Timeless Desire (37 page)

“I like anything with you.”

W
ITHIN AN HOUR THEY HAD REACHED
Gretna, near the eastern tip of the Solway Firth. Another hour after that they were back in England, angling west again, although Jaime was taking care to stay off the roads. Perhaps it would have been safer to avoid Cumbria altogether and catch a ship at Tynemouth on the North Sea, but his stash of money was in Whitehaven, and unfortunately they could not survive on love alone.

Panna had been unusually quiet for the last quarter hour, though he could hardly blame her. He had been putting this off, but he knew he could not delay further. He pulled the horse to a stop, then climbed down and took her hand.

“I do not take your accompaniment for granted. Whatever I said back there to Clare, I do not assume that the voyage upon which I am about to embark includes you.” She opened her mouth to speak and he stopped her. “Please,” he said. “Let me finish. I have asked you to give up your family and friends, your library, and everything you know about the world. No one should have to do that. I have lived without a family, without anyone, for so long. I would never wish it on someone else. I love you, Panna, but I will get you to that chapel if that is what you choose.”

Her face was brimming with emotion, and she clasped his hand more tightly. “Would you come to the future with me?” she asked.

He blinked. The thought had not crossed his mind, perhaps because he had an obscure fear of knowing what the future held or perhaps because there was a part of him that still didn’t quite believe such travel was possible.

“I . . .”

Her eyes clouded. “If you do not wish it—”

“No!” he cried. “No. I would happily accompany you. Do you think I . . . What I mean to say is, do you think there’s a place for a soldier like me in your time?”

She broke into a tender smile. “Unfortunately, there is. Oh, Jamie! You’d come to my time? There are so many things I want to show you!”

He chuckled. “I hope I’m prepared for it. If the rest of your world is anything like you, I shall require a sizable anchor just to keep from being swept away. I am still reeling from the notion of tofu turkey. Is it perhaps East Indian?”

She laughed, but then the joy left her face so quickly; he felt as if a storm
had
blown over him.

“I just remembered: Not everyone can go through the passage,” she said. “My friend Marie tried. For her, it was like trying to go through a wall.”

“Oh.” The happiness that seemed so certain only a moment ago was gone, replaced again by uncertainty.

Panna stroked his cheek. “I will never leave you, Jamie. Never. If you can’t be with me in my world, I shall stay with you in yours. I promise.”

He leaned his head against her hip, and she caressed his hair. The comfort of her touch was overwhelming.

“God, woman, you make me lose myself. We need to be on our way. You’re worse than a Siren.” He pulled himself free but still clung to her hand. “Together.”

“Yes.”

He climbed into the saddle again. “Let us make our last journey, then, aye?”

T
HEY HAD AGREED THAT THE CASTLE COULD NOT REASONABLY BE
approached until nightfall—not with a warrant out for Jamie’s arrest and every soldier between there and Hexham as well as half the clansmen in Scotland looking for him. Jamie had brought them to a safe house on the outskirts of Bowness, a small cottage owned by the elderly parents of one of the rebels, people known to provide medical care to local inhabitants. Their hosts had laid out a generous spread for dinner, but Panna had been too nervous to eat more than a roll and a few bites of sausage.

Now, they sat on stools in front the house, watching the foot and horse traffic on the main road in the distance. Jamie and the man, whose name was William Hillier, shared pleasantries about the coming harvest, and Panna considered how different her life would soon be. She gazed at the distant towers of MacIver Castle and the peaked roof of the chapel. Whether Jamie could make it through the passageway in the chapel or not, every day from here forward would be nothing like her life had been for the past three years. The thought made her a little nervous and a lot happy.

William’s wife, Sarah, emerged from the house carrying two tattered red coats, a relatively clean shirt, breeks, and a pair of boots, and Jamie caught Panna’s eye.

“Have you ever wanted to play soldier?”

While she might have wanted to once, what she’d seen so far in the borderlands had made that desire disappear. Nonetheless, she followed Jamie inside the house and into a back room. Their plan was to wait until the change of watch at ten and, with hats pulled down low, march through the ruins at the rear of the castle like two soldiers on duty, and reenter through the door Jamie had exited a few nights earlier.

Panna looked at the uniforms skeptically but lifted her arms so that Jamie might undo the ties on her gown.

“Seems a shame to waste such a fine undressing by putting you right back into another set of clothes,” he said.

“Do you keep such things all over Cumbria?”

“By ‘such things,’ do you mean houses, uniforms, or kindly parents?”

She laughed and her gown fell free. “All three, I guess.”

“The rebels dare not have a base camp for fear of being attacked. As such, it is most convenient to have a few dozen lairs tucked around the countryside. There’s a cave with pistols and gunpowder in Tarraby; a barn in Longtown with bandages, splints, and blankets; and even a brothel in Carlisle with a set of clothes so fine it could get a man in to see the queen herself.”

Panna pursed her lips. “Not in your size, I hope.”

He cleared his throat. “Er, no.”

“Hm.” She pulled on the breeks and buttoned them. Then she lifted her arms, and, with a tug, he removed her shift.

“God, I love the look of you.” He gave her a frankly desirous glance. “Like a modern Diana, ready to ride into battle.

She tingled as his eyes lit upon her, and he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

When they finished he said, “How I should like to lay you on this bed and take those breeks off again.”

Panna reached for the clean shirt. “Do you often feel that way about your fellow officers’ breeks?”

“If they filled them out like that, I would.”

She grinned and slipped the shirt over her head, then donned the coat. Jamie gathered the dress and shift while she pulled on the boots.

“Wait!” she cried. She ran to her gown and dug in the pockets. “The fox,” she said. “Hang on. What’s this?” She pulled out a folded piece of paper. “Oh, that’s right: This was on the floor under the bed in your mother’s old room. I think it fell out of one of the books. Jamie, I’m sorry you don’t have her books or the rest of the animals from the ark.”

He shook his head. “The fox is enough,” he said, taking it from her hand. “Thank you for saving it for me.”

She opened the paper and discovered it was a handwritten note. She read the first few lines. “It’s from the earl to your mother. Oh,
Jamie
.”

He took it from her outstretched hand and read it himself. When he finished he sank onto the bed. “He’s my father.”

“Did you doubt it?” She sat beside him and patted his arm. “‘I cannot wait to meet our son.’ He wrote it, Jamie. He wrote that to Sorcha. Is this the year of your birth?” She pointed to the date written in clear script at the top.

“No, two years after. I don’t understand. She died a few weeks after I was born.”

“Not according to what Mrs. Brownlow told me. She said she visited your mother and you when you were just old enough to hold a turkey bone on your own. You had to be at least six months old.”

“I can hardly believe it.” He clutched the letter as if it might disappear.

“Your father wrote the letter to her while Sorcha was in the care of Father Giles. It was after she left your father to have her baby. Your father said he loved her. Did you know they’d seen one another after he’d married Adderly’s mother—Wait. Was it after he’d married Adderly’s mother?” Panna had only the barest grasp of the timeline.

“Aye,” Jamie said automatically, still staring into the darkening sky. “My father married a week after I was born.”

“Oh, your poor mother. You can show him this. It’s in his hand. He signed it. You can say—”

“I can, Panna, but twill make no difference. He does not acknowledge me.”

“This will
force
him.”

“You mistake a legal acknowledgment for one of the heart,” he said gently. “I have no use for the first.”

She put her arm around him and squeezed. “Well, at least you know now. If you had even an inkling of doubt, it should be gone.”

“Why can he not acknowledge me?” he said sadly. “Other men have bastard sons.”

“I know it’s hard to hear, but the only thing you can do is to let go of your desire for him. I ached for Charlie for two years. Some of it I had to do. But there comes a time when it’s time to let go. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but it’s true.”

Jamie laced his fingers into hers. “Thank you. Come. Let us see if we pass muster.”

Their hosts were enchanted with Panna as a soldier, though Sarah did offer her the whispered advice to “keep her arms crossed as much as possible.”

Jamie had declined to ride with her on the grounds that “two soldiers sitting that close would certainly catch
someone’s
attention,” and Panna was just about to mount the horse when there was a commotion of some sort in the distance involving a wagon and several soldiers. One of the soldiers was walking toward the cottage.

Jamie and Panna exchanged a wordless glance and slipped into the cottage. When the door was closed, Jamie armed himself with the sword he had seen hanging over the fire. He took a position just out of sight near the open window and told Panna to wait near the back door.

The soldier told Hillier there was an unwell woman in the wagon who was out of her head, repeating the name “Jamie” over and over: Would the gentleman and his wife be willing to look after her?

William said he would check with his wife and went to the door.

“Is this not your wife?” the soldier said, evidently pointing to Sarah.

“Sister!” Sarah cried in great distaste. “Please. I have my standards.”

“Damn your mouth, wench,” William said, and went inside. When the door closed, he mouthed, “A trick?”

Jamie pondered for a moment then shrugged. “Say aye,” he mouthed back.

“Are you willing?” William said more loudly to Panna. “Perhaps she’ll have a coin or two to spare us.”

Panna realized she had a part to play. “I suppose. She can stay a night or two.” It had been her best approximation of a northern English accent, though she had seen Jamie wince when she’d spoken. “Perhaps his wife was born in Penn’s Woods,” she whispered after William had slipped back out.

“Doubtful,” Jamie said with a grin. “Cumbria men aim a bit higher.”

By the time the soldiers carried the woman into the house, Jamie and Panna were hidden in the trees behind the barn. When Sarah gave the all-clear sign, they returned.

The woman was covered in dirt and dried blood. She had two black eyes, and both were swollen shut. Her clothes were torn. She’d obviously been brutally attacked. Panna was so shocked at her appearance she didn’t see the look on Jamie’s face.

“Undine.”
He looked as if he’d seen a ghost.

Undine was the woman who had told him about the limit of three returns for time travelers.

The woman struggled to open her eyes. “Jamie? Is that you?”

He ran to her side. “Who did this to you?”

“Your brother.”

Jamie’s face went rigid. “He will never do this to another, I promise you.”

“Jamie, he knows.”

“Knows what?”

“About her.” Undine looked at Panna, and Panna felt a chill go down her spine.

Jamie turned to William and Sarah. “Can we have a moment alone?”

They ducked out and closed the door.

“Undine,” he said, taking her hand, “this is my wife, Panna. We married this morning. What does Adderly know?”

“That she is from the future.”

Panna felt a knot form in her gut. She didn’t want to believe that this knowledge, if Adderly truly possessed it, would put her in danger, but the flash of terror she’d seen in Jamie’s eyes convinced her otherwise.

“How?” he demanded. “How could he know this?”

“He’s been to the future, Jamie. To a library in the colonies.”

Panna gasped, and Jamie turned.

“There’s a statue of him in my library,” Panna said. “I thought it was you. I mean, it looks just like you. I thought you were him when we met.”

“Adderly went to Panna’s library?” he asked Undine. “In Panna’s time?”

“No—” Panna said firmly at the same time that Undine said, “I don’t think—”

They both stopped, and Panna gestured to Undine to speak first.

“I don’t know which library he visited,” Undine said, “but I know he bedded the library keeper there.”

Jamie’s eyes narrowed and he looked at Panna.