Doctor Rose, Laura in his mind no matter what she insisted he call her, stood about five feet away. Gaze flickering beyond him, she took a step back.
“If you run I will catch you before you reach the lift.” He pried the top off the carton. Neatly folded and waiting for him to don them again lay his boots, chausses and tunic. He would miss the softer fabrics of this time. Truly regretting they would not come with him, he toed off his runners.
With wide, panicked eyes, Laura watched him. “What are you doing?”
“It would cause no end of strife for me to arrive in my time dressed as I am now.” She thought him mad, but soon she would wonder at her own sanity. He wished he could spare her that, spare her all of this, but necessity demanded he act thusly. “I need to change.”
Every muscle taut and ready, she froze.
He unzipped his jeans.
She shot past him, screaming loud enough to wake the dead.
“Shit.” Oliver kicked his legs free of his jeans and ran like hell after her.
She reached the lift and punched the call button. The doors opened.
Grabbing the back of her hoodie Oliver hauled her out of the lift. Fastening his arm about her waist, he covered her mouth with his free hand and dragged her back and away from freedom.
She fought ferociously, nails raking his restraining arm, heels drumming against his bare legs. As her heel made contact, pain lanced up from his knee. Her head caught him on the chin and he tasted blood.
“Settle down.” He shook her. As much as he didn’t want to hurt her, she needed to calm the hell down. Carrying a fighting, wriggling woman took strength and effort. Sweat poured down his face by the time he had wrestled her back to his open carton. He snatched up his rope belt, and used his body weight to bring her to the ground. One knee to her chest, he tied her hands.
He sprang free.
She writhed and kicked. Her legs caught his ankle and brought him down hard on his knees. “Stop it.” Stubborn wench insisted on believing the worst of him. Part of him understood, but a bigger part had no more patience. Not with the sword murmuring to him.
Keeping his eye on her, he stripped his modern clothes and donned the tunic and chausses Mother had made for him. The tunic stretched tight over his shoulders. He had gained muscle since being in this time. Swinging his arms, he tried to ease the fit. The right tunic arm tore at the armpit. As Doctor Rose would likely lose her mind if he stripped naked, he kept the modern braes on. She already thought he meant to kill her and he would not add the fear of rape to her overwrought mind.
With his thinner waistline, his chausses bagged at the waist. He needed his rope belt to hold them up. The same rope belt Doctor Rose attempted to gnaw her way through. He had no belt with his modern garb. Holding his chausses up with his left hand, he took up the sword.
Sweet, sharp power flowed up the hilt into his arm. It surged through his muscles. At the touch that felt better than sex, his cock hardened.
Doctor Rose gasped and she scooted away from him. Her back hit the rack behind him.
“I am going to show you a thing now, Doctor Rose.” He stepped closer to her. His biggest regret from this time that he hadn’t found his way between her long, slim thighs.
She paled, her breathing a harsh pant.
“In the days to come when you doubt your own sanity I want you to remember this clearly. Look at me.”
Her gaze snapped to him.
“Look at me and keep your eyes on me. This really happened. Neither of us is mad.” He raised the sword.
Laura screamed. “No!”
“Take me home.”
Laura lunged.
Power surged.
Chapter Six
THE PAIN STARTED in her hands and tore through her. It ripped through every vital organ. Her heart stopped beating. Her lungs contracted, screaming for air.
This was death. No white light, no Mom and Dad waiting for her and ready to lead her into forever. Death splintered and whirled in dark so intensely nothing it tore her apart. Shards of her sheared off and got absorbed by the nothing.
Something pounded her back hard enough to start her breath again. Light burned her retinas and she blinked her eyes shut and then open again. Dots danced in front of her eyes and then coalesced into the dark of night.
Oliver’s shadowed angry face hung above her. “What the fuck did you do?”
“Oh.” She could breathe again. Pressing her hand to her chest, she almost cried when she registered the steady thump of her heart. Her fingers found lose dirt beneath her. Fresh air blew a hair tendril over her eyes. Still scowling was the one familiar thing. “Oliver?”
“Aye.” He reared away and sat down beside her. Shaking his head and muttering, he rested his elbows on his bent knees. “We’re in a right sodding mess now.”
“I don’t think I’m in Kansas anymore.” The night sky gleamed with millions of stars. Off to her left the darker shapes of trees confirmed her galloping suspicion. “We’re outside. Probably in the country.”
Oliver grunted.
The last thing she remembered was grabbing for the sword, and then nothing until she woke up in this field. “Did you knock me out and kidnap me?”
“Nay.” He looked genuinely affronted. “You grabbed the bloody sword and ended up here.”
With the mentally unstable, you often had to calmly and clearly repeat what you’d said before. “Oliver, I don’t believe in magic swords. There is a rational and logical explanation as to why I am now lying in a field.” Outside, night and dirt added up to field of some kind. With her eyes growing accustomed to the dark she could now make out a low perimeter wall.
“A rational and logical explanation?” With a sigh, he stood up. “Jesu. What a sodding mess.”
Beyond the wall a small, cottage squatted. The kind you saw on TV, like if you were watching Game of Thrones or something. Her head refused to go there. “Where are we?”
“My home.” He looked around him slowly and took a long deep breath. “I’m home.”
“Home?”
“Aye, my real home.” He raised an eyebrow at her, daring her to do the math.
It took her a moment. “As in England eight hundred years ago?”
“Aye.” Oliver stared down at her. “Are you going to sit there all night?”
“No.” She stood, dusting dirt from her butt and legs with her bound hands as best she could. Damn Singen Montgomery to hell and back. Oh, she knew exactly who was to blame. If that Montgomery prick hadn’t persuaded Hansom to release Oliver none of this would be happening. Actually, she barely believed any of tonight was real. Oliver breaking into her flat, the trip to the institution, the sword, all of it. “All right, Oliver.” This really had gone on long enough. “Show me your home. Show me England eight hundred years ago.”
Oliver glanced at her and shook his head. With sharp, angry movements, he untied her hands. “I’m going to need that.”
The rope tying her hands came free and her fingers prickled as blood flow returned to them.
Oliver tied the rope around his waist, then bent and picked up the sword. Tucking it into his belt, he turned and marched across the field.
Following close behind him, Laura tried to get her bearings. If she could work out where she was she could either call someone for help or find her way home. The air smelled different. It tickled her nose and she sneezed.
“Listen to me.” Oliver stopped suddenly. “I’m going to tell you how this is and you had best listen and save yourself some time. You’re not dreaming and you’re not going mad. This is really happening to you and everything I’ve told you is the truth.”
A chill frosted the air and made her shiver. She’d never been here before. That she was certain of. “I believe that you believe that.”
Growling, Oliver resumed his stomp toward the cottage. “This is real, and the sooner you accept that, the better for you.”
“It’s real for you, Oliver. The mind is a powerful thing.
I should know. I study the mind.” She tripped over a clump of earth and nearly fell.
Oliver caught her and righted her. “Stubborn wench. I tried to save you the headache. Never mind.” Holding her hand he tugged her after him. “You will come to your senses soon enough. For now, try not to speak too much. I need to work out how to fix this.”
“Fix what?”
“You don’t belong here,” Oliver said.
At least they agreed on that. No light shined from the cottage windows. She hoped whoever lived there was sleeping and the place wasn’t abandoned. Then again, if Oliver knew the owner, she might be walking into double trouble.
Oliver led her to a gap in the wall and through it. “Somehow you have travelled back in time with me. I think it happened when you grabbed my wrists.”
Time travel? Laura reached her limit for crazy in one night. Time. Travel. It struck her as unbelievably funny and she laughed. She laughed so hard she couldn’t walk anymore and bent over to catch her breath. Her belly ached from laughing so hard.
“Stop it.” Oliver grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “We do not have padded cells for the nutters here. We tend to let them die.”
Suddenly her laughter stopped. She took it all in. The field, the cottage, Oliver, the lightening sky, the loud drone of an insect. “Please, just take me home.”
“I cannot.” Oliver shrugged. He actually had the gall to look as if he empathized with her.
“I’m no threat to you. Take me home and I won’t say a word about the sword, the assault and kidnapping, any of it.”
Expression softening, he touched her cheek. “Sweet Laura, I wish I could do as you ask.”
How dare he look like he pitied her? How dare he stare down at her with regret, like he knew how she felt? Laura punched him. Something inside her snapped and she hit him again. Nothing else was real but the pounding of her fists against his chest, the solid smack of flesh against flesh.
“There now.” He gathered her close.
Trapped between their chests, her fists were useless. Refusing to draw comfort from him, she held herself rigid.
He cupped the back of her head, pressing it to his shoulder while his other arm tightened like a metal band about her waist. “You cannot fight this, Laura. Believe me, I tried when I landed in your time. You have to find a way to accept it.”
“No.” Oliver Fitzwilliam wasn’t just insane, he was a fucking wackjob. “I don’t believe any of this and nothing you say will convince me.”
“I understand that you believe that,” he whispered.
“Don’t you dare use shrink speak against me.” She sounded like a small, petulant child. “Take me home. Now.”
“I would if I knew how.” He pressed his head to the top of hers. “And I swear to you that once I have accomplished my heart’s desire I will do everything I can to find a way.”
Who gave a shit about his heart’s desire? She wanted to go home to her crappy flat and her awful job. Back to her lonely, pathetic existence. “Now!”
“I can’t.” He genuinely sounded regretful. “The sword is…complicated.”
“What?” She wriggled free of his hold. “This has nothing to do with that stupid sword. Take me to a phone and I’ll call someone to come and get me.”
Grimacing, he held her at arm’s length. “I see I am not making any headway with you. The only way to convince you is to show you.”
He walked to the cottage door.
Breathing in and then out again Laura took a moment to gather herself. Her loss of temper wouldn’t help her cause. She needed to keep calm and persuade him to release her. No matter how genuine the cottage appeared, the whole time travel thing was beyond ridiculous. God, if they could travel through time, there would be people zipping about all over the place. Imagine the opportunities for travel agents, for instance. Sumptuous Versailles, only a time flip away. Call now and secure your place. But wait…there’s more. Book your dream trip to Versailles and we’ll throw in a free trip to Henry VIII’s Hampton Court. BOGO, time travel style.
A dog shot around the side of the cottage, barking. It spotted Oliver and stopped barking.
“Hello, boy.” Oliver dropped to his haunches.
Tongue whipping out and catching whatever part of Oliver it could, the dog writhed and wriggled into his arms.
Oliver glanced up at her. “This is Arrow. He’s my dog.”
“So, this really is your home.” Talk about your DIY project. The thatch wore thin in places, and a crack zig-zagged down the front wall. The windows weren’t glass but a sort of waxy parchment type material. Weeds sprouted from where the foundations met the wall.
Oliver stood and looked about with a frown. “I must have been away for a while.” He approached the house. “It seems to be in some disrepair.”
It didn’t seem polite to point out the obvious. The place was a dump.
Oliver opened the cottage door and peered inside. “Mother!”
Great, even crazy men took her home to meet their mothers.
“She isn’t here.” Oliver widened the door and stepped inside.
“And she left the door open?” Laura followed him in. “She went somewhere and left the door open.”
He blinked. “Arrow was here.”
Arrow wagged his tail.
Coals glowed from a hearth fire and Oliver strode over to it and lit a candle. He used it to light two more on the rough wooden mantle and then put the candle on the table.
Laura absorbed the cottage in one glance. Not because she had Ninja-eyeballs or anything, but because it was one room. Fireplace and pots on one end, stalls on the other. In between, a table with two benches and a large bed. “Who sleeps in the stalls?”
Oliver’s face went suspiciously blank. “In the winter, we bring the animals into the house with us.”
“I see.” At least he kept the lie consistent. No lights or switches, no faucets in the kitchen, just a big wooden bucket on a table. How did they cook with no form of stove? Not even a hotplate. Not that a hotplate would do you much good when you had nowhere to plug it in. Maybe Oliver and his mum were living off the grid.
Laura marched over to the bench and sat down. It felt reassuringly solid beneath her butt.
Oliver cleared his throat. “Would you like some warm milk?”
“Coffee?”
“Not for another five hundred years or so.” Oliver crouched and fiddled around with the fire. “Or tea for that matter.”
Dear God, but he was totally committed to this bullshit. How could he looks so sane and spew this rubbish?
He moved about the space like he was familiar with it.
No phone either, and hard packed dirt beneath her Nikes. No matter how convincing she refused to entertain the notion that Oliver’s delusion was true. It wasn’t. Couldn’t be.
A fat orange cat landed on the table with a thump. It blinked at her and sat.
It looked real enough and she liked cats. Laura reached out to stroke its silky fur.
Oliver turned. “Do not—”
The cat lashed out.
“Motherfucker!”
Oliver shrugged. “She’s my mother’s cat and she’s not really friendly.”
A thin scratched oozed on the back of her hand. It stung. “Do you have a Band-aid?”
“No, Laura.” He shook his head. “No Band-aid, and no antiseptic cream either.”
She pressed a forefinger into the blood and put it in her mouth. The bitter coppery taste of blood hit her like a tsunami. What if it wasn’t a small scratch and he refused her proper medical attention? What if his mother was as bat-shit crazy as he was and they had some nefarious goal to all of this?
Her head wouldn’t stop playing the what if game. What if he made good on those promises to break her bones or snap her neck?
She could die here.
“Hey.” Oliver crouched at her feet. “You will get through this.”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded past the buzzing in her ears. “E
xcept right now I think I’m having a panic attack.”
“Breathe.” He pressed her head between her knees and stroked her back. “Breathe in and out.”
Her voice came out muffled by her position. “This can’t be happening.”
“I felt the same way.” He sounded so reasonable, compassionate even. “Should I lock you in a padded cell instead? Maybe strap you to a table, stick needles in you, shine things in your eyes? Make you spend countless hours with that horse’s ass Montgomery while he asks you if you masturbated as a child?”
She sat up slowly. “He asked you if you masturbated as a child?”
Oliver’s dark eyes gleamed. “We spent a lot of time on the subject.” He stroked her cheek. “Now, if the lovely Doctor Laura Rose had asked me the same question, I would have been far more interested in answering.”
“Don’t.” She caught his hand and pushed it aside. “Don’t flirt with me, right now. I can’t handle it.”
“Noted.” He stood and went back to his fire. “I will warm milk instead.”
He filled a kettle from a bucket by the hearth and swung it over the flame. Wooden bowls and spoons stacked against the wall. Rough earthen beakers beside them. Not one detail out of place or historically inaccurate. “Um, Oliver. Do you have anything stronger than warmed milk?”
Oliver grinned. “Mead?”
“That’s alcoholic, right?” Keeping her wits sharp sounded like a horrible idea.
He pulled a jug down from a high shelf and shook it. Once the stopper was out, he took a huge sniff. “Ah! I made this myself.” Two beakers hit the table beside the jug and Oliver poured.
Laura took a sniff. “It smells like honey.”
“That is what it is made of.” Like a sommelier at a New York restaurant, Oliver sipped and swirled it around his mouth, then grinned at her. “I have missed mead.”
When he stayed standing, she risked a tiny sip. “It’s dry.” Very dry when she had braced for sweet. “And tastes a little bit like white wine.”
“Mead is made to preference.” Oliver took a sturdy glug. “Some is sweeter, some is dryer.”
“Huh!” Mead didn’t totally suck and it carried a nice little buzz with it.
Romancing the de Wolfe Collection: Contemporary Romance Bundle Page 20