“It’s not a good reason, no.” Maud’s voice was soft. “But it is the reason Gisborne behaves the way he does.” Her lips turned up into a weak smile. “He was a good man when I knew him. He just needed some direction to stop the jealousy and self-entitlement from driving him. I thought I’d been making a difference…”
“Until he acted with the ultimate sense of entitlement.” When he kissed Eliza Thatcher. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “You probably didn’t need to hear that.” There was nothing she could say to make Gisborne seem reasonable.
She obviously got the same feeling because she dropped the subject, watching me a moment before returning to our previous conversation. “I think you are sad. If you weren’t, you’d get out of bed and spend time with your family.”
That was a reprimand if ever I’d heard one. She didn’t get to pass judgement on me just because she was living my life. “My family don’t care about me. Never have. Why would I want to spend time with them?”
“I’ve lived with them for a while now, I know more than you think. I know they love you, a lot.” She was quiet and self-assured, but not in a way that felt like she was rubbing her knowledge in my face. I’d expected her to be a spoilt brat. Like Eliza Thatcher.
However, she was wrong. Especially where Dad was concerned. “If they did, they wouldn’t have replaced me with someone else the moment I left.” My angry words were at total odds with her calm demeanor.
Maud sighed. “Look at it from your mother’s eyes for a moment. Time travel is foreign to her. She knew about your dad doing it, but she never really believed it happened. Then your dad sent you away without giving either of you the chance to say goodbye. Your mother already knows she’s neglected you these past two years since the accident, but she always thought she’d spend time with you soon, once Josh was better. Then you left and she had no chance.”
Still didn’t mean she should replace me.
“She blames herself. She thinks she should have known what your father planned that day.” Maud ran her fingers through her hair, pulling gently when they stuck in her curls. “What I’m saying is that she did everything she could think of to get you back. She even spent two weeks pretending my impersonation of you had her fooled.” Her smile was uncertain.
“Let me guess, you just couldn’t help yourself and told her who you really were?” I was wrong to be pissed at her for impersonating me. She’d done what she needed to survive in a foreign place. I’d done the same thing in her time. It was starting to feel like everything made me upset and angry these days.
Maud shrugged. “Josh kept saying I wasn’t you, that I couldn’t read his book the way you did. I thought my time was up, that they’d demand answers and I’d be back on the streets. I told them who I was, and what year I’d come from, and they told me I could stay. It was like I had a second chance.”
“How lovely for you all.” I was in full-on bitch-mode tonight and I didn’t seem to be able to stop.
Maud sighed. She gave me another of her never-ending stares, probably ready to tell me to lose the attitude. “Carrie feels indebted to you for letting her leave that morning. Josh misses you like crazy. And your Dad, everything he did was to make your life in the past easier.”
Somehow, I’d come to the same conclusion when I was eight hundred years away. Now I was back here, I didn’t see it that way at all. “They might say that, but they all have a funny way of showing it.”
“They’ve been trying for two months to get you out of bed to show you exactly that.”
Two months. It didn’t feel like I’d been back that long. The days and nights all melted together. “You think I’m being unfair.”
A gentle breeze blew a few strands of her long hair across her face and she flicked them away. “No. I think you’re being a lot nicer than I would be in the same situation. I also think you’re not seeing things clearly.”
She might have a point. Staying in bed for weeks on end didn’t exactly scream I see why you did that.
Maud curled her feet up beneath her. “You think you’re angry at your dad for sending you away. I think you’re angry at him, and at Tabitha, for taking away your choices.”
“Speaking from experience?” Still with the snark. I needed to stop. Next time I spoke, I’d make a conscious effort to reign it in.
“A little. And because it doesn’t take much to imagine how I’d feel if someone ripped me away from my life here and sent me home.”
Was I really playing the victim? It wasn’t intentional. I didn’t even know where the weeks had gone. “Do you like it here?”
“I do now. It was difficult to begin with.”
I could relate to that. The differences between our times were huge, yet we’d both been dropped in and forced to survive. “Where did you live? Before you came here?” She’d been here two years before she found my family.
“On the streets of London, mostly.” She looked past me, off into the distance. “Sometimes I went to a shelter. Sometimes I worked in exchange for board, cleaning, looking after children, whatever it took. But I never felt like I was in the right place. Always felt like I was searching for something. Or someone.” She turned to me. “That’s why, when I saw your family were looking for you, I had to contact them. Anything was better than life on the streets.”
I could have had the exact same struggle had I not found Rob that first day. “How was it you came to this time? I had to have a tether, to put me in the right place.” I held up my wrist where the coin Dad gave me on the day I went back in time was tied with a piece of leather.
Her smile was faint. “I found this…stick, when I was a kid.” Her lips quirked. “Or I might have been riffling through Father’s desk and taken it from there.”
I frowned. “A stick?”
“That’s what I called it. It fascinated me. There was a button I could push on one end, and it felt so lovely and cool in hand. The day I took it was the first day I met Gisborne. He was the best-looking boy I’d ever seen, and he liked me so much that I thought the stick must bring good luck. I expected Father to discover it missing and ask for it back. He never did, and I carried it everywhere. For luck.”
I nodded, still not following.
“I had it with me the night I went to the Big Tree. It’s only since I’ve been in your time that I discovered I was carrying a Parker pen. Then, when I met your father, I discovered it was his, left behind by accident in the twelfth century. He knew my father.”
“No wonder you never felt like you were in quite the right place. You were tethered to Dad.”
She nodded.
“Why didn’t you go back home? If life was so hard before you met my family.” She’d stuck around a lot longer than I would have in her situation.
“Are you kidding? There are so many possibilities here. Things I couldn’t do in my time because I’m a woman, and because so much hasn’t been invented yet. I want to see everything, go everywhere, learn everything. I can’t do any of that if I return home. You know what it’s like there. Here, I have so much freedom. And there’s no sexism—or not much, anyway.”
I giggled. Rob hadn’t been like that, but I had seen it. “True. But there are no guns in your time.”
She nodded. “Yes, but swords.” She made an exaggerated shivering motion. “No internet back then, either.”
“You know, I really don’t miss the internet. There’s probably only one thing I do miss.”
“Hot running water?”
I laughed. She had it in one.
“And baths,” we both said together.
It felt good to laugh. It had been too long.
Maud held up the book on her lap, her eyes serious. “I had my journal sent over from my storage locker. The one I wrote Tabitha’s warning in.”
I gave it a side-long glance. If she’d found something good, something that meant I could go back to Rob, she would have come right out with it.
“There are th
ings in here you’ll want to know.”
“But not good things? Right?”.
She shrugged one shoulder. “Some are good, some aren’t.” Her raised eyebrows told me I should hear them all, whether I wanted to or not.
And I didn’t. But her expression also said something else. It told me I’d been waiting for a choice, complaining because Dad and Tabitha took mine away when they sent me back in time, and again when Tabitha brought me home. Now I had one, and if I chose not to hear what that journal said, I would keep being a victim. Complaining about what had been done to me rather than standing up and doing something for myself.
I never behaved that way when I was with Rob. It was time I started acting like the person I was around him, whether he was nearby or not. Make a choice, then make it happen. It was what I needed to do.
I nodded. “Tell me.”
Maud looked over her shoulder at the house. The desk lamp in Dad’s study was on. I hadn’t noticed before. “You need to tell your father about those dreams. Then we’ll talk about my journal and make a plan from there.” She nodded in the direction of his study. “Come on.”
FOUR
I hadn’t been in Dad’s study for years. I used to hang out here for hours every week when I was younger. We’d sit on his brown leather couch together and talk about school, or archery, or friends, while we researched people Dad knew in the twelfth century. After Josh’s accident, this room became Dad’s retreat. His place to get away from everyone and everything. His place to get away from me.
It still looked the same as it always had. Warm, calm and inviting with the dark red walls. The room was meticulously tidy, except for the few papers he was currently reading on the huge wooden desk in the center of the room.
“Maud said I should tell you about my dreams.” I poked my head through the door, leaving the rest of my body outside. “Maud’s here, too.” I added the last sentence in case he was planning to turn me away. I had a feeling he wouldn’t do that in front of Maud.
Dad looked up and nodded as if it wasn’t the middle of the night, and I always dropped in for chats about things like dreams. He gestured to the brown leather couch beside the window and took the chair opposite. Maud followed me into the room and sat in the other chair.
“Before we do this, I have two questions.”
Dad’s head tilted to one side. “Sure. Anything.” His beard was grayer than I recalled. His hair, too.
“Why did you link my return to this time to Gisborne’s death?” I would never be sorry he was dead—not after everything he’d done to Rob—what I hated was that Dad had said he must die before I could return home. What sort of person did that make him?
Dad shook his head. “I didn’t ask for Gisborne to die. I asked for revenge, for Avery’s son. Rob must have felt he had it for the magic to allow you to come home.”
I nodded. At least Dad wasn’t a murderer.
My other question was something I’d wanted to know since the moment Dad told me he was sending me to twelfth century England. I’d never had the chance to ask. Before I bared my soul to him, I needed him to offer the same.
“Why are you so invested in Robin Hood?”
A frown creased his forehead. “Because it involves you, of course.”
I shook my head. It might involve me now, but it hadn’t when he sent me back, and he hadn’t known for certain it ever would. “Not now. Before.”
“You know this already.” Dad gave a weak smile. “I owe a debt to his father.”
“Because you ran on the night he was killed?”
He nodded, his lips stretching into a thin line.
He seemed so interested in the lives of the people of that time, almost to the point of obsession. There had to be more to it. “Is that all?”
Dad got up from his chair, walked over to the window and stared out into the darkness. “I never wanted to tell you, but you deserve to hear.” He was silent for a long time. Maud and I waited, hands in our laps. When he finally spoke, it was the last thing I expected him to say. “I loved him. Avery Woodhurst.”
I stared at his back, unsure if he meant he loved Avery like a brother, or as something more. “Because he was such a good friend?”
“Because of that, yes. But…” He took a deep breath. “I was in love with him, too.”
My mouth fell open. I glanced at Maud to find her eyes were wide. I didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t the usual sort of dad and daughter conversation.
Dad turned, his eyes falling on me. “Your mother knows.”
I wasn’t sure I could make my voice work. “Knows what, exactly?” That they’d been lovers? That Dad didn’t love her?
“How I felt about him. That I was once in love with…a man.” He looked at his feet like he thought him loving a man might upset me.
It didn’t. As long as it was history. As long as it wasn’t hurting Mom. “Do you still love him?”
“It’s been a lot of years, Maryanne. There will always be a place in my heart for him, but I am no longer in love with him. I love your mother. However, his death and the way it happened, has made me take an extra interest in the lives of the people that were there that night. And their families. I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner.” His voice dropped to a whisper.
He should have. It would have made understanding everything that had come since so much easier. “What happened that night?” What I knew of Dad’s last day in the past took on new meaning with his confession. I couldn’t imagine leaving Rob to die while I ran to the safety of a different time.
He sighed. “Avery and I were traveling back to Woodhurst from Nottingham. We were late leaving because his horse had thrown a shoe. In hindsight, we should have left the next day rather than riding through the forest at night. We stopped in the dark at a stream deep in the forest to let the horses rest. The moonlight fell across Avery’s face, and he smiled at me. I couldn’t stop myself, and I told him how I felt about him.” He shook his head. “I never should have done it. Avery was married and I had no business saying any of those things. It was just…impossible to keep them inside any longer.”
“He didn’t know?” Because that was a pretty big confession to make out of the blue.
Dad shrugged. “He probably did. We’d never talked about—or acted on—our feelings before then, though, if that’s what you’re asking.” He turned back to the window again.
I glanced at Maud. Her mouth was a small circle. I imagined I looked just as shocked.
“Avery resisted my words. He said he was married, that he loved his wife. I refused to believe him, kept pushing him to say what I wanted to hear.” He shook his head. “If I’d given up then, everything would have turned out so differently. Instead....” In the reflection of the glass, Dad closed his eyes, remembering, I guessed.
I cleared my throat, reminding him we were here. I was uncomfortable enough to have this conversation with my dad. I didn’t need to watch him recall such a private moment.
Dad’s eyes fluttered open and he squared his shoulders. “Avery didn’t admit anything that night. And rightly so. It would have been disrespectful to his wife. Did he love me?” He lifted his shoulders. “I think so, but he never said. I suspect he didn’t want anyone to find out about his feelings—it was the quickest way to the end of a hangman’s noose.”
I drew in a breath.
Dad took my shock at the medieval penalty for homosexuality for disgust. “I know. He was married. I should never have told him. I regret it every day.”
“So, you left? Came home because you couldn’t have the person you loved?” That wasn’t how he’d made it sound the last time he’d told me about this night.
He turned back toward us, shaking his head. “There was no time. Jerimiah, Avery’s brother, and four of his men showed up. They’d followed us through the forest with the intention of killing Avery for his land. Instead, I gave them something better. What I’d just confessed was against t
he law.”
“But it was just you in trouble, right? Avery did nothing wrong.” Perhaps running had been the smartest thing to do.
Dad shook his head. “Avery admitted nothing. But he refuted nothing, either.”
My shoulders sagged. “Jeremiah took it as an admission of guilt?” I could not like that man. It was little wonder Gisborne was the way he was.
Dad gave a slow nod. “We fought hard, the two of us together. Avery was like a demon, but he had no chance. Jerimiah had a plan, and however it happened, he wanted Avery dead. Had Avery not ended that night with a sword through his belly, we’d both have been hanged. So, he fought knowing he was going to die. He fought for me, so I could come back to this time. He fought to give me a life. When he took a shot to his arm, he screamed at me to run.” Dad swallowed, his memories of that night dancing in front of his eyes. “It wasn’t until he was on his knees, blood dripping from his arm, shoulder and thigh, that I listened. I wasn’t yet too injured to leave, but it was only a matter of time. With one final glance at him swinging his sword even though he couldn’t stand, I left. If he hadn’t fought for me, my life would have ended. Everything I’ve done since, was to repay the gift he gave me.”
“Dad,” I whispered, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. His story was miserable, on so many levels.
He shook his head and shook off his memories. “It’s fine. I’m fine. But you asked, and you deserve to know the sort of person your father is.” It was plain to see what Dad thought of himself, the guilt and shame was spread across his face.
I stood up, walked over to the window and took his hand. There were things in that story I didn’t like. Things he should never have done because he had no right—like confessing his feelings to a married man. But, better than anyone, I knew how different life was in the twelfth century. It wouldn’t have mattered if Avery was married or not, the two of them could never have had the relationship Dad desired because of the laws of the time. And that just made me sad. “I don’t hate you, Dad. And you shouldn’t hate yourself, either.”
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