A/N: Yay writer's block (and busy lives) – not. If the next couple of chapters seem forced, that's because they are. Alayna82, thank you for providing the much-needed kick in my backside with your hopeful story alert subscription.

Third Intermission

Smiling broadly, Jared and Rose watched Jack flash out to wherever he was planning to pick up his "pile of gold", Byzantine Rose reluctantly clutching his arm. The pair then turned to watch the monitors – a move that was in danger of becoming routine – but Rose found herself looking sideways at Jared, instead. He caught her look. "What?"

Smiling slightly, Rose shook her head, then admitted softly, "It's nice to see you finally trusting Jack."

He thought a moment, then shook his head in return. "I've always trusted him. It's just that... now I actually like him." His smile turned wry as he added, "Eleven-eighty-seven," and she snorted. He'd been keeping a mental catalog of the differences he discovered between himself and the Doctor, attributable to his half-human side and Donna's influence. How he remembered the count, she didn't know, but he hadn't missed once as far as she could tell.

The displays caught their eyes again, the timeline traces of Byzantine Rose's world rippling back into violet existence alongside Alpha and Celtic Rose's. "Yes!" cried Rose, and sighs of relief came from the others waiting, banishing the specter of Corvantes derailing the previous attempt once again. Rose turned back to Jared and asked again, "Who's next?", as giddy as she'd ever been, wanting to keep the momentum going.

Two jumps ahead as usual, Jared was already running through the program, picking up the right jumper and turning to the waiting Roses. Reich Rose, he saw, was still watching sourly from her perch, and he wondered briefly how she was going to handle her turn. Then he put her out of his mind to smile broadly at the next adventuress, picked out by the sonic.

"You are!" he told her – but then the woman beside her sighed in frustrated disappointment.

The next Rose turned to her. "Do you want to go next?" she volunteered.

"No," came the reply. "It's OK... I'm just anxious to get home. But it's going quickly. Go ahead," she demurred, stepping back a pace.

"OK, if you're sure..." She turned back to Jared. "Where am I going?"

Jared waited a beat. "Ever hear of King Henry the Eighth?"

A head shake. "No... Should I have?"

"No reason to, for you. For us... there were six reasons." Swinging back briefly, Jared fished out the next book from the stack and handed it to the traveler. She looked at the cover. The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Eyebrows flaring, she blinked back at Jared.

"Fifteen-oh-nine, eighteen-year-old Henry the Eighth ascended the throne of England and married Catherine of Aragon from Spain," he began briefing her, while she sat in one of the tech's chairs. "Over the next ten years, she was pregnant five or six times – we're not sure how many – but only one child lived more than two months: a girl, the future Queen Mary. Some time after that, desperate for a male heir and having fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, Henry starts an long chain of events that changed the world, just to get his divorce. That's in this history, of course.

"In yours, one of the male infants of Henry and Catherine survived, and grew up to become Henry the Ninth. No King Edward, Queen Mary, or Elizabeth, no divorce and five other wives, and apparently no split from the Catholic Church – although I couldn't tell that through the Cannon. Is there a Church of England in your world?"

Rose shook her head. "Never heard of it." Uninterested, she immediately returned to the focus. "So, what, you're telling me I have to prevent the death of a baby prince or something? How am I supposed to do that?" Her voice wasn't quite sarcastic – but this sure didn't sound as exciting as the others had been.

"We-e-ell," Jared considered, "The most logical thing to do would be to smuggle back some modern vaccines and immunize the kid."

"And you just happen to have some in your pocket, right?"

Jared started to speak, then shut his mouth with a pop. "No," he admitted.

"I could get some," came a new voice, and all of them turned to stare at its owner: Joel, the tech. "My brother's a doctor here in town, a pediatrician. Give me... half an hour? Unless you want me to use one of those things to get back faster?" He waved a hopeful hand at the time jumpers.

"No, that's OK," the next traveler told him, jumping in. "Half an hour is fine." She turned back to Jared, crossing her arms with a mulish air, a firm glint in her eyes that brooked no refusal. "Because I'm not going anywhere until you teach me how to use that jumper. Really teach me, not just preprogram a button."

^..^

It actually took Joel almost an hour, but he finally returned with a compact reusable syringe, a pack of needles, and several small, individual cartridges of all-in-one newborn vaccine that covered the entire range of preventable diseases. The delay worked out fine, as Jared was able to give all four remaining Roses (including his own) enough instruction for them to use their jumpers reasonably reliably, albeit warily. "Time is much easier to manage than space – if you can, always just jump from time to time in the same location," he stressed, but showed them how to roughly calculate some distance, as well. "Luckily, these things come equipped with failsafes that prevent you from trying to materialize inside solid objects."

"Now you tell me," his Rose muttered.

Tudor Rose, as she'd been mentally dubbed, tucked Joel's small package away in a pocket, then turned to Jared. "Anything else I need to know?"

"Of course, Tudor English isn't quite the same as modern, but you should be able to get by. The main characters all speak other languages, as well. Speak any French?"

"Un petit peu," came the immediate reply.

"Spanish?"

"Un poco," again, matter-of-fact.

"Latin?"

"There you've got me," Tudor Rose smiled. "Actually, I only know a few phrases in a few languages – enough to wrestle with a waiter or a shop clerk. Don't worry, though – I'll get by." She left it at that, confident in her own abilities. "What else?"

Jared wasn't so convinced, but then... Look at what his own Rose had accomplished. He shook his shoulders and went on to the main problem.

"I'm not completely sure which infant it was that survived. The first boy was the one who lived the longest in our world, almost two months, and was christened Henry, so it's reasonable to assume it was him. That's when I'm sending you to."

She nodded. "Still can't believe I'm doing this..."

Jared gazed at her in silent appraisal for several seconds, catching her attention. "What?" she asked.

"I'm just not certain about this, either. Are you sure you don't want some help? We could wait for Jack to get back."

"Where is Jack?" Alpha Rose put in. "He should have been back by now."

Jared shrugged. "Probably a slight bit of time differential between the parallels – like we found before between Alpha and Beta. He'll be back, don't worry." He turned back to Tudor Rose, but she forestalled his repetition with a perplexed query.

"Why would I need help?"

"Because you're not just dealing with the baby, you're dealing with Henry and Catherine, and all the rest of the court. And Henry's no pushover. Look..." Jared blew out a breath. "Henry was a womanizer who had many mistresses, aside from all those later wives. Are you sure you can handle this?"

Tudor Rose stared at him, eyes bugging out, then startled them all by bursting out in broad, helpless laughter. Mystified, Jared and his Rose glanced at each other, then back at her, as she struggled to get herself under control.

Still catching her breath between giggles, she raised a placating hand. "Not a problem," was all she said.

Jared still wasn't sure. "Rose," he began, but she cut him off.

"Oh, no, please. I'm sorry – no offense," she said quickly to her alpha double, "but I actually don't care for that name. I never use it."

"Oh," said Jared, unexpectedly nonplussed. "What should we call you, then?"

The traveler picked up "her" book again, laughing at the pictures on the cover of the lecherous old king and his six hapless queens.

"Well, under the circumstances," was her mysterious, smiling reply, "I guess you'd better call me Belle."

.

A/N: don't worry/get your hopes up (strike as appropriate); I'm not going to write any graphic scenes. You'll have to rewatch your Secret Diary of a Call Girl DVDs to fill in the gaps.