Spirit of the Ruins

by Jenny Lykins

  Suddenly her eyes widened and she slid from the bed. Her long, gentle fingers cupped his face, felt for a fever, then she looked at him as if trying to look right into his soul.

  “I have heard of soldiers from both sides returning from the war...changed…by the horrors they witnessed and endured. Heaven knows Stephen changed.” She blinked hard and seemed to look inside herself for a moment. “Some have never even come home, either by choice or they have blocked out the memory of who they are.” When he opened his mouth to speak she pressed a finger to his lips. “Whatever you have gone through, Tylar, we will conquer it together. We have so much to be thankful for, especially now.”

  Every word out of her mouth only made his confession tougher.

  He stepped away from her hands, away from the touch that shook the very foundation of his morals and resolve.

  “Callen.” He rubbed the back of his neck and studiously avoided looking at her. “I’m not Tylar. I mean, I am Tylar...well, Ty...but I’m not your husband.” He looked at her then, and wished that he hadn’t.

  Confusion, compassion, and something awfully close to pain warred in her eyes. She looked so small; fragile as spun glass.

  “You have no memory of our wedding?”

  “No, you see, that’s just it!” He took two strides back to her and held her hands in his. “I’m not that Tylar. I just look like him. I don’t know what happened to him, but he’s not me!”

  He knew exactly how insane he sounded, but he couldn’t stop now. He couldn’t not tell her the truth…or at least part of it.

  “Come,” she said softly, then pulled him to the nightstand that held the telling photograph, picked up the silver frame with loving care, then handed it to him as she guided him toward a cheval glass. “Look, darling.” She stood on tiptoe behind him and turned his face toward the mirror. “This man in the picture is you. Whatever horrid thing caused you to forget, we will defeat it together.” She came around to face him then, so soft and beautiful in the lamplight he had to force himself not to pull her into his arms. “You’ve memory of me, Tylar. You called me by name. And you found your way home, something many soldiers have not done.”

  He took a deep breath, let his head fall back, and stared at the high ceiling. How could he tell her he’d just popped in from the future? Gotten curious, walked through a secret passage in a free-standing pillar and came out on the other side in...

  “What year is it?” He continued to stare at the ceiling, knowing he couldn’t face the confusion in her eyes. After a long silence, he felt her snuggle her head against his chest and wrap warm, desperate arms around his waist, holding him as if she could keep the obvious insanity at bay.

  “1867,” she said, her breath warm through his tee shirt, her arms holding tighter, as though she expected him to bolt. “The seventh of April, 1867.”

  Insane. He had to be insane. He wasn’t standing in a non-existent bedroom, two years after the Civil War ended, wrapped in the arms of the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on, looking exactly like her husband. And on his birthday, no less.

  No, it wasn’t happening.

  He looked down, tilted her chin up with his knuckle until their gazes met, until his heart raced.

  Maybe there was something to be said for insanity.

  He shook off the thought. Insane or not, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her the truth about who he was. He needed to get out of there, back to his own time, away from her, and her scent and her touch, so he could think clearly.

  The porcelain clock on the mantel chimed midnight.

  “You must be exhausted,” he managed to say through a throat gone dry. He set the framed picture back on the nightstand and led her to the bed. “You need sleep. Things always look better after a good night’s sleep. Yes, sleep. Sleep is what you need.”

  He was rambling, but desperation did that to him. He tossed back the quilted bedspread and helped her climb into bed. She slipped off her dressing gown and went willingly, then sent his blood stampeding to one destination when she tried to pull him in after her.

  “You’ll not leave me, will you?”

  “Leave you?” Oh, great. His voice cracked like a thirteen year old’s.

  She held his hand, then let go and settled back against the pillows, her hair a dark, curly cloud against white linen, her eyes tortured, waiting for his answer.

  “Of course I won’t leave you,” he heard himself saying.

  Well, what the hell else could he say with her giving him a look like that? He paced for a minute, waiting while she turned out the lamp, waiting for her to drop off to sleep. He’d just wander quietly around the room until she dozed off, then he’d wander right on down to the cellar and—

  “Will you hold me?”

  He froze in mid-step.

  “Um...what?”

  “Hold me? Just...hold me.”

  Oh, that would be a stupid, stupid thing to do. Masochistic. Totally avoidable, self-inflicted torture.

  She scooted closer as he stretched out atop the covers. Her soft body molded to his, her warmth penetrating the linen sheets, the denim of his jeans, his cotton tee shirt. Her hand resting on his chest sent little electric waves of heat surging while she nestled her head against his shoulder. The silk of her hair caressed his arm and he swallowed hard against the storm brewing in every nerve of his body.

  “Tylar?” Her breath, so close, fanned across his cheek.

  “Hmm?” he managed to rasp, finding human speech impossible without benefit of moisture in the throat.

  “What manner of clothing is this?” Her hand skimmed across his tee shirt and down to his waistband and belt. It took half of his willpower not to jump away, and the other half not to roll atop her. He settled for sucking in his breath and letting it out slowly.

  “They’re...something new. Everyone wears them where I—” Too late, he realized he’d ventured into territory he wanted to avoid.

  She snuggled closer, curling a long, firm leg up over his thigh, inflicting infinite torture. He stared at the shadowy underside of the mosquito netting canopy and forced a ragged breath in and out of his lungs. Breathe, McCall. Just breathe. Think about...baseball!

  “Where have you been?”

  “What?” Oh, why couldn’t she just go to sleep and let him get the hell out of there? Every little movement she made sent lightning bolts ripping around inside him.

  “Where have you been?” she repeated, this time with a little catch in her voice.

  He deserved the shame that suddenly swept over him at that sound. Here he was, concerned about himself and the way one little wiggle from her could heat his blood to steaming, and he hadn’t given one thought to her.

  As far as she was concerned, she was holding a long lost husband. One she’d thought had died in the war. How long had it been since she’d been held by that husband? How long since she’d done what she so obviously wanted to do now?

  Against his better judgement, he tucked her closer to him and nuzzled the top of her silky head.

  “I’ve been farther away than you can ever imagine,” he answered truthfully. “Let’s rest now. I promise to tell you everything. Later.”

  Much later, he thought. The first thing he had to do was get back to the cellar and see if the column still opened with a view of a late model Explorer. Something he planned to do the minute she fell asleep.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Callen felt his body finally, slowly relax, from a bristling wild cat ready to bolt to that of a man drifting to sleep against his will. He’d fought the sleep for hours. She heard it in the way he breathed, felt it in the tension of his muscles. She had lain awake with him - in silence - for fear that if she slept he would disappear back into her dreams, and if she spoke he would again deny that he was her husband.

  She vowed one thing as she lay there, wrapped in the heavenly strength of his arms. Whatever demons plagued him, they would banish them together, as man and wife.

  She took a deep, ind
ulgent breath, breathing in the scent of the man she’d loved since childhood. The boy she’d loved since he’d blackened Petey Ward’s eye for pushing her into a mud puddle. The boy who’d arrived, motherless, with his overseer father, to live in the small house on the grounds, and her heart had ached at the thought of what it would be like to grow up without a mother. Heaven knew she’d missed her own mother in the five years since her death.

  She took the chance to snuggle closer, to melt into his warm, pliant body, as she had so longed to do even before their one night together. In his sleep he rolled toward her and gathered her against him, draping a leg encased in that rough blue fabric over her thigh.

  Her heart sighed. Lying in Tylar’s arms was like floating in a warm, dark pool on a starry night. Totally embraced. Totally safe. The heavens sparkling down into her very soul. Her world might right itself now that he was home, if only his behavior wasn’t so odd.

  Where had he been the two years since the war had ended? Because of her efforts to help reunite soldiers with their families, she knew, better than most that men were still finding their way home. Had he, too, been on the road all this time? Had he suffered an injury and spent time recuperating?

  Perhaps an injury to his head?

  The feel of the body contoured to hers, strong and healthy, gave argument to any type of prolonged illness. She edged closer against the hard, solid length of him. Most certainly, if he were any healthier... But no, she could not allow her thoughts to turn in that direction. Not yet.

  He rolled over onto his back, pulling her with him so that her head lay on his shoulder, their legs entwined, her arm across the warmth of his stomach.

  Her blood sang in her veins. This, and so much more, was what she’d dreamed of for years. Dreamed of, and then despaired of ever having. A knot of joy lodged in her throat. Hot tears welled in her eyes. All would be well now. The love of her life had returned to her. Together they would heal the wounds he carried with him. His friendship would turn into the love of a husband.

  And then, when she felt he was ready, together they would reclaim their son.

  *******

  He hadn’t had one of these dreams since he’d been a teenager. He could actually feel all sorts of soft curves and warm, womanly body parts pressed against him in ways that made a guy want the dream to go on forever. He took a deep breath and sighed. He could even smell her light, flowery perfume. Had he ever had a dream with a scent in it before?

  He rolled over, lingering in the dream, hugging the pillow to his chest.

  The pillow hugged back.

  His eyes flew open, scanned the white, gauzy film of mosquito netting, and the truth hit him like an icy rain.

  Sleepy, dark chocolate brown eyes stared up at him, smiling, as the owner of “the voice” snuggled deeper into the nest of his shoulder he’d so conveniently created for her.

  You ass! his mind screamed. How could you have fallen asleep? How could you do this to her? What if the portal has closed?

  “Good morning,” she murmured with a smile, then raised up on one elbow. Her dark hair fell across his chest in a tousled, shiny curtain, the silky feel of it planting the seed of a moan deep in his lungs. When her nightgown slipped off one shoulder the moan broke from his throat, rumbling low against his best efforts to stifle it.

  “Good...ahem...good morning,” he said, turning the moan into part of a long, lazy stretch. He had to get away from her, for the good of them both. He had to get to that door in the column.

  “I feared you would never wake.” She happily settled back into the crook of his shoulder, then tortured him by tracing imaginary swirls on his chest. The tip of her teasing, sensuous finger burned a trail through the thin cotton of his shirt. “You have ever risen early, except the morn after our wedding.”

  Her words tossed even more ice water on his muddled, totally distracted mind. Unfortunately, the cold shock didn’t extend to any organ other than his brain.

  She’s going to expect a husbandly reaction, he realized with more than a little panic. A long-lost-husbandly reaction. The fact that his body was obligingly cooperating with her plans didn’t help any.

  “Er...I was pretty tired last night,” he said in lame explanation.

  “That is to be expected,” she said with sympathy. “You said yourself that you traveled a very long distance.” When her fingers continued to trace lower, toward the leather belt on his Levis, more than just his stomach jerked with her touch.

  Statistics! Think statistics! McGwire beat Maris’s home run record in ’98. Pete Rose broke Ty Cobb’s hits in ’86. The Red’s swept the Series in ’90. Why the hell isn’t this working—

  “Good mornin’, sleepyhead. You ain’t feelin’ poorly, is...”

  A regal, elderly black woman stood in the now open doorway, holding a tray, her mouth as wide open as her eyes.

  Ty didn’t know whether to curse her or bless her. He’d been caught, in bed, with this angel of a woman, but the intrusion had at least halted Callen’s torturous explorations at just beneath his waistband.

  While he tried with frantic desperation to concoct an excuse that would save Callen’s reputation, she leapt joyously from the bed and grabbed the tray of rattling china from the old woman’s hands.

  “Magnolia! Is it not a miracle? Our Tylar has come home to us! Stephen was wrong when he said he’d been killed! Just look!”

  Callen dropped the breakfast tray onto the nearest table and jumped back into the bed beside Ty, smoothing his hair, touching his chest, his face, his arms, as though proving to herself he truly did exist.

  The words “he’d been killed” echoed through Ty’s mind, raising dozens of questions he knew instinctively would make things go from bad to worse.

  He lay there, frozen, like a bug under a microscope, waiting for his brain to tell him the logical thing to do.

  Logical? Hell.

  “Magnolia, when my sister finally deigns to grace us with her presence, tell her I—”

  A tall, lean man with hair and eyes as dark as Callen’s appeared in the doorway. One of his riding gloves fell to the floor, unnoticed, as he gaped at the cozy couple on the bed.

  Callen gasped, “Stephen!”

  Oh yeah. From bad to worse.

  The man, obviously Callen’s brother, narrowed his eyes as his face went white, then deepened to a dark, dark red.

  “You, sir, are a dead man,” he said with quiet calm.

  From the revelation of moments earlier, Ty wasn’t quite certain whether this proclamation was a threat, or simply a statement the man believed to be true. He swung his legs from the bed and rose slowly.

  “You must be Callen’s brother,” he said as he advanced, his hand outstretched in friendship. “I know this looks bad, but I can expla—”

  The remaining glove in Stephen’s hand smacked across Ty’s cheek with a solid sting.

  “I demand satisfaction!”

  Well, that answered one question.

  “Look,” Ty said through gritted teeth, “nothing hap—”

  He caught Stephen’s wrist a split second before the leather glove made contact with his other cheek.

  “Don’t…even think about it.”

  Stephen’s eyes glittered with rage. “Choose your weapon,” he said, his voice a hiss.

  Ty cocked his head and blinked. The guy was serious!

  He tossed Stephen’s hand away with a laugh. “Get real, man. I’m not going to fight you, let alone try to kill you.”

  “Stop this!” When Callen jumped between the two of them, her brother snarled like a rabid dog. “Look at him, Stephen,” she pleaded. “Tylar’s come home!”

  Stephen’s glare slowly moved from Ty to Callen.

  “I saw him die, Callen. I stood at his grave. Damnation, I buried him! Whoever this man claims to be, he is not your husband.”

  “I told her that last night!” Ty wanted to suck back the words the minute they left his mouth. It was going to hit the fan now.

&
nbsp; Her brother’s eyes widened as his spine went rigid.

  “You slept with my sister under my roof, and you stand there and admit you are not her husband? You blackguard!”

  With Callen between them, Stephen could only hurl the glove at Ty’s face. Ty caught it before it cleared Callen’s shoulder.

  “Who is he, Callen? One of your strays you work so hard to save?” Stephen never took his glare from Ty. “He shows up on the doorstep, resembling your dead husband, and you think me fool enough to believe you are no widow? I saw Tylar McCall die on the battlefield at Pittsburg Landing, and I’ll see this one die for crawling into your bed!”

  Ty couldn’t believe his ears. Shiloh! The battle at Pittsburg Landing had come to be known as Shiloh, after a church on the battleground. He’d driven the couple of hours there from Memphis dozens of times, taking hundreds of pictures, not knowing why the area intrigued him so.

  Somewhat like the ruins had.

  A chill hummed through his blood when he realized something else. The battle at Shiloh had been fought April sixth and seventh, 1862. He remembered the date because the second day of the battle was his birthday. Yesterday. The day he walked through an antebellum column and into the past.

  He scrubbed his face, burying his shock, his palm rasping against two day’s growth of beard. This whole situation just got weirder and weirder. He didn’t bother to hazard a guess as to what day of the battle Callen’s husband was killed. He had a feeling none of this was mere coincidence.

  Suddenly his blood turned to ice in his veins. What if that day, April seventh...his birthday, the day he arrived in the past, the day Callen’s husband was killed...what if that was the only day the window in time opened?

  “Choose your weapon, I say!” Stephen’s bellow brought Ty back to the problem at hand. “I will see you dead at dawn.” He turned and glared at Callen. “And then I will see you wed to Hennessey.”

  Ty’s mind raced as this scene seemed to play out before him in slow motion. He had to get back to his time, to Daniel, but could he leave here, after putting Callen in a position unforgivable in the eyes of her brother? What would he do to her? Obviously marry her off to someone she had no desire to marry. His mind irrationally, inexplicably, rejected the thought of her with someone else.