"I think I should sell it." Victoria stared at the diamond bracelet in her hand. It had been an heirloom of the royalty in her own time, so it wasn't truly hers to sell. But it would undoubtedly fetch them tens of thousands of pounds in this time. She turned over her shoulder, and as Melbourne buttoned up his shirt, he shrugged and said,
"We still have plenty of money, Ma'am. Months' worth. And there's... well, I did a little research on my iPhone about credit cards. They say they have a credit card on file here. When I went downstairs today to add twenty days to our reservation, they said that 'the card cleared without a problem.' So I did not have to pay for that in notes. I only wish I knew who had put the credit card here in the first place."
"Well, until we know," Victoria said, rotating the diamond bracelet a little, "I'll keep this in the safe. It would buy us more time."
"But we are trying to get home," he said very firmly from behind her. Victoria sighed and put the bracelet into the safe. They'd spent the day at the library again, searching through shelves of books in an unsuccessful search for anything resembling the book that had sent them here. They'd managed to complete a search on Melbourne's iPhone for the book, just before the iPhone had lost its life. They'd figured out how to use a cord to breathe life back into the device, and then they'd come to the realisation that there had never been any such book as The Perils of Modernity. Whatever force had planted it in Victoria's library had created it, it seemed.
Now Victoria had pulled on a flared-skirt blue dress, a new confection she'd bought at a shop near the hotel. She stepped into her high heeled black shoes and murmured quietly,
"I will not marry Albert."
"I do not suppose we ought to discuss that until we are home again," Melbourne said, almost angrily. She turned to frown at him, and as he played with the cuff of his shirt, he shook his head and said gently, "I have no desire to argue with you, Ma'am."
That was fair enough, Victoria supposed. They'd argued before, the two of them, and it had never ended well. There was no room here for discord. They needed to stick together. She knew how he felt; he thought that she would need to go home and live the life story they'd read about on the mysterious new devices. Victoria knew in her mind that she would not do it. But she would not argue.
She used her comb to pull her long hair into a sleek, gathered style atop her head that she'd seen some women wearing. Her hair seemed so very long for this time, and she said from the bathroom,
"Perhaps I ought to cut my hair to be more like theirs."
Melbourne appeared at the doorway and shook his head.
"Do you not think Miss Skerrett will wonder what's happened to your hair when you go home, Ma'am?"
There he was again, saying things that made her unhappy. Victoria pinched her lips and arranged her hair into the high style, which fell long and smooth down her back, and she asked,
"How do I look?"
"Beautiful," Melbourne said simply, surprising Victoria. He seemed a little sheepish then as he whispered, "You're always beautiful."
She stared into his green eyes and remembered dancing with him at her Coronation Ball. The feel of his hands on her then had been far more intoxicating than the Champagne. She'd wanted him that night, so very badly. Now she had him. She had him nearby. She'd awoken curled up against him. She'd had him inside of her the night before. Somehow, it still wasn't enough.
"I want to go back to that dancing club," she said. "The... the disco, they call it. I want to go back there and dance with you."
"I'll need more than a little whiskey before I can move like that, Ma'am," Melbourne smiled, and she nodded.
"Good. Lots of whiskey, then."
He was two tumblers of whiskey and two bottles of beer into the night before Victoria finally took his hand and slurred,
"Enough waiting and drinking. I want to dance with you."
Melbourne let himself be pulled off the stool at the bar, and he plopped down some cash to cover the cost of their drinks. Victoria stumbled a little as she made her way through the loud space to the crowded dance floor. This wasn't like any dancing Melbourne had ever done. These people were either moving entirely alone, swaying rather awkwardly to the beat of the thudding music, or gyrating against one another in a sort of simulated sex act. This was nothing like a waltz.
Victoria slid her arms up around Melbourne, like a few of the other women had done to men far younger than him. He put his own hands on her waist and dared to slide his fingers around to her backside, shocked by his own gall. Victoria's eyes went wide, but she nodded and took a half step toward him. She started to move, flush with his body, her own slithering motions making everything come alive inside of him.
"I love you," he whispered, knowing that she couldn't hear him. He wasn't even sure why he'd said it to himself. Perhaps something about the bright lights or the pounding music or the alcohol had pulled the words out of him. But Victoria shook her head in confusion, and as they moved, Melbourne bent down and said right beside her ear, "I am in love with you."
He did not pull away, but he felt her breath quicken on his cheek. Her arms tightened around him, and for some reason he put his mouth to hers right there in front of everyone. No one seemed to notice, much less care, that he was curling his tongue into her mouth and pulling her bottom lip between his teeth. Finally he stood up, dizzy and drunk and confused, and he shut his eyes and just listened to the music.
Her hands were all over him then. She was petting his chest, rubbing at his hip, and he wanted her so badly he could hardly breathe. She could not marry Albert. They would go home somehow, and she would be dressed up in her corsets and gowns and she would walk down the aisle of a church to marry her cousin Albert.
He could not let that happen.
Now that he had had her, he had no idea whatsoever how he was meant to let her go.
"Why didn't you stop me... after the fourth drink?" Victoria moaned pitifully and staggered into the hotel bathroom. She gagged a little and thought she might be sick, thinking distantly that at least their flushing toilets would allow her to quickly rid herself of the vomit. She gagged again and gripped the edge of the toilet, feeling the room spin.
"I'm sorry," she heard him say from behind her. "I ought... ought to have far more control than that."
She turned and looked at him over her shoulder, and she asked in a blurry voice,
"Were you... afraid of dancing?"
"Yes," he admitted. Victoria smiled weakly.
"I think you did a marvelous job of it, Lord M."
A half hour later, they'd managed to squirm out of their clothes and get pyjamas on, and Victoria pulled herself up against Melbourne's bare chest, singing quietly against his skin,
"The North Wind doth blow, and we shall have snow, and what will the robin do then? Poor thing..."
She trailed off, far too drunk to continue, and finally she heard Melbourne's gravelly voice finish the nursery rhyme.
"He'll sit in a barn and keep himself warm and hide his head under his wing. Poor thing."
"Did you mean it?" Victoria murmured, remembering distantly the way he'd bent down and said something very significant in the dance club. She'd kept moving against him, sure she'd heard him wrong. Now he did not answer her. He just stroked at her hair and kissed her forehead, and he said very gently,
"Even when we go home, Ma'am, I shall stay by your side as long as I am able."
"Forever, then," Victoria said, shutting her eyes. Melbourne did not answer that at all, and she knew he'd drifted off to sleep, carried away by the alcohol and the dancing and the night.
When she woke, it was still cerulean outside, not quite dawn. She sat up slowly, her head pounding like a war drum. She was desperately thirsty, so she went to the bathroom and filled up a little glass with water from the basin. She drank four glasses' worth, far more thirsty than she'd anticipated being. The water was clean and cold, and Victoria could not get enough of it. After awhile, she went back out into the bedroom and saw Melbourne propped up on one elbow. He nodded at her and said in a bleary voice,
"Good morning, Your Majesty. I meant what I said."
Her mouth fell open, and she trembled a little where she stood. She just nodded and whispered,
"You know I have loved you for a long while now. I can not go home and pretend otherwise."
"I know," he said simply. Victoria crawled slowly into the bed and let him kiss her cheek, and he lamented,
"I only wish I'd been sober when I'd told you."
"You're sober now," Victoria said, and Melbourne scratched his hair as he smirked,
"Sort of, Ma'am."
She laughed a little and stroked at his scruffy face. "Will you say it now anyway?"
"I do love you." He shut his eyes and seemed to be envisioning something. "I knew it the last time you and I rode out together. I could feel it then, deep in my veins, but I couldn't say it. I could never say it there. I could never, ever tell you at home. Not ever."
"But we are not at home," Victoria whispered, and Melbourne opened his eyes as he agreed,
"No, Ma'am. We are somewhere else entirely. We are among iPhones and Black Cabs and the worst sort of dancing, and so I think I have the liberty to think it. To say it."
"I will not marry Albert," Victoria insisted, not caring if she sparked a fight. But he did not argue. He just licked his bottom lip and nodded once.
"All right, Ma'am."
Author's Note: Oh, dear. It seems like they've hit a bit of a turning point. They're getting awfully comfortable in the modern world, and awfully comfortable with one another, and awfully uncomfortable with the biography Victoria is known to have had. Will they ever wind up back in 1839, and if so, how will Victoria change her destiny? Thanks as always for reading. This is the last update for a little while, so please do review if you get a quick moment.