“Oh, crap,” she said. “I forgot my stupid hat again.”
Rowan glanced over his shoulder at them and made a face. “Screw ‘em.”
“Spoken like a true pirate, my darling,” she said. “I hope you’re going to get all that out of your system before we get back to Cairo. It scares me a little.”
He took her hand and kissed it softly, his eyes watching hers. “I’m sorry, babe. I didn’t mean for it to go as deep as it did.”
“You rather enjoyed the pirate life.”
“Parts of it,” he admitted. “When they stopped whaling on me and trying to cut important bits off me, yeah. I mean aye!”
She laughed and then took a sip of her wine to bolster her courage.
“Look,” she said, “I’ve got to tell you something, Rowan. And I need you to stay calm and not go all pirate-caveman on me. But there was this guy…” She saw him visibly stiffen across from her.
“Shall we have this conversation in the privacy of our room?” he asked.
“Maybe we’d better.” She gathered up her purse, and as they walked upstairs she briefly outlined to him who Lawrence Bingham was. She then spent the next thirty minutes physically restraining Rowan from going to the Mortons’s house and dragging the Englishman’s sorry ass out into the street and making him eat his own ascot.
“Let me handle it, please, Rowan,” Ella said as they began to undress for bed. “It’s my insult to address and I want to deal with it my way. If it turns out I need you—”
“Oh, I’ll be there,” he said grimly. “I’ll be right outside the door.”
“Well, maybe the front porch would be good, and only if you promise to stay there until I call for you—if I call for you. Just remember, Rowan, nothing happened.”
“He got his grimy paws on your boobs, didn’t he? Isn’t that what you said? He was going for gold, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, but I stopped him.” She held up a hand to prevent his next words. “Yes, he saw me naked from the waist up but, really, Rowan, so did thirty-two French sailors back in Casablanca and I think we’re just going to have to call it collateral damage and go forward. Okay? Rowan? Okay?”
In the end, only an extensive and personal physical inventory of Rowan’s ownership of every inch of Ella’s body would pacify and distract him long enough to agree to let her handle it her way.
As he drifted off to sleep, Ella took comfort in the familiar sounds of his deep and steady soft snores. He was at rest and his world—her world, too—was at peace. Finally.
As she allowed the trials—and the pleasures—of the day to slowly claim her in sleep, she found herself wondering if Sully had gone forward, back to his own time. If he did, he was probably catching World War II just as it was getting started. She looked out the hotel room window, the louvered slats allowing a nice sea breeze into the room, the netting surrounding the bed keeping the vulturous mosquitos out.
That would be just like him, she thought sleepily. Eager to be a part of history, to make things happen. An image of his laughing face came to mind. He was always laughing. All at once she realized she was already seeing bits of him in Tater, and even herself. And she realized with surprise that, come what may, it really wasn’t the worst thing that could happen.
***
Even though Ella had planned her visit for a time when she knew Adele would be out shopping, she was nonetheless taken aback to see Lawrence open the door himself. She was also surprised at the level of fury just seeing him ignited in her breast.
The fool broke out into a wide grin and reached out with his hand to pull her inside as if nothing had changed—as if he didn’t know she had found her husband and as if he wasn’t planning to marry someone else himself. She pushed past him into the house without speaking.
In truth, she didn’t trust herself to speak. Rowan was standing out on the street, and she knew he’d gotten a good look at Lawrence. If he felt anything like she did, there was going to be a murder committed in this house before the day was done.
“My dear Ella!” Lawrence said as she walked straight down the hall to where the stairs began. “I am so gratified to see you in order that I might have the opportunity to tell you how…how much I…I say, Ella, where are you going, my dear?”
Ella trotted quickly up the narrow and steep stairs and turned at the top toward where her bedroom was. She heard Lawrence running up the stairs behind her.
“Ella,” he called, “I really don’t believe it is appropriate for you to be upstairs while the Mortons are not to home. You are not a houseguest any longer, if I may remind you.”
She jerked open the bedroom door and walked to the bed, where she dropped to her knees and began feeling around under the bed. Her fingers felt the hard, cold metal of the derringer. Lawrence entered the room and immediately went to the window to jerk the curtains closed. While his back was to her, Ella cocked the gun, aimed it at him and fired. He screamed and grabbed his buttocks, sagging against the door.
Ella stood and looked at the little gun in her hand with satisfaction. “And here I was disappointed I never got a chance to use this.”
“Dear God, you shot me! My good Lord…I…” Lawrence hobbled over to the dresser, his face bleached white, his eyes bugging out of their sockets at the gun she held on him.
“These little peashooters aren’t much good in a real confrontation, but they do pack a wallop at close range,” Ella said, looking at the gun in her hand. “Or so I’m told. Perhaps you could confirm that?”
Lawrence rubbed his backside and straightened up as if realizing the damage wasn’t as bad as he’d originally thought. “It is an unholy weapon dispensing untold agony, I can assure you,” he said dramatically.
“Well, thanks, because your assurances mean so much to me. You know, Rowan wanted to handle this little interview with you himself, Lawrence, but I think it involved tying your balls around the back of your head.”
“I did nothing wrong!” Lawrence said, his face contorted with indignation, his hands still rubbing his posterior, but Ella saw his eyes dart nervously past her as if he half expected Rowan to burst into the room.
“You led me to believe we were engaged,” Ella said.
“I wanted to marry you!”
“You just skipped over the whole asking me part.”
He hesitated a moment as if to consider the truth of this. “That was reprehensible, I admit. But it was because I loved you.”
“Trust me, Lawrence. Love had nothing to do with it.”
“You enjoyed my caresses, mia bella, I know you did.”
“No, please, keep talking,” Ella said, dropping to one knee and groping under the bed with her free hand. “I’m sure I have one more round under here somewhere.”
“All right, please, no more!” Lawrence held up a hand as he watched her scoop up the small caliber cartridge, blow dust off it and insert it into the derringer. “I apologize! I don’t know what came over me.”
“I think I can help you out there,” Ella said, standing and wagging the gun in his direction. “You saw a helpless woman and took advantage of the situation.”
“I admit it. I’m a cad.”
“That is the least of what you are. Now, the jewels that you stole from me. I’ll take them back now or I will relieve you of your own family jewels—one at a time.”
“I had no intention of stealing your—”
“Okay, just stop. Jewels now or start speaking soprano.”
Lawrence reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the small velvet bag. He spilled out the jewels onto the bedcover, then scooped them back in the bag and handed it to Ella.
“I’d say thank you but it’s against my policy to say thanks for getting my own stuff back.”
“I’m truly repentant.”
“I knew there was something missing from this little meeting, and that’s it. You just don’t seem repentant to me. I’m sure that’s my fault. I fear I’m going to have to ask Rowan to take over after all.”
“Surely your husband will understand my desperate desire to be with you?
“Yeah, I’m not so sure you want to lead with that when you’re talking to him, but you go with what works for you.”
“I must say, even if it results in my death, I’m not sorry to know how you look naked, or what you taste like.”
“See, now that’s exactly the kind of thing that’s going to get you killed, Lawrence. It’s because Rowan knows you know all that that he’s going to want to stuff you in a cannon and distribute you like buckshot to the remainder of the southern colonies. And I do not want my husband to be hung for your murder. Do you see where I’m going here?”
“I have a chance to redeem myself.
“I wouldn’t go that far, but you can make amends.”
“I can tell him that you fought like a she-cat the whole time you were naked in my arms.”
“Really? You think this is a joke? He’s a frigging US Marshal. He fought in frigging Iraq. How many people have you killed with your bare hands?”
“I can tell him I deserve to die and will, in fact, do so by my own hand unless he thinks it unnecessary.”
Ella paused. “Okay. I think that’s probably your best approach. Don’t be surprised if he still breaks your nose, though.”
“Is this goodbye?
“Unless you’d like another little zing to remember me by?”
“Goodbye, Ella.”
“Goodbye, Lawrence.”
As she walked out the door, she shot him again just for the hell of it.
***
Waiting another four weeks in 1825 proved to be nearly as difficult as anything else Ella had done in the last month. Eager to see her baby again—and Halima—she convinced Rowan that a month was plenty of time and that she’d be fine. After all, hadn’t she already spent nearly ten days in 1825?
The morning that they decided to go back was a hot one for early December and the skies were clear and cloudless.
“I wonder if 1925 will have the same weather?” Ella asked as she tried to hide behind Rowan’s bulk where they stood on the street corner. Men’s fashions were not exceptionally different from generation to generation, Ella noted, but if she was afraid of being institutionalized because she kept forgetting her hat she was all the more wary going out in public in a dress cut to her calf with nary a bustle to be had.
“I don’t think it works like that,” Rowan said, his arm around her protectively. “You about ready?”
“I’m so excited at the thought of seeing little Tater again, I could scream,” she said, nestling into his arms. “Let’s do it.”
“You got the ring?”
“Never without it. You?”
Rowan flicked open the lighter and gave her a grin. “Let’s go home, babe.”
As it happened, it would be another three weeks before Ella saw her child. When she and Rowan “woke up” in 1925 Key West, Ella was completely blind. Assuring Rowan that it was almost surely temporary (she hoped), Ella allowed him to lead her to the new Flagler Hotel on Duval Street, where the two collapsed in relief and emotional exhaustion.
The next morning, they took the Overland Railway to Miami, where Ella called Halima to tell her they were coming home and, true to form, Halima behaved as if she’d never doubted it.
“Our young man has been repeatedly and insistently asking for both of you,” Halima said. “And the strangest thing happened after you left. Two letters arrived for you from Casablanca.”
“Did you open them?”
“I admit I took the liberty.”
“And?”
“They are from Effendi Rowan! It is most strange indeed.”
“Rowan!” Ella turned to where Rowan was sitting drinking a spiked lemonade on the terrace of the Royal Palm Hotel overlooking Miami beach. There was a three-day wait for their flight to Cape Town. “Jan’s letters arrived!”
Rowan gaped at her. “The letters came?”
Ella nodded. “Yes. Halima said two of them. Identical in every way.”
“I’ll be damned.” Rowan shook his head. “I told him to send three in hopes that one would make it through. Ella, this means Sully didn’t kill him after all.”
“What, Halima?” Ella returned to the call. “Yes, read it to me.” She listened for a moment and then turned back to Rowan, tears sparking in her eyes.
“What is it?” Rowan asked eagerly, standing by her now, his hand ready to take the phone.
“There’s an addendum on both the letters. It says, PS — My friend, if this is really you reading this, I am alive and once more headed to South Africa to make my fortune. I hope you find your Ella. Best regards, Jan Aldegonda.”
“I’ll be damned,” Rowan repeated and looked out over the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.
Three days later they flew to Cape Town, and from there on to Cairo.
***
One month after their return, when life had finally gotten back to normal both with Ella’s eyesight and Rowan’s job, Ella went upstairs to her bedroom after putting Tater down. Rowan’s 1825 insistence not withstanding, life had been so busy upon their return that intimate moments had not been as frequent as they’d both assumed they would be.
Tonight, after a wonderful dinner out, Ella was well rested and Rowan was opening a bottle of wine in the downstairs salon. She marveled that they had been able to stand to spend even an afternoon away from each other after all that had happened, but life intervened and schedules soon made mockery of best intentions.
“You coming, babe?” Rowan called up to her softly, obviously hoping not to wake the baby.
Ella pulled open her lingerie drawer and touched the silk negligee she’d bought that day for tonight. A quick glance in the mirror over the dresser made her realize her hair was growing back. She smiled at herself and her fingers touched the shape of her US passport that she kept in the drawer. She glanced at it. This was not her 1922 passport, but the one Rowan had brought with him from 2010 when he had hopes of her being able to use it to return with him.
Those hopes were dashed when Tater was born. But she and Rowan had been talking lately about going back to see his folks, and her father and stepmother. Just as soon as Tater could handle the trip forward in time. She idly opened the passport and a small photo fell out onto the floor. Frowning, she scooped it up and looked at it. It was a photo of her and an older woman. They were both smiling. In fact, in the picture, Ella had her arm around the woman.
Who in the world…?
She turned the photo over to read the inscription on the back.
When Rowan heard Ella scream, he nearly dropped the wine glass he was pouring. Ella screaming after spending thirty minutes trying to get the little guy to finally go down had to be either a cobra under the dresser or worse. Grabbing a fireplace poker, Rowan vaulted up the stairs but no more sounds came from their bedroom.
He burst into the room and saw Ella kneeling on the floor, a negligee in her lap and her passport in her hand.
“Ella?”
She looked at him as if she didn’t know him, tears streaming from her eyes.
He dropped the poker and knelt by her. “Babe, what’s happened?” He could hear the slow growing cry of their son waking up.
She shakily handed him the photo she was holding and he looked at it in confusion. It was a picture of Ella, obviously taken sometime before they left for Cairo, with an older woman. An aunt, or something?
“Read the back,” she whispered, her hand covering her mouth.
He flipped it over and read: Me and Mom, Mother’s Day 2012.
He looked at her. “Oh. My. God,” he said. “Is this…?”
“My mother,” Ella said, her hand trembling as she wiped her eyes. “My mother is alive, Rowan. She’s alive.”
Rowan looked at the photo again. Once he knew it was her, it was obvious. They looked so much alike. “This means Sully…he must not have joined the Nazi party after all. So he wasn’t hung at Nuremberg?”
&nb
sp; Ella shook her head in wonder. “And my mother did not join the CIA and she did not try to kill herself.”
“God, what I wouldn’t do for just five minutes with an Internet connection.”
“She’s alive, Rowan. I have a mother in 2013”
He pulled her into his arms, the sounds of their son’s cries fading as he started to fall asleep again.
“We’ll go back,” he said. “Tater can handle it. We’ll go home.”
Epilogue
In the months before their scheduled trip back to their own time, Ella was amazed to discover that she was beginning to remember her mother. At first the images came to her as if wisps of dreams or wishes disguised as memories. More and more though, the pictures came into her head, one on top of the other as the weeks went by, until she could remember a past she never lived. Memories of her mother, laughing and free, showing her how to bake, walking with her to school, scolding or kissing her as Ella grew.
She’d had a mother. A loving mother who loved her still. How she knew this, after a lifetime of never feeling it, was to Ella like waking up one morning knowing how to speak Swahili. She didn’t know how she knew, she just did.
Even the anxieties of Tater’s first trip into time travel and saying goodbye to Halima, very likely forever, couldn’t mitigate the excitement and wonder that Ella felt about going home and meeting the woman whose dark shadow she had sat in, cold and forgotten, most of her childhood.
Saying goodbye to Halima was the worst.
“I’ll never forget you, Halima,” Ella said, the day they planned to leave. The two women sat closely together on the divan in the parlor. Plans had been made for Halima to continue to live in the townhouse and to be paid a small annuity for the rest of her life.
“And I you, dear one,” Halima said, her brown eyes warm and melting with unshed tears. After everything they’d been through, Ella didn’t think she could ever remember a time when she’d seen Halima weep.
Race to World's End (Rowan and Ella Book 3) Page 27