A Wife in Time (Silhouette Desire) (6 page)

“I know that much,” he said irritably.

“Well, actually it’s better known as the Gilded Age in this country. Mark Twain gave it that label, as I recall. And he wasn’t being complimentary. This is the start of a period of excessive consumption and a ruthless pursuit of profit.”

“Sounds like the
19
80s,” Kane noted.

Susannah nodded. “There are a lot of similarities, actually. Both were periods of great innovation and invention. Electricity, the telephone, moving pictures, recordings—all these things come about in this era.”

“The same way computers and cellular communications and other technologies were developed in the seventies and eighties of our century.”

“That’s right. There was also a lot of fraud among the bigwigs. Fortunes were made and lost. The stock market was manipulated.”

“Sounds like Ivan Boesky and the junk-bonds scandal. So who is the president of the United States now?”

“Arthur.”

“Arthur who?”

“Chester A. Arthur.”

“Get out of here. I don’t remember anything about a President Arthur. How can we have had a president I didn’t even know anything about?” Kane demanded, clearly not liking the feeling of being at an intellectual disadvantage.

“He wasn’t all that memorable. The poor man didn’t even get his own party’s nomination to run for president again. He only had the three years in office, after Garfield’s assassination, because he was vice president.”

“Jeez, and Bush thought
he
had it bad.”

“Let me see, what else can I tell you...?”

“Baseball was around.”

She nodded. “And Mark Twain’s
The Prince and the Pauper
is out. I heard it being discussed at the party tonight.”

“In which century?” he wryly inquired.

“This one. Which brings us back to the big question.”

“Why are we here?”

“And where are the cookies?” she couldn’t resist adding. At his startled look, she said, “Sorry. It’s just that I’ve got a T-shirt at home that says—The Big Questions— Who Am I? Why Am I Here? Where Are the Cookies?”

Kane groaned. “Don’t mention food. I never did get that burger I was looking for.”

“I think I have some food in my purse.” Digging around, she was delighted to find the apple she’d bought and stashed from the convention center, a travel-size package of cookies, two candy bars, a roll of candy Life Savers, a handful of saltines, several salted-nut packages, a package of sugar-free gum, a roll of breath mints, and some kind of dried trail mix advertising a new backpacking book coming out next year. She’d taken the plastic container holding a salad out of her purse earlier while still back at the hotel. Laying her findings out on top of the dresser, she said, “I’m willing to share.”

Kane looked at the assortment of food in amusement.

“I bring candy on the plane so I don’t get airsick,” she said rather defensively. “And I never eat the salted nuts they give you until later, because while you’re flying the salt just makes you bloat more.”

For some reason she blushed. Talking about bloating made her feel self-conscious—as if she were the size of a hot-air balloon.

She didn’t care what he thought. She was starving. She reached for the apple.

Kane took one of the candy bars and a few saltines. “I didn’t get a chance to actually count my winnings—”

“Our winnings,” she interrupted him before taking another bite of the crisp apple.

Staring at Susannah, her eyes closed with pleasure as she ate, Kane was reminded of Eve and all the temptations she presented Adam. Susannah could have posed for a portrait of Eve—dressed as she was in that red velvet gown. The material was as soft as her skin. The intense color made her creamy skin all the more beautiful.

But like Eve, she was dangerous to a man’s peace of mind. She was responsible for almost ruining his brother’s marriage and Kane would do well not to forget that fact.

Returning his attention to the money he’d spread out on the bed, Kane concentrated on counting it. First he had to figure out what was what. Nothing looked familiar! The coins he had went from a penny up to a ten-dollar gold piece.

The paper money was larger than he was accustomed to...but wait! There was good ol’ George Washington on the face of a dollar bill! Finally, a friendly face! The back side of the bill looked weird, but no weirder than jumping centuries was. Kane’s grin faded as he realized he had no idea of the current value of these denominations—it was hard to get a rate of exchange for a currency a century old. When he’d traveled to Europe, there had been signs showing the conversion rate. He wasn’t going to get that kind of help here.

Sitting in the rocking chair, Susannah ignored Kane and decided to do an inventory of her purse. The two largest items were the portable cassette player—a godsend on the plane to keep the noise of the engines from giving her a headache—and her makeup bag with essentials like a toothbrush and travel-size toothpaste, deodorant and bubble bath. When packing she always threw last-minute stuff into her purse, basically whatever didn’t fit into her carry-on garment bag. Which meant she often had an unusual combination of things left over in her purse after flying. Normally she dumped the extra junk in her hotel room, but there hadn’t been time tonight. Thank heaven!

What else was in there...? Her jumble of keys with the personal alarm attached to the key chain. That could prove useful. Then she found something even more useful—an extra pair of underwear! A friend of hers in the lingerie business had given her a travel pair—rolled up into a capsule the size of those prizes they used to have in gum-ball machines. Susannah valued this find as if it were a prize, for it meant she could wash out the pair she was wearing—both were made of fast-drying nylon. With two pairs of underwear, she was well armed to face the world.

Digging into her purse again, her hands closed on the round bottle that held her prescription medication. Discreetly flipping it open inside her purse, she took stock.

“If we budget our money we should do okay for about a month,” Kane said from the other side of the room.

“A month!” Susannah looked up from her pill counting. “We can’t stay a month! I’ve only got sixteen days’ worth of pills with me.” The words slipped out of her mouth.

“What kind of pills?” Kane demanded suspiciously.

“None of your business,” she muttered.

“Great. I get stuck time-traveling with some pill-popping junkie!”

She could have told him about her heart condition, which didn’t prevent her from leading a normal life providing that she stayed on the medication, but his attitude had evaporated any desire to tell him a thing. “You know, the first time I met you, I thought you were an idiot. I was wrong. You’re a stupid, barbaric, ill-mannered idiot!”

With that declaration, she grabbed the thin cotton nightdress from the foot of the bed and stalked over to the screen near the dresser. She’d inadvertently brought her purse with her. Fine. She didn’t trust him with it anyway. She wouldn’t put it past him to snitch her remaining candy bar, not to mention her cassette tape player.

“Uh, Susannah...”

“I’m not speaking to you,” she frostily informed him, undoing the side zipper on her velvet dress before pulling the bulky thing off over her head. Ah, that felt better. A warm breeze came in through the shuttered windows, the wooden louvers aimed in such a way that she was able to feel the movement of air. It provided a welcome relief.

But she still felt sticky. Glancing at the washbowl and pitcher, she decided to take a short sponge bath. Pouring some of the water into the washbowl, she undid her bra and used the corner of a linen hand towel as a washcloth along with some soap, which she’d snitched from the airplane bathroom, to wash. The water was deliciously cool against her skin and she relished the interlude, taking her time. Feeling refreshed, she dried off with a larger towel before sliding the nightgown on over her head. She also slipped on the new pair of bikini underwear, a leopard print she’d never have chosen for herself. The white pair she’d just removed were washed and hung to dry in as discreet a location as she could find. Ditto with her panty hose. The soapy water from the washbowl, she figured out, got poured into a bucket left on the floor for that purpose.

When she finally came from behind the cover provided by the screen, she found Kane lying on the bed. He’d taken off his jacket, undone his shirt, and was resting with his arms beneath his head, staring at the screen with a huge grin on his face.

Following his gaze, she only then realized that the light of the lamp on the dresser beside the screen had turned the white material into a see-through shadow show, allowing him to see her every move and every contour while she’d changed clothes! Susannah saw red.

“You dirty pervert!” Yanking the pillow out from under his head, she whacked him on the stomach with it.

The pillow, filled with heavy feathers, was no lightweight thing and the whoosh of his breath exhaling told her that she’d made a direct hit. Good! She hoped he’d think twice before playing the role of a Peeping Tom again.

Kane didn’t appear to show any remorse, however. Instead, he looked as angry as she felt. Growling, he grabbed hold of her wrist and yanked her toward him. Next thing Susannah knew, she was falling....

S
usannah’s descent was abruptly halted by Kane’s half-naked chest—upon which she lay sprawled, momentarily at a loss for words. When she’d fallen on top of him, he’d gasped for breath. So had she.

Before she’d lost her balance, Susannah had seen the startling flame of hunger in Kane’s blue eyes. Now she couldn’t see anything. Her eyes were closed but her other sensory pathways were wide open and being bombarded with intimate details. He’d already removed his suit jacket. The thin material of her borrowed nightgown and his rented shirt and pants did little to conceal the warmth emanating from their bodies—a warmth that was increased by the sudden awareness striking sparks between them.

In an instant, the memory of his kiss earlier that evening came back to her with vivid detail. Her nose was pressed into the hollow of his throat and she could feel his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. Her hands were trapped beneath her, sandwiched between her chest and his. She could feel the beat of his heart against her palm. It was racing. So was hers.

She felt frozen, like an insect trapped in amber. Her mind knew she should move, should push away immediately, but her body seemed to lag behind—like a caboose on a long freight train. Her hips were pressed against his and there was no mistaking his very male reaction to having her sprawled atop him like this. Or had he already been aroused from watching her undress behind that screen?

The thought sped up her reflexes. Using her hands to prop herself up, she found herself looking down at his face, directly into his eyes. They sloped downward on the outside corners, giving him a bedroom look. Of course, she
was
in a bedroom with him, on the bed with him, reacting to him. The expression in his blue eyes caught her and threw her off-balance as surely as his grip around her wrist had done moments before.

Where had that hunger come from? Was she looking at him the same way? God, she hoped not! But chances were that she was. Because she felt the gnawing yearning to get even closer than she was, to lower her lips to his, to once again feel the sensual intensity of his kiss.

She wasn’t sure if he moved, or if she did. She only knew that his mouth was covering hers. Whereas their previous kiss had been sudden and intense, this one was slow and sweet. She was drawn into it, became an equal participant in the seductive swirl of tongues.

Wait, this couldn’t be,
mustn’t
be! She struggled to free herself from the magically hazy web that held her in its grip while forcibly reminding herself that Kane had accused her of having an affair with his brother. He thought she was a loose woman. He was not good for her. Something to be avoided.

Avoidance was difficult to do while they were sharing this bedroom, however. The first step was to end this bewitching kiss. She did so immediately. Her eyes met his for a second before she tore her gaze from his, for the first time noticing the white mosquito netting draped from the canopy and tied back at the corners of the four-poster bed.

Susannah’s thoughts of passion went out the proverbial window as another thought occurred to her—regarding windows without screens...mosquitoes...and yellow fever.

“Wait a second.... When did they get rid of yellow fever?” she demanded of Kane even as she scrambled off the bed.

“Wha-at?” He was clearly startled by her question. One minute he’d been holding a soft bundle of femininity in his arms, with brown eyes the color of chocolate and lips that could make a blind man see, and the next instant she was shooting questions at him about yellow fever. Did she think he was sick or something?

Maybe he
was
sick—that would explain the fever he felt whenever she was near. She was getting under his skin. That first kiss back at the poker table had almost knocked his socks off. He could understand why his younger brother, Chuck, had fallen for her. Susannah was a passionate woman. Voluptuous. When he’d just kissed her now, her full breasts had pressed against his chest like soft pillows and his hands had itched to cup them, to brush his thumbs over the nipples he could feel through the thin material of her nightgown....

“Yellow fever,” Susannah demanded in an attention-grabbing voice. “When did they find a cure for it?”

Pushing away his erotic thoughts, Kane switched mental gears and searched his memory. “While building the Panama Canal, I think.”

“Yes, but what year?”

“Damned if I know,” he said irritably, still ticked off by the way he’d reacted to her.

“Then there’s no way I’m sleeping on the floor and risking getting bitten by a germ-infested mosquito!” she declared.

“So you want to sleep with me?” he drawled.

The knowing look in his eyes provoked her anger instead of her passion. “I find it only slightly less appealing than having yellow fever,” she retorted. “And I wouldn’t be
sleeping
with you.”

“We’d be doing something else in this bed?”

Kane was deliberately making things difficult for her and she was tempted to whack him with the twenty-pound pillow again. “We would be sharing the bed. That’s it. Nothing else. It’s big enough for both of us. And we could roll up this quilt and put it between us, it’s certainly too warm to use it for anything else.” She pounced on the quilt as if it were a long-lost possession.

“Aren’t you a little overdressed for sleeping?” Kane mockingly inquired.

“This is as undressed as I’m getting,” she stated coolly. The nightgown covered her practically from neck to ankles, and while she would have preferred the short silk chemise nightie packed in her suitcase back at the hotel, she didn’t have that option.

“Do you plan on wearing your necklace to bed?” Kane asked.

Looking down, she realized he was right. She was still wearing the garnet necklace originally belonging to her great-grandmother. In fact, she was still wearing all her jewelry.

“Afraid I’m going to steal it?” he inquired dryly. “I can assure you that you don’t have anything I want.”

Her look called him a liar.

So he rephrased his observation. “Let me put it this way. You don’t have anything I care to take. Of course, if you’re
giving
anything away...”

“You already got the only thing you’re getting from me. One candy bar!”

“And a few saltines, not to mention two kisses.”

“I’d rather you didn’t mention those kisses. And don’t repeat them, either,” she warned him with a chilly look, before removing her garnet jewelry set and stashing it in a quilted-silk holder she had in her purse. “You caught me off guard, otherwise you’d have been bent over and talking funny for a week. I do know how to protect myself, you know.”

“I’m impressed,” he said in a voice that made her doubt he meant a word of it—although the look he was giving her
did
give the impression he was impressed, but not by her self-defense abilities. He was eyeing her as if trying to paint a mental picture of what she looked like under the concealing cotton of her nightgown.

“I think we should be concentrating on what our next course of action will be regarding our situation,” she stated firmly.

“You’re talking...quaintly again. And I thought we already decided what our next course of action would be—that you’re going to be sleeping with me.”

She glared at him, but otherwise ignored his comment. “I was referring to Elsbeth. Clearly we need to find out more about her, since she’s the key to all of this. She’s the one who brought us back. Now we have to figure out why.”

“I’m still having a hard time buying this time-travel thing,” Kane admitted.

“Really? Don’t tell me you plan on walking into any more streetlamp poles,” she drawled.

He didn’t look amused. “I’m hoping to wake up in the morning and find I’m back in my hotel room, because frankly I don’t have time for any of this,” he growled.

“Time is something you can’t control. I think we’re excellent examples of that fact,” she countered.

He made no reply, simply loosened the remaining buttons on his shirt and closed his eyes.

“Aren’t you going to get undressed?” she asked.

He popped one eye open to lazily inform her, “Nope. No floor show tonight. Turn out the light.”

The man was impossible! “Turn it off yourself,” she muttered, focusing her attention on placing the thickly rolled-up quilt in the middle of the bed—from headboard to footboard.

While Kane got up to turn down the gaslight, Susannah quickly scrambled into bed, pulling the mosquito netting on her side down before tucking it in beneath the mattress so that there were no openings for the bloodsucking little devils to work their way in.

However, once the lamp was out and darkness filled the room, Susannah found she couldn’t sleep. The reality of her situation was sinking in—but good!

Kane was sound asleep; she could hear his rhythmic breathing—almost a snore but not quite. Restful respite failed her, however. Kane was right: she
was
starting to talk and even think like a Victorian.

And like any proper Victorian miss, she was on the verge of having a fit of the vapors. Or was that a Regency expression? Whatever, she felt like having a major crying jag. Here she was, stuck in 1884 with the last man on earth with whom she wanted to share company—let alone share a bed!

She felt lost and alone. Marooned. Tears threatened at the back of her throat and eyes.

She hadn’t felt this weepy since a disastrous trip down to St. Martin last year—to a resort that hadn’t even finished being constructed, let alone matched the shiny brochures. She’d held up pretty well then, taking the hole in the roof, the broken air-conditioning, the backed-up toilet, with a stoic stiff upper lip. But when she’d turned out the light and seen beady lizard eyes, a dozen of them, glowing at her from the hole in the roof, Susannah had lost her composure. She felt like that now. On the verge of losing her composure.

Oh, hell, who was she kidding? She’d lost her composure some time ago—probably from that first moment when she’d walked out of the historic Whitaker house and had a bad feeling. She’d lost even more when she’d read the nineteenth-century date on that circus handbill posted to the lamppost.

While the idea of time travel might sound romantic and exciting, she had to admit that the reality was downright...scary. This was completely unknown territory for her, and she wasn’t real fond of unknown territory.

Okay, so she knew
something
about the time period, at least. But she was certainly no expert. She didn’t even know when yellow fever had been cured, for cripes’ sake. That information would have come in mighty handy tonight.

So what
was
she doing here? Most time-travel claims she’d heard or read about seemed to revolve around big historical events, like the Civil War or the American Revolution. Now that Susannah thought about it, no doubt that was a similar phenomenon to so many people believing they’d been Cleopatra or someone equally famous in a previous life. Everyone wanted to be a major player. No one wanted to get lost in the shuffle.

Susannah had ended up in a shuffle, all right—a time shuffle. But did
she
end up in the midst of historical actions of monumental consequence? No, of course not. She ended up on a quiet street in Victorian Savannah, sharing a bed with a man who kissed like the devil and was sure to drive her nuts.

Okay, so she was grateful not to have landed in worse times. But given this time period, she could have ended up in the Vanderbilts’ Fifth Avenue mansion—that might not have been too hard to take. Or she could have ended up in one of New York City’s many tenement buildings. Or in a sod house out in the middle of Nebraska. There was such a great diversity in American life-styles during this decade—the Western frontier still in its formative stages while New York City was rapidly becoming the most crowded place on the planet. Some days on the subway in her own time period, the city still felt that way.

Even so, Susannah longed to be back on that familiar crowded subway. Biting her lip to hold back the tears, eventually she decided that perhaps the best way to deal with this lost feeling was the way she dealt with the hassles attached to living in New York City. She marched right on, as if she knew exactly what she was doing, the look on her face daring anyone to give her a hard time. If it worked on Manhattan’s subway, certainly it would work in Victorian times? Weren’t they supposed to be gentler times?

You need to help me.

The words stole into her consciousness. She could hear them as if they’d been clearly spoken. But she heard them inside her own head.

“Elsbeth?” Susannah whispered uncertainly, exhaustion catching up with her, washing over her and tugging her into slumber’s arms.

Don’t be afraid.

Remembering that any communication with the ghost had been cut off the last time she’d attempted to speak aloud, Susannah used her thoughts to talk to her.
Elsbeth, why am I here?

To help me.

Susannah struggled to keep her thoughts together. She was so tired....
But I can’t help you. We got here too late.

No. You can still help me. Clear my name.

The idea crept into Susannah’s consciousness just before she finally fell deep asleep to dream of a man with blue eyes and a gambler’s smile.

* * *

Susannah woke slowly the next morning with no clear idea where she was or what was going on. Had she been dreaming she’d jumped centuries? Had a ghost really talked to her? In that hazy world between waking and sleeping, she blearily opened her eyes. She saw nothing but white. Brilliant, blinding white.

Thoughts hit her brain with lightning speed. Had she died? Her heart dropped, no wait...it must not be beating in the first place—not if she was dead.

She vastly preferred the time-travel angle to being dead.

At least she was in heaven. White denoted that, right? Although, come to think of it, it certainly was hotter than Hades. Surely she hadn’t ended up...elsewhere? For what? Lying on her driver’s-license application? No one put their true weight on that damn form!

“Are you going to lie there all day or are you going to get up?”