Daring Time

He looked at the girl.

"Mel and a bunch of the women are escaping from the Sweet Lash if you'd care to join them," he told her quietly. When her mouth dropped open as though she were about to barrage him with questions he shook his head. "No time. I'm leaving now. If you want to come—"

But Mel saved him further explanations by hissing from the opened doorway. "Sally, get your ass out here. We're leaving the Sweet Lash for good."

Sally looked up at the bald man, who wore a stunned expression.

A huge grin spread on her pretty face. She didn't seem too upset when Ryan brought down the butt of his gun on the man's temple. "Bye-bye, Charlie," Sally whispered happily after Ryan had stuffed the unconscious man's body in the entryway closet.

SIXTEEN

An hour later, Ryan wandered around the drawing room of 1807 Prairie Avenue. Hope had hastily lit a gas lantern and several candles upon their arrival. Since their mission was secret, she didn't dare illuminate any of the newly installed electric fixtures. Mel sat in a yellow print chair and watched him as he prowled around the amazing room.

Hope had left just thirty seconds ago, saying she needed to retrieve something from her bedroom. At first Ryan had insisted upon going wit

h her, still worried about something happening to her.

"Nothing dangerous is going to happen to me in my own house, Ryan," Hope had exclaimed in muted exasperation.

Ryan wasn't so sure about that, however. He still didn't know if he was helping to change Hope's fate or nudging events to make her demise more inevitable. The thought brought him close to panic. It was starting to feel like every choice he made—move right or move left?—was somehow inevitably predetermined. The one thing he knew for certain was that the year 1906 was not a healthy year for Hope Stillwater.

He needed to get her out of it as soon as possible. For some strange reason, however, Hope had been adamant that he could not accompany her to her bedroom before she'd turned away, blushing, and hurried out of the room.

Ryan's nervousness for Hope's safety had slowly been replaced by awe as he took in the interior of the drawing room.

Every nerve in his body seemed to vibrate with mixed shock and amazement as he studied the details of the luxurious room. The only items of decor that remained in the year 2008 were the priceless mahogany panels covering every square inch of the walls and the elaborately carved fireplace. To see all the rich paintings, oriental carpets, crystal decanters and highly polished silver brought it home with more force than anything he'd experienced yet.

He truly was walking around in a different century.

One rarely saw this degree of luxury in modern times or if they did, never was it so naturally and elegantly displayed. This was a room that was clearly lived in and enjoyed, not a stiff, stuffy place where Hope and her father occasionally ushered in august visitors with an aim to impress.

Although the furnishings were well made, with fine woods and luxurious fabrics, the couch and several of the chairs by the fire were slightly worn, indicating how much Hope, her father and their visitors sat and lived in here. Ryan picked up a delicate blue-and-white porcelain bowl. Granted, he was no expert on the subject, but it appeared to be a genuine piece of Ming porcelain. Alistair had a few Ming vases that Ryan had studied with interest on several occasions.

He looked inside the bowl and saw that Jacob Stillwater used the priceless object as an ashtray for his cigars.

He shook his head in amazement and replaced the bowl on the table. Hope's father must have inherited his wealth. Surely social reformist ministers didn't make enough financially to afford a Prairie Avenue mansion. He tried to recall if he'd read anything about Jacob Stillwater's roots in the report he'd gotten from Gail, but came up short.

Ryan squinted in the dim light as he studied the portrait of a dark-eyed, dark-haired woman above the fireplace. She wore a lavish sapphire-and-diamond necklace along with matching earrings. The woman's physical similarity to Hope was so striking that it immediately caused a person to seek out the few subtle differences— lips that were thinner in comparison to Hope's lush rosebud mouth, breasts slightly smaller than Hope's, a more aquiline nose—

"Why did you stop that man from beatin' Betsey and me?"

Ryan spun around. He'd been so engrossed in studying the portrait of what must surely be Hope's mother that Mel's question had taken him by surprise. She sat stiffly in a chair near the entryway while they waited for Hope to return, as if she were prepared to bolt at any moment and wanted a convenient location to make her escape. It struck Ryan for the first time that Mel was uncomfortable to the point of prickliness sitting in a room that was almost negligently elegant and grand. Like him, she clearly was not accustomed to being in such a place.

"I have experience with guys like that at my job. You can usually spot them from a mile off." Ryan shrugged. "Sorry I didn't get there before he started hitting you."

Mel gave a bark of laughter. She looked at him as though he were some kind of bizarre alien artifact that had just fallen from the sky and still smoked and sizzled at her feet. It took him a moment to realize she'd been shocked by his apology.

"And then you helped us escape. Why?"

"You mostly have Hope to thank for that. On my part"—he shrugged—"seemed like the right thing to do at the time."

Mel stood slowly and came toward him, her head cocked as she examined him, her squinted eyelids deepening the lines at the corners of her brown eyes. She was still dressed in the robe and riding boots she'd worn to perform in the Slip and Whip. They'd left the rest of the women at the Marlborough Club with a concerned-looking Addie Sampson. The last glimpse Ryan'd caught of Hope's colorful friend she'd been bustling about her private boudoir, barking out orders to maids for towels and hot water and personally seeing to the women's cuts and bruises.

Ryan had asked Hope on their hurried flight to Prairie Avenue to keep their presence secret from the household, including her father, for the time being. She'd agreed, although he thought she was so overwhelmed by the circumstances to question his motives. Hope had snuck them into the house by a side door that Ryan hadn't even discovered existed yet in the early twenty-first century. She'd led them quietly down the back stairs of the darkened mansion, pausing at one point and lifting a finger to her lips as they crossed the foyer. The chandelier in the enormous formal entry hall had been lit, as though to entice the missing mistress of the household back home.

Ryan had seen a light shining beneath a swinging door, which he knew from his own time period led to the kitchen, pantries and back stairs—the servants' portion of the house.

But no one, including the awake, concerned servants, had observed them as Hope led them to the drawing room and whispered for them to wait until she returned.