Excerpt: Bane of Toads

Chapter One
In which Hopes Are Crushed and Visitors Enflamed

"I can not like this," Lady Margaret sighed, "but I suppose you are obligated. Was he really so much help to us?"
Emma Quarterpath nodded. "I asked him for information and he gave me what he could. So I do have to help get this balloon off the ground. What he does with it is his concern, including whether or not he has the showmanshp to make it a crowd-pleaser. Though I think ascents are still enough of a novelty to pull a crowd in any case."
Lady Margaret rose from her elegant lounge on the Roman couch. "I do hate to give him any countenance, but I ought to go--"
"Oh, ;lease don't if you dislike it!"
"--for the sake of your reputation, to ascertain that he at least acts sufficiently the gentleman."
Emma laughed. "Francis Barrett? From his writing, on a good day he's a neuter, ranging out to woman-hater."
"It doesn't matter if all he likes are boys, only that as the older lady you are staying with I have made, as it were, a tour of inspection."
With a frown, Emma shook her head. "My apologies. It's just very hard for me to think in terms of 'reputation.' People don't care about one's private life, except perhaps as entertainment as gossip. I thought as a widow I got greater freedom of action."
"You are not grey-haired and grandmotherly! As a young widow, and you look a very young one, it means you will not have to bring a chaperone every visit you make. Your maid should be sufficient companion then--only do not send her off on errands. Her purpose is to be with you."
"Thank you. I might have forgotten."
"The twenty-second century would be so strange a place for me. You did not quite cover some matters of change in our earliest conversations."
"I wasn't going to be here long."
"I so regret having separated you from your family and your life."
"Lemonade." In their six months together, Emma had already taught her friend and patroness the adage about being handed lemons. "Do you know, this may be over sooner than you fear? He may get fed up--"
"Weary of, disgusted with."
"Right." Acquire period upper-class speech habits, lose the twentieth century idiom. "He may grow so weary of being corrected by anyone, least of all a mere woman, that he bids me thanks and goodbye forever after only a few meetings."
"Why do you think it will be so bad?"
"Fascination with his work is what got me studying alchemy in my teens. But alchemy's only good where it's magic or where it is science manqué. He's not at all a good chemist, so his attempts to generate lift gas fail. Three tries, no flights."
"What will it change, I wonder, if he does get airborne?"
This was their running game, since Emma didn't see why the Prime Directive had to apply to time-travelers, since time was obviously not monolineal in terms of the quantum plenum. "Possibly nothing changes. I don't think every butterfly sneeze starts a tornado. But let's see--he spends more time on chemistry and actually makes some advances. He spends more time on balloons and doesn't write his opus on scrying--which didn't see print anyway until the twenty-first century, but who know who saw the manuscript and learned from it?"
"How does--did he die? Perhaps that changes and he lives longer to learn and write more."
"We had neither birth date nor death date for him. The joke among occultists is, 'Well, maybe he *didn't* die!' Or that Francis Barrett is just the latest identity for some immortal alchemist like St. Germaine."
"Oh, you should ask Count Rémy about him. I believe St. Germaine was a dinner guest in his family."
Emma got a tickly shiver up the back of her neck at the thought of the count. "I must! Ihad no idea--but then I've had little time to investigate occult history with so much to learn." Her turn to sigh. "Am I ever going to be fit for grown-up company?"
"Yes, I think you will be. Except for a near-blindness on the matter of what apparently innocent acts may mar a reputation, you are doing well. You no longer look appalled at the number of dishes at table, you converse well and vivaciously--I think your time at émigré houses helps there--and your dancing is light and graceful."
"There are so many to remember, but I think that very idea has finally sunk in, that dancing is much more varied and challenging here."
"I have noticed your memory of them improving."
"It's just like remembering what words go with the tune."
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