“But…” Anne says something else but I’m already out of the carriage.I’ll deal with that fallout later, if she decides to tell Victoria.
I stride up the walkway to a beige stone neo-Gothic gatehouse, ignoring both the carvings on the gate and the porter that comes forward when he tries to ask me where I’m going.I keep walking through the open doorway, the giant oak medieval door open for my trespassing.I vaguely hear Leo behind me, saying something in his calm voice to the porter that makes the porter’s voice stop.
Aristocratic nonsense.Useful aristocratic nonsense.
I look back quickly and see only Leo.Anne listened to me, or Leo said something to convince her to stay in the carriage, so that’s one less thing to worry about.
I ignore stone carvings, historic figures and the soaring King’s College Chapel with its beautiful fan vault ceiling to my right to focus on my task at hand.No time to take notes right now.
On the other side of the gatehouse, there’s an oasis of stillness around a grassy courtyard.The noise of the street fades away inside the gates, and I don’t see students running around, worried about being late to class or what they’re going to do this weekend.Just one or two stragglers.
Now where would I be if I was a guy named Andrew, interested in time travel?
CHAPTER23
“Do we know where we need to go?”Leo asks, a little out of breath jogging to keep up with me while running interference for me.He would have a rough time on my campus, where everyone is always in a rush.And there are hills.
“No.”I look around.“That’s the chapel.”I point at gothic building I was studiously ignoring earlier.“I think those are mostly dorms.”I point to the left.“And maybe those are classrooms?”I look straight ahead, across a perfectly manicured lawn with a fountain in the middle.I vaguely remember the college from a history conference I attended in the future.
“It’s mid-morning.The students should be in lectures now.Shall we wander and ask people if they know where Andrew is?”Leo asks.
“That’s the best plan we have.”
A man walks by, looking at me half hungry and half confused, like I’m a steak dinner inexplicably cut in the shape of a Christmas tree.
“Maybe we should aim for getting out of here as fast as possible.These lads do not get a lot of female interaction,” Leo says.
I roll my eyes.“Wait until the future,” I whisper at him.“Schools are co-ed.Women everywhere.And we wear shorts.You can see ankles and knees and elbows and thighs and sometimes bellybuttons.And other times, we wear pants so tight you can see the outline of our butts.And you can just learn to control your base desires, because they are not my problem!”I poke him as my voice raises with each word, ending on a particularly intense poke.Then I walk off in what can only be described as a huff in any century.
Then the wind gets taken out of my sails when I don’t see Leo walking next to me.I do need him before I apparently start a riot by existing.“Are you coming?”
Leo is as still as the statue of Henry VIII outside Trinity College just down the road.Now there’s a man who would be happy with the state of fashion in the twenty-first century.
“Leo?”I walk back to him and poke him in his hard chest.
But I don’t have time to enjoy his chest, just like I don’t have time to take notes about this trip to Cambridge.Well, maybe I can multitask, if Leo is set on taking his time.I poke him again, this time shamelessly enjoying his muscles.
“I want to see the future.I want to seeyouin the future,” Leo says, his voice rough.Imagining me in leggings he’s never seen?
“If this man has figured out time travel, you’re welcome to use it and see for yourself.”I try to ignore how happy I get at the thought of him and me in the future, because we don’t have time for that.There are too many complicated emotions around Leo, frankly, and if I start thinking of them, we’ll never get moving.Like Leo isn’t now, so I take his arm in mine and walk assertively forward with him.
He begrudgingly starts to move forward, stumbling a bit before he catches his footing.“Would you promise to show me what you usually wear?”
“Would it get you to move?”
“It might make it harder to move.”
I laugh, surprised at the dirty humor from the aristocrat, even though I shouldn’t be, knowing what they get up to.Every generation thinks they invented enjoying sex, or having fun with sex, and every generation is wrong.Maybe they all talk about it more freely than previous ones, but everyone does it.
“Did you just make a dirty joke at me?”We don’t really have the time, but I can find some time for this.
Leo blushes, adorably.“I apologize.I should not be speaking like that to a lady.”
I shake my head at him.“You have a lot to learn about women from the future.I’m sure some might be offended by the mention of an erection, but I feel that more would appreciate a good penis joke.”Or at least I do.
He blushes even harder at me saying penis.Oh, this innocent baby angel face.How the world is going to change in the next hundred years.
“You don’t have to worry about the wild women.They’re far away,” I say.
