Downtime (46 page)

“Good heavens. It’s as well you’re leaving before I find myself dependent on a boarder willing to lend a pair of hands.”

The look she gave Ezra made me laugh, and Ezra flush to his collar. “I do beg your pardon, Kathleen. Of course I will help you put up the wash, if you like,” he said contritely, then kicked me under the table.

As I nursed my shin, Kathleen looked us over dubiously. “I suppose I may entrust the two of you to the task. The lines and pegs are in the bag. Remember to hang the sheets short side to the wind, if you please.”

We strung the lines in a sunny corner of the garden and, hampered by a brisk wind, I showed Ezra how to smooth the sheets and hang them. He found the whole process amusing, judging by his grin as I struggled with Kathleen’s primitive pegs. Windblown and laughing, he stole one last kiss behind a wall of white linen, then headed for the house before either of us could get maudlin about it. I went upstairs to make sure I had everything I’d arrived with; and ended up lingering a few minutes in Ezra’s room, just looking around. So much had happened in the space of two weeks, it felt like I’d lived here far longer.

“Ready to go?”

He was making this as easy for me as he could. My eyes burned and I took a quick swipe at them before I turned to him and nodded. If he noticed any telltale moisture in my eyes, he didn’t say anything. I figured we would take the bus to the Theosophical Society, but Ezra hailed a cab—to give us a little more time alone, I knew, when he slipped his hand into mine. Corinna was ever her buxomy, cheerful self as she greeted us in the foyer of the Society’s offices, cradling a large, leather-bound book in her arms. I felt relief and regret. I was leaving behind some real friends—but I was going home.

Corinna hefted our prize higher on her hip as she came toward us. “Well, my dears, you’re quite fortunate Charles had your book in his possession.”

“Fortunate, indeed,” Ezra said, as if he were genuinely pleased Charles had been successful. “I’m grateful to you for your complicity. It was rather a lot to ask—”

“Ah, but you are to give us a lecture, do not forget.” She paused at the commotion coming from the hallway. “Good heavens, who can be—”

She promptly got her answer when an agitated guy, all arms and legs in a too-small black suit, burst through the door and just about lit into Ezra on the spot. “You! I should have known it was you.” Corinna got a baleful look for that transgression, but it was mild compared to the boiling wrath Charles—I assumed it was Charles—poured over Ezra. “You take me to task for my occult collection and then go about borrowing the selfsame volumes!” He pulled the book out of Corinna’s hands and clasped it to his chest. “Maybe no one else in this tight little club will stand up to you, but I shall.”

“For heaven’s sake,” Ezra said. “I only wanted to borrow the thing for a day or two. I do not mean to venture into the occult. Intentionally, anyway,” he added with a rueful smile for me.

“I know just what you intend,” Charles said. “You’ve had your fun making me out the villain, and now you’ll insist that dabbling in magicks is a fit pursuit for gentlemen after all, so you might poke about in it as you like.”

I swallowed a groan, along with the temptation to take the book from him and hustle Ezra off to the museum. But Charles was excited enough to put up a fight—or worse, go running for the police. Ezra didn’t look as worried as I felt, and I wondered if he had a way around this that I hadn’t thought of.

“Charles, I give you my word I’ll do no such thing.”

Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that; because it wouldn’t have worked in my own time. Ezra’s was another matter. Charles still looked suspicious, but there was a considering gleam in his eye. “A start,” he allowed.

Ezra sighed. “What else, then?”

“You’ll let it be known that you consider my work respectable. And you’ll admit to me and everyone else that you’ve been unfair to state otherwise. If you intend to begin lecturing again, you’ll apologize to me publicly and you’ll defend me and my work to anyone who still thinks ill of me. If you’re going to poke your nose about, Glacenbie, then I’ll use your reputation to my advantage.”

“Charles,” Corinna murmured in disbelief.

Ezra seemed amused, but uneasy too. “You see more in my reputation than I do. And I never said your work was not respectable. Just merely dangerous.”

“Be that as it may,” Charles said with an impatient jerk of his head. “I also want that book you won at the auction in August.”

Ezra’s faint smile faded. “Anything else? A pound of flesh, perhaps?”

“That will do for now. What do you say?”

Musing on the ever-growing possibility of laying this guy out with one well-placed right to the jaw, I dropped my attention to the book in his arms as something about it nagged at my mind. I had the weird feeling I’d seen it before, but I couldn’t have unless….

I grabbed Ezra and turned him away from Charles and toward me. “Remember that book you described for me at the library?”

He stared at me blankly. “What? I don’t—”

“In the museum library. You couldn’t recall the title, but you described the book. Can you remember what you said?”

His brows drew together. “I said the cover was green, dark green, and the cloth torn at the front corner…” His attention shot to the volume in Charles’ hands, then up at Charles as that altogether rare anger surfaced. “Right out from under our noses—”

“Whoa, Ezra, slow down.” I hated to stop him just when he was getting started, and God knew Charles deserved it, but there was a better way. “You wouldn’t happen to know a fellow by the name of Whitby, would you, Charles?”

Corinna perked up. “Adam Whitby?” she inquired, and Charles blanched. The book crushed to his chest, he looked around with furtive anxiety.

“I’ve bought books from Whitby,” he blurted out, when it was clear he couldn’t get away without some kind of explanation. “What of it?”

I tried not to smile at the defensive tone. “You bought the books and of course you didn’t know that Whitby was stealing them from the museum.”

Corinna gasped a very unladylike word in German and hastily put a hand over her mouth. With a little more effort, I maintained my Fed face. “I suppose you’ve documented your purchases?”

He ran fingers through the greased hair that had fallen into his eyes, making a prickly mess of it. Shifting the book in a looser grip, he shrugged his thin shoulders. “I did not think it necessary.”

Though it was better left to the police to sort out, I didn’t want the book ending up in their custody. “Didn’t think it was necessary, huh? You think Inspector Saffery will believe that any more than we do?”

“Call in the police if you want,” Charles muttered. “You’ll prove nothing against me. Here, take the damned book.” Suddenly it was in Ezra’s hands, and Charles was making a hasty exit from the office. He got as far as the door before I nabbed his coattails and, putting him nose to the glass, cuffed his wrists behind him. I asked Corinna to find a policeman, and as soon as she’d gone, shared a relieved grin with Ezra. “How fast can you copy?”

It took him a few minutes to find the spell he’d used to pull me back, and several more minutes to figure out how to reverse it to send me home. It would have taken even longer with Charles’ whining and haranguing, but the sight of my Glock shut him up and let Ezra transcribe in peace. Ez was still scratching Latin rapidly on a scrap of paper when Corinna came back with a constable whom she had apparently apprised of the situation. I slipped the cuffs off Charles and let the constable snap on his own pair. Ezra looked worried as he joined me outside the office. “I hope I shall be able to read my own writing.”

“I hope so, too. Breaking into the police station to get the book back isn’t such a hot alternative.”

We made it to the museum with time to spare. No one had arrived for our lunch meeting and we found Henry hard at work. He was pleased to learn we had recovered the stolen book and even seemed mildly regretful at the prospect of my departure. He rattled on about it as we followed him back to the storage room. Ezra, I noticed, hadn’t said a word since we’d hooked up with Henry; not even to tell Henry to behave himself whenever a snide remark slipped past. I couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t much in a frame of mind for conversation, myself.

When Derry arrived, and then Kathleen with Hannah in tow, we went for a somber lunch at a nearby noisy restaurant. Our trek back to the museum was even more solemn, with only Derry keeping up a steady flow of chitchat to try to lighten the mood. The moment had come and I was more nervous than excited by the idea of being hurtled through time again, even though it meant going home.

“We shall have to make this quick,” Henry said as we slipped into the storage room. “I think Mr. Brooke would quite give us the sack if he came upon us casting spells in the middle of the workday.”

To say the least. But as quick as our good-byes needed to be, I couldn’t rush them. I started with the easiest. “Henry, old pal. What can I say?” Certainly not that I’d miss him. Okay, he hadn’t been a total asshole; he’d helped us pin down Ezra’s dad. I had to give him credit for that. But I didn’t feel close to the guy and I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.

Henry, for his part, looked me over as if he felt as ambivalent. “You do realize, of course, that if Derry had put forth any real effort, we would have won that race,” he said with an indignant little sniff.

“Yeah, I do.” I smiled and held out a hand. Henry hesitated only a moment before he took it. I turned to Kathleen, then noticed Hannah peeking out from behind her. I gave her shoulder a soft squeeze. “Sorry, Hannah. Don’t stay mad at me too long, okay? I’ll miss you, kiddo.”

Hannah blinked back her tears and hid her face against Kathleen’s coat. A similar gleam shone in Kathleen’s eyes, though she was furtively dabbing away with a handkerchief.

“I feel like I ought to apologize to you too,” I ventured.

“Nonsense. My boarders generally move on at some point. It’s a fact of life I’m accustomed to.”

“Yeah.” I grinned. “I’ll miss you too.” I gave her a hug, whether it was good manners or not. She didn’t seem to mind and patted my shoulder before dropping her gaze to dab at her eyes again.

Derry wasn’t so self-conscious over his tears. He pulled me into a hug and sucked in a long ragged breath to steady his voice just enough to talk. “I’ll meet up with you again on another day, Morgan Nash, on another road. We’ll sit down to a beer, cold if you like, and laugh, till the tears we shed are the happy ones they cannot be just now.” He drew back to look at me, eyes a deep, misty gray, and smiled from ear to ear. “I’m pleased to have known you.”

“I sure hope we do meet again. I love you guys. All of you.” I couldn’t keep my own tears down without choking on them. It was time to go, before I had everyone bawling. I turned to Ezra, to see he’d taken in all the farewells with a calm, waiting air. “Sully’s not here, is he?”

Ezra shook his head with mute sympathy. Ah well—how many good-byes did I really need to say? One thing I knew, none of them were as difficult as the last one. His blue eyes gave away very little as Ezra steered me to the spot where I had first appeared, just weeks before. As I struggled for the words to tell Ezra good-bye, Hannah lunged forward and wrapped both arms tightly around my middle. Kathleen drew her away to a corner of the room and I was glad they hadn’t left altogether. I wanted to see them in the last moment before 1888 became a memory—if it would be even that, once I was home.