Page 26 of Time for You
“Understood,” Henry said seriously. “What’s next?”
“Next up: men.”
“We have those in the nineteenth century, too,” Henry said dryly.
Daphne snorted again, but this time, Henry tossed her a grin. Her stomach felt oddly melty, and she redoubled her efforts to figure out the answer to fifty-one across (ancient goddess, not Venus). “What are you working on there, Miss Griffin?” Henry asked.
Daphne could recognize an olive branch when offered one, so she held up her newspaper. “Crossword puzzle.” Henry cocked his head to the side quizzically. “It gives you clues, and then the answers fit together into one another.” She read off the clue she was working on, and Henry frowned.
“Aphrodite, I would think,” he suggested, and Daphne was half delighted, half irritated to discover he was right. Delighted because it had been a tough one for her, and irritated because Henry was not supposed to be kind and helpful, and also once he said it, the answer was so obvious she couldn’t believe she hadn’t figured it out on her own.
“Thanks,” she muttered, and Henry turned back to Brittany, who was now showing him a stock image of a white man wearing a beanie in front of a podcasting microphone with a giant rednosymbol encircling him.
Brittany walked him through the basics of twenty-first-century masculinity, while Henry nodded and frantically took notes. Daphne returned to her puzzle, lifting her head only when Henry started to sound angry.
“You have guns that dowhat?” he said. “What use could any civilian have for a gun that powerful? But you said people are allowed to simplyownthem?”
“Well, yeah, but only here in the United States. Pretty much everywhere else has way better laws about guns.”
“What is wrong with your country?”
“That’s the question,” Brittany replied archly. “It sucks.”
“It really does sound like a lot of the modern world, as you say,sucks.”
“You’re not wrong, but there’s good stuff, too. Like for women, LGBT people, and people of color. You guys don’t have much in the way of colonies anymore either, and that’s good, too. And we can get places a lot faster.”
“With—” Henry flipped back through his notebook. “Aeroplanes. And ... cars?”
“Exactly,” Brittany said.
“Airplanes.Notaeroplanes,” Daphne clarified.
Brittany was the one who threw her a dirty look that time, shaking her head when Daphne responded with an innocentwho, me?look in return.
“We’re going to move on,” Brittany said pointedly. “Ready, Henry?”
“Ready, Miss Spiers.”
Chapter Ten
If Daphne thought Henry’s high regard for manners would make him a slightly easier person to live with while they tried to figure out how to get him back in time, she was wrong.
Fortunately, she had sort of suspected he would be terrible. He was constantly questioning everything she did, down to whether it was safe for her and Ellie to live alone.
“Why? Because we might bring home a stray man who time-traveled from two centuries ago?” she asked to that one, thoroughly fed up.
“Well, yes.”
“Should we kick you out, then? To preserve our virtue?”
“I was simplysayingthat I find it surprising that no male relative objected to your living situation.”
“And as I’ve said, that’s not a thing anymore.”
“Still, they’ve severely neglected their duties. Vibol may be an excellent fellow, but there’s four unmarried women in your group of friends, which is a lot of responsibility.”
Daphne leaned her head back against the couch, reminding herself to breathe, even while trying not to laugh at the idea of Vibol thinking they were hisresponsibility. “Yes, I’ll be sure to tell my younger brother he should have negotiated for someone to take my hand in marriage. Didn’t you learn anything from Brittany’s lesson the other day?”
