The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance

Jean Johnson Steam

“So this house has just been sitting there, waiting for you to come along and inherit it?”

David refrained from nodding, since that would have caused his cell phone to slip from between his shoulder and ear. His hands were busy carefully pulling dust covers from strange pieces of archaic electrical equipment. “Yeah, that’s right. I never even met this guy, but Mom and Dad, and even Grandma and Grandpa always swore he was like the family’s Secret Santa, for decades. And ‘Uncle’ David left it to me in his will. Said his ‘namesake’ should be his inheritor. A pity he and his wife ended up disappearing during that hurricane. ”

“Well, I hope it was a quick end. And all that Victorian chinoiserie will be right up your steampunk alley, bro,” Kevin offered not unsympathetically.

“Actually, I’m more Edwardian than Victorian in my chosen era,” David countered. He pulled yet another dusty sheet off a chunk of furniture and found a beautiful, wonderfully preserved oak roll-top desk. “Ooh, baby. ”

“What, a sexy picture of a dame?” his best friend joked.

“Almost that good, bro. A late-nineteenth/early twentieth-century roll-top desk.”

“You’re sick, man.” The tone of his friend’s voice was more dismissive than disgusted, so David ignored the insult. “Listen, after you’re done drooling over your Edwardian love desk, you wanna hit the pub for a darts game?”

“That’s rather tempting,” David admitted, gently rifl ing through the papers pigeonholed in the desk, some of which were quite old and yellow, while others were a lot newer. A stack of old photographs, sepia with age, drew his attention. He pulled the pictures out, blinking in shock. They were of a beautiful young woman, her curls piled on her head in a Gibson hairstyle and her dress equally turn of the previous century. But her pose was anything but the staid, starchy, glassy-eyed stare of someone forced to sit still for several seconds while the photographic plates were exposed.

Instead, she had coyly unbuttoned her waistcoat and blouse and had lifted her breasts out of her corset, displaying them with a small but clearly lecherous smile.

He dropped the phone. Scrambling to catch it even as it fell from his shoulder, David almost crumpled the pictures as well. For a moment, he was all thumbs, juggling cardstock and plastic, until the pictures fluttered on to the desk surface. The disarray displayed more lascivious images, some half-hidden by the photos that had fallen face down. Gaping, David swallowed and lifted his cellphone back to his ear.

“Uh, listen,” he stated, interrupting his friend’s rambling comments about doing something or other at the proposed bar, “I just found some very important, uh. paperwork. that I have to. examine much more closely. I think it’ll take me all night.”

“Paperwork?” Kevin asked, his tone dubious.

“Yeah. Paperwork. Very. important. paper. Work. I’ll chat with you later, OK? Bye.” Thumbing the red button, he pressed and held it a second time as soon as the phone blipped, letting him know the call was ended. It blipped and buzzed a second time, letting him know it was now turned off. That left him in the privacy of a gadget-crammed attic with a roll-top desk that would have made an antiques collector weep, and some rather outstanding examples of turn-of-the-century pornography.

Writing on the back of some of the “paperwork” caught his eye. In lovely, large loops, a woman — presumably the one in the photograph— had carefully written, “To my B-beloved David, may this image I-inspire you to look deeper into the mysteries of love and life. Yours F-Forever, Elaine.’

Turning it over, he found his breath escaping him. David fumbled the chair out from the desk, shoved aside the dust cloth which had partially snagged on the oak-rail chair and sat down before the last dregs of blood vanished from his head. He arranged each photograph lovingly. She’s probably quite dead by now. These photos are from a hundred years ago. No one lives that long.

He had always been fascinated with the turn of the previous century. When other kids were grumbling about having to take a newspaper route to pay for Walkmans and CDs, he had been dreaming he was a street urchin hawking papers on a city corner in the days of horses and carriages. When they chatted about the latest action movie, he had wanted to talk about the old silent films. And now, here in this house he had inherited, he had found a treasure trove of antique delights.

David had seen turn of the century erotica before, and had found the profusion of ruffles, the crispness of the muslin and the contrast between demure layers and exposed skin incredibly sensual. But those pictures usually had been taken rather impersonally, either for commercial sale — however discreetly underground— or for someone he didn’t know. These pictures had been taken for someone he knew. Sort of. And the subject of all these photographs was beautiful. Long, dark hair, gleaming eyes, mischievous smile, little round spectacles perched on her nose in some of the pictures, and every last one of them was provocatively posed.

Those intimate bits of feminine flesh below her slender neck kept drawing his attention. He could easily imagine kissing her lips, her breasts, even the secrets exposed between her thighs. Knowing he had to move on, David reluctantly returned the erotic images to their pigeonhole in the desk. Studying them in depth could wait until after he had fi nished exploring the rest of the attic.

His fingers brushed against a book. He pulled it out and opened the plain, dark green leather cover to a random page, finding more of the same looping, feminine handwriting inside as on the back of the photos. It seemed to be a personal journal of scientific experiments of some kind. Sorting through to the front page, David found a piece of paper, much whiter and newer than the rest, tucked into the front.

The moment he opened it, he felt the blood rushing out of his face a second time — but not, now, from lust. It was written in his handwriting, and was signed with his signature, in the spiky loops that weren’t quite copperplate.

Dear Me,

I realize you’re not going to believe this at first, but it’s absolutely true. Follow all of her instructions, get this machine of hers going again. and she’ll be yours. Eventually. (Certain courtship rules still apply, of course; take a couple weeks first.) “Compromise” is the key and “equality” the grease for this maiden’s lock. Not to mention “S-steam”. Don’t worry; you’ll understand in due time. Um, you might want to burn this note as soon as you know everything is true. Just in case.

David Maddock.

The real David — the one living in the twenty-first century — stared at the note for several long seconds. The chill in the attic penetrated his dazed thoughts. He adjusted the straps of his suspenders for comfort and cracked open the book once more. It wasn’t an easy read, either, despite the lyrical quality of the writer’s penmanship and her engaging, slightly rambling, almost conversational style; he was a computer programmer by trade, not an electrician, and never mind a physicist.

But the gist of the technical diary was how this woman, Elaine Cuttleridge, had managed to tap into what he guessed were nineteenth-century terminology equivalents of quantum wormhole physics, and powered it all by means of the several lightning rods he had noticed sticking up over the roof earlier; lightning rods which normally channelled all that energy safely down into the ground, but which, when switched over, could power the machinery cluttering up his newly inherited attic, causing its whirling cube of rings to link to itself four-dimensionally.

In other words, she had somehow managed to create a time machine. In his attic. Which he had deeded to himself in his own will. under the pseudonym of “Uncle” David Cuttleridge.

Twisting in the chair, David looked around the attic at the half-uncovered equipment. Well, a corner of his mind thought idly, that explains the archaic, accordion-style camera over in the corner. I must have taken these pictures of my. wife. myself.

His wife. For a moment, David felt dizzy with the contradiction between his bodily lusts and his mental quandaries. Shaking it off, he forced himself to concentrate. If this is all true — if it is — then somehow I have to figure out how to get all of this stuff working again. Because. dayamn. that is one hot woman. Brilliant body and a brilliant mind, and somehow she ends up all mine? Predestination paradox, here I come! And — wow — how liberal she must have been, to be so willing to pose so naughtily.

Another thought had him flushing hot and cold with the possibilities. If she can create a time machine, then I can go back in time. I can live in the era I’ve always wanted to visit! Of course, the medicine and the transportation technology levels would suck, he acknowledged, but just think of the possibilities. I could see Caruso perform in person, not just on some rusty, static-filled cylinder recording. I could invest in companies I could look up in the stock market’s history books! And best of all, predestination paradox would work in my favour, because I know I’ll have succeeded in going back in time.

. No, no, don’t rush, he reminded himself, looking at the note he had penned to himself at some point in time. Romance is the key. well, along with compromise and equality. And “S-steam”. Or did I mean “esteem”? Well, probably straightforward steam, given those photographs.

Flushing again, this time with excitement of a more cerebral and emotional nature, David hurried to finish uncovering and dusting off every precious piece of equipment in the attic.

Pushing his bowler hat back on his head, David lined up his feet on the floor and lifted the dart in his hand. The noise in the pub swelled for a moment, then quieted again, allowing him to hear the thwup! of his dart hitting the dartboard for a fifteen-point score. His teammate and buddy Kevin cheered, clapping him on the shoulder while the other two guys groaned. Turning around to face them, David caught sight of the television over the bar. The sports channel had given way to a weather update.

One of the words on the screen captured his attention: Thunderstorm.

“Uh. I gotta go, guys.” Glad he had chosen to stick to a flavoured club soda, David grabbed his long brown duster and shrugged into the leather overcoat. He paused to fetch his darts from the board, packing them into their plastic case, and tucked the case in his pocket. “We’ll continue this later, right?”

“But. we’re winning!” Kevin protested. “And what is up with you and bad weather, lately? Ever since you inherited that house on the hill, you’ve been vanishing into it any time a thunderstorm rolls along!”

“Maybe he’s fancying himself as a modern-day Doctor Frankenstein,” one of the other two dart players drawled, then laughed as he picked up his beer.

“Maybe I am.” David fl ashed his friend a grin and a wink. Tugging at the brim of his hat to make sure the wind outside wouldn’t sweep it away, David nodded a polite fare well to the three of them and left the bar. The drive home in his truck didn’t take long, but the lightning was already flickering in the distance by the time he got out. Hurrying inside, David didn’t bother to remove his coat. That storm was approaching fast, and he didn’t want to miss a possible lightning strike.

As soon as he reached the attic, he double-checked the batteries of the flashlight on the neatly tidied desk. One of the many notes to himself he had found had concerned the power going out for a few moments. Once he was satisfied he would still have light if the storm overloaded the power grid, he moved to the switch board. They were large, stiff, old-fashioned levers insulated with glass and padded with rubber, and the thought of his Elaine — well, she wasn’t his just yet — playing with such dangerous equipment made him nervous.

The flare of light and rumble of sound encouraged him to try. Grasping the wooden handles, David pulled each of the four levers down. The arrays of copper wiring, glass tubes, brass fixtures and those strange wire-wrapped hoops forming a sort of oval-sided cage. did nothing.

Nothing.

Disappointed, David wondered if he had done everything right. Some of the equipment had been replaced over the years by more modern versions, and he had added a few replacements of his own, mainly of things which had corroded or deteriorated with time. The instructions in Elaine’s diary weren’t always clear, though the worst parts had been appended in his own handwriting with terminology the twenty-first century man could understand. But the machine wasn’t working.

It is predestination paradox, David reminded himself, staring at the inert machinery. I know these things are going to happen, because they already did happen. I—

KERBOOMMMM!

Dazzled by the flare of daylight-bright whiteness, deafened by the window-rattling explosion, David struggled to see and hear. He could feel every hair on his body prickling up at the sheer proximity of all that electricity. Blinking several times, he finally focused on the oval cage and found it glowing with an eerie purplish-white light. That light suddenly stretched inwards to the centre of the rectangular cage, shading from violet to blue, green, gold, red, and crimson where all the streaking lines met in the three-dimensional centre. Then they flared outwards again, opening into a rippling mirage of milk-white light.

It blurred the lines of the machinery visible on the far side, and distorted the voice, too, but not so far that David couldn’t tell it belonged to a young woman.

“Oh! Oh, I did it! I actually did it! I’ve invented a temporal vortex! But. to the past or to the future?”

Prompted by all the notes and clues left by his future and past selves, David moved closer and called out to her. “ To the future, my lady!”

“Oh! Uh. who is this, please?”

“David Maddock. I take it you are Miss Elaine Cuttleridge?”

“Uh, yes. Yes, I am. But I am T-totally surprised you should know my name — unless I’m F-famous in the future?”

Good grief, she even talks like she writes, David thought, amused. She didn’t stammer, she pronounced the letter, stating it as eff-famous. He knew it had been an affectation in some American circles a hundred or so years ago, meant to emphasize a particular word by stating its starting letter as a sort of fancy prefix. The verbal and print version of italics, back in an era where italic fonts hadn’t been differentiated yet. “I’m afraid not, Miss Cuttleridge. It seems I know you because I inherited this house. from my time-travelling self, in association with you.”

“Oh — oh, that is utterly I-impossible!” she snapped, and the blurry, milk-water oval rippled. A tallish woman dressed in a waistcoat, ruffle-necked blouse, long skirts, and ankle boots, carrying a carpet bag in her hand, stepped through the milky oval. She did so very carefully, making sure to not brush the wire-wrapped oval frames with anything, not even a stray bit of hem. “I’m glad I made the transduction ovals big enough. It is I-impossible, Mr Maddock, because I am moving into the future. I refuse to spend any more time living in the O-outmoded past.”

Her long brown curls, swept up at the top but left hanging free in the back, had auburn highlights. Her eyes were hazel green, and her chin was lifted in a stubborn, defiant tilt. Her declaration caught David by surprise, but his mind leaped swiftly through the variables of her claim.

“The future, my dear, is incredibly complex. First of all, you—”

“Don’t patronize me!” Elaine snapped, lifting her chin a little higher. “I may be a ‘mere’ woman, but I am clearly quite intelligent!”

“I am not patronizing you. I’m explaining certain facts, of which you need to be aware in order to live in this century,” David countered patiently. I can see why I wrote myself a note; she’s a real firecracker. Brilliant, beautiful and bearing a chip on her shoulder. A Suffragette as well as a scientist, if I’m not mistaken. Glancing at the oval behind her, David saw the bluish-white glow beginning to fade. “Look, according to the notes I read, you will have five days in the future before the next thunderstorm rolls through and the machines can be linked again. Between now and then, I will show you the complexities of life in the twenty-first century. But you have to promise me to keep an open mind, and not prejudge me, thinking I’ll treat you like a nineteenth-century man. I am not one.”

Her hazel eyes glittered with wariness. “Go on. ”

“First of all, you don’t have an identity established with the government. If you don’t have an identity, you’ll find integrating yourself into the future to be very difficult. And if you claim to be from a hundred or so years in the past,” David explained patiently, remembering to pick words she would understand, “they’ll lock you up in a sanitarium, and throw away the key. I’m sure that’s hardly the sort of future life you’d want to lead. Going back into the past — for select periods of time — will allow both of us to help establish an identity for you which you can use here and now in the future. But it must be timed and targeted just right.

“I could easily step into the past and establish myself as. David Cuttleridge. Or Marvin Melmack. Or James Earl Jones. And no one would gainsay my identity,” David pointed out. “The government did not have the ability to gather and process information at the turn of the twentieth century that it has in the twenty-first century, so I could get away with establishing an identity in the past. For you. it will be a lot more difficult. Not insurmountable, but hard all the same.

“And there is another reason to go back into the past, and maintain ties to the past. A couple of reasons,” David amended.

Setting her carpet bag down, Elaine folded her arms across her breasts. “What reasons?”

Trying hard not to think of her baring her breasts, David outlined his reasons. “First of all, this house needs to be kept intact and in good shape. If you abandon it completely to the future. who will inherit it, what will they do with it and wouldn’t some stranger dismantle all of your equipment, utterly ruining your temporal experiment? Because I found out all of the information I needed to know to make sure the machine was in working order, I know that you — and I myself — went back into the past, and probably did so several times, to ensure the sanctity of this house and its equipment.

“Another vitally important reason is funding,” David added. This one, he had thought about quite a lot over the last few months, though not quite in these terms. “Maintaining a house for that long is an expensive proposition. Not to mention the funds we’ll need to create the illusion that you do actually exist in the government records of this day and age. Money is a serious concern these days, because of inflation rates. A hundred dollars is a lot of money in your day, but in mine, it would barely feed a family of four for a week, if they were frugal.”

“I see. so you’re proposing using your knowledge of the future to make sound financial investments in the past?” Elaine asked.

“Why not? These investments would benefit both of us,” he pointed out. “You ’d need my help just to find the right information. Yours may be the Industrial Age, but mine is the Information Age, and our methods of storing and retrieving data are quite complex. I could be quite valuable as a partner.”

“Why should I trust you? Why not someone else?” she asked.

Lightning flashed in the distance. and the lights in the attic blinked out. David heard her gasp, and moved back a few steps to the desk. Fumbling, he found the flashlight and switched it on, hearing her gasp a second time. “The power has gone out. It’ll be back on in just a few minutes. In the meantime, I have a note from you, which is addressed to you, to be given to you when the power goes out. Which it has. I suggest you read it.”

Playing the light over the pigeonholes, he found the little flat drawer underneath one side and slid it open. He heard her move closer and extracted the wax-sealed letter. Turning, he found her right at his side, her head level with his own. She must have been quite tall for her era, a corner of his mind observed. She was also still quite lovely, even with her face lit from below by the flashlight’s reflected glow. For a moment, all he could see were the curves of her lips, which he wanted to kiss.

The lights came back on. Shaking himself mentally, David handed her the envelope. He watched her break open the yellowed packet and read the writing folded within. This close, he could see the blush staining her cheeks and the widening of her eyes. It made him wonder if he should have tried to read the letter himself in spite of its wax seal.

She flipped through the pages, gasped and covered her mouth, then flicked back and reread whatever it was she had written to herself. Twice, she darted a sharp look his way. David kept his expression polite, interested and mildly curious, despite his livid itch to know what her future self had written in the past.

Finally, she folded the slightly yellowed sheets and faced him. “According to this, you and I shall become quite the pair. Leading double lives, and doubled lives. Apparently our life spans will lengthen and our aging will slow, simply by travelling through the vortex. and we will need to carefully note the exact times whenever lightning strikes the house, record it for our future selves and have our future selves send it back into the past. Plus, apparently, I figure out a way to target specific time-storms, if their exact dates and times are known. All except for these first two strikes, when I got my machine started, and when it connected to yours, precisely one hundred stellar revolutions into the future.

“My letter to myself A-also says that. well, that you are a sensuall over, a bit of a libertine and an R-rabid E-equalist. Even more so than your contemporaries,” Elaine added, lifting her chin a little.

Mindful of his note to himself, David shrugged. “Why shouldn’t I be? Actually, if you don’t mind a bit of vulgarity, there’s a poem I once heard which describes my feelings exactly.”

Lifting her brows, Elaine folded her arms across her chest. “Go on. ”

“‘There is no difference ’twixt you and ’twixt me, save that one stands and one sits when we pee’,” he recited.

Her mouth twitched. A snort escaped her, evolving a moment later into a giggle. Covering her mouth, she muffled her laughter, then gave up and dropped it, tipping back her head. Pleased he had amused her, David swept her a bow.

“Well, at least you are A-amusing, Mr Maddock,” she admitted, dipping him a curtsy. “I think we might be able to get along in the days to come.”

“David, please. If I may call you Elaine?” he asked, mindful of the old customs he had read about. “It’s the modern way of things.”

“Of course,” she murmured. Stooping, she picked up her carpet bag. “So. Five days, you said?”

“According to what I’ve read, yes.” A glance at her machinery showed it was now quiescent. Moving to the pillar, David lifted the switches so that any further lightning strikes would be diverted around the old building. “Now, let me show you the rest of the house,” David offered, gesturing towards the stairs, “and all the improvements that have been made to modern life since your century.”

The only thing good about his entire day was coming home. Otherwise, today had been very much a Monday. All he could think about was relaxing in front of the television with a good old movie. A comedy, maybe even a Charlie Chaplin classic.

Elaine had arrived on a Friday night, which had given him the rest of the weekend to introduce her to things like the radio, television, computer and internet. She had learned quickly. Entering his house, David found her seated on the floor next to the mahogany coffee table. with his remote control and DVD player scattered in pieces across its surface, and her face pressed to the top of a binocular microscope she had dug out of the basement.

There went his plans to watch a movie. She didn’t even look up, just continued to look through the eyepieces. Covering his face with his hands, David groaned into his palms. He slid off his bowler hat and hung it up on the coat rack, removed his duster, and cleared his throat. She didn’t look up.

“Elaine?” he prodded.

One of her hands lifted and fluttered in a vague greeting. At least she wasn’t sitting in front of his computer, glassy-eyed from following too many Wiki-article links, or worse, stumbling across the shocking graphics of modern-day pornography. That had been an awkward experience, last night. All he had done was walk away for fifteen minutes, checked on their dinner, only to come back and find her as red as a tomato. No, this time she was calm, composed and the creator of this unexpected electronic clutter and chaos.

“Elaine, why did you dismantle my DVD player and the remote control?” he asked with as much patience as he could muster.

“Because I have an idea about these infra-red wave things, and the laser thing.”

“The ‘laser thing’,” David repeated.

“Yes, as a targeting mechanism. I told myself I would come up with a means of specifically targeting a particular lightning storm, and obviously I did, but I didn’t T-tell myself how. So I am investigating how.” She paused and lifted her head to look at him, her bun shifting a little on her head with the movement. “Um. were these expensive things?”

Biting back another groan, David nodded. “Yes, expensive. More to the point, I have had a difficult day at work, with meetings interrupting my attempts at coding, errors induced by my colleagues, a boss who insists I work overtime next week, and all I wanted to do was come home, drink a beer and watch a movie. Just so I could relax. Only now I can’t do that.”

“Oh, I can put it back together,” Elaine dismissed. Then paused and nibbled her lower lip, looking at the disarray of parts. “I think. ”

Giving up, David closed his eyes. She wasn’t a messy house guest; she did make her bed, pick up after herself, and had even offered to wash the dishes — by hand, until he had shown her the dishwasher — but she did do things like this. He heard the floorboards creak and opened his eyes. She had risen and crossed to him, and now gently touched his arm.

“If we prepared for the future, in the past, and made sound investments in the past based on our future knowledge, why not just use that money to buy a new DVD thingy?”

“Because while I inherited the house straight off, ‘Uncle’ David’s bank accounts and stock shares were put into trust until my thirtieth birthday. Or until I married, whichever came first.” Hands on his hips, David met her startled gaze. “E-exactly,” he stated, using her trick of emphasizing the first letter. “For whatever reason our elder selves decided, the two of us are stuck on a budget until then. I have just had a stressful day from hell, and if I can’t watch a movie. well, at least I’m going to go have a cold one.”

“Erm. ” Her hazel green gaze turned hesitant. “If you, erm, meant to have alcohol. ”

Oh, no. Giving her a sour look, David asked, “What did you do?”

“Well, I’m a T-totaller, and I didn’t like the thought of alcoholin my house — it is still my house, you know!” she added quickly, defensively. “If we’re going to associate with each other in the past and the future, it’s M-mine, too! So I gave it to your neighbour down the hill. All of it.”

He stared at her, then buried his face in his palms again, muffling another, much more frustrated moan. Elaine patted him on the shoulder.

“There, there. You do sound rather stressed. Perhaps if you had a lie-down, and, erm, palpitated yourself? Well, I’m not sure if men actually can palpitate themselves, since it’s a female thing, but perhaps there’s a variation which can be applied to them?”

Sliding his hands down his face, David stared at her. “Palpitate?”

She blushed, then lifted her chin. “Yes. My mother’s doctor told me about it. It’s a medical technique used to relieve hysteria and stress in women. Surely you’ve heard of it in this day and age?”

Hysteria and stress. A snippet of learning from his wide-ranging study of the previous turn of the century resurfaced in his brain. Doctors used to relieve “hysteria” in women by. masturbating them. Flushing with a mixture of embarrassment and arousal, David reminded himself firmly that he was supposed to take a couple weeks at least in courting her first.

“David?” she asked, guileless and clueless, for all of her intellect.

“Uh, yes, men have something similar,” he agreed. Such as what I did after I found the photographs my future self will have taken of you. “Um. don’t worry about the DVD player. It was a little old, and I suppose I can afford something new. I’m just going to go up to my room and lie down, as you suggested.”

With the photographs I took of you to study as I “palpitate” my stress away.

“All-right, then — I am S-sorry for dismantling your thingy without asking first. I won’t do it to anything else without double-checking,” she added, her hand stillon his arm. Pressing in sympathy, she hesitated, then leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Thank you for putting up with me, David. It’s V-very sweet of you.”

Yes. yes, I do believe I feel the need for an attack of “palpitations” coming on, he thought dazedly. He headed for the stairs with a smile, enjoying the lingering impression of her lips on his skin.

Day ten of his first seventeen days in the past, David was longing for air-conditioning. It was a hot, humid summer evening, filled with the drone of insects and only the slightest stirring of the air as a sort of breeze. Although a man of the year Ought-Nine never took off his shirt in front of a lady, Elaine had taken pity on her house guest, permitting him to strip off his upper clothes. The straps of his suspenders chafed a little, but the occasional, rare puff of air felt too good on his naked chest to care.

Plus, she did slant her gaze towards his torso every few paragraphs, immersed though she was in a borrowed future book extolling the virtues of superconductors. David himself was trying to read back issues of the Chronicle, but the heat made it hard to concentrate on the articles in the “Local News” section. Part of his reason for reading the paper was his curiosity about how people lived and thought and, well, gossiped about each other. The other part was to make sure that Elaine’s name wasn’t besmirched by his presence.

So far no one had enquired as to where he was staying — a hazard since Elaine’s father was currently overseas lecturing on the newest learnings in electricity to his fellow scientists, leaving her essentially unchaperoned — but he didn’t want to take chances with her reputation. The hilltop house was fairly isolated in this age, with no neighbours at the bottom of the hill. They had, however, driven her father’s automobile into town a few times already, with David introduced as “a fellow scientist and colleague of Mr Cuttleridge’s” to explain his presence and peculiarities. That had come in handy when trying to explain away certain oddities in his speech and demeanour.

He tried to focus on a description of a soirée given by the mayor and his wife up at the county seat, but just couldn’t focus. Groaning, he dropped his head on his hands.

“Stressed again?” Elaine asked, looking up from her book, which she had covered in plain brown wrapping paper to disguise its out landishly bright cover. “Have you palpitated recently?”

He winced again and dropped his head to the table, slumping in his chair. “If I ‘palpitate’ any more, I’ll palpitate myself to pieces.” Wiping his forehead on his forearm only smeared the sweat around; it did nothing to remove the damp, sticky feeling. “What I need is a shower.”

“I’m afraid all we have is a bathtub in this day and age,” Elaine reminded him. “But if you mean to bathe, do not look to me to heat up your water. I’ll go nowhere near the stove in this B-beastly weather.”

“I’d rather have a C-cold bath instead,” he muttered. “One more week of this, and then it’s back to blessed air conditioning.”

Elaine hmphed. “I distinctly recall suggesting that I come to the future again. But no, you insisted you wanted to live in the past. To revelin its lack of amenities. Well, R-revel all you want. It was your own choice.”

“It wouldn’t be so bad if you at least had a swimming pool,” he pointed out, rolling from his forehead on to his cheek so that he could look at her.

Elaine looked up, but not at him. The thoughtful pinch of her brow intrigued him. Nodding slowly to herself, she picked up her book ribbon, marked her spot and set it aside. She nodded sharply and placed her hands on the table. “Up you get. I might not have a formal pool, but there is a small pond down at the bottom of the hill. Down about where that mini-market thing is located in your era. If we take a lantern and a blanket, some towelling cloths and so forth, we can go down there and. erm. ” She paused, blushing. “No, that wouldn’t work. You didn’t bring a bathing suit, did you?”

It’s been a couple of weeks, the devil in the back of his mind whispered. Or maybe it was the one in his trousers. David shook his head slowly. “No, I didn’t. But I won’t tell if you won’t. This is a private pond, yes?”

“As private as it gets. The land goes down to the bottom of the hill, where the Attenborough Farm takes over; technically it’s a stock-watering pond,” she explained, “but the Attenboroughs have been pasturing their cattle on the west side of their property of late. However, there are many bugs to worry about. If you don’t wear a proper swimming suit, you’ll run the risk of being bitten in unpleasant places.”

“Then the bathtub it is,” he decided, pushing himself upright. “At least the windows of this house have mosquito netting on them.”

“I am not going to heat any water for you,” she reminded him tartly as he rose. “Nor am I going to pump it into the heating pails. I’m too warm as it is to work that hard. Though. well, a cold bath does sound like it would be Llovely.”

David grinned and flexed his arms. “No worries; I’ll raw enough for you, too.”

Pumping water for the primitive needs of the household was a better way to exercise than stopping by the gym. It didn’t take that long to get the kitchen pump working, nor to carry two buckets at a time up the stairs. The activities of pumping, lifting, climbing and pouring worked his arms, waist and legs. The fourth trip was tiresome, though. The Cuttleridges had spent all of their money on fitting their house with the latest electrical gadgets, not on upgrading the indoor plumbing.

Even the tank in the water closet had to be filled by bucket every third or so flush, though Elaine had mentioned her father had plans to rework the plumbing upon his return from his latest lecture tour in Europe.

Once the beautiful, nearly new, claw-footed tub had been filled halfway, David stripped off the remainder of his clothes. The water was somewhere between cooland slightly cold, enough of a shock that he sucked in his breath. The contrast to the humid evening heat was too heavenly to resist, however. Settling happily into the tub, he lazily scooped cool water over his chest and shoulders, and splashed some of it up on to his face, scrubbing away the residue of too much perspiration.

Just as he started to feel better, to feel human once again, the bathroom door opened. Startled, David splashed upright, then into a ball, trying to hide his groin from her view. Elaine poked her head around the corner. Her face was redder than the summer heat could account for, and she looked more hesitant than he had ever seen her before. Which wasn’t all that hesitant, for after ascertaining eye contact, she stepped fully into the smallroom.

“Erm. I wrote myself a letter — as you may recall — and in it. ” She hesitated, then reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a small blue square. “Well, it instructed me to take a twenty-dollar bill out of your wallet on the last visit, and to go down to the mini-market to buy some of these. And to bring them back with me to here and now, to be used when you take a cold bath after I suggest you go and palpitate.”

Heat suffused his face. It accompanied a tickle in his chest, which turned into a wry laugh. “No wonder you keep suggesting I should go and palpitate myself! You lascivious little.! Come here,” David ordered, grinning and holding out his hand. She approached and handed him the little condom packet, blushing and smiling. Setting it on the shelf built behind the sloped back of the bath, David gestured at her clothes. “Well? Take everything off! You’ll want to get nice and coolin here before we start heating things up again in the bedroom. And I did say I’d draw enough water for you, too.”

She smiled and blushed, and started unbuttoning her ruffled white blouse. “I feel so N-naughty, doing this. And yet. so free. So future-modern.”

“Whereas I feel so R-randy, and never so grateful for a lack of air conditioning in my life,” David countered, grinning. Uncurling from the last of his protective huddle, he settled against the sloped back of the tub, displaying himself as well as enjoying her half-shy show. Brains, beauty and boldness, all wrapped up in time-travelling papers and quantum-mechanic strings.

She paused in her disrobing, catching sight of his erection under the cool caress of water bathing his flushed skin. The look in her eyes was almost the same one he had seen in that first photograph, that small smile with hints of lascivious pride.

Yes, these are definitely a few of my favourite things.

“Come here, my dear, B-beloved Elaine,” David coaxed as she unfastened her skirt and shimmied her hips, helping her lower garments to drop. “Join me in the tub, and, together, we’ll make some steam.”

Climbing into the tub, Elaine argued, “I’m not so sure that steam should be considered a viable comparison, David. Electricity has so much more potential. Your own era proves my point.”

Rolling his eyes, David pulled her down on top of him. “And I say, steam.”

As their bodies met, his cool and damp from the bathwater, hers warm and sticky with sweat, he silenced her with a thoroughly modern kiss. Not until both of them were once again hot and breathing heavily did he release her.

“All-right, I’ll concede your point. Steam, it is,” Elaine stated, pulling back just long enough to capitulate. She recaptured his lips with another kiss, proving herself as quick a student of passion as she was of everything else. Murmuring against his lips, she slid her hand boldly down his ribs, underneath the waterline. “Lots of lovely S-steam…”