“I agonized over telling you. I did plan to, first thing in the morning. If I made a mistake, then I made a mistake, and I am sorry for that.”
He nods curtly, and I know I’ve lost ground here. So much ground.
Would I make another choice if I could?
Would I have told Gray in the kitchen if I had a second chance?
No. This hurts—hurts more than it should—but I had to choose between losing Gray’s trust and losing Isla’s, and I wouldn’t throw away hers to gain his.
“I’m hoping you’ll keep me on,” I say. “At least as Catriona the housemaid. Preferably as your assistant, but that’s up to you. I’m stuck here until I can get home, which I will do as soon as I can figure out how.”
“Yes, I am sure we seem very backwards and provincial to you,” he says coolly.
“Not at all. But I have a life there.”
“How old are you?”
“Roughly your age, I think. Thirty.”
“A year younger. You must have family then. A husband. Children.”
“No, and no, and if that seems odd, I’d say to look in a mirror. I’ve got my career, and it takes up a lot of my time. Too much, maybe. But I still have a life in the twenty-first century. My parents, my grandmother, my friends, my job. This is temporary.”
“Of course.”
That silence drops again, and I feel the lead weight of it. I want to keep apologizing, but I know it won’t help. The damage is done, and it won’t be repaired in the next hour. That makes it all the more awkward to have this conversation, where I’m asking to keep living in his house after I’ve done something that feels, to him, like a betrayal of his trust.
No, it feels like a rejection. Duncan Gray does not make friends easily, I’m sure. He’s learned to fortify himself against insult and injury, and he took a chance reaching out and he feels rebuffed. He tentatively opened a door. I didn’t shut it. I did something worse—I ignored it. I walked away as if I hadn’t even seen it open. That’s not what happened, but it’s what it feels like to him.
“While I’m here, though, I’d like to help,” I say. “If I can. Like I said,I’ll play at being a housemaid for a roof over my head and food on the table. If you really do need an assistant, though…”
“And what am I supposed to say to that, Cat—” He stops. “What even is your name?”
“Mallory. Mallory Atkinson.”
“What am I supposed to say to that, Detective Atkinson? That I will not allow you to help me when you obviously can? When you’re ideally suited to help me advance a science I’ve dedicated my life to advancing? What sort of man would that make me?”
“I-I’m sorry. I just meant that I understand you feel…” I struggle for a word that won’t make him close off more, insist he doesn’t feel hurt at all.
I start again. “I lied. Misrepresented myself. Withheld evidence from an investigation. I can defend my choices, but I still acknowledge that I did all that, and so you might not be comfortable working alongside me.”
“I’m not,” he says shortly. “I won’t pretend otherwise. I have been seeing you as a child, a girl trying to better herself. I still see that girl, but instead, she’s a woman of my own age, a professional officer of the law, and she has been that the whole time and I feel…” He inhales, as if steeling himself for an admission. “I feel foolish. I feel I should have stopped long enough to wonder how my housemaid could suddenly read and write and show such aptitude for my studies and detection.”
“Because ‘She’s clearly a time traveler’ isn’t going to be anyone’s first or last guess.” I say it lightly, trying to ease the mood, but his expression doesn’t change.
“Perhaps not, but I feel very discombobulated, and I will need time to adjust to…” He looks at me. Really looks, like he did earlier this evening, when he seemed to see past Catriona to me. This time, he pulls back sharply and shakes his head.
“I will adjust,” he says, his voice still frosty. “In the meantime, I can hardly turn down any assistance you might offer.”
“I’ll be careful,” I say. “I won’t tell you anything about forensic science that could mess up history.”
He shakes his head, relaxing a fraction. “You have an interesting idea of how science works. The other day you mentioned fingerprints. Scientistshavesaid that fingerprints can be identifiers. They’ve studied the phenomenon since before I was born. That does not mean the police arewilling toemployit. I cannot simply pass along whatever you tell me. I would need to prove it, which would take years, and they still would not use it within my lifetime. It could, however, help in investigating Hugh’s cases.”
When I don’t answer, he continues, “You will need to keep the housemaid position, to explain why you are living in the household of an unmarried man. That would be too unseemly for my assistant, even with my sister here. We will not, of course, require you to fulfill those duties.”
“You’ll need to have me do some chores to keep up appearances. Except scrubbing out the chamber pots. Please hire someone else for that.”
Again, I’m trying to lighten the gloom, but he only nods abruptly. “As you wish.”