled me. When his shirt lay open, I rubbed my
cheek against his chest, back and forth, then lower, pressing soft,
sucking kisses to his tense abdomen. He trembled.

I unbuttoned his pants, then pushed them down over muscu-

lar thighs until he was naked. He was a large man in every sense,
and I felt a trickle of unrest as I eyed what he had brought to the
party. Holy giant schlong, Batman! I started to think about the
limitations of the female anatomy at that point and wondered if
maybe Dev needed to find himself a heartier lass, but was

49/94

distracted as he seized that moment to kiss me senseless once
again.

Filing my concern in the “cross that bridge when we came to

it” part of my brain, I wrapped my arms tightly around his neck
and fell back against the bed, pulling him with me. The weight of
him was luscious. I felt warm and safe beneath him. He pulled
his mouth from mine and pinched my earlobe between his teeth
and released. He roamed downward, pressing his lips to my jaw,
then to the pulse that leaped in my neck. One big, firm hand
closed over my breast and I whimpered with satisfaction as he
tugged and teased. I couldn’t get close enough, and arched my
hips against his, grinding against him.

He looked down at me and said through gritted teeth, “It’d be

better if you didn’t do that.”

I grinned and, grasping his magnificent, juicy bottom in both

hands, swiveled my hips again in a slow circle. He issued a
muffled curse and lowered his mouth to my chest, flicking my
nipple with his tongue, then drawing it into his hot mouth. It was
my turn to curse as my hips pulsed against his of their own ac-
cord. He turned his attention to my other breast as one hand
snaked down my side, over my ribs, trailing my hip. He half
rolled off me to his side, splayed his open palm over the cloth of
my panties and squeezed. I let out a squeak and he smiled. He
grabbed the cloth and gave a sharp tug, breaking the strings with
a snap. A moment later his hand covered my already moist heat
and a finger slid down my core. “Oh God, Dev, please, just…” I
was too far gone to care that I was begging.

“Just what, love?” he whispered as he flexed his long finger

deep inside me.

I reached for him then, wrapping my own fingers around his

swollen sex, and held him tight, stroking up, then down. He
groaned, pulling my hand away, then rolled back to cover me.

50/94

“Next time,” he muttered under his breath, and spread my

legs with his knee.

Both of us held our breath as he probed with his thick, hard

length and found his mark. Flexing his hips, he stared into my
eyes as he pressed, inch by exquisite inch, into my waiting heat.
His arms shook with the effort of holding back as my body
stretched to receive him. Finally he was buried, seated deep in-
side me, and it felt so right.

I tried to savor the sensation, tried to stay still as my body

clenched around him in gentle waves. Soon it became too much,
and I began to bounce my hips against his, pulling at his backside
with my hands. Eyes blazing, jaw clenched, with his dark mop of
curls, he looked like some sort of avenging angel come to life. He
took my wrists in his hands and held them down against the bed
over my head, pulling back and sliding deep as he did.

I moaned as he pulled away again, only to gasp when he came

back, filling me once more. He worked his hips long and slow,
despite my attempts to urge him faster. He was relentless, and
my body was like a wire about to snap. I started to shake as the
pressure began to build, heat suffusing my whole body, skin
tingling.

“Yes, that’s it, love. Come on,” he said, his voice an urgent

whisper as he thrust faster and deeper.

He bent his head low and sucked my nipple into his mouth,

giving a long pull as he plunged forward. Then I was flying. I let
out a yelp as my body imploded in hard, smashing waves, clench-
ing tight over him again and again. As tremors still racked my
body, Devlin stiffened above me and shouted, quaking and
straining, pinning me hard against the bed as he came.

“I love you, I love you,” he whispered into my hair.
It was some time later before I realized that my entire body

had gone numb from his weight and I let out a muffled squeak.
He rolled heavily off me, leaving one arm wrapped around my

51/94

waist. His hand stroked my stomach almost absently as we lay.
Neither of us spoke for a long time. I was deep in thought about
the irony of fate, my predicament, my feelings for Dev, my loyal-
ties to Gilly and more. I lay quiet, not wanting to disturb Dev
from his undoubtedly equally philosophical thoughts. He began
to snore. I stared at him, flabbergasted. I was absolutely torn up
inside and he was off in dreamland. How could a person have
such an emotionally crazy night, all these questions unanswered,
all these feelings unresolved, and just conk out?

With no plan beyond getting the TTMs back in my possession,

I extricated myself from under Devlin’s arm with painstaking
care. Rising, I gathered my clothes as stealthily as possible, al-
though the effort was wasted as his snoring had picked up steam
and taken on epic proportions by that point.

Once dressed—except for my torn undies—I rifled through his

clothes and found my TTM and goggles in his waistcoat pockets.
I tiptoed over to my carpetbag and, to my immense relief, found
the mercury pin in its hidey-hole. Good start. I put everything in
my bag and turned back to Devlin.

Despite my intentions, staring at his gorgeous, naked body

sprawled on the bed, his sweet face soft in sleep, I just couldn’t
bring myself to slap the shackles on him. But I couldn’t allow him
out of the room until I checked the house and located the second
TTM either. I went back and pulled the door key from his pocket
and moved out of the room, locking the door behind me.

I went through the house methodically, opening each door,

giving a cursory look and then moving on. My hope was to nar-
row it down from the twenty-plus rooms to the few most likely
locations, making the search a little more manageable.

Turned out, it was far easier than I’d expected. About eight

rooms into my recon, I opened a door and hit pay dirt. Devlin’s
workshop. It was a huge room, perhaps a ballroom in a former

52/94

life, with remarkably high ceilings. Clearly it was where he spent
most of his time.

I stood in the doorway for a moment, my eyes flickering from

one thing to the next in amazement. The place looked like Rube
Goldberg’s childhood playroom. Dozens of odd-looking contrap-
tions, ranging from the simple to the extremely complex, stood
on every available service. The centerpiece of the room, however,
was a large, pod-shaped flying machine hung by thick ropes from
the high ceiling. It resembled a modern-day blimp, but the ma-
terial looked more like parchment or worn leather. It reminded
me of a giant, prehistoric moth that had been stripped of its
wings.

I spared the dirigible only a fleeting glance and walked for-

ward, picking my way through the maze of creations, focused on
one thing. A giant replica of the TTM. Not exactly right, but close
enough that I knew exactly what it was. There was no way that
had been made in the weeks since he’d won the mechanism from
Bacon. No, this thing was elaborate, like it had been years in the
making. The implications had me floored. Either Devlin, by some
impossible stroke of luck, had created something very similar to
Gilly’s invention on his own. Or, as crazy as it was, he had seen
the TTM before and was attempting to recreate it himself.

When I finally reached the display, I stood in front of the

device, dwarfed by its size. The intersecting gears were precision,
and looked to be made of real silver. The numbers were painstak-
ingly hand painted and decorated with gold leaf. While it was
beautiful, it appeared to be in the midst of repairs. A couple of
empty spots, a few missing hands; I could only guess that since
he had the actual item in his possession, he was retooling this
one now for accuracy. Walking around to the back side of it, I
confirmed my suspicion. A fresh hole had been bored into it, still
sharp-edged, not yet buffed down, mimicking the empty hole
that would house a mercury pin.

53/94

I stepped back, bumping into a long worktable. Glancing

down, I puzzled at the contents. It was covered in drawings,
notes and literally dozens of miniature TTM replicas. As I picked
them up, one at a time, turning them this way and that, I realized
with dread, he was close, terrifyingly close to figuring it all out.
One pin away, really. Who has he shown these to? Does he have
other engineers, inventors working with him? This could be far
more serious than I had even suspected.

As I searched gadgets, I found Bacon’s easily. It was clutched

in a vise, surrounded by tools as if had been worked on. I re-
leased it from the grips, and slipped it into the carpetbag with
mine. There was no point in taking the rest of them. He had the
knowledge to recreate the mechanics of it. I could only hope that
no one else knew and that he had no inkling of what was in the
pin that drove it.

I began to look through the myriad of papers on the workt-

able. The top ones were drawings of my alternate perception
goggles. He had worked fast, creating maybe a half-dozen
sketches already, with measurements and various specs jotted all
over the pages. I took those and shoved them into my bag as well.
Even if the TTM could be recreated, it would be difficult to locate
an open wormhole without the APGs. And without the sketches,
it would be nearly impossible to make the goggles from memory.
Whether any of this would stop him, I couldn’t know, but it
would at least slow down his progress.

As I continued to shuffle through his papers for anything else

of any import, my eye fell upon something that stopped me in my
tracks. Dropping all but the sheet in my hand, I was stunned to
see the face of my beloved Gilly staring up at me. Tears instantly
pooled in my eyes, a sob clogging my throat. I ran my fingertips
over his sweet face. God, I missed him. Why is this here? I looked
harder and realized that he was young in this picture, at least rel-
atively speaking. This was not Gilly at age seventy-six, right

54/94

before cancer ripped him from our lives. It was Gilly in his six-
ties, the way he looked when he first found us.

For no reason except that I wanted it and couldn’t bear to

leave it, I folded it carefully and stowed it in my bag as well.

Shoving back the sorrow that threatened to engulf me, I

picked up the sheaf again, determined to unravel the mystery
that was getting more mysterious by the second. This time, under
the pile, I noticed a tan leather journal. Tamping down a tiny
niggle of guilt, I opened the worn, smooth cover to read.

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Chapter Five

Bethlehem, September 15, 1823
If I wasn’t insane before, staring at these walls is mak-
ing me feel that way. I know I shouldn’t complain. At
least I have private quarters, miniscule though they
may be. Some of the ladies here (whose husbands are
not as generous with the hospital as my parents have
been) are just piled together like stones, sometimes five
to a room. The worst part of it is that many of them
seem perfectly ordinary. It is said within these walls
that some are no more than victims of their husbands’
anger. Maybe they were disobedient, maybe they
strayed, but they seem so normal. I suppose I seem nor-
mal as well.

And I suppose it’s not so bad, really. Sometimes, for

those of us who have the capacity to enjoy it, they hold
dances in the great hall. During the day they let us into
the yard for a while. It’s nice to feel the sun on my face.
Father and Mum feel they know best, so here I must re-
main, with the other unfortunates, until my diseased
soul is cured. I don’t know when that will be, because I
know what I saw. It didn’t “seem” real. It was real. I am
so tired, all of the time, tired.

Bethlehem, September 28, 1823

It seems strange that three months have gone by

since I first arrived. It feels like forever, yet no time at
all. Today was difficult for me. For a fee, several times

a month they allow people fascinated by the macabre to
come in and stare at us, even in the curable wing.
Today was such a day. I can’t say why it bothered me
more today, to have them stare and point. I have heard
that the incurables are sometimes poked and prodded
with sticks. It is a wonder that these visitors are not re-
quired to stay here as well. Wouldn’t it seem that only a
wicked mind, a broken soul, could delight in another’s
misery so?

Most of the time, it feels as if it all must be a dream,

or a nightmare. But I know, too, that this is my punish-
ment. Not for being a lunatic, or diseased, or possessed
by demons, or for any of the reasons doctors give for
my being here. No, I’m being punished for not saving
those children. I had the chance. I could have done
something, but fear stopped me. And now, here I am.
Unable to search. Unable to convince anyone else to
search.

Would that I could close my eyes just once and not

see her dirty little face, her oft belligerent, brave coun-
tenance in my mind. Would that I might sleep one night
through without waking, wondering if they suffered a
fate far worse than mine. Would that I…

Bethlehem, November 11, 1823

They tell me that I seem to be responding to treat-

ment. Before last month, it had been limited to mustard
plasters or leeches. The leeches are disgusting
creatures, but those treatments are mild compared to
those of some of the other patients. Because my condi-
tion wasn’t improving, the doctors have moved to
something entirely new called the tranquilizing chair.
I…I do not like it. I will do whatever it is I need to do

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and tell them whatever it is they want to hear in order
to not have it again. If I supply the proper answers to
their questions, perhaps there will be an end to this.

I have not seen Mother or Father in quite a while

now. I understand their not wanting to be here, and
hope, for their sake, that the speculation and gossip of
the ton had…run its course. I know I’ve embarrassed
them. And I know they fear that I have ruined my
chance of ever finding a suitable wife, but I cannot find
it within me to mourn that fact.

I just want to go home now. I long for the freedom to

ride my horse, to go outside when I choose, to eat what
I like. Yet at times I wonder, would freedom be better?
Will I even be truly free until I know about what
happened to Molly and the boy? I cannot stop my brain
from imagining some new horrors that they might be
subjected to. If I could just know they were all right, I
would be all right.

Bethlehem, November 23, 1823

I’ve settled into a routine of lies for the past month,

denying my eyes and what I know to please the doctors
here. To the point that I’d almost even convinced my-
self. I’d begun to hope that, rather than replaying that
day over and over, rather than obsessing about it and
what I could have done differently, that maybe as time
passed, the event would be less affecting, that maybe I
could go on as if it never happened. But in a moment of
clarity—and they seem to occur less and less of late—I
realize that I don’t want to forget. I need to remember,
need to write down my thoughts about that day in the
event that all these “treatments” make me lose sight of
my thoughts altogether, in order to preserve the truth,

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so that if I ever get out of this place, it will serve as a re-
minder. But not today. I can’t face it this day. Tomor-
row, then.

Bethlehem, November 24, 1823

I suppose I should really start at the beginning, and

the beginning was January 2nd of that same year. I
hadn’t ever really noticed the urchins on Fenchurch
Street. I am sure they’d always been there, but preoccu-
pied with my own import, I’d never truly seen them be-
fore that day. They were a part of London, part of the
setting, no different than the cobbles or the vendors or
the gloomy winter weather, and as such, I paid them no
mind.

On this particularly cold day, I was on my way

home, wrapped snugly in my heavy wool greatcoat.
Scurrying down the street, arms full of sketches I’d
done that week at my art lessons, I was looking for-
ward to a blazing fire in the hearth and a cup of warm
chocolate. Distracted, I tripped on a loose stone and
landed hard, vellum flying everywhere. Cursing my
stupidity, I looked around to see if anyone had noted
my mishap. Three grubby, solemn-faced children milled
nearby. One of them, a girl, stepped forward and si-
lently began picking up the scattered sketches. I stood
quickly and began to scoop some up as well, mumbling
my reserved but polite thanks (though, to my everlast-
ing shame, I clearly remember hoping that the filthy
little thing didn’t smudge them).

Once they’d all been gathered up, I held a hand out

for the ones in her possession. The girl boldly met my
eyes with hers and I finally, really looked at her. She
couldn’t have been more than thirteen. Her frame was

59/94

thin, too thin. Dark shadows under her eyes gave her
the look of someone far older than her years. She lifted
her pointy little chin haughtily as I stared. Her navy-
blue eyes snapped with pride, daring me to judge her.
She handed me the drawings without a word and, with
the bearing of a miniature queen, turned to go. So-
mething made me reach out for her scrawny little arm,
but I stopped as she flinched.

“It’s all right, child. I just wanted to give you a coin

for your help.”

“You aren’t much more than a child yerself, are you,

Master? But I’d be ’appy to take yer coin,” she respon-
ded blithely.

The two children behind her, a small red-haired boy

and another towheaded lad, moved forward then,
hands out. I looked at them, noting how pale they were,
and that all three were trembling.

“You tremble. Are you afraid of me, then, children?” I

asked them gently.

The girl snorted and replied, “No, sir. Mayhap you

didn’t notice, but it’s bloody cold out ’ere.”

I realized then that none of them had coats or gloves

and suddenly my world tipped. The scenery came to life
and the background became the foreground. I dropped
the sketches onto the street and stripped off my coat,
tossing it over the girl’s shoulders. She swam in it, and
it could have wrapped her three times around, but she
closed her eyes and buried her face in the neck. I
stripped off my scarf and waistcoat, wrapping up the
little redheaded boy next, and gave the yellow-haired
child my gloves and hat. I pulled the purse from my belt
and handed it over.

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“Get something hot for dinner, will you?” I said and

picked up my drawings to leave. Turning back, I called
over my shoulder, freezing myself now, “I’ll be back
later in the week!”

“Sure you will, sir. We thank you fer the clothes and

coin, though,” she said, her face filled with acceptance
and an understanding that humbled me. Then they
scampered off with the small sack of coins, chattering
with excitement.

I kept my word. In fact, I went back once every

week, dropping off food each time—mincemeat pies,
loaves of bread and even coins when I could. The three
soon became a dozen, and I would sketch them and tell
them stories. During this time, I became especially at-
tached to the little girl I’d met that first day, Molly. She
was full of piss and vinegar, and I admired her greatly.
Although she remained wary and a bit reserved, every
time I came when I promised I would, she seemed to
trust me a little more. There was something special in
her. Something that both humbled and surprised me. I
was in awe of the way she took the younger children
under her wing. The way she was so willing to share
when she had so little. I found myself wishing I was as
strong as she was, as good as she was. I spent a fair
amount of time thinking how unfair it was that she nev-
er really had a chance in this world. In truth, I spent
even more time hoping that someday I would be able to
give her that chance.

As the weeks passed, I got to know all of the children

to some degree, learned their names and their favorite
foods so I could smuggle the most wanted items from
Cook if I had the chance.

61/94

This went on for a few months until my father got

wind of it from his solicitor who had seen me with the
children. I was forbidden to go any longer. I had turned
seventeen that April and was practically a man by any
standard, but as I had no income of my own, I was
bound to my parents tightly. His edict didn’t stop me,
but I had to be tricky and limit my visits to a couple
times a month.

On a warm June evening, not knowing the visit

would be my last, I’d gone to bring the young rabble on
Fenchurch Street some berry tarts I had secured from
the kitchens. As I approached the corner of Fenchurch
by way of Upper Thames Street, I heard a voice I recog-
nized down the alleyway. Little Molly. Thinking to alert
her of my visit, I headed toward the alley to call to her
when another voice, a deep male voice rang out.

“You will have things you never dreamed of, sweets.

And I would never hurt you or the boy.”

I peered around the corner, shielding my body be-

hind a large shrubbery, and saw Molly and the little
ginger-haired boy, Peter, standing with a well-dressed
older man.

Molly’s face was scrunched up in thought, and the

man spoke again.

“If we are to go, the time is now,” he said urgently.
She looked up at him, grabbed Peter’s tiny hand in

hers and gave one brisk nod. “All right, sir.”

I wanted to run out and yell. What possible reason

could this man want to lure these young ones into a
deserted alley? Why would he want to take them some-
where else with him? My brain supplied possible an-
swers, none of them good. I couldn’t believe Molly
would go with him. Surely she knew better. But maybe

62/94

his offer was more than she could refuse. Terrified for
the children but unsure what to do, I backed away a bit
to conceal my face from view. Wherever they were go-
ing, they would be coming back my way leaving the al-
ley, and I could remain undetected, then jump out and
intercede when they got closer. It could be that the man
would just let them alone when he realized there was
someone watching.

I was sure I could convince Molly that this was not

prudent if I just had a moment to speak with her. And
worst-case scenario, if it came down to a fight, the man
was large and fit but getting on in years. With the ele-
ment of surprise maybe I had a chance.

I ducked low behind the bush, waiting. But a minute

later, they still had not passed. I took another furtive
peek around the corner and stared in disbelief. They
stood in the same spot, but the man had donned a pair
of strange goggles, with multiple lenses in varying
sizes. In his hand he held a timepiece. It was big, with
elaborate gears, and he turned a dial on it with care.
Linking his arms with the children, he stood remaining
very still.

“Close your eyes,” he counseled.
They did. I had no idea what to expect at that mo-

ment. Would he dash them in the head with his strange,
giant pocket watch? Would he push them to the ground
and beat them? Would he laugh at their naïveté and
walk away? Whatever my brain had conceived could
not compare to what actually happened next.

The air behind them crackled, then wavered, almost

like water rippling. A small pinpoint of bright light ap-
peared and flickered. And as I stood frozen, stood doing

63/94

nothing to stop them, I watched Molly and little Peter,
hand in hand with the devil, vanish in a blinding flash.

Gone.

The words blurred and my eyes burned. Fat tears plopped

onto the yellowing pages as, for the third time in the last thirteen
years—and the second time that day—I cried for real. My heart
was breaking into a million pieces.

Devlin, the Loony Duke of Leister, had gone to Bethlehem

Hospital because of me. Bedlam, they call it. The most infamous
sanitarium in history. And I had put him there. I had quite liter-
ally ruined his life. How lonely he must have felt, how scary it
must have been, how abandoned he was. A bolt of fury toward
his parents shot through me. Parents who don’t stand by their
children are lower than slugs in my book.

Tears still flowing, I turned the page and found a whole sec-

tion of drawings of me, of Gilly, of Bacon, of the TTM and
goggles. They were all painstakingly detailed and fairly accurate,
with the exception of Gilly. His eyes looked somehow cruel, in-
dicating that Devlin had a skewed view of him based on his inter-
pretation of the events of that day.

At least an hour passed as I continued leafing through the rest

of the journal. There were no more entries from Bethlehem Hos-
pital. The next written entry was dated February 1824, and it was
apparent that Devlin had just been released, writing from home.
He seemed relieved to some degree, but still very troubled by our
disappearance.

Entries were sporadic from then on, sometimes with several

months between them. Many of them chronicled his interviews
of the other street children regarding our possible whereabouts
and the strange man who had taken us, and his theories over
what had happened. One entry mentioned his nickname (al-
though at that time it was “the Loony Lord of Leister”), which

64/94

bothered him more out of guilt for the burden on his family than
anything.

Things took a turn when he entered university and started

taking a serious interest in science and engineering, even dab-
bling in alchemy. He began to put it all together then, and
through his studies, realized that it was no magic or devilry, but
science that he had witnessed. This gave him some relief because
it allowed him to hold out hope that we were alive and well.

By his early twenties, Devlin was numb to any judgments of

him and had lost patience with his parents’ preoccupation with
society and their reputations. By the time they were both killed in
a carriage accident when he was twenty-five, their relationship
had been strained to say the least. He dutifully mourned their
passing, but if their relationship had been one of affection, by the
time of their passing it had dulled to one of obligatory respect.
He moved on with his life quickly.

After their deaths, he traveled, studying science wherever he

went, still on a quest to unlock the mystery of our disappearance.
It was around 1832 that he’d become convinced that what he had
witnessed was time travel, and all his efforts and entries surroun-
ded that topic. I was glad to see that they indicated his determin-
ation to solve the mystery as well as passion and interest in time
travel rather than just guilt and despair over Bacon and me.

The very last entry was the day after his card game with Ba-

con. Apparently, Devlin had no clue that this was the boy he’d
been looking for all those years. Bacon had only been six at the
time we disappeared. As a man, he looked nothing like the dirty
little ragamuffin of Devlin’s memories, aside from maybe the
hair, but even that had mellowed to a strawberry blond over the
years. All Devlin was hip to at that point was that the TTM looked
exactly like the device he had seen in his dreams for the past thir-
teen years, and that he needed to possess it. Once he had won it,
he did try to get some information on the devices’ origins, but

65/94

Bacon, in a rare display of common sense, told him that he had
won it himself only a few nights before.

I closed the book after reading the final page and stood for a

moment, still reeling. In all real terms, nothing had changed. I’d
promised Gilly that I would never divulge our secret. This was
the one thing, the only thing, he had ever asked of me, and I
wouldn’t let him down. Telling anyone, even someone as worthy
as Devlin, was out of the question.

So now what? Suck it up and keep it moving, Stormy, that’s

what. I tried not to think about Dev at all as I did a thorough
check of the room, making sure I didn’t leave anything important
behind. I checked my bag one more time to make sure I had
everything and left the workspace.

As I tiptoed up the stairs and approached the chamber where

Devlin slept, I was at once relieved and heartsick to hear him
snoring still, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. I wished I could
have just woken him up, for even one minute. But I wouldn’t lie
to him anymore. And I couldn’t tell him the truth. So there was
absolutely nothing to say.

Jesus, what kind of person am I? After all he went through

for me. Could I dare to hope that he would just be satisfied to
know that we were alive? That he would be able to move on and
find happiness now? Maybe even a wife who would love him for
his dogged determination and innate kindness. Or the way he
smelled, all warm and manlike. Or the way his dimple flashed
and his eyes lit up when he laughed. The tears that seemed to be
my constant companion of late returned in a rush and I bit my
hand to stifle a pitiful sob. Get on with it, you twit.

I pulled the key from my bag and stuck it in the lock but

didn’t turn it, leaving it sticking from the keyhole. Then I reached
into the carpetbag one more time and pulled out the sketch of
Gilly, tearing off a corner of the sheet and putting the drawing

66/94

back in my bag. Grabbing a pencil from a nearby desk drawer, I
wrote:

Devlin,

For the first time in thirteen years, I truly wish

things were different. But they’re not. And still, I can’t
leave without letting you know that Bacon and I have
lived a wonderful life, with a gentle, loving man who
treated us as his own. And you don’t have to worry
about us anymore.

Forever,
Stormy

I folded the note gently and laid it on the floor in front of the

door, knowing that once Devlin woke up, he would find the key
in the lock and use his ingenuity to free himself. He would find
my letter, but not before I had a chance to get away.

Then I grabbed my bag and walked out of the house, leaving

Devlin behind.

Again.

67/94

Chapter Six

I had purposefully gotten a room close to Leister’s estate so that
if a break-in and getaway was necessary, Bacon would be close by
and we could make tracks fast. But as I walked the two miles
back to the inn, I discovered that covering the relatively short
distance still left me way too much time to think.

I stopped and almost turned back at least a dozen times, only

to continue walking because there was no point in going back. It
would only delay the inevitable.

I cared about Devlin a lot. That much was true. And to be

honest, even that much was tough for me to swallow because I
can count on two fingers how many people I’ve allowed myself to
get close to in the last twenty years. Sure, he was gorgeous and
funny and sexy and smart and great in bed. But more than that,
he was a good man with a shiny, pure soul. If I could find a man
like that in the twenty-first century, I’d chain him to my bed. But
I couldn’t tell him about the TTM and I couldn’t tell him about
time travel, or anything else for that matter. So he couldn’t come
with me, and I couldn’t stay in 1800s. Not just because of air-
conditioning and tartar-control toothpaste, but also because I
needed to take care of Bacon. We made a pact a long time ago
that we would never go back to stay, and I could never leave him,
so that was that. Not that Bacon was the problem, really. Even if
there was no Bacon, and I could stay, Devlin wasn’t the type of
guy to let it go.

“Hey Dev, listen, about all that stuff? The stuff that landed

you in the loony bin for six months and ruined your life forever
and destroyed your family? Just forget it. I am going to stay
here with you and just plead the fifth about what went down

that day, where I’ve been and what that machine is. You cool
with that?”

I almost cracked a smile, thinking about what his reaction

would be to that. The urge was fleeting as I reminded myself that
I would never see his reaction to that or anything else, ever again.
My stomach pitched at that, and I would have given anything to
click my heels and be home a moment later where I could sleep
until the pain of it all passed.

Despite my waffling, I made pretty good time. I arrived back

at the inn about a half an hour later, freezing my ass off—since I
had no drawers on.

I looked like a disheveled gypsy mess. There was no way the

proprietress would recognize me as the same lady who had
checked in. To avoid any hassles, I sneaked around to the side
door, maximum stealth engaged, and sidled through the hallway
to our room. I unlocked the door and slipped into the room. Ba-
con was standing in the corner near the window.

I shut the door behind me and rounded on him, the despair a

living, writhing thing inside me. It was determined to manifest it-
self in some horrible way and found a suitable target in my
brother.

“Well, Bacon,” I began in a voice dripping with acid, “I just

want to thank you again for setting this hideous mess into mo-
tion with your careless—ooof!” The air was forced from my lungs
in a rush as he threw his arms around me, lifting me off my feet
and squeezing so hard I thought was going to end up a human
bobblehead doll.

“Dammit, Storm, you scared the ever-loving shit out of me. I

thought you were dead or something. One hour, one more hour
and I was leaving for Leister’s to get you. What the hell
happened? I was so afraid for you,” he said softly, voice breaking,
dopey green eyes swimming with unshed tears.

69/94

Aww jeez. My mouth was still open in preparation for verbal

castration, but I closed it with a snap. And for my next act, ladies
and gentlemen, seal pup clubbing.

Dammit. I wasn’t even allowed to throw a decent hissy fit.

With a sigh, I holstered my word pistols, packed away my puppy-
kicking boots and pasted on a reassuring smile.

“I’m okay, I’m fine.” Breaking away from his iron grip, I held

out my arms and executed a turn so he could see that I was in
one piece, at least on the outside. “But we have to go. Right now.”
I brushed by him and started gathering the few things we had
brought with us, shoving them into my bag.

I briefly debated changing into my proper lady garb again to

make the walk through town toward the beach in the event that
Devlin asked after us and described me, but didn’t want to waste
another minute. Even if he woke shortly after I left, it would take
him some time to escape. Odds were that we would be long gone
by the time he was out and about asking questions. Even so, he
was wicked smart and my instincts were telling me that above all
else, we needed to get out of town as quickly as possible. Plus we
still had to get out to the beach, assemble my TTM and locate the
wormhole. We needed as much of a head start as we could get.

“Right, so you got it, then?” Bacon asked hopefully.
“Of course I got it.”
“Thanks, Sis.”
He sounded pathetically grateful and I gave him a quick grin.

“No problem.”

Until that point I’d been so wrapped up in my own feelings

that I hadn’t considered whether I would tell him what
happened, or about Dev and the asylum. On one hand, he wasn’t
a child and he deserved to know. On the other, he would feel just
as guilty about it as me, and what purpose would that serve?

For the gazillionth time since his death, I wished Gilly were

there to give me some advice.

70/94

Sick to death of my own self-pity and determined to shake off

the melancholy, I stopped quibbling, took the bull by the horns
and gave it to Bacon straight.

“Here’s the situation,” I began, closing my carpetbag, and try-

ing to keep my voice light. I told him almost everything but left
out the sex part—because who wants to hear that about their big
sister?—and any mention of how I left things with Devlin.

He stared at me, trying to gauge whether I was serious or not,

for a long moment.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Yeah, he does look like him, now that

you mention it. Man, he was so nice to us, ’member?”

Sigh. I ’membered.
I tried to push the big lug toward the door, but he dug in his

heels.

“So is he okay now?” He sounded so forlorn I wanted to cut

my tongue out for telling him. I couldn’t for the life of me recall
why I thought it was a good idea. I guess maybe misery really
does love company. For someone who detests lying to someone
they love, I prepared to make a hypocrite of myself and geared up
for a doozy, because I knew Bacon wouldn’t let it go.

“He’s okay. When I left, he was sleeping like a baby. And I

asked him earlier if he wanted to come with us, but he’s a really
busy guy, so he said no. Now that he knows we’re okay, he’s go-
ing to live happily ever after. Probably get married and have twin
boys named Mackenzie and Jack, buy them ponies and so on. It’s
going to be great,” I announced cheerfully, grabbing one of his
big mitts in mine and pulling him toward the door. He narrowed
his eyes in suspicion, but lucky for me, he allowed himself to be
led away and soon we were on the street hoofing our way to the
beach.

It was only about a ten-minute walk and I set a grueling pace,

mostly due to the circumstances, but also to keep Bacon out of
breath so he would stop asking me questions: did I think Devlin

71/94

was going to be okay? Could we could come back and visit him
sometime? Loads of questions, none of which I wanted to an-
swer, because the answers were just too sad. I was totally disgus-
ted with myself, but no matter how I turned it, I didn’t see any
possible way to make this a happy ending.

We approached the beach, and the brackish smell of the water

assailed me just as the breeze kicked it up a notch. I scanned the
area quickly and had Bacon do the same. It was deserted, as
would be expected in October, and we moved to the copse of
trees we had come from only the day before.

Lord, has it really only been one day? So much had

happened and I was so wrung out, it seemed like a month or
more.

Once we found our landmark tree, I set down my bag, calling

to Bacon over the whipping winds. “Get out the APGs, and I’ll put
together my TTM. Dev was messing with yours and I don’t want
to take any chances with it.”

He nodded and pulled the goggles out of the bag. I reached in

and grabbed various pieces, losing myself in the intricate task of
rebuilding the TTM.

“Uh, hey, Storm?” Bacon called a few minutes later.
“I’m almost done, just a couple more minutes. Did you find

the wormhole yet?”

“That’s what I wanted to tell you. I don’t see one.”
I put the half-assembled TTM down and held out a hand for

the APGs, donning them quickly. As I moved through the various
loops and lenses, I noted that my perception stayed the same no
matter which lens I selected. I went through all seven once, then
again. No striations, no change in color, no ripples in the atmo-
sphere. Nothing. It was almost like the lenses were just plain
glass. I closed my eyes briefly as realization dawned. Dammit,
Devlin.

72/94

I should have known that he would take some precautions.

Replacing the lenses with glass would be the safest thing to do on
the off chance I somehow got to them.

Okay, so this was a minor setback. I had a legendary eye for

wormholes and, as I knew we were in the general location, it was
only a matter of time until I spotted it.

“Glass,” I shouted to Bacon, pointed to the lenses. “It’s okay, I

don’t need them. See if you can find it while I finish.” I had added
the last just to keep him busy. If Hogwarts had a wormhole-spot-
ting class, Bacon would have failed miserably.

I bent to pick up the time-travel device so I could complete

the assembly, but was halted by another unpleasant epiphany. If
Dev had taken the time to sabotage the goggles, why would he
carry all the pieces to the TTM in his pocket for me to find? I
knew, just as surely as I knew all of my names, he wouldn’t.

I continued, determined to finish the task and find out what

was missing so I could evaluate just how dire the situation was.

A couple of minutes later, I found out. The temporal displace-

ment module was missing. It was nothing but a tiny sensor and a
needle that moved to and fro. In fact, it didn’t really alter the
functionality of the machine at all. But what it did do was allow
us to gauge when to stop. Without it, accuracy, even to within a
decade, was impossible.

Prognosis: pretty fucking dire. Sticking around to fix it by dis-

mantling Bacon’s TTM and swapping parts out would take at
least an hour. Not to mention that no time-travel devices were
exactly alike, so there would need to be additional adjustments.
At the end of the day, without the proper tools, we still could be
off by as much as a year.

No, we needed to get out of Lordship ASAP. We’d have to just

go where it took us and hope for the best. Wherever or whenever
we ended up, we could take our time and fix it properly. This trip

73/94

had been doomed from the start and I was finally resigned to that
fact that its conclusion was going to be no picnic either.

I looked up to see Bacon squinting at various points in the air,

closing one eye, then the other, occasionally swiping at the air
like a bear trying to knock a beehive out of a tree.

“Got anything?” I asked him, managing with some effort to

keep all the sarcasm out of my voice.

“Not yet.”
“All right, then, you set the TTM and I’ll look for the

wormhole.”

As I began the hunt, trying to keep my eyes unfocused in

hopes of spotting a ripple, I heard a sound. It just barely penet-
rated the rush of the wind and the crash of the waves. I stopped
and strained to hear more clearly and was rewarded with the
sound of a baying bloodhound. My heart stuttered and I froze in
sheer terror as the sound got closer. Please, no.

A moment later, a lean brown dog came around the bend and

entered our little thicket, jowls flapping as it howled and barked.
A sharp whistle sounded, and the hound went silent.

Not twenty feet away, Devlin of Leister rounded the corner

looking loonier than ever, wild-eyed, with my torn underwear
clutched in his hand. His mouth a tight line, his jaw tense.

There had always been some small part of me that took com-

fort in the fact that I had endured so much pain in my life, almost
like it might make me somewhat immune to more. Part, “Okay,
I’ve had my share of misery, so in the interest of Even Steven-
ness, the rest of my life should be easy, right?” Combined with a
dash of, “And if not, fine. After what I’ve seen and been through,
there isn’t much you can do to me that could be worse, so
whatever.” But as I stood staring at Devlin, that part of me
shriveled up and died. Apparently, fate was intent on making this
a teaching moment. The lessons? You never become immune to

74/94

new pain, you don’t get credit for old pain and it ain’t up to you
to decide when you’ve had your share of it.

Devlin’s eyes stood out in stark relief against his face, so pale

and so full of sadness and bitterness, it took all I had not to look
away.

The hound trembled with excitement as Devlin reached to pat

him, murmuring words of praise as he continued to skewer me
with his stare.

“Hello, Dorothy.” He inclined his head in a stiff nod, “Bacon,”

he said, his voice thawing slightly. “Good to see you again.”

“Hey, Master Dev,” Bacon said, his eyes alight with un-

repressed happiness. Dev returned his smile halfheartedly as he
surreptitiously stuffed my underwear into his pocket.

“Stormy said you were sleeping but I hoped I’d get to see you

before we left. This is great, like a reunion, right?” Bacon asked,
sensing something was amiss as his eyes flitted from me to
Devlin and back.

“Yes, just like that. I had hoped I would see you before you left

as well. Where are you headed?” he asked Bacon in a deceptively
casual tone.

“Don’t,” I pleaded.
“Don’t what, Dorothy? Don’t try to get the answers I have

spent my whole life trying to find? Don’t try to stop this from
happening again?” he asked, his voice raw with hurt and edged
with desperation. “You don’t want to be with me. You’ve made
that abundantly clear. But dammit, don’t rob me of the answers I
deserve.”

“They aren’t my answers to give,” I said, begging with my eyes

for his understanding.

“What’s happening, Stormy? I thought you told him. I

thought he didn’t want to come.” Bacon asked.

“Give me the TTM.” I held my hand out to Bacon.

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Accustomed to me bossing him around, he gave it to me

without a word. I kept his hand in mine as Devlin began to walk
toward us, closing the distance quickly.

Looking down at the TTM, I noted with relief that Bacon had

already set the date and location. I planted one foot for leverage
and pivoted toward the spot two few feet behind us where I
thought I’d seen a ripple. Praying it was the real deal, I depressed
the lever and yanked on Bacon’s arm with all my strength. A mo-
ment later, Devlin’s shell-shocked face flickered before my eyes,
and we were gone.

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Chapter Seven

West Grove, Pennsylvania, Christmas Eve,
2010

We ended up spending two weeks in 2004 fashioning a new tem-
poral displacement module, but we finally made it back home. I
think I’d been outside of the house maybe twice since then—once
to buy twelve pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, and once to
chase some pious-looking carolers off our front porch.

I just couldn’t get my shit together. Everything, from washing

my hair to making tea, felt like a Herculean effort. Christmas was
usually my favorite time of the year. Every year we would make a
few special trips the month before and hoard tons of treasures,
then sell it all on eBay. Flush with cash, we’d clean out all the
toys stores in town and bring loads of gifts to all of the homeless
shelters and Boys and Girls Clubs. We’d have bikes and books
and video games, chocolate Santas and stockings stuffed with
goodies. Then we’d hit the food banks and stock them up with
turkeys, potatoes and pies.

This year, Bacon did all the work. I didn’t even have the heart

to deliver the gifts with him. I was in glass-half-empty mode, and
even though their faces would be alight with joy at their gifts, I
knew half of the kids there didn’t have fathers, or had drug addict
mothers, or no home to go to. Worse, they stood little chance of
breaking that cycle. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.

I couldn’t work but I couldn’t relax either, and the only time I

felt even close to normal was when I was sleeping. I dreamed of

Dev and of Gilly, and in that second before waking, that moment
between dreams and reality, I felt right again.

But then I invariably woke up.
The ugliest, most selfish part of me wished that I could just

travel back to the day the TTM was lost to Devlin and stop Bacon
from leaving the room that night at all. Then I would never have
heard of the Loony Duke and I could go back to my old life. But
Devlin would never have known that we were all right, and after
all he’d been through, I didn’t have the stomach for that. And
even if I did, one of the many problems inherent in time travel is
that if something happens as a result of time travel, it cannot be
undone. Once the state of that time period has been altered, it
cannot be altered again without serious consequences. And since
we’d been in London on a time-travel mission when Bacon
played cards with Devlin, we had already changed things once.
We couldn’t go back and fix it, no matter how much I wanted to.

By the time we got back home, despite the lies and the fact

that he did not agree with my choices or my methods, Bacon for-
gave me almost right away. Partly because he saw how devast-
ated I was, and partly because we’re family, but mostly because
he is a wonderful person and he doesn’t have it in him to hold a
grudge. He did, however, try to convince me to go back and get
Devlin.

“He is obviously your soul mate. Fate handed him to you

when we were kids, now again as a grown up. And what if you
only get one, then what?” he asked for the twentieth time.

“We promised Gilly we’d never tell,” I reminded him yet

again.

Bacon stared at me, his soft eyes filled with pity, his thought-

ful expression making him look much older than his nineteen
years. “And if Gilly was alive he wouldn’t make you keep that
promise. If he knew how sad you were right now, there isn’t

78/94

anything he wouldn’t do to make you feel better. Don’t you know
that?”

“I do,” I agreed. “Gilly had a weak spot for us, and he would

have sacrificed anything for our happiness, even it meant reveal-
ing a secret as potentially dangerous to the world as time travel.
And just because he might have been willing to risk that for my
happiness, doesn’t mean I am.”

“The thing about being a martyr, Storm, is that you end up

dying alone.” He gave me a sad little smile and walked out, leav-
ing me alone once again with my Chunky Monkey, reruns of I
Love Lucy blaring in the background.

I dreamed of Gilly again Christmas night. It seemed so real, like I
could touch him. And whoever said you can’t dream in color is so
dead wrong, because in my dream, Gilly’s lively blue eyes
crackled with barely repressed glee, just as they had in life.

We sat together on a pair of swings not unlike the ones he had

gotten for us when we were young. We swayed forward and back,
just enjoying the sun on our faces and being together. He spoke
first, and the sound of his voice and that gentle, lilting brogue
he’d never quite shaken was a balm to my soul.

“What are you doing, lass?” he asked, the glee in his eyes

dimming.

I almost played dumb and said swinging, but opted to just an-

swer the question. “Wallowing, I guess.”

“Nah, wallowing means it’s overdone, undeserved. You have

every right to be sad. You’re nursing a broken heart. The question
is, why?”

“You know why. Because it can’t happen,” I responded

sharply, instantly regretting my irritable tone. “Sorry, it’s just
hard.”

“Do you love him, then?

79/94

“I do. I think I loved him from the day I saw him bumbling

down the street on those skinny legs, so oblivious to everything
around him, so filled with hope. He was like a bright light. I
wanted a piece of that light so bad.”

“That’s what you and your brother are to me, lass. The two

brightest spots of my life. More than my inventions or the adven-
tures. I love you unconditionally. And if you love him, then I
know he has to be a good man. You couldn’t love another kind.
And I trust you to know what’s best, even if it means sharing our
secret. See, if you truly love someone, you have to trust them,
even if it terrifies you. Not everyone will let you down or hurt
you. Haven’t I shown you that? Hasn’t your brother?”

I woke with a start, in that heart-pounding “I feel like I’m fall-

ing” way. My face was wet and I felt robbed that I hadn’t had a
chance to say goodbye.

Knowing that Gilly would visit my dreams again and feeling

like I had to take immediate action, I tamped down my disap-
pointment and jumped out of bed, trying to stay calm, trying not
to let the little ember of hope flickering within me run amok.

I went straight to my desk and unlocked a large drawer,

pulling out the Risk Index Module. Breathless with fear and anti-
cipation, I hooked it up to the computer and began frantically
typing in the data.

Twenty endless minutes later I sat, my finger paused over the

Enter key. Closing my eyes, I pressed it and waited as the RIM
whirred and clicked.

When all was quiet, I opened my eyes, cracking them first like

a child playing hide-and-seek and pretending not to peek, then
opening them fully to take in the results flashing on the monitor
in front of me.

Forty-nine percent.
My breath hitched as I allowed it to sink in. There was a forty-

nine percent chance that Devlin’s absence from his world would

80/94

cause such a major change in history, that life as we know it
could be altered. We had never even attempted anything with a
risk factor of higher than ten percent before. Forty-nine was…so
far out of the question it wasn’t even worth contemplating.

And just like that, my little ember of hope fizzled and died.

Even if I wanted to go back and get him, I couldn’t. Deep down I
think some part of me had always known that.

I closed my eyes again and slumped forward, pressing my face

to the cool walnut desk, finally, truly beaten, too sad to even
weep.

Bacon found me in that same spot when he woke up a few hours
later. He called to me softly, thinking I was asleep.

“I’m awake,” I said, not even attempting to inject any emotion

into my voice. After sitting in that position for hours and think-
ing about Dev, I was numb. I couldn’t feel my face, and I didn’t
care.

Bacon moved across the room until I could feel his hulking

presence behind me.

He let out a soft whistle. “Forty-nine, huh? Well, that won’t

do, will it?” He began tapping on the keyboard.

Knowing I had entered all the data correctly, I wasn’t even

mildly interested in what he was doing, and didn’t even bother to
pick my head up to see.

By the time he was done and the machine started whirring

and flickering, I had almost fallen into a white-noise coma. I was
so entranced by the sound of the clicking keys that, when all went
quiet again, it was jarring. My eyes popped open and I saw two
separate numbers flashing. The one on the left side of the screen
read 6 and the one on the right read 10.

I turned to look at Bacon questioningly, and he peered back at

me, that wide, guileless smile wreathing his face.

81/94

With a shaking hand, I reached out and clutched the mouse,

dragging it to scroll downward. As I read the data he’d entered, I
flicked my eyes to Bacon again.

“You sure?” I asked, the weight of this decision heavy in those

two words.

“Are you kidding? Of course I’m sure,” he replied without

hesitation.

And if there was even the slightest doubt in my mind about

my feelings for Dev and what I wanted, it fled as pure joy coursed
through me. I leaped to my feet and grabbed Bacon’s hand in
mine as we engaged in an impromptu and most excellent dance-
off, falling into a gasping, laughing pile on the floor somewhere
between the twist and the robot.

82/94

Chapter Eight

Lordship, Connecticut, October 31, 1836

The “Farewell to 2010” Buffalo chicken salad and diet cola, fol-
lowed by a shared pint of Cherry Garcia, had seemed like a good
idea at the time. But as I walked up to the front door of the es-
tate, eh, not so much. I felt like I was going to blow chunks.
Granted, even if I’d sipped weak tea and eaten toast, I probably
would have felt that way. But if I did boot, the fallout of tea and
toast would have been much less heinous than what was poten-
tially coming up the pike after Bacon’s and my epic binge.

Bacon stayed back at the inn, waiting for the verdict. He was

pretty optimistic, but since that’s his general state of being, it
didn’t give me much comfort.

Despite my initial euphoria, during the week of planning that

had followed Bacon’s offer, I had gotten progressively less con-
fident about the outcome of this trip. I was still happy that I had
a shot at least, but as the look on Dev’s face at the beach that day
played like a loop in my mind, I had to wonder—how many times
can you hurt somebody before they stop caring? And had I used
up all my chances?

I took a deep breath, summoning every last bit of my steely

time-pirate resolve, and knocked sharply on the door. A full two
minutes passed, and I knocked again, harder this time. And still,
another couple minutes later, nothing.

Having gone through the gamut of emotions and working my-

self up for this moment for two weeks, I was panicked at the
thought of walking away. Even if it was just to come back later or

the next day. On top of wanting, needing to see Devlin’s face, I
also needed to know the ending to the story. If it was a yes, I
needed to hear it. And if it was a no, well, I needed to hear that
too. I was putting it all on the line. And until I had his answer, I
was like an armadillo with its belly exposed—totally vulnerable.

I knocked harder.
Under my pounding fist, the door popped opened and swung

wide. I leaned forward and peeked in but saw no one. Where
were his servants? And where was Dev?

Almost in answer to my question, a loud banging sound

echoed down the long hallway in front of me. It was coming from
the workroom.

Trembling from head to toe, I stepped into the foyer and shut

the door behind me. As I marched slowly down the hallway to-
ward the bang-bang-banging of a hammer, my apprehension was
so great that I felt dizzy. If someone took that opportunity to
shout, “Dead man walkin’!” it would not have seemed out of
place.

A moment later, I stood in front of the door of Devlin’s work-

room. Either the banging had stopped or all the arteries in my
brain had exploded from the pressure, and I could no longer
hear. I cleared my throat to check which option was the most
likely. A loud bang from the other side of the door let me know
my brain was in one piece. “Mary?” shouted Devlin.

The panic I felt at the sound of his voice almost sent me tear-

ing ass over teakettle down the hallway and out the door, but the
feeling was quickly outweighed by a surge of jealousy. Who the
hell was Mary?

“I told you, you didn’t have to come today, I am just going to

have some of that cold pie and a—”

The door swung open, and there he was—Devlin of Leister,

love of my life, staring down at me in shock. He was a mess. A
gorgeous, sexy mess, but a mess nonetheless. His hair stood on

84/94

end, dark circles ringed haunted eyes and his clothes hung off
him as though he hadn’t eaten since I’d seen him last.

Bacon and I had tried to come back to the day after we had

left, but the wormhole on the beach had closed, and the best we
could do was two weeks later. By the looks of it, it had been a
tough two weeks on Devlin. My heart broke just looking at him. I
opened my mouth to speak, but he beat me to it.

“Come back for the rest, did you? Do you want me to pack it

up for you?” he asked. He shocked me. His tone was so cold. It
was if he was someone I had never known.

“No…I just wanted to—”
“What? What did you want to do, Stormy? Bugger up my life

some more? Because I think you’ve already proven you’re a
smashing success at that.”

At that, my eyes began fill. I turned to walk away, burning

with shame and regret. He had every right to feel the way he did.
I had screwed it up and now it was too late.

I was halfway to the door before his voice, the one I knew so

well, stopped me.

“I won’t tell anyone,” he said softly. “If that’s why you came, I

won’t tell anyone. As soon as you left, I burned it all. The blue-
prints, the notes, everything. Your secret is safe, so you can tell
your…benefactor that you did your duty.”

I turned to face him, but he was already turning to head back

into the workroom.

My heart thundered at the implications of his words. This

wasn’t a definite rejection. He really didn’t know why I was there.
So maybe I still had a chance? When I thought he had rejected
me just a moment before, it had been so hideously painful that I
hesitated for a second, wondering if I could risk putting myself
through it again. And then I thought of what Devlin had gone
through for me, and what my life would be like without him in it,

85/94

and I ran toward the workroom door, catching it just before it
closed.

“I…I love you,” I stammered at his retreating back, “and I

want to stay here with you. Well, not necessarily here, but any-
where, with you. I’m sorry I hurt you. I tried to come back soon-
er, but the wormhole was closed and I couldn’t get back, and if
you forgive me, I’ll, well, I’ll do anything, Dev. Anything. And
even if you don’t, I want to tell you what happened that day, and
about my life and about time travel,” I finished breathlessly, the
words tumbling out of my mouth coming to a halt as he froze,
then turned to face me.

I strained to hear him over the pounding of my heart, but he

just stood there with his eyes closed, not saying a word. So I kept
talking. For the better part of an hour I talked. I told him about
Gilly and about his life and his death. I told him about time travel
and how it worked and about places I’d been. I even told him
about my mother and how she left me. I was terrified to stop, in
case he stayed silent. That would be the death knell, the nail in
the coffin, Taps bleating from the trumpet. But eventually, I ran
out of both steam and saliva, and silence filled the great hallway,
nearly suffocating me with its weight.

A long moment passed; then, to my great relief, he spoke.
“Do you want to play a game with me?”
“What kind of game?” I asked, trying to maintain my compos-

ure despite the sudden urge to faint.

“A game of guessing.”
“Yes, I do.” I said without hesitation.
“What do you have to wager, then?”
“Well,” I said thoughtfully, trying to sound nonchalant as my

entire world clicked into place with an almost audible snap, “I
have this emerald ring. It’s got a latch and a secret compartment,
in the event that you need to poison someone.”

“Sounds intriguing. But I’d rather have the skirt.”

86/94

“The skirt I’m wearing?” I asked, feigning shock.
“That’s the one,” he said with a smile. But the smile faded, as

he moved to stand in front of me. He reached out to cup my chin
in his hand. “Eu te iubeste pentru totdeauna.”

“What does it mean?”
“I will love you forever. And I will, Stormy.”
“I’m not wearing dresses and corsets everyday, I’ll tell you

that right now,” I began to babble. “And you can forget all that
‘obey’ stuff too. That’s not how I roll. I can’t cook either. So don’t
say I didn’t war—”

“Oh, for the love of God, would you shut up?” he asked. It was

a rhetorical question. He pulled me tightly to his chest and
planted a searing kiss on my lips.

A long while later, I pulled away. “I will love you forever too,

Dev,” I said, my voice shaking. Sucking in a deep, shuddering
breath, I allowed the last of the fear and panic that had been my
constant companion for the past two weeks slip away. I worked
up my best siren’s smile and asked him, “Now, how about that
game?”

87/94

Epilogue

And so it went that we soon became the Loony Duke and Mad
Duchess of Leister. Through with running away from our prob-
lems, we moved back to London. With me around town in my
britches, hair flying loose, my new nickname was a reasonably
good fit. Even so, the locals have really come around to treat us
as more of an eccentric novelty than with the previous cruelty
they had shown to Dev as a youngster.

To address our desire to effect real change in people’s lives,

we opened a safe house for children. They can stay, learn a trade,
get a hug, eat three squares and sleep in a warm bed at night. We
can’t save them all, but we do our absolute best.

I also finally uncovered the mystery to Devlin’s torture cham-

ber back in Lordship. Once he had inherited his parents’ fortune,
he had used much of it to purchase an old asylum. He had
stripped it of its outdated, miserable treatment devices and made
it into a real hospital where people could go and be safe while
doctors tried to learn more about their patients’ psychological
disorders.

Devlin kept the items in the hopes of using them to demon-

strate the cruelty many mental-health patients were forced to en-
dure. He felt certain that if people saw them and were faced with
the brutality of it all, they too would be spurred into taking ac-
tion. Already, we have two hospitals in England agreeing to try
alternative and humane treatments.

I’ve used my goggles once a year for a time-traveling adven-

ture. When we travel now, we go to the past and do a little “col-
lecting” for Gilly’s House. The trips keep my instincts sharp and
the coffers full when we have a lot of mouths to feed.

We never go to the future. We’re exactly where we’re meant to

be, and the lure to stay would be too strong. In the interest of full
disclosure, however, we did go to 2010 one time, right in the be-
ginning. We didn’t stay long, just long enough for me to stock up
on a lifetime supply of essentials like Advil and chocolate. Devlin
got to try pizza and ice cream. He also got a look at automobiles,
television, an airplane and porn. He is infinitely curious about all
things twenty-first century. I spend a lot of time sewing lingerie
to model for him, drawing pictures of various inventions like the
iPod and explaining why anyone would pay money for a bottle of
water or a sweater for a dog. The conversations typically go
something like this:

“So a person buys a dog?”
“Right.”
“And then they get the dog’s fur cut?”
“We call it ‘groomed.’ But yup.”
“And then they buy a sweater for it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But it sort of came with a sweater right from the start.”
“True.”
“So why did they shave it in the first place?”
“Great question. But sometimes even if they don’t even shave

it, they just get the sweater anyway in case the dog gets chilled.”

“Oh. So they treat them like people.”
“Bingo.”
“What’s ‘Bingo’?”
And then it starts all over again.
Our days are pretty full with the children, and any spare time

is spent inventing. Our Magnificent Flying Contraption is almost
complete.

Devlin also built us a glorious bath for two, and I must say

showers are overrated. In fact, when we were testing out our new
tub for the first time, we created a miracle. Our daughter Molly

89/94

will be one-year-old next month. With her father’s soulful eyes
and mop of curls, and her mother’s sense of adventure and steely
time-pirate resolve, she is trouble with a capital T. Her uncle Ba-
con adores her and the two of them spend hours playing games
together. I only wish Gilly could have met her. She would have
stolen his heart for sure.

Bacon’s met a lovely young girl named Catherine and they are

fast becoming an item. They help out with the children and we
have a lot of laughs together. Bacon never was a very good time
pirate and he was happy to give it up for good. A simpler guy cut
out for simpler times, I think, and far too guileless to be a good
pirate, in any case.

I don’t know what the future holds. Scratch that. I guess I ac-

tually kind of do. But I know there are no guarantees in life, and
that’s okay with me. Devlin, Molly, Bacon, Gilly’s House, they’re
all worth the risk. And even though sometimes I crave a mochac-
cino desperately, I know my namesake had it right. There’s no
place like home.

90/94

About the Author

Christine Bell is one half of the happiest couple in the world. She
and her handsome hubby currently reside in Pennsylvania with a
four-pack of teenage boys and their two dogs, Gimli and Pug. If
she gets time off from her duties as maid, chef, chauffeur or ther-
apist, she can be found reading just about anything she can get
her hands on, from young adult novels to books on poker theory.
She doesn’t like root beer, clowns or bugs (except ladybugs, on
account of their cute outfits), but lurrves chocolate, going to the
movies, the New York Giants and playing Texas Hold ’Em. Writ-
ing is her passion, but if she had to pick another occupation, she
would be a pirate…or, like, a ninja maybe. When she isn’t writing
steampunk romance, she’s writing erotic romance under her pen
name, Chloe Cole. Christine loves to hear from readers, so please
contact her through her website, www.christine-bell.com.

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Copyright © 2011 by Christine O’Neil-Bell

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