Time After Time

by Wendy Godding

  Time After Time

  Wendy Godding

  Time After Time

  Wendy Godding

  She has died countless times before, and she is not going to let it happen again.

  Abbie Harper dies just before her eighteenth birthday. It has happened before, more times than she can remember — and always at the hands of the same man. Her dreams are plagued with past lives, cut short.

  But this latest dream feels different. Her past life as Penelope Broadhurst — an English pastor’s daughter in 1806 — keeps bleeding into her present life in ways both sinister and familiar. As Penelope meets and falls in love with the dashing Heath Lockwood, so too does Abbie meet the brothers Marcus and Rem Knight. One wants to love her; the other to kill her.

  Time is running out for Penelope, but as Abbie mourns her inability to change the past, she chases the slim chance to save her future. To survive, she must solve the puzzle of an ancient love story…and Penelope just might be able to help.

  About the Author

  Wendy Godding is a happily married mother to three boys and lives in Perth, Western Australia.

  To Mike, Lachlan, Riley and Patrick for being so understanding and supportive as I follow my dreams. And to my dear friend and critique partner Jane who has been a champion of this story from the beginning.

  Contents

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Bestselling Titles by Escape Publishing…

  Chapter One

  Present day

  It was a Saturday afternoon when my nightmare moved into the house next door.

  I’d heard the moving van reversing into the driveway, the monotonous beep, beep, beep filling my small bedroom. I lay on my bed reading my English text, Jane Eyre, one of my favourite books.

  As I was reading the part where Helen Burns dies, shouting filtered up to me from beyond my window, ruining the poignancy of the moment.

  Leaving Jane abandoned on my bed, I made my way to the window and peered out into the street, making sure to hide behind the white voile curtains.

  New neighbours were moving in next door.

  A woman with short, dark brown hair spoke loudly and firmly to the removalists, her arms flailing. Behind her, resting on the lawn, lay several flat parcels wrapped in brown paper. Paintings, I suspected. The corner of one had ripped, the torn paper revealing the swirl of colour on a white canvas.

  As I watched, a boy came out of the house and made his way down the path to the group. He was tall, broad-shouldered and walked with the easy confidence that came from a lifetime of being popular. I knew that walk. It was the same walk Lilly Hamilton had, the same walk the guys on the football team had. A confident, life-is-easy swagger. I didn’t walk like that.

  I took a moment to examine the boy. There was something familiar about him, although his face was obscured by dark brown hair falling loosely across his forehead. But the familiarity was in the tilt of his head, the way his hair curled at the base of his neck.

  Approaching the group, he rested a hand on the woman’s arm, calming her, before turning his charm on the removalists. I couldn’t hear what he said, but the two men nodded, their heads lowered, before they picked up the artworks carefully and carried them indoors.

  The woman smiled up at the boy, her face relaxed, before she, too, moved away.

  For the longest moment I stared at the boy, a nagging at the back of my mind. He was familiar. And he was familiar in a way that frightened me.

  Then he flicked his hair back from his face, a quick jerk of his head that made my breath catch in my throat. The blood in my veins stilled, and I was frozen to the spot, transfixed. I couldn’t move if I wanted to. And I wouldn’t move until I was sure.

  No. No. No. This was the only word I could think. Beyond it my mind was dark and black, sliding away from me.

  He turned, raising his eyes to my window, as if he knew I was there, watching him. His face broke into an easy, lopsided grin that made my heart lurch as I staggered back from the window.

  Surely not…

  I couldn’t be sure until I’d double-checked. I couldn’t rely solely on my own eyes and memories for confirmation that it was really him. But as I made my way to the attic, up the small, narrow steps at the end of the hall, my heart was already beginning to sink. It was him, I knew it. I’d drawn an image of him just that morning in my journal.

  The attic was filled with afternoon light. It streaked in through the high, narrow window, slanting across the room and highlighting the dust hovering in the air. There wasn’t a lot of room, and when Gran died a year ago the room had become even more congested with trunks and boxes of her things, things that neither Aunt Meredith nor I could bear to part with. But there was enough room for my easel and paints, and an old, small rose-coloured armchair, which sat to one side. In it I regularly curled up to write in my journal. That morning I’d documented the meeting between Penelope Broadhurst and Heath Lockwood. They’d met in the year 1806 in a little country village in England.

  And now, I was pretty sure, Heath Lockwood had moved into the house next door.

  Pulling out my sketchpad, I flicked through it, past the various images of the other man, past the multitude of drawings of silver grey eyes, to what I was looking for. The last picture I had sketched, only that morning. Brown eyes. Warm, chocolate eyes, set in a face that was angular, the smile slightly lopsided. His hair was longer, brushing against his collar, and he had sideburns too, but that had been the fashion in 1806 England.

  Heath Lockwood.

  There was no doubt in my mind as I regarded the picture. It was Heath Lockwood.

  The man that Penelope Broadhurst had met only last night in my dreams in 1806 had just moved next door to me in the twenty-first century.

  I didn’t move from the attic all afternoon. Not until I heard Meredith come home. Instead, I curled up in the chair while reading my journal. It was a secret journal, one I kept tucked under the seat of the armchair. In it I documented my past lives.

  All of them.

  Because I remembered them.

  Remembered might be the wrong word, because they weren’t just memories.

  Each night, when I closed my eyes, I went into their worlds. The other worlds and lives my soul had passed through before coming to this one. In the front of my journal I had a list of all of them — at least, the ones I’d dreamed of so far — as well as a record of how each life had ended.

  Katherine. Drowned. Aged seventeen.


  I easily recalled the feel of the chains dragging at my feet, sucking me down despite my struggle. I hadn’t been able to see anything save the murky water and my hair twisting and tangling around me. My lungs had burned, had felt as if they were bursting from my chest. Eventually the sensation had passed and I had stopped flailing as unconsciousness and death washed over me.

  Claire. Hanging. Aged seventeen.

  Claire—I—had been falsely accused of a crime and sent to the gallows. The most frightening thing about Claire’s death had not been the moment when the trapdoor fell open and the noose tightened, but strangely, the walk up the gallows’ hill. The scaffold was set high, surrounded by lush green lawns, and the wind raced past my face, hinting at a freedom I didn’t have. My feet burned with a desire to run, but I’d been constrained on all sides by guards and shackles. The injustice had weighed heavily on me then, as well as the overwhelming, suffocating desire for freedom. A freedom Claire would never have again.

  Elizabeth. Throat slit. Aged seventeen.

  I shuddered, quickly moving down the list, not wanting to think about that particular death.

  Vivienne was next on the list. Poisoned. Ugh. My veins were instantly hot as I remembered the feel of the poison moving through them and making me ill. The pain, the fevered delirium, the violent vomiting that had lingered for days. The pus-filled welts that had risen on my body…I swallowed the lump in my throat as I moved on.

  Oh, and Vivienne was seventeen.

  Just as I was. And Penelope Broadhurst. She was seventeen too. Living with her father in a country parish church in England. I’d grown increasingly fond of her world, which included not only the beautiful village of Broadhurst, but also a doting father and two close cousins. Life was sweet for Penelope.

  For the moment.

  But he would come for her, as he had come for all the others. Their deaths at aged seventeen were no coincidence. It was murder. Each and every time. And every time they—I—stared up into his frightening eyes and knew the end was near.

  Turning to the latest entry, which I’d written for Penelope that morning, I began to read, wondering who this new boy next door really was.

  And what it meant.

  Chapter Two

  1806

  The nightmares still lingered in Penelope’s mind, in spite of the bright morning light and comforting warmth of her room. They were too dark to be easily chased away.

  Despite the warmth, she shivered.

  Her father, Pastor Gerald Broadhurst, glanced up from the breakfast table as she entered, smiling indulgently. That simple act vanquished a few of the dark shapes in Penelope’s mind, but not all. She had a feeling this particular nightmare would be slow to evaporate. Still, it would eventually fade, just as the others had. Even now some of the details were vague and hard to recall. Had there been eyes? Strangely coloured eyes? Odd. They made little sense and meant nothing to her. She just wished they would hurry up in being sucked back into the void from which they’d come.

  With the other nightmares.

  ‘Harry has returned from Cambridge,’ her father announced.

  ‘Yes. Georgina sent a note inviting me to call on them this morning,’ Penelope replied.

  ‘And you will, of course?’

  ‘Yes,’ she took a seat opposite him, ‘Will you come?’

  ‘No,’ he replied, true to form. ‘I’ve promised to visit Mrs Smith.’

  Penelope’s lips quirked. Mrs Smith and her family lived on the outskirts of town and refused to come to church. Descended from gypsies, Mrs Smith had her own particular beliefs that had little in common with Pastor Broadhurst’s Sunday sermons. But the pastor was determined to bring the Smith family into the fold. If not Mrs Smith, then at least her children, whose souls were in need of salvation. Penelope admired his determination.

  ‘I’ll put together a basket for you to take,’ she smiled, ‘and please tell Mrs Smith I’ll call on her during the week.’

  ‘You’re a good girl, Penelope,’ Pastor Broadhurst smiled.

  After breakfast Penelope packed a basket for her father to take to Mrs Smith’s cottage. Then, putting on her bonnet and shoes, she began the short jaunt up the hill to Broadhurst Manor.

  The Manor stood only a mile from the parsonage, and the walk in the late September morning was pleasant, despite the autumn chill. Penelope loved walking through the fields, but most of all she loved the manor house itself. She adored the large, grand home of her ancestors, although she lived in the more modest parsonage bordering the forest, having the misfortune to be born to the second son of the Broadhurst family. But Georgina and Harry, her cousins, plus Uncle Henry and his late wife Elizabeth, had always made her feel welcome, made her feel as if she belonged there as much as they did.

  Following the brook that ran through Broadhurst, she strolled up the hillside dotted with craggy rocks and trees, inhaling deeply and letting the fresh air fill her lungs. There was something magical about the North York Moors that made her feel as if she was part of something bigger.

  It’d rained heavily the night before, and she scooped up her skirts to avoid getting their hem muddy. As she walked she hummed a little tune, one her mother used to sing, losing herself in a world of thoughts that quickly turned from the beauty of the day to the nightmares of the night before.

  Would they never leave her alone?

  Absorbed in her own world and not watching where she trod, Penelope didn’t notice a puddle of mud and stepped into it, sinking ankle-deep. Particles of mud splashed up, smacking her face and smattering her clean dress. Annoyed, wanting to look her best when she saw Harry, Penelope began rubbing at the mud marks, smearing them across the pale fabric as she struggled to pull her feet from the sticky mud.

  Slowly, like the sun’s weak rays reaching out, the back of her neck began to prickle, a course of shivers running up and down her spine.

  She straightened, instantly alert. Her eyes swept over the land before her, taking in the familiar shapes of trees, the odd fallen branch, craggy rocks and the stream that trickled past.

  Nothing to spook her.

  And yet her stomach was clenched in tight knots, her heart straining against her rib cage.

  She was most definitely spooked.

  Glancing behind, she saw only the fields and stream, a few sheep roaming aimlessly in the meadow.

  Her chest squeezed and she inhaled deeply. It feels like I’m being watched. Which was impossible. Her father had left for Mrs Smith’s. She was too far from Broadhurst Manor to run into any servants or fieldworkers, and none of them would have this effect on her.

  Swallowing hard, she turned back, surveying the hill beyond her. Over the rise, just at the top, she would be able to see the Manor. Shielding her eyes against the feeble rays of sun with her hand, she hoisted her skirts higher and made to move forward, but her feet were stuck firmly in the mud.

  Then she saw him.

  At the top of the hill, perched on a black horse, he stared down the slope towards her. The sun rose behind him, bathing him in gold, darkening and obscuring his features so that he appeared as a silhouette on the horizon. A blight in the familiar landscape and her perfect world.

  Penelope’s heart thumped. There was something about him…something familiar. He wasn’t from the village. He was too tall, too broad-shouldered and physically commanding to have gone unnoticed before. No, she knew him from somewhere else.

  Sometime else.

  She shuddered. That makes no sense, the rational part of her brain corrected, how could I know him from sometime else?

  Suddenly, the horse reared and kicked its forelegs in the air as it whinnied, the cry carrying down to where Penelope stood stock-still. Without thinking, she stepped back, dragging her feet through the mud, prepared to run, her heart hammering against the wall of her chest and the sound filling her ears. She could run back to the parsonage but then what? Father was out and there was only the housekeeper at home. She could run up the hill, towards him,
and hope she managed to pass by and get in sight of the Manor to attract attention. But it was doubtful she’d be able to outrun him, especially since he sat astride a powerful-looking horse.

  Penelope swallowed her increasing anxiety. She felt as if she was squeezed into a tiny box, four walls closing in and suffocating her. There was no escape.

  A cool breeze slipped across her cheeks, reminding her that she was outside in the wide open moors, not suffocating and not in one of her nightmares.

  Who are you? Penelope wondered, staring at him. And how are you doing this to me?

  Abruptly, the rider turned and faced the manor house. Something had caught his attention, and she sensed he was torn between following her and following the distraction. Please go, she begged silently, wanting to be far, far away from him.

  Standing, imprisoned in her spot, she waited for him to decide and felt as if she balanced on a precipice. The horse jostled between its feet in indecision, and as it did, the light changed. For a moment, the rider’s face emerged from the shadows, his features laid bare for her to see.

  A flash of brilliant white teeth shimmered as he turned the horse towards her, his decision evident. She tried to stagger back but her feet were caught, and she could only hold her breath and brace herself as he raced down the hill towards her. The sound of hoof beats pounded in her ears, mingling with her frantic pulse.

  Run, a soft voice whispered in her mind. Run from him. But she couldn’t move, and before she knew it he was there, towering over her and once again blocking the sun.

  She gasped as vivid silver eyes met hers; they shimmered as if a myriad of crystals had been embedded in them, a strange, tear-shaped pupil taking centre stage in each. Dark hair fell across his forehead in a boyish fashion, although there was nothing boyish about his sharp, angular jaw and his furrowed brow. There was nothing boyish about him at all.

  He’s beautiful!

  She opened her mouth to speak, to say something to the man who gazed down at her and who inexplicably terrified her, when the sound of laughter filled the air. It came from just over the crest of the hill, and Penelope sighed, relieved that someone was close by. If she screamed for help they would hear her.