Free Byron's Child by Carola Dunn

attractive, was she? Jodie thought. Somehow she had pictured the physicist as middle-aged, dumpy, and most certainly bespectacled. Of course Giles was only keen to see her again because of her knowledge—but keen he undoubtedly was.
    “How do I go about sending her a message that we would like to call tomorrow morning?” he was asking.
    “Write a note and send one of the footmen with it,” Charlotte advised. “Tell him to wait for an answer.”
    “Is nine o’clock all right, Jodie?” Giles asked.
    Charlotte shook her head. “It is not proper to pay morning calls before eleven. Mrs. Brown may be dancing half the night away tonight, for all we know.”
    Giles looked startled at the idea. Jodie found his incredulity consoling. At least his image of Cassandra was not of a beautiful young woman enjoying the amusements of London.
    A sudden thought struck Jodie. “Dancing! Charlotte, if you are to chaperone me to balls, I must learn your dances. I refuse to be a wallflower.”
    “Unthinkable,” said Roland gallantly.
    “I shall teach you,” Emily promised, her brown eyes sparkling. “We shall start tomorrow. Roland, will you help me demonstrate the steps? And then partner Jodie while she practises? Oh, it will be such fun going to balls with Jodie, will it not, Charlotte?”
    Charlotte agreed, unoffended by the implication that going to balls without Jodie had been less than fun.
    Later that evening she confided to Jodie that when they were in London in the autumn she had been too unsure of herself to give her sister-in-law the support she needed. “Emily is right,” she said. “We shall go on much better with you to show us the way. You may not be conversant with all our odd customs, but you are so—so intrepid.”
    Jodie’s supply of intrepidity ran low that night. Lying wakeful in her bed, her feet on a hot brick wrapped in flannel, she felt very far from home.
    She listened to the watch calling the hours, the occasional clop of hooves and rumble of wheels as a carriage passed in the street: sounds more alien than any she had heard at night at Waterstock. Besides, she had known Waterstock Manor, however briefly, in her own time. The very house itself had been a link with the future. Here in the great city Giles was more than ever her only lifeline, and Giles cared for nothing but his theories and Cassandra Brown.
    Would she ever see Mom and Dad again?
    Don’t be silly, she told herself sharply. Feeling sorry for herself would get her nowhere. She decided to read for a while to take her mind off her worries. Dinah, who had unpacked for her, had put the biography of Ada Byron beside her bed. Now there was someone with real problems.
    It was not as easy as reaching out to turn on the bedside lamp. She had blown out her candle hours ago. There was a box of lucifers on the dressing table, with the little bottle of oil of vitriol needed to ignite them. And that, according to Giles, was concentrated sulfuric acid. Not something to be messed with in the dark. Nor did she think she could strike a spark with the tinderbox in the dark.
    Emily had said that a lamp was always left burning on the landing. Shivering, Jodie slipped out of bed and felt for her slippers and wrapper. Carrying the unlit candle in its holder, she tiptoed out of her chamber. Yes, there was the lamp, turned down low, with a jar of spills beside it.
    There was also a line of light under the door of Giles’s chamber. Talking to Giles would be even better than reading. Jodie tapped on the door.
    “Come in.” His voice was tired and abstracted.
    She opened the door, stepped in, closed it softly behind her. The room was chilly, the fire of banked sea-coal barely flickering. In a brown velvet dressing gown, Giles was sitting at a small table, his inevitable sheaf of papers before him. He continued to write for a moment before he looked up.
    “What is it, Jodie?”
    “I can’t sleep. I thought we could talk for a while.” She saw that his eyes were