He nodded.
“Unfortunately, yes.” She looked at Seth, who had turned slightly in his seat to watch them. “Have you seen these?”
“Aye. He has put up thousands of them since you disappeared, blanketing at least a fifty-mile radius from the clearing in which the two of you fell. He even faxed a copy to other bounty hunters in hopes they would distribute them in other parts of the state.”
“Why didn’t you tell him I was okay? Why did you just let him think the worst?” What Josh must have suffered…
“Had I approached him and informed him that his sister was alive and well and living in thirteenth-century England, what reason would he have had to believe me?”
“Then you should have sent him back with me!” she declared, anger rising.
“I could not,” he said simply.
“Beth, love,” Robert said beside her, “please do not mar it.”
Looking down, she saw that she had clenched her hand into a fist, crinkling the paper, and relaxed her grip.
Robert took it from her and carefully smoothed it out on his knee, handling it as though it were a priceless work of art.
Seth turned back around, swung the van out into traffic and resumed their journey.
Sighing, Beth leaned against Robert.
“You will see him soon, love,” he promised.
Her stomach in knots, Beth hoped so.
Hours later, Beth sprawled in Josh’s favorite chair in the living room, wondering where the hell her brother was. The house had been empty when they had arrived.
Thank goodness Seth hadn’t just dropped them off, then driven away, because Beth hadn’t had her keys with her.
Apparently, among his many other gifts, Seth had pretty impressive telekinetic abilities. One wave of his hand and both locks had unlocked.
Beth had invited him to stay, but Seth had declined.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
The lights turned off, on, off, then on again as Robert toyed with the switch across the room.
Darkness had fallen. Beth’s stomach rumbled with hunger, but she didn’t eat anything. She couldn’t. She was too nervous. Too frustrated. Too impatient to see her brother if he would just bring his ass home already.
Click-click. Click-click. Click. Click.
The flickering lights didn’t help, but she could understand Robert’s fascination with electricity.
On. Off. On. Off. On-off-on-off. On. Off. On.
Where the hell was Josh? Had he gone to the clearing?
She had tried to call him on his cell and discovered he had left the damned thing at home.
She tried to calculate how long it would take him, in rush-hour traffic, to get to the clearing, search it, then come home.
He should be here by now, if that was what he’d done. Shouldn’t he?
Click. Click. Click-click. Click-click.
Off. On. Off-on. Off-on. Off. On. Off. On. Off-on-off-on-off-on-off-on-off-on.
“Robert, honey, you are working my last nerve. Please stop messing with the lights.” She was so tired and tense she forgot to use Middle English.
“Beth?”
She gasped. Josh.
Head whipping around, she looked toward the kitchen.
Her brother stood just inside the living room, his face as white as a sheet, his eyes wide, and his right arm aiming a Glock 9mm at Robert.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. “Josh!” Launching herself from the chair, she raced across the room and slammed into him, hitting him so hard he staggered backward two steps.
He wrapped his free arm around her waist.
Beth looped her arms around his neck and squeezed hard, so damned happy to see him.
“Beth,” he said again, as if he couldn’t quite believe she was there.
Nodding, she hugged him tighter, tears welling in her eyes and dampening his shoulder.
A throat cleared behind her. “Beth, sweetling,” Robert said, “your brother has trained his weapon upon me. Should I be concerned?”
She shook her head. “Nay.” Never looking up, she slid one hand down Josh’s arm, found the 9mm, took it from him, flipped the safety on, and tossed it onto the sofa.
Josh must have taken that to mean Robert was friend and not foe, because he clamped both arms around her, buried his face in her hair, and wept.
The strength seemed to leave his legs, and the two of them sank to their knees.
Beth didn’t know how long they remained there, both crying so hard they couldn’t speak, clutching each other desperately, as if each feared the other would disappear if they loosened their hold even the slightest bit.
Then…
Click. The lights went off. Click. Then came on again. Off. On. Off. On.
Beth released a watery chuckle. “R-Robert.”
When Josh reluctantly let her draw away, she sat back on her heels and smiled over her shoulder.
Robert offered her a sheepish grin. “Forgive me. I knew not how much longer you would be and”—he shrugged—“the temptation proved too great to resist.”
“W-Well, you lasted longer than Stephen would have,” Beth said wryly.
Robert laughed. “Stephen would never have ceased.” He started toward them.
Josh rose and helped Beth to her feet.
“Josh,” she said, “this is Robert, Earl of F-Fosterly. Robert, this is my b-brother, Josh.”
Robert tendered him a friendly smile. “’Tis an honor to meet you.”
Eyeing him warily, Josh turned to Beth. “Is this the man who abducted you?”
“No. He’s the one who found me. And I don’t know what I would’ve done without him.” She smiled up at Robert.
Robert brushed her hair back from her face, his friendly smile turning tender.
“Where did you find her?” Josh challenged. “And why are we speaking Middle English? Why don’t—?”
“Josh,” Beth quickly interrupted. “It’s a really long and truly bizarre story. I’d rather not tell it on an empty stomach.” As if on cue, a low growl emanated from her midriff. “Could we call out for pizza or heat something up first? I feel like I haven’t eaten in a week.”
Robert laughed. “You ate more than I did yestereve.”
She grimaced. “I know, but it came right back up again as soon as I left the great hall.”
He sobered. “What?”
“I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you would worry, but my stomach has been so queasy the last few days that I haven’t been able to keep anything down.” She hadn’t been sleeping well, either, which might explain her new tendency to cry at the drop of a hat. She had been pretty stressed of late.
Robert frowned and gently pressed the palm of his hand to her forehead. “Are you ill, Beth?”
“No, I’m fine. It’s just nerves. We were waiting for Seth to come. And then, when he did and said he would help us, I was afraid it wouldn’t work, or that something would go wrong and we wouldn’t make it back here, or that—”
“Make it back from where, Beth?” Josh demanded, his patience visibly fraying. “Where have you been all this time? How did you survive your wounds? The detectives said—”
“The man who took me healed me.”
“What man? Was he in league with Kingsley and Vergoma?”
“No.”
“Was it Robert?”
“No.” She held up a hand, forestalling further questions. “Josh, I know these last two months have been difficult, but if you would just—”
“Two months,” he practically bellowed. “Two months?”
She glanced at Robert uneasily. “I know it’s been a little bit more than that, but…”
Disbelief, fury and confusion clouded Josh’s fea
tures. “Beth, you’ve been gone for two years!” he shouted, abandoning Middle English entirely.
Beth gaped up at him. “What?”
“Two years! I’ve been looking for you for two years! What happened to you? Did the man who took you…?” He swallowed hard. “Did he hurt you, Beth?”
“No,” she assured him, reverting to modern English. “No, he didn’t. Actually, he helped me. I never would have survived if he hadn’t healed me.”
“Well, did he hold you captive or something? Where have you been all this time?”
She glanced uneasily at Robert.
Robert watched them with furrowed brow.
“He didn’t hold me captive,” she told Josh. “I wasn’t a prisoner and wasn’t mistreated or anything. But I couldn’t contact you or come home. Not until today.”
“I don’t understand. What the hell does that mean? Were you in witness protection or something?” He motioned to Robert. “And why is he dressed like that? Why does he speak Middle English?”
She bit her lip. “Okay, here’s the thing. I’m going to tell you exactly what happened, beginning in the clearing when you passed out and ending with my coming here today, but it’s going to sound really unbelievable, and you’re going to think that whatever happened to me made me lose it mentally, but it’s all true, I’m completely sane, and I want to say right now that I have the pictures to prove it.”
Josh stared at her, then looked at Robert, who shrugged, not understanding.
Beth nodded and returned to using Middle English. “Robert, please hand me my cell phone.”
Two hours and three pizzas later, Beth sprawled next to Robert on the sofa, so full she could barely breathe. Across from them, Josh leaned forward in his favorite chair, elbows on his knees, and pored over the photos spread across the scuffed-up coffee table between them. He had uploaded them from Beth’s cell phone and printed them while they waited for the pizzas to arrive. All colorful pictures taken of Fosterly and its inhabitants.
“Do you believe me now?” Beth asked around a wide yawn. Just as she had known he would, Josh had panicked halfway through her tale, believing she had suffered some kind of mental breakdown. Hence the pictures.
“How can this be?” Josh murmured, spearing a hand through his thick brown locks. “Time travel isn’t possible. It just isn’t.” He shook his head. “Do you know how screwed up the world would be if time travel were possible?”
Robert grunted. “’Tis precisely what Beth told me when she sought to convince me of the truth.”
Josh frowned and held up a photo. “Is this William Shatner?”
Beth grinned. “No. His name is Edward. But he looks a lot like him, doesn’t he?”
Josh continued to examine the photos. “What about this one? This teenager. Why does he look familiar to me?”
Beth took the picture and studied it. “I don’t know. Something about him seemed familiar to me, too, but I could never figure out what. That’s Marcus, Robert’s squire. I wish you could meet him, Josh. He’s the sweetest kid.”
“Hmm.”
She returned the picture to the array on the coffee table. “Come on, Josh. You know me. You know I would never lie to you. I have no reason to lie to you about where I’ve been or why I haven’t contacted you. So the only explanations left are that I actually did go back in time or that I’m delusional.” She settled back against the cushions once more and motioned to the coffee table. “You can’t take pictures of delusions. And be honest. Aside from claiming I went back in time, does anything else about me seem off? Anything that would indicate I’ve suffered some kind of breakdown or have been… I don’t know… mentally reconditioned to believe I went back in time by some captor?”
He pursed his lips. “You are speaking Middle English. Mostly.”
She rolled her eyes. “What are the chances I would even remember that language if I’d really lost it?”
Josh sighed and resumed his perusal of the photos.
Robert took Beth’s hand and linked his fingers through hers, giving it a squeeze. “Beth?”
She glanced up at him. He looked as sleepy and sated as she felt. “Aye?”
His lips turned up slightly at their corners. “I like pizza.”
Laughing, she raised his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles. “I do, too.”
She returned her attention to Josh.
Though his head was still bent over the photos, her brother’s piercing brown eyes watched the two of them intently.
Uh-oh.
“Why do I get the feeling you haven’t told me everything?” he asked, his voice ominously soft.
Beth lowered Robert’s hand to her lap and toyed with it as anxiety rose. “Umm.”
“Beth?”
“Do you believe that I was in the thirteenth century?” she asked, procrastinating.
A long pause followed. “Yes.”
“You hesitated!”
“Well,” he said defensively, “admitting you believe in time travel is a little hard to do. It makes me feel like I’m the one who is delusional.”
Robert squeezed her hand. “You had a difficult time admitting it yourself, sweetling.”
“Thanks so much for reminding me,” she grumbled.
“So what haven’t you told me?” Josh pressed.
Beth squirmed beneath his gaze, afraid he would blow a gasket when she told him the little part she had left out of her tale.
The little part about getting married.
“The fault lies with me,” Robert said. “As you are the head of her family, I should have waited until I could speak with you. But, in truth, I knew not if I would be able to, or that I would accompany Beth here when she left Fosterly.”
Josh’s face remained impassive. “What are you saying?”
“I fell deeply in love with Bethany and, fearing I would soon lose her to the future, did convince her to wed me a little over a sennight ago.”
Josh slumped back in his chair, his expression stunned. “You’re married?”
Beth leaned forward. “I know. You’re thinking I should have waited. Or maybe that I shouldn’t have married him at all, because he’s a total stranger to you. And it did all happen pretty quickly. But I really love him, Josh. And I didn’t know if I would ever be able to come back here. And even if I had known and had waited, we couldn’t have gotten married here anyway, because Robert doesn’t have a birth certificate or a social security number.”
Josh looked from her to Robert to their clasped hands, then back to her. “You’re really married?”
“Yes.”
“Happily?”
“Very much so.”
“You really love him?”
“More than I ever thought I could love someone.”
“No doubts at all?”
“None whatsoever.”
He looked to Robert. “And you love her?”
“Aye. I would give my life for her.”
Beth swung on him with a scowl and punched him hard in the shoulder. “Damn it, stop saying that!”
Shrugging, he rubbed his shoulder. “Why? ’Tis the truth.”
“Well, I don’t want you to give your life for me. And I don’t want Marcus to give his life for me either. Or Michael or Adam or even Stephen, for that matter. I can damn well take care of myself!”
He took her throbbing hand in his own. “I fear, in this instance, what you want or do not want matters little to me, love.”
She gaped. “How can you say that?”
He shrugged. “I may have compromised when you wanted to dress and train like a squire. And I did not complain when you were too familiar with my men.”
Her brow furrowed. “Familiar how? Like being too friendly with Michael and the guy
s?”
“But I will not compromise on this,” Robert continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “If your life is in danger and I must risk my own to protect you, I will not hesitate to do so, Beth.”
Before she could open her mouth to rebut, Josh leaned forward and extended his hand to Robert. “Welcome to the family.”
Robert hesitated a moment, then shook Josh’s hand.
Beth knew men didn’t shake hands in Robert’s time, but he had seen her do it more than once out of habit.
Josh leaned back in his chair. “So how are you two going to get past the no birth certificate or social security card thing? Robert’s going to have a hard time making a go of it here without them.”
Her stomach sank.
That was the other little thing she hadn’t told him yet.
She glanced at Robert, who squeezed her hand for support. “Actually, the thing is, we can’t stay here.”
Josh frowned. “What do you mean? Here in Houston? Here in the States? Because, if you’re thinking of moving to England, you’re going to need passports.”
Damn it. When she had asked Seth to let her visit, she hadn’t considered how she would tell Josh she couldn’t stay. “Josh, the man who took me back in time told me that my life here in the present was supposed to have ended in that clearing, that I would have died if he hadn’t intervened. So I can’t live here. There would be too many ramifications. He said I have to return to Robert’s time.”
Josh stared at her. “Are you shitting me?”
“No.”
“You think you’re going to live out the rest of your life in the Middle Ages?” he asked, voice rising.
“Yes.”
“Do you know how short your life will be if you do that? That’s insane! Their life expectancy wasn’t even half what ours is. Fifty was old. If you go back there, you’ll only have maybe thirty years… if you’re lucky. If you stay here you could have seventy!”
“Josh—”
“And without modern medicine you probably wouldn’t even have the thirty. You could die in childbirth or—”
“She will not,” Robert interrupted.
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