Under An English Moon (3 page)

“I hate to tell you this, Reginald, but even if I show you the door, you’re still not going to walk outside and find your horse...in England.”

Reginald narrowed his eyes and scanned the room, stopping to focus on the window. He moved quickly toward the window and peered out into the night. Phoebe approached him cautiously, keeping a wary eye on him as she studied his movements. He swung his head from side to side as if to take in all the bright lights of the city, the neighboring buildings, the street below. He looked up at the moon, and she heard him exhale as if he had been holding his breath.

“I see one thing that is familiar,” he said quietly.

“The moon?” Phoebe followed his eyes.

“Yes, that at least is a constant. Pray, what are all these lights?” Reginald nodded toward the buildings across the street. “Are those large edifices homes? What is it that twinkles on the street below? Surely not lanterns? That many carriages?” He looked down and then turned toward the room. “Where are your candles? How did you light the room with a button on the wall? What is the name of this place?”

Phoebe smiled despite her own confusion. She had no idea where Reginald had come from before he entered her apartment, or whether he was delusional, but he certainly had a charming naïveté about him that seemed very real. Maybe he’d just never seen skyscrapers before, although she was pretty sure they had some tall buildings in England’s larger cities.

“Obviously, each entire building isn’t a single home—someone would have to be pretty rich and need a lot of square feet to call one of those buildings a home—but some of the lights come from apartments and some come from offices,” Phoebe said as she nodded toward the surrounding buildings.

She looked down. “Ummm...twinkling lights? Cars? I wouldn’t think there are any carriages on this street. Too far from the tourist areas.” She turned back toward the living room. “There are candles on the fireplace mantle. I flipped the switch to turn on the lights, and the name of this place is my apartment in New York City.” She thought she’d answered all his questions in the right order.

“Now seriously, where did you come from?” Phoebe asked, crossing her arms. “I totally believe you come from England, but I don’t think you just left your horse on a road near your father’s country home.”

“But it is the truth, Miss Warner. I swear it upon my honor. I am as taken aback as you. I cannot possibly be in New York!”

Phoebe found his gesture of hand over heart irresistible, and she decided then and there she wanted to keep him. Not that he was a toy or anything, but he was the cutest confused man she’d ever met! He had a definite little-boy-lost thing going that entranced her.

“Look, why don’t you take off your hat and have a seat, Reginald? I’ll make us some coffee. Then we can figure out how to help you,” Phoebe said in her best motherly tone. “I promise, you are not going to open that door and find yourself with your horse in England...not without a great deal of travel.”

Reginald opened his mouth as if to protest, but closed it as Phoebe held out her hand for his hat. He removed it and handed it to her.

“Your coat?”

He shrugged out of his coat and gave that to her as well. Phoebe sighed inwardly. She
had
been right. He
did
have broad shoulders. His double-breasted cobalt blue dress coat showed a narrow waist. He looked like the quintessential Georgian-era Englishman, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

“Shall I sit here, Miss Warner?” Reginald looked down at the chocolate brown chenille sofa.

“Yes, please,” Phoebe said, releasing a quiet sigh. She laid his coat and hat across a matching easy chair and made her way over to the kitchen area of the open concept apartment.

“How do you take your coffee?” Phoebe called out as she threw a single serving of coffee into the instant coffee brewer.

“Cream and sugar,” Reginald said.

“I hope milk and sugar are okay. I don’t have any cream.”

“Yes, that will suffice, thank you.” Reginald rose and approached the breakfast bar of the kitchen. “Forgive me for shouting at you from across the room.”

“Oh!” Phoebe murmured in some confusion. She hadn’t thought they were shouting. The apartment was only about 700 square feet. “Okay. Have a seat.” She nodded toward the high-backed, cushioned barstools. “Coffee will be ready in a second.”

Reginald slid onto a stool and watched her with a look of avid curiosity. Phoebe’s cheeks flamed under his gaze.

“Do you not have a cook, Miss Warner?” He looked over his shoulder. “For that matter, do you have a companion? Surely, you do not live alone.”

Phoebe, in the act of popping another container of coffee for herself into the instant brewer, paused. She reminded herself that she really didn’t know him and should use caution. No sense in revealing everything.

“A cook?” she laughed nervously. “No, not me. I think my cousin Annie has food delivered when she lives here. I mean, when she’s here...which will be at any moment.” A lie, but he would probably never know. It seemed likely that he really didn’t know Annie. Had a previous owner left a key? Hadn’t Annie rekeyed the place when she moved in?

“Ah!” he said. “Yes, of course, a cousin.” He nodded toward the coffeemaker. “And what is that device?”

“An instant coffeemaker? It’s my cousin’s. I can’t afford anything like this. It’s pretty nice though, makes coffee in a jiff.”

“And how is it heated?”

“Plug it in?” Phoebe wasn’t about to start describing electricity. They had electricity in England.

Reginald shook his head in apparent confusion.

“Here.” Phoebe handed him his coffee. “Let’s go sit on the couch and figure out why you’re asking me about coffee pots, Reginald.”

He took the mug gingerly and followed her back to the living room, waiting to sit until she lowered herself to a chair across from the sofa. He set his mug on the coffee table and seated himself on the edge of the sofa.

“Reggie,” he said.

“What?”

“If you intend to call me by my given name, please call me Reggie. I cannot abide the name Reginald.”

“Okay, Reggie. What can I do to help?” Phoebe asked. She slipped out of her shoes and pulled her feet up under her. “Let’s start at the beginning. How did you get into the apartment? I’m guessing you had a key somehow?”

Reggie watched her movements, his eyes straying to her legs and bare feet. Although she was covered, she realized she’d been rather informal with a total stranger. She straightened and thrust her feet back into her shoes.

“Yes?” she urged.

He dropped his eyes and cleared his throat.

“No, I did not have a key. I do not know how I came to be in your apartment. Frankly, I think I must be dreaming.”

Phoebe could have taken that as a compliment, but the confused note in his voice didn’t sound like he meant “dreaming” in the romantic sense. She sighed inwardly. No, she definitely hadn’t conjured this guy up just by dreaming about him in the moonlight. Otherwise, she would at least have found a man who kneeled at her feet and swore that he’d fallen in love with her at first sight—perhaps placing warm kisses on the inside of her wrist as he whispered endearments.

She voiced her thoughts...some of them.

“Well, you couldn’t just have dropped in by moonlight,” she said. “Have you been drinking? You seem sober.”

“Certainly not, Miss Warner. I am not inebriated,” he said as he rose hastily. Phoebe watched him pace in front of the window.

“What was that you said about the moon?” he asked.

“I said you couldn’t have dropped in here by moonlight.”

She watched him stop and stare out the window before pacing again, seemingly trying to work something out.

He shook his head. “No, of course not. That is not possible.” He stopped and stared at her. “Are you certain this is New York?”

Phoebe choked on her coffee and laughed. “Well, yes, I’m sure, Reggie.” She jerked a thumb toward her chest. “
I’m
not the one who appears to be out of place. Where did you get that costume anyway? It’s very attractive, looks quite authentic.”

Reggie looked down at his clothing. “Thomas and Sons Tailors on Bond Street in London. Thank you. They do fine work.”

Phoebe had expected to hear the name of a costume or theater shop, but somehow she wasn’t surprised to hear him name a tailor in London. It would have been more ludicrous to hear him say “The Costume Shop on East 42nd.”

Reggie stopped his pacing to peer down into the shade of a lamp. At the light bulb?

“What is the date, Miss Warner?”

“The date? April 23rd.”

“The year?” He turned to survey the room, allowing his eyes to pause on her. Phoebe squirmed under his intent look. It was as if all her dreams had come true. A handsome historical gentleman gazed at her ardently. Well, more like shocked really, she thought.

“2013,” she replied.

Reggie drew in a sharp breath and looked around the room wildly as if he would bolt. “2013?”

Phoebe swallowed hard and jumped up, feeling suddenly as out of control as Reggie looked. She turned one way then turned another, unsure of where to go or what to do. The shock in his voice was unmistakable. There was no doubt that the date surprised him. Which could only mean one thing.

She stopped and stared at him.

“Reggie, what year is it where you come from?”

“1827,” he said a hoarse voice. “It is the 23rd day of April in the year 1827.”

Chapter Two

Reggie stared at the slender young woman standing before him, a stricken look upon her pale face. Had he been rendered unconscious when he fell and somehow awakened in the future? Or was this some fantastical dream—of twinkling lights, buildings which touched the sky, lamps which glowed without candles, and beautiful, if scantily clad, young women? Were it true, what a delightful dream he had engineered. If not, then some mystical force had transported him to the future—a future he could not possibly have imagined.

“1827,” she gasped. Then inexplicably she began to laugh, a tinkling sound that soon devolved into something resembling a cackle. She clutched her sides and howled unbecomingly. Tears rolled down her face.

Reggie stiffened. “I beg your pardon, Madam. Your raucous laughter is unseemly at best. Please desist. What can you possibly find so amusing?”

Miss Warner stopped chortling, but the tears continued, accompanied by an occasional sob.  Reggie was appalled. He had thought her tears to be from laughter but could see now that she wore an expression of alarm. Much as he felt.

“Come, Miss Warner. There now,” he murmured, producing a kerchief for her. “Dry your tears. Forgive my harsh words. I suspected you to be mocking me. I cannot bear to see a woman cry, and have little enough experience with it. I have no sisters.”

Miss Warner pressed the kerchief against her eyes and slumped ungracefully onto the settee. “No sisters,” she murmured inconsequentially.

“No, alas, only a brother and a father, and lately a stepmother, but I have never seen her shed tears, not even at the birth of her first grandchild.”

“You’re not married,” she stated.

“No, Miss Warner, I am not, but I hope to remedy that some day.”

“Oh! Are you engaged?” He almost imagined he saw her mouth droop.

“No, not as yet.”

“Thinking about it?” A small twitch of her lips charmed him.

Reggie grinned. “One always thinks about one’s future. However, I think our most pressing concern should be just that—the future. Either I hit my head when I fell and am now dreaming, or I have somehow been transported almost two hundred years into the future.”

It seemed as if his own legs failed to hold him upright and he slumped into the chair opposite the settee.

Miss Warner straightened. “Did you fall? Hit your head?”

“Yes, I thought I mentioned that. While I was walking Sebastian back to my father’s house, I tripped in a rut on the road and fell. I awakened here on your floor.”

“Okay, but maybe you fell somewhere else, in the present time, and you’ve had a concussion, and you’re kind of delusional.” Her forehead creased as she contemplated her words.

“I think time travel would be preferable to the scenario you describe, Miss Warner. A delusional state of mind does not appeal to me.”

“But maybe it’s temporary. I could take you to a doctor.”

Reggie shook his head. “And have them dispatch me to an asylum? I think not.”

“They don’t do that anymore, Reggie.”

“I am pleased to hear it, Miss Warner, but no, no physician. He would as likely bleed me as anything, and I do not relish the thought.”

Miss Warner stared at him intently, and Reggie squirmed under her gaze. Not so long ago, he had wished for the ardent look of another American woman. However, Miss Crockwell had but smiled at him kindly, having eyes only for William Sinclair.

“Miss Warner? Is there something amiss with my clothing? My hair?” He ran a hand through his thick unruly hair.

She blinked and shook her head. “Oh, no. No, nothing. You’re all zipped up, if that’s what you were asking. I’m just so confused.”

“Zipped up?”

Miss Warner’s cheeks reddened, and she smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I’m beginning to think that you really don’t know about zippers...or electricity.”

Reggie shook his head. “I am afraid I fail to understand either word.”

Miss Warner rose from her seat to approach the window. She seemed to stare at the moon.

“How do
you
think this happened?” She turned to face him, resting on the windowsill. “Because we don’t have time travel in this century, and I don’t think you all did either.”

“Time travel,” Reggie murmured. “No, I have not heard of it. Is it an American notion?”

“Not particularly. In fact, I think a British author wrote the first book having anything to do with traveling through time. Charles Dickens in
A Christmas Carol
. Somewhere in the mid-nineteenth century, I think.”

“Charles Dickens,” Reggie repeated. “I do not know that name.”

“After your time,” Miss Warner said. “And then British author H. G. Wells wrote
The Time Machine
, clearly about traveling through time with the use of a machine.”