I lift his fingers to my own cheek, feeling his touch and leaning into it. “And that this is real.”
“It is.” He cups my cheek and bends to brush his lips to mine. He looks into my eyes. “Thisis real. We are real. What we feel, what we share, my love for you.”
“And mine for you,” I whisper. “I said once that it was frightening, and it still is sometimes. But it’s real. That is what matters.” I put my arms around his neck and pull him down with me. “It is all wonderfully, impossibly real, and I could not want anything more.”
We sleep until nine,which does not sound overly late, but we were not out overly late, either. Last night, when we returned to the hotel, there was a note asking us to text Helen when we woke so that a coffee tray might be delivered. We do so, and it is there within minutes, along with a plate of fruit and pastries, and a promise that breakfast will follow.
I could very much get used to this. It is rather like having house staff, except with the added privacy of not needing to worry about dressing before they bring the morning meal. Nicolas threw on his dressing gown to fetch the coffee tray and then discarded it to return to bed.
The tray holds both tea and coffee, which I appreciate. Nicolas is most fond of coffee, having grown up on it. To me, it was foul stuff that August drank. As I discovered, that was because the foul stuff was all we could obtain in our region and time. Nicolas has introduced me to true coffee, and that is what is delivered. I will have some, and then I will have some tea. It is indeed a rare decadence.
We lounge in bed, naked, eating and drinking and talking, when I suddenly bolt upright.
“Dick Turpin.” I twist to Nicolas. “I have forgotten about Dick Turpin.”
“I am certain he does not mind. The dead rarely do.”
I swat Nicolas’s thigh. “You would not say that if you had the Sight.”
“Ah, yes. I stand corrected. Still, unless that ghost could have been Turpin...”
“No. Which means that Mr. Turpin will indeed not mind, but I still need to read that internet story, in case I can help the young man.”
I reach for the phone, which we plugged in before bed, on Bronwyn’s strict instructions. I am also rather pleased with myself for mentally using the phrase “plugged in” as if I am someone who has grown up in a world where one does such things.
I take the phone, and I find the screen I need, but it is blank. At the top, there are the letters I inserted, but the screen only says that I am “not connected to the internet.”
“Oh no,” I whisper. “I ought to have read it sooner. It has disappeared.”
I show Nicolas. He lifts a finger and then slides from bed and returns with a card covered in plastic. It bears instructions, labeled “How to Connect to Wi-Fi.”
“That is what the young man called it,” he says. “Wi-Fi,non?”
“You are a genius.”
Another lift of his finger as he takes the phone. “Do not proclaim me such yet,crécerelle. The instructions presume that one is familiar with the operation of the phone. Let me see if I can remember what he seemed to do.”
It takes a few minutes, but soon Nicolas figures it out. I am most envious, and I remind myself that I must pay more attention. I am caught up in the wonders of this world, which is all very fine, but when someone is doing a thing I do not understand—be it crossing the street or hailing a cab or “connecting to Wi-Fi”—it behooves me to emulate Nicolas and study the method as best I can.
This may be the city I grew up in, but it is still a foreign land. I ought to treat it as such and pay attention to the customs so that I am not floundering and constantly asking for help, which is not like me at all.
I take the phone as he hands it to me.
“I believe you must enter those letters again,” he says. “There is paper and a pen. Wait so I may copy them out.”
He gets that, and I read the letters, but rather than enter them, I press a little symbol that looks like a circle with an arrow. To my delight, it does exactly what I hoped it would, and the page returns as it was, the article ready for us.
I read it aloud, and with each word, I realize just how much my view of the highwayman was formed by fiction and legend. In my defense, it is not as if I had developed a keen interest in Dick Turpin. If I had, I’d have gone in search of factual accounts. Instead, it was rather like the stories of King Arthur or Queen Boudicca. I enjoyed all those legends as legends, with little thought to what lay behind them.
What lies behind the legend of Dick Turpin is an entirely different man. I expected the account to be much like the book Nicolas might have inspired had I only met him in passing and inflated and expanded upon the little I knew of his exploits. Nicolas himself would still be the heroic figure he is. That is not at all the case with Dick Turpin. Instead, it is as if Nicolas told me about an ignominious scoundrel on his privateering crew, and I took inspiration from the story, elevating that person to hero, when he was quite another thing altogether.
In my mind, the legend of Dick Turpin muddles together into a vague narrative, but he was clearly a Robin Hood sort, not unlike Nicolas, who helped a fishing village in their battle against a tyrannical lord. Any crimes that Nicolas committed were required to provide food and other relief to the villagers.
While nothing in the legends suggested Turpinonlyrobbed to give to the poor, they did say he targeted the wealthy and would provide for the poor as needed. Not a knight errant, but a decent enough man. A gentleman thief and a dashing romantic figure much admired by the ladies, whom he always treated chivalrously.
According to the legend, when Turpin was about to be caught, he rode his horse, Black Bess, two hundred and fifty miles, just ahead of his pursuers. The poor beast eventually died of exertion, and he was taken captive. He was tried at York and condemned to hang, much to the dismay of his ardent supporters.
The truth bears but the most passing resemblance to this tale. Yes, Turpin was a highwayman. Yes, he was executed. Those are the only facts that match the story.