It took no time at all for Amanda to toss her toys back into the box and close the lid. Jaci helped her out of her dress and shoes and she scooted beneath the covers. She reached out and took the airplane and waved it back and forth as she had seen Jaci do.
“Does it make a noise, like the animals?”
“Yes, it does.” Jaci scrunched up her face, trying to figure out how she would explain it. “It makes an engine noise.”
Amanda looked at her blankly, so Jaci took her wrist and moved it back and forth in the motion of the plane, imitating the sound of an engine.
She sat on the edge of the bed and began her story. “Once upon a time, there were two brothers named Orville and Wilbur.”
“Like Uncle Nicholas and my papa?”
“Yes, but these brothers owned a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, instead of a horse farm.”
“Bicycle? Molly saw one in Philadelphia and they’re terribly dangerous and not at all the proper thing for a lady to ride.” Amanda shook her head as she spoke and Jaci thought her much too wise for five years of age.
Deciding to hurry the story along, she said, “They also had a sister named Catherine.”
“Like me,” Amanda squealed. “I have Uncle Nicholas and papa. I’m not the sister, but it is close to the same, isn’t it?” Before Jaci could answer, she continued, “Do they take care of her? Catherine, I mean?”
“Yes, of course, they take care of her, just like you. Now, if you’re going to keep interrupting me, I won’t be able to tell you the story of the airplane.”
“Airplane. That’s what it’s called?”
Jaci sighed and Amanda got the message, settling back on the bed.
“Orville and Wilbur had a bicycle shop where they sold and fixed things, but they decided to build an airplane that they flew through the air.”
“Why?” Amanda breathed the single word in wide-eyed awe. “How could they do that? Nothing flies.”
“Birds do,” Jaci answered. “You see, one day their father bought them a little toy. It was a bird that the boys wound up and the wings would flap and the toy would fly through the air.”
“Oh, my.” The very idea must have overwhelmed Amanda, for she laid there with her mouth open. Jaci decided not to go into a lot of particulars.
“The Wright Brothers studied hard and made little airplanes they called gliders before making a larger one. Finally, they put an engine on it and went to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. They took turns flying through the air.”
“What about their sister? What about Catherine?” Being a girl, the sister was more important to Amanda than the idea of flying through the air.
“Wilbur and Orville took Catherine for rides in the airplane. And when the boys got hurt flying their airplane, Catherine would help take care of them.”
Amanda yawned and closed her eyes, her fingers still wrapped around the wooden plane. “It’s nice to have somebody take care of you.”
Jaci leaned forward and kissed her brow. “Yes, it definitely has its advantages.”
Jaci tiptoed across the room, turning to the sleeping child as she pulled the door shut. Satisfied that she would sleep a few hours at least, she turned to go to the kitchen for coffee.
“Who are you?”
Jaci clamped a hand to her mouth to keep from screaming. Pure reflex brought her other hand up to push against Nicholas’s shoulder. “Good Lord, you scared me to death.”
“Answer me.” He grabbed her extended hand tightly.
“Sh.” She put a finger to her lips and walked down the hall away from Amanda’s door. Since Nicholas clutched her wrist, she figured he’d follow.
He did, but when he thought they had gone far enough, he pulled her to a halt.
“Miss Eastman, I couldn’t help overhearing your story. I can certainly appreciate the legends you have recited before to my niece. And while such stories don’t have any basis in fact, they are somewhat understandable. This time, however, I must question telling her a story of such outlandish proportions. Flying ships, indeed.”
She jerked her hand out of his grip, both angered at his highhandedness and slightly frightened that he had heard a story about the future. She would have to bluff her way out of it.
“It was only a make-believe story about something that might happen in the future. Maybe someday we’ll fly—” At his look of outright disbelief, she thought again. There must be something.
“You don’t recall the story of Icarus and Daedalus?” Were those the names of the Greek mythology characters? She noticed his hesitation and breathed a little sigh of relief. Still, he squinted at her with suspicion.
“What about balloons — gas balloons?” She was grasping at straws.
“Do you perhaps refer to the Confederate’s attempt to construct a spy balloon during the war? The myriad display of the ladies’ silk ball gowns, sewn together to make a balloon which was captured before they hauled it a mile up river?” For a man who espoused the fact that the war was over, she thought his tone held quite a bit of northern arrogance.
She tried to change the subject. “Yes, well, it doesn’t matter. It was simply a story.”
“Ah, Miss Eastman, but it does matter. A balloon is a far cry from a machine that flies through the air with a motor attached.”
She had begun to hate it when he called her Miss Eastman. It always meant she was in trouble.
Looking up, she found his gaze intent on her face, as though trying to see inside her head to where her memories hid. She stared at him, hoping he would accept the story; and her. She couldn’t be that lucky.
“Who are you?” he asked again, slowly shaking his head in disbelief.
He has asked her that question before, and each time she had answered with less and less information. After all, he didn’t believe her, anyway. The first time she had said she was from the future, he had accused her of being addlebrained. What good would it do to explain?
“I just am.” She looked at him sadly. In the three months she had lived in Wildwood, she had come to care about its occupants — all of them, and yet she still didn’t understand the significance she played in this household. Was she to spend the rest of her life here, baby-sitting his niece, growing old in a world still very foreign to her?
She didn’t wait for him to dismiss her. She turned and hurried to her own room, quietly closing the door behind her. She didn’t want to forget who she was, nor the world from which she had come. Yet every time she let a little bit escape through stories to Amanda, she got caught. How was she to keep her memories alive?
* * *
Jaci should have known that walking away wouldn’t end their discussion if Nicholas deemed it incomplete. This morning when Molly came to her room and said Mister Westbrooke requested her presence, she realized she had only postponed the inevitable.
As she walked downstairs to the study, she tried to come up with a logical explanation for the stories she told Amanda. However, there was nothing logical about motorized flying machines in an era where the word horsepower was taken literally.
Nicholas bid her enter when she knocked on the door, and he immediately rose from his chair. He looked quite handsome, his dark hair pulled back and the gray streaks adding to his sophisticated appearance. In the warmth created by a glowing fire, he had forgone his jacket, his shirt sleeves rolled up to reveal strong arms, lightly sprinkled with dark hair. His casual attire added to his charm, and to her nervousness.
“Miss Eastman, how pleasant of you to pay me this visit.” He motioned her towards the chairs by the fire.
“You requested my presence.”
“Ah, yes, but of late I seem to be ignored in my own house when the need suits.” He grinned at her, and she couldn’t help but smile back.
She seated herself, gracefully sliding back from the edge until she came to rest against the velvet of the cushion. He appeared to be in a good mood, and she sincerely hoped that was a good omen. She’d soon find out. “I thought you were going to
call me Jaci?”
“I believe I did say that at one point, didn’t I?” He had seated himself across from her, propping one booted foot over the other knee, his fingers steepled in front of his lips. He had such a look of concentration that Jaci soon began to squirm, feeling like a bug under a magnifying glass.
“You and I have had some lively debates, have we not?” he asked, his expression not varying or giving anything away.
She didn’t know whether he was mad, upset, or merely curious. Until she determined the exact direction of this conversation, she decided to answer with a simple, “Yes.”
“While your stories to Amanda are creative, I hesitate to have her head full of nonsense like Indians in the sky and now flying machines.”
She straightened. So that was the topic of conversation today. Perhaps it was time to see exactly how open-minded Mister Nicholas Westbrooke was. “What if they’re not nonsense?”
“Come now. I know there have been attempts, but no one has ever created a motorized flying machine. Are you telling me that the Wright brothers have done so? Why haven’t I heard about it?”
“Not have done so. They will do it.” She spoke barely above a whisper, but he sprang on her words.
“You’re saying it will happen in the future. You’re speaking again about being from the future?” His voice rose.
She sat with head bowed, staring at her fingers entwined in her lap. She wouldn’t lie, but she sincerely hoped he would drop this particular discussion. There was nothing she could do about her origins, and nothing he could do about getting her back there. She didn’t want him mad enough to send her away from Wildwood.
Nicholas stood and began to pace in front of the fireplace. His next words caught her totally by surprise. “Let me play the devil’s advocate for a moment. I don’t believe you, mind, but just suppose—”
She jerked her head up to stare at him.
“Suppose you are from the future. Why don’t you invent a way to get yourself back? I mean, surely there are things you have in your time which we have not been blessed with yet.”
His sarcasm wasn’t lost on her. If she could, perhaps she should invent something that would put him in his proper place. However, not only did she not have the knowledge to invent anything; not even fast speed film, and photography was her love; but what if she should somehow change the course of history? What if — she voiced her thoughts.
“If I invented something early, or somehow altered events that made an impact on history, it might change my own history as well. I mean, suppose whatever I did somehow altered the history of Texas, and because I messed with things here, I wasn’t born when I actually was. I wouldn’t exist then — in the future — so how could I slip back through time and end up here?”
As she spoke, Nicholas had come to stand in front of her, hands locked behind him and an incredible look on his face. She grimaced. “This is very confusing. Does it make any sense at all?”
“Somehow, I understand what you’re saying, and that worries me no end.” His high brow wrinkled as he frowned.
“So, what happens now?”
“I am still not convinced that what you say is true.” When she started to protest, he held up a hand. “I said I understood your confusion, but whether such a concept as time travel could actually be accomplished or not—” He shrugged those eloquent shoulders and shook his head, his hair picking up highlights from the fire. “I think that blow to the head you received when you landed among my horses did more damage than we thought.”
Jaci’s shoulders sagged in defeat, and relief. Actually, she thought it would be better all around if he continued to think that. Hearing Selkirk outside the door, she decided it would be a good time to escape.
“I believe Selkirk needs to visit with you. I’ll leave you to your manly things.” She scooted past him and headed for the door.
“Jaci?”
She stopped and turned.
“Try to stick to less fanciful topics with Amanda. She has far too much imagination as it is.”
She smiled, for although he had made a statement, his tone of voice implied he was seeking her permission.
“Of course.” She would give in this time, for it seemed the easier path to take.
* * *
Not more than a week went by before Jaci and Nicholas were at it again, this time over Amanda’s studies. Even though the child was only five, Jaci wanted to teach her math and science as well as reading.
They were arguing in the study, and Nicholas remained standing in front of his desk. Jaci had noticed, as a gentleman, he always rose when she came into the room and would remain standing until she sat. Today, to spite him, she refused to sit down and instead paced back and forth. The more she tried to make him understand the importance of her position, the more stubborn he became.
“I see no reason to clutter her brain with nonsense,” he countered her latest argument, crossing his arms over his chest.
“You know arithmetic, and the science of husbandry. Does that over tax your brain cells?”
“I’m a man. It’s different.”
“Of all the egotistical, chauvinistic—” she sputtered to a stop when Nicholas began to laugh. “What is so funny?”
“Do you know how absolutely adorable you are when you’re angry?” He grinned in response to her startled expression. A lock of hair fell over his forehead, and her stomach tied in knots.
She threw up her hands in despair. “I can’t reason with you.” He took a step toward her and she fled.
Her confrontations with Nicholas were getting more heated by the day. Every time she had a conversation with him, his silver eyes seemed to cut to her very soul, exposing her secrets and disarming her defenses with his charm. Everyone said he was supposed to marry Miss Edwardson, but he didn’t appear to be of the same intent. Why else would he make such idiotic comments? Every time he said something sweet, like calling her adorable, she fell deeper under his spell.
Not getting involved should have been easy, for she had been raised in a world of feminine freedom. She had no use for a chauvinistic male with an ego the size of Texas and no understanding of independent women. Then why did her heart flutter every time he said her name? Why did she ache for those times their paths crossed? How come her dreams and all waking thoughts were invaded by his presence, and why he didn’t kiss her again?
“Oh, Mandy, how I wish you were here to guide me,” Jaci sighed dejectedly as she wandered back to her room. Her sister, the romantic, had been the one to know the ins and outs of the dating world. Such things had always been furthest from Jaci’s mind.
“Why are you always talking to someone named Mandy?” Amanda had followed her into the room, and regardless of Jaci’s wish for solitude, the youngster hopped onto the bed, pink skirts bunched up around her making her look like one of the roses in the garden.
Abandoning any sense of decorum, Jaci fell face first onto the bed beside her, crossing her arms under her head as she turned and gazed at the pixie.
“Mandy is my sister.”
“A sister? How old is she; where is she; can she come and play with me?” She bounced on the bed as she jabbered questions faster than Jaci could absorb.
Jaci quickly turned her head to hide the unbidden tears that sprang forth. Amanda’s inquisitiveness reminded her of Mandy at that age. Her throat constricted.
“Well?” Amanda didn’t seem likely to give up, and waited impatiently for Jaci to answer. To stall for time, she pulled the child into the curve of her body, nestling her cap of springy curls under her chin so the child wouldn’t see the tears which still blurred her vision.
“Mandy is a few years younger than I am, so she’s much too old to play. Besides, she lives very, very far away.” She struggled to keep her voice steady. “Her real name is the same as yours. When we were both very small, I called her ‘my Mandy’ because I thought she belonged just to me.”
Amanda squirmed and wiggled before coming to rest once
again against Jaci. “I wish they would call me Mandy, instead of A-manda.” She stressed the `A’ as though it were an entire name of its own.
Jaci smiled.
“You can call me Mandy, if you like. I mean, since you don’t have your sister here to get us mixed up and all.”
“But your uncle wouldn’t like it, would he?” It seemed Nicholas was forever on her mind.
“Well, no. He probably would not.” She stopped, and Jaci wondered what her mischievous little mind was cooking up now. “But you could call me that, when we’re alone.” She tilted her head back to look up at Jaci with eyes that held wisdom beyond her five years. “Maybe then you wouldn’t be lonely for the real Mandy.”
Jaci was glad the child snuggled down against the soft mattress and didn’t see the stream of tears that washed down her face. Silently she sent a wish across the centuries. “Oh, Mandy. If I had to leave you, at least someone saw fit to drop me into a loving household.” She hugged Amanda closer and cried herself to sleep, hoping Mandy managed to survive without her.
Hours later, when Amanda didn’t come to the library to bid him good-night, Nicholas went in search of her. He asked all the servants and looked in all the rooms. At length he stood in front of Jaci’s door. Should he disturb her to inquire about his niece?
She had left in a huff after their latest discussion, and he wondered if she was still angry with him. Her wild ideas and fanciful stories were beyond believing, and her unconventional ways set his teeth grinding. Yet he admired the way she stood up to him. He usually intimidated the most stalwart man at the Philadelphia Exchange, but Jaci wouldn’t back down if she thought she was right.
Added to her stubbornness was her beauty, which was heightened when her green eyes flashed and her cheeks flushed. For some reason, she didn’t appear to like it when he openly admired her beauty. Of course, because it bothered her, he quite frequently deliberately baited her.
His second knock was not answered, and his brow furrowed in concern. How odd that both of them appeared to be missing at the same time. Using his concern as an excuse, he opened the door and glanced into the room, illuminated only by the moonlight streaming in through the tall windows.
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