The Time Rip (13 page)

She let out a shaky breath, turned to leave and banged solidly into someone tall and warm.

Chapter 4

“Freya.”

She heard her name murmured and looked up straight up at Jeremy. She stood motionless with shock, staring at him, her mind blank. Was she dreaming? Everything felt slow, unreal, what was he doing here?

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I came to find you, of course.”

A sudden wave of giddiness had her swaying slightly. He turned to face her fully and slid his hands down her arms, steadying her.

“You came to find me. How did you g— I mean, why? What is it?”

“I needed to talk to you.” His expression was serious. “This doesn’t look good.” He took hold of her hand, holding it up high, and pulled a battered roll of lint from his pocket.

Freya watched him in puzzlement, distracted for a moment, because everyone she knew carried lint around. She shook her head slightly to clear it, and belatedly noticed blood beginning to pour from a gouge in her wrist.

In spite of Jeremy’s swift handiwork, bright hot colour ran up her arm under her sleeve. There was suddenly an awful lot of it. She blinked and tried to understand that it was real, when it looked like paint or something.

She was shocked to notice it was already beginning to spot through his makeshift bandage, and surely it should be hurting now. It was strange that she couldn’t feel much. There was pain, but not as much as she would have thought.

She hissed out a breath between her teeth and scowled. “What are you doing here? How did you know where to find me?”

“We’ll get to that in a minute. Who are you running from, Freya?” his voice was gentle, as if he expected her to be hysterical at the sight of a little blood.

It was at odds with his fingers, which had pushed her sleeve right up and now bit into her arm on the inside of her elbow.

He held her blood-streaked arm high, watching the bandage for a while. Then his eyes skimmed the market, looking for her pursuer.

“No one. At least… I tripped, that’s all.”

“All right, we will deal with this first.” His voice was quiet, but had an unnerving quality that she couldn’t quite place. He seemed nonchalant, distracted, yet Freya’s every sense was screaming danger. If it were not for his tight grip on her elbow, she might have been seriously tempted to make a run for it, and that was bizarre.

What was he doing here anyway, had she imagined the whole time travel thing? It had been a flaky idea to begin with, and her mind now scrambled in circles trying to make sense of everything.

She glanced up at him and felt a chill skim down her spine. Logic dictated the way he was holding up her arm, but the knowledge did not help much; it was, unfortunately, just how an adult might hold onto a recalcitrant child, and no amount of reasoning would budge the image.

“You could let go, you know. I doubt it’s that serious.” Freya was pleased with her tone, but it got her nothing more than a narrow eyed glance and a slight tightening of the fingers around her elbow. He had to be cutting off the circulation now and Freya scowled. Her wrist was starting to hurt and she was beginning to get annoyed.

Jeremy turned to run a hand over the corner of brickwork, found a nail sticking out half an inch and exhaled softly. Keeping tight hold of her arm, he fished inside his inner coat pocket and brought out what appeared to be a mobile phone. He slid it open and glanced around before pressing a number of keys with his thumb.

There was a sudden flash, a feeling of falling and they were standing in a room with rough looking walls and bare floorboards. A bed lay against one side and a wooden desk against another.

“What the—how did—?” Freya stammered, gasped and tried to step back.

Jeremy slipped the phone into his pocket once more and pulled her towards the door. “It’s this way.”

She glimpsed a leaded window with fields beyond, glowing in afternoon sunshine, and knew that somehow they had gone back in time to the farmhouse.

He pulled her into a small bathroom and began undoing the buttons on her coat. Feeling too bemused to stop him, she blinked as he pulled out her keys and mobile. He slipped them into his pockets.

“Hey! Give those back.”

“In a minute, we need to clean that cut first.”

He deftly striped the wet coat from her, tossing it casually into the bath, the lint followed, and then he caught her elbow again, fingers biting in as he turned her to face the sink. The blood had slowed somewhat, but the cut was deep and jagged. He forced it straight under the tap.

“Ow! What, are you nuts? Let go! That stings like hell.”

“Shh, soon be done.”

“You patronising—” she bit the words off and elbowed him half-heartedly in the gut. “Don’t shush me, I’m not a child.”

“Then behave like an adult and clean that.” He backed off to lean against the doorframe, watching her face while the water ran red down the sink and the blood slowed to a trickle.

Glancing back at him, Freya got the feeling he was trying not to laugh. She pulled her wrist free of the water and studied the sluggish blood flow. “I think I’m done.”

He took a first aid kit from a cupboard and led her back to the bedroom. At the desk, he pulled out a chair. “Sit down.”
His hand on her shoulder forced her compliance.

Freya felt her temper rise and then glanced at her torn open wrist. It hurt appallingly and she felt abruptly sick.

He dried around the cut, pulled the edges together deftly with Steri-strips and sprayed something from a can that took the majority of the pain. She felt relief flood through her as the pain receded and decided to let him get on with it as he clearly had some first aid knowledge.

“That’s better.” He straightened up allowing her to stand, while still not giving her a lot of room.

Freya got to her feet, surveying him warily as she struggled to contain a chaotic mixture of emotions. Relief at having the cut bound up contradicted with nerves over his sudden appearance and anger at his highhanded actions.

The loss of his body heat from her back made her feel suddenly cold and she looked up into dark eyes, serious on her face, and shivered. She blinked at him as her emotions took an unwelcome twist.

Anger followed swiftly, more than anger, sheer outrage at his actions in treating her as if she were some helpless fainting bit of fluff. She latched onto it immediately.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing grabbing me like that and where did you come from and how did we get here?” Her words ran together in a jumble and she scowled at him.

Jeremy exhaled and rubbed the heel of his hand briefly over his forehead. “Yes, I suppose it is now time we got to that. Where is your time device, Freya?”

“What?” she stared up at him, her mind blank with incomprehension. His words threw her off balance; not so much what he had said, but how he had said it. She had expected anger in response to her own and it was confusing that he wasn’t playing ball. She stared at him blankly.

“Do not try to tell me that you don’t understand what I am talking about. Just tell me where it is.” He took a step toward her, looking grim, and she involuntarily backed up.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, caution beginning to make an appearance.

He gave her a sharp look and took her mobile from his pocket. He looked it over for a moment, popped off the back, and had it dismantled and reassembled in seconds, before jamming it back in his pocket and hissing out a breath between his teeth.

“I’ll give you a clue, it looks like a mobile phone and you used it to come here to visit me.”

Her anger was arrested before it had even got going. She blinked at him, confusion taking its place. That Alice in Wonderland feeling was back with a vengeance.

Jeremy felt tired all of a sudden. He did not have Greg’s gift of the gab for getting people to open up and trust him. He could see Freya was having difficulty keeping up with her changing emotions, but he was not doing much better.

He had never gone in for intense relationships. All his liaisons had been easy; light. None of the girls he had dated had scrambled his emotions in the way Freya did. He was uncomfortable with the strength of his feelings. Uncomfortable with the whole scene. On top of all that, anger that she thought she could lie to him mixed with anxiety over her injuries, making him want to behave like someone from another century. This century.

Adrenaline had made dark pools of her eyes, the summer blue a glimmer around the edge. He inhaled sharply, trying to keep his emotions in check and then, seeing his way clear, pulled her into his arms. He knew she would not want to give up her time device, but he couldn’t let her keep it.

“Freya,” he murmured, and then took her breath with a kiss. He broke off to whisper softly, “Why don’t you tell me where it is?” Without waiting for a reply he kissed her again, silently thrilled with her response.

She tried to hold onto him to catch her balance, but it didn’t seem to help much. His hands slid down her back firmly then skimmed round her waist as he walked her backwards across the room.

“You are soaked through,” he said. The back of her knees hit the edge of the bed and he pushed her down. Stripped her jumper and tee shirt from her in one fluid motion. “Tell me where it is.”

Freya’s hands shook as he followed her down to sit on the bed. He found the zip on her calf length boots and stripped them off, tossing them carelessly to the floor.

“Wait, Jeremy, stop.”

He paused, his eyes meeting hers, filled with laughter. “Where is it?” His hand felt hot on her foot.

“Where’s what?”

“The time device you used to bring your accounts here. Where is it?” His hand ran up her leg under her skirt, stopping at the top edge of her stocking.

Freya was beyond thinking rationally. She tried to make herself want to push him away, but could not seem to manage it. His hand moved to her other leg, pushing her skirt up as he shaped her hip and waist.

“Jeremy.” Her forehead dropped into the hollow of his shoulder, and her hands slid down his arms.

He hissed out a breath and she caught his exasperation mixed with laughter. “You really don’t have it here, do you,” he said, and stood up abruptly.

Freya watched in bemusement as he picked up her boots one at a time, running his hands over them and dropping them to the floor. He snatched up her jumper and tee shirt next. Turned them through and shook them out before dropping both to the floor and striding from the room.

Freya caught her breath. Realised she was sprawled inelegantly on the bed in her underwear and hold ups, with her skirt rucked up around her waist. She straightened her skirt, pulling it down, and scooted off the bed to grab her jumper off the floor.

The rat had actually had the audacity to strip search her for something and, to make matters worse, she had let him; had melted into a puddle, unable to even make herself want to stop him.

He came back into the room with her coat in one hand, and she felt her face burn. She had not reached the jumper and now hovered, torn between wanting to run forward to snatch it up and standing her ground to prove it did not matter. She bunched her fists at her sides, her temper rising, she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing she was uncomfortable.

“Freya,” he said her name like a warning and walked slowly across the room towards her, watchful, as if waiting for her to make a run for it. She told herself to stand her ground, but he was intimidating and she felt herself move backwards involuntarily. “You are from 2008. This farmhouse is currently in 1908. You are one hundred years in the past. If you want me to take you back, then you will tell me where your time device is.”