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“Tell him to bring lots of morphine.”
“Lord Marston!” The butler, mortified, gestured for the woman to leave as he backed toward the door. “I’ll send a footman for the doctor. If you’d wait for me right there, my lord, we’ll have you feeling like yourself in no time,” Gates promised. The woman fled into what should have been the bathroom but it was dark and the floors were wooden, not soft blue marble. Reginald took a few steps to get a better look and caught sight of a somewhat familiar face in the standing mirror by the door.
“Is that…?” He pointed as he drew closer. Reginald stared, stunned as a face he’d seen in a portrait at Milthorp watched him through the mirror. “What is going on with my hair?” He asked as he turned to Gates. “What’s all this?” He swung back to the mirror and patted one of his long sideburns.
“I believe it’s in keeping with the current fashion.”
“God. It’s…brown.” Reginald grimaced at his reflection. His features were almost right but his bleached hair was gone and Reginald had brown eyes. “I look like my father,” he said and stomped away from the mirror so he could return to the window. “What year is it, Gates?”
“It is December the 22nd, of the year 1853, my lord.”
“Holy fucking shit!” Reginald ignored Gates’s appalled gasp and pinched the bridge of his nose. “This can’t be happening,” he whimpered then gasped when he realized that it truly wasn’t. “None of this is real. I’m tripping my balls off!” He went limp with relief and hugged his middle as he laughed. “I’ve really done it this time.” Reginald gave the inside of his arm a sharp pinch and swore at the pain, but the room stayed clear and solid around him and Gates was still there. “Let’s try something else. Hit me as hard as you can, Gates,” he said as he regally swept the end of the bedsheet out of his way and advanced on the butler.
“I will not,” Gates stated firmly.
“Fine,” Reginald replied and gave himself the hardest slap he could muster. His palm clapped against the side of his face so hard that Reginald staggered to his right and braced his hand on the wall. He gave his head a shake to clear it and cupped his cheek. “Why are you still here?” He complained to Gates. “Why am I?”
“The doctor, my lord.” It was an anxious plea. Reginald’s teeth scraped over his lip as he took stock. He appeared to be hallucinating or experiencing a vivid, deeply immersive dream. I appear to be stuck, he told himself bitterly.
“Looks like I finally broke it,” he sighed.
“Broke it?”
“This,” Reginald explained to Gates as he gave his forehead a knock. “This is obviously a drug-induced fever dream. The lack of sleep has caused my hippocampus and amygdala to freak out but I’ll be fine once I’ve had a little rest,” he assured Gates but a tiny voice at the back of Reginald’s frazzled brain warned that he might have truly done it. He began to panic again so he made himself take stock and he thought of all the pertinent historical milestones. “It’s still too early for cocaine and weed but there’ll be plenty of opium and there should be some early syringe prototypes floating around the hospitals or universities,” he reasoned.
“Opium?” Gates squeaked but Reginald waved it off. He needed to muffle some of the dread, not fall into a coma within a coma.
“It’ll be rough stuff. Probably black tar and I’ll be too sick to do anything. I should stay relatively lucid and see if I can’t calm myself down from in here.”
“Lucid and calm would be most ideal.”
“Agreed. Get me plenty of morphine,” Reginald said and widened his eyes at Gates when he failed to move. “What? Please?” Reginald attempted. It had been so long since he’d had a butler and he’d never visited Victorian England so Reginald had no way of knowing if it was de rigueur to be polite to one’s servants.
“Well…” Gates’s gaze slid to the ceiling. “I don’t know where one would get plenty of morphia but if lucidity is your intent…” Gates said delicately.
“Just send for the doctor and tell him to bring lots of morphine. I don’t care what it costs, I am not raw dogging the Industrial Revolution. Fuck, I need Paul.” Reginald pressed his hand against the center of his chest as his anxiety swelled and he became frightened again.
“Raw dogging the…?”
“Never mind. Is there gin?”
“Yes, but at this hour, my lord?”
“Of course, there’s gin. And it’ll be the good London dry, not the swill with turpentine in it,” Reginald relaxed a little as he leaned next to the window and watched all the horses trot by. “I have horses?”
“Several. You are Marston, after all,” Gates replied. Reginald shut his eyes at the rush of joy and longing he always felt at the thought of laying his hands on a horse’s flesh and feeling the wind in his hair as he raced around a track or over a field.
His ancestors had always been obsessed with horses. They’d nearly destroyed Reginald’s grandfather and had depleted the marquisate to the point that the estate was mortgaged to the hilt by the time his father inherited. He’d sold off all the horses and refused to let Reginald keep his. It was just one of many acts of cruelty Reginald had endured but he never recovered from that loss. Reginald couldn’t be near a horse and not feel bitter and resent his father all over again. He’d begged and promised he could find the money for the horses if his father would just give him a chance. He swore he could fill the family’s coffers and revive the estate but Reginald’s father wouldn’t listen.
Reginald tried to explain that he understood this new “internet” the way bankers understood the markets. Most importantly, Reginald knew how to find all the money he needed, if his father would trust him. Of course, he didn’t. His father demanded Reginald marry an American hotel heiress or get out. So Reginald got out and he quickly made more money than most Marstons could ever dream of.
Except the Marston Reginald was currently inhabiting. He seemed to be doing rather well for himself…
Reginald took stock as he noted all the ways the view from his window had yet to change. The street was neatly paved with cobblestones and there were gas lamps. Horses were the sports cars of the day and Reginald could see Rotten Row and just make out the riders and spectators in their carriages.
“I’ve sent for Dr. Lister,” Gates informed Reginald when he returned. “Would you like me to help you dress?”
“Not even a little.” Reginald threw him a threatening glare. “I prefer to dress myself and I’m certain there’s nothing in this house I’d want to wear. Not if the state of this room is any indication of what my wardrobe looks like.” He shuddered and began pulling the sheet around him as he turned. Reginald threw the end over his shoulder, fashioning himself a toga. “This will do for now. Please get me as many of whatever it is that goes for a newspaper these days,” he said and pressed his hands together as he bowed.
