Read Online Time Rovers 03 Madman's Dance by Jana G Oliver - Free Book Online

meeting. In truth, he’d met her son first, as the lad lay in a street with a broken leg. His tending the boy had cost him his position with Dr. Hanson who had long frowned on his charity work. Despite Hanson’s theory that the poor were indolent and gin-soaked wretches, he’d found Mrs. Butler to be a hardworking woman. She’d already lost a husband and two other children to illness and that had bred a tenacity for survival.
    “You bought a house?” she asked wistfully.
    “No, no,” he replied. “I’m only a tenant. I cannot afford a house of my own.”
    She stared at him with open-mouthed incomprehension. The concept of possessing even enough funds to rent a house was beyond her ken.
    Davy, now all of twelve, understood immediately.
    “You need a maid,” he said brightly.
    Alastair beamed. The lad was always quick on the uptake.
    “Actually, I’ll need a housekeeper, and I want you, Mrs. Butler, if you’re willing.”
    Her eyes widened further. “Me?”
    “Yes. The house is very pleasant. Eight rooms, plus space for my clinic. I know your health is not strong enough to handle everything, so I will allocate funds to hire a maid-of-all-work to do the heavy tasks.”
    Mrs. Butler blinked, her mind clearly awhirl. “A whole house? Near the train station?”
    “Yes. Reuben…Dr. Bishop assures me that most of the street’s residents are of a decent nature. I would not bring you or your son into a situation that was not to your liking.”
    Mrs. Butler’s attention roamed around the one-room Bury Street hovel in which they lived. Mold laced its way down one wall, and the single broken window had a rag stuffed in it to keep out the cold. Loathsome things lived inside the walls. Alastair could hear shouts from some brawl above them.
    “You make it sound like a palace,” she said dreamily.
    “To me, as well,” Alastair replied, though in truth he had grown up in a house much like the one he’d just rented. “You will have Sundays off. I promise you will find me not a demanding master.”
    “I…”
    “Mum,” Davy urged. “We can’t stay here. Not with the landlord pushin’ you all the time.”
    “Your landlord has been bothering you again?” Alastair asked, hackles rising.
    “He’s always sayin’ he’ll lower the rent if she goes with him. When she tells him no, he raises it again.” The glower on Davy’s face told Alastair that one of these days the landlord would find himself on the wrong side of the young man’s fists.
    “All the more reason you need to move, Mrs. Butler. I am offering you thirty-five pounds per year, room and board. You will have your own room, which is much bigger than this one.”
    “Thirty-five,” she repeated, astonished.
    “All right then, make it forty,” Alastair responded, feeling generous. “I will pay the first month in advance, as I know you will have expenses for the move.”
    “Dear God, that’s a fortune.”
    “Well, what do you say?” Alastair pressed.
    “Yes.” Mrs. Butler wrapped her son in a tight embrace. Then she broke into tears.
    ~••~••~••~
     
    The moment the transfer effect began to stabilize, Copeland knew he’d find the Ascendant on his knees, head bowed reverentially. What else would a Victorian make of those whirls of light and that odd sound, especially if he was at all religious?
    He couldn’t restrain a grin. Damn, I love this job.
    Sure enough, there was Hezekiah Grant, prostrate in awe as if his visitor were a god or something. From Copeland’s perspective, Grant had three things going for him. First, he lived in an unstable time period. Second, he was the leader of the shape-shifters. Third, he was a very pious man—too pious, some might say, with a tendency toward fanaticism. Thanks to a few examples of technical hocus-pocus from the twenty-first century, Grant was now absolutely convinced that he was receiving visits from the Archangel Michael. His ego already oversized, Grant had no trouble believing that he,