She snatched her hand away from him, hurt but determined to go through with her gesture of independence for her own sake. “Well, if that’s how you feel, you can stop pretending to protect me from this stupid pool. You don’t believe there’s any danger here, anyway.”
She turned and stared into the spring, ceremoniously suspending the ring above the water.
“Leah, you have been fortunate so far, but if you get soaked again, you are quite likely to catch cold, perhaps even worse.” He took her elbow in his hand. “You ought to be more mindful of your well-being.”
“I don’t need you to look after my well-being.” She wriggled her arm to try to break free. “I don’t need anyone for that anymore. I only wish I could have the chance to tell Kevin as much.”
“Leah, please, stop this nonsense.” He tightened his grip and tried to pull her away from the pool, but she twisted harder and yanked free. Unfortunately, the movement threw off her balance and she lost her footing. She slid into the pool, wincing in an icy splash.
The ring slipped from her fingers as her body dropped--no, her body plunged! In a lightning stroke of terror, she realized the time portal had opened.
Panic shot adrenaline through her blood vessels, and she flung out her arms to try to clutch onto anything solid. She smacked into David’s arm and grasped frantically, but her fingers slid down his to his wrist. He grabbed her hand and, for a moment, she thought he might be able to save her. But the spring raged and sucked harder. His hold loosened, and she spiraled downward, clamping her mouth shut against a scream.
It won’t last. It won’t last, she repeated in her mind, trying to ignore the muffled roar of the cold cauldron’s brew and the bubbles accosting her skin. In another minute, I’ll be able to breathe again. I’ll be . . . Where? Back in the twenty-first century? Or in yet another time period?
She curled into a ball, squeezing her eyes shut to try to blot out the teeming abyss. Surprisingly, the tactic seemed to work. The bubbles felt as though they grew softer against her body. Could they actually be subsiding? Her rear end settled on the bottom of the pool at the same time her head and shoulders emerged above the surface.
A jolt of daylight blinded her, but she forced her eyes to adjust, anxious to orient herself. She rose in the thigh-deep water, slowly distinguishing her bright surroundings. The springhouse stood in ruins again. The great oak tree cramped the little clearing, dwarfing the pool with its huge roots. When she spotted her purse on the grass near the edge of the water, there could be no further question of what era she’d reached.
She sloshed out of the pool, too numb to feel chilled by the air. Mindlessly, she leaned over and began to wring out her skirt. But when she looked at the burgundy fabric between her fingers, she stopped. Phoebe had lent her this gown for her trip to London. A minute ago the dress had been a minor detail in an intriguing world. Now, the gown was the only thing left of that life. The rest of the world was gone, everyone who had lived there, dead.
David was lost to her forever.
She stared at the fabric, forgetting her efforts to squeeze the water out. Suddenly, she clutched the skirt against her chest and dropped down onto the ground. Immersed in yards of soaked sarcenet, she sobbed like a lost child.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
David lunged toward the whirlpool that stormed and swelled around Leah. He grasped for her outstretched arms as the water engulfed her. An instant before the spring could swallow her, she caught his forearm with one hand. Her grip skidded down his skin, but he managed to capture her fingers.
Afraid the pool would drag him in as well, he hooked his foot around the trunk of a tree. He pulled with all his strength, praying he would not wrench her arm. She flailed and he grabbed for her other arm but missed getting hold. Then the fingers he’d already had in his grasp slipped free.
The maelstrom devoured her.
“Leah!”
He dropped flat on his abdomen and sliced his arms through the water. Around his head and shoulders, the surge tempered into a gurgling, and his hands struck mud at the bottom. As he probed the roots and rocks on the floor of the pool, the bubbling diminished into ripples. The tantrum had subsided.
Pale moonlight penetrated the water, outlining dark natural formations but no trace of Leah. He refused to accept the evidence and tumbled head-first into the spring, splashing madly. As he righted himself, his limbs scraped on stone and bark but met with nothing akin to human flesh.
She was gone.
He clenched his fists and balled up his body, ducking below the surface and opening his eyes. The blackness around him only grew quieter, and cool night air skimmed the top of his head. The depth of the pool did not even cover him.
Frustrated, he sprang back up, dousing the surrounding area with a huge splash. He lost his balance on the rutted floor and fell forward, elbows thudding into the bank.
Half draped on the ground and half submerged, he buried his face in the crook of his elbow. She was gone, irretrievably swept from his life. She had tried to tell him the truth, and he had refused to believe her. Her story had been outlandish, but he might have at least listened. Eventually, she would have told him enough to prove her case. Now the future had reclaimed her and thrown her two hundred years away from him--a distance he had no means of spanning.
He clasped his fingers behind his neck and squeezed his head between his arms. Not since his mother’s death had he felt so bereft. He wondered why Leah’s departure should affect him on the same scale as such a personal loss. Had he actually harbored some hope of bridging the social gap between them?
Yes. For the first time, he realized that her easy acceptance of his birth had indeed given him hope. Foolish or not, he had secretly longed to win her in the end. He had dreamed he might accompany her back to the States to reunite with her family. There, where the efforts a man made counted more than the station of his birth, he would have worked to build his own success. He would have sweat blood to prove himself worthy of her--to convince her to become his wife.
Instead, Fate thwarted him again. As with every other important aspect of his life, his efforts would amount to nothing. All of his abilities, his exertions, any scheme he could devise . . . none of it would bring her back. Preternatural powers had brought her to him and ripped her away again. Divine or demonic, such forces loomed beyond the realm of his influence. Disgusted, he collapsed, his arms spread out across the ground.
Something warm brushed his fingertips, and he jerked back. A metallic gleam, half hidden in the grass, cut through the darkness. He reached forward and picked up Leah’s guinea, apparently fallen from his pocket during the struggle to save her. Oddly enough, the gold still retained his body heat.
As he gripped the coin, he imagined the metal grew warmer. The gold began to feel almost hot. And the water around his legs started bubbling. He remembered that Leah had credited the guinea as a catalyst for her original transport, the means by which she’d wished herself back in time.
The metal flared hotter, and the waters of the pool increased in turbulence. Apparently, this strange spring accepted trinkets in turn for granting wishes. Now, he sensed the spring wanted him to sacrifice the guinea.
Did he dare ask for a return?
“I do want to be with her,” he whispered.
The water surged to his waist, and the heat of the coin intensified. The metal burned into his palm, forcing his hand open. The gold dropped into the water with a hissing wisp of steam. Then the ground fell out from beneath him, and his body plummeted into rumbling blackness.
He closed his eyes against the brew and stretched his arms above his head. Already, the water topped his reach. The pool no longer had a surface or a bottom, only endless rioting currents reverberating around his body.
By rights, he should have said his prayers then. He should have pleaded forgiveness for all his sins and prepared to meet his Maker--or the nothingness he often feared might comprise the next world. But Leah had survived the same experienc
e. She had braved this trial, and he would, too. He felt more excitement
than fear, more freedom than loss of control.
He soared, weightless, through the void, likening the effervescence around him to years bubbling past. The moment his lungs began to ache for air, his feet touched down on the bottom of the pool, and he burst through the surface, gasping.
The glare of afternoon sun blinded him, and he shielded his eyes, blinking to adapt to daylight. He had traveled through time! Gradually, he made out details in the surrounding scene: a huge oak crowding the pool, the springhouse in a wretched state of repair . . . and Leah, sitting before him in the grass. Soaked, bedraggled, her face swollen with tears, she gaped at him as though she had witnessed a ghost materializing.
To him, she couldn’t have looked more beautiful.
He sloshed out of the water, offering her an unsteady smile that she failed to return. A trace of doubt flickered through his mind. What if she didn’t want him in her world?
She sat frozen as he approached, her gaze never straying from his face. Only when he stood directly in front of her, looking down into her eyes, did the set of her features melt. Her brows tilted upward and her lower lip quivered. He had to bite his own to keep from responding in kind.
At last, she leapt to her feet and threw her arms around him. She let out a sob and squeezed his body against hers, pressing her hands high on his back, low, then in the middle, perhaps testing his corporeality.
“You really are here,” she choked out. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
His throat tightened as he returned her embrace. “I thought the same.”
“Incredible.” She gazed into his eyes, shaking her head. “How did it happen? I know you tried to pull me out of the spring, but you didn’t fall in with me, did you? I’ve already been here for . . . oh, I don’t know--five minutes. It seemed like a lifetime.”
“I gave your guinea back to the spring.” He stroked her hair to calm her, swallowing his own emotions. “I wanted to come after you. I suppose I wished to come, after a fashion.
“You made a wish with the coin? I wonder . . . Check your pockets to see if you still have the guinea.”
He gave his pockets a quick patting. “Empty.”
“You are the original wisher! And you got your wish? You wished to come here?”
To be precise, he’d wished to be with her, but he nodded.
The interest in her expression dissolved into anguish. “Oh, David, I’m sorry. I know what it’s like being thrown into a world where you’re an outsider. And you’ll probably have even more problems adjusting to this time than I did with yours. There’s so much for you to learn. And the coin is gone now! What will you do if you can’t get back?”
He stared down at her hair. The prospect of living in a future world scarcely frightened him, as long as the world were hers. “I suppose I will do what I have always done. I have never quite belonged and perhaps never will, but I shall work hard to make a place for myself.”
“But life today is so complicated. There are nuclear weapons, biological weapons, HIV . . .” She looked up at him, her brow creasing. “Military horrors and insidious disease. Evils that could wipe out the human race.”
“We faced the same sort of evils in the nineteenth century,” he said. Though her distress showed she cared about him, her feelings must not have run deep, or she would not mention these abstract concerns. Of course he would have to adapt to this era. He knew he would have to acclimate himself to changes in speech and manners, but he had expected to do as much when he moved to America, anyway. There would be history to learn, but only two centuries’ worth--little in comparison to the span back to classical times. Clothing styles would have changed, and perhaps a better carriage spring had been invented or a quicker horse bred. He anticipated those differences with pleasure.
“But the evils of your time don’t seem quite so evil.” She bowed her head, clenching his shirt so tightly water squeezed between her fingers. “Oh, David, you shouldn’t have come.”
Her words hurt. He wanted her to be glad about his arrival --no, more than glad, overjoyed. But he reminded himself he would prove his worth to her. He had that chance now.
“I regret that my presence should distress you,” he said, keeping his manner stiff. “I assure you I will bide my time here usefully and, I hope, happily. I don’t ask for your guidance, though some counsel would naturally be helpful. I hope you will at least consent to maintaining our acquaintance.”
“Of course I will!” Once more, she embraced him. “Oh, David, you haven’t got a clue, have you?”
“A clue to what?” To life in the this new century? But he did have many clues, provided through his knowledge of her. If other people of this time shared her spirit, her independence and her fair-mindedness, he looked forward to living amongst them.
“Never mind.” She detached herself from him and bent to pick up a small satchel from the ground. She slipped the bag over one shoulder and stretched her other arm around his waist. “Come on. I think we’ve arrived back on the same afternoon I first came to the spring. If I’m right, we may still be able to catch the bus back to London. Our tour guide is pretty laid-back. I think he’ll let you hitch a ride.”
A hint of apprehension tingled through his body. Her confusing words represented only the first of a world of matters he would not comprehend. He inhaled deeply. The sooner he started, the sooner he would learn. “As you wish.”
Brambles and trees had overtaken the path to the drive, so they wove their way through the woods. As they emerged onto the drive, David saw that a wooden fence had been erected along the side, and the approach itself sported new gravel. No, not new. Like the splintered fence rail they stepped over, the white pebbles showed evidence of neglect. The stones had scattered into the wayside, and tufts of grass sprouted through in spots. Clearly, the present owner employed a groundskeeper far less proficient than his father’s man.
His father. He stopped, staring down at a rut in the ground. Until that moment, he hadn’t thought about Solebury and Phoebe being gone. They would be dead--no, he would not think of them as such! They were simply on the other side of the abyss he had crossed. Perhaps they were lost to him or perhaps one day he would find himself restored to their time. For now, he had to concentrate on more urgent matters.
A strange sound, somewhat akin to the rumble of thunder, drew his notice to an astounding sight at the end of the drive. Some sort of enclosed carriage, gleaming like a polished onyx, sped toward them . . . with no horses leading it! The conveyance glided closer and halted abruptly beside them.
He marveled as a window, fashioned in crystalline curved glass, slid into the side of the carriage toward the rear. An elderly man, his white hair long and unruly, stared at him with eyes nearly as wild as his coiffure.
“Good Lord! Son, is that you?” He shot a glance to someone seated beside him. “I swear, Isabella, it is Davy. I knew he hadn’t drowned. What have I said all these years? Not such a swimmer as he!”
Leah leaned close to David’s ear, whispering, “He must be the current marquess, and I think he’s mistaken you for his son. I saw the viscount’s portrait, and you do resemble him. If you remember, I also thought you were him when I first saw you.”
The current marquess? David studied the man’s features, but wizened skin obscured any resemblance he may once have borne to the Traymores of the nineteenth century. Could the man truly be their descendant--his father’s descendant?
A mature woman leaned in front of the man, her snowy hair pulled into a bun. On meeting David’s gaze, her eyebrows rose in high arches. As she examined his features, the arches sank and drew together. She scanned his wet person from head to toe, eyes narrowing.
“Good afternoon, sir, miss.” Her thin lips formed a rigid ruby line. “I gather you’ve met with a mishap of some sort, though I can’t imagine why you’ve been wandering the grounds in costume. May I inquire what business you have at S
olebury House?”
“Isabella, it’s Davy! Don’t you recognize your own nephew?” The old gentleman tapped a cane on a divider separating him from another man in the front of the carriage. “Gerald, help me out of the car. I must see my son.”
David exchanged a look with Leah while the second man emerged. Dressed in an all-black costume marked by long trousers, Gerald moved with a certain efficiency that branded him a servant. He spared but a glance for the strangers, then moved to open the rear doors of the carriage.
“Davy, why are you drenched in water?” the old man asked as he struggled to quit the conveyance. He wore an ensemble similar to his coachman, except in a dull blue decorated with fine vertical stripes. On attaining his balance, he stopped, his pale gray eyes rounding. “Not the waters of the Mediterranean! Isabella, are we seeing an apparition? Lord help us! Do you see him as well?”
“I do, Jonathan, and he appears entirely earthbound to me.” The woman called Isabella joined them on the gravel, revealing spindly ankles beneath a flower-adorned dress cut to a brevity that startled David. She continued to observe him with fixed hazel eyes. “Sir, pray assure my brother you are not an apparition.”
He shook his head, happy to be able to assure his inquisitors something. “I am not.”
“Then you are alive. Praise be!” The old man began to shake alarmingly, prompting his sister and the servant to steady him by the elbows.
Isabella pursed her lips. “Jon, this young man cannot be your son. He does favor the boy, but his hair and eyes are both considerably darker. Besides, David would have celebrated his fortieth birthday this year. This gentleman can only be thirty at most.”
“But of course he is Davy.” He tried to slip away from his helpers, but they held him fast. “Tell your aunt, son. Her eyesight must be failing her.”
David glanced at Leah, but she only gave him a weak shrug. He turned back to the elderly man. “I fear you have mistaken me for another, sir. I am called David, but I am not the David you know. My name is David Traymore.”
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