A Murder in Time (16 page)

No fucking way.

“Where are you going, Miss Donovan?”

Kendra hadn't even realized that she was up and moving until she felt the doorknob under her hand. She glanced back at the lady's maid—God, how did she live like this?—unaware of the stark desperation darkening her eyes.

“Home. I need to go home.”

Thankfully, the study was empty. Kendra made a beeline for the hidden door. Her hands shook as she pushed aside the tapestry. It was only when the door swung open that she found herself hesitating, a spidery sense of fear crawling up her spine.

Time travel.
It was absurd. Unbelievable. Yet here she was, smack in the middle of the unbelievable. Having ruled out a brain tumor, psychotic break, or hoax, Kendra had to believe that she'd just spent the morning in the early nineteenth century.

In theory, time travel
was
possible. Albert Einstein had theorized if gravity was strong enough, it could conceivably cause a curvature in the space-time continuum, forcing time to literally loop back on itself. There were some science fiction freaks who even believed that there were natural gravitational hot spots in the world that could create such a vortex of space-time, allowing people to travel through time. But that was science
fiction
, for Christ's sake.

Of course, there'd been experiments that had basically proven that time travel was possible. In 1971, scientists J. C. Hafele and Richard E. Keating had placed amazingly accurate atomic clocks—each with the capacity to measure time to the billionth of a second—on jets flying at 600 miles per hour. Using the atomic clock at the U.S. Naval Observatory as a reference point, they'd documented that nanoseconds of time had been both gained and lost on the clocks onboard the jets. In effect, anyone onboard the jets had leapt a nanosecond into the future and back to the past.

But there was a big difference between traveling
nanoseconds
in time and
centuries
. This shouldn't be possible. But since she was standing here, maybe she'd encountered one of those alleged gravitational hot spots. Could that explain the unnatural darkness, the vertigo, the pain . . . the way her flesh seemed to bubble, dissolve,
disappear
. . . ? And if the passageway housed one of those vortexes, this would be her ticket home.

There were a lot of things wrong with that theory, Kendra knew—like, if there was a vortex beyond this door, one would think the Duke would've encountered more people appearing suddenly, or inexplicably going missing. She didn't want to think about it.
I just want to go home.

Still, Kendra hesitated before stepping through the door. Greasy knots of anxiety made her stomach clench. Physically, the experience had been agonizing. Excruciating. But that wasn't what made her vacillate. She'd endure the pain if she knew she'd return home.

That was the problem: would she return home? Or would she be flung deeper into the past, or even further into the future? The future she could handle. But what if she ended up in the seventeenth century? The fifteenth century? This century, at least, was the beginning of the modern era.

Again, Kendra was struck by the sheer absurdity of her thoughts. Yesterday if anyone had told her that she'd worry about being transported somewhere in time, she'd have laughed and wondered about their sanity. Now it was
her
sanity that was in question.

She raked her fingers through her hair, and then straightened her shoulders.
Stop stalling.
She inhaled deeply and walked through the door.

10

The stairwell was dark.

But not the absolute, unnatural darkness that she'd encountered last night.

It was also cold.

But not unusually so.

Slowly, she climbed the stairs, willing the darkness to thicken, the temperature to drop, the stairwell to take on that strange supernatural element that she'd sensed, but hadn't really understood, before.

Feeling a little like Dorothy clicking her ruby red slippers, Kendra closed her eyes and held her breath.

There's no place like home—yeah, right.
She'd given up her home when she'd created new identities and bank accounts for herself, when she'd made it her mission to kill Sir Jeremy Greene. Was this some sort of karmic payback?

She was beginning to feel a little light-headed. Hope surged . . . until she realized the slight buzz in her ears wasn't caused by some paranormal electromagnetic charge in the air, but because she was still holding her breath. Feeling as stupid as Sarah had accused her of being, she let it out with a whoosh, sagging against the cold stone wall. Anger replaced the dizziness.

“This is
insane
! Absolutely fucking insane!” She climbed more stairs, and then slapped a frustrated palm against the stone wall.
“Goddamnit!”

She pushed herself upward, paused. Closed her eyes. Nothing.

“Where the hell is that damn vortex? C'mon!” She thought of her mother, Dr. Eleanor Jahnke, currently trying to unveil the secrets of the universe in Switzerland. “Oh boy, oh boy . . . Mother, I've got a doozy for you. You'd love this. You'd—”

“Ahoy. Who's there?”

Kendra froze. The voice echoed from above. Footsteps approached.

She considered the odds of escaping.
Not good.
A second later, light bounced off the wall, and then the Duke of Aldridge rounded the curve, holding an oil lamp.

“Miss Donovan?” He stopped, raising his brows as he studied the young woman poised on the spiral steps below. Because she looked frightened, he gentled his voice. “This is a surprise.”

“I'm sorry, I . . .” Kendra wondered how she could explain her presence in the passageway. Once was bad enough. But twice? That was bound to raise suspicions.

Aldridge looked at her curiously. “Do not apologize. 'Tis serendipity. Would you like a cup of tea?”

Kendra blinked in confusion. “What?”

“Tea. I rang for some. Come along, my dear.” He didn't wait, but began ascending the stairs. “Don't dawdle, Miss Donovan,” he said cheerfully, not looking back.

A little bemused, Kendra followed him through the doorway. The last time she'd been in this room, she remembered, it had been empty, save for the fireplace. Today, the hearth was filled with burning logs, adding a hint of smoke to the air. Above the mantel were two oval paintings, portraits of a woman and child. The same woman and child, Kendra realized, that graced the oil painting in the study.

Except for the mullion-paned windows that allowed in natural light, the other walls were lined with bookshelves. There was a desk, less elegant than the one downstairs, its surface smothered beneath stacks of books and sheaves of papers. A couple of wooden chairs were positioned around it. Yet it wasn't the desk, but the two long worktables that drew the eye. They carried an odd and untidy assortment of equipment, instruments, and tools. Kendra caught the gleam of brass, the polish of bronze.

With a sinking feeling, she scanned the old-fashioned microscopes; the mortar and pestle bowls; the pottery filled with chunks of rock and bits of what looked like bone; and jars filled with liquid. On the floor was a beautifully designed armillary sphere, representing the celestial bodies. A large telescope, as tall as she was, stood beside it.

“You're a scientist,” she observed, and couldn't control a tiny shiver. The irony didn't escape her. She'd been born—bred, really—as a scientific experiment. For the first fourteen years of her life, she'd been treated with awe by some, suspicion by others, and careful clinical detachment by her parents. Was it some cosmic joke that she'd been transported back in time only to find herself employed by an aristocratic scientist?

“Scientist.” The Duke of Aldridge said the word now, and in such a way that he seemed to be testing it on his tongue. “I am not familiar with the term.”

Kendra stared at him in his old-fashioned clothes, and it took her a moment to remember that the word
scientist
wouldn't be coined for another twenty-five or so years. Language, she reflected ruefully, was a lot like a living organism: words were born, they thrived, sometimes died or evolved into new words, new meanings. It would, she suspected, be her greatest challenge while she was here.
Oh, God, please don't let me be here long.

“I meant,” she said slowly, even as her stomach twisted, “you're a man of science.” Aware that he was staring at her—
studying
her—she moved toward the armillary sphere and telescope. “You're interested in astronomy?”

He smiled. “Like my father before me, I have an avid interest in natural philosophy and the arts.” He touched the sphere reverently. “I was only a lad of twenty-two when Sir William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus. Such a discovery . . . And only four years ago, the Great Comet was observed streaking through the sky. What else is out there to be discovered, among the stars, eh, Miss Donovan?”

“Those to whom the harmonious doors,/Of Science have unbarred celestial shores,”
Kendra quoted unthinkingly, offering a tentative smile. It had seemed apropos, but she instantly regretted it when the Duke stared at her.

Fascinated, Aldridge said carefully, “Are you an admirer of the poet?”

Kendra shrugged uneasily. “He was . . . is . . .” She tried to remember when William Wordsworth had died. Mid-1800s? “Ah, remarkable.”

“He is.” The Duke's blue-gray eyes twinkled, even as he clearly wondered at the woman's sudden discomfort. “Like many of my contemporaries, I've tried my hand at poetry. But my efforts fall far short of Mr. Wordsworth's genius. He knows how to explore a man's soul, eh? I prefer to explore those celestial shores, or divine the secrets of the earth. There is much to be explored, is there not, Miss Donovan? You would, of course, understand. Being an explorer yourself.”

Kendra went pale, her eyes wary as she looked to Aldridge. “What do you mean?”

“You are an American,” he pointed out, deliberately keeping his tone mild, though her reaction had piqued his curiosity. “You were enough of an explorer to sail across the Atlantic.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, of course.” Her brow cleared. Biting her lip, she rubbed her clammy palms against her arms. Unable to meet the intensity of his gaze, she looked around. The messy sheaves of paper caught her attention. Smoothing out one curling paper, she studied the graphs and notations with interest.

“I chart the night sky,” Aldridge explained. “These are my observations of last evening.”

“There was a full moon?”

“Yes,” he said, giving her a questioning look.

Kendra missed it, too busy considering the implications of a full moon on her own bizarre circumstance. Was there a connection? Not because of the myth that mysterious and magical things happen under a full moon, but for the purely scientific reason that the gravitational pull was strongest during that phase of the lunar cycle. And perhaps a stronger gravitational pull might influence the vortex . . .

Jesus Christ. Would she be marooned in this dimension, this time rift, for a full
month
?

“Are you quite well, Miss Donovan?”

“Oh . . . yes. I'm fine.” Yet she couldn't stop shivering. It didn't make sense. Full moons didn't occur on the same day every month.
Her
full moon, in her own time, wouldn't necessarily be the same as the Duke's.

She rubbed her arms and paced aimlessly along one worktable, staring at the objects jumbled across it. There was no order or specialty. The Duke of Aldridge's interests, it appeared, were wide-ranging and eclectic. He was a true Renaissance man. She paused next to four squat jars connected with metal wires and rods.

“That's a Leyden Jar,” the Duke identified, noting her interest. “Rather primitive electricity toys, but when I was a boy it was quite the thing. Do you have an interest in natural philosophy and astronomy, Miss Donovan?”

Kendra slanted him a look. She was a servant, she reminded herself. Did servants in the nineteenth century have an interest in natural philosophy or astronomy? “I suppose they're interesting subjects,” she replied carefully.

“They are indeed.” He picked up the pipe he'd left on the table. “How'd you find yourself on these shores, Miss Donovan?”

“What?”

Crossing the room to the fireplace, he lit a long taper and brought it to the clay pipe bowl. “England, Miss Donovan,” he prodded gently as he puffed. His expression was genial but his gaze was sharp as he surveyed her through the smoke. “How'd you come here, pray?”

Kendra thought of the answer she'd glibly given that morning. “By ship,” she said instead.

He smiled. “I didn't think you came by air balloon. Perhaps a better question would be: What brought you to England?”

“I . . .” Oh, God, what could she say? “I had . . . something to do. Business. And, ah, you might say I got stuck here.” It was the truth.