Great idea, except not so easy to do with his erection pressed against her.
“As far as my mother knows, we are man and wife. If I shun you, so will she. Now lie still and pretend you like being in my arms.” His voice, pitched so low, wrapped them in a bubble of intimacy. “With all the noise we’re making, she probably thinks we’re making love anyway.”
Ugh! So creepy and so embarrassing. And, dammit, more than a little intriguing.
Oliver woke with the sun. Outside the casement, dawn spread pale orange and pink fingers into the sky. It took him a moment to realize it hadn’t been a dream, the sword had brought him home.
And Laura with them.
In the night, Laura had curled into him and finally slept.
The door opened and Mother slipped into the morning to get water for breaking their fast.
Propping himself up, he allowed himself the luxury of studying the woman in his arms. In sleep, she lost the grim resolve her features had carried at the institution. She looked much younger with the corners of her mouth curled into a smile. Thus far, she had taken the news of her changed circumstances rather well. He grinned when he remembered the confrontation between her and Mother yesterday. Dr. Laura Rose did not back away from a fight, it seems. Good, because that ability would be tested before they were done here.
He needed to return her to her time. If he trusted the sword’s magic more, he could simply pop her back and return, but the damn thing seemed to have a will of its own. He’d spent long hours in his future life trying to understand how he had ended up when he had. It had to do with the wish uttered. One, clearly, needed to be careful about the wording.
Laura muttered and stirred.
He smoothed flaxen hair back from her face. Like a wheat field, her hair held all the colors of gold and brown. They called them highlights. He’d seen it on the television, and wanted to tell her she needed no artifice to make her beautiful. To him she had always been beautiful, robbed him of coherent thought. Finally, he had her in his bed, the starting point of so many of his late night fantasies. His cock stirred.
Laura blinked her eyes open, frowned and stared about her. “So it’s real.”
“Aye.” It had taken him many mornings of waking in the future to accept the inevitable. So beautiful, her blue-green eyes clouded with confusion that he wanted to fix. Of course, his wooing of Doctor Rose might go better if she didn’t want to run screaming from him. In a winning courtship combination, he’d followed insanity with a quick trip through time.
“You’re staring,” she said, her gaze fixed on the casement.
“I know.” He brushed the warm cream of her cheek. “You’re beautiful. I have always thought so.”
“Now you’re flirting again.” She sighed but didn’t move away from his touch.
He took that as a good sign. “Well, we are in bed together. I am naked. You have taken off part of your armor. It seemed like a good time.”
“It’s not.” She turned and looked at him. “Because when we get out of this bed, we get out into ye olde England.” She heaved a sigh. “How did you do it? Get your head around what had happened to you.”
“I stopped fighting it.” He traced the delicate, firm line of her jawbone. Where her neck and shoulder met dwelled a sweet spot he ached to bury his face in and inhale the nectar of her. “I accepted the impossible. Sherlock Holmes said it best. He said; ‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’”
“You read Sherlock Holmes?”
“I read everything I could get my hands on.” He shrugged. “Reading is one of my favorite things from your time. You have so much knowledge available to you. A world of learning and discovery waiting for anyone with the will to take the journey.”
“And still we remain woefully ignorant.” She shook her head. “I’m getting maudlin. What’s the plan for the day?” She grimaced. “And as much as I know I’m going to hate the answer, I really need to know about the facilities.”
Laura scraped her bowl and resisted the urge to lick it clean.
For breakfast Elewys had made a porridge of sorts, which when mixed with a dollop of butter, fresh—as in straight from the cow behind the cottage—cream and honey dripped from the comb was so delicious she could eat it all day. She settled for another slice of homemade bread, with more butter and honey.
She caught Oliver watching her with a smirk. “What?”
“Are you done?”
“Maybe.” Laura looked at the bread, the golden honey, the rich yellow butter and hesitated. Thank God for track pants. “I’m done.”
“Good.” Elewys scooped their breakfast things into the wooden bucket and slammed it on the table in front of Laura. “For such a bag of bones, you eat a lot.”
“I couldn’t help myself. It was delicious.” Laura smiled. She was a professional and after a surprisingly good night’s sleep it seemed easier to make friends than to keep sniping at each other.
Elewys shoved the bucket closer to her. “Make yourself useful and wash those.”
“I’d be glad to.” It would help if Elewys would drop the hostility a wee bit.
Oliver stood and grabbed the bucket. “Come, I’ll show you how we do this.”
“No hot water tap, I’m guessing?”
He grinned at her. “Not even close.”
After scrubbing the dishes with sand and then a smelly hard soap that Oliver said was lye, he offered to take her for a walk.
Given a choice between Elewys and the cottage and a walk with Oliver, she made the only real choice she could.
“Have you lived here since you were a child?” Laura followed Oliver into a copse at the edge of the farm. Huge, old trees threw them into deep shade. She really hoped these lovely trees hadn’t been destroyed to make way for encroaching humanity, but she suspected they had. As had most of the pristine beauty around her.
Oliver held out his hand and she took it. “No,” he said. “We moved around quite a bit when I was little. Mother’s reputation as a seer made us welcome when we arrived but eventually led to us moving on.”
“Ah.” She really wished she’d paid more attention to history. “They thought she was a witch?” It wasn’t much of a stretch. Slap Elewys on a broomstick and witch leaped to mind.
“Not in this time.” Oliver dropped his head back and looked up at the trees. “My people live their lives by the church but are much more accepting of paganism. The witch hunts came a long while later.”
“Right.” And she might know that if she hadn’t spent AP European History making eyes at Tyler Delaney.
“Come.” He tugged her hand. “I want to show you a favorite place of mine.”
Laura went willingly. A good therapist needed to understand her patient. A good therapist also needed to quit lying to herself and admit that spending time like this with Oliver made all the bad in her world recede. “Show me.”
He led her through the copse and into a meadow filled with tall grass and speckled with wildflowers. To Laura’s delight, he stopped and let her admire the beauty around her before leading her to a stand of willows.
Leaves dangling in the waters of a busy stream, the willows provided a perfect green canopy to hide beneath.
Oliver parted the branches for her. “I used to come here and pretend to fish.”
“It’s a perfect place to spend a dreamy afternoon.” The willow encased them in a private green world, while the stream burbled away. Seating herself, she slid off her Nikes and responded to the cool water’s invitation. She hissed as ice cold water covered her feet but kept them there.
Head cocked, Oliver watched her.
“What?” She felt suddenly self-conscious.
“This is strange.”
A snort escaped Laura. “You’re telling me.”
“I’m not talking about that.” Oliver dismissed time travel with a leisurely hand wave. “I’m talking about having you here is like my two worlds colliding and
I never thought to see it.”
“Hmm.” Laura didn’t want to talk about colliding worlds for fear of exploding minds. “Tell me more about Oliver as a boy. Let’s start at the beginning. Where were you born?”
“Why do you want to know?” He walked to the edge of their willow bower.
She had never managed to crack his steel barriers at Deer Fallows. “Your file was understandably sketchy on details. I already know your biggest secret, why not tell me the rest.”
“There is that.” The tension left his face. “Actually, I’m not sure where I was born.”
“Elewys didn’t tell you?”
He shrugged. “She said something vague about south of here but couldn’t remember the village.”
Strange that, because Elewys remembered everything about her confrontation with De Wolfe after Oliver had been born. “Do you remember anything about growing up there?”
“Nothing.” Oliver crouched beside her and plucked a blade of grass. “I don’t have many memories of me as a youngster at all.”
“Most people don’t.” Laura wanted to erase the sadness from his face. “Most adults have no memories before age three. In fact, a new study suggests that from age seven childhood amnesia begins and we forget our earliest memories.”
He looked intrigued by that. “Really? Because my earliest memory is of me at about six. Of course without knowing what year I was born in, it’s hard to be sure, but from before then, nothing.”
“You don’t even know what year you were born in?”
“Enough of this.” He tossed his blade of grass into the river and threw himself beside her. “It is my turn to ask the questions. Now that we have established I don’t need any of your head doctoring.”
Laura wanted to press but left it. “Are you sure about that?”
“Yes.” Rolling onto his side, he propped his head on his hand. “Tell me about little Laura.”
“There’s not that much to tell.” She didn’t like talking about herself but Oliver and being trapped in this unreality made it easier to speak. “Little Laura was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming. That’s in—”
“I know where that is.” He poked her with his grass stalk. “I read everything I could and when I couldn’t do that, I watched television.”
“Which accounts for why you managed to adjust so quickly,” she said.
“I had to.” Oliver’s expression clouded. “The only way I could get back home was to persuade you I wasn’t insane.”
“You did a good job.” Singen had swallowed Oliver’s story like a trout on live bait.
Oliver raised his brow, his gaze full of challenge. “Not good enough for one Doctor Laura Rose though.”
“I saw right through you, mister.” Laura jabbed her fore and middle fingers at her eyes and then at him.
Oliver’s face grew serious. “Is that why you passed me on to that idiot Montgomery?”
“In part.” No way she was touching that.
“In part?” He studied her. “At first I was angry with you.”
“But then you realized you could have Montgomery eating out of your hand.”
Oliver’s grin was unrepentant. “You gave me to him.” He sobered. “Tell me why. I thought we were getting on well.”
“Too well.” Heat climbed her cheeks, but she resisted the urge to prevaricate or lie. There had already been too many half-truths and evasions between them. Until she figured out how to get home, Oliver was all she had. “I liked you. Too much.”
He looked intrigued. “Is that an issue?”
“Having feelings for a patient gets in the way of your objectivity.” Her face felt like it might explode by the time she finished.
Oliver dropped onto his back and laughed. “So you wanted to do undocterly things to me? Shame on you, Doctor Rose.”
“Shut up.” She thumped his arm. “Don’t try and tell me you didn’t flirt with me every time you saw me.”
“That would be a lie.” He looked at her, his gaze warm and caressing. “I definitely wanted to do more with that couch in your office than talk about my feelings.”
Heat washed through Laura, followed by a vivid picture of her and Oliver on her office couch.
Oliver caught a strand of her hair. “I’d love to know what went through your mind just then.”
“Uh-uh.” Laura shook her head.
“I bet it was—”
“Oliver!” Elewys’s voice dumped ice all over the moment. “Why do you tarry here?”
With a low groan, Oliver rolled to his feet. “What is it you would have me do, Mother?”
“You know what.” Elewys held the sword up to him. “You must do what we have both sworn must be done.”
As he looked at his mother, Oliver stilled and his shoulder’s tightened. A stranger crept over his features and robbed them of all light and laughter, and left a cold, angry, scary man in their place. “All right, Mother. I will see this done.”
Chapter Nine
Day three in her alternate reality brought Laura face to face with boundaries. You needed to establish firm boundaries and stick with them. Even in the face of a scowling six-three, muscle-bound, sword-wielding man of old standing in his nasty cottage while his batcrap crazy mother bustled in and out. Laura stated her position calmly and assertively. “I am coming with you.”
“Nay, you are not.” He stepped closer to her.
Physical intimidation? Not so much. “Yes, I am, and we are wasting time standing here arguing. You are insisting that you need to get this revenge done before you can take me home. I want to go home. Even more so since visiting your long drop in the woods a few times. Hence, I am entitled to witness this revenge mission.”
Legs braced for a storm, Oliver folded his arms. “You want to see me cut down William de Wolfe?”
“Not at all.” She needed to clarify. “I find the whole idea barbaric, but you are determined to do this. I am determined to talk you out of it.”
“Ah ha!” He jabbed a thick finger at her. “I knew it. You really want to come so you can stop me.”
“Exactly.” Laura motioned him toward the door. “You have a mission, I have a mission, and they both seem to meet at William de Wolfe. Let’s get on with it, so the next time I use the bathroom I can do so with two-ply and flushing.”
Elewys slipped into the cottage, slammed the door behind her and pressed her back against it. “We must go now. What are you waiting for?”
As much as the “we” in that sentence pained her, Laura nodded. “Let’s go.”
“You cannot come with us.” Elewys twisted her face into a sour expression.
“Neither of you are coming.” Oliver fiddled with the binding on his sword. “Revenge is no place for a woman.”
“I think history would disagree with you on that one.” Laura kept her gaze locked with Oliver’s. No way in hell was she letting him and that sword out of this cottage without her. And no way in hell was she letting Elewys go with him. Even her name sounded kind of twisted.
“You are determined?” Oliver had the whole scary, growly thing down pat.
“I am.”
“You stay here.” He pointed at his mother. “Three of us will draw too much attention.”
Elewys puffed up. “But—”
“Stay.” Sword strapped to his back under his tunic, he stomped out of the cottage, muttering some words that he certainly hadn’t learned in this time.
Elewys jumped in front of him, cupped his face, and tugged his head closer to hers. “Go with God, my son. Know that justice stands at your shoulders, and right will guide your sword hand.”
If Elewys had spoken about anything other than hacking another man to pieces, Laura might have found it all rather poetic. She prodded Oliver in the back. “Let’s go.”
The glare Elewys shot her could have scorched her undies. If she was wearing undies, but her one and only pair hung on a bush outside to dry, and apparently medieval women went commando.
The day heated
as they walked. Hot and sticky, Laura wanted to rip her dress in half. Dammit! What was this thing made of? Because it itched like all hell. So much for natural fibers. When she got back, she intended to find the first hipster she could and tell them all about stupid natural fibers. Or maybe Elewys had put some of her nasty juju on the dress before grudgingly loaning it to Laura.
Square, grey and impenetrable Questing Castle stood on a rise. Past and present coalesced into one giant mental twist. The castle looked nearly the same, minus the gift shops and touristy restaurants clinging like barnacles to its outskirts. Where there should have been roads, traffic, and street lamps was a moat, which stunk to high heaven. The ghosts of buildings that had sprung up and flanked the castle in the eight hundred or so years since, yawned in the still empty spaces.
“You all right?” Still sulking with her, Oliver hadn’t said much since they’d left the cottage.
Laura concentrated on breathing in and breathing out. “Give me a moment.”
The castle gates stood open to the steady trickle of people moving in and out. Except the people looked all wrong, wore all the wrong clothing, carried the wrong things in their hands.
She’d pay good money for a tour guide with one of those plastic dinosaurs on a stick, leading his tour through the gates, talking ten to the dozen as he outlined the history. History she had just become a part of. Wasn’t there some sort of physics issue coming into play here? She’d watched enough Dr. Who to know you couldn’t mess with the past and expect the future to stay the same. Not wanting to mess with the butterfly effect, she skirted a young woman carrying a basket of apples.
“His pennant flies.” Oliver pointed to banner fluttering in the unenthusiastic morning breeze. “He is here.”
“Oh, goodie!” Because fate wouldn’t do her a solid and have de Wolfe on the other side of the country.
“I could always leave you here.” Oliver looked far too hopeful for her peace of mind.
Laura got it together. Or close enough. “Forget it, big boy. Where you go, I go.”
“Bloody hell.” He grabbed her hand and hauled her over the drawbridge. “Women have gotten a lot more mouthy over the years.”
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