The Time Tutor by Bee Ridgway

any other student he’d ever had. First, he didn’t want her to learn to jump, because he wanted her to stay forever in this little twelfth-century room, far from Bertrand, far from Hannelore . . . but very, very close to him. And second, he had never taught anyone to jump when he couldn’t feel the River himself. He always felt it along with his students, always guided them by touch and empathy. Now his concussion was in the way, and teaching Alva to jump was like teaching someone to read when you yourself can make neither head nor tail of the alphabet.
    It was much easier to simply seduce her again.
    But it was at the most inelegant moments—when he was gazing up the length of her from an interesting position between her thighs, or when he was arched over her, her hands pinned beneath his to the featherbed, and her heels pressing the backs of his thighs to encourage him to greater and greater efforts . . . it was at moments like these, when a normal woman would at least pretend to be lost in ecstasy . . . it was at these exact moments that she would ask, in a voice as calm as a Sunday afternoon, when he intended to teach her to jump.
    It was enough to drive a man bent on distraction and delay entirely mad.
    And so he found himself trying, both of them fully clothed in the twelfth-century garb lent to them by the landlady. “It is both the easiest and the most difficult thing to do,” he said. “And the first thing you must do is learn to find the River. I cannot feel it myself, just now. Normally I would ask you to take my hand, and I would reach for it in my mind. I would make the first mental effort to jump, and bring you along with me. Often that will trigger the feeling of the River in you.”
    â€œTake my hand anyway.” She held hers out. “Now. How do I find the River?”
    Dar put his hand in hers. It was elegant but strong. He loved it. He wanted to kiss it. He wanted to press it, open-palmed, to his mouth. . . .
    â€œIgnatz!” She was laughing. “You are incorrigible!”
    â€œDo not call me Ignatz when I am trying to teach you. That name has come to signify something very different. I am Dar.”
    She blinked. “Dar? Really? What kind of name is that?”
    â€œIt’s my title. I am Lord Dar.”
    She frowned. “Well.” She looked him up and down. “That’s as may be. But Ignatz you shall always be, at least to me. It is a good, honest name, even if you came by it falsely. A good name for a time tutor. And what about Vogelstein? Where did that come from?”
    â€œA stone I found. A fossil of a bird, trapped in stone. Many millions of years old. It is on my desk in my Devon home.”
    â€œSweet Chuck,” she said.
    He barked a laugh. “Yes! For you I shall be Ignatz, and he shall be Sweet Chuck, forevermore.”
    She leaned across the bed and kissed him. “I like your scruffy, laughing face, Ignatz,” she murmured.
    â€œIt is your fault, this time, that we are abandoning the lesson,” he said, flipping her onto her back.
    â€œOh, no.” She twined her arms around his neck and drew him down. “It is Sweet Chuck’s fault.”
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    Rather than teaching her how to jump, he was teaching her to dance. “I told you, on that blasted mosaic floor,” he said. “First thing when I’m better, we’re going to the Savoy. We’ll go to the costume room in the catacombs and get you dolled up flapper-style and we’ll go to the Savoy.”
    She stood in his arms, already proficient at the waltz after only a few hours’ instruction. Now they were working on the Charleston, and that was harder. She had no familiarity with jazz rhythms, and she kept laughing when he started singing “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby.”
    â€œWe shall simply waltz,” she said. “And sit out this Charleston