“I’m bollocks at both those languages,” he said, suddenly grinning ear to ear. “I think I just did a spell, Ariana.”
“Not possible,” she said, pulling her notes out of her coat pocket. “I only copied out the one. We only studied the one.”
How could he explain to her that he felt them absorbing through his skin? It didn’t seem possible, and yet he just witnessed it. “How else can you explain Miss Farrah up and leaving like that? She waved at us. That hamper was big enough to have food for more than just her and the boys. They came out to find us, and they did. But I sent them away with that— that spell.”
She looked skeptical, tinged with anxiety. Ariana didn’t like when things didn’t make sense, and she always had trouble just believing in things.
“Tell me what you said, then,” she insisted. “Say it again as you did.”
He shook his head, certain that was impossible. “I don’t know what I said. It just came out of me, like someone else was using my voice.”
She shivered and stuffed the fish spell instructions back in her pocket. “That can’t be right.” Her brows were so furrowed they practically met in the middle. “That’s not what happened. I believe that something happened but not that someone else was using your voice. That’s too horrid to think about.”
“If it’s a nice someone it’s not horrid.”
Ariana stamped her foot and reached out to shake him. “Stop, Owen,” she said, truly upset.
“I don’t really think it was someone else,” he told her quickly. “But it does feel as if I’ve been doing it all my life. Just being near that book feels natural.”
“You said you dreamed about it. Do you think you sleepwalked down?” She smirked and said, “Were you sleep reading?”
He gave her question serious consideration, because he didn’t know how else he could have such an affinity for it. “I don’t think so,” he finally said. “Because think about how dirty we got down there. I’m sure I would have noticed waking up like that.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “That’s true. My mum made a huge fuss about all the mud on my boots and hem. She was already upset about the rabbit bite so I got it a little worse than usual. You’re probably just naturally gifted with this stuff.”
“It would be nice to be naturally gifted at something,” he said. “Then perhaps my parents would brag about me as much as yours do about you.”
Her eyes widened. “Are you mad? Just last night at supper your father couldn’t stop talking about your amazing hunting abilities. Can you really put an arrow through a pheasant’s eye?”
He barely listened when his father had been telling Uncle Julian that story but seeing Ariana seem impressed by it made him feel warm and important.
“Bah, being able to hunt is necessary to live. It’s not like I get marks for it at school.”
“You should. Especially as it’s necessary to live. Half the things my tutor makes me learn I’m positive I’ll never use.”
“Let’s go do this spell. Then I can pretend I’m a good fisherman as well, since they’re supposed to jump onto the hook if it works.”
She laughed. “Yes, and be fat and delicious.”
Owen could tell she still didn’t truly believe in the power of the book, but he did. He could feel it the same as he could feel his heartbeat, and he knew it was going to change his life.
Chapter 4
Tilly wrapped herself in her dressing gown. She was toasty from her bath but knew it wouldn’t last long in the drafty old mansion. She hurried to the fireplace to dry her hair before she turned into a popsicle. The Scottish weather had gone from chill to near arctic in a matter of days, and she worried about the children catching colds, running in and out all day as they did. Farrah kept the boys busy inside by telling them fearsome tales until her throat went hoarse but it was as if Ariana had become part wee folk, flying about like a wild banshee.
Every evening she turned up with twigs in her hair, her cheeks ruddy and wind burned, and a savage gleam in her eyes. When Tilly asked what she’d been up to all day, she seemed to say a lot. But as soon as she was tucked in and Tilly tried to recall it all to tell Ashford, it was as if Ariana had mumbled a bunch of gibberish and only made her mother believe it was an actual story.
She scooted closer to the fire, soaking up the cozy heat, feeling tired and comfortable. It had to be the pregnancy that was making her fuzzy-headed and forgetful, not to mention fearful. She felt guilty not paying enough attention to her daughter’s stories, and silly for reacting so badly to the rabbit bite. It was healing fine and not only Ashford, but Serena and Kostya had assured her it wasn’t the harbinger of the future she saw when Tilly got stuck in 1889.
The fire felt too hot now, and she stood up to pace off the nerves that took hold of her. She went over everything she could to try to calm herself down but was a bundle of anxiety when Ashford came into their room, already pulling at his neck cloth.
“I don’t know why Kostya insists on showing me all the accounts every time we come up here,” he grumbled. “He knows I trust him, and it’s boring as watching turnips grow.” He noticed her twisting her hands together and pacing and hurried over to her. “I’m sorry, darling, what is it?”
She relaxed into his strong embrace, feeling some of her worries drain away. Ashford had always had that effect on her but right now she was too worked up to completely relax. She decided to confess, hoping he’d be able to make her see how ridiculous and unfounded her fears were.
“I’ve been worried about the children,” she admitted, thinking it was as good a place as any to start.
“Ariana or the boys?” he asked, leading her closer to the fire. She didn’t want to sit there, feeling suffocated by her anxiety, but he pressed her gently into a chair. “You’re freezing,” he said, rubbing her shoulders.
“Am I?” She wondered if she was coming down with a cold, because she felt stifling hot. When she touched her fingertips to her cheeks, they did indeed feel icy and she wilted into the plush chair. “Ariana mostly,” she said. He took the chair across from her and waited patiently for her to continue. “I’m not certain we did all we could to prevent what’s going to happen. What happened, I mean.”
Saying the words made her throat close up. Having experienced more than her fair share of time travel, she knew how dangerous and capricious it could be. And how utterly confusing.
She’d gone to a time some seventy years in the future to find her beloved daughter had been murdered. Should she think of it in the past tense, as having already happened? She couldn’t bear it. Thinking that way would make it a done deal. But how could they be certain they prevented it? Having to wait and see made her want to claw her eyes out and she felt frustrated tears springing to them now.
“It’s not going to happen,” he said forcefully, gripping the arms of the chair. “It won’t. It hasn’t. However you want to say it. Matilda, we’ve done all we can to prevent it. That scoundrel Kerr is living well away in Florence now, thanks to Liam going back and setting him up with a fortune he certainly didn’t deserve. We won’t be bothered by him, nor will Ariana.”
She nodded, but hearing Liam’s name unleashed a whole new floodgate of fear. Now that he was gone, she was not only destined to never see her family again, but now they didn’t have an escape route to her time if things went bad in this one. She never admitted to herself that she thought of Liam that way. Up until that moment it had never presented itself as a tangible thought, more of a whisper in the far reaches of her mind. She loved this time and, as well as she’d adapted, that tiny whisper always reminded her of things. Diseases that could kill her children because there were no vaccines for them yet. Something as small as Christian or Grayson stepping on a rusty nail and getting tetanus, or Ariana getting bitten by a wild animal that might be infected with rabies. Or the portal reopening now that Liam was no longer around to do upkeep on the spell he placed on it.
Oh, dear God, that was a new one.
She reached over and grabbed Ashford’s arm. “What if we need to get to my time and can’t,” she said. “If one of our babies needs medical care they can’t get in this time. And we never talk about the portal, Ashford. What if now that Liam’s gone, it opens up again? What if that’s how Ariana ends up going to the future?” Her voice rose until it was a squeak and she pressed her lips together hard to keep from screaming.
“My dear.” Ashford moved from his chair to kneel before her, taking both her hands in his. “What’s got you so upset? Is it that ruddy rabbit bite? The lass harrasses wild creatures, love. She’s bound to get bit by one of them eventually.”
“But we already knew about this bite and where she’d get it.” She pulled up her dressing gown sleeve and pointed to her own scar. “It’s the same as mine. It’s how I was able to pretend to be her.” Tilly could tell by the color draining from his face that he began to agree with her. He was afraid now, too.
“We’ve kept the truth from her,” he said weakly. “How can she become what she did if she has no inkling of her heritage?”
“I don’t know,” she said, exhausted.
“We’ve done all we can, love. We must hope it’s enough.”
“Have we done all we can?” she asked bitterly.
She knew she was sick with grief from not only losing Liam but the rest of her family as well. She was angry at Ashford for not offering alternatives, for not reassuring her that there was some way she’d be able to get back. And now that Ariana’s fate seemed to be unfolding no matter what they did, she was furious at time itself for playing out as it wanted to, uncaring about who it hurt along the way.
“We can leave,” she said, her heart aching at the suggestion.
She loved this farm, Serena, Kostya, Owen. She adored Belmary House even with its hateful curse. She had real friends in London and felt she made a difference there with her charity. And what would the children think, being uprooted in such a way?
“Leave Scotland?” he asked.
“Leave this time.” She leaned back and crossed her arms, fixing him with a steely glare. She could tell how shocked he was at the suggestion, because the furrow that normally settled between his brows melted away. His mouth gaped open and he didn’t respond. “Go to my time,” she pressed. “It’s more than a hundred years past when Ariana— we’ll be safe from that future, anyway. The kids can know their grandmother and great-gran, and Dex and Emma and Dahlia. They can get proper medical care—”
“It sounds as if you think they’d have a better life,” he broke in, clearly hurt by her barely thought out tirade. “I’m sorry you think they’ve suffered so all this time.”
She hadn’t meant it that way. She only wanted to keep Ariana safe and, if she was honest with herself, she couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing her mom and grandma again. She’d been lucky these last ten years, getting to have the best of both worlds. She liked to think she made some noble sacrifice to be with Ashford, but she hadn’t at all. Until now.
The truth of how she felt made her cringe, but it was still the truth and she could no longer hide from it. If she was forced to choose, it would always be Ashford. But why did she always have to choose? Couldn’t he sacrifice for her now? For the safety of their children?
Tears streamed down her cheeks and she rubbed them away with her sleeve. She shook her head when Ashford tried to gather her in for a hug. “I’m going to go to sleep,” she said brokenly. “I’m overtired and probably coming down with a cold.”
She hoped he’d leave her alone but not be too upset. She didn’t mean to start a row. She only wanted things to be the way they were before Liam died. Before that damn rabbit bite made her remember everything she’d been suppressing over the years.
“Very well,” he said. He kissed her forehead and quietly left.
She sighed, finally dragging herself from the chair and crawling into bed. Her fear and sorrow kept her awake long enough to know Ashford didn’t return to their room that night.
Chapter 5
Ariana raced away from her parents’ room, scuttling around the corner before her father came out and caught her eavesdropping. She didn’t mean to. She only wanted to say goodnight to them again. Even though they already tucked her in, she couldn’t get to sleep, feeling restless and jittery after a long day of reading the spell book and practicing what was in it.
She started feeling guilty keeping so many secrets since they found the book. Owen had used his mysterious ability to keep the adults away more than once. Not just on Farrah, but on her mother that very morning, which added to her guilt. She hadn’t liked seeing her mum’s eyes go vacant as she turned away and left them alone to keep practicing. She’d carried a folded napkin, probably trying to bring them a treat. Watching her walk away with that red and white cloth bundle made Ariana’s stomach churn with sadness. She wanted to run after her mum, but Owen had become stricter than her tutor at home. He was determined for them to learn as much as they could before she had to leave for London at the end of the month.
Her stomach churned worse than ever after everything she just heard. She should have left right away, especially when she could tell it sounded like a row, but then she realized they were talking about her. Fearing she was in trouble, she stayed. She didn’t have any difficulty hearing what they were saying, what with her mum’s raised voice. What she was having trouble with was understanding everything they said.
It was almost as confusing as some of the odd things came out of Owen’s mouth lately, but her parents had been speaking plain English. She struggled to remember it all, word for word, even if it all sounded like nonsense. Her confusion made her reckless and she pounded through the halls until she came to Owen’s bedchamber. Without knocking, she cracked open the door and wedged herself into the room, dimly lit only by the low burning fire.
She hurried to light a lamp and thumped the deeply sleeping boy on the top of his rumpled dark head. She always thought he was lucky he got his father’s dark hair and not his mother’s buttery blonde hue. He was almost borderline pretty with his sharp nose and large blue eyes. Light hair would have made him look too much like a girl. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head, not sure she was really there.
“You’re not dreaming,” she said, scraping a chair over to the side of the bed. “You’ve got to listen to what I’m going to say. It doesn’t make any sense, but my parents said it so it must be true.”
“What?” He sat up eagerly, then frowned at the distress on her face. “Are you all right? I think there’s still water in the pitcher. Perhaps have a drink.”
“Later,” she said. “I have to get this all out first before I forget. You’re not going to believe it, but—”
“I’ll believe it,” he said impatiently.
“My mum’s from the future,” she said, her voice cracking. It sounded crazy enough in her mind as she repeated it on her way here, but hearing it from her own mouth made her hands begin to shake. She balled up her dressing gown in her fists. “I think that’s where they go when they say they’re going to America. Maybe they’re traveling to both, but I think that’s why the boys and I are never allowed to go. It’s a long way in the future. I heard her say more than a hundred years.”
“Bloody hell,” he whispered, getting out of bed to pour himself a drink of water. He slugged it down and sat on the edge of the bed.
She nodded, agreeing with the sentiment. “And something bad is supposed to happen to me.” She rubbed her arm. The bite was almost healed, but her mother insisted she continue to keep it bandaged until it was completely gone. “They knew I was going to get this rabbit bite, and for some reason that has mum completely mad. She wants to take us all to the future. To keep the bad thing from happening, I guess.” Her heart felt shriveled in her chest, and getting full breaths was getting more difficult. “Owen, I don’t want to go to the future.”
“Then you won’t have to,” he said, impetuous as ever. “I’ve been hiding us pretty well thes
e last few days. I’ll hide you forever if it comes to it.”
She gasped, remembering another bit of the disturbing argument. “They’ve been lying to me, too.” She waved her finger back and forth between them. “They said something about keeping my heritage from me. That whatever bad thing is supposed to happen shouldn’t if I don’t know about it.”
He straightened, his eyes nearly popping out. “You think it’s the book? They know about— about magic?”
They shared the same embarrassed look they both got every time one of them had to say the word. It seemed so babyish, the stuff of nursery stories, but the last few days they’d proven time after time that it was real.
“They must, if mum’s from another time. How else could she get here if they didn’t use— Oh my goodness, I forgot something. Everything they said seemed so fanciful it was all I could do to get here before it all fell out of my mind. But this might be the most important part. They said something about a portal. That it might open up again and that’s how I might end up in the future.”
“So you do go to the future?” he asked, shaking his head. “To your mum’s future, do you think?”
“I don’t know,” she wailed, forgetting that she wasn’t supposed to be awake, let alone in Owen’s room. She lowered her voice. “None of it makes sense. She either wants us to go to the future or she doesn’t want me to go. I don’t understand any of it.”
They sat in silence until a log crumbling in the fireplace snapped them out of their reverie. Owen patted her shoulder awkwardly.
“This is too much to think about right now,” he said. “I know it’s going to be hard, but you should get back to your room and try to sleep. It’s more important than ever now that we don’t get in trouble. If there are answers to be had to any of this, they’ll be in the book. Tomorrow we’ll scour every page for any mention of going through time or portals.”
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