A Stolen Season
Tamara Gill
Avon, Massachusetts
This edition published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
Copyright © 2012 by Tamara Gill
ISBN 10: 1-4405-5434-X
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5434-6
eISBN 10: 1-4405-5435-8
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5435-3
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
Cover art © 123rf.com
For my mum.
I love you.
“Man … can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way.”
H.G. WELLS,
The Time Machine
Chapter One
England 1817 – Kent
Sarah shifted in the saddle, the weight of her saturated clothes heavy on her shoulders and hindering her seat. The horse’s pounding hooves, as loud as a drum, echoed in her ears. She kicked her mount and urged him over a small hedge-grove, her determination not to be caught overriding her common sense.
Rain streamed down her face, but she couldn’t stop. The future of TimeArch depended on it. Her father’s years of research. The hundreds of man-hours spent working on man’s greatest, most sought-after ability. Sarah slowed her mount to canter through a fast moving ford, the stones causing the horse to stumble, making the short trip across painfully slow. Time was up. She had to get away. Although the horse grappled and slipped up the other side of the muddy bank to continue on, apprehension still threatened to close her throat in panic.
The mount missed a step and Sarah clutched the saddle, cursing the weather. She flashed a glance over her shoulder and cried out her frustration into the sheeting rain at the sight of the Earl of Earnston not two horse lengths behind.
His gaze held hers, and with fearless determination, he urged his mount beside, clutching for her reins.
“Let go.” Sarah punched his hand and kicked out, trying to push him away. All in vain, as it seemed nothing could deter the determination she read in his eyes.
“What does it do?” he yelled, pulling on her reins.
The horses bumped hard and Sarah grappled for balance. “Let go, Lord Earnston. You’ll kill us both.”
He released her reins for a moment as a large bush separated them. But at blistering speed he drew beside her again.
“What’s so important you’d risk your life?” He yelled at her over the storm.
Sarah shook her head. Why wouldn’t he leave her alone? Damn her clumsiness in his library. Had she never knocked over the vase — had she not tripped, for that matter — the Earl would never have investigated the sound. But he had, and found her hands deep in his collection of peculiars, stealing a device not of this time.
“Forget about it. Forget me,” Sarah yelled through the deluge. “Go home!”
“No,” he said, spurring his horse ahead of hers.
A low-lying tree branch slapped her face. Sarah cringed at the stinging pain. The night was perfect for thievery but not for escape at breakneck speed. If they kept up the chase, it was only a matter of time before one of them was killed.
“Stop your horse!”
Sarah shook her head and kicked her mount on. No matter the dangers, she couldn’t obey him. The future, her father’s business, everything she held dear hinged on her getting away. “I won’t. My lord, please leave me.”
He clasped her reins and jerked hard. Sarah’s horse bucked at the aggressive manhandling and she tipped awkwardly to one side. Feeling herself about to fall, she reached out and clasped at the earl. Her reins slipped from his grasp as his strong arm encircled her waist, struggling to keep her from falling between the two horses. But it was little use. Her horse veered away, and she fell hard against his lordship’s mount. Her fingers, cold and wet, slipped for purchase on his saddle but his horse shied away from her.
“Hold on, I have you.” With an oath, the earl tried to pull her up but gravity was against them.
“I’m slipping. Let me go. I’ll bring you down.” Sarah’s feet dragged on the muddy, stone-strewn road, and she braced herself for a bruising fall. A gentleman to the last, he shook his head and tried to pull up his horse. “Please, let me go.” But it was too late. His horse slipped and they both hit the muddy track with a sickening thud.
Sarah landed on her knees and rolled. Leaf litter and mud entered her mouth, and her leg twisted, shooting a pain into her hip.
Moments later the wet nose of her horse nuzzled her neck. She dragged herself to a sitting position and wiped mud from her face and eyes with a torn remnant of her shirt. Sarah took deep breaths and waited for her body to stop shaking. The only sound was the rain slapping at the leaves through the foliage above.
Then she saw the motionless form on the muddy track. Dread clawed up her spine. Sarah crawled to where the earl lay, his body twisted at an awkward angle. She rolled him over and cursed his vacant, lifeless eyes.
“Don’t be dead. Please, don’t be dead.” She felt along his stubbled jaw and around to the nape of his neck where a lump protruded from his skin.
Unable to accept what her eyes told her, she bent over his chest and listened for a heartbeat.
Nothing.
Sarah slumped back on her haunches and covered her face. She’d killed him. She’d killed Lord William, the blooming Earl of Earnston! “I’m so sorry,” she said, tears mingling with the rain, a muddy pool at her feet. What had she done? The earl wasn’t supposed to die, not yet, and certainly not by her hand. Within a space of half an hour she’d probably wiped out a complete generation of earls. She’d stuffed up history, and she couldn’t undo it.
Not even her father could.
A crack of lightning illuminated the dark forest, and Sarah quickly stood when the silhouette of a horse and man loomed from the shadows.
“Halt!”
Sarah ignored the warning and grappled to mount her horse as the fired-up mare pranced. “I’m sorry,” she said to the cloaked figure as he dismounted and ran to the earl’s limp form sprawled on the ground.
He bent down, felt for a pulse, and gasped. Her stomach rolled with nausea knowing what she’d done, and what he’d discovered. A flicker of silver flashed as he stood.
“Stay where you are or I’ll shoot you as dead as my brother.”
Sarah turned her head, frantically searching her surroundings for someone to help. Perhaps Richard, her partner, who’d warned her not to go tonight. He said the weather wasn’t good for safe getaways.
And he was right.
It was the flash of lightning outside the earl’s library window illuminating a menagerie of severed and stuffed animal heads that had scared the shit out of her, and she’d tripped. The earl heard the commotion, came to investigate, and caught her red handed.
Idiot.
“Please. It was an accident.” Sarah watched him cock the pistol and wondered if he’d actually shoot a woman. His voice, trembling with shock and hate, said that he would.
“Get off the horse — now.”
“I can’t.” With shaking fingers she clasped the reins. “I’m sorry,” she said, turning her horse and kicking it hard.
“Halt, I say.”
She ignored the steely voice that thrummed with warning. Instead, she pushed her mount into a gallop, the horse slipping, unable to move fast enough. And then the shot, followed by searing pain, deafened her and deadened the sound of the thrashing storm to a vague rumble.
Her fingers tingled and warmth seeped along her skin. Sarah looked down, expecting to see her arm missing. He’d shot her! “Get up,” she hollered to the horse, ignoring the pain and the curse from behind.
The horse gained its footing, and Sarah peered over her shoulder, the silhouette of the man all she could see. Cold rain set goose bumps over her skin, yet she pushed on, determined to make the inn and London. 2012 London to be exact.
• • •
With a running nose and an arm that throbbed and ached with every thud of the horse’s stride, Sarah sped through the night. At last she spied the glowing lights of the inn, a welcome beacon on this frightening journey.
Wet and bedraggled, like a beggar woman, she entered the common room and waited for the innkeeper to acknowledge her.
He walked toward her and eyed her injured arm with suspicion. “Ye have an injury there, lass. Do I need to summon the doctor for ye?”
“No. I’ll be fine.” Sarah tried to pull what remained of her jacket across her wound, then gave up. She placed her sodden shawl about her shoulders, thankful she had thought to pack it in her saddlebag.
“What can I get ye then, love?” the innkeeper asked. He leaned on the counter, his fetid breath making her queasy stomach roll even more.
“Can you direct me to Mr. Alastair Lynch’s room please? I believe he has a chamber set aside for a Miss Phoebe Marshall.” A knowing twinkle entered his eyes, and Sarah’s own narrowed in comprehension.
“Right this way, Miss. Marshall,” he said.
Wine, beer, and the smell of cooking meat permeated the air, turning her stomach again. She needed help and quickly. Summoning a smile, she thanked the innkeeper as he walked her to a door and nodded.
“This is ye’re room, Miss. I’ll send up a girl when I have one spare if ye wish for a wash.”
“Ah, yes, thank you. That would be most kind.” Sarah waited for his heavy footfalls to disappear down the stairs before she entered the chamber. The smell of damp wood burning and the flicker of two candles greeted her along with a pair of boots warming before the hearth.
Her heart leapt in her chest, constricting her breath, as Richard jumped from his seat.
“Sarah, good God, you’ve been shot!”
“Oh, Richard, it was terrible. I tripped in the Earl of Earnston’s library and both brothers came to investigate. I ran.” She walked over to the bed, threw her soggy shawl to the floor and flopped onto the hard mattress. “He caught up with me when I escaped on horseback. How, I have no idea.”
Richard came over to her and pulled her boots from her feet. “Knew the area, I suppose.” He looked at her wound. “It doesn’t appear too bad. Just a graze by the looks of it.” Sarah glanced at the bloodied mess. “Yes. But that’s not the worst of it. I killed the Earl of Earnston.”
Richard reeled backward as if slapped. “You killed the Earl … Good God! How? Why?”
She shook her head and gave him a rundown on the earl’s rescue attempt. Sarah shut her eyes, not wanting to remember his lifeless eyes staring up at her or the horror of knowing she had caused his demise. “His brother came upon us and, with his pistol cocked, demanded I stay. Of course I ran. I had to. And … he shot me.”
With one hand, she undid the first button at the front of her shirt, stood, and tried to pull the sleeve off her arm.
“Here, let me help you,” Richard said, pulling out a knife. He cut the garment from around her arm and slid it down over the soaked chemise underneath.
