Twisted Tale of Stormy Gale (2 page)

A Londoner, I surmised, although the crisp accent had flattened somewhat, sort of like that of a person who’d lived in the States for a long time. Even so, I wondered for a moment if this might be the duke. I dismissed the thought as soon as it occurred to me as I took in his workman’s clothes with a sweep of my eyes.

His lips kicked up at the corners as I completed my inspection, and so I headed into the tent, making sure to keep my face turned away until some of the color had faded. Presented with this stunning batch of man candy, I was feeling a bit unnerved and uncharacteristically shy.

I grabbed the jug of wine and poured myself a small cup, hoping to quell my nerves. After chugging half of it down in one huge gulp, I took a deep breath and turned around to face my handsome patron. I started in surprise as our bodies bumped. The sneaky fellow had rolled up right behind me.

“Oh, I bek your pardon! Von’t you seet down?” I backed away while motioning toward a crate that was acting as a chair. I took a seat on the opposite side of the rickety little table and waited for him to join me.

He sat and continued to look at me intently. I was starting to wonder if this guy ever blinked. A trickle of unrest snaked up my spine. Had my libido gotten the better of me? Sure, he
looked
great, but if he planned to cut my head off with some old-fashioned lopping shears or make a dress out of my skin, it was
so
not worth it.

An irrational panic had started to build, its insidious fingers brushing up the sides of my neck. What with the music and noise from the festivities, if I screamed, would anyone even hear me? I looked to see the tent flap still laying wide open as it had been all evening, and was about three seconds from lobbing a beeswax candle at him and running out screaming, when he spoke again.

“I’m sorry, I just…You remind me of someone. I don’t mean to stare, but it’s quite uncanny.”

Okay, so I looked like someone he knew. The panic began to subside.

“I promise you, sir,” I replied with a purr, on solid ground again now that I felt reasonably reassured that he wasn’t serial killer, “I vould remember
you
if ve’d met.”

He didn’t smile at my flirtatious tone as I’d expected. Instead he pinned me with another heated gaze. My heart beat faster at the stark sensuality in his face. His dark eyes slid away from mine, down to my mouth. My breath fell short and my lips parted of their own accord. Suddenly it became very warm.

Gathering my wits, I pasted a smile on my face. “So what…er, vhat do you vant to know, handsome? About money, maybe? Or a voman? Just ask it, and Madame Baptiste vill give you answer.” I tried for a faux cheery tone that, to my chagrin, came out sounding rather shrill,

“All right, Madame Baptiste,” he replied, his eyes never leaving mine.
“Sa dansezi cu mine?”

My stomach dropped at his response, for two reasons. Mostly, because the man’s knowledge of what I assumed was Romanian did not bode well for me. It felt like a bad omen. Of all the gypsy joints in the world, the guy who speaks Romanian walks into mine. Some fortune-teller I was—I never saw that coming. But rounding out a close second was the effect that husky voice coming out of that sensuous mouth seemed to have on me.

A little shaken, I realized he was watching me, waiting for a response. For a brief moment, I debated brazening it out in hopes that this was some one-off Romanian phrase he’d learned, but dismissed the idea. The comfortable way the words just poured out of his mouth along with the smooth way he rolled the
r
led me to believe that he was fluent.

Fluent in Romanian! What are the frigging odds? “Uh, vhat language is thees you speak?” I asked, feeling like a huge idiot but not quite ready to concede, on the off chance that he was speaking Greek or something and I might be able to salvage my image.

“Why, Romanian, of course. Don’t you speak, Madame Baptiste?
O singura limba nu este suficient.
Wouldn’t you agree?” he asked, a nefarious dimple flashing on his right cheek.

I almost rolled my eyes then.
Of course
he had a dimple. Like he wasn’t distracting enough without it.

Deciding that something resembling honesty was in order, I let out a long but ladylike snort and slammed a hand on the table. “All right, you got me. I don’t speak Romanian. Happy? It’s just, no one takes me seriously if I tell them that I’m a gypsy from Pratt’s Bottom.” Rallying, I pressed forward. “So what did you ask me? I can still tell your fortune, you know.”

“I asked you if you wanted to dance with me,” he replied, his expression solemn once again.

“And what else?” My throat felt a little tight.

“I said, ‘One language isn’t enough.’ Don’t you agree?” His gaze swept down the column of my neck, skimming along my shoulders, then lower. He ran his tongue over his lips before he met my eyes again. “One language to tell a woman like yourself just how beautiful she is would be a hindrance.
Vos yeux sont beaux comme la mer,”
he murmured.

Ah, French. This one I knew. But what’s a girl supposed to say when a gorgeous stranger tells her that her eyes are more beautiful than the sea?
“Merci, Je suis flatté.”
It was true, I was flattered. Worse than that, I was crushing on this fellow hard. It had been a long, long time since I felt this way about a man. But I couldn’t allow myself to be sucked in by his charm, no matter how droolworthy he was. I needed to tell his fortune and send him packing so I could get my focus back.

Find the duke
.
Retrieve the TTM
.

In truth, I was probably being overly cautious in my efforts to recover it. Neither Gilly nor I had ever let Bacon walk around with all the pieces to his TTM anyway. It had always been our habit to remove the mercury pin upon arriving at our destination without his knowledge. We didn’t want to demoralize him, but at nineteen he was easily distracted, and anything from a pretty girl to a juicy steak could make him lose focus. The responsibility of keeping the technology a secret was a heavy one, so it was really best for everyone if he didn’t have to bear it.

Without the mercury pin in it, from the duke’s perspective, what he had on his hands was probably just some sort of elaborate timepiece. A curiosity to be sure, but certainly not a time machine. If I left well enough alone, things would probably turn out all right.
And
it would give me some free time to spend with the hunk before me.

So. Tempting.

Still, if by some miracle the TTM should get into the hands of a
real
scientist or bright young inventor, and he or she got lucky…Well, I couldn’t take that chance.

Time travel is inherently fraught with risk. The technology is so volatile that in the wrong hands, it could destroy the world as we know it. In order to maintain balance and harmony, it needs to be regarded with reverence, if not a little fear. Every time we travel forward or back, something changes. Even with the risk index module we use to measure how much impact each trip could potentially have, nothing is guaranteed. And still, governments would kill for it, hoping to undermine other governments. Grief-stricken people would riot for it, hoping to undo tragedy and awaken the dead. None of them would care or understand the ramifications of their actions.

Nothing is more important than protecting our secret. Nothing.

Flirting with this sexy man was a pointless endeavor in any case. There was no room for a relationship in my life. Once again resolute, I sat up straight, steeled myself against his diabolical dimples and the intimacy of the candlelit space and pressed forward.

“All right, then, sirrah, what would you like to know about your future?” I asked him, hoping he would pick up on my newly brisk tone.

His sharp eyes took in my countenance and he cocked his head. Not willing to let me off the hook so easily, he asked, “Might I know your real name first, c
héri
? Surely it would be silly for me to continue calling you ‘Madame Baptiste’ now that we have peeled away that guise?”

With his head at that angle, for a split second, he did look oddly familiar. And for some inexplicable reason, with his eyes locked on mine, suddenly I wanted him to know my real name…wanted to hear him say it. I licked my lips and croaked, “Dorothy. But my friends and family call me Stormy,” wondering, even as the words spilled from my mouth, why I was telling him the truth. Well, half the truth, anyway.

My family
does
call me Stormy, but I don’t really have any friends. It’s hard to have relationships, or keep them at any rate, due to my lifestyle. At a certain point, people always start to ask questions. And the odd thing about me is that, even though my profession often requires me to lie or pretend to be someone I’m not, I actually don’t like lying to people. I justify it by reminding myself that what I do is for the greater good. I take from the rich and give to the poor. I rob the undeserving and redistribute their wealth to those who deserve it more. I travel through time trying to right wrongs without disrupting the fragile balance between what is and what can never be. It’s important work, my
life’s
work, and if I have to deceive people to do it, so be it. But I draw the line at lying to those I care about. If someone trusts me, it’s my responsibility to be worthy of that trust. So, I’ve found it easier to just have casual acquaintances rather than best buds, a rare tryst rather than a boyfriend. Always making sure they know from the start that I’m not going to play house with them or marry them or have their babies. That kind of life just isn’t in the cards for me.

“And do you have a surname, Stormy?”

I purposely ignored his use of my nickname, knowing full well he was trying to bait me and answered, “Gale. My name is Dorothy Gale.” Again, it was the truth. Since he wasn’t familiar with
The Wizard of Oz
or moving pictures at all, I was saved from having to answer the questions that typically follow that pronouncement—a bonus, since answering truthfully there was not an option.

“Dorothy Gale” had been my own choice. My adopted father, Gilly, had been a Scotsman, a scientist, an inventor and the creator of the time-travel mechanism. On one of his earliest journeys, he found himself in London, circa 1823. Bacon and I attempted to pull a pickpocketing scam on him. Rather than turning us in to the constables, he bought us bread and cheese. He spent a few days in London taking care of some business but made sure to see us each day and give us food. Upon preparing to go back to his twentieth-century life in America, he found he could not just walk away, so appalled was he by the conditions in which we lived. When he offered to take us with him, we didn’t think twice, and we never looked back. Life before Gilly was…Well, I don’t like to think about that. My life began at the age of thirteen when he found me.

Gilly was an indulgent sort, as if it was his job to make up for all the misery we had endured in our young lives. So when I told him we wanted to forget our past, to start fresh, he suggested that we come up with new names for ourselves. I pondered for weeks, tossing around this name and that, until I saw
The Wizard of Oz
on television. Breathless with exhilaration and flushed with excitement from the spectacle, I told Gilly from that point on, he should call me Dorothy Gale. He later nicknamed me Stormy because of the color of my eyes—at least, that’s what I tell myself.

I often wonder if Bacon wishes he had taken a little longer in picking
his
name. He’d only been six at the time and still awed at the prospect of eating three meals a day, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that food came into play for part of it. Gilly had gotten down on one knee and said, “Well, little master, what do you think? You can be called
anything
, whatever pleases you most.” At this direction, Bacon chose the things that made him happiest, and there you have it: Bacon Frogs.

I shook off the memory, trying not to smile, because I was still really pissed at Bacon. He’d allowed himself to be suckered out of his TTM during a drunken game of cards. Once again, his trusting nature made him an easy target for a charlatan. The bastard Leister had chosen his victim well. And sometime tonight, justice would finally be served.

“Dorothy Gale,” my luscious patron murmured thoughtfully, dragging me from my reverie. “Hmm, I think Stormy might be a better fit.”

“Probably so, sir,” I said, trying to ignore the tingle that ran through me as he said my name. I busied my hands, popping a lemon drop into my suddenly dry mouth, offering him one as well, which he declined.

“Now you know all about me. Let’s find out about you. For starters, what shall I call you?” I prompted, pulling my seat closer to the table and holding both hands over the green glass ball in an effort to get things back on track and moving along. It seemed long past time to end this dalliance so I could get outside to find out if my intended victim had arrived.

“Well,” he replied with a sardonic twist of his heavenly mouth, “The name’s Leister, but to be honest, most people just call me the Loony Duke.”

Chapter Two

He stared at me in abject horror as I promptly began to hyperventilate, huffing in frantic gasps like a landed carp. The lemon drop I’d been sucking on was vacuumed into my windpipe, where it lodged like a little sweet-tart life stopper. The noise that escaped from between my lips sounded like a cross between a leaky tire and a choked gasp—sort of squeaky “pffffttpp” ending with a “gack.”

My eyes teared and my vision blurred as I struggled for air, working my throat in a futile effort to dislodge the dastardly little nugget. I’m not too proud to admit that there may have been a fair amount of drool and eye bulging as well, which must have tipped the duke off to the seriousness of the situation.

He leaped to his feet, crossing the distance between us in a single stride. Standing behind me, he pounded my back soundly with his hand. Once, twice, three times a charm. With an audible pop, the candy careened out of my mouth with impressive velocity and smacked directly into my fake crystal ball, shattering it on impact.

For a full minute I sat drawing sweet air into my lungs. My brain was reeling—the very duke I’d been looking for was here in my tent.

It wasn’t until the sound of my own harsh breathing began to quiet and my panic began to subside that I realized he was rubbing my back in a gentle, comforting rhythm.

I stood up and moved away, picking up my cup of wine and taking a sip to soothe my burning throat. I scrambled to call upon my infamous, steely time-pirate resolve, but came up empty, taking another gulp of wine in hopes of soothing my frayed nerves.

“Thank you,” I said with as much dignity and grace as could be expected after unwittingly enacting what could easily have been a scene from
I Love Lucy
.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, fine,” I replied stiffly. I was pretty pissed at myself and more than a little worried that my Spidey senses were on the fritz. How could I not have known that the man before me was the duke? Instinct is everything in this job, and mine had barely made a peep. When this was over, I needed to reassess a few things. First on the list? How not to be swayed by a pretty face.

Looking into said pretty face, I put my worry aside and grabbed onto the silver lining; the Loony Duke of Leister was in my tent. Despite things not going exactly the way I had planned, the result was optimal. Buoyed by the thought, I moved my focus to getting the TTM.

Game on
.

“Sorry, the drop just went down the wrong pipe is all. Happens all the time. I have a condition—erm…spastic windpipe disorder. Since birth. Irreparable, you know. We’re just lucky it wasn’t a boiled egg or a chicken leg. Anyway, you were just telling me about your funny little nickname and then we were going to do our reading,” I reminded him with a smile.

He squinted at me, obviously confused by my response to the near-death experience and my ever-shifting moods. Then he turned and eyed the shattered crystal ball pointedly.

“No problem,” I said, taking the gaiety down a notch, as it may have been overdone the first time round. “We’ll just do a palm reading instead. Madame Baptiste is an excellent palm reader.”

I’d hoped the banter would relax him and maybe he’d chuckle at my self-deprecating humor. He did not, and continued to stare at me as if I were some strange creature.

Pasting on an encouraging, non-judgmental smile, I said, “So, do tell me how you earned your moniker and why you’re dressed like that if you are a duke.”

I needed to get him to let his guard down again, and maybe a heart-to-heart chat would do some good. Leaning forward to give him a good view of my cleavage, I began clearing glass from the table, glancing up surreptitiously and noting with satisfaction that he was enjoying the view as he contemplated my request. I wrapped the shards in a cloth and put it aside, looking at him expectantly.

“It really isn’t all that intriguing, the story not nearly as juicy as the nickname would imply,” he replied in a measured tone. “I’m something of an inventor, and spend quite a bit of my time creating gizmos and things. I’m afraid there are times that I get lost in my work and don’t adhere to the social norms. If I’m on a particularly interesting project, servants will often see me pacing in circles, talking to myself, maybe tossing gears and bits out the window in frustration. I’ve been that way since my teenage years, and after a while the name just stuck. I wanted to get out of the house and enjoy the fair, but knew I would get no peace if everyone in town spotted me. Needless to say, they’re curious about the Loony Duke, so I made sure my attire allowed me to blend in.”

My Spidey senses chose that moment to come back to life, as I knew with utmost certainty that he had not told me the whole story. I guess it takes a phony to recognize a phony. And while it wasn’t news to me that he considered himself a man of science, this reminder combined with the fact that he mentioned inventions specifically did reinforce the need to get back the TTM ASAP. He epitomized the type of person we couldn’t chance having it.

“Well, the name does have a nice ring to it, but if you don’t mind, I’ll just call you Leister, then.” I decided to let the matter rest rather than pressing him on the details of his past just to satisfy my own curiosity. “Why don’t I get you a nice cup of wine and we can have a drink together while we contemplate the possibilities of the universe and your illustrious future?”

He nodded. “Fine, that might be nice. You’re sure you’re all right after your choking spell?” he asked again, his expression troubled again.

The man was good, I had to give him that. He actually seemed genuinely concerned about me, but the false sincerity only served to strengthen my conviction. I turned to grab the second mug, filling it from the wine jug.

Plan A was quite simple, as most good plans are. First, I would get the duke addled. Then I would con him out of his valuables and try to ascertain whether he had the TTM on his person. If he did, I would deliver the coup de grâce, knocking him out and taking it from him. If the TTM wasn’t on his person, I would have to move toward the more complex plan B. Since it was just the backup plan, the details hadn’t exactly been worked out. In a nutshell, I would somehow have to break into his estate the following evening, then search the premises. Needless to say, that course of action was fraught with problems and uncertainties, so I sincerely hoped that my instincts were right and he had it on him.

I handed the duke a cup of wine and sat down again, holding both hands out to him. He reached out and clasped them loosely, pausing to gaze into my eyes before grazing his thumbs over the pulse points in my wrist. A bolt of heat jolted through me at his touch, and I gasped, struggling not to pull away. His pupils dilated, his grip tightening almost imperceptibly.

He’s a fiend,
I reminded myself and slapped a casual smile on my face to mask my reaction. “No, silly, yours need to be palm up.” Tugging my wrists from his grasp, I turned his hands over to lie flat on the table.

“Now, then, here is your lifeline.” I traced the crease that led from beneath his index finger in a curved vertical line almost to his wrist. The urge to follow it with the tip of my tongue hit me like a train, but I tamped it down.

“It appears that you will live long and prosper,” I said, realizing only after the words left my lips that I’d been quoting Mr. Spock from
Star Trek
. I really had to stop watching so much TV.

“How can you tell that?” he asked, arching a cynical brow.

“Well, the line is long and deep. And your money line is also very pronounced,” I replied, tracing a crease running from beneath his ring finger parallel to the first.

I’d read a short booklet on the basics of palm reading for authenticity’s sake, and what I told him was mostly true, if you believe in that kind of stuff.

“And what about love?”

His voice had dropped to a husky whisper. I swallowed hard and traced another line, deciding to take him down a peg for toying with me. “I see love here, yes. Oooh…” I looked up and gave him a pitying shake of my head.

“What? What is it?”

“Well, it’s a bit too vague with only a palm, but I foresee some trouble in the area of love. Really, I shouldn’t say more. It wouldn’t be proper.” I dropped his hand and turned my face away in faux modesty.

He picked up his wine and took a slug, setting it back down hard, sloshing it over the sides of the cup. “Out with it. Come on now, you can’t start telling me something like that and then stop. It’s only the two of us. You’re a fortune-teller and I’m a loon. Why the need for propriety?” he asked. He stared at me again, this time with a challenge in his eyes.

Cocky bastard.
“All right, then, sir, if you insist. It’s your money after all. Is everything…erm, working down there?” I flicked a pointed glance below his waist.

“What do you mean?” he sputtered. “Of course. Absolutely. It’s never been a problem.” His brow furrowed. “Is it going to be? A problem, that is.”

“Can’t say without my crystal ball. Palm reading is much less accurate. Oh, but I do have another method we could try! How about pulling some cards? I have a deck around here somewhere.” I turned to rifle through my bag.

I dropped the deck of cards on the table between us. My goal was to get him talking, drinking and making merry so he wouldn’t notice the slightly bitter taste when I drugged his wine. To that end, I decided that to let him off the hook and cease my efforts to unman him. I would just redouble my efforts to charm the pants off him.

I spread the cards out over the table and advised him to choose four. He did, and with a flourish, I flipped them over. “Ahh, I see now. The queen of hearts. Beautiful. Love is on the way for you, good sir. Oh, and your palm was misleading!” I gave him a broad wink. “Jack of spades only surfaces for the most virile of men.”

He sat back and let out a sigh of relief. “I wasn’t really worried, but one never knows.” That damned diabolical dimple flashed like a bloody beacon as he leveled me with a grin, then finished the rest of his wine.

I stood and picked up his mug, refilling it. As I poured, I flicked my thumbnail against a catch on the emerald ring that adorned my third finger. The stream of powder that trickled out was imperceptible in the dim candlelight but I kept up the animated chatter to distract the duke just in case.

I set the cup in front of him and filled my own glass in turn, sans the mickey. “Let’s have a toast, shall we, Leister? To impropriety,” I trilled.

“To impropriety,” he answered, clinking his mug against mine.

Following my lead, he drank it down.

“Do you happen to know what time it is?” I asked, relieved when he seemed to take no notice of the subtle difference in taste.

“I do.” He rifled through his pockets. To my disappointment, he pulled out a gold pocket watch and glanced at the face. “Half past eight.”

Of course, it would have been way too easy if he’d just pulled out the TTM. It did keep perfect time, but the way my luck was going, it lay hidden in his house locked in a safe somewhere.

“Say,” I ventured, my tone conspiratorial. “It’s still fairly early and I’m really enjoying your company. Would you care to play a game with me? Mayhap we can be
really
improper and do some gambling. I would wager this ring.” I pulled the sapphire off my pinky. “What will you wager, handsome?”

I lowered my gaze and fluttered my lashes, trying my best attempt at the seductive coquette.

“Do you have something in your eye?”

He leaned forward, all concerned, to get a closer look.

“Er, no, no, just a little smoky from the candles.” Note to self: brush up on flirting techniques.

Changing tactics, I leaned toward him again, relying on old faithful to reel him in. It worked, as his attention strayed to my breasts.

“All right, a game might be nice. I’ll wager my watch, then,” he responded, still watching my breasts as if in a trance.

I rose again to fill the mugs. I felt a tiny bit tipsy, but nothing I couldn’t handle, and it was far more important to make sure he kept drinking. The powder he’d ingested was a mild drug that would lower his inhibitions a bit and, mixed with alcohol, would cause him to pass out. He was much larger than I’d anticipated when I measured the amount, though, and now I doubted if the one dose would do the trick. A second ring on my left hand held a similar dose, but I didn’t want to overdo it. I decided to hold off and see how things progressed.

“What shall we play? How about a game of guessing?” I suggested.

“Guessing? And what would we guess?”

“We’ll use our powers of observation to determine things about one another. I’ll tell you something about yourself and if I’m right, I win that round. Then, you do the same to me until one of us is wrong when the other is right, and declared the winner. But we have to tell the truth or else it wouldn’t be fair.”

“All right. But as a fortune-teller, I think you have the advantage,” he teased. “And truly, I’ve no need of your possessions. Let us make it more interesting, shall we? What say we shut the flap to the tent and play for something I want more than your ring.” His voice dropped to a husky tone that gave me shivers. “How about a dance?”

I was totally taken aback, but shouldn’t have been. What he was suggesting was a little risqué for the time period, but he was nicknamed the Loony Duke, for God’s sake. And really, what was a dance? I had nothing to lose except my reputation. And as a traveling gypsy fortune-teller in the 1800s, it really wasn’t all that valuable at any rate. More importantly, I’d convinced him to stay, and that was all that mattered.

Moving toward the front of the tent, I untied the knot securing the flap and rolled it closed. “You’re on!”

I added a little extra sway to my hips as I walked back to my seat. “I’ll go first.”

I took a moment to look at him, sizing him up, as if mining his visage for information. It didn’t hurt that I had a limited dossier on him and already knew some basic facts that I could use. I opened my mouth to “guess” the month of his birth—May—when I stopped short, mesmerized by his pretty brown eyes.