“Here.” I hand him the bread. “It’s not much, but it should tide you over until Mom goes to sleep and I can get you a real plate of food.”
“Real food?” He frowns. “This bread is not real?”
“No, that’s not…” I sigh. “It’s just another saying. The bread is real, so eat up.”
He takes a bite and closes his eyes. “Delicious. Did your mother make this?”
I nod. “She covers it in this herb butter before she bakes it. Puts every grocery store French bread to shame.”
He finishes the bread and licks the crumbs from his fingers. I try not to notice how soft his lips look, an oddly feminine contrast to the hardness of the rest of him, like one of those rock stars from the eighties. My tongue darts out over my own suddenly dry lips.
“What are you expecting to find?” I ask him. “In the journals?”
“I’m not certain,” he says. “Perhaps nothing at all, but it is the only place I can think to begin.”
“We’ll rifle through Dad’s study tomorrow. Mom leaves for work at seven thirty sharp, and she won’t be home until four thirty or so, which should give us plenty of time. I’ll have to skip school,” I say, more to myself than to him, “but what else is new?”
He clears his throat. “You still would hide my presence from your mother?”
“I don’t have much of a choice. If she finds out what I’ve done, she’ll just freak and tell Uncle Joe. And then we’ll both be in serious trouble.” My eyes flash to his. I hold them so he’ll understand the importance of what I’m saying. “You have to stay hidden.”
His features soften. “I will do anything you ask of me.”
My breath hitches in my throat at the sincerity in his voice and the way his half-lidded eyes stare up at me, all thick, blond lashes and dark, slashing eyebrows. “Thank you.”
He shrugs. “It is the least I can do in return for the kindness you have shown me this day.”
I sit on the edge of my bed. “There’s something else you could do.”
His brow arches.
I point at the Rubik’s Cube. “Teach me how you did that?”
XVI
Two hours later, Brightonshire has taught me how to beat the cube I gave up on years ago, and I’ve explained (with as few tech-savvy words as possible so he won’t be able to recreate anything) every single thing in my room to him as promised, from the reason my mattress is so soft to the electricity powering the overhead fan and the small TV in the corner. As soon as I turn the TV on, he’s riveted. Even when I bring him a plate of leftovers, he only picks at it, scrolling through the channels as I showed him and commenting on the fashion, the way everyone talks, the predicaments they find themselves in. I make sure he keeps away from the educational programs and the news, hoping sitcoms will teach him just enough to understand why I dress and speak the way I do but not enough to actually change the course of history.
He likes Three’s Company, but says it’s entirely too suggestive for my feminine sensibilities. Part of me wants to tell him to suggest this and flip him the finger, but he probably wouldn’t understand what I was doing anyway. And besides, it’s kind of cute, especially when he lands on the home shopping channel and says, “Those overly shiny marbles are supposed to imitate diamonds? Has this woman never seen a real diamond?”
“It’s cubic zirconia,” I tell him as I sit on the edge of my bed, “and it’s for people who can’t afford or don’t want to spend money on the real thing.”
He clucks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Are the women of your day so accepting as to take fake diamonds from their suitors over real ones? I do believe that in my time a woman would spit in my face if I pulled such tomfoolery, and I would not blame her.”
I spread out on my stomach, pushing my fingers through the holes in the afghan my grandmother knitted as I watch him. He sits in front of the TV like a child, knees pressed into his chest, arms wrapped around his legs. “Are you rich?” I ask him.
He looks at me for the first time since turning on the TV.
“Sorry, rude question,” I say. “It’s just—are you one of those people who can afford real diamonds?”
“What does that matter?”
I shrug. “It doesn’t really. I’m just thinking that maybe if the option weren’t available to you, you’d see the value in being able to give your, uh, ‘suitor’ something nice, even if it isn’t the ‘real thing.’”
He chuckles. “She would be my lady, not my suitor, and to answer your question, I am not a prince, nor am I a pauper.”
Yeah, sure. That answered my question, all right. “Are you ever going to tell me anything about yourself, or are you going to make me call you Brightonshire the entire time you’re here?”
He pushes his finger into the power button and the screen goes black. He turns away from it and puts one leg down, the other knee still up, his arm resting across it. A model pose, the kind that says I know you want me while sporting the new must-have jeans in Times Square. But he doesn’t look smug, or like he’s doing it on purpose to look sexy or something, like a guy from my time would. Instead, the pose looks natural. I can see him sitting in front of a fireplace like that. Or maybe on a grand sweeping porch surrounded by rolling green hills and a twilight-orange sky smudged with smoke.
“I am Henry Durant,” he says, his accent lilting his words, “son of Augustus and Celia Durant, Baron and Baroness of Brightonshire.”
“Baron? So you are rich.”
“Not exactly,” he says. “We have farmlands that sustain themselves and put coin in our pockets and the pockets of our tenants, that is true, but my parents are not interested in participating in the decorum and politics of the peerage. Their ventures are purely academic, and lie solely in the wood.”
It feels weird, sitting here talking to someone about the wood who isn’t a Parish or Uncle Joe. Foggy, like I know I’m in a dream and I’m just waiting to wake up. But it’s kind of nice, too. For the first time in nearly two years, I don’t have to pretend what I do isn’t dangerous to protect my mom, and I don’t have to follow Uncle Joe’s orders. I can just be me. I don’t even have that with Meredith anymore.
“And now, Madam, it is time you give me your name.” Henry tips his head forward, studying me. His hair falls into his eyes and he pushes it back, the thick gold strands swallowing his fingers. “Or perchance you would have me guess?”
That could be fun. “Go for it.”
He smiles. “Mary.”
“No.”
“Suzanna?”
I shake my head.
“Dorcas.”
“Is that even a real name?”
“It’s as real as Winter.”
I gasp. “You cheated. You heard my mom say my name.”
His eyes flash. “Careful, Madam. In my time, to call a man a cheat is to call into question the honor of the man himself.”
“No offense,” I say, holding my hands up, my fingers poking through the holes in the afghan. “It was a joke. I know you didn’t actually cheat. You just … withheld information.” I can’t help myself. “To be a brat.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s called sarcasm, Brightonshire,” I say. “Ever heard of it?”
“Henry.”