A Matter of Circumstance and Celludrones (8 page)

She turned her head to peer at Lord Adair. “You don’t seem as
concerned about people learning of Neco. Are you not afraid he’ll be taken from
you, that someone might steal him in order to learn the secret of his design?”

“You’ve seen Neco. The man can take care of himself.” His lips
twitched. “That story is almost as bad as the misbehaving bunny you made up
yesterday.”

“You think I’m making this up?” Clearly Ana wasn’t as unique as she’d
been led to believe, but the celludrone was all Lily had of her father. That
and a trust fund that would make her husband very happy one day. There were no
paintings of the man, no miniature in a locket her mother might have passed on.
She didn’t even have a single memory to treasure.

Lord Adair met her gaze with a frown. “Your mother spun you a load of
yarn, that’s what I think.” He looked away. “Neco and Ana are the last
remaining celludrones fashioned on the original, ancient Egyptian schematics. I
don’t know how McAllister came by the parchments. I do, however, know that Neco
and Ana were built by him. In Scotland, not France.”

“This McAllister might have built the original celludrones, but my
father practically created an entirely new technology from it when he designed
Ana.”

His eyes came back to her. “You have it the wrong way round. Duncan
McAllister built six celludrones such as Neco and Ana. Then he patented a
simplistic model and sold it to a manufacturer in Manchester. Not for the
money, although I’m sure he made a small fortune,” Lord Adair added. “The
production of simple celludrones was a means to hide his six in plain sight.”

Lily increased her pace. She didn’t need to listen to his ridiculous
ideas. It was his word against her mother’s. She’d only met him two short days
ago; she barely knew the man.

Her heart pounded and the blood reverberated in her head.
Why would
Lord Adair lie? How does he know all these things?

“Where’s his blasted proof?” she muttered beneath her breath.

The flat ground abruptly gave way to a steep bank that dropped into a
small lake. One foot slid forward on the slippery grass and the rest of her
followed, bumping along on her bottom to a series of unladylike grunts.

“Lily…!”

She clutched at the long grass, thankfully finding purchase and
drawing her knees up before her boots touched the water.

“Good God, are you okay?” His hands came around her waist, sliding her
all the way up the bank again and hauling her to her feet. “Are you hurt? Did
you twist your ankle?”

His hands left her waist, but didn’t go far. As if he expected her to
collapse any second.

“I’m fine.” She pushed her hat straight and wiped her
brow—unfortunately before she saw the grass stains and mud on her glove. She
scrutinized Lord Adair’s face to read the extent of the damage.

His expression was deadpan. “You…you’re not going to cry, are you?”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” She tugged her gloves off before they could
do more harm. “Why, were you?”

His expression broke with a deep chuckle that creased his eyes and
softened the hard lines of his jaw. Lily shook her head at him, but then she
was laughing too.

Laughing at the absurdity of both the moment and at how complicated
her life had suddenly become. Laughing so she wouldn’t cry at the loss of a
silly childish notion that should never have lasted past the nursery.

It had made reasonable sense back then that the ghost of her father,
his soul, lived inside Ana. How else did one explain how a machine could act,
react, converse like a human being and comprehend emotion?

She hadn’t given that daydream conscious thought for ages, hadn’t even
realised a part of her still clung so faithfully, until now.

“I admire a lady who’s not afraid to laugh at herself,” Lord Adair
murmured.

If he only knew the whole of it.

But a compliment was a compliment, and her first from him at that. And
the way he was looking at her, as if he’d finally decided she might be more
than a mere nuisance to be tolerated, left a pleasant warmth in her belly.

Not quite comfortable with this new feeling stirring inside her, Lily
turned her gaze from him to the lake. A light breeze had kicked up, rippling
through the water reeds. Above, a few wispy clouds straggled in a clear, blue
sky. A perfectly normal afternoon, like so many that had gone before, but she
was starting to wonder if her world would ever return to normal again.

“Please, tell me more about our celludrones,” she said when Lord Adair
moved in front of her. “How is Ana able to imitate human behaviour so closely?”

“McAllister called it fabricated intelligence.” He took the stained
gloves from her and tucked them into his jacket pocket. “His celludrones
receive and translate optical and verbal instruction in the same way as the
others. The difference is their ability to process and store everything they see
and hear in addition to the instructions initially loaded.”

He offered his arm to steady her as they navigated the sharp incline
to continue their walk around the lake. “Consider that we are a product of our
memories. The way we talk, think and act is learned by listening, watching and
mimicking. Ana watches and listens all day and, thanks to her advanced
technology, she never forgets a single detail.”

“Given enough time,” Lily said quietly, “they’d make better humans
than us.” The thought was daunting. “How is this technology possible?”

“I’m not a scientist, but I do know the memory fluid was made from the
sap of an extinct papyrus plant discovered in the same tomb as the schematics.
McAllister said the last of it was used in the original six. Ana and Neco are
unique and can never be replicated.”

“Who is this Duncan McAllister you keep mentioning?”

“McAllister was chieftain of the Perthshire McAllisters. The clan rose
in power around the time King James I united the Crowns and have been prominent
in Scotland ever since. Castle Cragloden is one of their strongholds.”

They’d reached the ornamental rock feature camouflaging the pump
house. Lord Adair placed one booted foot on a stony ledge and rested an elbow
on his thigh.

His gaze settled on a pair of geese waddling from the muddy bank.
“McAllister is the man your mother was visiting when she died.”

“What an extraordinary coincidence.” As she spoke, the puzzle pieces
clicked into place, even if she couldn’t see the picture. “Oh, right. It’s no
coincidence at all.”

“I’m afraid not.”

She realised something else. “You refer to McAllister in the past
tense. He was killed in that gas explosion too, wasn’t he?”

“Everyone was. You’re the last person who might have had some
answers.” He brought his foot down and straightened. “I was given the
impression your mother had confided in you, but it seems the little she did
share was nothing but lies. Sweet Jesu.” He grabbed her hand, tugged her
roughly behind him and let go again before she’d found her balance.

“Heavens.” Lily flung an arm around his waist to keep from tumbling
forward. “Have you gone—”

“Quiet.”

Her mouth snapped shut and it had nothing to do with his rude command.
Somehow she’d wrapped herself around Lord Adair, one hand clutching the folds
of his jacket and the other spread over his abdomen. The layers of shirt,
waistcoat and jacket weren’t nearly enough of a barrier between her and the
lean contours of his body.

He dipped his head forward and went completely still.

Over his shoulder, her gaze froze on the problem. The ostrich lady had
just emerged from the tree-line across the lake. She’d exchanged her burgundy
dress for muslin white, her plume of feathers for a shallow box hat, but there
was no mistaking the woman.

A rush of dread and pure fear kicked behind her knees. Lily clutched
tighter to Lord Adair.

This was not the time to dither between reality and visions.

Everything she felt, every moment she was instantly reliving in her
mind, was absolutely terrifying and ended with her dead. She hadn’t realised
how badly she was shaking until Lord Adair’s hand closed over hers to still her
trembling fingers.

Some comfort came from the warmth, but the woman’s strides brought her
closer and closer and why wasn’t he doing something? Jumping into action as he
had yesterday, issuing orders and shoving her out of harm’s way behind the pump
house or something?

Then suddenly something
was
happening.

The world around her blurred: the trees, sky, field, lake…even the
ostrich lady, all smeared on a grainy canvas and then even that dissolved in a
furling cloud of grey. Lord Adair’s substance crumbled and she was left
clutching air.

Chapter Six

T
he
cloud evaporated and the world grew solid in the blink of an eye. Lily dug in
her heels on the dirt path lined with Elms. Lord Adair stood a few feet ahead,
holding aside a low branch.

The branch sprang into place as he turned to her.

Her mouth slackened and the blood drained from her head. She’d been
here. This place. This moment. She’d dipped beneath his arm and stepped out onto
the open field of sweet grass and wildflowers. She stretched her arms before
her, staring at the spotless gloves that were neither ruined nor tucked away in
Lord Adair’s pocket. Had she descended into utter madness or…? Her scalp
prickled at the unknown.

“Lily,” Lord Adair said urgently, “what’s the last thing you
remember?”

“We were by the lake and that ostrich lady…” She faltered as she
glanced up and saw the dark, grim look on his face.

“You came back with me again. It must happen when we’re touching. No
one ever has before.”

“What must happen?” She folded her arms and set her chin on high. She
was done with sugarcoating herself in ignorance. “You know what’s going on here
and I’m ready to listen.”

She was ready, even if it meant hearing she had some awful
degenerative illness and her mind was in rapid decline.

He cast a long look through the branches as he spoke. “You have
visions—spells? Whatever you call it, you’re able to see things others can’t.”
His gaze returned to her. “Lady Ostrich mentioned you and I are alike, and that
may not be far from the truth. I, too, can do what others can’t, Lily. I have
the ability to focus on a moment in the recent past and will myself to step
back in time to that point.”

Lily stared at him blankly.

“Until I figure out how Lady Ostrich wields that control, until I know
how to fight her, I have no option but to run.” He took another look through
the trees. “I’ve never had to explain this before. No one has ever stepped back
with me or been aware of me doing it.”

“You stepped back in time?” Her voice pitched to a shrill.

“
B
y thirty minutes or
so,” he confirmed.

“You stepped back in time?” she repeated, stuck on the implications
slowly dawning. He’d brought them backward, reversed a part of her life,
brought her along with him to a place and time she’d been in thirty minutes
ago.

“I suppose you’re convinced by now that I’m a raving lunatic.”

After a considered pause, she shocked herself by admitting, “Quite the
opposite.”

He spun around, his brows drawn in a cautious scowl as he stood there,
watching and waiting.

For her to come to her senses and start screaming foul?

But the more she thought on it, the less crazy the idea of rewinding
time became. Lord Adair’s supernatural revelation brought a natural order to
the chaos inside her head, answering questions faster than she could formulate
them. Nothing else came nearly as close to describing what she’d felt yesterday
and just now. As if God had taken pity on her and reset the clock of her life
at the direst of moments.

His scowl cleared. The grim set of his jaw remained. “Lady Ostrich has
somehow tracked us here. Or she will, in roughly thirty minutes. We need to get
the hell away.”

Lily’s shoulders tensed as they started up the path again.
He can
rewind time!
She waited for hysteria to descend. But no, only a niggling
concern that she should be more worried about his absurd announcement than she
was. Where there should have been screaming doubt, there wasn’t even a whisper.

“You rewound time yesterday. That was no vision, or premonition.”
They’d reached the end of the path, where it opened onto the sports field, and
she glanced upward. Many more air paddlers had taken to the skies and the crowd
of spectators had thickened at the edge of the field. Her gaze snapped back to him.
“We need to go to the authorities. This is a matter for the police.”

“And tell them what? That someone we know only as Lady Ostrich
murdered you?”

“Of course not.” But he was right. If she went to the police with her
ridiculous claims, there was only one person they’d lock away and it wouldn’t
be Lady Ostrich.

“Besides, you saw what she did to Neco and Halver, to Ana. A handful
of policemen aren’t going to stand up much better.”

“I really did die,” she said quietly, needing the words out there.
“She really did kill me.”

Lord Adair gave her one of his rare, kinder looks that softened his
entire face and hinted at a gentle nature hidden deep beneath his rock-hard
shell. “I cannot imagine how horrific that must have been for you.”

Dying had been horrific, to say the least, as were
the rebounding memories that had haunted her all night long and most of today.
Now, however, something else was thrown into the mix, a blurred emotion she
couldn’t quite define. The one thing she’d always—to use Lord Adair’s words—had
an unnatural fear of, had transpired yesterday and here she was today, still
living and breathing.

By Heaven’s stars, I defied death.

She felt simultaneously terrified and euphoric, vulnerable and
invincible. Either her brain had finally shattered or, with a little help from
Lord Adair, she’d survived death. Given those options, she’d take the latter.
All the rest, possibly even the truth, could be shoved into a jar of mental
formaldehyde, preserved for when she was better able to deal with it.