frustration, unburdening all her secrets. “The year you
are living in—hell, the year I’m living in at the
moment—is 1215! I don’t know what kind of calendar
you people use, but the kind my people use designates
this year as 1215. Oh, God.” Feeling herself on the brink
of insanity and complete despair, Judy paused, gasped,
and held her forehead in her hand. “I’m not born until
1971,” she repeated quietly. “That means I don’t exist
in 1215. So what the hell am I doing here?”
She raised her head and looked at Andrew, a fragile
damsel in distress, the sort of female he, a knight,
should have been able to protect. At least, he should
have had the answer to her question. But he had no
answer. He had barely begun to open himself to the mere
possibility that everything Judith described she had
truly lived, not merely dreamed. It couldn’t be true, none
of it could. Yet the things she had shared with him
during the past weeks, and the things she showed him
now, the pictures, seemed far too fantastic to be of this
world, of this time.
Andrew picked up something Judith had discarded
on the ground. The tube with the big, shiny eye that
emitted a beam of white light. “It’s a flashlight,” she
informed him before he could ask. “In England, they’re
called torches.”
He ran his fingers over the casing. “What is it made
of?”
“Plastic.”
“Plastic?” he echoed, and she nodded, sniffing. “A
material not of this world,” he surmised.
“Oh, it’s of this world, all right. It didn’t come from
outer space.” Afraid she would lose Andrew when it
seemed, again, that he might be willing to believe after
all, Judy gestured with her arm toward the sky. “It didn’t
come from beyond the moon, is what I’m saying.
Somehow—I don’t know how—plastic is made from oil.
But that’s something nobody figures out how to do until
sometime in the 20th century.”
“In America.”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Take me to America.” He raised his head and his
eyes met hers. He’d made a concession, issued a
challenge.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” Andrew’s mind flipped through the
information Judith had given him. “Even if you traveled
through time on Samhain, you were in England in your
own time before you arrived in the England of mine.
Thus, America exists now, during the rule of King John,
same as it exists in your year of—what is your year, the
year you met my descendant, Viscount Laycock?”
“1998,” Judith supplied. She rubbed her forehead as
though it ached and shook her head again. “You’re
correct, Andrew. America—the land—exists in 1215.
Only nobody from Europe has discovered it yet. It lies
way on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, and right
now the only people who live there are natives. The
first Europeans who travel there in ships don’t arrive
until around 1492.”
Andrew narrowed his eyes, computing in his head.
He couldn’t come up with the incredible numbers he
searched for.
Judith supplied them. “Not for another 300 years,
more or less.”
His pulse began to race. Judith’s tale sounded mad,
absurd. But she was quite correct—if he didn’t believe
her, he didn’t truly love her. And he did love her. Worse,
if what she was telling him proved a deranged fantasy,
she was mad. Or a witch. And that, he did not believe.
Besides, her possessions served as evidence.
“You said I would have children because of the man
you met in Wixcomb, the Wixcomb of your time,” he
reiterated softly. “And you said there’d be no attacks
against King John’s fiefs, that Lackland would sign the
barons’ charter. But you did not see into the future to
make those predictions, did you? Instead, you recalled
the past.”
Judith nodded.
“If all you say is true, I would understand that you
know something you experienced—your meeting with
the Laycock lord who lives in your time, for instance.
But how could you know what happened here, in
England, so long before you were born?”
“It’s history,” Judith said with a shrug. “We learn
about it in school because it’s so important. Andrew,
those conditions your father and his friends force King
John to sign end up affecting not only English law, but
law everywhere, all around the world! Eventually it will
become known as the Magna Carta. The king signs it in
a field called Runnymeade, somewhere near Windsor.”
Judith smiled. “Geez, I didn’t know I knew that. I have
to admit, lately I’ve been amazed by what I know!
Anyway, your descendant, the viscount, has some
parchments written during the negotiations that my
friend, Carla, came to England to see. I saw them, too,
preserved under glass.”
Judy held her breath and considered Andrew warily,
hopefully. She felt as though her whole life hinged on
his believing her, and perhaps it did. As she watched,
his expression changed. She hoped—suspected—he was
no longer dismissing her every word as madness. But
did he believe her, really believe her?
“What did Philip say when you told him?”
His question caught Judy by surprise. “I—I never
told Philip.”
Her answer surprised Andrew just as surely. “Why
not?”
“It never occurred to me. If it had, I wouldn’t have
dared.”
“Why not?” He took her hand lightly, clasping only
her fingers.
“Because Philip would never have believed me. You
know he wouldn’t.”
“But he and I are very much alike. I explained our
similarities to you once, did I not? So if you felt certain
he’d dismiss your story as lunacy, why did you risk
telling me?”
“Because you’re not at all alike.”
“And you felt sure I would believe.”
“I did,” Judy conceded. “Actually, today, I kind of
counted on it.”
Andrew’s heart swelled. He pulled Judith closer and
clasped her hard against him, rubbing his bristled
cheek over her smooth one. No sane man could accept
her story as true, but fortunately for him, he had
obviously gone mad.
“I believe you, sweetling,” he assured her. “I cannot
fathom it, but I believe.”
Judy’s swollen heart burst open like the petals of a
blossoming flower. She clung to Andrew, giddy with relief.
“I love you,” she admitted, no longer feeling brave, just
glad to be able to confess everything, even her love. As
she squeezed her eyes tightly shut and savored his
strong, supportive embrace, she realized Andrew was a
better person than she. If their situations had been
> reversed, she’d have called the cops and had him
transported to the nearest padded cell.
“Sweet Jesu, woman,” he whispered in her ear, “I
love you also. No matter who you be, where you are from,
or how you came to be here, understand I shall not be
letting you go.”
“That’s okay by me.” She smiled into his neck, glad
Andrew couldn’t see the blush she felt creeping into
her cheeks. But it was okay, everything was okay, for
she had no intention of leaving Andrew Laycock.
Because really, when a girl traveled nearly a thousand
years back in time to find her one true love, how could
she let him go?
***
As the sun began to sink low in the western sky,
gilding the verdant green landscape, Andrew laid Judy
down in the grass. He kissed her tenderly, from her
brow to her eyes, from her wrists to her fingers. The
torture of his deliberate caresses proved agonizingly
sweet. But the two of them had waited so long to be
together, and there remained no reason to either delay
their desires or restrain their ardor. Neither the
constraints of her world nor his could force them to deny
their passions anymore.
So Judy found herself responding with impetuous
abandon, and soon Andrew’s impatience became evident
as well. It only took seconds for him to remove her
medieval girdle, gown and shoes. When those layers had
been tossed aside, leaving only her skimpy, futuristic
underwear in place, she began fumbling with his belt,
intending to discard his tunic, too. But Andrew forced
her to pause as he flipped her bra straps off her
shoulders, kissing the skin against which they’d lain.
“Damnation, woman,” he whispered. “Since the first
time I saw you in these brief and curious garments, I
have longed to examine them.”
“Oh, just take them off,” Judy begged in a throaty
whisper. “Please!”
Grinning, he obeyed, burying his face in the valley
between her breasts. Even as he kissed her, he worked
the clasp between the bra cups and unfastened it so
that her breasts sprang free.
Judy chuckled. “And you didn’t even go to high
school.”
He ignored her comment. Andrew did not understand
many things Judith said, but he intended to spend the
rest of his life deciphering her unusual words. Now,
however, he saw no need for talk. Instead he slid the
garment that covered her breasts off her back and arms,
and began to suckle her nipples. Each pink nub tasted
sweet as a berry, and the soft, pebbly flesh against his
tongue made his cock strain to be freed from his braies.
Judy peered down at Andrew, who gazed up at her
through his thick, black lashes while his moist tongue
teased her rosy aureola. A current shot to her groin so
that she couldn’t resist moving, rolling her hips against
him.
He groaned and pulled himself higher against her
length, until they lay face to face. Catching her lips with
his teeth, he plundered her mouth with his tongue.
Again, Judy rolled her hips and felt what she’d been
longing for—his hardness, that ridge of masculinity
which promised so much pleasure.
“Andrew!” she gasped, breathing his name into his
mouth as she scrabbled at his leggings and
undergarment where they tied at his hips.
Andrew didn’t thwart her. He wanted his sex free to
burrow into Judith’s. Yet as she bunched his clothing
up his chest and down his hips, he continued to nibble
her lips, her chin, her throat. Finally, he finished what
Judith had begun, tearing his tunic off over his head,
and his chausses and braies off his legs. Naked at last,
he crouched beside her and tongued a trail from her
breasts to her navel. When his lips met the hip band of
her nether garment, he kissed the smooth, shimmering
fabric. Judith hissed, inhaling through her teeth, and
thrust her hips upward again in an obvious invitation
for him to take her.
“Lie still, sweetling,” he urged, determined to love
this woman as no man but he ever could, so that she’d
not be tempted to leave him for another man, another
time, another world. Spreading her legs, he knelt
between them and slipped his hands beneath Judith’s
bare bottom. Raising her slightly, he nibbled at the tiny
triangle of bright green cloth that hid her woman’s flesh.
His breath blew into the fabric, fluttering against the
nest of curls they protected.
“Andrew, please!” Judith cried out. “You’re torturing
me!”
“Nay, dearest. I am loving you.”
“Then love me, please. Completely. Now. I need you
inside me, Andrew.”
He considered delaying but knew there would be
time later for more lovemaking. They would have all
the time in the world, once he made this wench his
wife. So Andrew said, “Your wish is my command, my
lady,” and drew aside the thin band of material that
separated her legs and the globes of her derriere,
exposing the moist pink petals of her sex. He ran a finger
between those folds, and Judith bucked, crying his
name.
He had never heard his name uttered with such
intensity, such need, before. Judith’s calling out to him
nearly made him spend. But he managed to nestle the
head of his manhood inside her cleft. Then he slid his
sex home, knowing he’d come home, to his woman, the
one he had been destined for, though she’d had to travel
near a thousand years to find him.
Judy wrapped her arms tightly around Andrew’s neck
and twined her legs around his waist, cleaving to him,
making them one for now, forever. She hadn’t known
sex could be like this, her nerve endings like a knot of
severed electrical cables sparking and sizzling. No man
in her own time had made her feel this way, not even
close. Whatever she’d gone through, Judy decided, what
ever lay ahead, would be worth it to have Andrew’s love.
“Andrew! Oh, hon!” she panted, sensing she would
soon erupt with a climax the likes of which she’d never
had before, not with anyone, not even alone.
Judy climaxed. The feeling resembled the sensation
she had experienced on Halloween, when it seemed she
had burst into a shower of shimmering starlight. As she
spasmed with her release, she felt Andrew spasm, too,
spending himself, warm and liquid, inside her.
“Jesu,” he whispered as he rolled off Judy and lay
beside her, holding her close. “I never dreamed...”
“Neither did I,” she returned. “Neither did I.”
***
They were not hungry, so though Andrew made a
fire, he and Judy merely sat beside it, talking. At first
she presumed they would discuss their future. But then
she realized there was no point. It had already been
&n
bsp; decided. She would stay, and they would be together.
Besides, Andrew seemed curious about his descendant,
the future Viscount Laycock, and Judy began wondering
if she were related to Carla’s English lord, herself as
much a distant ancestor as Andrew.
“He seemed dark, like you,” Judy told him. “A little
gray in his sideburns. I’d guess he was older than Robin
by a few years. Otherwise, I can’t tell you much. He
wore a cap—a hat—and glasses. I didn’t bring any
eyeglasses with me, not even shades, so don’t ask me
to explain what they are right now. Suffice it to say,
they kind of covered his eyes, so I didn’t see much of
his face.”
“You called him a ‘goo-roo.’ What is that?”
This, Judy explained as superficially as possible. And
then, to help Andrew better understand, she retrieved
her laptop from her tote. She hauled it out, set it on her
thighs, and opened the cover.
“I did that earlier, when you were ill.”
“You opened it? You didn’t turn it on, did you?”
“Turn it on?”
“You didn’t. Good, then there should still be juice in
the battery. Here, let me show you.”
Attaching the power pack, Judy booted up and
demonstrated simple things, such as word processing.
Andrew seemed captivated, reaching over to tap the
alphabet keys and move the mouse by running his finger
over the touch pad.
He attempted too much too fast, and the computer
beeped.
“Holy mother of God!” he exclaimed, literally leaping
off the ground.
Judy laughed. “Liked that, did you? Then you’ll love
this.”
She turned off the laptop and closed the lid. Again,
she began rummaging through her belongings. She
wished she had a boom box or a disk player. But her old
standby, her tape recorder, would have to suffice.
“Check this out.” Judy yanked the headphones out
of the device, glad her tastes ran to jazz, standards, and
Broadway show tunes. If rap music or heavy metal
blasted out into the still twilight, Andrew might have
run off screaming. When she pressed the “play” button,
only an orchestral version of “Funny Valentine” flowed
thinly from the tiny speaker.
Yet the music seemed profound, almost huge, in the
virtual vacuum of that medieval countryside. Though
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