Of that, he had no doubt. “I always respected the Scots. I fought because it was my obligation. I was no great supporter of the Stewarts or the bloody King. The de Lohrs prosper regardless of what idiot ass sits on the throne, but we do our duty by our birthright, and sometimes that means going to war.”
“Why, then, do you think you’re stuck here haunting a small village inn some seventy miles from Culloden?”
He shrugged. “It’s been a mystery I’ve been grinding on for one hundred and fifty years.”
“Maybe I could help you,” she offered, her voice bright with optimism.
“How could you possibly?”
“I’m stuck here too now, aren’t I? At least until the storm blows over, and I love a good mystery. You’re obviously not going anywhere, so why not?” She emitted a short sigh one might after completing a task. “There. You can turn back around.”
The first thing he noticed when he did was that her damp undergarments were pinned to the fireplace mantle, drying in the heat.
Which meant beneath her clothing she wore… nothing but her corset. Somehow that knowledge was just as arousing as the idea of her completely naked.
Well. Almost.
He locked his jaw, glaring at her strange garments as if he could see through them. As if he’d never seen them before. The skirts of this decade were odd but ultimately flattering, spread tight and flat over the hips and flaring like a tulip toward her knees. A wide belt with an ornate buckle accentuated her impossibly small waist, and the bodice was made of some fabric other than silk. Something lighter that bloused out at the shoulders and bust.
Suddenly he wanted to know everything there was to know about this strange and extraordinary woman.
She peered up at him rather owlishly. “Goodness, I can see more of you now.”
And he could see less of her, he silently lamented.
“You have color,” she noted, as if to herself. “Your hair is as gold as your namesake’s. In fact, you rather look a great deal like him.”
Did he? And she’d called him handsome.
Sort of.
He did his best not to preen. “The fault of the solstice, it seems, and the strangeness of the Northern Lights at such a time of year. There’s maybe been five such occurrences in the past one hundred and fifty years, and if this is anything like those, I’ll become more corporeal as the night goes on.”
Her eyes flew wider. She opened her mouth, no doubt to ask a million questions, inquisitive minx that she was.
So, he headed her off at the pass. “What sort of weapon is a camera?” He said the word carefully, tasting the syllables, trying to dissect its root words as he drifted toward the case. “You said you were going to take a photo with it. Do you really think to battle the Loch Ness Monster in the middle of winter?”
She blinked, moving in front of the case as if to protect it from him. Her delicate features, once so open and intrigued, were now closed, defensive.
Perhaps a bit reproving.
“Photo is the abbreviation for photograph,” she informed him stiffly.
He searched his education of the ancient languages. “Photo meaning light. And graph meaning…something written.”
“Precisely.”
“I couldn’t be more perplexed,” he admitted.
“I’ll show you.” She crouched down to open the case, undoing buckles and straps and throwing it open to unveil the strangest contraption he’d ever seen. She didn’t touch it, however, but took a flat leather satchel from where it was tucked beside the machine. What she extracted after opening the flap stole the next words from him.
Perching on the bed, one knee bent and the other foot still stabilizing her on the floor, she placed a strange and shiny piece of paper on the coverlet. And then another. And another. And several more until they were all splayed out in wondrous disarray.
John could have been blown over by a feather.
With unsteady fingers, he reached out to the first photograph, a portrait of the Houses of Parliament in London, but this depicted it with a cracking huge clock tower built. The edifice glowed and reached into the sky taller than anything he could imagine. The rendering was nothing like a painting. Colorless and with only two dimensions. But it was real, as if the moment had been captured by some sort of magic and…
“Written by light,” he breathed.
She nodded, watching him with a pleased sort of tenderness as he discovered a modern miracle that she probably considered quite pedestrian. The next photograph was of the Westminster Cathedral. Another a close-up of a tall lamp. The flame fed by nothing he could imagine, as there was no chamber for wood nor oil. It was as if the fire floated on its very own.
He was about to ask after it when something else caught his eye.
“What the bloody hell is this?” He smoothed his hands over a rather terrifying-looking automaton comprised of arms, levers, whistles, and wheels.
“A locomotive engine. We call it a train, as it can pull dozens of boxcars behind it endlessly at astonishing speeds. I left England on the seven o’clock train last night and arrived in Perth early this afternoon.”
He shook his head in abject disbelief, aching to see the real thing. To discover how his empire and world had changed in so long. “How does it work, this locomotive?”
“I’m no engineer, but the engine is powered by steam created with coal fire.” She put up a finger as if to tap an idea out of the sky. “You’ll be interested to know, ships are powered by steam and steel, as well, rather than wind and wood. We can cross to America in a matter of six days.”
“America?” He scratched his head. “Oh, you mean the colonies.”
Her lips twisted wryly. “Well…that’s a long and rather disappointing story. But the short of it is, they are their own sovereign nation now.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re having me on.”
“I am not. Declared their independence in seventeen seventy-six. They’ve their own parliament and everything.”
“And what royal family, I’d like to know?”
“A democratic republic, if you’d believe it. A society whose aristocracy is chosen from the best capitalists.”
“Not landowners, then?”
She shrugged, gathering back a few of the portraits from the bed into a tidy pile. “Some. But mostly industry giants and war heroes. Machines, factories and the like have changed everything. England’s like that too, now. The new century will belong to innovators rather than aristocrats, I’d wager.”
“Good God, what I wouldn’t give to see that.” He couldn’t decide what would be worse, dying before his time and missing what might have been. Or existing past his death and learning what he was still missing. What if the Empire rose and fell, and he was still sitting here in the bunghole of Blighty, watching generations of Balthazars raise, eat, and sometimes bugger sheep?
Her eyes brimmed with sympathy, as if she could read his thoughts. “I wish you could see it all. I plan to. I haven’t been to America yet, though I’m dying to visit New York. I think I’ll go there next if my journey to Constantinople is delayed.”
“You’re traveling to Constantinople? With whom?” He looked pointedly at her ring finger, which he noted was bare.