No wooden boxes filled with shields. Just a glass countertop filled with knives. What shields there were hung on the wall behind the extremely large and burly pirate currently showing a double-edged dagger to a middle-aged man.
The shields were all factory-produced, perfectly gleaming, brightly adorned pieces of faire regalia. Not a dented, dingy one in the lot.
Kate worked her way to the other side of the ship. Maybe he’d moved over here, though she knew before she got there she wouldn’t find him. It was as if he’d vanished as completely as she had when she’d touched the window.
Fighting back the tears, Kate ran out of the shop. Now what? The window was broken, Master Griff and the shield nowhere to be found. That left only the dulled, dented ring.
Her one hope.
She ran down the street again, looking for the table where she’d first found it. There, beneath the orange and gray banner…
Farley’s Family Jewels.
There was coincidence and there was coincidence. And she didn’t believe in either.
The faire’s most famous pair of conquistadors ran into her as she stopped suddenly in front of the store.
“Pardón, señorita,” Don Juan said with all the gallantry of an era five hundred years ago. “Mi amigo y yo, we would like to offer you the finest seat in the house for our show. It is the least we could do after plowing into you like Don Quixote tilting at his windmills.”
Kate waved her hand, not taking her eyes off the store. There was a man inside, he wore orange and brown…
“Perhaps, la señorita would prefer Miguel sing an ode to her beauty?” the other man asked.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Kate said, not even glancing at the Spaniards, “but I have to go see a guy about a ring.” She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and entered the store.
The man’s welcoming smile disappeared when Kate strode up to the glass counter. “May I be of service, my lady?” he said somewhat hesitantly.
“Are you Farley?” From the looks of him, unless Simon himself had traveled through time, she’d bet this guy was a direct descendant.
The man nodded.
Kate brandished the ring on her finger. “Where did you get this?”
The man looked from her face to the ring. He frowned and reached for her hand. “I’ve never seen this before. I wouldn’t carry something so… pedestrian. Though—”he got out his loop and studied the emerald and whistled. “That is one quality stone. Where’d you get it and would you be interested in selling it?”
Kate let his words wash over her. This was all so not right. “You’ve never seen it before?”
Farley ran his thumb over the stone as if measuring it. “Trust me. If I had, I’d have remembered it. It needs some work, but you’ve got an heirloom piece there.”
No kidding.
“Are you interested in selling?”
Kate shook her head. Get rid of her last link to Alex? No way.
“Well, perhaps you’d be interested in acquiring something to complement it?” The man unlocked the display case between them and pulled out a velvet-lined box.
Calista’s necklace.
Kate sucked in her breath. Could that be her way back?
“Where did you get this?” she asked.
“It’s been handed down in my family for generations,” he answered. Sensing a sale, Farley Junior removed the necklace and held it up. “Would you like to try it on?”
Kate backed away, afraid to touch it. She wanted to get her daughter first. “No. But can you hold it for me?” She whipped her credit card out of her pocket, glad for the one thing Frederick had done right by giving her her clothes back.
“Certainly. I’ll hold it for you until the faire is over today.”
“No, I mean, could you keep it for me? Not let anyone else buy it? I’ll pay for it now and come back in, say, a month or two?”
She was used to receiving that look he gave her by now. “Sure, lady. It’s your money. I’ll put it in the vault and give you a receipt.”
Kate signed the credit slip, careful not to even brush by the box.
It couldn’t be a coincidence that she’d found him and the necklace. It just couldn’t be.
She’d come back when she had her daughter, get the necklace, then travel back in time to be with Alex.
It was just too coincidental not to work.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Three Months Later
Coincidences sucked.
The necklace didn’t have one ounce of time-travel ability.
Kate ran the stones through her fingers again, touching each one to the recently cleaned emerald ring, looking for some way, some Rubik’s Cube sequence to send her and Emma back to fourteen eighty-seven.
Nothing worked.
Kate looked down at the sleeping baby in her arms. It’d been three months since she’d seen Alex. Three months since that trip to the faire, and her life since had changed as drastically as it’d had when she’d time-traveled. She was now the proud, adoring mother of one beautiful baby girl. She’d taken leave from her job while she acquainted herself with all the nuances of caring for a baby, enjoying each moment spent with her little bundle of joy.
But always in the back of her mind was the image of sharing this special time with Alex and William.
They should be together.
God knows, she’d tried. She’d packed a bag full of baby items and medicinal supplies, a few creature comforts like chocolate and paperbacks, eschewed the packages of disposable diapers and jarred baby food, because, really, how much could she hope to carry with her, made sure Emma’s vaccinations were up to date, then called a messenger service to deliver Calista’s necklace.
But now, here she sat on her sofa, bay window at her back, sleeping six-month-old in her arms, two bags of supplies hanging from her shoulders, the RenFaire costume billowing around her, and the necklace didn’t do squat.
She’d been so sure. She’d just known the necklace would send her back. Why else would she have found it?
Kate slipped the bag straps off her shoulders, taking care not to wake the dark-haired wonder in her arms. She placed a soft kiss on her daughter’s crown and slid to her feet. If they weren’t going anywhere, Emma should nap in her crib.
The stray white cat that’d adopted them meowed from beneath Emma’s window. Kate looked out and made a shoo-ing motion with her hand. The cat, proving once again how uncanny animals can be, seemed to nod at her and walk off.
A detour to the kitchen followed the trip to the nursery. She opened her side-by-side and pulled out a soda.
She couldn’t even be mad at Alex for throwing the window at her. He’d done what she hadn’t been able to do out of love for her.
She took a sip of the soda and propped her feet up on the glass coffee table. That would be on its way out shortly. Glass tables and toddlers didn’t mix, even if it was tempered glass.
The cat meowed behind her. Kate almost dropped her drink as she turned to see Blizzard, as she’d named him, staring in the window with his beautiful green eyes, swishing his tail as he sat in the crook of the barren Japanese maple. Why the cat had picked her house she didn’t know, but he was a gorgeous animal, well-behaved and affectionate when he chose. For the price of a can of cat food he ensured her home was mouse-free which was a pretty good deal on both their parts.
Kate sighed and took another swig. Sure, she could sit here and wallow in self-pity the rest of the day, but that wasn’t her style. Besides, in the whole scheme of things, yes, losing Alex sucked, but it wasn’t as if she’d watched him die. They’d had their time and he had lived out his life.
Or had he?
Kate sat up, putting her feet on the floor and the soda on the table. Had Alex lived or had Frederick succeeded in what he’d planned?
Kate fumbled for the bag next to her. One of those paperbacks she’d bought in that new bookstore in town, Heavenly Books, was a about fifteenth century English history.
She pulled the bag onto her lap and unzipped it. She tossed a few of her favorite authors onto the floor, a sacrilege at any other time, but the history book was, of course, at the bottom.
A box of tampons hit the cushion beside her as she pulled the book free. The Bayeux tapestry, so not fifteenth century, graced the cover. Her fingers still shaking, Kate turned the pages until she came to the table of contents. Edward IV, Richard III, The Wars of The Roses, The Tudor Age.
Kate turned to the page detailing Henry’s victory over Richard, the debate over whether or not Richard’s crown had actually been found under a hawthorn bush, the aftermath effects to the country…
The Marston name popped up, but nothing about how Isobel spent her final days. Wexham was mentioned. Frederick’s death in battle and there… Alex.
Lord Alexander Traverse, Earl of Shelton, defied the king’s edict to re-marry, instead promoting such outlandish ideals (at the time) as prohibiting the practice of blood-letting, and advancing a pre-contemporary version of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. While mocked at Court, within Henry’s presence, Lord Shelton was accorded great reverence. Dying at the age of fifty-five, he was succeeded by his only son, William.
He’d survived Frederick. Thank God.
Kate sat back, resting the book in her lap. He’d never married. That spoke volumes across the century markers. And William had lived, too. Frederick hadn’t won.
God, she missed him. It’d only been three months, but she felt every one of those five hundred years between them. Maybe she could go to England, see where he was buried.
She closed her eyes and laid her head against the back of the burgundy sofa. Soft gray light of a damp winter day filtered in through the slats of her blinds. Blizzard meowed softly outside the bay window.
If only she could see him again. One last time. Just to say goodbye. To tell him she’d love him forever and that, hopefully, some day, some time they’d meet up again.
Yeah, like that would happen. She had about as much chance of seeing Alex again as Blizzard had of talking.
“Oh I wouldn’ know ‘bout that, lass.”
Kate’s eyes shot open. Who said that?
She sat up. She’d heard someone. Practically right next to her. Or… behind her?
Slowly, Kate turned, expecting to see, well, someone there, just outside the window.
But there was no one. Just Blizzard sitting there swishing his tail, an odd cat grin on his face. Kind of like the one he had after finishing his favorite salmon dinner.
She shook her head and turned back around. She was imagining things. Could grief do that to a person?
“Sure, why not? I’m sitting here holding conversations with myself, why not imagine other participants?” She wrapped her hands around her waist. “God, I’m so lonely.”
There, she’d admitted it. She missed what she’d had with Alex. The camaraderie, the friendship, the spark. She wanted that spark again. Missed it. Craved it, if she were honest with herself.
She wanted a husband, a soul mate. A family and all it entailed.
She picked up the book and snapped it shut. It was over. Alex was gone and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. Moping wasn’t going to send her back.
She tossed the book onto the coffee table. It landed with a small clatter in the box with Calista’s necklace.
The stones kept clattering.
Kate reached out to stop them when she noticed the book.
It was… moving.
The air was moving too. Twisting, twirling, right in front of her, the off-setting taupe stripes of her wallpaper on the other side of the room looking like caramel candy being twisted around an apple at a harvest festival.
Emma! She had to get Emma.
She jumped up, grabbing the sofa arm to stay upright and realized…
The air wasn’t twisting around her. It was swirling in the middle of her living room, right where two figures shimmered into existence.
Alex.
William.
“Kate?”
Oh my God… “Alex!”
Kate launched herself into his arms and suddenly there was a flurry of kissing, crying, and skirt tugging.
Kate pulled out of Alex’s arms and looked down into William’s grin.
“Up, pease.” He held up his arms.
Kate hugged him to her. “Oh, William, I’m so glad to see you.”
“Me, too, I hope.” Alex cupped her cheek.
“Most definitely you, too.” She had to blink away the tears because she didn’t want to miss one moment of looking at him ever again. “You are real, right?”
There went that eyebrow she’d missed. “Need you ask?”
“Yes. I do. How did you get here?”
Alex held something in his hand. “This.” A glass unicorn.
She took it from him. “Where did you get it?”
Alex looked around the room and spied the sofa. “Shall we sit? I find that traveling through time does something to one’s legs.”
“Tell me about it.”
She found a few of the toys she’d bought for Emma and set William on the floor in front of them. That glass table was so going in the garage first thing in the morning. She grabbed hold of Alex’s hands and turned to him on the sofa, her knee resting over his. “So tell me everything.”
Alex smiled and ran his hand over her hair. “I still can’t believe this is possible. That it happened. I’ve missed you.”
They glanced quickly at William, who was discovering the joys of pop-up games, then gave themselves over to about thirty seconds of some serious getting reacquainted.
But William didn’t need that kind of education just yet, so they eventually pulled apart, though not without some heavy breaths and reluctant sighs.
“The man who brought me the window?” Alex explained when their pulses had returned to a somewhere-in-the-vicinity-of-normal range. “He had the unicorn in his cart the day I met with him. After you disappeared from the cave and Frederick was killed, I remembered it and his odd reaction when I’d almost touched it. Seeing what the man could do with a window, I had a feeling the unicorn might work for me.”
“Wait a minute. Frederick was killed? How?”
Alex’s face went grim. “Your disappearance. It wasn’t something he’d counted on, nor had even thought of, obviously. I had the element of surprise and knew he wouldn’t let me out of the cave alive. It was either him or me. I decided it should be him. Hell, had he lived, my son would never have been safe. Not to mention any of the people of Shelton.”
“Especially the women.”
“Yes.”
“So you went back to the window maker and he gave you this unicorn? So why didn’t you show up weeks ago? I returned to the exact place in time when I’d left.”
“I couldn’t leave immediately, Kate. There were things I had to take care of. Promises to be kept. Shelton to ensure.”
“Oh, Shelton. Who’s going to inherit it now that you and William are here? I read in the history book that you were supposed to have lived until you were fifty-five.”
“History book?”
“Uh hmm. Right here.” She handed it to him open to the page she’d looked at earlier. Calista’s necklace had stopped vibrating.
Alex read the words then smiled at her. “Kate, it says nothing of my death here.”
“What? Let me see that. I must have given you the wrong page.” She turned the book around. “Why are you smiling?”
“Read.”
Lord Alexander Traverse, Earl of Shelton, was known as one of Henry’s more peculiar friends, though well revered by those in his home, regardless of his penchant for going against modern day medicinal practices. He eschewed the use of leeches and openly taught a pre-contemporary version of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. But it was his final request to the king that will forever mark him either a lunatic or a man of great generosity. History, having lost account of him after this final act, has no definitive answer.
“What are they talking about?”
Alex’s smile grew wider. “I’m not a lunatic. Keep reading.”
Alexander Traverse was said to have lost two women he loved. History finds record of his wife, Jeanne de Breven, who died in childbirth with his second son, but no record exists of the mysterious Lady Katherine, though there are reports that her ghost is said to haunt Shelton to this day.
Kate laughed. “Maybe I should take a trip over there and see if I run into myself clanking chains through your great hall.”
“Read, Kate.”
When Lord Shelton defied the king’s edict to re-marry, he did so in such a way as to keep his word to the king. Henry wanted the Shelton lands to be united with the neighboring Marston ones. Said to be quite beautiful, widowed Lady Marston was also endowed with enough land to make rich landowners vie for her hand, and it’d been widely believed that her hand was promised to the earl of Shelton.
But it wasn’t Alexander Traverse who would unite the two estates. He petitioned King Henry to make a neighboring baron, Nicholas Caversham, his heir. Singularly unheard of with a son in existence, nevertheless, somehow Alexander Traverse received the king’s blessing on both the transfer of the earldom and the betrothal of Lord Caversham to Lady Marston. It is here where Lord Alexander Traverse disappears from history, and Lord Caversham became Lord Shelton.
Under his ownership, the joined lands flourished, and Lady Marston’s daughters from her first marriage made advantageous marriages, all strengthening the grip Henry had on his new kingdom by his many alliances.
Kate closed the book. “You did it. You kept your promise to the king.”
Alex nodded. “And to Nick. Henry was insistent that Shelton and Marston lands be united, but I couldn’t betray my friend.”
“‘La grandeur d’un homme se mesure à la parole tenue,’” Kate said, moving closer to him. “You truly are an incredible man, Alex. One who stands by his word.”
Through The Leaded Glass Page 24