In this enterprise, however, she was unsuccessful; on the first visit, she found only primeval forest where the nunnery should have been. On the second expedition, she arrived in the year 1720.
The woman had returned to the twentieth century and resumed her life, never to make the transfer again. Her conclusion was that, having found its rightful place in the universe, her spirit had chosen to settle itself there.
A little disappointed that there was no talisman mentioned, no magic potion that would carry her back to Dane, never to be parted from him again, Gloriana was nonetheless certain that she had found a way to go home.
She was tired, but could not rest, for her mind was abuzz with reckless schemes. She would put on her own gown, she decided, so as not to stand out unduly when she reached her destination. She had only to find that star-crossed gate again, in whatever state of ruin it might be, and step over the threshold.
There was, of course, no guarantee that she would not arrive at the wrong time in history, as the woman in the book had done. Still, she had to try—something inside pressed her toward that end, something separate from her love for Dane, but just as deeply rooted m her soul. She felt a new urgency to return, sensing that she might never have another opportunity.
Leaving behind an oxblood ruby set in a ring of woven gold, the only piece of jewelry she’d been wearing when she’d suffered her last spell and left Dane calling her name in that rain-dampened meadow, Gloriana took various medicines from Lyn’s surgery cupboards and the well-stocked medicine cabinet in the bathroom, along with a thick book on first aid, a volume on herbal remedies, and, finally, a small amount of cash from a leather box on his desk in the study.
She left a note for Lyn, apologizing for the necessary thefts and expressing the hope that the gem she’d left would suffice as compensation, along with Professor Steinbeth’s check, which he was to keep for himself and use as he saw fit. After thanking Lyn for all his help and bidding him a life of joy, she signed the paper and hurried out of the cottage, carrying the purloined items in a plastic grocer’s bag.
The money covered her cab fare to the ruins of the abbey, which, like Kenbrook Hall and Hadleigh Castle, was little more than rubble now.
The summer sun shone bright on Gloriana as she made her way between the broken walls and uneven paving stones, searching for that one special place—it must have been near Elaina’s courtyard—where she had crossed over as the child Megan. She prayed silently all the while that the magic would still work, that she might find her right place in time and never have to leave it again.
When she found what was left of the gate, however, she hesitated, her heart thudding in her throat, for there was a sense of permanence in this undertaking. She could not help glancing back at the world she hoped to depart and never to look upon again. She did not want to live there, and yet she had no doubt that the place would seem very good to her if she missed her mark and wound up in the wrong niche of time.
Then, resolved, clutching her bag of stolen miracles, Gloriana squared her shoulders, raised her chin, and walked through.
Nothing happened.
There was no headache, no darkness, no change at all. The world looked the same as it had before—a jet passed overhead, leaving a stream of white across the azure sky, and out on the paved highway beyond the crumbled outer walls, a car tooted its horn.
Gloriana stood still for a long moment, dealing with her disappointment. Then she recalled the witch’s tale, and decided to try again. She would simply go back to where she’d started and pass through the gate once more.
She drew a deep breath and stepped forward.
This time, the world seemed to tilt at a dizzying angle, though only for a moment. There was no pain, no black sickness, only a violent inner shift that made her breath catch and her heart skitter over a few beats.
The walls rose whole and high around Gloriana, and the sky was darkening with twilight. She heard the nuns singing their lovely chants in chapel—vespers—and swallowed a sob of mingled relief and dread. There was no way to know what year or century she was in, and instinct warned her not to make herself known.
Gloriana made her way out of the abbey through a postern gate and immediately turned her gaze toward Kenbrook Hall. It looked much as it had when she and Dane had been imprisoned there and conceived their child in the Roman baths hidden beneath, but that was no indication that she had managed to return during her husband’s lifespan. The hall had been a fortress for the legions once and had not changed greatly over a period of nearly eight hundred years.
Biting her lower lip, Gloriana turned to Hadleigh Castle and the lake. There were lights blinking in some of the windows, but it was already eventide and growing darker by the moment.
Carefully, Gloriana tied the plastic bag up under the skirts of her gown, affixing it to the lacework in her chemise.
There was but one way to find out if Dane yet lived, and Gloriana’s suspense was too great to put the task off until the morrow. Following the hidden path through the woods and around the lake that she and Edward had blazed as children, she proceeded toward Hadleigh Castle and her destiny.
Moonlight spilled over the waters, but Gloriana did not stop to admire its silvery dance, as she might have on another occasion. Her mind was fixed on finding Dane, and naught else.
Perhaps that was why the rider was almost upon her before she realized she was not alone on the path. With a little cry, Gloriana jumped to one side just before she would have been trampled by a horse.
“Who goes there?” demanded a familiar voice, as the rider reined in and then leaped deftly to the ground to face her. “God’s breath, Gloriana—is that you?”
Edward’ Joyous tears rushed into Gloriana’s throat, all but choking her and making it impossible to speak. With a sob, she flung her arms around his neck and planted copious kisses all over his face. Edward.
He was alive.
He thrust her back to look at her, his eyes narrowed, his exquisitely drawn features gelded with moonglow. “Have you gone mad, wandering about in the dark like this? And where have you been—we’ve searched the whole of the countryside for you’”
Gloriana struggled to regain her composure, but there was no succeeding—all she could do was laugh and weep and snuffle ingloriously. Edward stood before her, hale and hearty, which meant that Dane and Gareth and dear, dear Elaina were yet among the living. By the grace of God and His angels, she had managed to return in time to make a difference.
“Well, I’d better get you back to home and hearth,” Edward said, sweeping her up onto the horse and mounting deftly behind her. “Dane is certain that Merrymont has kidnapped you, and if Gareth hadn’t locked him up in the dungeon, he’d be out tearing the man’s holdings apart stone by stone, searching for you.”
Gloriana rested her head against Edward’s shoulder and laughed insensibly before lapsing into a spate of hiccoughs. “Just—take me—home,” she managed to say, and Edward reined his mount back toward Hadleigh Castle and spurred the animal with the soft heels of his boots.
“How long have I been missing?” Gloriana asked, in a small voice, when they were passing over the drawbridge and into the lower bailey, where the tournaments were held.
Edward looked even more worried than he had before. “You don’t know where you’ve been, or what you were doing?”
She hesitated while the sights and sounds of her beloved world entered her through every pore and follicle. “No,” she admitted as they progressed through the village at a slower pace.
“You were walking in the graveyard at Kenbrook Hall yesterday morning,” Edward said. “Your handmaiden, Judith, was bringing you a wrap, and bent on begging you to come back in and sit beside the fire. Something distracted her—just for a moment, she swears—and when she looked again, you had vanished.”
Yesterday morning. For all that had happened, or seemed to happen, in the interim, she had actually been separated from Dane for only about thirty-six hours�
�� He would not remember her last visit, when she had been parted from him in the meadow behind Kenbrook Hall; for him, that had never happened. Neither, of course, had his fatal encounter with Edward. Hadleigh’s fever had not come upon him, and Elaina was surely as well as could be expected, given the chronic nature of her illness.
“I—I must have struck my head,” she said, for she could not tell Edward or anyone else what had really happened. Even Dane must remain in ignorance, for he would not believe the truth.
“You are safe now,” Edward replied with supreme gentleness, “and that is all that matters. Kenbrook will be beside himself with joy.”
No doubt apprised by watchful guards that Edward was returning with Lady Kenbrook in tow, Gareth was standing in the private courtyard when they arrived. He was attended by several men-at-arms, who held torches aloft. A servant stood nearby with an oil lamp.
“Where is Kenbrook?” Edward asked. “I have brought his wife.”
Gloriana slipped down from the saddle before anyone could help her, even before Edward, himself an expert horseman, had managed to dismount. She gave her elder brother-in-law a greeting similar to Edward’s, flinging her arms around his neck and planting a great, smacking kiss on each of his cheeks.
“You’re alive’” she crowed.
Gareth gripped his erstwhile ward by the shoulders and held her at arm’s length, searching her face. “God’s blood, Gloriana—of course I am alive’ It is you we’d nearly given up for dead. Where in the name of all that’s holy have you been?”
“She was wandering and does not remember passing the day and night,” Edward said. “I found her in the woods.”
“Have you lost the ability to speak for yourself?” Gareth demanded, his fingers tightening a little on Gloriana’s shoulders.
“No, my lord,” Gloriana answered, suppressing a smile. She must remember, she told herself, that from the viewpoint of those left behind, she had been gone only a short time. “May I see my husband, please? I’m told that you’ve locked him up to keep him from murdering Merrymont.”
“Aye,” Gareth said, with no hint of remorse, snatching a lamp from one of the men and dismissing the others with a nod. “He’s in the dungeon, my brother. It was that or have him storming the walls of our neighbor’s keep and taking an arrow from Merrymont’s crossbow for his trouble.” With this explanation, Lord Hadleigh put his free hand lightly to the small of Gloriana’s back and steered her into the castle and through the great hall. Edward kept pace, walking in silence on her other side.
“I appreciate your efforts to protect my husband,” Gloriana said to the lord of Hadleigh Castle, “but I can’t imagine that imprisonment has done his character any good. He’ll be fit to throttle you for holding him captive in such wise.”
Gareth gave his sister-in-law a dour, sidelong look. “No explanation will be required of me,” he said, putting a pointed emphasis on the last word. “Duty demands that I warn you, Lady Kenbrook—my brother won’t settle for this silly prattle you’ve given Edward about wandering in the woods, lost and confused, for the better part of two days. He will demand to know what you’ve been about.”
Gloriana felt a certain sweet uneasiness, but she was too eager to see Dane again to waste time worrying. She would deal with his inevitable irritation somehow.
They entered a passage behind the great hall, leading down a steep set of stairs, cut spiral fashion in the stone. The light of several torches made a golden pool at the foot of the steps, and Gloriana heard her husband’s voice even before she saw him.
“Gareth, if that’s you,” Dane called, from somewhere below, “you’d better be bringing the key to these damnable irons, for if you’re not, I swear I’ll have your liver before cock’s crow’”
Gloriana’s heart soared, and she hurried down the steps, leaving Gareth and Edward behind, and raced into the dungeon. She had never been in the place before and might have been fascinated if her attention hadn’t been fixed on the solitary prisoner.
Dane sat, disheveled and plainly annoyed, in a pile of fresh straw near one of the dank walls, and he was chained to the wall by one ankle and one wrist. At the sight of Gloriana, he started to rise, but she didn’t give him a chance. She nearly flattened him with the exuberance of her embrace.
“Gloriana,” he said, and the ancient iron chains rattled as he raised his hands to cup her face. He must have felt the odd bundle under her skirts but, mercifully, he said nothing of that. “Oh, God, Gloriana—where have you been?”
She kissed his mouth, his eyelids, his cheeks and forehead. “I’ll explain later,” she said.
Dane’s handsome face hardened, though the love in his eyes was not lessened by his anger. “You will indeed, my lady wife,” he said. “At length and in great detail.”
Gloriana nodded, trying to look meek. “Yes, my lord,” she answered, but there was no trace of true humility in her tone or manner, and the fact did not go unnoticed by anyone in that terrible room. She turned a sharp gaze upon her brothers-in-law, who had no earthly idea that they had been, in effect, resurrected from their graves. “Unlock these chains immediately.”
“Contentious woman,” Gareth grumbled. But he produced a rusted key from the pouch tied at his belt—the dungeons at Hadleigh Castle were seldom used, and torture had been outlawed many years before—then squatted to work the locks, which resisted his awkward efforts for so long that Dane finally took over the task.
Gareth and Edward wisely took their leave before their angry brother had managed to free himself, and thus Gloriana was at last alone with her husband.
She wanted to have her way with him in the straw, she’d missed him so terribly, but for him the separation had not been overlong, and now that he knew she was safe, he was furious.
“I will ask you once again, woman,” he said, rising and pulling Gloriana to her feet as he did so. “Where have you been since yesterday morning?”
Gloriana wished she’d taken the trouble to think up a viable tale to explain her absence, but she’d been too caught up in the evening’s reunions to do so. Besides, until she’d encountered Edward by the lake, she hadn’t known what she would find when she reached Hadleigh Castle. Dane’s ancestors might have been living there, or even his descendants.
“I could tell you on the morrow,” she offered hopefully. “When we’ve both had a good night’s rest.”
“You will tell me now,” Dane replied, folding his arms. Although he did not say so, Gloriana suspected he had other plans for the hours ahead, and sleep was not among them.
Gloriana was beginning to lose patience. She loved this man enough to cross the very borders of time to live out her days at his side, but if she allowed him to bully her, she would be setting a disastrous precedent. Dane St. Gregory might as well learn, right now, what she would put up with and what she wouldn’t.
“Take care, my lord,” she told him angrily, “that I don’t refuse to speak to you altogether. I am not your dog, your squire, or one of your men-at-arms’”
Dane shoved splayed fingers through his hair, which needed barbering, as always, and was filled with bits of straw that glittered in the shifting light of the torches affixed to the walls. His frustration was nearly palpable, but he was making an admirable effort to restrain his temper.
“Explain,” he rasped through his teeth.
“What will you do if I refuse?” Gloriana challenged, putting her hands on her hips and squaring her nose with his. “Give me a good drubbing? Banish me to the nunnery?”
Dane opened his mouth, then closed it again. He was utterly magnificent, Gloriana thought, even in a state of fury. “God’s breath,” he spat, “you know I would never strike a woman, be she wife or whore or both—and as for banishing you, there probably isn’t a convent in the realm deserving of such a fate’”
Gloriana tried to retain a fierce expression but, in the end, she couldn’t do it. Dane was being impossible, of course, but she was simply too glad to see him to remain a
ngry. She started to laugh, and when he glared at her, she laughed harder.
Finally, after a muttered curse, Kenbrook wrapped her in his arms, spun her about once in celebration of her return, and then kissed her soundly.
“I’m sorry you were frightened,” she said in an unsteady voice, when Dane released her at last. “I didn’t mean to leave you.”
Dane’s look penetrated deep, searching her soul. “I believe that, milady,” he said gravely. “I can’t think why I should, but I do.”
“I love you,” Gloriana said with a sniffle. Her vision was blurring again. She wondered if she needed spectacles, then concluded that they probably hadn’t been invented yet.
“And I love you,” Dane responded, touching the tip of her nose with an index finger. “Are you all right, Gloriana? Were you hurt, or sick?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said softly.
He frowned, his hands resting gently on her upper arms. “That day in the tower room, when you vanished for a few moments—was it something like that?”
Gloriana swallowed, then nodded.
“You were in the future, then?”
“Yes.”
Dane sighed and clasped her close against his chest, as though fearing that she would be torn right out of his arms.
Gloriana wanted to reassure him and drew back slightly to look up into his face. “It won’t happen ever again.” she said.
“How can you be sure of that?” Dane demanded.
“This time was different,” she answered. It was not the proper moment to tell Dane about her other visit, to what would have been his future, when both Edward and Gareth had been dead and they had been together in Elaina’s cell at the abbey, keeping a sorrowful vigil. Even so, Gloriana could not resist showing off a little of the knowledge she had gained on that particular excursion. “I am told you wanted to kill your uncle, thinking he had taken me captive.”
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