Unwrapped (14 page)

“Miss Jenkins, it’s been an honor.” Mr. Devitt once more took my hand and pressed his lips against it, his eyes smoldering, watching me as he let his mouth linger against my glove. “I hope to see you again.”

“Not very likely.” I removed my hand from his, suppressing the impulse to tuck a stray lock of hair behind his ear.

He straightened, the smolder falling off as quickly as a fake smile. “That works on most girls, you know.”

“I’m not most girls.”

“I know.” He leaned in close to me, his mouth near my ear. “Most girls don’t appear out of nowhere.”

Shit.

With a wide grin, he touched the brim of his hat and left me on the steps of the hotel.

***

I arrived at my room and stripped off the wet, muddy dress, all the while cursing Mr. Devitt and his stupid pretty eyes. Of course he saw me emerge from the between-space,
of course
. The Program Director would have words with me when I got back. The Time Bureau took a pretty strict line when it came to travellers interacting with the natives; tourists were severely fined if they revealed themselves or future events to natives, no matter how accidentally. An entire division of the Bureau was dedicated to rectifying those mistakes, and it was almost as boring and complicated as Historic Inflation Control, which ensured that all the tourists flocking to interesting points in history didn’t flood the local economy with too much cash.

Luckily, most natives who claimed to see something as remarkable as a person appearing out of thin air were labeled crazy or possessed, depending on your proximity to the Middle Ages. But I had appeared in the center of one of the busiest streets in London. If Devitt spread his story, others might come forward to corroborate it. The effect would still probably be harmless to history, but the Bureau would not be amused, and I simply couldn’t afford a fine or to have that black mark on my time travel record. I wanted to be a professor of Time Travel someday, after all.

I kicked the dress into the corner, unhooked the front of my corset, and untied my bustle framework. I left my transmitter strapped to my leg. One of the primary rules of time travel was that you always wore your transmitter—a device designed to call your present and signal a need for help or transport. It was like a seat belt for time travel, a 911 of sorts. I made sure it was still securely nestled against my thigh, then tossed myself onto the bed with a groan.

The door opened and I scrambled for a blanket—it was absolutely unseemly for any Victorian girl to be seen in her underthings—and then the one person I least wanted to see sauntered in.

Drusilla Wells.

Her name wasn’t really Drusilla. In reality, it was Sophie Wells, which sounded Victorian enough to me, but she had insisted on choosing something ridiculously fanciful for her travel name, and there’d been no dissuading her. She and I received our undergraduate degrees in Time Studies together, and then I’d joined the graduate program while she’d scarpered off to work for Dear Old Dad and his billion-dollar-a-year tour company as a tour guide.

“Oh my,” she said, catching sight of me in my chemise and petticoats. “Having a bit of a rest, are we?”

Her fake Estuary accent was so bad.

I threw myself back on the bed. “What do you want, Sophie?”

“Just to tell you that rumors are swirling about you and Henry Devitt.”

I sat up. “What?”

Her green eyes glittered, set off by the honeyed tan of her face. The frizzled curls on the top of her head bobbed as she talked. “People saw you outside of the hotel,” she said, slipping into her normal fast-talking East Coast accent. “Talking and holding hands. He’s got quite the reputation, you know.”

“Reputation for what?” I asked warily.

“Oh, the only kind of reputation Victorians want to talk about.” She waggled her professionally-shaped eyebrows. “Unchaperoned walks. Rumors of French mistresses. A girl in Devonshire who had to be married off quickly. That kind of thing.”

I took stock of my day, from my looming field trip and all its responsibility to my disastrous landing in the middle of London. Coffee Eyes was handsome, and possibly even intriguing, but his reputation as a cad was really the least of my concerns at this point.

I lay back down. “His reputation as a cad is really the least of my concerns at this point.”

Sophie/Drusilla shrugged. “Suit yourself. I just thought you’d like to know.” She plopped on the bed next to me, picking up a book on the end table and then tossing it back without looking at it. I couldn’t help but notice that even the insides of her wrists were tan. That was tanning dedication.

“Daddy bought me a portable landing platform,” she said, her voice nonchalant, even though portable platforms cost more than the Time Studies department’s annual budget...and weren’t even available for sale to the public yet. She gestured to a glittering brooch pinned to her velvet dress. “I just press it and—”

A plane of golden light extended from the brooch, eventually resolving itself into a shimmering tube of cloudy tachyons. “All I have to do is say a date and time out loud and it takes me there!” She pressed the brooch again, and the tube disappeared with a slight hiss and the smell of burned leaves. “So I don’t even need a real platform now. And it’s so fast—since I came here with this
insipid
tour group, I’ve been home twice to wax my legs and grab some carryout. And to see Mason. He and his father are working on a new kind of transmitter. He says it will make them billions.”

Mason, her genius boyfriend and heir to a multi-billion dollar transmitter empire. I suppressed an irritated exhalation. She knew I didn’t have a boyfriend. Was she trying to rub it in?

I also guessed that the portable platform was the real reason she had come in. In our undergraduate classes, she’d always made a point of showing off her wealth, whether it was her clothes or her latest tech gadget or her deep tan from a summer spent sunning on the Riviera in the Twenties. I decided not to deign this latest display with an answer.

“It’s too bad the University can’t afford these…” she trailed off.

Now she was just baiting me. “Don’t you have a tour group to babysit?”

“God, Emilia, you’re no fun.” She stood and flounced to the door, her voice going from irritated to bubbly in a matter of milliseconds. “I’ll see you at dinner, okay?”

“No, not okay—”

The door had shut already. I gave the empty room my loudest and most dramatic sigh. That was the worst thing about Sophie/Drusilla—she mixed her rich girl vitriol with this sincere supposition that she and I were friends of some sort. And that severely undermined my ability to actually hate her.

I pushed thoughts of Sophie and portable platforms and Henry Devitt aside. I needed to get dressed, check on accommodation and transportation arrangements for tomorrow, ensure that spare clothes were ready and waiting for my students, double-check the weather…

I rose, pulled on a new dress that was waiting for me in the wardrobe, and got to work.

***

“The Strand is one of the most fashionable streets in London,” I warned the group as we prepared to disembark from our coach. “So it will be crowded and noisy. Stick close to me.”

It was two days later for me, although technically the same day in history. The students piled out of the coach, gazing in awe at the tall weathered buildings and the wide street, bustling with horses and cabs and impatient private coaches. We walked about half a block, and the students tugged on each other and whispered excitedly. They could see the Savoy Theatre, our destination, four stories of stone and windows, topped with turrets and faux crenellations and a couple of spires for good measure. Victorians weren’t the best with restraint.

“The Savoy was the first all-electric theater in the world,” I told them quietly. The seven students and I walked through the doors into the sumptuous lobby. “And it was built specifically for Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Can anyone tell me about the play we’re seeing tonight?”

“
Yeoman of the Guard
,” Janice/Jane whispered. I smiled and nodded. She’s one of my favorite students; she turned in her papers on time and treated me like I’m a real teacher, not just a GTA. “Some consider it the pinnacle of Sullivan’s career.”

“Nice job, Jane. Now we talked about operas and opera etiquette in Unit Three, but I’ll give you a quick refresher before we head into the fray. It’s perfectly all right to walk about the foyer in between acts, just make sure that your accent and behavior are befitting, especially if you are partnered with a member of the opposite sex. Ladies, leave your gloves on, and boys, remember—no sitting while your partner is standing. It’s considered rude.” I gave them a quick once-over. They looked nervous but eager, shuffling their feet and trying not to gawk at the well-dressed men and women chattering around them. “This is the part where I’m supposed to give you a lecture about behaving yourselves. But I don’t think you need to hear it and I definitely don’t want to give it. Just be quiet, smile politely, and for God’s sake, don’t flirt with each other.” I paused. “Oh, and don’t talk about anything even remotely futuristic. Talk about the weather and the music, if you have to talk about anything at all. We’ll have plenty of time to unpack our experiences back at the hotel. And of course, you’ll journal about it too.”

A boy groaned. “That’s two journaling events today,” Steven/Stephen said. “How much homework are we going to have to do on this trip anyway?”

Was I this whiny as a sophomore? Surely not.

I level my best professorial gaze at him. “I know you’re just here to satisfy your history credit, Steven, but others are here to deepen their understanding of history, and regardless of what major you ultimately choose, you are still going to have to do homework and a lot of it. So I suggest you view this as an opportunity to practice for that inevitability.”

Steven/Stephen shut his mouth, but I could tell he wasn’t happy.

“Okay everyone. Meet back here at the end of the opera?” With a burst of smiles and nervous glances, they began to scatter into the lobby. Once they couldn’t see me, I gave them all my own nervous glance. For all seven students, it was their first unsupervised time in the past, and I seriously worried about some of them. Steven/Stephen’s bad attitude was one thing, but what about Harper/Harriet’s awful accent? Or Scott/Silas’ tendency to forget his backstory?

It will be fine.You had a first opera too.

In fact, that was one reason I chose the opera as the one (mostly) unsupervised outing allotted to each trip. GTAs could choose between a restaurant, the zoological gardens or the Savoy, and I chose the opera because I remembered how perfect it was, how dazzling to my untrained eye. Beautiful and gilded and lively, busy in all the fastidious but decorative ways that Victorians were busy in. Women in jaw-droppingly beautiful dresses, dripping with silk and jewels, and men in top hats and gleaming shoes and blindingly white spats. It was all I could do not to gawk, but that was okay, because the natives were there to do the same thing. They were there to see what so-and-so was wearing and whom they were with, they were there to gossip and pretend not to flirt and then gossip about who was pretending not to flirt.

The last of my students disappeared and I let out a breath. It would be okay. I turned to make my way to the balcony and ran right into none other than Henry Devitt.

He placed his hands on my upper shoulders to steady me. I took a step backwards, ostensibly to preserve my modesty, but also because the brush of his kid leather gloves on my bare shoulders made me shiver for some unaccountable reason.

His eyes flashed at my retreat; I pretended to adjust my elbow-length gloves to hide my discomposure.
Keep it together, Jankowski! They have cute guys in your century too!

“Why, Miss Jenkins, what a pleasant surprise,” he said, voice unperturbed. “All recovered from your fall this morning, I presume?”

“Yes, very much,” I replied smoothly, automatically, my brain churning to keep up with my mouth. My fall had only been this morning to him, even though it had now been two days for me. “I trust you are well, Mr. Devitt?”

“Much better now that I have seen you.” His gaze raked along my form, and now I really wanted to shiver. At the last moment, I’d had to trade dresses with Janice/Jane because hers had been far too large in the bust due to some botched measurements given to the native seamstress. So instead of my usual long-sleeved yellow satin, I was in a sleeveless pink silk with a low neckline and a black choker. It had been a little risqué when Janice chose it, but I’d approved it because the worst that could happen would be a mild stir of gossip and since she lived in the present, it wouldn’t matter. Besides, the dress, low cut and form fitting as it was, would have looked elegant on her slender frame. But with my curves and the thick, glossy curls that threatened to burst free of their pins at any moment, I felt more like a cabaret dancer than a first-year GTA.

It didn’t escape my notice that Mr. Coffee Eyes wasn’t dressed too shabbily himself, with his black tails and tight trousers and his white bow tie. And the way the well-trimmed suit accentuated his narrow hips and flat stomach…

I took another step back.
I’m on the clock! He’s a native!

“It was good to see you, Mr. Devitt,” I managed, thanking God and the university for all of those acting classes required for a Time Studies degree. My voice was as solid and unruffled as a matron’s.

He took my hand. “Let me escort you to your seat.”

I debated resisting. But what was the point? I didn’t want to be rude and I’d never see him again and we were already walking toward the stairs and
those lips
—even in profile, there was something dangerous and knowing about that mouth.

We climbed the stairs, the train of my gown hissing softly as it dragged on the carpet. We turned a corner and then I found myself pressed against a wall, Henry Devitt’s arms on either side of me. His expression was serious.

My expression should have been scandalized, but his sudden proximity sent my pulse racing. I wanted to arch my body, to press against him. I wanted to grab his jacket and yank him down to me and force his wicked lips on to mine.