CHAPTER 29

Dariux glanced aroundKalli’s room, taking in the assorted chaos of a hundred items haphazardly stacked on every surface.

“Need help packing? We have to leave in an hour.” He had already packed his own belongings. They sat in his room, waiting to be picked up by the bellhop.

“No need. I have it all under control.” She sounded confident, but he was still dubious.

“Are you sure? You seem to have a lot yet to pack.”

“Don’t worry about it. I have a system. Everything is organized and will be packed away in a few minutes.”

“Remember to check everything.” He stepped closer and added in a low voice, “We can’t risk leaving behind any piece of technology.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “I know, Dariux. That is the reason for my system. I’ve got this. For real.”

Reassured, he turned his attention to her. She had recovered fully in the two days since the fever broke. Her color was healthy, and her normal energy had returned. If he hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t believe that only three days ago she had been so sick. Now the only reminders of her disease were a slight weight loss.

It was subtle, for she was already slim, but he knew her body so well by now that he noticed. The extra sharpness of her delicate features, the deeper indentation of her collarbone, the width of her waist. He could almost span it with his hands now.

His eyes lingered for a moment on her waist while other more disquieting thoughts crowded his mind. Was his child growing in there even now? The idea still had the power to rob him of breath. And not in a good way. More like in a suffocating, panicking way. Oh God, please don’t let it be so. He would never abandon a child of his, but he was not fit to be a parent.

What did he know about parenting, anyway? His own father’s example had been abominable. His mother had been kind, but embittered and powerless. He loved her but wouldn’t consider her an exemplary role model. After she gained her freedom from her abusive marriage, she had been more concerned with rebuilding her own life than parenting him. He blinked away the memories, his eyes refocusing on the task at hand. He noticed with surprise that half the items had disappeared and were now neatly packed away in one of the traveling trunks. She was not kidding when she said she had it under control.

“I see you do have a handle on the situation here. If you don’t need me for anything, I’ll be back in an hour to pick you up.”

She waved a hand in dismissal, not even bothering to look at him. Well, then. That was his cue to leave. Ever since she had recovered, he had avoided spending time with her as much as possible. Between the temptation she presented, and the sense of betrayal he felt, being in her company was uncomfortable, to say the least.

He took the staircase down to the lobby. The hotel featured lifts, which was the height of technological advance in these times, but he didn’t trust the primitive technology, so he took the stairs as much as he could.

Arranging for a hired carriage to take them to the train station took a bit longer than he had expected. The hotel should have been able to manage this without issue, but this morning they were experiencing a shortage of larger carriages, due to several guests requesting them. The staff efficiency was proven when they procured a satisfactory carriage within the hour. But that didn’t leave him any time to dawdle at all.

At five minutes to the hour, he was again knocking on Kalli’s room, ready to escort her down. He expected her to still be packing, but she was ready. Looking every inch the Victorian lady in her bustled traveling gown that emphasized her tiny waist and a jaunty hat perched over her head. The deep green color of the velvet contrasted and enhanced her red hair, while making her skin glow with pearlescent luminosity.

Where did that nonsense come from? Pearlescent luminosity indeed!

Goodness, this mission had scrambled his wits more than he thought, if he was spouting such poetic nonsense. But she did look good enough to eat in that outfit. Which was the reason he averted his eyes and went to pick up one of her suitcases instead.

“I have a carriage waiting. We have over an hour until the train departs, but the traffic in London is unpredictable, and Paddington station is notoriously busy, so I thought it better to give ourselves ample time to reach the platform.”

“I agree. Let’s be off, then,” she said, taking his proffered arm with all the nonchalance in the world. Was she unaffected by their nearness then?

“You must be eager to go back home,” she said in a low voice as he handed her onto the hired carriage.

“In a way, yes, I am. And yet, I think I will miss this time we have shared.”

She did not look at him as she replied. Busying herself with arranging her voluminous skirts. He thought she said something like “I’ll miss you too,” but it was so low he couldn’t hear it well over the racket of the busy street.

The train station was a cacophony of sounds and a riot of activity as people moved about purposefully to catch a train or hurried back to the arms of loved ones. Except for the manner of dressing and the shapes of the trains, not much had changed in the way a train station looked and felt in the last three hundred years.

He approached an old man in a uniform and asked for directions to the train, then guided Kalli and two hotel concierges carrying all their paraphernalia to the correct platform. It was a slow, torturous process. Just as he had expected. They could have moved a lot faster without so much luggage, but everything they had brought was necessary for the expedition.

When they reached their train, a conductor checked their tickets and opened a door on the side of a wagon that led into a private compartment. He reached out to help Kalli step up, but she was already climbing the brief steps to the train on her own.

After supervising the loading of their luggage and paying the concierges, he took the seat opposite hers. She was still looking around the compartment with awe.

“This is so luxurious it’s almost decadent.”

He took in his surroundings. The private compartment was indeed opulent, outfitted with deep, overstuffed benches. Gold and blue wallpaper and honey-colored wood paneling covered the walls, while a plush carpet in the same tones cushioned their feet. Over their heads, there were brass racks to hold their smaller luggage. They had their own private door to the exterior and also one to the interior of the train. Rich velvet curtains covered the windows for privacy. Hiring the private compartment had been an indulgence. But he wanted privacy and comfort, especially for a trip of almost three hours.

That may not seem that long for the people in this era. In fact, the trains had dramatically improved the traveling times, cutting them in half or more from what they used to be using horse-drawn carriages. But in his time, whenever he spent three hours on a trip, he ended up on another continent. This particular route would have taken no more than twenty minutes. So yes, he was used to speed and had grown impatient as a result.

He stretched his long legs. “It is. I don’t know what I was expecting when I rented it, but it wasn’t this much luxury. I only wanted space and to be away from the chatter of people.”

At that moment, a whistle rent the air and the train started moving with its characteristic swaying motion. Kalli retrieved a book from her purse, and he leaned his head back and closed his eyes, tilting his hat over his face. The posture suggested sleep, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He had never taken a nap in his adult life. But it allowed him to study Kalli from beneath his lowered eyelids.

She started scribbling in the book, which wasn’t a book at all, but a notebook or diary of sorts. She was writing by hand. Who did that anymore in their time? He didn’t know she liked to journal. What was she writing about? Their adventures in the past? It couldn’t be about their mission. They kept all those notes digitally in carefully curated logs. Maybe she was writing about them. Their affair, and whatever her feelings were about it. His curiosity sparked, he tried to focus on the writing, attempting to read what she was committing to paper, but the angle and his half-closed eyes did not make the text legible. He could tell, however, that she employed beautiful calligraphy, suggesting she engaged in handwriting often.

He studied her for a few minutes, fascinated by her changing expressions as she wrote. The occasional small crease between her eyebrows, the narrowing of her eyes in thought, how her face seemed to glow and she smiled a little right before she started writing a little faster, as if a brilliant idea had just occurred to her and she was in a hurry to capture it on the page.

The chase of emotions across her expressive face was fascinating. He could almost read her feelings just by studying her. Which was the reason he noticed as soon as the first sign of discomfort showed. Her lips pinched and her brow creased, but not with concentration. Was she a little green or was that the color of the dress reflecting on her face? Then her left hand came up to rest against her stomach. She slid the curtain to look outside, and he knew for sure. Fuck.

“Are you nauseous?”

Her gaze snapped to him, surprise in her eyes, as if she had forgotten he was right in front of her. Or maybe she had assumed he was asleep.

“A little bit,” she confessed.

“Isn’t that a sign of pregnancy?”

She rolled her eyes. “Nausea is also caused by motion, which is the most likely culprit here. I suffer from motion sickness.”

“But you didn’t have nausea on the train ride to London.”

She shrugged as if the whole subject did not matter. “It was the writing. I should know better than to write in a moving vehicle.”

“But it could also be pregnancy. Do you feel any other symptoms?”

“What pregnancy? Relax, Dariux. What do you know about pregnancy symptoms, anyway? Been around many pregnant women?” she asked sarcastically.

He narrowed his eyes. “None, in fact. But I know nausea is one ailment many women suffer when in that condition. My dear mother likes to talk about it. She loves to remind me every chance she gets what an awful time she had carrying me.”

Her face changed, then, becoming softer. “I’m sorry,” she said almost with...pity? For him? He didn’t need her pity. How had this conversation turned from her possible pregnancy to pitying him?

“Sorry for what?”

“I didn’t mean to upset you. The nausea has receded now.”

That was not what she had meant by that ‘I’m sorry.’ Was she sorry that his mother liked to rehash negative things concerning him? That she constantly reminded him of the many ways in which he had ruined her life just by his mere existence? No way. She couldn’t know that. Nobody did. Not even his mother realized what she was doing.

He had long ago learned to live with the knowledge that he had been a punching bag for his father and a burden for his mother. But that didn’t matter anymore. He was a grown man now. He didn’t need anybody’s pity.

“Dariux.” She waited until he looked at her to add, “There is no sense in getting ahead of ourselves. By this time tomorrow, we’ll know if there’s something to worry about.”

She was right. Tomorrow they would be back in their time, in their world. They could find out if they had created a life together or not. And then they could each go their own way and continue with their lives.

The knowledge did not bring him any contentment, though.