Now and Forever (57 page)

Andrew looked so distressed that her heart went out to him. "Are they--" He cleared his throat and began again. "What happened to the family?"

"It doesn't say here but, if you like, I can check some of our other records."

"I would be in your debt," said Andrew.

She shot a look in Shannon's direction.
You have to do something about his speech patterns,
that look said. This was 1993. Nobody was polite any more, not unless they were displaced time travelers who hadn't learned the ropes yet.

"Give me a minute," she said. "Archived material is kept downstairs." She gestured toward the leather sofas lining the window. "Make yourselves comfortable." She glanced down and noted that they were holding hands. Apparently they were already more comfortable than she'd realized.

Oh, Shannon,
she thought as she raced past the leaded windows that looked out on Dr. Forsythe's Colonial-era knot garden.
Do you really think this is going to last?

Hiding behind a pillar she looked back at the two of them, seated together on the sofa with the light spilling over them like a benediction. She closed her eyes for an instant, praying she'd been wrong, praying things would be different, but when she opened her eyes and looked - really looked - at Andrew, she found nothing had changed.

The man had no aura. The light around him was from the sun streaming through the windows and nothing else. He was as irrelevant and temporary to this world as a good hair day was to Lyle Lovett.

The wonder was that nobody else saw the things she saw when they looked at him. A chain of history followed him wherever he went. Thousands of lives were somehow tangled up with the fate of this one solitary man from another time.

Would those lives vanish into the mists if he remained here? Would it be as if they never existed, never had the chance to live and love and walk this earth? A wave of dizziness crashed over Dakota and she clung to the pillar for support. She rested her hands on her thighs and bent her head, struggling to regain her equilibrium for the second time that day.

Shannon loved him. You had only to see the two of them together to know that for a fact. And she deserved the best life had to offer but nothing good could come of flying in the face of history.

Unless that book was wrong.

The thought caught her attention and she straightened up, her head clearing. How many texts had she thumbed through that were filled with errors, both minor and major? Hundreds, that's how many. Scholars were not infallible, no matter what they might like the hoi polloi to believe. One book did not a destiny make.

Love was a powerful force, she thought as she continued on her way to the basement. She prayed it would prove to be more powerful than the sense of farewell that was growing stronger by the minute.

Chapter Eighteen

"She is gone a considerable time," Andrew observed as he and Shannon sat on the couch and waited.

"I know," said Shannon, tapping her finger against the armrest. "Maybe she ran into Dr. Forsythe and he sent her to do something else."

"Dr. Forsythe?"

"Her boss. They have - shall we say - a confrontational relationship."

"She watches us as if she knows what we are about. 'Tis a most disconcerting notion."

"That's one of the problems with having a psychic for a friend. Keeping a secret is harder than it should be."

"She does not know how it was I came to be here, does she?"

"She knows about the balloon," said Shannon, shifting uncomfortably on the leather cushion. Hiding the history book was one thing; lying to Andrew was something else. "She - she seems to suspect there's more to it than that."

"Aye," said Andrew. "It is in her eyes each time she looks at me."

Shannon stood up and smoothed the front of her walking shorts. "You know, it's beginning to look like Dakota's going to be stuck for a while. Why don't we just leave her a note and she can drop off whatever information she finds when she comes by to teach the kids?"

Great idea but about thirty seconds too late.

Shannon and Andrew were halfway out the door when Dakota came racing across the room, waving a sheaf of papers.

"Sorry I took so long," she called out, "but some idiot filed these with survey maps instead of death records."

Andrew recoiled noticeably, startling Shannon.
These are his friends,
she reminded herself.
A few days ago they were alive and well and celebrating their daughter's wedding.

"It was a bit hard to find," Dakota went on, acting as if there was nothing unusual going on, "but apparently the Blakelees moved back to Princeton in 1785 and lived here until their deaths. Josiah died in 1799. Rebekah followed in 1801."

Andrew nodded, a muscle on the right side of his jaw jerking spasmodically.

"There is another couple," Shannon said, knowing he would not ask, "who once lived in Princeton with the Blakelees. I heard about them once - Zane and Emilie Rutledge."

"Where did I hear those names before?" Dakota wondered. She looked at Shannon then her cheeks reddened. "Give me another five and I'll see what I can do."

Andrew reached for Shannon's hand as Dakota hurried away. "'Twas a generous thing you did."

"I must be crazy," Shannon said with a quick laugh. "Finding out about my own competition."

"There is no other," Andrew said. "No woman could compare to you."

His words touched Shannon's heart and she pressed a quick kiss against his lips. "I knew you wouldn't ask for yourself, so I figured I would."
Generosity, Shannon, or just your guilty conscience?

 
#

Dakota was unable to find any information pertaining to Emilie and Zane Rutledge but when Andrew mentioned that Emilie's maiden name was Crosse, the floodgates opened.

"Crosse Harbor," said Dakota as she handed Andrew a sheaf of papers. "It looks like Emilie and Zane had a mansion near Philadelphia and a summer house on the Jersey shore. Since this is a New Jersey museum, that's how it was referenced."

"How did Crosse Harbor come to be known by her maiden name?" Shannon asked.

"Who knows?" Dakota shrugged her shoulders. "Maybe she was emancipated before her time. It's not that unusual for a woman of the era to wish to perpetuate her family's name in some way."

'Tis Emilie as I knew her,
Andrew thought. He looked toward Shannon and felt a wash of emotion that warmed him, body and soul.
A woman unlike any other until you.
 
She met his eyes and he knew by the expression in their aqua depths that she'd somehow heard his thoughts and understood his meaning.

His eyes burned with unshed tears as he looked down at the top page.
The Rutledge family, one of the foremost families in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was founded by Zane Rutledge and his wife Emilie Crosse. Their five children, Sara Jane, Andrew --

"I cannot read this," he said, folding the papers and stuffing them into the breast pocket of his shirt.
A child,
he thought.
A boy who carries my name....

He could feel the eyes of the two women boring into him with iron-hot intensity but he could not find the words to explain his actions.

"We should go," Shannon said. "You know what rush hour on 287 is like."

Dakota seemed reluctant to let them leave. "If you wait a little bit longer, I might be able to find more information on the Rutledges of Pennsylvania."

"Nay," said Andrew, a bit more gruffly than he intended. "'Tisn't necessary. I know all I need to about them."

Dakota walked with them to the door. "So I'll see you guys later. I'm bringing over a pile of
Sesame Street
books my mother found at a yard sale."

"
Sesame Street
?" Shannon asked. "Aren't the kids a little old for that?"

"When you can't read it doesn't much matter if you begin with Ernie and Big Bird or Shakespeare. All that matters is that you learn to read."

It occurred to Andrew that Dakota was as extraordinary in her own way as his Shannon was. These women felt commitment to a cause beyond themselves, as he once had, and he wondered if they knew how fortunate they were.

 
#

Dakota stood in the doorway and watched as Shannon and Andrew walked hand-in-hand down the street.

"Coward," she whispered to herself. Maybe Shannon didn't have the heart to tell him the truth about his destiny, but there was no excuse for Dakota. She wasn't in love with him. In fact, except for the way he looked at Shannon like she was the best thing since sliced bread, she wasn't entirely certain she even liked him. What kind of man would leave a time where every one's effort counted, where one person could bring about changes that would affect a nation's destiny?

He had no business abandoning his true fate. So what if life was not what he had wished it to be? Maybe if he'd stayed put instead of leaping into the first hot air balloon to come along, he might be carving a place for himself in history, a place reserved for heroes.

Down in the archives she had uncovered two more documents with mention of Andrew McVie's heroism during the winter of 1779-1780 featured prominently in the text.
You don't understand
,
Shannon had said.
He left in August 1776.
And you don't understand,
Dakota thought.
He's going back again.

 
#

Shannon was quiet on the drive home. She blamed it on the rush hour traffic, which was true enough, but that was far from being the entire reason.

You're getting good at this, Shannon. Bet you never thought you were such a skillful liar.

Lying? She hadn't lied to Andrew about anything. She'd sidestepped, underplayed, and concealed, but she hadn't lied.

Can you look him in the eye and say that?

"Oh, shut up," she muttered, exiting the highway.

He looked toward her. "Lass?"

"Nothing," she said. "I was just talking to myself."

"'Tis a bad sign," he said with a playful grin. "When I practiced law in Boston, that was cause for arrest."

"We're not in Boston," she pointed out.

"Aye," he said, rubbing his chin, "and this is not 1776."

She looked at him sharply. "You sound disappointed."

"That was not my intention. I am but stating a fact."

"I know what year it is, Andrew. I don't need you to point it out to me."

"You are unwell?"

"What makes you ask that?" Her tone of voice was cool enough to frost a margarita glass.

"'Twould seem the best explanation."

"I'm not entitled to a bad mood?"

"You do not wish an answer to that question."

She glared at him. "Wimp."

"I do not know that word."

"Good," she said. "It's an insult. Not particularly apt, but an insult."

"You are behaving in a most uncharacteristic fashion, lass. In truth it appears each time you and your friend Dakota are in each other's company."

"You're imagining things."

"Nay," he said. "I know what I see and hear."

"Maybe time travel damages the grey cells."

"I do not understand the meaning but I believe it to be another insult."

What was wrong with her? This was the man she had waited her entire life to find and now she was pushing him away with cheap wisecracks a cut-rate comic in Las Vegas wouldn't touch.

She turned onto the long, winding drive that led up to the house. She wanted to tell him she was sorry but the words wouldn't come. She felt brittle as glass, as if the slightest movement would shatter her heart into a thousand pieces.

She suspected Dakota had found something more about Andrew, probably more proof that he had saved the world or something equally grand and heroic...and impossible if he didn't go back where he came from. Shannon could feel the truth of her suspicions deep inside, in the place where her guilt was growing bigger by the minute. She'd thought her heart would stop beating when Dakota handed over those pages about Emilie and Zane.