Page 10 of Stolen Time

I liked the feel of his hand on my arm.

But then he was walking me down the short hallway to the bathroom, which was in exactly the same place as it had been in my rented bungalow.

Was this really the same house?

Although the bathroom’s location and basic layout were the same, with a sink and toilet and claw-foot tub, everything else was radically different. Small white hexagon tile with a dark blue border covered the floor, and although there was a bathtub with a reassuring set of faucets that told me they at least had running water here, that was about all I could say for it. No sign of a showerhead, no little curtain you pulled around yourself for some privacy.

I’d never been into baths, had always been a long, hot shower kind of girl. The thought of having to get clean by taking a bath didn’t exactly entrance me.

Well, you’re not taking a bath now,I reminded myself.You’re just freshening up a bit and changing your clothes. You can worry about the bathtub later.

“You can meet me in the living room when you’re done,” Seth said, not quite meeting my eyes. “It’s kind of a good thing you showed up on Saturday evening — since it’s Sunday today, I don’t have a shift at the mine.”

“Do you have to go to church?” I asked. It wasn’t just idle curiosity; while I knew the majority of the McAllister clan was steadfastly pagan, I somehow doubted they’d be able to put their leaning toward alternative religions as much on display in the1920s as they had in the twenty-first century. I wanted to know how they handled things.

Seth’s gaze was still directed somewhere near the floor. “Oh, we have prayer meetings at various family members’ houses on Sundays. That’s how we’ve always done it.”

Meaning, I guessed, that they observed their old religion in private. It was kind of surprising the civilian population in town hadn’t asked a lot of questions about that, but from what I was able to recall, the McAllisters had been some of the first settlers and town founders here, and maybe no one wanted to poke them about their religion.

Whatever. Some people in my own clan were religious, but a lot more were cheerfully agnostic. It wasn’t as though I was too worried about missing church. No, after hearing how my mother had had to drag her bustled butt to the Methodist church in Flagstaff every Sunday when she was back in 1884, I was just glad to know I wouldn’t have to do the same thing here.

“How interesting!” I said, which I hoped was more or less the way a woman in 1926 would have responded. “And thank you for showing me the bathroom. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

“Take as much time as you need,” Seth replied. “Come find me in the living room when you’re done.”

I nodded, then stepped inside the bathroom and closed the door. He’d already laid out some clothes on top of the little wooden washstand, so I peeled off my jeans and shirt and socks and everything else, and put on the garments he’d provided. The undies were more like little cotton tap pants, and the bra was closer to a bralette than anything I’d ever seen, just a flimsy piece of cotton with some lace trim.

Luckily, I’d never been an underwire kind of girl.

A narrow slip went over the underwear, and I selected a dress with a demure green flowered print that buttoned up the front. It was shorter than I’d expected, hitting barely below theknees, although I didn’t know whether that was the actual style or whether I was just tall for the period.

Well, not much I could do about that.

Silk hose that had to be held up by garters had been tucked into the pair of brown heeled lace-up shoes Seth had left for me, and for a moment, I balked, thinking there was no way I was going to wear those things, especially when I knew June in the Verde Valley regularly pushed into the nineties, sometimes hotter.

But I also didn’t want to give the wrong impression. I knew a whole lot less about the 1920s than I would have liked, and yet I had the feeling that a woman who went around without hose would be considered “loose.”

Better to suck it up and deal with those hose, even though I had no idea what I was doing.

The struggle took me a couple of minutes, and when I was done, I still had some bags at my ankles. It couldn’t be helped, though.

He’d also helpfully provided a box of hairpins. One thing I did remember about the 1920s was that a lot of women wore their hair short, but there was no way in the world I was about to lop off my hair, which I’d been carefully growing ever since my senior year of high school and now hung midway down my back. Luckily, though, I’d watched enough YouTube videos to know how to put it up in a pretty bun, something that came in handy during those hot summer days.

So I finger-combed my wavy locks as best I could — I’d spied a wooden comb sitting on the washstand, but I thought it would be rude to borrow something of Seth’s without asking — and then wrapped my hair around my hand to make the nautilus-style bun I’d perfected the summer before, placing it low on the nape of my neck in my best attempt to mimic the hairstyles of the period. When I was done, I thought I looked pretty much likesomeone you’d pass on the street in 1926 without even taking a second look.

Good thing I’d never pierced my ears more than once, and that I’d been wearing plain gold hoops when I slipped back in time. Seth didn’t seem to have given them a second look, which told me that, even if they weren’t quite what most women of his time wore, they also weren’t odd enough to invite comment.

Ditto for the gel polish I’d abandoned right after I graduated from college, figuring that I’d be working with my hands a lot at Rachel’s store and that it was probably better to keep things simple. While I thought that some women in the 1920s wore makeup and nail polish, I had a feeling the glittery purple I’d sported last before I went with naked nails would have raised a few questions.

There wasn’t a clock in the bathroom, so I had no idea how long my primping had taken. However, Seth didn’t seem too impatient when I returned to the living room, which made me think I hadn’t made him wait more than ten or fifteen minutes.

Was that a spark of admiration in his eyes when I entered the room?

No, I was probably imagining things.

He’d been sitting on the couch but stood up right away as I entered the room. “Feeling better?” he asked, and I nodded.

“Much.”

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