"But you're already quite fond of her, aren't you?" Mrs. Noone pressed.
"Well . . . Miss Lowell is a . . . a very nice young woman."
"She's beautiful, and you know it," Mrs. Noone snapped.
"Yes," Cole agreed. "She is beautiful."
"And intelligent, and not the sort to be made a fool of."
Cole couldn't argue with either of those statements. "That's true."
"But she can be hurt, and probably quite easily." Mrs. Noone's eyes narrowed. "I would be very upset with anyone who hurt one of my boarders."
"Then you're going to rent the room to her?"
"If she wants it, yes. I pride myself on being a good judge of character, Mr. Brady, and I like her. I like her a great deal, and I want to have her here in this house."
"That's what I want, too," Cole said. "If Annabel is agreeable to the arrangement."
Mrs. Noone nodded and leaned back in her chair. "Very well. You'll find the rent quite reasonable." She named a figure, and Cole did find it reasonable, especially for a neighborhood as fashionable as Pacific Heights.
'That's fine," he said, then gave in to his curiosity. "Now that that's settled, perhaps you could tell me some more about my father. . ."
Mrs. Noone might well have done so, but footsteps sounded outside the parlor just then, and Annabel entered, followed by Lucius. "The room is lovely," Annabel said. "I'll take it, if that's all right with you, Mrs. Noone."
"Certainly, my dear. Mr. Brady and I have already discussed the rent and come to an agreement."
Annabel seemed to bristle a bit at being left out of that discussion, so Cole said quickly, "It's really a very reasonable rate, Miss Lowell. I know that's important to you, since you intend to pay me back."
"I sure do," Annabel said.
"I believe that concludes our business," Mrs. Noone said briskly. "Supper is promptly at six-thirty, my dear, and breakfast is at seven. You'll find that Lucius is an excellent cook."
The butler smiled thinly, and Cole supposed that was as much of an expression of pleasure as anyone ever got from the man.
"Now, if you'll excuse me," Mrs. Noone continued, "I'm rather tired, and my afternoon nap beckons. Lucius, show our guests out, and then you can take me upstairs."
"Very good, madam," Lucius murmured. He held out a hand for Cole and Annabel to precede him.
The front door closed softly behind them as they left the house, and Cole took Annabel's arm again. "I'll have your things brought over here," he said. "It shouldn't be much trouble. Did you really like the room?"
"It was very nice," Annabel said. She didn't sound quite as enthusiastic about the move as she had a few minutes earlier, though.
"Is something wrong?" Cole asked as they walked down Vallejo Street toward the cable car stop.
"No, of course not. I have a place of my own now, so that problem's taken care of. What could be wrong?"
Cole could think of only one possible answer.
Could she possibly be upset because she was moving out of his house?
****
Why wasn't she happy? Annabel asked herself. She had a place of her own, just like she had wanted. Was it the fact that she was still beholden to Cole Brady for it, and for everything else she had, including the clothes on her back? Was it because the only thing that was truly hers was the pin attached to the shift under her dress?
She had insisted on riding the cable car back to Pacific Heights by herself. She wasn't going to get lost, she had assured Cole. In truth, the streets were very similar to the ones in her own time period, and her years as a member of the SFFD had left her with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of San Francisco's streets.
"I have to be on my own eventually," she had told Cole. "I don't need a mother hen following me around."
"Well," he'd replied, a little offended, "if that's the way you want it . . ."
"It is," Annabel had declared.
Only now she wasn't so sure. She had made it back to Mrs. Noone's house just fine, and the boxes full of her new clothes had arrived shortly after her. As she sat in her room, though, the realization of just how alone she really was came crashing in on her.
On all the earth, she mused, there was surely no one else like her, no one else who came from a world ninety-odd years in the future. Even in her own time, first as a female firefighter and then as a smoke-jumper, she had been a little unusual. . . but this was much different.
She looked around the rented room and tried to get her mind off Cole Brady and all her other problems by concentrating on her surroundings.