Down the Rabbit Hole

“Space-time continuum,” Weston corrected sotto voce again. Alice merely shrugged at the correction.

Arbuckle nodded. “I suppose you have a point, miss.” With his finger on his lips, he seemed to give the question some thought. “I think electricity has been the most significant invention. It is now used to power lights, provide heat in the winter and cooling in the summer, and further powers so much of what we use in daily life.”

“Electrical science is of some interest in my time,” the earl said, wondering if that was the key to repairing the West fortunes.

“Yes, but the true development of electricity in a practical way does not happen until the end of the nineteenth century.”

“Shall we walk among the crowd?” Weston suggested, hiding his disappointment. “Perhaps that will provide inspiration.” He spoke the last aloud without intent. Mr. Arbuckle was taking the used cups to a trash bin, but Alice heard him.

“Inspiration for what?”

“A way to repair the fortunes of the Earl of Weston,” he answered as he stood to help Alice from her chair. “There must be something here that I can invest in back in our own time.”





CHAPTER SIX




As Weston watched Mr. Arbuckle make his way back to them, a conversation from a nearby table distracted him.

“See, Ginny. That girl didn’t mind that the guy with her helped her up.”

The speaker was half of the couple he had observed earlier having such an intense conversation. Weston was sure the young gentleman had not intended him to hear.

“Yes, but that’s the least of it, Bryce. It’s not those old-fashioned things like helping a woman put on her coat or opening the door, it’s your overall attitude toward my work.”

“It’s not your work, Ginny. It’s the way it consumes you.”

With a glance at him, Alice sat back down in her seat, and Weston did the same. Yes, this was a little bit of twenty-first-century drama that he wanted to hear, rude as eavesdropping may be.

“Being a physician takes time,” the girl continued.

“But you’re done with your residency.”

“And now I’m going to spend a year or two as a colleague of the foremost physician in the field of head and neck surgery.”

Alice looked stunned. He probably did too. This woman was a physician? Beyond that, she was apparently about to specialize in a field of science he had never heard of.

“So if we want to marry we’ll have to wait?”

The girl shook her head. “I love you, Bryce. I want this to work. But your job with the foreign office and mine, well, it makes it hard to have much of a life together.”

“Shall we go?” Mr. Arbuckle asked as he came back to the table.

Embarrassed by his eavesdropping, Weston stood up with unnecessary speed. Alice was more decorous but made no demur, and they left the coffeehouse and the little drama behind them.

Alice took his arm and leaned closer and said, almost whispering, “Did you hear that, Wes? That woman, she could not have been much more than thirty. And she is a physician! It’s astounding.”

“It most certainly is. I’m not sure I would be willing to trust her to care for me.”

“And why not?” His comment brought Alice up short, and they stood in the middle of the walk, people streaming around them on either side. “She must have been well educated if she is to work with the best in her field. Do you not believe that a woman can do work with an expertise equal to a man’s?”

“I find it hard to believe that times have changed that much.”

“Oh, Weston, don’t be ridiculous. Look at those things that fly and the machines that hold more information than every book in your well-respected library. If those things are possible, then why not a woman doing a man’s work?”