‘And join me?’ Where the certainty that was what I wanted came from, I don’t know, but I was suddenly very sure.
He bent and kissed me, long and slow and tender until I was shivering with need for him. For more.
After a long while he lifted his head. ‘I must stop or I will do something I should not, with you so knocked around.’
‘And you,’ I pointed out. ‘How did you recover from the carriage crash?’
‘James.’ Lucian pointed out of the window. ‘See, there is the wreck. They are lifting it off the milestone now. It would not have been so serious if we had not hit that.’ We were driving along one of those stretches between Kensington village and Hyde Park Corner that I had noticed had no houses, only market gardens fringing the southern edge. A carriage, wheels splintered, had crashed into a milestone that had stove-in the side. We were past it even as I shuddered.
‘James had been at Tattersall’s to look for horses for his new curricle. He had found a pair that he liked, and he was trying them out by driving them along to Kensington and back. He came across us about ten minutes after the crash. Some workers from the gardens had run to help and were laying us out on the verge. I was just about conscious by then and I sent him to fetch Selbourne while I got one of the gardeners to run to Kensington to bring the doctor, the magistrates and the constables.
‘I was expecting to find you, bored and cross in that spinney. When I realised that you had gone and we saw the gates were open with fresh wheel tracks, I feared the worst.’ Lucian stopped talking and his arm tightened painfully around me. I didn’t complain.
After a minute he cleared his throat. ‘We went up the drive and I saw your signal, which meant we could go straight to the right floor once we had broken the doors down. The rest you know.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘Have you any idea how remarkable you are, Cassie?’
‘I am not. If you allowed women in this time to have the education and the freedom and the opportunities we have in mine, then they would surprise you far more than I do.’
Lucian did not reply, only shook his head and held me as we passed Hyde Park Corner and began to drive along Piccadilly. I was glad, because the world was shifting out of focus again and I felt distinctly peculiar, almost as peculiar as I had in those seconds before the miniature had spun me out of my own time into this. Then I realised what was happening.
‘Lucian, I need to go to Almack’s.’
‘What? Now?’ Lucian straightened up and turned to stare at me. On the opposite side Garrick stirred and opened his eyes. ‘You have gone very pale, we need to get you home. We are almost there.’
‘No, Almack’s now.’ I clung to him, desperate not to let him go, frantic with the need to do just that. ‘Lucian, I think I am about to leave this time and I have no control over it. What will happen if I begin to spin out of this time without the focus of the mirror though which you saw me? I could end up anywhere, anywhen. Or nowhere.’
‘Stay,’ he said fiercely even as he nodded at Garrick who leaned out of the window and shouted up to the driver.
‘Almack’s. Spring ’em.’
‘Stay, I need you.’ He kissed me, his mouth hard on mine, then moving to kiss my eyes, my temple, the angle of my neck. ‘Don’t go, Cassie.’
‘How can I stay?’ I was holding him just as desperately, kissing him too, any part of his face I could reach, his hands, The carriage lurched as it made the turn down Duke Street and we broke apart. I think I was crying, he looked desperate.
‘Lucian, you know I can’t remain here, now, for ever. I’ve a home and family. Friends and work. Obligations. A damn cat. And they are two hundred years away.’ Was what I saw in his eyes what I thought I saw, or just my wishful thinking? Did I want him to think like that about me, to need me?
I told myself that I didn’t want to feel anything for him because it would hurt too much. Because I was leaving, going home, or into some timeless void. My focus blurred again, but there was nothing to see beyond Garrick’s wavering figure. No familiar flat, no twenty first century. I tried to concentrate on the here and now, but I could feel a breeze on my face now, there in the closed carriage. ‘Hurry.’
The carriage skidded to a halt and Lucian hauled me out, stumbling across the pavement and up the steps. He shouldered through the half-open door, scattering a squawking, protesting gaggle of servants who were chatting in the hallway around a pile of cleaning implements, and made for the stairs.
There were cries of alarm as scummy water spilled across the shiny marble floor but Lucian kept going, almost carrying me now as my shaky legs began to give way. He passed a smartly-dressed man with an air of authority about him who opened his mouth to protest and was left reeling as we barrelled past. ‘I say, my lord! Stop, sir!’
Then we were in the refreshment room, empty thankfully, although the stacks of freshly-pressed table linen suggested that someone would be back soon. We skidded to a stop in front of the mirror, its surface dull and dead in the shuttered gloom.
Lucian took me by the shoulders and stood me between him and the glass, a few steps back. Distantly I could hear raised voices and the rumble of Garrick’s voice as he calmed things down.
‘Can you see anything?’ Lucian’s breath stirred my hair and I stared at our reflections, both of us dishevelled, battered, breathing hard. At least we were alone and still together. He reached for my hand and I curled my fingers into his, feeling the horseman’s callouses, the thud of his pulse.
‘No. I can see nothing.’ Only you. Only you. It was a lovely old mirror, that was all.
He bent and I watched in the glass as he kissed my neck, the exposed angle where throat met shoulder and my frieze coat and old shirt was pushed back. I shivered as his warm mouth opened against my skin. I wanted to lean back. Turn back. Then the image in the glass shimmered as if it was water and a breeze had touched it.
I stepped forward, out of his arms, reached out and my hand went into the surface of the glass, into cool, dry air. The draft was strong, almost a wind rushing over my fingers.
‘Cassie. Stay.’
I looked back over my shoulder, hesitated, began to step back.
Then Lucian dropped the hand he had reached out to me. ‘No. You must go. I understand that. Will you come back? Will I see you again? Cassie, I – ’