Timeless (28 page)

Neither of us spoke for a moment, but we held
each other, relieved that we were both alive, and for the moment,
at least, in no danger. There was much to discuss, to learn, to
discover together, but in this moment, we needed no words.

He felt like a haven for me; the warm,
familiar scent of him was both strange and instantly recognizable.
I looked out the large window panes at the blooming azaleas, the
bees buzzing, the birds happily singing. It was as if I’d entered a
beautiful dream, and I never wanted to wake up. This was happiness,
perfection—the still moment, the moment outside of time and place.
I didn’t know what the future held for us, but the future was not
important. Only now held any significance, this moment suspended in
time.

We stayed like this, holding each other and
making plans, for the rest of the day. I knew I’d eventually have
to go back, but neither of us wanted to break the silence that
cemented us together.

As it turned out, Mrs. Arthur, the
housekeeper, broke it for us.

“Will the young miss be joining you for
dinner, Mr. de Vere?”

Both of us jumped apart, startled. I hadn’t
realized anyone besides Damien and I were here, though I should
have guessed that, in a house this large, there had to be some
staff.

“Certainly,” he replied.

“No, I can’t,” I said, getting up.

“Why not?” he asked.

He looked a little hurt.

“I don’t want to leave, but my Aunt…” I gave
him a knowing look.

“I’ve been meaning to discuss that with you,
Emmeline,” he said, becoming serious.

I looked puzzled.

“Don’t worry,” I assured him, “she doesn’t
suspect that I’m here.”

“You mean you lied to her?”

He looked horrified. I’d forgotten for a
moment that Damien would consider any form of deceit terribly
wrong.

“Well, not exactly,” I backtracked. “I just
didn’t tell her I was coming here.”

He looked at me skeptically.

“Emmeline, I want you and your aunt to come
and live with me.”

“What? Here?”

“Of course.”

He said this as if it were the most natural
thing in the world for us to pack our bags and come to live with
him. I wished with all my heart that I could.

“I’m sorry, Damien, but I can’t.”

I hoped he saw the regret in my eyes.

“Two women shouldn’t live on their own. You
have no one to protect you,” he argued.

How could I explain?

“Damien, I love you for wanting to take care
of us, but it’s a different world now.”

I sounded like a broken record, even to
myself.

“What I mean is…,” I continued, “women live
alone all the time. We’ve been doing it my whole life, or at least
since I was five.”

I could tell this didn’t satisfy him
either.

“With Lamia possibly lurking around,
Emmeline, I don’t think you can afford to take any chances,” he
said.

I suddenly felt the urge to laugh. Telling a
small white lie to sneak out of the house could have consequences
for my soul, yet living together, or what my Aunt would consider
‘living in sin,’ was perfectly acceptable to Damien. Of course, I
knew he’d guard my virtue fiercely, perhaps a little too fiercely.
Since we’d all lived together in the castle in my past life, he saw
no problem with my sharing this large house with him now.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing. I was just wondering how
exactly I’m going to explain to my Aunt that we are going to be
moving in with a boyfriend of mine that, to her, I just met last
night.”

He looked offended.

“But Emmeline, I am your betrothed.”

“Yes, this just gets better and better. We’ll
announce we’re getting married while we’re at it.”

I was laughing then, imagining Aunt Jo’s
reaction.

“I think it’s a good idea,” he said
quietly.

I stopped laughing and felt an eerie sense of
history repeating itself.

“I think that’s probably not a good idea,” I
said.

“So you still don’t want to marry me?”

Just as before, I rushed to assure him that
yes, I did, just not right now. It felt like déjà vu.

“Damien, it isn’t that…it’s just, well, a
different world now,” I finished.

“So you keep saying.”

“Women live alone, and it’s perfectly safe
and acceptable. And no one, or almost no one, gets married when
they’re seventeen. It’s not even legal.”

Damien looked at me, not comprehending.

“Not legal?”

“No, you at least have to be eighteen to get
married. You’re not considered an adult yet.”

He looked thoughtful.

“Even with your Aunt’s permission?” he
asked.

I didn’t want to answer this. Actually, with
Aunt Jo’s consent, we could get married. But I didn’t want to tell
him this; he’d suggest asking her immediately. I didn’t want to lie
to him, either.

“Yes, but she isn’t going to give it.”

“Why not?” he asked, looking affronted. “Am I
not worthy of you, Emmeline?”

Worthy was an understatement. Of course he’d
always been perfect in every way that mattered. He was more than
worthy in the sense that he meant, but I’d also made him materially
worthy in a way he hadn’t been before. He had no real concept of
the wealth he had. He understood ideas like “estate,” those having
been in existence as strongholds and castles in the thirteenth
century, but he didn’t cringe at the car I drove or the clothes I
wore, which didn’t have designer labels attached to them. Conrad
had purchased the Audi in his name and had had him measured for the
impeccable clothes he wore. And it was Conrad who’d bought him
several outfits in London and had the rest shipped to him in
America. Damien had no real frame of reference to understand the
difference between his level of wealth and mine. If there were any
monetary obstacles between us now, it was all on my end, not
his.

“Damien, it isn’t that. If anyone is
unworthy, it’s me,” I answered.

He looked at me in disbelief.

“Besides that, I have to finish school first;
then I want to go to college. Only then do I want to get married,”
I said.

I’d explained the schooling system to him
earlier that day, and he was amazed that girls and boys went to
school together for so long. “What do they learn for so many
years?” he’d asked. I had smiled at him, amused. Thinking of all
the movies they’d shown, fieldtrips we’d taken, and homework I’d
neglected, I wondered myself what I’d learned at school over the
years.

Damien wasn’t sure why I needed to go to
college anyway when he would be taking care of me for the rest of
my life. I could tell he wasn’t persuaded by my argument. I wasn’t
going to be able to put him off, and truthfully, my heart wasn’t in
it.

“Alright,” I finally conceded, “but I don’t
think Aunt Jo will say yes.”

I left it at that. His face looked so elated
that I didn’t want to burst his bubble. I was unsure how I was
going to broach the subject to Aunt Jo.

“You can still go to school, to college,” he
promised.

I smiled. I guess I should be grateful that
I’d fallen in love with such a progressive knight, my bare legs
notwithstanding.

He was reluctant to let me go, insisting on
taking me home, but I was firm in my refusal. It was already five
o’clock, much later than my usual time, and I knew I’d better have
a good story ready for Aunt Jo. It wasn’t going to include Damien.
If she was going to accept him at all, it wasn’t going to happen if
she knew I’d skipped school to hang out with him all day.

Though I knew that Damien was ecstatic to
have won me over so easily, I could still tell that he wasn’t happy
about my refusal to move to Sugar Hill. It finally hit me that I
needed to explain it in terms he’d understand. I didn’t want him to
think I was rejecting him.

“It isn’t that I don’t want to live with you,
Damien. It’s just that, in my culture, it isn’t traditional for a
girl my age to live with her boyfriend, at least not when she’s
seventeen. And Aunt Jo wouldn’t think it was acceptable at any age
for unmarried people to live together.”

“Oh... Why not?”

“I don’t know. It’s cultural…no, religious,”
I said in a burst of inspiration. As a knight, he’d understand
that.

“Emmeline, I would never…” he began, nearly
speechless as he finally comprehended what I said.

I put my fingers to his lips.

“I know. I’m just trying to explain the
difference between the age where you, no, where we came from, and
this one.”

“But who defends you?”

“We have locks on the doors.”

He looked at me skeptically. I had to concede
that it was rather flimsy. A knight like Damien could have the door
down in less than five minutes with his bare hands. Fortunately,
there weren’t lots of those running around…I hoped.

“We look out for each other here in town,” I
finished weakly. But even as I said this, I knew that crimes were
always being committed, even in small towns. Just last week, a
house two streets over from ours was robbed, and I knew of at least
one girl at school who’d been raped after a football game last
fall. And that was not taking into consideration that we likely had
an evil witch on the loose to contend with.

If it had been left up to me, I wouldn’t have
thought twice about moving here with Damien. But I had my Aunt’s
feelings to consider, and I was still underage. Even if I’d wanted
to move, I couldn’t without her permission, which I’d little to no
chance of getting.

Damien accepted my explanation. Under no
circumstances was he interested in leading me down any untoward
paths, so once I’d explained how Aunt Jo would likely see our move
to his house, he was satisfied. But I could tell it made him more
urgent to marry me. I couldn’t be all that surprised. It was just
last week that I’d agreed to marry him in the chapel, and he’d
asked Father Philip to marry us before we made our escape. Poor
Father Philip. If there was one good thing resulting from Lamia’s
coming through with Damien, perhaps it was that it had maybe spared
his life along with Peter’s and Millie’s. I guessed I’d never
know.

Chapter Fourteen

"Encounters"

I was still the same,

Knowing myself yet being someone other—

And he a face still forming; yet the words
sufficed

To compel the recognition they preceded.

T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”

I spent the rest of that week trying to teach
Damien the ins and outs of modern life—no little feat in such a
short time span. Fortunately, Aunt Jo announced that she was going
to see an old friend in Orlando on Wednesday, so I was able to stay
with Damien until Sunday afternoon, when she returned. She worried
about how I’d get to school, but I asked Annie to cover for me
again, explaining to Aunt Jo that she’d come by in the mornings to
pick me up. I really did owe Annie. She was a great friend.

Damien had his driver, Dmitri, who lived in
one of the rooms at the top of the house, to come for me on
Wednesday morning. I didn’t bother coming back in the evening,
letting the Duchess out to fend for herself for a few days. I had
no worries about her. She left us all kinds of disgusting presents
on the back stoop that I was sure I’d have to throw out before Aunt
Jo returned. I still left lots of cat food on the front porch,
hoping the Duchess wouldn’t be too angry that I was leaving her for
a few days. She seemed to understand when I explained where I was
headed, though I think she was upset she couldn’t go. When I told
her, she’d turn her head away from me and pranced out the back.

One of the highlights of the week was my
teaching Damien the finer points of driving. While he had learned
the rudiments before finding me, he wanted to improve his skills.
He’d already begun lessons with his driver, but it was more fun, he
said, to practice with me.

Sugar Hill had acres and acres of land, and
we practiced on several unpaved roads first before trying the
grocery store parking lot, usually late at night, when no one was
there.

Damien caught on quickly. Dmitri often
accompanied us on those first outings, and I suspected that he and
Damien went out together every day when I was not there. I was
learning that Damien was a perfectionist, and he had his driver’s
license within a month. I was unsure how he’d arranged it without
having to take the dreaded Drivers Ed class we’d all had to suffer
through. I wondered if Conrad continued to pull strings. He seemed
to have powers as great as mine.

I knew that people would grow suspicious if
Damien didn’t go to school, and if he was to exist in the modern
world, he’d at least need a high school diploma. We discussed how
to enroll him. Conrad had again managed to get him the passport so
quickly, and we called him, trying to arrange for a student visa so
that he could stay. I was glad, actually, that we were getting
married when we both turned eighteen, a concession I was finally
able to persuade Damien to make since it was less than a year away.
Applying for his citizenship would be easy then. I could have used
my power to arrange this, but I knew that Damien didn’t want that,
and neither did I. I knew I’d have to get him settled and likely
wield some magic to that end, but I wanted my life to return to
normal, as far as it could, with Damien by my side. Now that he was
here with me, I hoped never to cast another spell if I didn’t have
to.

We hadn’t talked yet about where we would
live after the wedding. I was serious about the desire to earn a
college degree. One of the last promises I’d made Mom was that I
would go. Damien understood vows, of course, and he was supportive,
joking that perhaps he’d enroll in college too.

This was going to be the greatest obstacle I
could see facing us. How would Damien handle school? High school
wasn’t exactly rocket science, but for someone who’s never been
there, never gone through each grade, it was going to be a nearly
impossible task. I thought over what Damien already knew from his
past life, and I decided the best course of action was to enroll
him as a foreign student, explaining that he’d taken much different
classes than American students. No one, I thought, would question
this with his strange accent. I knew it was just a matter of
picking a country most people had never visited or heard much
about.