by Nora Roberts
8
LILY’S EYES WENT wide in surprise. “I, tormenting you? The shoe is on the other foot. You came to me, made love to me! And then you went away!”
He recoiled as if she’d slapped him. “A year and more has passed since then! I went out to the headland each day, for months afterward, searching for you. Waiting for you.” He laughed bitterly. “I wanted to call out to you…and realized that I didn’t even know your name.”
Lily frowned. “Is it still autumn?”
“Spring,” he replied. “Just after Easter week.”
“It is still summer,” she said slowly. “Only three days have passed since we met.”
“Ridiculous!”
“What year is this?”
He looked confused. “What year? Why, it’s the year of Our Lord 1881.”
“Not in my world,” Lily said quietly. She knelt and retrieved her handbag, pulled out the calendar in her wallet, and silently handed it to him.
“This is dated far into the next century!” he exclaimed.
Reaching in again, she took out several other items: a ballpoint pen, a credit card with a hologram on the front, a solar calculator, and showed him how they worked. He scanned her driver’s license, her other I.D., and watched the hologram on the credit card change with the flick of his wrist.
His jaw tightened. “Are you saying that you are not a ghost, but a visitor come from the future? Like something out of Jules Verne?”
“Not exactly.” Lily bit her lip. It was so difficult to explain. “I live in the future, yes. But it is you who have come to me, out of the past.”
He touched her face. Her mouth. His long fingers outlined the contours of her lips until they trembled. “You are no illusion.” His eyes darkened with desire. “And whatever—whoever—you are, Lily Kendall, you still make my blood run hot!” His hand dropped to his side. “Go away. Go back to wherever you come from and forget me. Perhaps that will end this curse.”
“Why is it a curse?” she cried. “Are you afraid to love again? I’ll stay with you, here in your time, if that is what you want. I don’t know how, but I’ll find a way!”
His face and voice were impassioned. “I can’t ask that of you. It would destroy you, as it did Catherine. I took her away, out of her element, and she was driven mad because of it. I’m burdened with enough guilt for that.”
Lily moved closer, so close that his breath stirred her hair. “I’m not Catherine. She was a mere girl. I am a woman. I’m stronger. And I want you, Rees Tregarrick! Not your position or your wealth. Only you.”
She moved into his arms, pliant as a willow. With an anguished growl, he scooped her up. His kiss was as wild and defiant as the elements. She opened her mouth to him, sighing with relief. He wanted her, too. Lily’s arms wound round his neck.
“I will never let you go,” she whispered against his broad chest.
His limp was no impediment as he carried her down the grassy slope toward the house.
“No,” Lily whispered against his cheek. “Portia and James are there.”
“And who the devil are they?” Rees asked. “I tell you, there is no one at home today. It’s St. Dunstan’s fair, and all the servants have gone down to the village, even Mrs. Penhale.”
When they reached the house, he kicked the door open and carried her inside. He mounted the stairs as if she were weightless in his arms. Lily barely had time to see that there were no velvet ropes before the cabinets, no advertising flyers on the table or blue-and-white vases by the parlor doors. The whole house was subtly different—but Rees Tregarrick was the same.
He pushed the door to the master suite open with his shoulder. “Not here,” Lily murmured. “Not in her bed.”
“Catherine never slept here,” he whispered hotly. “I went to her. But you, Lily Kendall—I will make love to you here, as I’ve dreamed I have for so long.”
And he did. His hands were rough as he stripped away her clothes, but gentle on her naked flesh. “I’ve aged three years, and you not a single day,” he said. “Your breasts are as firm and high, your face as unlined as it was the day we met.”
Lily noticed the faint sprinkling of silver at his temples. She ran her fingers through his hair, locked them into it and pulled his face down to hers. Her eyes were as fierce as her emotions.
“If this is all we ever have, we’ll make the best of it! Love me, Rees Tregarrick, for I love you with every atom of my heart and soul.”
This time they didn’t bother with preliminaries. They were both more than ready. He slid inside her as if their bodies had been designed solely for one another. For a moment he just held her close to his heart.
“I’m so afraid you’ll vanish again.”
The moment the words were said, she felt a strange rushing sensation, as if she were being pulled backward through the air. She fought it and clung to him with all her might. Lily knew with terrible fear that if they were separated this time, they would never find one another again. Never in all eternity. And they would both be lost.
“Take me, Rees. Take me!”
As he lunged against her, the air shimmered. His voice was urgent, as if he shared her fear. “I love you, Lily Kendall. Love you with all my heart and soul.”
She wrapped her legs around him, welcoming him, and he plunged deep. As their bodies joined, the air shimmered once more, fractured into shards of gold and rose and bright, electric blue.
She closed her eyes against the whirling colors, blocking out everything but Rees Tregarrick…the masculine smell of his body, the strength of his arms, the potency of his virile, male passion. Sliding his hands beneath her, he lifted Lily higher, thrusting harder, faster, with every beat of their hearts. They were flying like seabirds again, swooping over the brilliant sea, soaring up together over the bay and into the fiery sun.
He pushed her harder, and higher. “Don’t leave me, Lily,” he whispered against her ear. “Never leave me! Swear it!”
Lily felt the tension crackling in the air around them. She knew, without a doubt, that she had come to a crossroad in time. Once the decision was made, there would be no going back. Literally.
She arched up into him, taking him deep, and kissed his firm mouth. “Rees Tregarrick, I swear that if it is in my power, I will never leave you.”
He filled her completely, claiming her as his own with every powerful stroke. The air shimmered once more, and although the sun shone outside the windows, a mighty crack of thunder rent the air. The lovers didn’t care. Lost in each other, they rode the currents of desire higher and higher, until their wings were singed with the heat of their passion, and they fell spiraling back to earth, together.
He worshiped her with his body, grazing her skin with his lips, from the soft curve of her throat to the firm upthrust of her breasts and down to her thighs. He savored the taste of her, the scent of her, and brought her arching up into glory again and again.
Afterward, Lily lay in his arms, her head against his shoulder. “Tell me about Catherine. But only if it is not too painful.”
“No.” He sighed. “That wound is an old scar now. What is there to tell? She was young and beautiful, and I loved her despite her flaws, with all the ardor of a young man in his first infatuation. She was also selfish and shallow, but I was too head-over-heels to realize it. Catherine married me with no intention of settling at Star House. I didn’t know that. I built it for her.”
“Oh, Rees!” Lily heard only ghosts of the old pain in his voice, but the bewilderment was still there. She pressed a kiss against his shoulder.
“Were you never happy together?”
“It was all a sham. I think she was one of those women who loved herself so well, she had no love left for anyone else. But I was besotted. When she refused to go to sea with me, I brought her back all the treasures of the earth that I could find, hoping, I suppose, to buy her love. She didn’t want them. And she didn’t want me.”
“She was a fool.”
“Only you
ng and ambitious. She wanted to be a dashing young London hostess, to spend her life at parties and balls, dancing away the hours. I was to be her tool, my wealth her entrée into the world she coveted.”
He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. Lily ran her hands across the sculpted muscles of his chest, offering comfort. “You needn’t tell me any more.”
A long sigh answered her in the gathering darkness. “Some say I killed her, Lily.”
“Yes, I know. I have never believed it.”
He rolled over and took her face between his hands. “You should know this, then. I could have killed her when I learned what she had done! It was Catherine who snuffed out the lamps that lit the star window and sent the Tregarrick’s Star onto the rocks.”
“Dear God, why?”
“To rid herself of me!” The words were wrung from him. “So that she might return to London a wealthy widow and lose herself in a round of balls and mindless pleasures. For that I lost two men! Two good men, with wives and children in St. Dunstan. When she told me what she had done, I wanted to kill her, Lily! I wanted to throttle her with my bare hands!”
“But you didn’t. You didn’t!” She pulled him down and kissed him fiercely.
He laughed, with only a trace of bitterness now. “No. She ran out onto the headland, and I ran after her, thinking she meant to fling herself into the sea. Fool that I was! Instead, Catherine tried to trip me. She was insane with rage and thwarted ambitions. She meant for me to die that night, but she lost her footing. I tried to save her, and we both went tumbling down the sea-stairs.”
His voice grew low and bleak. “She cursed me as she lay dying. ‘May you never have a happy moment again, Rees Tregarrick, until you find a woman fool enough to give up everything else for love of you!’ ”
Lily kissed his chest, moved her lips teasingly over the crisp hair, and touched his nipple. “You’ve found her,” she said, sliding atop him. “I will go where you go, live where you live. And,” she said, as his body responded, “I will love you body and soul.”
She straddled Rees and slipped down onto him, sheathing him inside her until he groaned and reached out to her. “Oh, Lily, I was such an imbecile. I never knew what love was until I met you. These past three years have been a lover’s hell, waiting for you to appear again. Wondering if you ever would—or if I had conjured you up out of my loneliness.”
“We’ll make it paradise,” she promised.
Placing his hands on her waist, he pulled her down, hard, and thrust his hips up to meet hers. She met him, jolt for jolt, her back arched and her head thrown back, reveling in the pleasure that she gave and took. The last fading light of the setting sun gilded the outlines of his splendid body, tipped her breasts with gold. As she cried out in sudden passion, he sat up, rolled her over, and took her with a fierce possessiveness that left them both spent.
Rees looked down into her eyes. “Lily, my love, my heart, will you come away with me? Will you leave this place behind and sail away with me?”
She smiled up into his beloved face. “Rees Tregarrick, I will sail with you to the ends of the earth.”
9
DR. LANDRY CLIMBED out of his ancient automobile, feeling that he was on a fool’s errand. For a moment he almost wanted to turn around and leave. It had been an exhausting morning, and he didn’t want any more disappointments. But the note from Lily Kendall crinkled in his inner jacket pocket.
She hadn’t signed it, but he recognized her writing from the postcards, and the woman who had left the note with his receptionist matched her description perfectly. Only a few sentences were penned on the neatly folded sheet:
Don’t worry about me. I’m well and happy and more alive than I’ve ever been! Look behind the lining of the trunk that Portia opened at the Star House Museum while I was there—she’ll know which one—and you’ll understand.
She’d vanished three nights ago, after having been seen walking briskly toward Yearning Head, her tote bag of sketching materials over one arm. Her ruined camera and rain-soaked handbag had been found among the rocks just above the tide line, along with the battered thermos from her picnic lunch.
As he would tell the coroner’s jury, Miss Lily Kendall had evidenced no suicidal tendencies, as was shown by the letter she’d left half finished on her hotel desk, and the expensive new camera she’d purchased only the day before. She had confirmed her return ticket with the airlines.
The verdict would be only a formality: Miss Lily Kendall had been caught in the sudden squall that had blown up with unusual suddenness and been swept out to sea by the high tide. Like those previously lost on the beach at Yearning Head, no trace of her was likely to ever be found. A terrible tragedy.
And yet…The words of her note echoed through his head: Don’t worry….I’m…more alive than I have ever been! Somehow he felt it must be true.
Dr. Landry straightened his shoulders. He was wise enough to know that he didn’t have the answers to half the questions that life posed. He was a man of science, never happy unless he’d investigated every avenue of inquiry.
Even if it turned out that he could never make the truth public, he had to find out for his own peace of mind.
He crossed the gravel car park and went through the side door into the museum, where he was one of the trustees. Portia looked up, surprised to see him. “Miss Kendall told me that you opened a trunk when she was here last. I have a particular interest in seeing it, if I may?”
“Of course.” Sighing, Portia picked up her ring of keys. “I keep hoping we’ll learn she went off to visit some other place and forgot to leave word.”
The doctor avoided her eyes. “I don’t think she’s the kind of woman not to leave word.”
“No, I suppose not.” Handing him the key to the chest, she went back to her task of sorting out catalogue cards and entering them in her notebook computer.
The doctor passed through the door and into the museum’s storeroom. The old trunk with the embossed tin panels was against the far wall with other items to be catalogued and photographed. Light from the partially shaded window behind it made it seem to glow. I’m getting fanciful in my old age, he told himself.
Look inside the lining, Lily’s Kendall’s note said. Turning the trunk carefully toward the window, he unlocked it. He found the small book nested inside the white organza folds: Unique Flora and Fauna of the Sandwich Islands, written and illustrated by Mrs. Lily Kendall Tregarrick. It shook him profoundly.
Opening the pages, he admired the beautiful renderings of birds and flowers in the engravings—each one so perfectly precise and lifelike that it might have been taken with a camera. “So, you found your talent, after all,” he murmured.
Landry ran his sensitive fingertips along the top lining. Instead of a fine, smooth finish, the chest had a thin, rough edge on one side of the floral panel. His heart gave a leap of excitement.
He hunkered down and pulled out his pocketknife. Sliding the thin tip behind the liner, he worked it loose. There were only six tiny nails holding the panel in place. He popped the last one out and jumped as an envelope fell out from behind it and landed facedown inside the chest.
When he turned it over, his hands shook just a little, as he recognized his own name printed neatly in faded ink across the front of it. The envelope was heavy. There seemed to be a lot of papers in it, or perhaps old photographs.
Ah, yes. He pulled out a yellowed marriage certificate, two birth records, a slim diary, and an ornate cardboard frame, such as Victorian photographers had used. There were several very like it in his collection of family memorabilia.
It opened like a book. Inside were the ornate silver-stamped name of a photographer in Honolulu, and two sepia-toned photographs. One showed a dashing man and a radiant woman, holding a bridal bouquet. The second was a family grouping: the same couple, this time with two children.
To Dr. Landry, the baby looked like any other baby of three or four months, but the pretty toddler, with
her wide eyes, deep dimples, and glossy ringlets, bore a startling resemblance to Portia Trelawny.
He smiled as he looked over at the wedding portrait again. The man’s arm was around his bride with proud protectiveness. A happy bridegroom—Captain Tregarrick, certainly, but not the stern, unhappy man in the museum’s portrait. Despite the hint of gray at his temples in the photograph, Tregarrick looked joyful, and carefree, and, Dr. Landry thought, almost amazed to find himself so.
And Lily Kendall—for despite the old-fashioned gown and hairdo and jewelry, he had no doubt at all that the woman with Tregarrick was truly she—how beautiful, how joyous her face was, with love and contentment shining from it like the sun!
Landry shook his head and smiled back. She had been right after all—and she had found her Rees Tregarrick, despite the span of generations that had separated them. His hands shook, just a little, but his world was shaken even more. Somehow Lily Kendall had managed to go back in time.
Ordinary logic had no rational explanation. He certainly had none himself. Perhaps quantum physics had the answer, and time and the universe were composed of a magical fabric, where every moment touched and blended into every other. Perhaps Yearning Head was one of those places where it was possible to step from one world into another.
Or perhaps, he told himself, he was mad as the proverbial hatter.
But no, here was Lily Kendall, in the portrait she had purposely hidden away a hundred years ago, for him to find today. Lily Kendall looking, as she had promised, happy and well and more alive than ever before.
Dr. Landry wiped his eyes. “Sentimental old fool,” he muttered, and blew his nose in his linen handkerchief.
A small piece of yellow paper was tucked behind the family grouping. The doctor pulled it out and read the words written in Lily’s unmistakable handwriting:
Dear Dr. Landry,
I thought perhaps Portia would like to know how much she takes after her great-grandmother—even to the dimples!