Chapter 22
“His lordship is here, Mr. Brown,” the maid called out, watching the street from the front window.
“Thank you, Marie,” he replied. She hurried past him, her task complete. The butler heard the swish of skirts on the stairs as Lady Sephora descended to meet her husband, as she did most evenings.
“Has Kingsbury arrived yet?”
“No, milady. He sent word that he was delayed and would be here closer to nine.”
“A long night indeed,” she replied.
Howard Brown adjusted his coat and then opened the front door, stepping outside. He scanned the streets as the coach came to a halt. It was after dark and a silvery mist hung in the air.
Wescomb waved as he exited the carriage. “Good evening, Brown!”
“Good evening, your lordship,” the butler called out.
“A bit damp, isn’t it?”
“Yes, my lord. It looks like rain.”
“He’s in high spirits,” Lady Sephora observed. “That bodes well. Perhaps I should have attended court today.”
Another man stepped out of the carriage. After a word from Wescomb, he headed for the front door.
“Dr. Montrose,” Lady Sephora acknowledged with a smile. “Welcome.”
“Good evening, your ladyship,” he responded, mounting the stairs to the house. He looked drawn, dark circles under his eyes.
“Go on in,” her ladyship told him. “Have a seat in his lordship’s study. I’ll ask Marie to bring you some tea to cut the chill.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
Wescomb approached, smiling widely. “Good evening, my dear,” he called out, doffing his hat in a gallant gesture at the bottom of the stairs. “Today went well. I believe we may just prevail in this—”
There was the hurried sound of footsteps on the sidewalk.
“My lord!” Brown shouted.
The first shot spun Wescomb around like a top. The second missed, shattering a gas lamp farther down the row of houses. His lordship fell to one knee, his face a sketch of pain and surprise. The gunman boldly advanced on him, cocking the pistol, aiming at his forehead for the final coup de grace.
Three shots echoed in the street like cannon blasts. Brown’s first bullet missed, the second hit its mark, followed by the third. The assassin staggered toward the center of the street, clutching his chest as blood poured down the front of him. A hansom sped toward him, and for a second Brown thought it would strike him down. Instead, hands pulled the injured man inside. The driver whipped the horse unmercifully, sending sparks from the beast’s hooves as it flew away.
Sephora was the first to her husband. “John!”
Lord Wescomb gaped at her. “Hell of a thing, Sephora…”
Then he toppled over.
Alastair had just settled in a chair when he heard the shots. Bolting down the hallway and onto the street, he found his host cradled in his wife’s arms, white shirt thick with blood.
“We need to get him inside as quickly as possible,” Alastair insisted.
“Foster!” Brown called, beckoning to a young footman standing at the top of the stairs. “Help me with his lordship.”
Once the peer was laid on his own bed, Alastair moved forward.
“Staunch the bleeding as best you can,” he ordered as Lady Sephora leaned over her husband, her face alabaster and hands painted in blood. She pressed a cloth into Wescomb’s right shoulder, instantly staining it dark crimson.
Alastair stripped off his coat, tossing it aside with no care as to where it landed. “I’ll need hot water, bandages, any antiseptic you have,” he ordered.
The maid bobbed once and flew out of the room.
Alastair pulled a chair near the bed. “Let me have a look,” he said, taking Lady Sephora’s place. He pulled back the compress and gently examined the wound, taking care not to touch the injury directly.
Wescomb looked up at him with a sweat-sheened face. “Oh, there you are…young man. How bad is it?”
“Just determining that.” Alastair carefully manipulated the peer’s arm, eliciting a groan. “Sorry, my lord.” His initial examination complete, he gently replaced the compress. “It is as I hoped.”
“As you hoped?” Sephora asked, hanging on his every word.
“The bullet has gone completely through the fleshy part of his shoulder. Just continue pressing on the wound while I wash up.”
He rolled up his cuffs, poured water into the basin, and scrubbed furiously with a bar of soap that smelled of pine trees. The panicked maid scurried in with a basin of hot water, some of it sloshing over the edge onto the carpet.
“Excellent. Place it near the bed.”
The girl wavered on her feet, but did as he asked, full attention on her master. “The bandages are coming, sir.”
“Thank you.” Alastair dried his hands. “Please bring some hot tea with a tot of brandy in it for your mistress.”
“Yes, sir,” the maid said, curtseying. The door closed behind her and he heard the sound of running footsteps on the stairs.
Alastair sat next to the wounded man. “Do you feel well enough to assist me, your ladyship?”
Sephora nodded weakly. “I do.”
“Your lordship, this is not going to be comfortable,” Alastair advised.
“You all say that sort of thing.” He eyed his wife, panting and gritting his teeth as Alastair set about cleaning the wound. A deep breath. “How did our…butler,” Wescomb asked in between hisses of pain, “come to…have a pistol…in his pocket, my dear?”
There was a noticeable pause before Sephora found her voice. “Brown is a gamekeeper’s son. He is familiar with firearms. I thought it prudent that he be armed, given the extraordinary pressure you’ve faced during Keats’ trial.”
Wescomb mustered a weak smile. “You’re a marvel, my dear.”
Sephora’s eyes moistened.
His lordship winced again. “Take my advice, Doctor. Marry a smart woman. If I had done otherwise, I would be dead.”
“I shall remember that, my lord,” Alastair responded with a smile. “There, the bleeding has slowed. A very positive sign.”
The maid hurried in with the tea tray. In her wake, the butler appeared at the door with a tray of bandages.
“Perfect,” Alastair replied. “Thank you.”
“My lord,” Brown began, “I have secured the house. I have an armed footman on each entrance and have sent for the police. I fear we’ll be thick with Blue Bottles very soon.”
“No doubt contributing to the chaos,” Wescomb muttered. “Excellent, Brown. When I’m well again, we’ll go shooting. I haven’t done that in ages. It appears to be a skill I must endeavor to polish if others intend to make me a target in future.”
The man was visibly startled. “I…I would be honored, my lord.”
The moment the butler was out of the room, Wescomb added, “Raise his salary, will you Sephora? Can’t lose that man to one of our neighbors.”
“Most certainly, John.”
“If you can hold his lordship’s arm steady, I’ll apply the antiseptic and then the bandages,” Alastair requested.
She clasped hands with her husband and placed a kiss on his damp forehead. Another grunt of pain issued from the injured man, and she winced in sympathy.
“You are going to win this case, John, or they would not have gone to such effort.”
Wescomb nodded. “The question is, dare I ask for a continuance? The jury is teetering on the brink. Give them a week and they may swing in favor of the prosecution.”
Alastair expertly tied off the bandage. “There, we’re done. If you have laudanum in the house, I would recommend a dose to cut the pain.”
“Not yet. Not until Kingsbury arrives. We must make war plans.”
“You’ve got a hole in your shoulder,” Alastair retorted.
“It’s better than a noose around the neck. No arguments; we’ll do our work, and then I’ll rest.”
Sephora abruptly rose and made her way to the chair near the fireplace, her face still ashen. When Alastair next looked at her, large tears glistened on her cheeks. She gave him a wan smile, her hands clutching a teacup.
“Sephora?” Wescomb murmured from deep in the bedcovers.
Suddenly, she was all attention. “Yes, John?”
“Dr. Montrose has not had anything to eat this evening. Can you ensure he receives a good meal?”
“Of course, dear.”
“It appears that Kingsbury is about to earn his spurs,” Wescomb observed.
“Is he up to the task?” Alastair asked.
The peer caught the doctor’s eyes. “He’ll just have to be, won’t he?”
~??~??~??~
2057 A.D.
TEM Enterprises
Morrisey rubbed his temples to ease the headache. It wasn’t working. In front of him, on the vid-monitor, was Dr. Weber waxing verbose about the dangers of untreated ARD. The aggrieved psychiatrist was making the rounds of Vid-Net talk shows. His message was simple: if his patient had been treated when she was younger, the incident would never have happened.
Fulham and Mr. Hamilton were watching over his shoulder. He could feel the mounting tension, at least from Jacynda’s oldest friend.
“That bastard,” Hamilton muttered under his breath “He should lose his license.”
“He hasn’t crossed the line yet,” Fulham advised. “As long as he only uses her initials and not her name, he’s fine.”
“Everybody will know it’s her,” Hamilton protested. “There are only seven or so women currently active in the time stream. You’d have to be stupid not to connect the dots.”
Weber’s voice rose from the speaker. “Untreated Adrenalin Reactives are a sincere danger to themselves and to society. I have learned this personally and am submitting a request for legislation to make treatment mandatory.” He touched his bruised jaw gingerly for emphasis.
Morrisey ground his teeth. The moment the interviewer invited listeners to send in their thoughts, the Vid-Net message boards went ballistic. Hamilton groaned, bringing up a second screen to scan them.
“What are they saying?” Morrisey asked. It would be easier to craft a response if he knew what the public thought of all this.
“Most of them are from the time groupies. Leave it to the Timers to spread a juicy rumor,” Hamilton grumbled. “One of them says Lassiter’s too far into Endorphin Rebound and went rogue. Another writes that she tried to kill Defoe.” He chuckled darkly. “This one says she tried to kill you, boss.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Not to them. Why else would TPB have issued an Open Force Warrant with her name on it?”
Hamilton was right.
“We need damage control, sir,” Fulham counseled. “We need the public to know who’s the victim here. It may be very important down the line.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.” Morrisey swiveled toward Hamilton. “Get the real story out there; just don’t mention the Null Mem treatment yet. That’s our ace in the hole.”
“On the message boards?”
“No. Go where you and Miss Lassiter are known. They’ll trust your word better if they hear it in person. ”
Hamilton thought for a second. “The Time Pod. All the Rovers and groupies go there.”
“Then do it. It’s time to strike back.”
The favorite bar of both the Rovers and their groupies, the Time Pod was the marketing ploy of a man who’d made only one trip into the stream and then realized that time travel scared the living hell out of him. Dan Mead promptly resigned his job and opened the bar. It’d been an immediate success, and now the guy was earning way more than he would have as a Senior Rover.
“Hey, Ralph!” the owner called out from behind the cherry wood bar. He was still thin as a pipe stem. Ralph had always joked that Dan and Cynda had been separated at birth.
“Hi Dan, how’s it going?”
“Good. Eisler Lager?”
“Yup. Full pint this time.”
“So when are you going to come to work for me?”
That was a recurring proposition, one that Ralph had never taken seriously…until now.
“Don’t know. Maybe soon,” he replied. He’d had about as much of Morrisey as he could handle. It was like working for Albert Einstein and Marie Curie’s love child.
“How’s it goin’ at TEM? Is Morrisey like they say?”
“Worse,” Ralph replied, waiting as the amber fluid rolled into the glass.
“What’s this I heard about your buddy, Lassiter? Do they really have an OFW out on her?”
“Yup. I don’t know why they’re bugging her.”
Dan placed the pint on the bar with a grin. “On the house.” His way of garnering information from those in the know. He lowered his voice. “So what’s really goin’ on?”
Ralph took a sip of the beer and leaned closer. “You won’t believe it.”
“Try me.”
Later, Ralph settled himself in his favorite corner under the giant movie poster of H.G. Wells’ Time Machine, the 2029 version. Dan was already moving the tale along, customer by customer. A few were Rovers, and that was the key. Every now and then, someone would shoot Ralph a questioning look and he’d nod. If they wanted more details, they’d come to him.
The bar began to fill up, like someone had fired a starting pistol. It was easy to tell the groupies as they came in two flavors—the geeks and the women. Not that women couldn’t be geeks, but it just seemed to fall out that way.