Linda Lael Miller Bundle (22 page)

A sigh escaped Elisabeth as she watched the sunlight making moving patterns on the waters of the creek. She was going to have to go back soon, back where she belonged. Her throat went tight. Before she could do that, she had to find some way to convince Jonathan that he and Trista were in very real danger.

The book forgotten at her side, Elisabeth curled up on the blanket and watched the water flow by, shimmering like a million liquid diamonds in the bright sunshine. And her sleepless night caught up with her.

When she awakened, it was to the sound of children’s laughter echoing through the trees. Elisabeth rose, automatically smoothing her hair and skirts, and left the blanket and book behind to follow the path of the stream, walking beneath the covered bridge.

Presently, she could see the schoolhouse across the narrow ribbon of water. The children were all outside at recess. While the boys had divided up into teams for baseball, the girls pushed each other in the rustic swings and played hopscotch. She spotted Trista and wondered if the plain little girl at her side was Vera, who would eventually give birth to Cecily and Roberta Buzbee.

Deciding that her presence would just raise a lot of awkward questions for Trista, Elisabeth slipped away and, after fetching the blanket and Jonathan’s book, went back to the house.

By this time, there was a nice stew simmering on the stove and fresh bread cooling on the counter under a spotless dishtowel. Ellen had apparently left for the day.

Relieved, Elisabeth opened the icebox and peered inside. There was a bowl of canned pears left over from breakfast, so she dished up a serving and went out onto the back step to eat them. She was enjoying the glorious spring afternoon when Jonathan pulled up alongside the barn, driving his horse and buggy. He sprang nimbly down from the seat and walked toward her, his medical bag in one hand.

Elisabeth felt a sweet tightening in the most feminine part of her as he approached. “Must have been an easy day,” she said when he sat down beside her.

He chuckled ruefully. “‘Easy’ isn’t the word I would use to describe it,” he said. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you, Elisabeth.”

Elisabeth drew a deep breath, and suddenly her heart and her spirit and all of her body were full of springtime. She lifted one eyebrow and forced herself to speak in a normal tone. “I suppose you were wondering if I was chasing poor Ellen all over the farm with an ax.”

Jonathan laughed and shook his head. “No, I’ve considered doing that myself.” His expression turned solemn in the next moment, however, and his sure, callused hand closed over one of Elisabeth’s. “Who are you?” he rasped out. “And what spell have you cast over me?”

Never before had Elisabeth guessed that tenderness toward another person could run so deep as to be painful. “I’m just a woman,” she said softly. “And I wouldn’t have the first idea how to cast a spell.”

He stood slowly, drawing Elisabeth with him, discounting her words with a shake of his head. She knew where he meant to take her, but she couldn’t protest because it seemed to her that she’d been moving toward this moment all of her life. Maybe even for all of eternity.

She closed her eyes as he held her hand to his mouth and placed featherlight kisses on her knuckles.

Once they were inside the house, he lifted her easily into his arms and started up the back stairs. Elisabeth buried her face in his muscular neck, loving the smell and the strength and the substance of him. She looked up when she heard the creak of a door and found herself in a version of her room back in the world she knew.

The bed, made of aged, intricately carved oak, stood between the windows facing the fireplace. The walls were unpapered, painted a plain white, and Elisabeth didn’t recognize any of the furniture.

Jonathan set her on her feet and just as she would have found the wit to argue that what they were about to do was wrong, he kissed her. So great was his skill and his innate magnetism that Elisabeth forgot her objections and lost herself in his mastery.

He unpinned her hair, combing it through with his fingers, and then very slowly began unbuttoning the front of her dress. Uncovering the lacy bra beneath, he frowned, and Elisabeth reached up to unfasten the front catch, revealing her full breasts to him.

Jonathan drew in his breath, then lifted one hand to caress her lightly. The pad of his thumb moved over her nipple, turning it button hard and wrenching a little cry of pleasure and surrender from Elisabeth.

She tilted her head back in glorious submission as he bent his head to her breast, pushing the dress down over her hips as he suckled. Elisabeth entwined her fingers in his thick, dark hair, her breathing shallow and quick.

When both her nipples were wet from his tongue, Jonathan laid her gently on the bed, taking no notice of her sneakers as he pulled them off and tossed them away. She crooned and arched her back as he slipped her panties down over her legs and threw them aside, too. He caressed her until she was damp, her body twisting with readiness.

His clothes seemed to disappear as easily as hers had, and soon he was stretched out on the mattress beside her. The April breeze ruffled the curtains at the windows and passed over their nakedness, stirring their passion to even greater heights rather than cooling it.

Elisabeth moaned as Jonathan claimed her mouth in another consuming kiss, his tongue sparring with hers. Her fingers dug into the moist flesh on his back as he moved his lips down over her breasts and her belly. Then he gripped her ankles and pressed her heels to the firm flesh of her bottom. Boldly, he burrowed through the silken barrier and tasted her.

Elisabeth’s head moved from side to side on the pillow. “Oh, Jonathan—please—it’s too much—”

“I want you to be ready for me,” he told her gruffly, and then he enjoyed her in earnest, as greedy as if she were covered in honey.

The exercise moistened Elisabeth’s skin, making small tendrils of hair cling to her face, and her breath came hard as she rose and fell in time with the rhythm Jonathan set for her. A low, guttural cry escaped her when he set her legs over his shoulders and teased her into the last stages of response.

She called his name when a sweet volcano erupted within her, her body arched like a bow drawn tight to launch an arrow. He spoke gently as he laid her, quivering, upon the bed and poised himself over her. She was still floating when he began kissing her collarbone.

“Shall I make love to you, Elisabeth?” he asked quietly, and a new tenderness swept over her in that moment because she knew he would respect her decision, whatever it might be.

“Yes,” she whispered, twisting one finger in a lock of his hair. “Oh, yes.”

He touched her with his manhood, and Elisabeth trembled with anticipation and a touch of fear. After all, there had only been one other man in her life and her experience was limited.

“I promise I won’t hurt you,” Jonathan said, and she was diffused with heat when he teased her by giving her just the tip of his shaft.

She clutched at his back. “Jonathan!”

He gave her a little more, and she marveled that he filled her so tightly. “What?”

“I want you—I need you—”

In a long, smooth glide, he gave her his length, and Elisabeth uttered a muffled shout of triumph. An instant later, she was in the throes of release, buckling helplessly beneath Jonathan, sobbing as her body worked out its sweet salvation.

She was embarrassed when she could finally lie still, and she would have turned her head away if Jonathan hadn’t caught her chin in his hand and made her look at him.

“You were beautiful,” he said. “So—beautiful.”

Elisabeth’s eyes brimmed with tears. Jonathan had given her a kind of pleasure she’d never dreamed existed, and she wanted to do the same for him. She cupped his face in her hands, moving her thumbs slowly over his jawbones, and she began to move beneath him.

He uttered a strangled moan and his powerful frame tensed, then he began to meet her thrusts with more and more force, until he finally exploded within her, filling her with his warmth. When it was over, he collapsed beside her, his head on her chest, one leg sprawled across her thighs, and Elisabeth held him.

After a long time, he asked quietly, “Who was he?”

Elisabeth braced herself, knowing men of Jonathan’s generation expected women to come to their beds as virgins. “My husband,” she said.

Instantly, Jonathan raised his head to stare into her eyes. “Your what?”

Her face felt hot. “Your honor is safe, Doctor,” she assured him. “Ian and I were divorced a year ago.”

He cleared his throat and sat up, reaching for his clothes. The distance in his manner wounded Elisabeth; she felt defensive. “Now I suppose I’m some kind of social pariah, just because my marriage didn’t last,” she said. “Well, things are different where I come from, Jonathan. Divorced women aren’t branded as sinners for the rest of their lives.”

Jonathan didn’t answer, he just kept dressing.

There was a black-and-blue-plaid lap robe folded across the foot of the bed. Elisabeth snatched it up to cover herself. “Jonathan Fortner, if you walk out of here without speaking to me, I swear I’ll never forgive you!”

He watched as she tried to dress without letting the lap robe slip. “Why did he divorce you?”

Elisabeth was furious; her cheeks ached with color. “He
didn’t
—the choice was mine!”

Jonathan’s shoulders slackened slightly, as though pressed under some great weight, and he sat down on the edge of the bed with a sigh. When he extended a hand to Elisabeth, she took it without thinking, and he settled her gently beside him, buttoning the front of her dress as he spoke.

“I’m sorry. I was judging what you did in terms of my own experience, and that’s unreasonable.”

Elisabeth couldn’t resist touching the dark, rumpled hair at his nape. “Did she hurt you so badly, Jonathan?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he answered simply. And then he stood and started toward the door. “Trista will be home soon,” he said, without looking back. And he was gone.

Barely fifteen minutes later, when Elisabeth was in the kitchen brewing tea, Trista came in, carrying her slate and a spelling primer. The child set her school things down and went to the icebox for the crockery pitcher.

“How was school?” Elisabeth asked.

Trista’s gray eyes sparkled as she poured milk into a glass and then helped herself to cookies from a squat china jar. “When Miss Bishop opened her lunch pail, there was a love letter inside—from Harvey Kates.”

“The blacksmith?” Elisabeth took a cookie and joined Trista at the table.

The little girl nodded importantly, and there was now a milk mustache on her upper lip. “His sister Phyllis is in the seventh grade, and he gave her a penny to put the note where Miss Bishop would be sure to find it.”

“And, of course, Phyllis told all of you exactly what her brother had written,” Elisabeth guessed.

Trista nodded. “He said he was crazy for her.”

Before Elisabeth could respond to that, Jonathan came into the kitchen. He gave Trista a distracted kiss on the top of her head, without so much as glancing at the houseguest he’d taken to bed only a short time before. “You’ve paid your debt to society,” he said to the child. “You don’t have to spend any more afternoons in your room.”

Trista’s face glowed with delight and gratitude. “Thank you, Papa.”

Elisabeth might have been invisible for all the attention Jonathan was paying her.

“I’ll be on rounds. Would you like to go along?”

The child shook her head. “I want to practice my piano lessons,” she said virtuously.

Jonathan looked amused, but he made no comment. His gray eyes touched Elisabeth briefly, questioningly, and then he was gone. Sadness gripped her as she realized he now regretted what had happened between them.

While Trista trudged bravely through her music, Elisabeth made her way slowly up the back stairs and into the little girl’s room. She was becoming too enmeshed in a way of life that could never be hers, and she had to put some space between herself and Jonathan before she fell hopelessly in love with him.

The decision was made. She would say goodbye to Trista, go back to her own time and try to make herself believe that all of this had been a dream.

T
he necklace was gone.

Elisabeth dried her eyes with the back of one hand as relief and panic battled within her. After drawing a very deep breath and letting it out slowly, she made her way downstairs to the parlor, where Trista was struggling through
Ode to Joy
at the piano.

Elisabeth paused in the doorway, watching the little girl practice and marveling that she’d come to love this child so deeply in such a short time. “Trista?”

Innocent gray eyes linked with Elisabeth’s and the notes reverberated into silence. “Yes?”

“I can’t find my necklace. Have you seen it?”

Trista’s gaze didn’t waver, though her lower lip trembled slightly. “Papa has it. He said the pendant was valuable and might get lost if we left it lying around.”

“I see,” Elisabeth replied as righteous indignation welled up inside her. The fact that they’d been so gloriously intimate made Jonathan’s action an even worse betrayal than it would ordinarily have been. “Do you know where he put it?”

Moisture brimmed along Trista’s lower lashes; somehow, Trista had guessed that Elisabeth meant to leave and that the necklace had to go with her. She shook her head. “I don’t,” she sniffled. “Honest.”

Elisabeth’s heart ached, and she went to sit beside Trista on the piano bench, draping one arm around the little girl’s shoulders. “There are people in another place who will be worrying about me,” Elisabeth said gently. “I have to go and let them know I’m all right.”

A tear trickled down Trista’s plump cheek. “Will you be back?”

Elisabeth leaned over and lightly kissed the child’s temple. “I don’t know, sweetheart. Something very strange is happening to me, and I don’t dare make a lot of promises, because I’m not sure I can keep them.” She thought about the impending fire and a sense of hopelessness swept over her. “I’ll tell you this, though—if I have any choice in the matter, I
will
see you again.”

Trista nodded and rested her head against Elisabeth’s shoulder. “Most times, when grown-up people go away, they don’t come back.”

Knowing the child was referring to her lost mother, Elisabeth hugged her again. “If I don’t return, Trista, I want you to remember that it was only because I couldn’t, and not because I didn’t want to.” She stood. “Now, you go and finish your practicing while I look for the necklace.”

Elisabeth searched Jonathan’s study, which was the small parlor in modern times, and found nothing except a lot of cryptic notes, medical books jammed with bits of paper and a cabinet full of vials and bottles and bandage gauze. From there, she progressed to the bedroom where he had made such thorough love to her only that afternoon.

She was still angry, but just being in that room again brought all the delicious, achy sensations rushing back, and she was almost overwhelmed with the need of him. She began with the top drawer of his bureau, finding nothing but starched handkerchiefs and stiff celluloid collars.

“Did you lose something?”

Jonathan’s voice startled Elisabeth; like a hard fall, it left her breathless. She turned, her cheeks flaming, to face him.

“My necklace,” she said, keeping her shoulders squared. “Where is it, Jonathan?”

He went to the night table beside his bed, opened the drawer and took out a small leather box. Lifting the lid, he looped the pendant over his fingers and extended it to Elisabeth.

“I’m going back,” she said, unable to meet his eyes. For the moment, it was all she could do to cope with the wild emotions this man had brought to life inside her. He had taught her one thing for certain: she had never truly loved Ian or any other man. Jonathan Fortner had first claim on both her body and her soul.

He kept his distance, perhaps sensing that she would fall apart if he touched her. “Why?”

“We made love, Jonathan,” she whispered brokenly, her hands trembling as she opened the catch on the pendant and draped the chain around her neck. “That changed things between us. And I can’t afford to care for you.”

Jonathan sighed. “Elisabeth—”

“No,” she said, interrupting, holding up one hand to silence him. “I know you think I’m eccentric or deluded or something, and maybe you’re right. Maybe this is all some kind of elaborate fantasy and I’m wandering farther and farther from reality.”

He came to her then and took her into his arms. She felt the hard strength of his thighs and midsection. “I’m real, Elisabeth,” he told her with gentle wryness. “You’re not imagining me, I promise you.”

She pushed herself back from the warm solace of him. “Jonathan, I came here to warn you,” she said urgently. “There was—will be—a fire. You’ve got to do something, if not for your own sake, then for Trista’s.”

He kissed her forehead. “I know you believe what you’re saying,” he replied, his tone gentle and a little hoarse. “But it’s simply not possible for a human being to predict the future. Surely you understand that I cannot throw my daughter’s life into an uproar on the basis of your…premonitions.”

Elisabeth stiffened as a desperate idea struck her. “Suppose I could prove that I’m from the future, Jonathan—suppose I could show you the article that will be printed in the
Pine River Bugle?
”

Jonathan was frowning at her, as though he feared she’d gone mad. “That would be impossible.”

She gave a brief, strangled laugh. “Impossible. You know, Jonathan, until just a short while ago, I would have said it was
impossible
to travel from my century to yours. I thought time was an orderly thing, rolling endlessly onward, like a river. Instead, it seems that the past, present and future are all of a piece, like some giant celestial tapestry.”

All the while she was talking, Jonathan was maneuvering her toward the bed, though this time it was for a very different reason. “Just lie down for a little while,” he said reasonably. His bag was close at hand, like always, and he snapped it open.

“Jonathan, I’m quite all right….”

He took out a syringe and began filling it from a vial.

Elisabeth’s eyes went wide and she tried to bolt off the bed. “Don’t you dare give me a shot!” she cried, but Jonathan put his free hand on her shoulder and pressed her easily back to the mattress. “Ouch!” she yelled when the needle punctured her upper arm. “Damn you, Jonathan, I’m not sick!”

He withdrew the needle and reached for the plaid lab robe Elisabeth had tried to hide behind after their lovemaking that afternoon. “Just rest. You’ll feel better in a few hours,” he urged, laying the blanket over her.

Elisabeth sat up again, only to find that all her muscles had turned to water. She sagged back against the pillows. “Jonathan Fortner, what did you give me? Do you realize that there are laws against injecting things into people’s veins?”

“Be quiet,” he ordered sternly.

The door creaked open and Trista peered around the edge. “What’s wrong with Elisabeth?” she asked in a thin, worried voice.

Jonathan sighed and closed his medical bag with a snap. “She’s overwrought, that’s all,” he answered. “Run along and do your spelling lesson.”

“Pusher!” Elisabeth spat out once the door had closed behind the little girl. The room was starting to undulate, and she felt incredibly weak. “I should get that Farley person out here and have you arrested.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little childish?” Jonathan asked, bending over the bed. “I admit I shouldn’t have shoved you down that way, but you didn’t give much choice, did you?”

Elisabeth rolled her eyes. “A pusher is…Oh, never mind! But you mark my words,
Doctor
—I’m filing a complaint against you!”

“And I’m sure Marshal Haynes will track me down and throw me in the hoosegow the minute his boil is healed and he can sit a horse again.” In the next moment, Jonathan was gone.

Struggling to stay awake, Elisabeth wondered how she could ever expect to get through to this man if he was going hold her down and drug her every time she talked about her experience. She drifted off into a restless sleep, waking once to find Trista standing beside the bed, gently bathing her forehead with a cool cloth.

Elisabeth felt a surge of tenderness and, catching hold of Trista’s hand, she gave it a little squeeze. Then she was floating again.

The house was dark when the medication finally wore off, and the realization that this was Jonathan’s bed came to her instantly. She laid very still until she was sure he wasn’t beside her.

Her hand rose to her throat, and she was relieved to find the necklace was still there. Another ten minutes passed before she had the wit to get out of bed and grope her way through the blackness to the door.

In the hallway, she carefully took the pendant off and tossed it over Trista’s threshold. Only when she was on the other side did she put it on again.

There was pale moonlight shining in through the little girl’s window, and Elisabeth went to her bedside and gently awakened her.

“You’re leaving,” Trista whispered, holding very tightly to her rag doll.

Elisabeth bent to kiss her forehead. “Yes, darling, I’m going to try. Remember my promise—if I can come back to you, I will.”

Trista sighed. “All right,” she said forlornly. “Goodbye, Elisabeth.”

“Goodbye, sweetheart.” Elisabeth put her arms around Trista and gave her a final hug. “No matter what happens, don’t forget that I love you.”

Trista’s eyes were bright with tears as she sank her teeth into her lower lip and nodded.

Elisabeth drew a deep breath and went back to the door, closing her eyes as she reached for the knob, turned it and stepped through.

She was back in the twentieth century. Elisabeth opened her eyes to find herself in a carpeted hallway, then reached out for a switch and found one. Suddenly the electric wall sconces glared.

She opened the door to her room and peeked in. A poignant, bitter loneliness possessed her because there was no trace, no hint of Jonathan’s presence. After lingering for a moment, she turned and went downstairs to the telephone table in the hallway.

Not surprisingly, the little red light on her answering machine was blinking.

There were three messages from Janet, each more anxious than the last, and several other friends had called from Seattle. Elisabeth shoved her fingers through her hair, sighed and padded into the kitchen, barefoot. She was still wearing the cambric dress Jonathan had given her, and she smiled, thinking what a sensation it would cause if she wore it to the supermarket.

Since she hadn’t had dinner, Elisabeth heated a can of soup before finding the microfilm copies she’d made in the
Bugle
offices. It gave her a chill to think of showing Jonathan a newspaper account of his own death and that of his daughter.

While she huddled at the kitchen table, eating, Elisabeth read over the articles. It still troubled her that no bodies had been found, but then, such investigations hadn’t been very thorough or scientific in the nineteenth century. Maybe the discovery had even been hushed up, out of some misguided Victorian sense of delicacy.

Flipping ahead in the sheaf of copies, Elisabeth came to her own trial for the murder of Jonathan and Trista Fortner. With a growing sense of unreality, she read that Lizzie McCartney, who “claimed to be” the sister of the late Barbara McCartney Fortner, had been found guilty of the crime of arson, and thus murder, and sentenced to hang.

Elisabeth pushed away the last of her soup, feeling nauseous. Destiny had apparently decreed her death, as well as Jonathan’s and Trista’s, and she had no way of knowing whether or not their singular fates could be circumvented.

She took her bowl to the sink and rinsed it, then went upstairs to take a long, hot shower. When that was finished Elisabeth brushed her teeth, put on a lightweight cotton nightgown and crawled into bed.

Unable to sleep, she lay staring up at the ceiling. It would be easy to avoid being tried and hanged—all she would have to do was drop the necklace down a well somewhere and never go back to Jonathan’s time. But even as she considered this idea, Elisabeth knew she would discard it. She loved Trista and, God help her, Jonathan, too. And she could not let two human beings die without trying to save them.

Throughout the rest of the night, Elisabeth slept only in fits and starts. The telephone brought her summarily into a morning she wasn’t prepared to face.

“Hello?” she grumbled into the ornate receiver of the French telephone on the vanity table. Having stubbed her toe on a chest while crossing the room, Elisabeth made the decision to move the instrument closer to the bed.

“There you are!” Janet cried, sounding both annoyed and relieved. “Good heavens, Elisabeth—
where have you been?
”

Elisabeth sighed an sank down onto the vanity bench. “Relax,” she said. “I was only gone for a couple of days.”

“A couple of days? Give me a break, Elisabeth, I’ve been trying to reach you for
two weeks!
You were supposed to come to Seattle and spend a weekend with me, remember?”

Two weeks? Elisabeth gripped the edge of the vanity table.

The question was out of her mouth before she could properly weigh the effect it would have. “Janet, what day is it?”

Her friend’s response was a short, stunned silence, followed by, “It’s the first of May. I’m on my way. Don’t you set foot out of that house, Elisabeth McCartney, until I get there.”

Elisabeth’s mind was still reeling. If there was no logical correlation between her time and Jonathan’s, she might return to find that the fire had already happened. The idea set her trembling, but she knew she had to keep Janet from coming to visit and get back to 1892.

She ran the tip of her tongue quickly over her dry lips. “Listen, Janet, I’m all right, really. It’s just that I met this fascinating man.” That much, at least, was true. Bullheaded though he might be, Jonathan
was
fascinating. “I guess I just got so caught up in the relationship that I wasn’t paying attention to the calendar.”

Janet sounded both intrigued and suspicious. “Who is this guy? You haven’t mentioned any man to me.”

“That’s because I just met him.” She thought quickly, desperately. “We were away for a while.”