Free Out of the Blue (A Regency Time Travel Romance) by Kasey Michaels Page A

heels.”
    “Hence the female PM,” Marcus cut in, his
expression of dismay almost comical. “How endlessly fascinating. Do
you fight in wars?”
    Cassandra nodded. “In America women do almost
everything in the services, and in some countries women fight in
combat. American women will also go into all areas of combat soon,
if we have our way. After all, if we’re going to have bombs dropped
on us we should be able to fight back, right?”
    “Amazing.” She noticed that the marquess had
taken up a notebook and was busily scribbling in it. “Have you
fought in a war, Cassandra?”
    “No, not unless you count riding the subways.
But we’ll leave war for another time, okay? It would only open
another can of worms, what with smart missiles and nuclear weapons.
Let’s get back to the women of my time. The majority of us don’t
have come-out balls and Seasons and that sort of thing, and we
wouldn’t want them. We go to work, at eighteen, or after college—at
about twenty-two. We pull our own weight. We don’t marry right away
either, at least a lot of us don’t.”
    “Why not? All women wish to make an
advantageous marriage. It is what they are raised to expect. My
sister, Georgina, began planning her marriage in the nursery. Has
marriage fallen out of favor?”
    Cassandra’s head was aching behind her eyes.
This was impossible. She couldn’t possibly explain her lifestyle to
him. Not this morning. Not today. Not in the years and years he
spoke of so glibly. No one could. “No, marriage has not fallen out
of favor. We women still want marriage. But not right away. We have
our careers to consider. Many women don’t get married until they’re
in their thirties, then go on to have children into their
forties.”
    Her last statement seemed to have gotten
Marcus’s full attention so that he stopped as he was about to dip
his pen into the inkwell once more. “Their forties? But that’s
positively ancient! Oh, Sally Jersey may have attempted it,
but—Miss Kelley, I must insist you tell me the truth. It won’t do
either of us any good for you to spite me by spinning fanciful
tales.”
    Cassandra instinctively reached for the
opened pack of cigarettes, then thought better of it. “I am telling you the truth. We’re talking about one hundred and eighty
years of progress here, Marcus. Thanks to modern medicine, people
routinely live into their seventies and eighties. There’s plenty of
time for marriage and children—although my mother has never agreed
with that theory. She insists that I’m destined to be an old maid.
Last summer, on my twenty-fifth birthday, she showed up at my party
dressed all in black, saying she’ll never be a grandmother.”
    “You’re five-and-twenty?” Marcus questioned,
shaking his head. “That won’t do. That won’t do at all. We’ll have
to keep your age our little secret, I’m afraid, as I’ve already
informed my aunt that I wish to launch you into Society next month,
as part of my experiments, you understand. But if Corny finds out
you’re at your last prayers she’ll insist we put you in caps and
seat you with the dowagers. We have been acquainted less than
twenty-four hours, Cassandra, but I am already convinced that your
place is most definitely not among the dowagers.”
    Cassandra finally found something to laugh
about. “Your aunt Cornelia and my mother would get along
swimmingly, Marcus. Of course, your aunt would get a little upset
when my mother started to talk about her idea of my becoming a
single parent, as she has all but given up the idea I’ll ever
marry. She read somewhere that I have as much chance of getting
married as I do of being abducted by little green men from
Mars.”
    Marcus shook his head. “Stop, Cassandra.
Please, stop. This discussion is getting out of hand. We are simply
going to have to form some sort of agenda for speaking of
individual subjects. This random accounting you are spouting is
getting us nowhere at all. Now, if I accept