Primeval fanfic: An Ideal Husband
Title: An Ideal Husband
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I own nothing herein, and I'm making no money from it either.
Rating: G
Pairing: Connor/Emily
Summary: Emily's given the chance to make a choice about her future.
AN: Did I plan to write another Connor/Emily 'ship? No. I may do Connor's PoV on this at some point in the near future, but all you have to know is that he, Abby and Danny went through after Helen, and Helen got the chance to misdirect Connor through time into Victorian England. This is pretty thin on the dialogue, but the bunnies . . . oh, the bunnies they threaten me with maiming if I don't do what they say. That and Celery Stalks at Midnight, you know.
*******************************
No one was quite certain of where Connor Temple had come from, only that he'd appeared quite from nowhere and had turned near-destitution into a brilliant success on the stock market. A sort of success that made some wonder if he had a sort of clairvoyancy or understanding of predestination that allowed him to know every new thing that swept in from the New World or Africa and knew when to get himself back out again. He'd made a fortune and now lived quite comfortably in a nice part of town where he was known to putter about with strange electrical and mechnical devices.
With his new fortune, however, he was quite the prey for the mamas of young women hoping to land a wealthy bachelor for a husband.
Emily Trethewey knew that her parents had been eyeing Lord Henry Merchant, a man of small wealth, but an excellent title. She also knew she did not much like him and that if she wanted to avoid becoming Lady Merchant, she'd best find herself a man to make an offer for her before her parents talked Lord Merchant around.
It was on an afternoon stroll in the museum that she first met the mysterious Mr. Temple. He was standing in front of the display of iguanodons, an almost sad look on his face. He turned to leave and tripped over her, sending them both to the ground in an unseemly display of skirts and limbs. "Oh! I'm so sorry," he rambled, scrambling up. "I should look where I'm putting my great, stupid feet." He took her hand and pulled her up.
"I should apologise," she told him. "I must have been standing too close for you to have fallen so."
A bright smile, attractive and delightful spread over his face. "No need to save my ego," he said.
She frowned. "Your . . . ego?" It was an unusual use of Latin.
His smile dipped away momentarily, a look that seemed lost crossing his face before he recovered, his smile a fraction less delighted than before. "A . . . German model of thought about the way the human mind works," he explained slowly. "Sort of that the mind is divided into parts." He shrugged. "In short, my sense of self-worth won't be damaged if you call me clumsy," he explained. "Happens all the time."
Her abigail was making distressed noises in her direction at the informality of the exchange, but Emily was too interested to much care. Instead, she said, "Well, as there is no one to introduce us, I shall take the first step. I am Emily Trethewey," she offered.
"Connor Temple," he told her back.
A sputtering noise from her abigail told Emily the woman had recognised Mr. Temple's name as well, and Emily decided to irritate the irritating creature further. "So, you seemed to be much taken with the dinosaurs, Mr. Temple," she said.
"It's a bit of a hobby of mine," he told her. Then he gave her a conspiratorial smile. "But I think they're reconstructed wrong."
"Really?" she asked, intrigued. "Why is that? Are you, perhaps, a proponent of the theory that they should sprawl properly, as lizards do?"
He looked appalled. "No." He turned back to the display and pointed. She obligingly followed his direction. "You see the tails? Between the," his language suddenly changed to a complex jargon of anatomical terms of which only the word vertebrae stood out for her. "You can see, the jagged lines there. Someone or something's broken them to create the curvature of the tail. They don't fit together properly. The tail should be straight."
Looking at where he pointed, she could see it. "So, you feel they should be hunched over forward, in order to straighten the tail."
"Quadripedal," he corrected. "The forelimbs are clearly strong enough to bear weight."
In that next hour, Emily decided she would attempt to convince Mr. Temple to make an offer for her. Because in that one moment, and in all the minutes after, he treated her as he would a man. He simply assumed she had opinions and that they would be valid, when her views disagreed with his he acted as if she were a peer he were disagreeing with, never once slowing his steps or thoughts for her.
His greatest strengths were in discussion of the natural world and the sciences, his grasp of history strange, although his understanding of Egypt was also quite good. But when she would direct the topic of conversation to the Greeks, which she knew far better, he would listen and converse with her as an equal. He tended to be a small bit didactic when discussing prehistoric animals such as dinosaurs, but that was only due to his thorough and interesting knowledge of them, and she had the feeling he would speak to anyone thus, simply due to how much he knew.
When they parted ways, he asked her direction, explaining that he had not found anyone who would simply talk to him in a way he deemed normal, for a very long time. She happily gave it to him, and soon was embroiled in a delightfully scandalous relationship with the man. Scandalous not because he ever did anything that was truly unseemly, but simply because of how he talked to her, and indeed any woman, as he would a man and never imagined any other way of being.
Lord Merchant made an offer which was accepted by her parents and Emily pressed her lips together and called for a carriage at once. Her abigail was wittering on at her when she arrived at Mr. Temple's home late that evening. His entire staff was unusual, the butler Irish, the cook an Indian Hindu, the maids two orientals from the Far East, who he would sometimes have cook on the cook's days off, he even had Jews in his household. On the whole, being in his home was a little like a Grand Tour, as they would usually answer her questions of their homelands quite readily.
"Miss Trethewey," he said, emerging from his workroom, "It's pretty late. What are you doing here?"
She braced herself for what might be the most appallingly forward statement she'd ever make. "I need you to make an offer for me."
"What?" he asked, looking baffled. She couldn't really blame him.
So, Emily tried again. "Lord Merchant has just asked for my hand in marriage."
"That berk?" he said, sounding scandalised.
In spite of the gravity of her situation, Emily couldn't keep herself from laughing a little. Then she sobered. "If I do not find myself someone else, and marry him beforehand, I will have no choice but to marry Lord Merchant."
He seemed to struggled with himself for a long moment, his eyes closed, jaw clenched, then something in him relaxed and he said, sounding pained. "Alright. I . . . should I . . . this just sounds so sick, put in a bid, or what?"
If there was one thing Emily had learnt of Connor Temple in the year she'd known him, it was that the notion of a woman as the property of her husband or father distressed him greatly. Between that and her desire to offer her parents no chance to force her, she said. "No. I wish this to be my choice. I . . ." because it was not done that you admitted such a thing she had to steel herself to say it, "I have been pursuing you this past year, you know."
The deep brown eyes were shocked as they met hers. When he spoke, she nearly laughed. "You . . . me? I mean, me? I'm not . . . I mean, I guess there's the money and all, but that's not you . . . me?"
"You treat me as if I were a man, Mr. Temple . . . Connor. As though I had thoughts of my own," she explained. "You don't know how incredible that is."
"Like a man?" he muttered. "People are so weird."
"So, will you?" she pressed. "Save me from Lord Merchant, Connor Temple. You're my only hope."
He let out a near-hysterical bark of laughter before he said. "Okay then. You've won me over. Are we heading for Scotland, then?"
Emily couldn't but grin. "I've never been that far from home before. It will be an adventure."
And it was. She slipped home, hastily packing up some clothing to go with, and they hired horses, riding all the way. They married in Gretna Green and came home to a wonderful scandal that made her laugh all the more in delight, because Connor Temple truly had no idea what was happening in Society, nor did he care so long as he could continue to visit the museums and university.
They took a Grand Tour, visiting almost none of the usual places, Connor instead taking her to find fossils on beaches and telling her all about the wondrous animals they had once been. He bought her scandalous clothing to wear, trousers he paid fortunes for, just so that she might follow him on his perambulations with ease. She, in turn, took the time to ease his way in Society, getting him into conversation with others who studied geology and ancient creatures.
Best of all, when her mother made scathing comments about him, Emily took great joy in informing her that at least she, Emily, had never had to lie back and think of England.
There was still something sad about him, though. And the one room in the house he had kept all his strange acids and wires, electrical devices and engines was locked up, and she was asked, (not ordered, never ordered) to leave it be. Though sometimes she'd wake to find him missing from bed, sitting on the floor beside it, tears in his eyes. After the way he'd walked away from her the one time she'd asked about it, she never asked again.
When she saw the strange light, hovering in the air, surrounded by what seemed to be floating glass shards, she'd boldly investigated, wanting to have details to tell Connor when she met him later. He would be fascinated by it and want to investigate as much as she did. But upon walking through, it dissolved behind her, leaving her alone in a terrifying new world. One filled with the beasts Connor had told her of so often.
And she could not return home.
It took a very long time, and a trip through the 21st century before she returned home. Connor wept when she came back, asking her every day if the amnesia she claimed of her year missing had lifted. She felt terrible not telling him, but the whole story was mad. How would even her brilliant husband ever believe a portal of glowing shattered glass had transported her to the ancient past?
The stories of Springhill Jack reached her, and taking the time to look into them, she found the evidence needed to prove it was clearly a raptor of some sort. So she secretly went hunting, wearing a cloak, dressing in hard-wearing leather and bearing knives she had purchased in the Oriental-dominated parts of London.
It was weeks that she tracked it, hampered by the need to hide her activities from Connor, from Society. And then it happened. "Emily!"
"Matt!"
"I sent a raptor back through by mistake," admitted the Irishman.
Smiling, she said, "Not your finest moment."
When he agreed to follow her lead in the hunt, she felt a sense of triumph that flared into panic when suddenly Connor was there. "Emily, what are you doing here?" he demanded. There was something in his tone she'd never heard before.
"Connor, I can explain," she said. "Springhill Jack. He's . . . it's not a person, Connor."
Her husband's eyes flicked up and down her clothes, making her feel uneasy. Then suddenly narrowed as he stared at Matt. "Are you from the ARC?" he demanded.
"What?" Emily asked at the same moment Matt spoke.
"Connor Temple?" Matt sounded stunned. "You're . . . you've been missing for years. Abby and Danny just said Helen had sent you somewhere, we never knew where."
Connor's voice cracked. "Abby? Is she alright? Her and Danny? I mean, they must've stopped Helen, because . . ." he gestured vaguely around.
"Wait!" Emily stepped in. "Is that . . ." she shook herself and carefully asked, "Connor. Are you telling me that you are from the future? From . . . from the 21st century?"
Her husband looked nervously at her. "Yes. I am. It's part of why I wasn't sure I should marry you. Because it meant giving up on going home. I can't ask you-"
She interrupted. "If Matt's here, then there's a gateway back, isn't there?" she turned to Matt. "We can both go. Connor, you don't belong here, and I know how it saddens you to be here." She took a breath. "I don't belong anymore either, Connor. The year I was missing? I don't have amnesia. I-"
He cut her off. "You found an anomaly. You went through and it took you the time to come back," his eyes were alight in a way she hadn't seen in a very long time. Then suddenly his eyes narrowed at her. "You're down here to catch the raptor, aren't you?"
"Yes," she said, showing him her knives.
His eyes went wide, and for a moment she thought he might try to stop her. "What are you . . . can you shoot?" he demanded, striding to the the carriage, forcing her and Matt to follow. "Because I'm not letting you get in clawing distance. What are you thinking? Knives for a raptor?"
"You're not trying to stop her?" Matt asked him.
Connor snorted. "I used to live with Abby. Only an idiot would tell her not to go after something like that. And Emily's a lot like Abby where it counts," he informed Matt. Then he turned back to Emily. "I've got a rifle and a pistol. You have a preference?"
A smile split her face and she leapt forward and kissed him. After a minute, Matt cleared his throat. Connor was blushing, but Emily didn't care. "If you two are quite finished, there's a raptor running around, you know."
When it was all over, Connor quickly penned a letter, one which left his substantial assets equally divided between all the members of the household staff, and they walked through the gateway together, Connor promising to introduce her to his parents and gleefully cross-questioning Matt about computers.
Emily Temple knew one thing. She'd made an excellent choice in husband.
Back to archive page