Timeless (14 page)

Caissie raised an eyebrow. “Um, okay. Shoot.”

“So, um … I sort of stayed out until after four in the morning and my grandparents flipped. I couldn’t tell them where I really was and I was put on the spot, and I just—well, I blurted out that I was with you at your friend Aaron’s. I don’t know why
I did it and I feel really embarrassed telling you,” Michele confessed. “I’m sorry to have to ask, but would you be willing to tell your mom that’s what happened? Just ’cause I know my grandmother’s going to check my story with her.”

Caissie gave her a strange look but shrugged. “Okay. I mean, why not, I guess. Where were you that you can’t tell them?”

Michele bit her lip. “I can’t really say,” she admitted.

“Oh. Okay,” Caissie said stiffly.

“I wish I could,” Michele said hurriedly. “It’s just—”

“I get it,” Caissie interrupted. “Consider the favor done.”

“Thanks,” Michele said gratefully.

Caissie swung her backpack over her shoulders. “Well, see you around.”

“See you.” Michele watched her leave, feeling unsettled. She could tell that she had offended Caissie by asking her to lie for her and then not trusting her with the truth. Still, how was she supposed to tell
anyone
what had really taken place the previous night?
I should have just made up some story to tell her
, Michele thought regretfully.

As she set off down the hall for her next class, Michele thought of what it would be like to have someone to confide in about this unbelievable turn of events. It would be a relief in a way. But there was no one to tell. Amanda and Kristen would never in a million years believe it. There was only one person who would take this seriously, and that person was gone.

After school, Michele arrived at the Windsor Mansion just as her grandparents were leaving.

“Hello, Michele,” Dorothy greeted her quietly as they passed in the Grand Hall. Walter gave her a polite nod, but his face still looked tense.

“Hi,” Michele replied. She watched them walk out the door, dressed in upscale finery. They were probably headed to yet another gala for one of the many boards they served on. It seemed to Michele that her grandparents did nothing meaningful, just constantly attended board dinners and events.
What kind of life is that?
she wondered as she headed up the stairs to her room. She heard her cell phone beep with a text message, and she pulled it out of her pocket. The message was from Kristen, asking where in the world Michele was. Michele guiltily remembered that she hadn’t returned her friends’ calls for the past few days, ever since her first trip to 1910. As much as she missed them, she didn’t feel quite ready to call them back yet. They knew her well enough that they’d immediately sense she was different—and she had no idea how she would explain that.

Not in the mood to start on homework, Michele headed into her sitting room to find something to read. As she opened the glass-enclosed library cabinet, she saw a small burgundy porcelain music box that she hadn’t noticed before. Michele opened the lid, and strains of Chopin’s haunting Nocturne no. 19 in E Minor began to play. The music box was clearly ancient, and the song played in fits and starts, the sound low and tinny. Yet the melody was still so beautiful Michele wished she could hear it played properly.

Suddenly, a sound from downstairs caused her to jump, and she nearly dropped the porcelain box in her shock. Just as she had been wishing to hear the song in all its glory, there it was:
she could hear it now being played below by someone who sounded like a virtuoso.

Stunned, Michele turned to examine her room. Her TV and entertainment console were gone, replaced with a delicate white tea table, and gas lamps had taken the place of electric.
I’m back in 1910
, she realized with amazement. Somehow, Time had sent her back instantaneously. But all Michele could focus on was the music.
Who in the world could be playing like this?
she wondered. She had always thought Lily was the only Windsor with any musical talent, but she would have been just a baby in 1910.

She hurried downstairs, following the sound to the ballroom. Michele stood in the doorway and found the Windsor women seated admiringly around a young man playing the piano, whose back was to Michele. Henrietta sat with a little girl on her knee. Michele guessed that she was the youngest daughter, Frances. The two of them listened solemnly, while Violet perched beside them with a satisfied smile on her face.
Where’s Clara?
Michele wondered.

Michele looked closer at the young man playing the piano—and she froze. There was no mistaking that thick dark hair, those hands, that proud posture. It was
Philip
.

She watched in awe as his fingers danced across the keys. Philip’s eyes were closed in concentration, his body moving fluidly with the music, as he played with the passion of someone giving every bit of his soul over to the song. Michele felt a stab of longing as she watched him.

When he finished, the Windsor women politely applauded. Philip turned to face them and then stopped short, drawing a sharp intake of breath, at the sight of Michele. For a moment
she worried that he was unhappy to see her, but then his face broke into a beautiful smile that sent a warm glow through her body.

“Philip? What in the dickens are you looking at?” Violet asked.

“N-nothing,” he answered, collecting himself.

“What are you playing next?” Frances piped up.

Philip paused, and though he spoke to the others, the quick glance that he first gave Michele made her feel that he was addressing her. “This is actually something I composed myself,” he said.

He turned back to the piano and began to play a song that couldn’t have been more different from Chopin’s Nocturne. This music had a syncopated, swinging rhythm, making Michele think of New Orleans jazz, only sped up. Philip’s fingers flew across the keys, his hands looking like they were in competition with each other. The song was intoxicating and catchy, and Michele couldn’t resist moving to the rhythm. Although Violet’s presence was a painful reminder that Philip was taken, Michele felt even more under his spell now, after seeing his talent.

“Stop that at once!”

Michele jumped at Henrietta’s icy command. Clearly bewildered, Philip abruptly stopped playing. Violet’s face was red and she looked like she had just swallowed something sour.

“We do not allow that music in our house,” Henrietta sternly admonished him.

“I beg your pardon?” Philip asked in disbelief.

“You were playing
race music
!” Violet hissed. “What would people
say
if they knew?”

Michele’s mouth fell open in shock. Philip fixed Violet and her mother with a cold look. “It’s called ragtime,” he said evenly.

“The music of red-light districts,” Henrietta said, shaking her head with disdain. “As my future son-in-law, I expect you never to expose my daughter to that music again.”

“It’s a shame you feel that way.” Philip pulled out his pocket watch and gave it a perfunctory glance. “I’d best be taking my leave now, as Mother and Uncle will be expecting me.”

“Philip!” Violet sputtered, no doubt guessing the reason he was cutting the visit short.

“I expect I’ll be seeing you soon, Violet,” Philip said cordially. “Goodbye, Mrs. Windsor, Frances.” As he picked up his hat and headed toward the door, his eyes locked with Michele’s.

“Don’t listen to them,” Michele, not even bothering with a hello, burst out the second Philip had left the room. “What they were saying was totally ignorant. Most of your generation may still think there’s a racial pecking order, but history proves them wrong. African American music isn’t race music; it’s just
good
music. And it’s great that you’re so inspired by it, because your song is amazing, and as much as I dig Chopin, the ragtime is way cooler.”

The corners of Philip’s mouth twitched with amusement. “I confess I couldn’t make out any of what you just said. But I do detect a compliment somewhere in there,” he said, his voice low so as not to attract attention.

“Oh.”
Got to remember not to use slang in 1910
, Michele
thought. “I was saying that they’re completely wrong, and that you have to keep playing ragtime. I’ve never heard anyone play like that, and it was …” Michele searched for the right word. “Spectacular.”

Philip stopped and looked at her, his eyes bright. Then he unexpectedly reached for her hand. Their fingers interlaced as if by habit and he led her out of the house, not saying a word until they were outside the Windsor Mansion gates.

“There’s so much I’ve wanted to say to you, and ask you, since I saw you last,” he said intently. “I know it’s not quite proper, but the only place for us to talk without my being seen is in my home. Can I take you there?”

Michele nodded, feeling a thrill at his surprising change toward her. “Of course.”

P
hilip led her through the arched French doors of the Walker chateau and into the lavish mansion. They passed through crimson-carpeted hallways on the first floor, decorated with eighteenth-century French tapestries and paintings, until Philip opened a door into a formal room and closed it behind them. The room had white and gold paneled walls, a gilded ceiling, and elegant curtains and furniture in different shades of burgundy. In the center of the room was an intricately painted grand piano, beside a five-foot gold harp.

“This is the music room—the one room in the house no one ever seems to enter but me,” Philip said with a grin.

“It’s beautiful.”
Who would have ever thought I’d soon be so
familiar with houses on this scale?
Michele thought in amazement.

Philip gestured for her to sit beside him, and suddenly Michele couldn’t contain her curiosity any longer. “Philip, what happened?” she blurted out. “I thought you didn’t want … I mean, I thought you wanted to stay away from me.”

“I didn’t want to. I thought I
had
to,” Philip said. “That scene you just witnessed with the Windsors? That’s the life I’ve been accustomed to—tightly controlled, with my uncle and this society holding the reins, pulling me back from any freedom or happiness. I’ve been numb for years, and I didn’t realize it until after you appeared and—and made me
feel
something. Since then, these past two weeks I’ve been … awake. Alive. Restless for you to return—and afraid that you wouldn’t.”

Michele felt her face grow warm, and for a moment she couldn’t speak. “I’m glad,” she finally replied, shyly. She moved an inch closer to him, and the two of them sat smiling at one another. Philip’s eyes seemed to drink in her appearance, and his face flushed as he regarded her knee-length plaid skirt and short-sleeved white blouse. “You’re—you’re quite underdressed,” he commented.

“Not for 2010,” Michele said with a chuckle. “These are my school clothes. This is actually considered conservative in my time.”

“I haven’t been able to stop wondering about the future since I saw you last,” Philip said, his eyes filled with curiosity. “Will you tell me about it?”

Michele hesitated. “Are you sure you want to know?” She wondered if there were rules about this kind of thing, if it was
bad for her to reveal what was ahead. But Philip nodded so eagerly that she couldn’t stand to disappoint him.

“Well … the truth is, it couldn’t be more different from now,” she began. “In my time, we fly around the world in airplanes. There are rockets that send astronauts into outer space. People have walked on the moon—” She broke off at Philip’s expression. He looked so incredulous she couldn’t help giggling.

“We’ve been trying to get man to fly since ’03, but no one has quite managed it,” Philip said. “So it really works, then? And to go to outer space and the
moon
!”

“That’s not all,” Michele continued, warming to her subject. “We have computers, which are kind of like typewriters, but with all sorts of programs and applications. Practically
anything
you can imagine, you can do on a computer. We have small portable telephones that we carry with us everywhere, and there’s this amazing invention called the Internet, where you can communicate with people from across the whole world in just seconds. We have access to anything we want—entertainment, communication, news—whenever we want it, just by logging on to the Internet on our computers and phones. There are video cameras in computers too, so I can be in New York and speak with someone in Africa as easily as if we were in the same room.”