Timeless Desire

by Cready, Gwyn

He saw her disquiet and brought his mouth to hers lightly, an offer she might accept or dismiss. The gentle connection sent a stabbing pain through her. Hungrily, she kissed back, reeling in the storm of emotion.

  His lips were warm, and the hunger in them seemed as strong as the hunger in hers. He brought his fingertips along the ridge of her spine, sending waves of delight through her. Though he handled her reverentially, she could feel the desire like a harnessed panther just under his skin. He was waiting for a sign.

  But what sign could she give? He was opening a box she’d locked after Charlie’s death. Her brain said, “Run!” but her body and her heart would have none of it. They had been denied too long.

  Whether through desire or fear, she began to shake, and he pulled her into the glow of the candle so he could see her face.

  “What is it?”

  She shook her head, ashamed. “I think I’m afraid. It’s been so long.”

  He pulled her close. “You need never be afraid with me. Ever.”

  He crushed her to him in an embrace that left her breathless. Her mouth found his, and for a long moment the world around them disappeared.

  Panna would have happily said good-bye to it forever, but they both felt the cold length of the pistol between them. He had a mission and she had a home.

  A deep sigh rumbled through him. “If I could make time stand still for us, I would,” he whispered.

  “I would, too.”

  A distant set of church bells rang. “A quarter past the hour,” he said.

  He slipped from her arms, letting his hand trail slowly across her cheek, and then allowed himself one final kiss.

  She clutched the wall for support, thinking of the library and Marie and the house that held everything that remained of Charlie. What was she getting into with Bridgewater?

  He aimed the telescope at the path. “Still not here.” He tsked. “You’re running late, boys.”

  She straightened her dress and made her way to Bridgewater. She could feel the power of what they’d summoned thrumming like a guitar string between them. He squeezed her hand and swung the telescope upward, training it on a precise spot in the sky. “Here. Look at this.”

  She almost had to slip into his arms to reach the eyepiece. The lock of hair fell forward again.

  “Come, come,” he said. “We can’t have this. Keep your eyes on the path.” He pulled a pale green ribbon from the map. He removed the combs in her hair, letting the tresses fall across her shoulders.

  “Tis like a thousand rays of sunshine,” he said gravely.

  She gathered the hair to one side of her shoulder, and he fumbled twice before tying the satin in a neat bow.

  “Thank you.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

  She bent to the eyepiece and he held up his hand. “Wait. See, the star there?” She tucked herself against him to follow his line of sight.

  “Yes. It’s part of the Big Dipper.”

  “The Big Dipper?” He examined the sky. “Oh, aye. I suppose so. In Cumbria, tis called the Butcher’s Cleaver.”

  “So that’s what you meant!”

  He chuckled. “Aye. Tis an ugly name, I suppose, but it certainly fits the sensibilities of this place. Look at the second star from the end. In the sky, not through the telescope.”

  She gazed where he pointed. “It’s larger than the rest. It almost looks like it’s pulsing.”

  “Now through the scope.”

  She looked again. “Oh! It’s two stars! They’re so close!”

  “Like lovers circling one another in a dance, I’ve always thought. Slowly falling in love. And someday they will be as one.”

  Their eyes met, and Panna thought he would kiss her again, but he busied himself with the adjustments self-consciously. “I am eager to see them more clearly. My scope is good, but I hear in Leiden they are developing even more powerful lenses. Perhaps someday . . .”

  He must have seen a movement in the courtyard, for he turned abruptly. “Private Swenson. Tis time.”

  Her heart lurched.

  He grabbed the bag he’d prepared. “Now, remember: three minutes from the time Thorpe and Coyne break from Swenson and Baker. No more, no less. And remember to descend two flights.”

  “Two flights. Yes.”

  He slid the note back into her hands. “I don’t know who you really are, Panna, but you say you are not a spy, and I want to believe you. If you could take this to the home of my servant, Clare, it would mean so much. He can tell you the rest. I shouldn’t ask you to risk yourself, I know. And, in truth, the things I strive for will survive whether you deliver it or not, but it would mean a great deal, and not just to me.”

  She shook her head and tried to give the note back, but he pressed it into her hand. Then he threw his arms around her and kissed her. “Come back to me, Panna. Let us stop time together. I don’t know when I’ve spent a more enjoyable evening.”

  He flew down the stairs.

  She exhaled as his last steps died away. A long moment passed before she had mastered her emotions. She looked down. Coyne and Thorpe were gone. How much time had gone by?

  She tiptoed down the stairs, two flights as he’d instructed, though the staircase descended even farther, which is where Bridgewater must have gone. She ran through the passageway under the library and up the stairs on the other side. Since she’d lost track of time, she decided she’d count to sixty—this time without letting her mind wander—and slip out. According to Bridgewater, she’d be in the hall that ran between the chapel and the library.

  By the count of thirty, she was quaking so much, she couldn’t wait any longer. She opened the door. She was in the hallway she remembered from before. After three steps a distant shout pierced the night—“You, there! Stop, I say!”— followed immediately by a pistol shot.

  Her heart leapt in her chest, and she sprinted into the chapel and through the half door, slamming it soundly behind her.

  Her hands shook as she fumbled with the key, and it wasn’t until she had safely locked the triangular door behind her that she noticed the man standing, back to her, outside the darkened door of the Carnegie Library.

  He waved when he saw her and gave her a generous smile. Still dazed by the staggering turn of events, she went to the door, which someone had locked, and slid the bolt. She wished she was any place on earth but here.

  She pulled the door open and managed a weak smile. “You must be Kyle’s cousin, Steve. I’m Panna. So sorry, I’m late.”

  EIGHT

  BRIDGEWATER FELT THE SHOT WHIZZ BY HIS HEAD. HE DROPPED TO the ground in the rubble of the castle’s west side and rolled into a ball.

  “There! Do you see him?”

  Bridgewater recognized the distant voice as that of Private Able Kenworthy.

  “That’s a rock, you fool,” said Kenworthy’s duty partner, Bobby O’Hare. “There is nothing there but rocks.”

  “I saw it move.”

  Bridgewater was completely unprotected. If Kenworthy took another shot, even in the dark, he would a stand a better-than-even chance of getting hit.

  “Which one?” O’Hare asked.

  “That one, I think.”

  Bridgewater braced himself. Shot by one of his own men. An ironic ending for an officer. If dying was to be his fate, he preferred that it be at the hands of his mysterious visitor, ideally after a long night of illicit love. At least he would die happy instead of laid out like a practice target on the most uncomfortable stretch of Castle MacIver imaginable.

  “I think it’s a rock,” O’Hare said. “But if you’re so goddamned certain, haul your arse down there and find out.”

  “Aww. Bloody hell, I ain’t going all the way down there.”

  In the unlikely event that he survived and was restored to his command, Bridgewater made a mental reminder to have both men whipped for dereliction of duty.

  Several moments went by without additional shots or discussion, and Bridgewater crawled over the heaped debris of the ancient wing
until he reached the corner of two singed walls. This was the only intact room that remained amid the ruins, and therefore the only room beyond the immediate notice of his servants.

  He drew himself up and considered what she’d told him. From the future. It was too foolish a cover for a spy. And yet, if she wasn’t a spy and what she’d told him was true . . .

  He shook his head, banishing the concern from his present enterprise, and put his ear against the wall. Apart from the distant hiss of the firepots and the gurgling of the river, he heard nothing.

  He leaned closer and softly imitated a nightingale’s call.

  He heard the scuffle of footsteps and an answering nightingale’s call, clear and true.

  Thomas.

  The entrance to the room was directly opposite where he stood. That was where he supposed the guard would be situated. It would have helped to know which man it was— each, of course, had his own foibles—but he didn’t have the time to spare to make a determination. He was grateful to his judicious forebear who had insisted that every room worth entering was worth exiting in at least two separate ways, though in this case Clare was the one who had pointed out the oddly placed chimney when they’d made their first inspection of the property four years earlier and asked, “Why would there be a chimney in a powder shed?”

  Why, indeed?

  Bridgewater found a toehold in the rough stone and heaved himself up to the top of the brick structure. With a quick swing of his legs, he was inside and climbing down the carefully placed metal rungs. The last step ended a good eight feet above the hearth, and he dropped to the floor with a soft thud.

  The boy stood before him, filthy, one ear covered in dried blood and eyes wide with terror. But it was the way in which his slim arm dangled limply at his side that darkened Bridgewater’s vision.

  Too bad I will not be able to offer you as fine a nursing as I had tonight.

  Thomas knew enough not to speak, though Bridgewater could tell he was desperate to. Bridgewater thought guiltily of the boy’s father and mother, who had been so proud that their son was aiding the rebels. Bridgewater would have to tell them how brave the boy had been. He wondered for a moment what it would be like to have such loving parents and to feel that sense of belonging. Though the disparity between their positions in the world was immense, Bridgewater had often felt Thomas was luckier than he.

  He leaned in to whisper. “Can you climb with one arm?”

  Thomas nodded and only gave a small groan as Bridgewater lifted him to the rungs. When he found his footing and began to make his way, Bridgewater adjusted the satchel over his own shoulder, leapt, and wrestled his way up after him.

  When he reached the top, he heard a click.

  Kenworthy was pointing his pistol at Bridgewater.

  “Good evening, sir.” He held the boy by his bloody ear.

  Bridgewater nodded. “Glad to see something of your training has stuck with you.”

  To his credit, Kenworthy laughed. Which gave Bridgewater just the time he needed to withdraw his pistol from his belt.

  Kenworthy paled.

  “My incarceration will be over by morning—one way or another,” Bridgewater said. “My bet is on me being your commander again. Each man has to choose which side of the line he’ll stand on, Kenworthy. Now is your turn. You can be a hero tonight and then spend the rest of your career walking the far side of Hadrian’s Wall with sixty pounds of shot on your back. Or you can wave us on while I give you my word I will be back in the north tower within a quarter hour and enjoy the privileges of being one of the most favored privates working in Her Majesty’s army. Your choice.”

  Kenworthy’s eyes went from Bridgewater’s face to the wing where the colonel was housed.

  “The third option being, of course, that I shoot you and run.” Bridgewater cocked the pistol.

  “I . . .”

  “Don’t take too long, Kenworthy. The guard on the other side of the powder shed may hear us, and only one of you can be the most favored.”

  “I have a right desire to see Galway again, sir. Tis my mother’s home.”

  “A request for transfer, along with a highly complimentary letter of reference, will be sent by messenger to Colonel O’Donovan in Dublin tomorrow.”

  Kenworthy nodded but didn’t lower his pistol. “Thank you, sir. But I’m afraid I must insist you say good-bye to the lad and return to the castle while I watch. And you’d best hurry.”

  Bridgewater took Thomas by his good arm and hurried across the rocks. When they reached the next outcropping and were out of earshot, he crouched to look the boy in the eye. “I can’t go with you.”

  Thomas nodded wordlessly.

  “You’ll be all right. Go to the surgeon’s house in Longcroft. Tell him I sent you. He will set your arm. Stay off the road. Walk along the river path. All right?”

  “Aye.” His shoulders hitched and he started to cry. “I told them about Carlisle.”

  Bridgewater gave him a reassuring smile. “Any man in your place would have done the same. When your arm is set, borrow the surgeon’s horse and go to Clare’s as quickly as you can. The effort tonight must be abandoned.”

  Thomas nodded.

  The note about Langholm had been a plant, Bridgewater’s attempt to divert the army’s attention northward. The rebels’ real target was Carlisle, where a raid was set to occur several hours from now. Their objective: the destruction of a shipment of forty kegs of gunpowder coming from York. With surprise on their side, the rebels would likely be successful, and the loss of gunpowder would mean a setback in the English army’s plans by several weeks. But with the rebels’ real objective now known to Bridgewater’s commanding officers, the rebels would be surprised and slaughtered, a warning to anyone who dared challenge the army’s monopoly on power in the borderlands. Reeves’s scrawled message had told Bridgewater the Carlisle plan had been uncovered, the outcome of Thomas’s torture. He prayed Panna had changed her mind and was already on her way to Bowness to find Clare. By the time Thomas reached Bowness, it would likely be too late.

  “They told me they would find my mother and . . .” Thomas cried harder.

  “They lied. They wouldn’t.” Even the colonel wouldn’t do that. Nobility counts for something, he thought.

  “It hurt so much.”

  Bridgewater sighed, thinking of his own interrogation. “You are no different than any man in that regard. I promise you.”

  Thomas rubbed a torn coat sleeve across his wet cheeks, eyes cast downward. “I do not make a very good soldier.”

  Bridgewater pulled him into his arms, careful not to jar the broken one. “No. Tis I. I do not make a very good captain.”

  NINE

  “AGAIN, I’M SO SORRY.” PANNA DROPPED ONTO MARIE’S COUCH AND told herself to relax. She’d been babbling since the moment she’d gotten into Steve’s car. Steve was a cop, and so far he’d treated her with the unfailing kindness cops reserve for lost children and stranded ducklings.

  Steve waved away her concern. “Really, don’t sweat it. Marie said she was sure you’d be back. You were. No problem.”

  As if on cue, Marie came through the door to the kitchen carrying two beers, corn chips, and a heaping bowl of guacamole on a tray. “Glad to see Steve was able to wrestle you to the ground.” She laughed. “I told him you’d probably gone for a quick walk or something.”

  Yeah, to the eighteenth century.

  “I—I—” Panna shook her head. “I’m an idiot, what can I say?”

  Marie placed the tray on the coffee table. “Well, Kyle’s charring the red peppers in there for the fajitas. I need to be standing by with a fire extinguisher. Back in a flash.” She raised her eyebrows at Panna and ran out.

  Steve grabbed the beers and handed one to Panna. “Hey, you know, I locked myself out of my car while it was running tonight on my way to pick you up. I’d forgotten to grab your cell phone number and went back inside to get it.”

  “Well, that is a good thing to
have,” she admitted.

  “Yeah, too bad it was in my pocket the whole time.” He clinked his bottle against hers. “To idiocy. The only difference, it looks much better on you.”

  She flushed and lifted the bottle to her mouth. She felt like she’d gone one too many rounds on the Tilt-A-Whirl. Steve was nice—nicer than she’d expected, with a wry smile and an unflappable approach to life that reminded her of Charlie— but she didn’t want to be here. The sound of that gunshot was still ringing in her ear. And the memory of Bridgewater’s kiss exploded and re-exploded in her brain, like Roman candles in a pressure cooker.

  She moved and the corner of Bridgewater’s note jabbed her through her pocket.

  She’d been very surprised to discover it still in her hand once she’d slammed and locked the triangular half door at the library. While her philosophy of time travel was by no means well thought out, she’d assumed that, since the dress had disappeared both times she’d returned, the note would, too.

  The parchment was folded tight and sealed with a plug of emerald green wax impressed with Bridgewater’s coat of arms. When had he written it? What did it say? Most important, what sort of danger was he in, and what would happen if she didn’t deliver it?

  If you tell anyone about this place or what I’m doing, my life will be forfeit.

  She realized Steve was looking at her.

  “Sorry. Did you ask me something?”

  He gave her a considering look. “Sort of. I asked if you thought Marie would be mad if I dug into the guacamole, and you said, ‘My life will be forfeit.’”

  “Oh.”

  “Needless to say, I put my chip down.”

  “Oh, Steve, I’m sorry.” She shook her head, trying to dispel the worry that had taken hold of her attention. “I’m a little frazzled tonight. Yes,” she said, filling two chips with dip and handing him one, “let’s have some. You’re a cop, right? I can’t think of anything more different from being a librarian—or, frankly, more interesting.”

  He laughed. “It has its moments.”

  “Let me ask you something. How accurate were guns in the early seventeen hundreds?”