Linda Lael Miller Bundle (28 page)

“So you’ve never seen nothing suspicious, huh?”

As a teacher, Elisabeth winced at his grammar. “I’ve seen things I can’t explain,” she admitted. She figured she owed him that much, since he was giving her a ride home.

“Like what?”

Elisabeth sighed, unsure how much to say. After all, if he went home and told his parents she’d talked about traveling between one century and the next, the authorities would probably come and cart her off to a padded room. “Just—things. Shadows. The kind of stuff you catch a glimpse of out of the corner of an eye and wonder what you really saw.”

Her companion shuddered as he turned into Elisabeth’s driveway. She could tell the sight of the dark house looming in the night didn’t thrill him.

“Thanks,” she said, opening the door and getting out of the truck. Her knees seemed to have all the substance of whipped egg whites, and she clung to the door for a moment to steady herself.

The boy swallowed. “No problem,” he answered. He gunned the engine, though it was probably an unconscious motion. “Want me to stick around until you’re inside?”

Elisabeth looked back over her shoulder at the beloved house that had always been her refuge. “I’ll be perfectly all right,” she said. And then she turned and walked away.

Her young knight in shining armor wasted no time in backing out of the driveway and speeding away down the highway. Elisabeth smiled as she made her way around the house to the woodshed to extract the back door key from its hiding place.

The lights in the kitchen glowed brightly when she flipped the switch, and Elisabeth felt the need of a cup of tea to brace herself, but she didn’t want to take the time. Her strength was about to give out, and she yearned to be with Jonathan.

Upstairs, however, she found the door to the past sealed against her, even though she was wearing the necklace. After a half hour of trying, she went into the master bedroom and collapsed on the bed, too weary even to cry out her desolate frustration.

In the morning, she tried once again to cross the threshold, and once again, the effort was fruitless. She didn’t let herself consider the possibility that the window in time had closed forever, because the prospect was beyond bearing.

She listened listlessly to the messages on her answering machine—the last one was from her doctor, urging her to return to the hospital—then shut off the machine without returning any of the calls. She thumbed through her mail and, finding nothing from Rue, tossed the lot of it into the trash, unopened.

In the kitchen, she brewed hot tea and made toast with a couple slices of bread from a bag in the freezer. She was feeling a little better this morning, but she knew she hadn’t recovered a tenth of her normal strength.

After finishing her toast, she wrote another long letter to Rue, stamped it and carried it out to the mailbox. By the time she returned, carrying a batch of fourth-class mail with her, she was on the verge of collapse.

Numbly, Elisabeth climbed the stairs again, found herself a fresh set of clothes and ran a deep, hot bath. After shampooing her hair, she settled in to soak. The heat revived her, and she had some of her zip back when she got out and dressed in black jeans and a T-shirt with a picture of planet Earth on the front.

Pausing in the hallway, she leaned against the door, both palms resting against the wood, and called, “Jonathan?”

There was no answer, and Elisabeth couldn’t help wondering if that was because there was no longer a Jonathan. There were tears brimming in her eyes when she went back downstairs and stretched out on the sofa.

The jangle of the hallway telephone awakened her and, for a moment, Elisabeth considered not answering. Then she decided she’d caused people enough worry as it was, without ignoring their attempts to reach her.

She was shaky and breathless when she picked up the receiver in the hallway and blurted, “Hello?”

“What are you doing home?” Janet demanded. “Your doctor expressly told me you were supposed to stay until Friday, at least.”

Elisabeth wound her finger in the cord, smiling sadly. She was going to miss Janet, and she hoped her friend wouldn’t suffer too much over her disappearance. “I was resting until you called,” she said, making an effort to sound like her old self.

“I’m wasting my time trying to get you to come to Seattle, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” Elisabeth answered gently. “But don’t think your kindness doesn’t mean a lot to me, Janet, because it does. It’s just that, well, I’m up against something I have to work out for myself.”

“I understand,” Janet said uncertainly. “You’ll call if you change your mind?”

Elisabeth promised she would, hung up and immediately dialed her father’s number at Lake Tahoe. These conversations would be remembered as goodbyes, she supposed, if she managed to make it back to 1892.

The call was picked up by an answering machine, though, and Elisabeth was almost relieved. She identified herself, said she was out of the hospital and feeling fine, and hung up.

Early that afternoon, while Elisabeth was heating a can of soup at the stove, a light rain began to fall and the electricity flickered. She glanced uneasily at the darkening sky and wondered if it was about to storm where Jonathan and Trista were.

Just the thought of them brought a tightness to her throat and the sting of tears to her eyes. She was eating her soup and watching a soap opera on TV when a messenger from the hospital brought her purse. Later, if she felt better and she still couldn’t get across the threshold, she would get into her car and drive to town for groceries. Because she’d been away so much, she had practically nothing in the cupboards except for canned goods.

Thunder shook the walls, lightning flashed and the TV went dead. Not caring, Elisabeth went upstairs. Once again, longingly, she paused in front of the door.

There was nothing beyond it, she told herself sternly, besides a long fall to the roof of the sun porch. She was having a nervous breakdown or something, that was all, and Jonathan and Trista were mere figments of her imagination. They were the family she’d longed for but never really had.

She leaned against the door, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. The hope of returning was all she had to cling to, and even that was fading fast.

Presently, Elisabeth grew weary of crying and straightened. She knotted one fist and pounded. “Jonathan!” she yelled.

Nothing.

She splashed her face with cold water at the bathroom sink, then went resolutely downstairs. Amazed at how simple exertions could exhaust her, she got her purse and forced herself out to her car.

Shopping was an ordeal, and Elisabeth felt so shaky, she feared she’d fall over in a dead faint right there in the supermarket. Hastily, she bought fruit and a stack of frozen entrés and left the store.

At home, she found the electricity had been restored, and she put one of the packaged dinners into the microwave. She hardly tasted the food.

Following her solitary meal, Elisabeth spent a few disconsolate minutes at the piano, running her fingers over the keys. The songs she played reminded her too much of Trista, though, and of Jonathan, and she finally had to stop. And she had to admit she’d been hoping to hear the sound of Trista’s piano echoing back across the century that separated them.

Figuring she might as well give up on getting back to 1892—for that day at least—Elisabeth gathered an armload of Aunt Verity’s journals from one of the bookshelves in the parlor and took herself upstairs. After building a fire with the last of the wood, she curled up in the middle of the bed and began to read.

At first, the entries were ordinary enough. Verity talked about her marriage, how much she loved her husband, how she longed for children. After her mate’s untimely death in a hunting accident, she wrote about sadness and grief. And then came the account of Barbara Fortner’s appearance in the upstairs hallway.

Elisabeth sat bolt upright as she read about the woman’s baffled disbelief and Verity’s efforts to make her feel at home. The words Elisabeth’s aunt had written shed new light on the stories Verity had told her teenage nieces during their summer visits, and Elisabeth felt the pang of grief.

By midnight, Elisabeth’s eyes were drooping. She closed the journals and stacked them neatly on the bedside table, then changed into a nightshirt, brushed her teeth and crawled into bed. “Jonathan,” she whispered. His name reverberated through her heart.

She was never sure whether minutes had passed or hours when the sound of a child’s sobs prodded her awake.
Trista.

Elisabeth sat up and flung the covers back, her fingers gripping the necklace as she hurried into the hallway. Her hand trembled violently as she reached for the knob on the sealed door, praying with all her heart that it would open.

The child’s name left her throat in a rush, like a sigh of relief, when the knob turned under her hand and the hinges creaked.

There was a lamp burning on Trista’s bedside table, and she stared at Elisabeth as though she couldn’t believe she was really seeing her. Then her small face contorted with childish fury. “Where were you? Why did you leave me like that?”

Elisabeth sat down on the edge of the bed and gathered the little girl into her arms, holding her very close. “I was sick, sweetheart,” she said as joyous tears pooled in her eyes. “Believe me, the last thing I wanted to do was leave you.”

“You’ll stay here now?” Trista sniffled, pulling back in Elisabeth’s embrace to look up into her face. “You won’t leave us again?”

Elisabeth thought of Rue, her father, Janet. She would miss them all, but she knew she belonged here in this time, with these people. She kissed Trista’s forehead. “I won’t leave you again,” she promised. “Were you all alone? Is that why you were crying?”

Trista nodded. “I was scared.”

“Where’s your papa?”

Jonathan’s daughter allowed herself to be settled back on the pillows and tucked in. “He’s just out in the barn, but I heard noises and I imagined Mr. Marley was coming down the hall, rattling his chains and moaning.”

Elisabeth smiled at the reference to the Dickens ghost. “I’m the only apparition in this house tonight,” she said. Then she kissed Trista again, turned down the wick in the lamp and went downstairs.

Before she went to Jonathan and told him she’d marry him if he still wanted her, before she threw herself into his arms, there was something she had to find out.

E
lizabeth stood in the kitchen, staring helplessly at Jonathan’s calendar. Never before had it been so crucial to know the exact date, but the small numbered squares told her nothing except that it was still June.

The sudden opening of the back door and a rush of cool, night air made her turn. Pure joy caused her spirit to pirouette within her. Jonathan was standing there, looking at her as though he didn’t quite dare to trust his eyes.

With a strangled cry, she launched herself across the room and into his embrace, her arms tight around his neck.

“Lizzie,” he rasped, holding her. “Thank God you’re all right.”

She tilted her head back and kissed him soundly before replying, “It was hell not knowing what was happening here. I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to get back, and I was even more frightened by what I might find if I did.”

Jonathan laughed and gave her a squeeze before setting her on her feet. His hand smoothed her hair with infinite gentleness, and his gaze seemed to caress her. “Are you well again?”

She shrugged, then slipped her arms around his lean waist. “I’m a little shaky, but I’m going to make it.”

A haunted expression crossed his face. “I wanted to go with you, to make sure you got help, but when I stepped over the threshold, you vanished from my arms.”

Elisabeth glanced back at the calendar. “Jonathan…”

He smiled and crooked a finger under her chin. “That’s one thing you were wrong about,” he said. “It’s the twenty-third of June—Thursday, to be exact—and there’s been no fire.”

His words lessened Elisabeth’s dread a little. After all, she knew next to nothing about this phenomenon, and it was possible that she or Jonathan had inadvertently changed fate somehow.

In the next instant, however, another matter involving dates and cycles leapt into her mind, and the shock made her sway in Jonathan’s arms.

He eased her into a chair. “Elisabeth, what is it?”

“I…” Her throat felt dry and she had to stop and swallow. “My…Jonathan, I haven’t had my…I could be pregnant.”

His eyes glowed bright as the kerosene lantern in the middle of the table. “You not only came back to me,” he smiled. “You brought someone with you.”

Tears of happiness gathered on Elisabeth’s lashes. Once, during her marriage, she’d gotten pregnant and then miscarried, and Ian had been pleased. He’d said it was for the best and that he hoped Elisabeth wouldn’t take too long getting her figure back.

“Y-you’re glad?”

Jonathan crouched in front of her chair and took her hands in his. A sheen of moisture glimmered in his eyes. “What do you think? I love you, Lizzie. And a child is the best gift you could give me.” He frowned. “You won’t leave again, will you?”

Elisabeth reached back to unclasp the necklace and place it in his palm. “For all I care, you can drop this down the well. I’m here to stay.”

He put the pendant into his shirt pocket and stood, drawing Elisabeth with him. “I’d like to take you straight to bed,” he said, “but you’re still looking a little peaky, and we have to think about Trista.” Jonathan paused and kissed her. “Will you marry me in the morning, Lizzie?”

She nodded. “I know it wouldn’t be right for us to make love,” she said shyly, “but I need for you to hold me. Being apart from you was awful.”

He put an arm around her waist and ushered her toward the rear stairs. “I’m not going to let you out of my sight,” he answered gruffly.

In the spare room, he settled Elisabeth under the covers and then began stripping off his own clothes. She was grateful it was dark so she couldn’t see what she was missing and
he
couldn’t see her blushing like a virgin bride.

A few moments later, Jonathan climbed into the bed and enfolded Elisabeth in his arms, fitting her close against the hard warmth of his body. Despite the lingering effects of her illness and their decision not to make love again until they were man and wife, desire stirred deep within Elisabeth.

When his hand curved lightly over her breast, she gave an involuntary moan and arched her back. She felt Jon come to a promising hardness against her thigh and heard the quickening of his breath.

“I suppose we could be quiet,” she whispered as he lifted her nightshirt and spread one hand over her quivering belly as though to claim and shelter the child within.

Jonathan chuckled, his mouth warm and moist against the pulsepoint at the base of Elisabeth’s throat. “You?” he teased. “The last time I had you, Lizzie, you carried on something scandalous.”

She reached back over her head to grasp the rails in the headboard as he began kissing her breasts. “I g-guess I’ll just have to trust you to be a…to be a gentleman.”

“You’re a damn fool if you do,” he said, just before he took a nipple into his mouth and scraped it lightly with his teeth.

Elisabeth flung her head from one side to the other, struggling with all her might to keep back the cries of surrender that were already crowding her throat. Rain pelted the window, and a flash of lightning lit the room with an eerie explosion of white. “Jonathan…” she cried.

He brought his mouth down onto hers at the same moment that he parted her legs and entered her. While their tongues sparred, her moans of impending release filled his throat.

Their bodies arched high off the mattress in violent fusion, twisting together like ribbons in the wind. Then, after long, exquisite moments of fiery union, they sank as one to the bed, both gasping for breath.

“We agreed not to do that,” Elisabeth said an eternity later, when she was able to speak again.

Jonathan smoothed damp tendrils of hair back from her forehead, sighed and kissed her lightly. “It’s a little late for recriminations, Lizzie. And if you’re looking for an apology, you’re wasting your time.”

She blushed and settled close against his chest, which was still heaving slightly from earlier exertions. Thunder rattled the roof above their heads, immediately followed by pounding and shouting at the front door and a shriek from Trista’s room.

“I’ll see to her,” Elisabeth said, reaching for her nightshirt while Jon scrambled into his clothes. “You get the door.”

Trista was sobbing when Elisabeth stumbled into her room, lit the lamp on her bedside stand and drew the child into her arms. “It’s all right, baby,” she whispered. “You were just having a bad dream, that’s all.”

“I saw Marley’s ghost,” Trista wailed, shuddering against Elisabeth as she scrambled toward reality. “He was standing at the foot of my bed, calling me!”

Elisabeth kissed the little girl’s forehead. “Darling, you’re awake now and I’m here. And Marley’s ghost isn’t real—he’s only a story character. You don’t need to be afraid.”

Trista clung to Elisabeth’s shoulders, but she wasn’t trembling so hard now, and her sobs had slowed to irregular hiccups. “I don’t want to leave you and Papa,” she said. “I don’t want to die.”

The words were like the stab of a knife, reminding Elisabeth of the fire. “You aren’t going to die, sweetheart,” she vowed fiercely, stretching out on top of Trista’s covers, still holding the child. “Not for many, many years. Someday, you’ll marry and have children of your own.” Tears of determination scalded Elisabeth’s eyes, and she reached to turn down the wick in the lamp, letting the safe darkness enfold them.

Trista sniffled, clutching Elisabeth as though she feared she would float unanchored through the universe if she let go. “Will you promise to stay here with us?” she asked in a small voice. “Are you going to marry Papa?”

Elisabeth kissed her cheek. “Yes and yes. Nothing could make me leave you again, and your father and I are getting married tomorrow.”

“Then you’ll be my mother.”

“I’ll be your stepmother,” Elisabeth clarified gently. “But I swear I love you as much as I would if you’d been born to me.”

Trista yawned. It was a reassuring, ordinary sound that relieved a lot of Elisabeth’s anxieties. “Will there be babies? I’m very good with them, you know.”

Elisabeth chuckled and smoothed the child’s hair. “Yes, Trista, I think you’ll have a little brother or sister before you know it. And I’ll be depending on your help.”

She yawned again. “Did Papa go out?”

Elisabeth nodded. “I think so. We’ll just go to sleep, you and I, and when we wake up, he’ll be home again.”

“All right,” Trista sighed. And then she slipped easily into a quiet, natural sleep.

Jonathan had still not returned when Elisabeth and Trista rose the next morning, but Elisabeth didn’t allow the fact to trouble her. He was a doctor, and he would inevitably be away from home a great deal.

While Ellen prepared oatmeal downstairs in the kitchen, Elisabeth brushed and braided Trista’s thick, dark hair. After eating breakfast, the two of them went up to the attic to go through the trunks again. The school term was over, and Trista, who was still a little wan and thin from her illness, had a wealth of time on her hands.

Elisabeth found a beautiful midnight blue gown in the depths of one of the trunks and decided that would be her wedding dress.

Trista’s brow crumpled. “Don’t brides usually wear white?”

Draping the delicate garment carefully over her arm, Elisabeth went to sit beside Trista on the arched lid of one of the trunks. “Yes, sweetheart,” she replied after taking a breath and searching her mind for the best words. “But I was married once before, and even though I wasn’t very happy then, I don’t want to deny that part of my life by pretending it didn’t happen. Do you understand?”

“No,” Trista said with a blunt honesty that reminded Elisabeth of Jonathan. The child’s smile was sudden and blindingly bright. “But I guess I don’t need to. You’re going to stay and we’ll be a family. That’s what matters to me.”

Elisabeth smiled and kissed Trista’s forehead. It was odd to think that this child was her elder in the truest sense of the word. The dress in her arms and the dusty attic and the little girl had become her reality, however, and it was that other world that seemed like an illusion. “We are definitely going to be a family,” she agreed. “Now, let’s take my wedding gown outside and let it air on the clothesline, so I won’t smell like mothballs during the ceremony.”

Trista wrinkled her nose and giggled, but when her gaze traveled to the grimy window, she frowned. “It looks like it’s about to rain.”

There had been so much sunshine in Elisabeth’s heart since she’d awakened to the realization that this was her wedding day, she hadn’t noticed the weather at all. Now, with a little catch in her throat, she went over and peered out through the dirty panes of glass.

Sure enough, the sky was dark with churning clouds, and now that she thought of it, there was a hot, heavy, brooding feeling to the air. From where she stood, Elisabeth could see the weathered, unevenly shaped shingles on the roof of the front porch. They looked dry as tinder.

She tried to shake off a feeling of foreboding. Jonathan was right, she insisted to herself—if there was truly going to be a fire, it would have happened before this. Still, she was troubled, and she wished she and Jonathan and Trista were faraway from that place.

They took the dress down to Elisabeth’s room and hung it near a window she’d opened slightly, then descended to the kitchen. Since Ellen was busy with the ironing, Elisabeth and Trista decided to gather the eggs.

Fetching a basket, she hurried off toward the hen house, expecting to be drenched by rain at any moment. But the sullen sky retained its burden, and the air fairly crackled with the promise of violence.
Jonathan,
Elisabeth thought nervously,
come home. Now.

But she laughed with Trista as they filled the basket with brown eggs. Surprisingly, considering the threat of a storm, Vera appeared, riding her pony and carrying a virtually hairless doll. After settling the horse in the barn, the two children retreated to Trista’s room to play.

Elisabeth joined Ellen in the kitchen and volunteered to take a turn at pressing Jonathan’s shirts. The cumbersome flatirons were heated on the stove, and it looked like an exhausting task.

“You just sit down and have a nice cup of tea,” Ellen ordered with a shake of her head. “It wasn’t that long ago that you were sick and dying, you know.”

There was a kind of grudging affection in Ellen’s words, and Elisabeth was pleased. She was also enlightened; obviously, her disappearance had been easily explained. Jonathan had probably said she was lying in bed and mustn’t be disturbed for any reason. “I’m better now,” she allowed.

Ellen stopped ironing the crisp white shirts long enough to get the china teapot down from a shelf and spoon loose tea leaves into it. She added hot water from the kettle and brought the teapot and a cup and saucer to the table. “I guess you and the doctor will be getting married straight away.”

Elisabeth nodded. “Yes.”

The housekeeper frowned, but her expression showed curiosity rather than antagonism. “I can’t quite work out what it is, but there’s something different about you,” she mused, touching the tip of her index finger to her tongue and then to the iron.

The resultant sizzle made Elisabeth wince. “I’m—from another place,” she said, making an effort at cordiality.

Ellen ironed with a vehemence. “I know. Boston. But you don’t talk much like she did.”

By “she,” Elisabeth knew Ellen meant Barbara Fortner, who was supposed to be Elisabeth’s sister. Unfortunately, the situation left Elisabeth with no real choice but to lie. Sort of. “Well, I’ve lived in Seattle most of my adult life.”

The housekeeper rearranged a shirt on the wooden ironing board and began pressing the yoke, and a pleasant, mingled scent of steam and starch rose in the air. “She never talked about you,” the woman reflected. “Didn’t keep your photograph around, neither.”

Elisabeth swallowed, contemplating the tangled web that stretched before her. “We weren’t close,” she answered, and that was true, though not for the reasons Ellen would probably invent on her own. Elisabeth took a sip of tea and then boldly inquired, “Did you like her?”

“No,” Ellen answered with a surprising lack of hesitation. “The first Mrs. Fortner was always full of herself. What kind of a woman would go away for months and leave her own child behind?”