Chapter Text
The cold morning sneaked under the blanket, nibbling the toes of her bare feet. Of course, she had forgotten to shut the window and it was pretty chilly in the room. The vile alarm clock was screeching its tedious tune, she couldn’t pry her eyelids open, and her head was sinking back into the pillow. Just five minutes, five tiny minutes more. She fell back asleep only to be pulled back into reality by the same perforating electronic sound.
Victoria rolled over and pulled the blanket over her head. She lay like that for a few seconds, perfectly still, pretending she was in a shelter that could hide her from the worries and hustle of the day outside. Then, in an instant, with one determined motion, she threw the warm cozy covers aside and jumped off the bed. “Shit! I’m going to be late again!” she thought in exasperation after shooting a look at the plastic face of the clock that indifferently counted minute after minute.
Five minutes in the shower, fifteen minutes for frantic dressing and make-up — the earring fell somewhere on the carpet, ah, hell, she will look for it later. She found the keys at the last minute, under the side table in the hall — courtesy of the ubiquitous paw of her mischievous tabby Mr. Findus, who loved entertaining himself with his mistress’s things and watching her reaction afterwards from his corner.
She will get a coffee on the way. She has be completely awake, especially today, the day that will determine the fate of her project, her ad campaign for a new toy manufacturing company. Christmas is just around the corner, and the client is prodding her boss who hates it when things aren’t going as planned.
Victoria bounced into the office, leaving the buzzing city behind the door; she downed her coffee in one hasty gulp, she fixed the wayward strands of hair. A quick look in the mirror, a well-practiced smile. She scooped the bulky folder with sketches and drafts from the table, heading for the meeting room where representatives of Small Wonders Inc. were eagerly awaiting.
It was a crazy day, not unlike any other. The disappointed clients rejected yet another idea, she was in one hell of a mood, the boss snarled and grumbled, and all the lunatic passers-by kept running somewhere, getting in her way so it was impossible to flag down a taxi. Finally, exhausted and frustrated, Victoria got to the door of her flat. She pulled out her keys when she suddenly caught a faint but persistent smell of burnt plastic. It did not take her long to figure out the source. She flew up the stairs and banged on her ex’s door.
Albert was home. His bleary eyes made it clear that he had just been roused from a deep and sound sleep. He stared blankly at the young woman’s furious face. The room smelled of burned wire. Victoria jerked all windows open and let her words loose.
“Don’t tell me Peel was here and you were running your insane experiments again!”
“It’s just calculations, spatiotemporal computations. We are one step away from a bombshell! You don’t understand! You never understood!”
Like a resentful petulant child, Albert watched his ex-girlfriend from under a thick lock of hair falling over his eyes. Victoria looked at him thoughtfully. She had loved this genius, this mad scientist once but she realized at some point that she needed more than quantum physics lectures. Admonitions were pointless. Victoria spun on her heel and left his flat, thankful that she had made it to his flat before it was too late, yet again. She had to contact Albert’s mother as soon as possible. She was not going to be the holy trinity of his guardian angel, firefighter and emergency aid anymore.
Once safely in her flat, she immediately dialed the familiar number but Baroness Coburg was busy with one of her usual charity actions that were her biggest passion and nobody answered. Victoria fed her whining pet and lied down on the sofa with a promise to herself not to lounge too long. The new mockup had to be ready by tomorrow or her boss, John Conroy, would make her a whipping boy. Or a whipping girl, to be more accurate, she thought, falling into sleep.
When she woke it was late night. A dreadful storm was raging outside, the rain drumming furious against the windowpanes. The violent wind bent the trees, flashes of lightning split the sky again and again. Findus cuddled against her, his fluffy side warm, and mewled indignantly as she jumped off the sofa. Victoria, you idiot! I'll have to pull an all-nighter again. Will I ever have a good night sleep?! Exasperated, Victoria padded to the kitchen to make some strong coffee.
Suddenly, she heard a terrible racket behind her. Somebody was pounding at her door as if trying to break it into pieces. Victoria instinctively clutched a large kitchen knife in her hand and called out, “Who’s there?”
“Vic, it’s me! Albert! Please, open up! Quickly!”
Cursing her crazy ex-fiancé, Victoria dashed to the door and unlocked it. Albert stumbled out of the raging storm and into the room, panting, hauling someone on his back, both soaked to their skin.
She thought at first that it was Robert Peel, Albert’s closest friend and colleague from the university where they conducted their research. But the man, whom Albert dragged to the sofa and dumped on the cushions with a gasp of effort, turned out to be taller and broader in the shoulders than Professor Peel, who was worn out thin by his laboratory.
The upholstery got wet in a matter of seconds, because water was running in streams off the stranger’s clothes as if he had just been fished out of the river.
Victoria was about to empty out her entire arsenal of swear words. The lunatic had either done somebody in with his experiments or unloaded a drunken buddy on her. However coming up with elaborate epithets and punishments for her cheeky ex took some time, so Albert took that as his chance to speak first.
“Victoria, please, hear me out. Don’t get mad!”
“Yeah, sure! Why would I be mad?” said Victoria acidly, and if looks could kill, the Albert problem would have been solved once and for all that night. “You only have barged into my flat with some passed out bloke and flooded my sofa. Situation normal, isn’t it?”
“I know, I know I had no right to bother you, but he is so heavy, I couldn’t haul him upstairs. I also happen to know you to be a very kind and understanding person.” Albert swallowed nervously meeting her glare and added, “Deep down.”
“Who is he? Is he drunk or should we call 999? Where have you brought him from, pray tell?”
“Can I please tell you everything tomorrow? He is fine, he just needs to recover after… Please, could just put up with us until tomorrow? I’m going to do everything by myself, I just need some dry towels and blankets to put on the floor. The sofa is dripping wet.”
“You’re right about that,” Victoria said testily. “Towels are in the bathroom, and I’ll get the blankets. But I want both of you out of here in the morning!”
She headed for the bedroom, making a mental note that Albert’s stranger was wearing some very odd clothes, as though he had escaped from a costume ball. Victoria waved the thought away — she had to finish the project and the prospect of ending up on the receiving end of Conroy’s trademark dressing-down did not appeal to her.
***
The next morning found her not in her bed but in front of the laptop screen, because she had fallen asleep with her head on a pile of printed out sketches. The idea of Victorian Christmas cards had come to her out of nowhere in the middle of the night when she sat down to work on the project for the toy company. As her phone alarm clock chirped out a loud tune, Victoria lifted her head, already knowing that she would have to drink a gallon of strong coffee today to be alive and kicking.
She quickly got into the shower, feeling with relief that the tingling warm water jets washed the weariness away. Despite the monstrous sleep deprivation, she was in a feisty mood. These snobs from Little Joys better not say her idea wasn’t original. Damn Christmas — everybody makes so much fuss about it! Father Christmas, reindeer, elves and other such nonsense for little kids. She might love this holiday if it wasn’t for certain bleak childhood memories.
After the shower, Victoria came downstairs. Humming something cheerful but not at all Christmassy under her breath, she was about to have coffee in the kitchen — since she was up on time — when she heard a rustle in the living room. Thinking that Albert had forgotten his promise not to bother her with his presence again and swearing she would give him an earful for the last night, she stepped out of the kitchen. But the person in her living room was not her ex-fiancé. The middle-aged man, whom she recognized as the soaked stranger from last night, had obviously recovered enough to have put back on his weird clothes — apparently dried by the thoughtful Albert. He stood in the middle of her living room staring at her with his stern green eyes. He looked confused but he was trying not to show it. When he saw her, he jerked his bushy eyebrows up in surprise and, embarrassed, turned to face the wall. Victoria, who was not used to such a reaction, looked over herself. Nothing was wrong with her — she was wearing her pajamas, a crop top and soft loose pants, and a fluffy robe to protect her from the morning chill.
“Excuse me, young lady. To whom do I have the honor of speaking?” the stranger suddenly asked, turning a little but still resolutely not looking at her.
Victoria hesitated, not knowing what to say. No one had ever spoken to her in this manner. But she quickly composed herself.
“I’d like to ask you the same question.”
“You know my name, and so does your friend, my abductor! You must talk some sense into him, convince him to let me go. The Parliament is meeting today, I shall be missed.”
Right. It's so like Albert to leave her with a lunatic who walks about in the nineteenth century clothes and thinks that he is expected at the Parliament. She has to be careful, who knows what a crazy person could be up to…
“Just a sec, I need to make an important call,” Victoria blurted, stepping back. Her fingers were already dialing Albert’s number.
She retreated to the kitchen and almost yelled as she heard her ex’s voice: “How could you? Why is he still here? Why have you left me alone with this nutjob?”
“Vic, don’t worry! I can explain. Give me a couple more minutes, and I’ll come down to yours. You see, I had to run to the lab for a bit, because my flat has no electricity after last night… Well, you already knew that.”
“You’d better hurry up, Albert, or I’m calling the police!”
Trying to get her bearings, she went back to her bedroom, locked the door and quickly got dressed. She pulled her hair into a tight pony-tail, took the folder with her sketches and her bag, and glanced at the clock, disappointed. No time for coffee.
Albert was waiting downstairs with a laptop in his hand. Behind him, like a living stage set, loomed a tall figure in an old-fashioned shirt and breeches. The stranger was pacing the room, clearly not in a good mood. Victoria watched her uninvited guests in alarm, promising herself to reach the Baroness at all costs and ask her to take Albert under her wing.
“I’m so sorry, Vic, I can’t work in my flat — the electrician will come to fix the wiring, but not before two. And this is a matter of life and death. I have to fix what I’ve done, the sooner the better.”
“And what have you done this time, Albert? Was there an error in your calculations or not enough of, what do you call them, spatiotemporal computations?” Victoria asked tartly.
“You will think I’m mad if I tell you, but trust me, this is a scientific breakthrough! I just didn’t think it’d go this far.”
Only then did she register Albert’s pale face and the feverish gleam in his eyes, as if he saw a live dinosaur in the center of London.
“I'm running late, the boss will kill me if I’m not there on time. But when I get back, I’d better not find the two of you here!”
Victoria shut the door of her flat with a loud bang. Why does Albert always get his way? she thought angrily.