Daring Time

"No. I don't."

He held her stare. She wondered if he was being so certain just to still her jitters over things she couldn't control one way or another. Even with that vague suspicion, however, Hope found herself calming.

"No more questions now. Go to sleep," he urged, pushing lightly on the back of her head.

She returned her cheek to his chest and closed her eyes.

It was impossible not to be affected by Ryan's quiet, depthless confidence.

TWENTY

Shadows lay thick in his bedroom by the time Ryan opened his eyes. He rubbed the grit out of his eyelids and glanced down beside him.

He bolted out of the brass bed.

"Hope?" he called out, instantly admonishing himself for shouting. The woman had a right to get up out of bed, didn't she?

His eyes flickered over to the gilded mirror. She wouldn't. Surely she saw the stark danger of trying to travel using the mirror when its twin had been destroyed in her time.

He headed for the door, deciding even Hope couldn't be that impulsive and headstrong. It still alarmed him to think of her wandering around in the twenty-first century alone. He'd had some of the guidance of history to prepare him and he'd still been shocked to the core. She'd be as innocent and curious as a toddler playing around a steep staircase with no adult present.

He could just imagine her wandering out in front of a barreling truck or asking a whacked-out drug dealer for directions to the nearest respectable jeweler where she might pawn her priceless jewelry.

"Hope!" He saw that the bathroom was empty and that her neatly folded skirt, blouse, petticoat and hosiery were missing. He barreled down the grand staircase and bellowed her name several more times as he checked room after room on the first floor. The memory of the intimate drawing room came to him and he changed direction.

The drawing room stood silent and empty when he reached it. Now that he knew what it'd looked like in the past, the room struck him as hollow and depressing—like an empty tomb.

"Hope" he shouted with increasing anxiety. Where would she go to find comfort in a barren house that had once been a home filled with people she loved, every item that her gaze fell upon likely associated with the memories of a lifetime? Damn. Why hadn't he thought of this? Why hadn't he done something to make the austere mansion warmer, more cheery? As he ran down the hallway a movement outside of the uncurtained window caught his eyes.

A second later he hurried down the limestone front steps and ran across a quiet Prairie Avenue barefoot.

She stood on the sidewalk, shivering as she stared up at the Romanesque mansion kitty-corner from their house. Her long skirt and high-necked blouse didn't strike him as out of place like he might have expected it would. Enough of the elegance and grandeur of Prairie Avenue remained to make Hope look as natural there as in her own time.

When Ryan saw her face he wondered if her trembling was from the cool late November afternoon chill or shock.

"This is my friend Fanny's house. We went on our European tour together. They've made it into a museum," she said dully when he came beside her and said her name.

He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around firmly. "Let's go back inside.

There was something important I needed to tell

you before you saw the changes time has made."

She didn't resist him, but she moved like an automaton as he marched her across the street and back up the limestone steps. She cast a sad glance down the north side of the street, her eyes enormous in her white face. Ryan followed her gaze, trying to see Prairie Avenue through her eyes. None of the grand mansions on the Seventeenth and Sixteenth Street blocks remained. Gone was George Pullman's palatial mansion; gutted were the grand homes of Lydia and William Gold Hibbard's many children in a block that would have been known to Hope as Hibbardville due to the family's pervasive presence.

In their place stood blocks of modern brick condominiums, each and every one of which was precisely the same. A few ugly low-rises built in the 1960s added a grim, institutional presence to the street.

Things were much better when one looked to the right, where at least an attempt had been made in the new buildings to preserve the historical appearance of the once-grand avenue. In fact, the new limestone and brick town houses were each unique and built within the strict guidelines of the Historical Preservation Society. A few of the houses were meticulously renovated structures that would have stood during Hope's time.

Several of the grand mansions still remained as well, 1807 Prairie Avenue being one of many. Instead of pointing that out to Hope, however, he hurried her into the house.

He understood that it was what Hope was not seeing as much as what was there that distressed her so deeply.

When they entered the front door Ryan noticed that the foyer chandelier was turned on again. He was going to have to get an electrician to come out and repair that short. He aimed Hope for the grand staircase. When they reached the bedroom Ryan turned the electric heater on to high and brought it over to where Hope sat shivering at the end of the bed.

"Sorry it's so chilly," he mumbled. "Someone is coming out early next week to check out the heating system. It's been modernized but it still doesn't seem to work very well."

"It never did. Ryan?" she asked suddenly, seeming to stir out of a trance.