Timeless Desire

by Cready, Gwyn

  She looked down and nearly jumped. On her feet were a pair of embroidered mules, and the blue silk of her summer sundress had descended into a floor-length wave of cerulean and lace. The discovery so surprised her that she jerked out of the chapel and back into the library’s entry, slamming the door. There, the gown had reverted into the sundress.

  For a long moment she stood absolutely still, trying to process what she’d just witnessed. An empty chapel . . . just over the threshold of a long-forgotten storage closet in Carnegie, Pennsylvania.

  Something about the scene niggled at her super-revved brain. Then it struck her. The lamps on the wall hadn’t been lamps at all—at least, not as she knew them. They’d been unlit torches. There’d been no electricity. Long gowns and no electricity.

  “Hey, Panna.” Henry, one of the children’s librarians, gave her a wave as he strode past.

  “Hey.”

  She could lock the closet door and throw away the key. It would all be over as easy as that. That would be the responsible thing to do. Not to mention the smart thing.

  But Panna had had enough of being smart and responsible since Charlie’s death. She didn’t want to feel smart. She wanted to feel alive.

  She slipped back inside the doorframe, pausing for a moment to bop her head between the long-gown world of the chapel and the sundress world of the Carnegie Library. She felt the same heart-fluttering giddiness as she had before leaping out of that plane.

  “This is for you, Charlie,” she whispered.

  TWO

  PANNA EMERGED IN THE CHAPEL, SKIRTS RUSTLING AS SHE MOVED. The chapel was tiny, with room for only a few dozen people, and it seemed to open into a carpeted hallway off the middle of the nave.

  Her nerve endings quivered as she walked. The warm, pleasant air of the evening felt like a dream. Even the dust motes floating lazily in the streaming rays of the setting sun seemed magical.

  The burnished wood floors gleamed under her feet, and the thick green velvet upholstery on the pews was marked with a large B embroidered in gold thread. No retiring chapel owner here. No devotee of sacrifice, either.

  She caught a glimpse of her reflection in a polished silver urn beside the tomb. The dress, a jacquard the color of an afternoon sky, fell in gorgeous, soft ripples, and when she looked closer, she could see the exceedingly low-cut neckline was trimmed in jet beads that converged at the ribbon-laced bodice and formed the center of the dress. She wasn’t exactly sure what was under the dress, but she knew it wasn’t enough, for her breasts felt unbound, and despite the muslin slip peeking beyond the silk as she walked and the hose knotted tightly at her thighs, she could feel the evening air moving over her hips and belly.

  Several tall candle holders, the height of a man, were arranged on the floor around the room, but only the candles in one—the one near the tomb—showed any signs of use.

  She touched her head to feel if the pencils she always wore in her hair were still there. Her hair was up, but the pencils had been replaced with a French knot and several metal combs. In addition, three loose blonde ringlets trailed past her collarbone to the neckline of her dress. With the deep décolleté and the delicate jet beads, the dress felt just this side of wicked. Panna knew she had the body for it, with full, high breasts and rounded hips, though it was not in her nature to leverage this fact. In fact, her usual work outfit was jeans and a silk blouse. Charlie hadn’t been fooled. He had always made her own up to the full potential of her body when they were in bed. Oh, yes, she thought with a heated stab of longing, that was something he had done very well.

  Whether ingrained in her nature or not, however, she found herself bowing to the power of her dress and throwing back her shoulders.

  She heard the sound of footsteps at the rear of the chapel and sprinted out of sight into an adjacent hallway. The footsteps grew louder as they came down the chapel aisle, and Panna’s heart thumped; but instead of coming toward the hall, they turned toward the tomb.

  For several long moments she heard nothing. At last, her curiosity got the best of her. She tilted her head just far enough to view a narrow slice of the chapel. Seeing no sign of the person who had made the noise, she leaned farther in.

  At last she saw boots, highly polished and black. The man was kneeling at the tomb, head bowed, hands resting on the railing surrounding the marble, shoulders under his red coat wide and proud. His hair was the color of wheat sparkling with glints of gold and sunshine. And although nothing on his face betrayed his emotions, Panna could feel the intensity of his devotion.

  Perhaps sensing her presence, he angled his head slightly toward the door.

  Panna started and jerked out of view. But fear of discovery wasn’t the only thing that had made her jump. She’d recognized that profile. She’d looked at it every day for the last ten years. That was John Bridgewater, Viscount Adderly.

  Had he seen her? Would he speak to her? Would he be like the John Bridgewater of her rather fertile imagination? To have seen in the warm and exceedingly handsome flesh what she’d only glimpsed in lifeless marble was quite a shock.

  She felt her palms start to dampen, and she nearly laughed out loud. Good Lord, I’ve fallen into another world, in another time, and what I’m most unnerved by is meeting the man depicted by a statue. This trip through the looking glass was growing stranger and stranger.

  She braced herself for his arrival, but he must have not seen her, for no footsteps sounded.

  She waited as long as her curiosity could bear and then slowly ducked her head around the corner again.

  He was still deep in his reverie, and Panna noticed for the first time that his hands were clasped not in prayer but in fists. He loosened one to swipe an eye with his thumb.

  Her observation began to feel like an intrusion, and she pulled back. The hallway, long and elegantly appointed, ended in a pair of closed doors at one end and a window at the other. She made for the doors.

  But an entryway off the hall made her stop. The room it framed was lined on one side with opulent oriel windows, each with its own cushioned window seat. The space was as big as an elementary school gym and just as tall, with a massive hearth at the far end flanked by carved Chinese foo dogs. Best of all, every inch of the three walls without windows was covered with glass cases lined with books.

  She stepped inside, thrilled that the man she’d daydreamed about had such a regard for reading. She’d seen libraries like this before—the Morgan Library in New York was a shining example of a man elevating reverence for books to a new level—but never one belonging to a denizen of the eighteenth century.

  In all other aspects, the room looked like the drawing room of one of Samuel Richardson’s or Henry Fielding’s heroes. The rugs were thick, the furniture finely crafted, and the desk . . .

  The corner of her mouth rose. The top of one’s desk offers such an intimate glimpse of one’s personality. She stepped closer. Her own desk held a heart-shaped stone she’d found on her first date with Charlie; half a dozen books she intended to read; a few snippets of fabric she was considering for a new chair; and a ball of red yarn, the vivid color of which made her smile every time she looked at it, even though she didn’t knit.

  This desk was not that of an ordinary gentleman. The papers, ink-smeared blotter, account books, and loose ribbons could have belonged to any land-owning nobleman, she supposed, but the halved nautilus shell, beetle fossil, and shining brass-mounted magnifying glass attested to a more curious intellect. The irony of the open nautilus shell made her smile.

  The cry of a gull outside made her look up from the desk, and she was shocked to discover the room she was in was easily three stories above the ground, casting its shadow over a stout, crenellated wall. She was not in a country home. She was in a castle.

  A wide stretch of river at the base of the castle divided the estate’s long parkland from fields of green and gold. On this side of the water, a small town hugged the shore, a church steeple rising like the center of a sundial abov
e the buildings around it. Another town sat across the wide stretch of water on the opposite bank. Or perhaps it was all one town, divided by the waterway, but with no bridge connecting the two sides. The thing that caught her eye, running as it did along the water on the near shore, was a tall, sturdy stone wall that reached in each direction as far as the eye could see.

  If she wasn’t mistaken—and she didn’t think she was— that was Hadrian’s Wall, which could only mean she was somewhere near the border of England and Scotland.

  She wondered what Colonel John Bridgewater, hero of the Battle of Ramillies, would be doing on the border of England and Scotland instead of out fighting one of England’s enemies on the battlefields of Europe. She also wondered who the inhabitant of the tomb was. She thought of the scene in The Three Musketeers in which the handsome, brave swordsman d’Artagnan says a tearful good-bye to the woman he loves as she dies in his arms.

  Panna heard footsteps and turned to run, but it was too late. The door slammed and she found herself gazing into the surprised face of Viscount Adderly.

  In the course of an instant, his surprise turned into anger, then an unreadable blankness. She could almost hear the mask snap into place.

  He barely missed a step.

  “If depositing a whore on my doorstep is the English army’s idea of a peace offering,” he said, drawing his appraising gaze across her breasts as he passed, “you may consider yourself relieved of duty for the evening. Close the door as you go.”

  She was so shocked, it took her several beats to even begin to form a response. She felt as if she’d just had her skin seared off by a fire-breathing dragon. Panna did not take well to dragons.

  “I am not a whore,” she said, emphasizing each word with razor sharpness.

  The man did not even look back. It was as if she had been dismissed not only from the room but from England, the planet, and quite possibly all of existence as well.

  He stopped at his desk, his eyes taking a careful inventory of his papers and belongings. Then he gave each drawer a firm tug. None budged.

  He was checking to see if she’d taken something! Fury rumbled in Panna’s veins. “Would you care to search me?”

  “Would it be necessary in that dress?”

  Panna’s jaw dropped. She considered a response, but decided she’d be wasting her breath. As her mother liked to say, “Never mud-wrestle a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig enjoys it.” This pig could have his mud castle all to himself. She turned on her heel and stalked out, careful not to close the door, and rode her anger all the way back to the entrance hall of the Carnegie Library, where she happily slammed the door behind her.

  THREE

  BRIDGEWATER WATCHED THE FLOUNCE OF THOSE PROUD SHOULDERS all the way to the hall. He expected a slam but instead got a sharp look of disdain—admittedly well deserved—as she made a deliberate path around the end of the open door.

  He almost smiled.

  Spies were not often so comely, especially the ones employed by the English army, nor so well suited to his tastes. If he hadn’t been so surprised by the violation of his privacy and infuriated by the depths to which his commanding officer would sink to wring information out of him, he might have even invited her to stay. The fire in those green eyes had been inebriating.

  He flopped into his chair, fingering one of the silk ribbons that were a vestige of his own information gathering, and considered the possibility.

  There were uses one could make of spies—feeding the enemy false information, for example—that sometimes made it worthwhile to further one’s relationship with them. And if furthering his relationship with the woman happened to include drinking in the gardenia scent of her hair or partaking of those full lips, or even something more, it would be a worthwhile risk. He knew exactly what he could and couldn’t say, after all. His opinions were hardly secret, even among his fellow officers, having been voiced at countless dinners and councils. So long as he took care to keep his actions under wraps, an evening with so handsome a spy might be just the diversion he needed.

  He sighed, thinking of those green eyes. He was a solitary man, and it had been such a long time since he’d talked of anything but the war.

  Gazing at the hills in the distance, he considered the repercussions of the skirmish the rebels were planning for tonight in Carlisle. He was willing to suffer the consequences, but he supposed willingness didn’t enter into it. He had no choice. Not if he wanted to bring some semblance of peace to the borderlands. He would have to live with the results of his actions, and so would the English army.

  He lifted his nose, wondering if a trace of gardenias lingered in the air or if he was only imagining it.

  He heard footsteps and turned, wondering if she’d changed her mind. But it was the guard from the end of the hall.

  “The colonel is ready to see you now.”

  Bridgewater sighed and stood. He was not looking forward to the conversation.

  FOUR

  D’ARTAGNAN? HA! BRIDGEWATER WOULD HAVE MADE A BETTER Cardinal Richelieu, the musketeers’ villainous nemesis. Panna was done with daydreams, especially ones involving time travel, and completely done with Colonel John Bridgewater.

  She was still quaking with fury and the sheer shock at finding a storage room with a passageway to the past right in her own library. Jeez, no wonder no one liked cleaning those things.

  Marie poked her head into the entryway. “Oh, there you are. For our ‘Are they out of their minds?’ question of the evening, we have the Teen Book Club wondering if they can do a True Blood—hey, are you okay? You look a little, I don’t know, weird.”

  Panna dropped her gaze to her knees. Blue sundress. That, at least, was in order. “No, no. Just, er, wondering about a good historical fiction recommendation. The one I just started stinks.”

  “Action or romance?”

  “Definitely not romance. And, to be honest, I can do without the action as well.”

  “Hmmm.” Marie considered. “That doesn’t leave a lot. Maybe that new one by Tracy Chevalier?”

  “Perfect. Thanks. Oh, and—”

  “No on the True Blood. Yeah, that’s what I figured.” Marie ran off.

  AFTER A FEW MORE DEEP BREATHS, Panna brushed off her dress and made her way unsteadily to the circulation desk. She looked at the wall. You have got to be kidding me. The clock read 7:23. Her trip through the eighteenth century, The Three Musketeers, and pig wrestling had taken exactly eight minutes.

  The shock of the experience was understandably hard to shake, and when she found herself looking up Howard Stern instead of Laurence Sterne for one very amused patron, she decided to reshelve books instead, something that was easy and relatively mindless. She gave the statue a carefully hidden finger as she passed.

  What she had gone through was inexplicable. Unpleasant and inexplicable. Why would there be a time passage in a library? Why in her library? Were there others? Had anyone before her ever used it? Was the fact that it had carried her to John Bridgewater’s time related to the fact that they had a statue of said nobleman? It had to, didn’t it? Did the time passage pose a danger (other than to one’s ego, of course)?

  She grabbed a book at random from the cart. Dear Nell: The Miraculous Story of Nell Gwynn’s Rise from Street Urchin to the Bed of Charles II. Now, there was a whore, Panna thought. Self-proclaimed, in fact. And why would Bridgewater think that just because a woman wears a low-cut gown she’s a whore? That seemed rather old-fashioned. Even more old-fashioned than the eighteenth century.

  And what if she had been a whore? Would it have killed him to at least consider sleeping with her? She happened to be quite a catch in that regard—not that John Bridgewater was ever going to find out.

  What had he said? “If depositing a whore on my doorstep is the English army’s idea of a peace offering, you may consider yourself relieved of duty for the evening.”

  What an imperious, sexist prick. Was it any wonder British noblemen these days were regarded as a
bunch of chinless, toe-sucking scone eaters? And why would the English army be extending one of their colonels a peace offering, anyway? Some sort of sick fraternity gag?

  The most important question was, Should she tell anyone about what she’d discovered?

  Marie appeared with an armload of books.

  Panna tapped her foot, considering. “Come here for a second. I want to show you something.”

  Marie followed her to the entryway. Panna stood behind the storage room door and pulled it open. “Take a gander in there.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes. Tell me what you see.”

  Marie shrugged and bent.

  Panna said, “Do you think there’s any way to leverage that into enough money to keep the library afloat?”

  “Six cans of old paint, a broken stepladder, and a sign that says ‘Quiet’?”

  “What?” Panna bent and saw only the black void. “That’s what you see?”

  “Are you all right? Maybe we should reschedule dinner.”

  “No, no. I’m . . .” What was she? ‘Fine’ certainly didn’t cover it. “. . .going to do it.”

  So Marie didn’t see what Panna saw. Maybe no one did.

  Marie gave her a concerned look and closed the door. “All right. You know, dinner’s going to be the highlight of my weekend.” She started back toward the circulation desk and Panna followed. “I work tomorrow, and Sunday I’ll be spending the whole day working on my stupid group project. And the guy who’s supposed to be doing the index says he’s too busy to get it done, so I guess I’ll be doing that, too.”

  “What? No,” Panna said. “Look, you’ve got to read him the riot act. First, if you don’t give jerks like that a brushback, they’ll just assume what they’re doing is somehow okay. And second, you do not want to get a reputation for being a doormat. I mean, if you’re going to end up with a reputation, it’s much better being the bitch who wouldn’t take someone’s crap than—”