Rendezvous With Yesterday

by Dianne Duvall

  Oh, crap. “I’m sorry.” Eyes wide, Beth looked at Robert, who winced, then at Dillon, whose expression darkened as a murderous gleam entered his blue eyes. “I’m so sorry. Really. That was incredibly rude of me,” she blurted, talking fast to head off whatever violence Dillon contemplated and to reassure Alyssa. “Please do not think I meant any insult by it. I totally did not. I just remembered at the last minute… I mean, I forgot that…” Get it together, she ordered herself. “Okay, Robert told me you can read thoughts and… I didn’t think… I mean, I thought it wouldn’t be wise for you to…” Sheesh. She was really bungling this.

  She looked up at Robert. “You want to help me out here?”

  “Verily, she meant no insult, Alyssa,” he insisted. “’Tis only that I told her of your gifts and there are things in her past that she feared would shock you.”

  Beth stared up at him in dismay. That sounded even worse than her ramblings had! She slapped him on the arm. “Robert! Don’t say it like that! You make it sound like I used to be a whore or something!”

  “Were you?” Dillon asked insolently.

  Beth glared at him. “You know, you are not too old to spank.”

  Robert choked on a laugh.

  Alyssa held up one hand to silence whatever retort Dillon planned to voice. “You did not avoid my touch because you fear I am evil?”

  Beth frowned. “What? No. Nay. Why would I think you are evil?”

  Now Alyssa’s brow puckered. “Because of my gifts.”

  Beth shook her head. “Nay, I do not think you’re evil. I just come from a place that is very different from this one, and worried that if you saw it in my thoughts…” Well, she wasn’t sure what would happen. Robert and Michael and the others had known there was something off about her long before she had told them the truth. Alyssa would just have seen it all cold turkey, no warning.

  Beth sighed and glanced up at the man she had come to love so much. “You know what? This isn’t going very well. My one shot at making a good first impression on your family has pretty much been blown all to hell, so why don’t we just spill the truth and get it over with?”

  He tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and stroked the nape of her neck. “Forgive me, Beth. Had I thought this through, I could have made this meeting far less awkward.” He turned to Dillon and Alyssa. “There is much we have to tell you. And more we must discuss. ’Twould be best if we do so in the privacy of the solar.”

  Beth offered Alyssa a tentative smile. “Maybe we could start over? I promise—once we tell you everything—you can touch me all you want.”

  All eyebrows flew up.

  Beth groaned. “Wait. That didn’t come out right. That sounded sexual, didn’t it?”

  Stunned silence greeted her.

  Shoulders drooping, she looked up at Robert. “I must be more tired than I thought. I keep putting my foot in my mouth.”

  Chuckling, he drew her up against his side and kissed her hair. “The day has been a long one, love.”

  “For all of us,” Alyssa added, kindly wiping the shock from her expression. “May I congratulate you, Lady Bethany, on your victory over Robert’s men? My husband told me of your contest.”

  “Thank you. And please, call me Beth.”

  “Then you must call me Alyssa.” She smiled. “I wish I could have been here to see Sir Faudron’s and Sir Stephen’s expressions.”

  They turned as one to look across the hall at Stephen just as Ian’s sword hit Stephen squarely in the groin. Dropping his own sword, the irascible warrior slammed his knees together, cupped himself with both hands, and—whimpering—toppled over onto the floor.

  Robert and Dillon both winced.

  Beth pursed her lips. “Too bad he wasn’t still wearing his armor.”

  Michael and the other men in the great hall found it wildly amusing, their laughter swelling and echoing off the walls.

  Alyssa narrowed her eyes at Dillon. “Do not dare laugh.”

  “I would not,” he said with a grimace. “Ian has done the same to me on numerous occasions.”

  Robert grunted. “I will not ask if Alyssa healed you with her hands.”

  Alyssa’s cheeks flushed while Dillon donned a naughty grin.

  “Perhaps now would be a good time for us to retire to the solar,” Beth suggested brightly, hoping to alleviate the other woman’s embarrassment.

  The others agreed, and—with lighter spirits all around—they exited the great hall.

  An hour later, Dillon and Alyssa sat with their heads bent over Beth’s cell phone, gazing in astonishment at the photo she had just taken of them, as well as those she had taken of Robert, Marcus and the others.

  Thank goodness Beth had packed her solar charger. Without it, her cell phone’s battery would have long since died and she wouldn’t have had the photos to aid her whenever she tried to convince others she was from the future.

  She and Robert had recited her tale as concisely as possible. Through much of it, Dillon had looked angry and suspicious. Alyssa had appeared unsettled. But, as with Michael and the others, Beth’s modern goodies—the cell phone and coins in particular—convinced them where words would not.

  Alyssa’s gifts, however, also afforded them another way.

  “Alyssa,” Beth said, extending her hand, palm up, “would you like to see the future?”

  Alyssa glanced at Dillon.

  “Do not overtax yourself, sweetling,” he murmured.

  Beth’s gaze dropped to the woman’s stomach. “Oh. Will it tire you?” She didn’t know how exactly the woman’s gift worked.

  Smiling, Alyssa shook her head as she handed her husband the cell phone. “Not overly.”

  “Good.” Beth extended her hand again. “Do I just picture what I want you to see?”

  “Aye, though I should warn you I may pick up other things along the way,” she cautioned. “Things you may not wish me to see. Things you think of often.”

  Beth bit her lip. That was a bit unsettling. “Then I should probably warn you that you are likely to see a lot of Robert naked.”

  Alyssa’s eyes widened as a blush climbed her cheeks.

  Dillon released a bark of involuntary laughter.

  When Beth glanced at Robert, his eyes twinkled as his lips stretched in a mischievous smile.

  “You imagine me naked often, do you?” he murmured, toying with a lock of her hair.

  Beth winked. “Are you kidding? You’re naked right now.”

  Laughing, he kissed her cheek.

  Beth turned back to Alyssa. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist. Would you please keep anything personal or embarrassing you might see in my thoughts between you and me?”

  “Aye, Beth,” she said with a smile. “I would have done so without your request.”

  “Thank you. Now, why don’t I start by showing you my homeland?”

  As soon as Alyssa took her hand, Beth closed her eyes and pictured a map of the world laid out before her. “Okay, there’s Europe. There’s England. And way over here to the west are North and South America.”

  Alyssa’s hand tightened on hers. “I have read ancient scrolls that suggested there was land far to the west, but I never guessed ’twould be so much.”

  The map in Beth’s mind molded itself into a sphere and settled into orbit around the sun with the other planets all in their places.

  Alyssa gasped and jerked her hand back.

  Beth opened her eyes. “What?”

  “You know the Earth circles the sun,” Alyssa whispered, then looked at Robert.

  Robert raised his hands. “I did not tell her. She already knew.”

  Beth nodded. “Everyone knows that in my time. The Earth is round and revolves around the sun, along with seven other planets and th
ree dwarf planets.”

  When Dillon and Alyssa just stared at her, Beth fidgeted uncertainly. “Do you wish to continue?”

  Nodding hesitantly, Alyssa again took Beth’s hand.

  Beth pictured the globe again and let a map of the United States overlay itself atop the North American continent. “This is the country I was born in, the United States. This is Texas.” Mentally, she zoomed in on the Lone Star State. “And this is Houston, the city I’ve lived in all of my life.”

  “’Tis so large,” Alyssa breathed.

  “It is,” Beth agreed. “I think at last count there were around six million people living in the Houston metropolitan area.”

  Both Robert and Dillon expressed shock at such a high number.

  “’Tis true, Dillon,” Alyssa said as Beth showed her the tall buildings and the masses of people. “Look at all of the glass windows!”

  Glass windows, Beth had come to understand, were very rare and expensive in this time.

  “Oh!” Alyssa exclaimed. “What are those?”

  Beth smiled. “Cars. Also called automobiles. You might understand them better as horseless carriages or wagons. Most are powered by a liquid fuel, rather than animals, and can travel three or four times faster than the fastest horse you’ve ridden.”

  “Oh, I wish you could see this,” Alyssa told the men, her voice high with excitement.

  “You know what’s even cooler than the cars?” Beth asked with a grin. “Airplanes.”

  Beth recalled as vividly as possible her last trip to the airport. Walking through the long boarding tunnel, taking her seat, then watching out the window as the plane took off and the land fell away beneath them.

  Alyssa abruptly jerked her hand back and broke contact.

  Opening her eyes, Beth saw that this time the woman looked pale and shaken.

  “You were flying through the air,” she whispered.

  Robert and Dillon regarded Beth with wide eyes.

  “I wasn’t flying,” she corrected. “The plane was. Airplanes are like automobiles, except they can fly through the air and travel at much greater speeds. People frequently use them to cover long distances in the briefest amount of time possible. I’d have to look it up to be sure, but you could probably fly from London to Paris in just a couple of hours.”

  All three simply stared at her.

  Alyssa turned to her husband. “She truly is from the future. ’Tis miraculous, all that she has shown me.”

  His face unreadable, Dillon brushed the hair back from Alyssa’s pale face, then resumed his scrutiny of Beth.

  Beginning to feel uncomfortable, Beth turned to Robert, who studied her with astonishment.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” she griped. “Don’t you start looking at me funny. You already knew all of this.”

  Robert forced a smile and draped his arm across her shoulders. Encouraging her to lean into him, he kissed her temple, then turned to Alyssa. “Can you tell us if Sir Geoffrey was the man who came to her and carried her through time?”

  Beth looked to Alyssa for her response.

  “I have never known Geoffrey to accomplish such a feat. He would have told me if he could do so.”

  Dillon stroked her arm. “When you acquired your new gifts, they unsettled you so much that you would not admit you possessed them and only spoke of them when I forced you to.”

  Beth would love to hear more of that story. Alyssa had acquired more gifts? How? And when?

  “Mayhap Geoffrey has done the same,” Dillon suggested. “Mayhap he has acquired a new gift and is too unsettled by it to speak of it.”

  The notion clearly disturbed Alyssa, who extended her hand to Beth. “Show me what happened that day.”

  Her stomach turning over, Beth clasped the woman’s hand once more.

  “Robert,” Alyssa said, “you will either have to quiet your thoughts or cease touching her.”

  Beth glanced at Robert.

  His eyebrows rose. “You can hear my thoughts?”

  Alyssa nodded. “Quite clearly. ’Tis a bit like listening to two people speak at once.”

  Beth eyed him curiously. “You didn’t know it could work that way?”

  Frowning, he shook his head.

  Alyssa nodded suddenly. “Better. When you are ready, Beth.”

  Beth replayed the day she had traveled back through time. She tried to leave the gory parts out, but didn’t succeed. Whenever she thought of that day, she remembered it all. Hearing gunshots. Racing forward. Finding Josh cornered. Watching three bullets slam into him. Getting shot twice herself. Lying there, choking on her own blood.

  Then the man in black kneeling beside her.

  “’Tis not Geoffrey,” Alyssa murmured just before Beth heard the stranger’s words.

  I have come for you, Bethany.

  She opened her eyes.

  Alyssa released her and stared, unseeing, at the hearth. “’Tis not Geoffrey,” she repeated softly.

  “Was the man a gifted one?” Robert asked.

  Slowly, she nodded and met his gaze. “I could not glimpse his face clearly, but recognized his voice. ’Twas the giant. When the gifted ones came to Westcott to help me birth Ian, he spoke to me.”

  Beth frowned. “The giant?”

  Alyssa nodded. “There are two gifted ones we know not. Both are men. One is so tall he dwarfs Dillon.”

  Beth glanced at Dillon, who stood a few inches above six feet.

  “Though he calls himself Seth,” Alyssa resumed, “my husband refers to him as the giant.”

  “I can see why,” Beth murmured.

  “This Seth is the most powerful of us all,” Alyssa continued. “Far more powerful than I. And his voice was that of the man who came to you.”

  “Can you call him to us?” Robert asked her.

  “I will try.”

  “On the morrow, after you have rested,” Dillon insisted.

  Smiling, she touched his cheek. “As you will.”

  Dillon met Robert’s gaze. “What of the wedding? Now that Bethany has a means of returning to her own time, will it still take place?”

  The churning in Beth’s stomach graduated to an intense burning, as though someone had poured something highly acidic down her throat.

  “Dillon,” Alyssa remonstrated, “’tis not our concern.”

  “’Tis my concern,” he protested. “I do not wish to see my brother hurt.”

  “We know not that Seth can return her to her time. We…”

  Their voices faded away, drowned out by Beth’s heartbeat pounding in her ears. Her time with Robert could very well end soon, if Seth arrived and said he could take her back, said he would take her back.

  How could she leave? She loved Robert more than she had even known it was possible to love someone. How could she walk away from that? From him? How could she walk away from what they shared and return to her own time, knowing she would never see him again? Never know what had happened to him?

  Unless you look him up in a history book and find out who he married after you left, a hysterical voice whispered in her head.

  Robert cupped her face in his hand and tilted her chin up.

  “I don’t want to lose you,” she whispered, panic rising.

  “Nor I you.”

  She focused on his eyes, afraid to blink, hoping he could somehow quiet the maelstrom of thoughts crashing through her mind. “Do you still want to marry me?” she asked.

  Dipping his head, he brushed a kiss across her lips that—though light as air—carried the full weight of his love for her. “I would have you as my wife, Beth, for whatever time we will have together, be it a sennight, a season, or a century.”

  She blinked back tears. “And I would have you for my husb
and. I love you, Robert. More than I ever dreamed I could love another.”

  He took her mouth again, this time with a passion that fired an immediate response within her. Wrapping her arms around his neck, Beth let him lift her over onto his lap. His tongue plunged inside to stroke her own as he combed the fingers of one hand through her hair, sending tingles down her spine, then clasped the back of her head to hold her still while he devoured her. He settled his other hand on her waist, then slid it down to her hip. His grip tightened as hunger rose and claimed them both.

  A throat cleared.

  Robert lifted his head but never looked away from Beth. “Did you bring Father Markham with you?” he asked.

  “Aye,” Dillon responded.

  “Then we shall be wed three days hence.”

  If anyone said anything after that, Beth neither knew nor cared. Robert’s lips once more claimed hers, his tongue doing things that made her want to devour every inch of him, which—come to think of it—was an excellent idea.

  Bethany married Robert three days later with Dillon, Alyssa, and what appeared to be every inhabitant of Fosterly as their witnesses.

  Father Markham, who had accompanied Dillon and Alyssa on their journey, performed the ceremony. Beth wasn’t certain how old he was. She had difficulty estimating age here.

  In her time, people in their fifties could easily look, act, and feel as if they were in their thirties. But here fifty was old. Like nearing the end of your life old. Beth had met precious few men over the age of sixty-five, and even fewer women. The legal age for marriage was twelve in this era. And birthing one child after another was tantamount to playing Russian roulette. Robert had told her that he would have wed at age twelve himself if the girl to whom his father had betrothed him had not died before the ceremony could be conducted.

  Beth attributed Robert’s looking so young at age twenty-nine—not to mention attaining a height of six feet—to Alyssa, her healing gift, and the intriguingly advanced knowledge the woman’s family possessed and had shared with the Westcott lords. Knowledge passed down through the gifted ones’ mysterious lineage.