She was the niece of a great chief, she reminded herself, forcing her features into an expression of calm dignity.
She was of Poundmaker's blood.
She was Dennis Quinlan's wife.
This woman—she looked at Paige and swallowed—this beautiful white woman was a visitor in her home, brought here by the man her husband thought of as a brother.
Therefore, Tahnancoa would treat the woman with respect, offer her food, hide the burning resentment she felt for all women like this, women with white skin and disdainful eyes and a certainty that Tahnancoa and all her people were nothing more than dirt beneath their feet.
They'd finished the delicious soup and hot biscuits a silent Tahnancoa set before them, followed by enamel mugs of steaming coffee and slabs of dried apple pie.
"Myles, I'd appreciate it if you'd come on out to the barn with me," Dennis said. "There's a heifer I'd like you to have a look at. She's not eating and I'm afraid I may lose her."
Paige felt a surge of panic as the cabin door closed behind the men, leaving her alone with the aloof Indian woman.
Tahnancoa hadn't said one unnecessary word to Paige since they'd arrived, more than two hours ago now. Apart from hello, and would you like more coffee, she hadn't once addressed Paige directly or even looked her way.
Twice, Paige tried to start a conversation, asking about a beautifully tanned fur rug on the floor, and complimenting Tahnancoa on the apple pie, asking how she'd made it, but both times Tahnancoa gave only the briefest of answers and then busied herself at the far end of the room.
The men seemed unaware of any undercurrents, but to Paige the tension in the room and the silence were part of a graphically clear message.
Tahnancoa resented her presence here.
It was obvious Dennis's wife didn't want her around, and had no intentions whatsoever of being friendly. Uncomfortable, Paige sat at the table, wondering how many eons it would be before Myles and Dennis finally reappeared.
The logs in the stove shifted; the silence seemed to stretch like taut elastic.
"I'll help you with these dishes." In desperation Paige got to her feet and started scraping them.
"I will clean them." The quiet words were more of a command than a suggestion.
It was now or never.
Paige went over to the other woman and laid her hand on her sleeve, trying to put into her smile all the warmth she could muster. "Please, Tahnancoa, let me help. See, where I come from, there's a golden rule— the person who cooks doesn't clean up the dishes."
Tahnancoa's huge, dark eyes studied Paige for what seemed a long time, and then a ghost of a smile flitted across her classically beautiful features.
"And do the men of your tribe agree to this rule?"
Paige grinned. "Actually, I think they were the ones who dreamed it up, after the women started making them do the cooking."
"The men cook?"
Paige could see the incredulity on Tahnancoa's face.
"Sometimes they do. Well, they did. I came from a very different place." She was getting into deep water here. "Far away." Each time she had to explain some difference between her time and this one, she felt herself grow tense, anticipating the look on people's faces, that wary, disbelieving skepticism.
"The customs were totally different where I came from. I lived in a city, and men's and women's work weren't as clearly defined as they are here. I was— am—a doctor. Many women in my time are doctors, lawyers, businesspeople. Policemen, even. Women have much more freedom than they do here." Paige waved a hand in frustration, talking more to herself now than to Tahnancoa.
"Damn, it's so difficult to even explain how much time changed everything, when no one even knows what the heck I'm talking about when I mention a car or an airplane."
Tahnancoa had listened in silence. She was studying Paige intently, and now she nodded. Her voice was warmer when she spoke, the stiff formality gone. "I think you are the woman Myles told of once, the one who walked between the worlds. Is that so? Are you this person?"
A shiver squirreled its way down Paige's spine. "Yes. Yes, I guess I am." Haltingly, she explained what had happened to her on that fall morning that now seemed so long ago and far away.
Tahnancoa nodded when Paige finished. "So you traveled from then to now," she said.
It was an accurate and poetic description of exactly what had happened to Paige. More than that, Tahnancoa seemed to accept without question that such a thing could happen.
Paige could only stare at this beautiful Indian woman, stupefied by her calm acceptance. Without any elaborate explanations, without the details everyone else who'd heard her story had demanded and then rejected, Tahnancoa simply believed.
Tears of gratitude welled up in Paige's eyes. "Oh, Tahnancoa, yes," she said when she could swallow the lump in her throat enough to speak at all. She was trembling with excitement, and overwhelming gratitude welled up in her. It was so good to be believed, to have what happened to her verified and accepted.
"Yes, I did exactly that, I walked between the worlds, from then to now. God, you're the very first person I've met who doesn't think I'm a total lunatic." She reached out and grasped Tahnancoa's hand between both of hers and squeezed it, trying to convey some of what she felt and couldn't express.
Tahnancoa nodded again, her expression calm and accepting. Her fingers curled around Paige's.
"Sometimes my people, too, walk between the worlds, Paige Randolph. Chosen ones, only."
It took a long moment for Paige to absorb what Tahnancoa had said. It sunk in slowly, the fact that there were others who knew about the phenomenon that had happened to her—who perhaps had even experienced it, as she had. She wasn't alone, she wasn't some kind of freak after all.
But it sounded as if Tahnancoa's people did it at will.
Paige's heart began to thunder against the wall of her chest as the ramifications slowly dawned on her.
If someone knew how to get from now to then .. . then maybe. ... oh, God .. . maybe…..
Maybe there was a way for her to go back.
Now and Then: Chapter Eleven
"Myles, Tahnancoa said that some of her tribe have actually experienced what I did, this time travel thing. It's like a miracle, meeting someone who's actually heard of this happening before."
They were on their way back to Battleford, and Paige's excited voice echoed like a bell across the frozen landscape.
The early winter twilight cast blue shadows on the snow. A wolf howled somewhere far away. That, and the jingle of the horses' harnesses and creaking of the saddles were the only sounds to break the silence, apart from Paige's monologue.
With part of his mind, Myles noted the tracks of a jackrabbit, the marks of a coyote chasing it.
He turned from the tracks to look at the woman riding beside him.
Paige's wild dark curls were escaping from beneath the blue woolen toque she'd pulled carelessly over them. She had a red scarf wound around her neck, and her face was pink from the frosty air. Her green eyes looked almost turquoise in this half-light, shining like gemstones against the creamy paleness of her skin.
She looked so very alive, so full of energy, vital and arresting against the frozen landscape. She rode carelessly astride, her skirt hiked up almost to her knees, an expanse of shapely, slender leg encased in thick black stocking showing between the top of her boots and the hem of her skirt.
She was totally unaware of his eyes on her. Her voice rose and fell, the words bubbling out of her like a stream, irrepressible.
"We didn't get much time to discuss any of it in detail, because you and Dennis came in just then, but it formed the basis for a friendship. Tahnancoa invited me to ride out and see her soon again, Myles, and I'm going to. I'm sure I can find my way back out here alone."
Alarm bells went off in his head. "Let me know when you want to come, and either I'll bring you, or if I'm busy I'll arrange for an escort. It's not safe for a woman to ride out here alone."
"Oh, phooey." She sounded disgusted. "What on earth could happen to me between Battleford and the Quinlans? The trail is deserted; it doesn't even take an hour to get out there. I certainly don't need a bodyguard just to ride across a few miles of deserted prairie."
"It's exactly because this trail's deserted that I'm concerned. There are dangers here you're not aware of. For instance, there's still a number of renegade Indians around," Myles warned.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Myles. Indians aren't going to bother scalping a woman riding out to visit her friend."
"There are also wild animals, Paige, and white men who are anything but civilized." Myles was losing patience. "You know nothing about defending yourself, you don't have a gun, and neither do you know how to shoot. Therefore, you need someone with you if you intend to travel alone in country like this." He was doing his best to be reasonable, to hold on to his temper. Why did she always argue with him? He was an officer in the North West Mounted; he was accustomed to being obeyed. He ran his hospital wards with an iron hand. None of the men assigned to him would ever defy him the way she did constantly.
"But I don't want anyone with me," she insisted, her chin jutting out. "I want to be able to visit Tahnancoa by myself. I want to talk to her alone, so we can both relax and get to know one another. I want to learn about her people and their customs. I need to know about this traveling between the worlds. Don't you see, Myles? This could be my only chance to get back to the nineties, where I belong. This could be a way for me to go home."
He felt a sinking sensation inside. Finally, he understood her excitement. He hadn't realized till right now where all this talk about Tahnancoa and some obscure ceremony her tribe performed was leading.
He should have understood right away, but he hadn't. He hadn't wanted to, he admitted to himself, because he didn't want to think about that part of Paige, the peculiar mystery that surrounded her background, the unimaginable place and time she insisted she'd come from.
The cold air seemed suddenly to turn his blood to ice, and a shiver ran through him. He didn't want her to try to return to wherever it was she came from. He didn't see her often, but on a subconscious level he was aware every moment of every day that she was nearby, that if he chose to, he could climb on Major and be at her door in ten minutes.
He didn't want to lose her before he'd had a chance to really know her.
"Myles, thank you so much for taking me today. It's been wonderful. I don't know when I've enjoyed a day more."
They'd reached her house. It was almost full dark now, the short winter twilight fading quickly into night. A few stars were already out, and yellow lanterns shone in windows. Paige's house looked cold and empty, its windows dark, its chimney without smoke.
She'd thought for the last half hour of inviting him in for a makeshift supper, but it would take her a good hour just to get the stove lit and a kettle boiling. There was some soup leftover from last night's supper, and half a loaf of bread, but not much else.
He got down from his horse and caught her as she slid from Minnie's back. It had been a long ride, and her legs were a trifle unsteady. She leaned on his strong frame for a delicious moment, taking a little longer than was absolutely necessary before she reluctantly straightened.
He smelled wonderful, of wet wool and tobacco and fresh air. His breath held a hint of the hot rum drink Dennis had given him just before they left.
"Go ahead in," he ordered, as if they came home together like this every evening. "I'll tend to the horses and then bring some wood in and get the stove lit for you."
She lit the candle she'd learned to keep by the door, and in a few moments she had the gas lantern glowing. It was a relief to find that it wasn't too cold in the house; the fires she'd banked must have burned for most of the day.
Myles chopped an armload of kindling and soon had her kitchen range and the fireplace sending out waves of heat. It felt both strange and exciting to have this tall, broad shouldered man in his red serge tunic making himself at home in her kitchen.
"I've got a pot of barley soup," Paige suggested. "Want to stay and have some with me?"
"Thanks. Soup sounds good."
"Don't get too excited," she warned with a wry grin. "I'm not much of a cook. You're in luck, though, this is the first pot of soup I haven't scorched."
Paige heated the soup and put it on a tray along with bread and a lump of cheese, and they ate the simple meal in front of the fireplace in the parlor. They talked easily, of Dennis and his farm, of the small surgery Paige had set up in the other room.
She'd given Myles what she called a guided tour, and she'd been elated when he approved of what she'd done to make her surgery both efficient and comfortable.
Now, Myles sat in an armchair, and Paige, in her stocking feet, pulled her legs up on the settee, covered them with a crocheted afghan, and folded her arms on her bent knees. The lantern light spilled a soft incandescent glow over the room, an intimate glow. Sparks shot up the chimney from the logs Myles occasionally stirred with the poker, and the old clock on the mantel seemed to tick in slow motion.
"So now that I've given you every detail of Helen Gillespie's D and C, tell me what's been going on up at the hospital."
Myles recited a list of the injuries he'd treated in the past week: horse bites, frostbitten lips from blowing the bugle in below zero temperatures, old gunshot wounds, tapeworms, lumbago, removing a constable's toenails after he'd been stepped on by a horse.
Paige couldn't help it. She dissolved in giggles at the ailments he listed.
"I don't quite see why you find such matters entertaining," Myles teased, giving her a quizzical smile. "The poor patients certainly didn't find them at all amusing."
"I know, and I shouldn't laugh. It's just that I get a mental picture of a modern clinic in Vancouver being presented with a man suffering from, say, horse bites," she tried to explain. "My God, Sam's eyes would fall out of his head.”
"Sam?" Myles's voice was carefully casual.
"Doctor Sam Harris, my partner." Paige stared into the flames, her head resting on her bent knees. "Well, he used to be my partner. I suppose by now he's taken legal steps to take over the clinic. It's what I would have done, if he'd disappeared like I have." Her voice was nostalgic, but she was surprised to find she didn't feel dismal when she thought about the clinic and Sam. It was just too comfortable here with Myles tonight to miss that other life as much as she usually did.
"And was he in love with you, this Sam Harris?"
Paige turned from studying the flames to look at Myles. He was staring into his empty coffee cup as if it held all the answers to the universe.
"Yes, I suppose he was."
"And you? Were you in love with him, Paige?" He looked at her now, his gray eyes inscrutable in the firelight.
She shook her head, feeling her riotous mass of curls tickle against her neck. "Nope. I often wished I could have been, though. Sam was—is—a great guy; he'd have made a wonderful husband. But I didn't love him." Because he wasn't you, she wanted to blurt out. I never felt this giddy, delicious sense of excitement with Sam, this awful desire to be in his arms, this need to have him know me, to know him, through and through, the way I do with you.
She wanted Myles to understand who and what she was. She wanted honesty and truth between them.
"I've only fallen in love once before in my life," she began, unaware of what she'd just confessed. "I was seventeen, in my first year of university."
She could feel Myles's eyes on her, but she didn't look at him. It was easier to stare into the flames.
"He was a dashing medical student six years older than I was, named Nick Morrison, and neither of us knew much about birth control, because within two months I was pregnant with his baby. He wanted me to get an abortion, but I couldn't do it. A baby—"
She swallowed and tried again. "God, I just couldn't destroy my baby. She was already a person to me. Nick was furious. I guess he was scared too."
Even after all the years, it was difficult to tell the story. Paige cleared her throat, still avoiding Myles's eyes. "I confided in a friend who knew Nick. She called his parents, and then things got messy. They were very moral people. They pressured him into marrying me by threatening to cut off their financial support. He needed it; he wanted to be a doctor. I was too scared, too young, and too much in love to realize what a mistake it all was. All I could think of was that we could work it out, that at least our baby would have a family."
Paige remembered the agony of loving Nick, the sleepless nights when he didn't call or come home, the terrible day she'd seen him kissing another student in the library, the lace panties she found in the pocket of his tweed jacket. She was wearing enormous maternity briefs herself by that time. The panties had been pink, extra small.
"I soon realized he didn't love me. My life began to center around my baby."
She remembered the night her labor began, and even after all these years, she shuddered. As usual, Nick was nowhere around, and even those first pains were agony, with hardly a minute between. She'd managed to call a cab, stagger out to meet it.
The entire thing was a nightmare. Her obstetrician was out of town, and the young doctor who attended her was inexperienced.
"They couldn't locate Nick that night. My pelvis was small, and my labor went on and on. The baby was finally delivered by emergency c-section. I was unconscious. When I came to, they told me she was stillborn, a perfectly formed little girl who just couldn't seem to—to breathe. I screamed and carried on until they let me see her, hold her for a minute or two. She was an exceptionally big baby, which is why I had so much trouble. She would have been so beautiful." Paige hadn't cried for her daughter in a long time, but tears came now. "I still remember exactly how she looked. Oh, Myles, even for those few moments I loved her so."
She was aware of Myles moving, coming to sit beside her on the narrow settee. His muscular arm came around her shoulders, dragging her close to him, and it was infinitely comforting to rest her cheek against the rough wool of his scarlet tunic.
Now and Forever: Time Travel Romance Superbundle Page 17