The Time Travelers, Volume 2 Read online

  The sky was not yet winter gray, but still autumn blue. The sun was thin but friendly, and the city seemed buoyant and happy to Flossie. She jumped puddles and broken sidewalk slates. She circled peddlers and cabbies and shoppers and nannies.

  Laughter bubbled in her throat and smiles danced on her face. She, Florence Elizabeth Ruth Van Stead, was going to become Mrs. Gianni Annello.

  By now, the wedding procession would be finished. Her mother and father, neatly seated in their pew, her father’s top hat on his lap, her mother’s egret feathers towering above anybody else’s, would be proudly turning to see their daughter.

  But between Rose and Eunice there would be no Flossie.

  They must have changed the order, her mother would think. Flossie will be next.

  But instead, the flower girls would come.

  How on earth did I miss her? Mother would wonder, trying to discern the girls already near the altar. Mother would not dream of disfiguring her face with spectacles, and would not be able to see. Father, though he would be confused, would not remark on it, for weddings were the stuff of females, and he would just assume he had misunderstood.

  The ceremony would last over an hour because of all the music and scripture Devonny had added. By that time, Flossie and Johnny would have reached City Hall. By the time Devonny and her groom finished with the receiving line, why, Flossie and Johnny might have said their own marriage vows!

  She was hugging herself with joy. She could feel the shape of Johnny inside her arms. She could hardly wait to see his beautiful smile, hear his exuberant laugh.

  She reached Washington Square and rushed to the elm under which they had agreed to meet.

  No Johnny was there.

  Benches lined the park. Oak and ash and plane trees were bare now, and the fallen leaves swirled about her ankles. Flossie walked carefully, neatly, not letting herself think about it, past every bench sitter. She smiled at the pretty little dogs on leashes and the sweet children in perambulators.

  No Johnny.

  The magnificent new arch, in honor of George Washington, made a brilliant gateway. She walked calmly to the arch, and around it, and through it, but Johnny was nowhere to be seen.

  She stood beside the statue of Garibaldi, presented by the Italians of New York, but her own personal Italian was not there.

  She found a bench. She sat on the very edge, ready to leap into the air at the first sight of him.

  The minutes passed.

  The sun moved down in the sky.

  Johnny Annello did not come.

  Hiram Stratton liked the idea of a title in the family. England ruled the world, and Parliament was her voice. And what a world England was! India and Hong Kong and Australia and Kenya …

  His daughter would enter that world; her money would give that man more power; Hiram’s grandchildren would inherit everything: the Stratton millions, the Winden estates, the power of the British Empire!

  Devonny had wanted to marry a man who would accomplish something. With my money, my dear, thought Hiram Stratton, patting her little gloved hand as he studied the famous faces along the church aisle, perhaps he will. After all, somebody is going to have to rule India. Why not Winden?

  Ruling an entire country was an attractive thought. Hiram thought he would practice saying India the way the British pronounced it: Innn-jah!

  A moment ago, they had been moving forward, but now they stopped. Hiram Stratton assumed the flower girls were slow, and he thought nothing of it. The church pleased him: filled with people come to admire his daughter’s beauty and his daughter’s titled catch. Wives would stare at Lord Winden and be jealous, because this great catch had gone to somebody else’s daughter. Husbands would stare at Devonny and wish they were young again.

  There was nothing quite so wonderful as Society feeling jealous of you.

  He was oddly impressed by his ex-wife’s strategy. Aurelia had done an excellent job. He hated to admit how readily he had been conned into action he had not planned. The woman had almost gotten away with it. But Aurelia had given him two great gifts: the gift of this wedding and glorious future … and the gift of her punishment.

  He felt a frisson of pleasure at the thought of her life to come.

  He planned her next few hours. The wedding, of course, would be a triumph. Aurelia, unknowing of her fate, would be escorted back to the seashore mansion, while Devonny and her groom left for their journey on one of the great cross-Atlantic ships. Devonny would quickly forget her mama. And he, Hiram Stratton, who forgot nothing, ever, would enjoy watching the carpenters nail boards over the windows, while Aurelia chose which blanket to keep with her in the unheated attic.

  Hiram felt a strange cold tug, as if some fool had opened a door to winter and let in a vicious wind.

  He turned, and his face hurt slightly, icy in spite of the brushy thick beard and draping mustache. He put his hand up as if to wipe away snow, and in doing so, he realized that Devonny’s arm was not resting on his, and that Devonny—

  —that Devonny—

  Devonny!

  Tod’s university sweatshirt was a size extra large, although Tod himself was medium. It hung to his hips, and the cuffs went past his fingertips. His sneakers were his old ones, without decent laces, so they hung open like dogs’ mouths. His base ball cap was on backward, and his hair, which badly needed a trim, stuck out irregularly along the edges. His braces had broken during the week but Tod had not been in the mood to see the orthodontist, so he’d just smudged on that gummy wax the dentist gave you to cover rough braces edges.

  Time was ice, was zero.

  His skin, his teeth, his fingers, his gut hurt from the cold. He closed his eyes, but the brutal wind burned through his lids. He felt like a skier going down an advanced slope in Canada in February wearing only a T-shirt. His skin would come off, he would die or be hospitalized.

  Tod tried to come to grips with his sister’s courage, doing this willingly, but the cold and wind and speed were too terrible. He could only wait it out. He was Time’s property.

  He had agreed to come, but he had expected to run the show.

  He had a sense of landing, and a sense that he could refuse to let his body arrive completely, and a sense that even for one who wanted to travel to dangerous places, this was not wise. He could not find a grip, or a purpose, just cold and fear. His stretching hand found Devonny’s, and he seized it, and flung himself back the way he had come.

  In their pew, Mr. and Mrs. Van Stead smiled at one another.

  How well they had handled the potential disaster with the Italian boy! Luckily, a loyal servant had showed them yet another of those foolish letters. The ridiculous girl had actually intended to marry the stonecutter! It was revolting, but whatever silly little plan their daughter had cooked up would not work now.

  Mr. Van Stead had had the boy picked up. Gianni Annello was on his way back to Italy.

  The captain of the cargo ship had promised to keep him locked up until the ship was safely out to sea, and that took care of that.

  Scandal had been averted. And if Flossie’s heart was broken—well, headstrong young girls needed to be broken before marriage, like colts.

  Mrs. Van Stead could not see Flossie among the pink blurs at the front, but she hoped that Gordon or Miles was looking at her fondly. Hoped Gordon or Miles was sufficiently broke to want Flossie, because it was certainly necessary to get Flossie married instantly. Why, the girl’s behavior implied a low-class, animal, physical attraction to that boy!

  Rearing girls was so difficult, and so unrewarding.

  Hiram Stratton said thickly, “Where is my daughter?”

  The church ladies stared at him, looking wildly around, as if Devonny were a teacup that must be sitting on a shelf somewhere.

  The flower girls went down the aisle, strewing their rose petals. The trumpet music ceased. There was a pause in which everybody straightened, for this was the one time in a lady’s life in which she was important: this short walk, i
n this long gown.

  But there was no bride.

  FIVE

  The guests were having a wonderful time.

  No bride!

  They were thoroughly enjoying the humiliation of the groom; most eager to witness the fury of the father. Some of the guests stood on the velvet-cushioned pews for a better view.

  The bridesmaids could do nothing but stand in their semicircle, clinging to their baskets.

  The groom remained calm. How British! He stood as coolly as if this were merely a problem with the gown, a torn hem perhaps, and any moment his bride would glide into his arms.

  How could Devonny complain about securing a catch like this? thought Constanza. The man is handsome, courteous and needs her money. There’s nothing quite so nice in a marriage as being needed.

  Then came a thought so hideous and exciting that Constanza had to share it with Rose. “What if Devonny has jilted him?”

  “She wouldn’t dare,” whispered Rose without moving her lips. “Leave the man standing at the altar? In front of everybody? With a crowd of hundreds outside to know about it, and a dozen reporters to put it in every paper?”

  “Nobody would forgive her,” added Eunice, who hoped it was a jilting. She had always wanted to witness such a thing, and here she was, only a few feet from the groom. Such a handsome fellow. Perhaps—

  No. If an American jilted him, he would go back across the Atlantic in the morning and never associate with Americans again. In fact, if Devonny jilted Lord Winden, it would ruin everybody’s chance of grabbing a title. Eunice became angry at Devonny. What a wretched thing to do to the rest of them! Devonny was so selfish.

  “Where is Flossie?” Eunice whispered to Constanza.

  “Between you and Elizabeth,” whispered Constanza, irritated. Wasn’t this delay awkward enough without Eunice being a fool?

  Constanza looked up and down the semicircle to be sure she was correct that Flossie stood between Eunice and Elizabeth.

  There was no Flossie.

  Constanza studied the entire line. Flossie was not among them. How very peculiar. Had Flossie felt too faint to march in? Or had Flossie joined the search for Devonny?

  From the back came a huge bellow, a voice that seemed too large even for the large body of Hiram Stratton. “My daughter! My daughter has been kidnapped! I was warned! But I did not take it seriously! My daughter has been kidnapped!”

  The most difficult thing Hugh-David Winden had ever done was to walk back down that aisle … without a bride. He smiled courteously at the guests, ignored their hot gossipy eyes, said nothing to the barbed taunts they meant him to overhear. He made it out of the sanctuary and into the parlor, where Hiram Stratton was shouting to the police. “A man snatched her. Right from my arms!”

  “Are you sure she didn’t just leave?” said a policeman sternly. “Jilting a man has been done, sir. Done a lot more than kidnapping.”

  Hugh-David wondered which he would prefer. To be publicly humiliated—a man so undesirable that a lady had to flee the church rather than be united with him—or to have Devonny’s life in jeopardy.

  “It’s true!” cried the florist. “She was here and then she wasn’t!”

  “I saw him!” shouted Hiram. “It was kidnapping!” He was red in the face, strangled by his collar and his fury. “He took my daughter’s arm and snatched her! I should have hired more police! Why didn’t you stop this heinous event?”

  Miles and Gordon had followed Lord Winden out of the church. Now Miles pressed up against Hugh-David. “We must leave,” he whispered. “I knew this Stratton fellow was so abominable only the worst could happen.”

  Miles and Gordon would take this humiliation home with them. They’d dine out on the story for years. How amused his mother and brothers and cousins would be. It hardly bore thinking of.

  “No money is worth this, Hugh,” said Gordon. “Cut your losses and quit.”

  Devonny was a bet, and I lost, thought Hugh-David. Time to fold.

  The bridesmaids had joined them, sobbing and crying out, their huge gowns rustling, the thorns from their roses poking and stabbing. “Do you really mean it?” came their cries. “A threat against Devonny? How could you not have told us? How could you let this happen, Mr. Stratton?”

  In the midst of Hugh-David’s anger and humiliation came a splinter of fear. The girls were genuinely afraid for Devonny. If she were jilting me, he thought, she would have confided in one of them. Or in all of them. But she did not.

  The police rushed senselessly around the church, as if a bride in a flowing white gown had slid behind a pillar or was resting in the chapel.

  Hiram Stratton could not describe the kidnapper or the kidnapper’s clothing. He could not explain how his daughter had been taken from him without a fight.

  He insisted the kidnapper was alone. But how could one man, wondered Hugh-David, no matter how strong and determined, lift a bride whose gown was so heavy the bride herself could not move? The Devonny who had beaten him in golf and tennis, who had ridden a horse and a bike, who had talked back and argued—wouldn’t this Devonny have resisted? Surely at least she would have dropped her flowers; she would have screamed.

  Hiram Stratton was having a tantrum, pounding a heavy carved oak chair on the stone floor.

  It’s Hiram Stratton who demanded speed, thought Hugh-David. Hiram Stratton who set the wedding date for one month from my request for Devonny’s hand. I was in no rush. After all, my bills have not been paid in months, some of them not in years. Let my creditors wait longer, I don’t care.

  Is it Hiram who now does not want it? Could Hiram Stratton himself have arranged a kidnapping? But to what end? No man wants scandal involving his daughter. And if he wanted to call off the wedding, he would never have done it in front of his own guests.

  The police found nobody outside the church who had seen the bride. A dress described as vast, ornate and glittering? A thousand onlookers could not have missed Devonny’s exit.

  They began a grim search of cellar and belfry, back stairs and offices, classrooms and kitchens. Plenty of places to drag a girl—perhaps smothered by a drug, perhaps strangled by a wicked hand and plenty of places to have a carriage waiting.

  Hugh-David thought of what could happen to a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl in the hands of thugs.

  “Kidnapping!” exclaimed Gordon. “It’s so American, so vulgar. You cannot have this scandal attached to your name.”

  “It is not attached to my name,” said Hugh-David. “It is attached to Miss Stratton’s.” She would be ruined. No one would marry a girl who might have been raped. No one. Including Hugh-David.

  Hugh-David found himself comforting the mother, the real mother, the first Mrs. Stratton. The poor thing was sobbing uncontrollably. “What will become of me now?” she said over and over.

  What will become of you? thought Hugh-David, shocked. How could the woman think of herself instead of her daughter?

  Gordon muttered, “Come, Hugh. It is unthinkable that you should have anything more to do with this Stratton crowd.”

  But they had forgotten Hiram Stratton, and his great bulk, and temper, and power.

  “There is no crowd of Strattons,” said Hiram. “There is one Stratton, and I am he.” He smiled a terrible smile, his lips stretched like cords. In his jowls a muscle twitched, making his beard jump. “And you, Hugh-David Winden, will stay. My innocent name is at stake.”

  Your name? Hugh-David was stunned, for he had thought Devonny surrounded by love. But Devonny’s father and mother had no more regard for Devonny than Hugh-David’s father and mother had for him.

  “Really, sir!” said Gordon coldly to Mr. Stratton. “There is no need to behave like a ruffian on a frontier.”

  Hugh-David remembered himself in the garden at the mansion by the sea, playing games with her—this very young girl about to become his wife—and saying to her, “I do not have a heart, my dear.”

  She is alone and terrified in the hands of evil, thoug
ht Hugh-David, and knows better than to expect anything from me.

  The man who had Devonny was the most shocked of all. He had not had a master plan; if he had, it would not have included bringing Devonny into his time, wearing a dress the size of a school bus, carrying enough flowers for two funerals, and sobbing from behind a veil.

  “My mother!” she cried. “How will I save my mother? She will be held responsible! Father will keep her alive in the attic for decades! She will suffer so! Where is this? Where are we? Strat must be here! Do you have Strat? He will know what to do, you don’t know anything! Why are you wearing a shirt with a hog on it?”

  Tod was offended. He had a large collection of college team sweatshirts, and razorback hogs were the best. She had just insulted his favorite sweatshirt. “I told you before, I don’t have Strat!” he yelled back.

  “Then take me home!”

  “How am I supposed to do that? Throw you at the pump handle? Toss you in the sea? What are you doing in that ridiculous dress? I can’t even fit you through the car door.”

  “You came to rescue me, now rescue me!”

  “What am I supposed to do with you?” he yelled.

  “You ’re supposed to help me find my brother!”

  He stopped yelling because he was giving himself a sore throat, but also because runners were approaching. It was too late in the year for sunbathing or sailing, but runners never knew when to quit.

  To his disgust, Tod knew the runners: four girls in his high school who were on the varsity basketball team and thought they were perfect. They were wearing designer spandex, tighter than skin, and designer sneakers, and designer sweatbands, and as they ran up to him, laughing hysterically at the sight of Devonny in her wedding gown, they came to a halt but continued running in place.

  “What is this?” shrieked Tory, giggling at Devonny.

  “What a hoot!” said Jill, poking at the skirt, which appeared to be covered in jewels. Tod could not imagine how they got jewelry to stick to the skirt. There had to be a million little pearls on there.