A Thief in Time (Thief in Time Series Book 1)

by Cidney Swanson

  “There is your answer.”

  Halley drew her knees toward her chest. She dug her fingers into the cool sand, then lifted her fingers, allowing the sand to fall away. Then, on a whim, she placed a handful of sand in her pocket. She could carry it home and store it in a tiny jar, a small way to hold this moment forever.

  “Mistress . . .”

  Halley looked up.

  “Was it for this you were weeping when I found you at the faire?”

  He still didn’t know what she’d been crying about. Halley felt her shoulders tensing. She could say yes and leave it at that. It would be simpler than explaining the truth: that she’d wept for the loss of the man she’d thought was her father, that she’d cried for her mother’s careless indifference, for the years of small and great injustices. For finding herself alone in the world.

  “You need not give answer. I have no claim upon the secret spaces of your soul.”

  But . . . he did. He did. He had lodged there, in the secret spaces of her soul. She’d given him a piece of the truth. A slant version of the truth. But now Halley felt suddenly weary of slant truths. She wanted to tell someone the whole truth, just for once. She wanted to tell Edmund the whole truth. To be known. To be heard. To be real.

  Just for once.

  So she told him the whole truth.

  56

  • EDMUND •

  Edmund had never been so aggrieved as he was upon hearing Halley tell her tale. Her pain was of a sort he had never imagined. For a time he was too distraught to speak and could only hold her. But gradually, anger replaced the deep-seated sorrow. How had Halley’s mother dared to commit so great a fraud upon an innocent child? To perpetuate it as she had done by keeping silence. It was unthinkable. Monstrous.

  And it meant . . . it meant Halley had lost her compass-star—the “club” upon which she’d set her sights. She was as rudderless as the tiny barks he and Robert had once launched onto the millpond. He could not bear to think of her thus without purpose, without aim.

  Before thinking of what he was asking, he said, “Come away with me.”

  Halley’s arched brows rose.

  “To Hensley Manor. To my home.”

  “To 1598?”

  Edmund could hardly hear for the hammering of his pulse in his ears.

  “Be mistress of all I call mine. I cannot promise you will want for nothing, but I swear you will never want for love.”

  Halley’s brow contracted. “Edmund . . . I—” She broke off, shaking her head. “I don’t know what to say.”

  Say yes. He wanted to shout it aloud, to outroar the very ocean. Say yes.

  But she said nothing, only continued the running of sand through her fingers.

  “Do you not care for me a little?”

  “How can you ask? Of course I care. A lot. But you’re asking the impossible, Edmund. The kind of thing you’re suggesting is fine in the movies, because it’s always happily ever after and then fade to black. But I don’t know the first thing about being a . . . a housewife in the sixteenth century. And I know nothing about being an earl’s wife, either.”

  “Thou canst learn, surely.”

  “Canst I? I don’t even know how to talk right in your time. I’ll make a thousand errors a day, just like I’ve seen you do here. But here, the worst thing that can happen is people think you’re eccentric. Harmlessly crazy. What would happen if I didn’t go to church with you on Sundays? Or if I did? Without knowing what to say or do, when to kneel or rise or cross myself—”

  “We are not papists, mistress.”

  Halley shook her head. “That’s exactly my point. I’m not even sure what a papist is. I don’t know if it’s dangerous to cross myself or not cross myself in your world. And if I start behaving strangely in church or the marketplace or the kitchen, what will that look like in your time?”

  Edmund frowned. He saw to where her argument tended. “Thou might’st be questioned by the parson for lack of conformity.”

  “I might be burned at the stake.”

  “I would never let that happen!”

  “Edmund, seriously? Have you ever seen witches burned at the stake?”

  “Aye—”

  “And was there a single thing you could have done to stop it?”

  He frowned darkly. At length he replied, “Nay. But it might never come to that.”

  “Do you think I would risk putting you through that? Allow you to live day to day in fear of what crazy thing I’m going to say or do next?”

  He did not respond. His eyes were fixed on the horizon, on the setting sun, glowing like fire about to be quenched by the sea.

  “I wish I could say yes, Edmund. But I’ve seen how hard it is for you to fit in here. It would be impossible for me to fit in there, with you. I want you free from that kind of fear. I want you to have a long, happy life—”

  Halley broke off. She was staring blankly into the distance.

  “What is it?”

  Without speaking, she rose.

  57

  • HALLEY •

  Halley’s breath caught in her throat. What if she was a part of that long and happy life? Could she have been? Could she be? There was a simple way to find out: Wikipedia.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said before tromping around the sandstone outcropping that had been providing a sort of privacy wall for the two of them. On the other side of the outcropping, she typed “Edmund Aldwych, Earl Of Shaftesbury” into her phone. And waited.

  And found him. There was a portrait—those were his eyes. And there was the year of his birth . . . and the year of his death. A shiver ran along her spine. This was wrong. She shouldn’t know this. She wanted to unknow it. But she needed to know one more thing. What if the name of his wife was her name? Her heart hammering, she scanned through the paragraph describing Edmund, Second Earl of Shaftesbury.

  Where was it? Where was it?

  Her heart in her throat, Halley’s eyes landed on a name.

  It wasn’t her name.

  Edmund’s wife was listed as Maria Hallcote of Lavenham, a wealthy widow two years his senior.

  So.

  Edmund would marry.

  But he wouldn’t marry Halley Mikkelsen of Montecito.

  Her heart cracking, she read on, unable to stop herself. He would have ten children, six of whom would survive to adulthood. His wife’s dowry would pay debts contracted during the first earl’s lifetime—

  Halley tapped the page shut.

  She felt ill. She couldn’t breathe. She shouldn’t know these things. Edmund couldn’t know these things.

  She took a slow breath. In. Out. She’d found the truth: Edmund would return to his own time, without her. Again, it felt like all the air was being sucked out of her lungs.

  “Mistress Halley?”

  She snapped back to the present, hiding her phone guiltily, even though there was no chance Edmund had heard of Wikipedia. She took a shaky breath. Things were clear now. Horribly, incontrovertibly clear. She had no choice but to stay here and let him go. History had already been written, and it was a good history for Edmund. For his legacy. For his household. Feeling as though her feet were weighted with lead, Halley turned back to rejoin Edmund.

  She sank into the cold sand beside him. His eyes fixed on hers, then dropped to her lips. When he met her eyes again, his pupils were dark and large. His hand gripped hers as though he were afraid she’d vanish. As though he wouldn’t let her.

  The inches closed between them until their foreheads touched. She felt a tremor run through him, and his grip on her hand tightened.

  “Halley,” he murmured. “Lady.”

  And then words became unnecessary.

  58

  • EDMUND •

  After kissing her, Edmund lifted a hand to her cheek. Touched the pad of his thumb to her ear, slid it down along her jawline. And then, once again, his mouth found hers, and he kissed her across four hundred years, across a continent, across seas of time
and space that conspired to separate their souls. He kissed her as if by kissing her he could bend time to his will, re-forming what might have been into what could be. And in that kiss, he saw a future here and now: a parcel of land where they tilled the soil together, churned butter from their goodly cow, picked apples from a small orchard. He saw a future where he learned the art of brewing root beer and brought Halley root beer floats by the ewerful. She would teach him to speak aright in this time, and he would teach her to judge soils, whether better for corn or for pasture. He saw all this, and then he saw it swept away by duty and obligation.

  Shivering, he pulled back from the kiss.

  “Ah, lady,” he said, sighing. And again, “Ah, lady.” There were tears in his eyes.

  “Kiss me again,” she murmured.

  So he did. And this time he felt only his loss, his hunger, the ache that would fill the rest of the life he must return to. Her lips warmed beneath his and he took her in his arms, tumbling her back against the cradling sand. He wanted to breathe her in until he knew no other scent. To memorize the beat of her pulse until he heard nothing but the way her heart raced beside his.

  But then she pulled away, out of the kiss.

  “You have to go back.” Her voice was soft and flat.

  “Nay, lady—”

  “Yes. You do. Now. You have people who depend on you. Do you know what it’s like to have no one you can depend on? I do. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

  “I cannot leave thee.”

  “You can’t stay.”

  Edmund’s head fell forward, cradled in his hands.

  He sat like that, inwardly weeping. A minute passed. And another. Five. Ten. He cared not. All the while, Halley remained beside him, her head resting on his shoulder, her small hand in his, his sole comfort. At last, he raised his head and nodded.

  “It is time.”

  59

  • HALLEY •

  They pulled into the professor’s estate just as the first stars began to shine in the purple-black sky. Halley sighed. DaVinci would know what to call such a color—DaVinci, who might never speak to her again.

  “Mistress Halley?”

  “Yes, Edmund?”

  She pulled the truck past the guesthouse, parking it next to a side door of the main house. Overhead, the lean palms towered, their slender forms outlined in black against the night sky. Halley heard crickets and what might have been a lone frog. The scent of eucalyptus and roses was heavy in the night air.

  Pulling hard, Edmund slid his memorial ring from his finger. Then he took Halley’s hand, opened her palm, and dropped his heavy ring into it.

  “I no longer ask of thee to sell it,” he said, his voice raw with emotion. “I ask thee to keep it always, to remember me by, when I am gone.”

  Halley’s eyes flicked up to consider his, but his gaze was fixed somewhere outside, on one of the thousand things he would never see again after tonight.

  She hefted the ring in her closed hand. Felt its weight. It no longer felt like a reminder of her mother’s betrayal. It felt like Edmund’s soft smiles, his deep laughter. The way he took offense at things he didn’t understand. The way he’d walked all the way to East Beach today to offer help.

  She clenched her hand more tightly around the ring, as if by doing so she could keep Edmund there at her side.

  She thought back to the first moment she’d seen him. The handsome face hovering over hers, checking to be certain she was alive. Only minutes later, offering to give her a lifetime of employment and support. Canst thou bake or brew or mend? He was already struggling to meet his debts, yet he’d offered to help her, a stranger.

  Halley felt a lump forming in her throat. Her mom wouldn’t so much as pay for a set of tires without something in exchange, but here was this stranger who had been willing to commit to feed, house, and clothe her for the rest of her life.

  She pressed the ring into her palm, then slid it onto the middle finger of her right hand, the only finger it would stay put on.

  “I would like that, Edmund Aldwych. I would like that very much.”

  60

  • KHAN •

  Jules Khan was not by nature or inclination a violent man. He’d never intentionally harmed anyone, unless you counted the incident with Dr. Littlewood, which Khan most energetically did not. And yet, given the correct set of circumstances, even the most mild-mannered must unsheathe his claws, or so Khan consoled himself. He wished no harm to the girl or her boyfriend; they were simply in the way. The professor had studied the situation carefully and concluded there was no way around, under, or over them. Like extraneous variables, they had to be eliminated.

  And so, the stage had been set. The necessary items purchased. The Tasers (two of them) charged and, at least as important, practiced with. Halley and her sixteenth-century . . . boyfriend were to arrive by eight, and although Khan had texted Halley to say he would be leaving at four, that had been a lie.

  Everything about the operation was regrettable, yet what blame could be laid at Khan’s feet? He was not the person who had decided to sneak into someone else’s private laboratory and play with the equipment willy-nilly. In all of this wretched business, he could hold himself blameless. He might not like it, but he had no choice. The boy and girl were uncontrolled variables; they must be eliminated.

  Rather than focusing on the unpleasantness of the task at hand, Khan found it useful to focus on a hypothesis he’d been wanting to test. Until now he’d been without the means—without the requisite volunteers. Should his theories prove sound, he would be able to add a second law of temporal inertia to the one he’d already created and named after himself (this wasn’t hubris, he’d told himself; there was no one else working in his field at a level to warrant naming it for them). Tonight, then, he would find out if his hypothesis held water.

  After all, unpleasant tasks aside, he was first and foremost a scientist.

  61

  • HALLEY •

  Halley marched slowly from the guesthouse back to the main house, where she had left Edmund to change into his Elizabethan garb. It was 8:25, nearly half an hour later than Halley had promised to arrive, but the professor had told her he would leave keys under the guesthouse mat.

  They’d been there as promised: a set of keys for both buildings. There was even a hastily scrawled “Thank You” on the back of the envelope holding the keys. Halley had decided they would enter the main house using a side service door to decrease the possibility that their entry would be detected by the professor upon his eventual return in three days’ time.

  “This is the easy part,” Halley said to Edmund, unlocking the door. “We still have to figure out how to get into the basement without keys.”

  A few minutes later, they were at the base of the stairs, where Halley’s adventure had begun little more than forty-eight hours ago. This time, however, the door was not ajar.

  The two of them stared at the closed door.

  “Any ideas?” asked Halley.

  “You do not happen to have upon your person a lock-pick set?”

  Halley looked at Edmund in surprise. “How do you even know what a lock-pick set is?”

  Edmund smiled softly. “DaVinci introduced me to the delights of movie binge-viewing. After her gallery opening, I listened to three of the Jason Bourne movies.”

  “Listened?”

  “Aye.”

  “Don’t you mean, you watched them?”

  Edmund frowned. “In my world, we do say that we ‘hear’ a play, but aye, I did observe them as well. I learned much new speech of your world. Although, many of the strong oaths have not altered with time.”

  Halley shook her head. “Well, to answer your question, I don’t have a lock-pick set. That would have been a good idea. I guess we could try brute force.”

  “What doth ‘brute force’ signify?”

  “Smashing something.” She would do it, and suffer the inevitable questions and suspicion if she had to, but she was
hoping for a better idea. She glanced at Edmund.

  Edmund had changed back into his Elizabethan clothes while Halley had gone to retrieve the house keys. He was once again wearing a sword. Could it whack the door handle loose? Before she had a chance to ask him, Edmund stepped forward and tried the handle, which turned out to be unlocked.

  “Why didn’t I think of that?” asked Halley.

  “Perhaps you, too, should engage in binge-viewing of Jason Bourne.”

  Halley smiled. Humor was good. Keeping things light was good. She didn’t think she could handle another emotionally drawn-out scene with Edmund.

  “After you, lady,” said Edmund, holding the door wide.

  Halley stepped inside. “That’s odd,” she said, peering into the dark.

  “What, prithee?”

  “Last time, the lights came on automatically as soon as I stepped into the room.”

  “You are in need of a switch of lights,” said Edmund.

  Halley grunted out a small laugh and grabbed her phone, intending to use it as a flashlight, but then she heard a sound she couldn’t place, electrical, maybe, followed by a sound she could place.

  The sound she recognized was that of a body hitting the floor.

  Edmond had been struck down.

  62

  • KHAN •

  Khan’s first Taser shot struck perfectly. As he’d hoped, the young man’s body fell forward as fifty thousand volts racked his body, leaving Khan free to secure his hands behind his back. First, though, he had to incapacitate the girl. Before Halley could so much as emit a gasp of horrified shock, Khan fired his second Taser. The professor might have lacked a natural taste for violence, but he made up for it by planning each of tonight’s steps with a choreographer’s precision.

  The moment the girl was down—on her side, which was less than ideal—Khan slipped PlastiCuffs on the boy’s wrists, binding them behind his back.