Madman's Dance (Time Rovers #3)(84)

Morrisey sat next to her. “I don’t think he can. I think it has something to do with you.”

Me? “You mean if I do go back, it will resolve?”

“Perhaps, but not necessarily the way we would like.”

Which meant Keats might die no matter what. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” she murmured. “How ugly can it get?”

Morrisey went quiet. He doesn’t know for sure.

“No clue?”

“If this disconnect becomes firmly embedded in the timeline, it will methodically rumble forward. What sort of changes would occur?” He shrugged at his own question. “Time travel may not exist as we know it. You…me…we may never have been born.”



Then I have no choice.

“Jacynda…”

Their eyes met. She saw the desperate plea in them. “I would argue that you’re not entirely whole yet.”

Cynda agreed. Someone had dropped her box of puzzle pieces and there were a number of them that had vanished under the furniture for eternity. In all likelihood, this was as good as it was going to get.

“The clock is running,” she told him. “TPB will eventually realize I’m a lot more with it than they think. I can’t go on fooling the shrinks forever.”

“I have connections. There are places you can hide where they won’t find you.”

And have them throw you in jail?

“I’ve been thinking about this: I’ll go back to the night Nicci was killed and intercept Keats before he gets to my hotel room. I will insist we go somewhere public, where he’s known, so he’s seen by a number of people during the time Nicci dies. He won’t meet with Flaherty, go on trial, or be up for the noose.”

“Sounds too simple.” Morrisey rubbed his forehead in thought. “You might meet yourself. That can be very disconcerting.”

“You’ve done it?” Cynda asked. To her knowledge, he’d only made a couple of time trips to deliver information to her in ’88.

Morrisey shook his head. “Harter has. Said it was very…” He struggled for a word.

“Creepy?”

“Exactly.”

“Does it cause any harm to the timeline?”

“Not that we can tell,” Morrisey replied. “You should still avoid it.”

Fulham appeared in the doorway to the solarium. “The post has arrived—from Victorian London.” He held out a letter. And something else. “Apparently you left this behind, and the doctor felt you would want it.”



She’d know that furry face anywhere. “Fred!” She leapt to her feet and snatched him out of Fulham’s hands. “Fred,” she repeated, squishing the stuffed animal in an enthusiastic embrace.

The assistant bent over and whispered something in Morrisey’s ear. He gave a curt nod. “Tell Klein we’ll be ready very soon.”

Impatiently, Cynda tore open the letter and immersed herself in Alastair’s flowing penmanship, Fred in her lap. The first couple of paragraphs were full of the doctor’s supreme delight at hearing of her improvement. Then his tone turned dark when he wrote about Keats.

She heard Morrisey’s throat clearing, and knew what he wanted.

“He writes, ‘All seem to be against him, except for a loyal few. Lord Wescomb’s second, Mr. Kingsbury, performed a masterful job of defending Keats, but the end result is that he has been found guilty of Nicola Hallcox’s murder. Wescomb is profoundly upset, dismayed at being unable to navigate the vicious politics that swirl around our friend like a maelstrom. You may well wonder why Kingsbury was in charge of the case: his lordship, Keats’ staunchest defender, was nearly assassinated the other night in what can only have been a bid to ensure conviction.’ ”

Cynda looked up at Morrisey and saw a troubled expression.

“That’s not in Wescomb’s timeline,” he said. “Things are starting to unravel faster than even I had anticipated.”

She returned to the letter. “‘I truly fear the worst. I beg of you, if there is anything you can do to save him please do so, history be damned.’ ”

“History be damned?” she repeated. “Sounds like it already is.”

Cynda handed over the letter, knowing Morrisey would want to study it further. One of the butterflies swirled around her. She set Fred aside and followed it a few feet until it landed on a nearby flower. It fanned its purple iridescent wings as it drank deeply of the nectar.



You don’t care about the future, do you? You just live in the now. Wish we could.

There was a rustle of paper being folded. She found Morrisey studying her intently.

“Klein says if you’re going, you need to leave within the next twenty-four hours. TPB is getting edgy. He thinks they know you’re better off than we’ve been letting on.”

“You kept them off my tail longer than I expected.”

A weary shrug. “He wants you to depart from their facility, not ours.”

“Why?”

“Harder to track, for one.”

“Where else would I go but ’88? Why cloak ’n dagger it?”

“Klein has his reasons. So far, he’s played straight with us. I would suggest we do as he asked.”