“Maybe, but that’s all over now.” He scooped her thick tresses off her shoulder and kissed his way down her arm, her fingers and sensitive palms. “Every day is a new day. And I want to start all my fresh, new days with you.”
Epilogue
Sebastian Alexander, Baronof Surrey, landed in the middle of absolute chaos to his senses. Sirens were going off, pistol fire was being exchanged more rapidly than anything he’d ever heard. He covered his ears with his hands and opened his eyes, then closed them again. They stung from the almost blinding light above him. Was it the sun? He squinted and shielded his eyes with his hand. It wasn’t the sun, but a dozen little suns just above him, though they didn’t burn. He waited and as his eyes adjusted to the light, he realized they were lanterns of some kind, meant to give light, not heat. The noise shattered his thoughts. He stared, astonished, at the dozens of small, rectangular boxes all around him, no bigger than his hand, and a dozen more, larger, fifty-two inches or more by Sebastian’s estimation, picture boxes hanging on the walls around him. The sounds had come from them. Suddenly, the pictures changed and all of them showed the same thing. A beautiful woman outside somewhere, talking into a stick.
She was talking about “shootings” and “bombings” in the ever-changing world they lived in. The boxes all changed again and metal monsters with wings flew through the sky dropping…cannon balls or something he’d never seen before. Remarkable.
This was the future. Pendridge’s blackened brooch had worked. Well, he either lived or died here. Best to live. He turned around to leave all the picture boxes and the noise and walked through a sheet of glass. He never saw it. It was completely see-through! Amazing. He swiped the glass bits off the shoulders of his justaucorps and looked up.
The woman from the picture boxes stood staring at him. A man carrying a big, black piece of metal with a short telescope attached stared at him as well. He had no idea how to describe things he’d never seen before.
“Sir,” the woman holding the stick called out.
Sir? He was no sir. He was a lord. He—
The man holding the bulky telescope turned to him.
“What were you just doing in that electronics store?”
“I was lost.”
“Inside the store?”
He shook his head. “What is a store?”
She smiled, but after experiencing Charlotte’s array of well-practiced grins, he knew she thought him dull-minded.
“What year is this?”
She blinked her almond-shaped green eyes. “Excuse me? Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, looking at the man with a telescope on his shoulder. “We have some kind of looter here. Sir, what did you steal?”
“The year, dear lady?” he asked again, not caring what she thought. He wanted to know when he was.
“It’s twenty nineteen.”
His eyes opened wider. Was it possible? He turned to look at the picture boxes behind him for proof on the far-advanced world. He saw himself and the woman on all the boxes. “What are—”
“Okay. Who are you?” she asked, tugging on his sleeve. “What did you take from that store?”
“I took nothing,” he vowed, holding out his hands. “I came here from—” He turned again toward the picture boxes. “How are you doing this?” he pointed to the all the moving pictures of himself. “Are you a witch?” He remembered Pendridge talking about his time traveling friend being cursed by a witch. This woman was certainly beautiful enough to be a witch.
“No.” She laughed a little.
He smiled watching her. “Are you certain?” he asked softly.
She cleared her throat and looked into the telescope with a slight smile. “Reporting live for TTN, I’m Noelle Upton. Back to you, Janet.”
Another woman appeared on the screen. Sebastian looked around for her but didn’t see her.
“Turn off the charm, buddy. What were you doing in the store?”
Sebastian took a deep, cleansing breath. He didn’t want to lie to her and have her find out and curse him with boils. “I came here from the past. Two hundred and ninety-five years to be exact. I was—” His words came to an abrupt end when the air behind him shimmered and two knights appeared on horses trained to trample and kill.
They had come for him. He had to run…but first—he put his fingers under her chin and lifted her mouth to his and kissed her.
She opened her eyes and broke free. Sebastian made the mistake of looking into her eyes. There was a fire burning inside. She pulled back her hand and cracked him across the face.
He took a moment to appreciate her saucy nature, and then he ran.
