Forever Young: Time Travel Romance

by Gloria Gay

  “She awaits us in the carriage, on the road that runs near the edge of the forest.”

  They were silent for a while and once his horse was settled on a steady walk she again addressed him:

  “You cannot ever know how grateful I am to you, my lord.”

  “I hope I may be of service to you, Miss Shallot,” Lanquest said gallantly.

  How lucky she had been not to appear naked in the middle of London or any other town. A shudder coursed through her at the thought and she closed her eyes and said a prayer in thanks for that and for the unbelievable luck thrown her way.

  Lord Lanquest remained silent the rest of the way until they saw the carriage. He then helped Kate down from Blue and introduced her to his aunt.

  Lanquest tied his horse loosely to the carriage and took the reins of the carriage horses. The three then made their way slowly toward the house, encountering no one on the way.

  When they arrived at the front of the house the front door was opened and both a footman and the butler walked up to them. Kate supposed this was what Lanquest had meant when he said she must be seen as arriving with his aunt, for appearances sake.

  A housekeeper and a housemaid joined the group.

  Lanquest surrendered the carriage and his horse to a couple of grooms and then helped his aunt and then Kate down from the carriage. They then climbed the steps of a circular entrance. Lanquest then led both ladies through the enormous doorway of a magnificent mansion. She had to force herself not to stare.

  Arcadia seemed more a castle than a house.

  Lanquest spoke to her as they walked across a huge hall that had a multi-colored glass dome and vaulted ceilings.

  “Once you have been shown your bedroom, Miss Shallot, and a maid assists you with your attire, I shall order tea for you and Lady Donney in the library and you will expand on what you told me in my wood. Is that agreeable to you?” Lord Lanquest said, pulling Kate’s eyes away from the huge gold-framed paintings.

  “Yes, most agreeable, your lordship, and you cannot ever know how grateful I am for your help.” Kate glanced at his aunt and smiled. The sweet old lady smiled back and reached for Kate’s hand.

  “I hope your stay with us will be a pleasant one, my dear,” the kind lady said.

  “Thank you so much for your help, my lady,” Kate replied.

  When they entered the vast hall of the house a young woman in servant’s garb walked swiftly to meet them.

  “This is Romy,” Lord Lanquest said as the young woman, dressed in a light grey uniform and lace-edged apron approached and curtsied before him. She appeared to have been waiting for them by the royal-looking stairway in the vast hall where his horse could probably run at full gallop.

  “She will be your maid for now, Miss Shallot. Later on, we may have to hire a lady’s maid for you, for Romy is not trained for such work. But for now, she will have to do, while you remain in my household. She will assist you in tidying your gown and will show you your bedroom,” he added.

  “Hello, Romy,” Kate said as the maid curtsied to her. Kate parted with Lanquest with a nod and then followed Romy up the massive stairway that turned right and left on a huge balcony and picture gallery. Their footsteps were muffled over rich Persian carpeting.

  “Here we are, miss.” The maid opened the wide door and stood aside for Kate to enter. It was a large elegant bedroom with a canopied bed. The exquisite ivory lace was crowned above with burgundy velvet and cream ribbons arranged artfully into a rose bouquet.

  “It’s a lovely bedroom, Romy,” Kate said.

  “That it is, miss,” said the maid, smiling shyly and added, “’is lordship said yer clothes ‘ad been sent to the wrong station and that until they are located and sent ‘ere, ye’ll make use of ‘’is sister’s clothes press.”

  Romy walked over to the window and pointed to a cord. “This cord is to ring for me if you should need me, miss. This bedroom ‘as its own water closet, as it is one of the best bedrooms in the ‘all. ’is lordship said I was to accompany you to the library when you’re ready.”

  “Thank you, Romy. I’ll just sit here for a little while to catch my breath.”

  Kate looked out one of the long elegant windows while Romy puttered around the room. She glanced down at the beautiful designs of the flower beds and breathed a sigh of relief. She was safe for now. But for how long?

  While Kate rested by the window, Romy puttered around the room. She opened the drapes and straightened the counterpane on the beautiful bed that seemed fit for a duchess. She then went to the water closet and bustled about, opening a drawer stacked with towels.

  When Kate was ready, Romy helped her into the stays and re-arranged Kate’s outfit so that she looked properly attired.

  Reluctantly she motioned to Romy that she was ready to go down and Romy then led her to the library. The library was in the same floor and it was enormous, holding a great many books. It was a beautiful restful room.

  CHAPTER 6

  Lord Lanquest stood by one of the long windows, arms behind his back, and looked at the grounds below.

  Kate Shallot had made a strong impression on him. His hands still quivered from contact with her hands and her wide sea blue eyes were firmly in his mind. He recalled the beautiful soft turn of her mouth and how a frisson had coursed along his nerve endings at her touch as he had helped her to mount his horse, surprising him with its intensity.

  He was trying to make sense of the strong physical attraction he had felt for a young woman he had seen for the first time in his life, and also at the fact that he had never felt such an attraction to any woman in the whole of his life. He had never been aware, truth be told, that such a reaction could be experienced by a man towards a woman. He had had the usual sexual arousal during his occasional trysts with mistresses, and expected that his sexual encounters with his wife, once married, would be of a placid, tamer sort.

  Never in his life had he imagined this explosion of feeling, this instant attraction that pushed him into a place in which he was a stranger, where his need to be near this young woman was a physical need as intense as hunger if he had been denied food for a long time or water, if he was dying of thirst.

  All his life he had followed dutifully the path his father had chartered for him and he had done so emulating his father as best he could. He was similar to his father in character and in turn his father had been similar to his father before him. They were a family where their strength came from following the dictates of society and conforming to the path their station in life had been drawn for them since time immemorial. He had never thought to deviate in the slightest way from the orderly way that had been mapped out for him as a babe in arms by his family.

  Now he was confronted with something so explosively beyond his experience to be as completely alien as this woman was in his time. That she was from another time dimension he did not doubt, for he felt it in his bones on meeting her, even before she uttered words concerning ‘airports’ and ‘airplanes’ the likes of which had not been invented yet.

  And she was not similar to any woman of his time. Her skin was freely tanned by the sun to a lovely hue and her chestnut hair had honey highlights naturally made by the sun. Her legs were strong and beautifully shaped and she seemed as unaware of their beauty as a bird is unaware of its ability to fly.

  He was pondering this fact as the young woman of his thoughts entered the library, followed by Romy. His breath caught at his throat and he felt sudden heat in his belly.

  Lanquest felt Kate’s presence in all of his body and in his mind. He suppressed an inward gasp as he greeted her. He then opened the library doors wide so that anyone walking by along the huge hall would see them seated in the library.

  He then went to a table where a tea tray waited and poured a cup of tea for Kate and then one for himself.

  He stole glances at her as she sipped her tea in silence. She appeared to be very thirsty.

  “My aunt has agreed to my decision to suspend yo
ur further introduction to her until I have ascertained your identity, Miss Shallot,” he told her, suppressing the tremor in his voice. “Once she learns your story she will act as your chaperone.” He then added with a smile: “As I told, you, in our age, we must be careful of appearances, both for your sake and mine. That is the reason the doors to the library are opened wide, so that any servants that are about will be able to see us conversing in the room, seated at this large table that is clearly visible to anyone.

  “You will realize fully why I must be conscious of appearances when you meet a relation of mine, my aunt Augusta, Lady Bunright.

  “I’m afraid you have arrived at a busy time at the estate,” he added. “A ball is to be held here in a few days, in honor of my nieces, Herlinda and Sally, who will make their debut in London society during the season.”

  ***

  Kate suppressed a sigh as Lanquest looked intently at her with his wonderful sparkling blue eyes fringed with short dark lashes.

  She had just met the guy. Are you nuts, she asked herself.

  But she was glad that this wonderful man had awakened a bit of interest in her.

  “First of all,” said Lanquest when he had placed his cup on the table between them, “I would like to know your full name, Miss Shallot.”

  “Kate—Katherine Rebecca Shallot.”

  “And you are a maiden?”

  “A maiden?”

  “Unmarried.”

  “I’m divorced.”

  “Your husband divorced you?”

  “I divorced him. Since divorce is almost non-existent in your era, your lordship, let me explain: we’d been married for almost a year when I served him with the papers.

  “He and his partner had a successful business but it was in the beginning stages. So, those first months of our marriage he spent a lot of hours at work and often came home when I was already asleep. He convinced me that it was crucial to the business that it be launched firmly and that he had to spend more time than normal at his work place.

  “I was downtown one evening, shopping, and decided to drop by his office and see if we could have dinner together. I walked into his office and found him with a woman in…”

  “A very compromising situation,” Lanquest finished for her when she hesitated.

  “Kate’s face flushed red. “Pretty much in the act,” she said.

  “I’m sorry you had to recount it, Mrs—”

  “Miss Shallot,” Kate corrected. “Once a woman goes through a divorce, she is allowed to choose which name she goes by. I preferred to return to my own name.”

  “A few months after the divorce,” she added, “my ex-husband, tired of his new love, tried to come back to me, to my utter astonishment.

  “I wanted nothing to do with him and changed my phone number. And when he called at my home, I refused him entrance.”

  As she spoke she wondered why she was giving her history to a man she had just met.

  “You seem very young to have gone through all that,” said Lanquest.

  “I’m thirty.”

  “You don’t seem older than nineteen or twenty.”

  “I don’t?” Kate stood up and walked to a mirror nearby. She seldom looked at herself in mirrors anymore since her divorce. She stared into her face as her face had been ten years before.

  “I seem to have lost a few years in the transfer,” she said with a grin.

  “We will have to keep your divorce a secret between us, Miss Shallot, for divorce is rare in our time and it is considered scandalous. We will address you as Miss Shallot during the time you spend with us. I would not want for you to be shunned by our family and friends.

  “Tell me about your experience getting here,” said Lanquest when she had resumed her seat. His baritone voice was as warm as spring rain through sunshine. She suppressed a sigh.

  “Well,” she said as he looked intently at her, “It began with my mother. She was going home from work with her friend, Emmy, when they went by a psychic’s place, Emmy recalled for me how my mother impulsively pulled the cord and got off, then headed to the psychic’s place.

  “There, the psychic woman, a Madame Xalia, led my mother under a magical golden canopy that was so beautiful it was difficult to describe. My mother had been afraid to age and Madame Xalia gave her eternal youth.”

  Kate shivered and continued telling him about her mother’s experience. “Only a few people had ever reversed the effect. My mother had been one of the few.

  “I was drawn to my mother’s experiences as a moth to a flame. More so after my divorce. My sister and I obtained a diary from a friend of our mother’s that was to be given to us five years after our mother’s death.

  “I went in search of Madame Xalia but found instead her sister, Madame Enlia.

  “I read our mother’s diary so many times I almost memorized it and became obsessed to follow in her footsteps.”

  “Tell me in detail everything you know about that psychic woman, as you call her. But first your experiences with her sister. I will stop you and take notes as you go along. Maybe we will discover something you missed in your dealings with her.

  “After that, I will be very interested in knowing more about the world you come from.”

  “Well,” Kate began, “My mother’s story went something like this:

  “When I saw the psychic’s place from the bus, I felt a compulsion to get off the bus. I can’t explain the feeling but it was like a very strong pull, a gush of air pulling insistently at me. I had the option to resist, yet my curiosity won over.

  Emmy freaked out when I jumped up from my seat and told her I was getting off. She tried to stop me but couldn’t. I laughed off her concern and told her she wasn’t my mom.

  I’m glad Emmy didn’t get off the bus when I did. Her life was normal and mine wasn’t. And that’s why I’m giving this diary to her, to keep until five years after my death, when she is free to give it to Kate.

  “There’s a lot of danger in magic and her attitude toward it protects her from it. I, on the other hand, was of an impulsive nature and lived in fear of not ever getting married. It was different time, the late Sixties.

  I was about to turn thirty but back then if you passed a certain age without falling in love, without getting a proposal, you started to doubt yourself, doubt your worth. Nowadays women have a lot of choices and most women take their careers seriously. In that era, great numbers of women went to college to meet men. Their careers became secondary in their lives once they married.

  But we were in an age of great changes and there were also many women who were fighting for women’s rights and who took their careers seriously.

  It was my thirtieth birthday and I was freaking out that I would never marry. I should have just waited because soon after that I met the man who would become my husband…but I did not know that was in my future. And then that incident with the psychic, Madame Xalia occurred. I was drawn toward that magic and it changed my life.

  Kate hesitated and looked into Lanquest’s eyes. “I was trying to decide whether to follow in my mother’s footsteps.”

  “Tell me how you came to that decision, Miss Shallot. And please describe to me in detail the place where you live. I want to understand you and the best way to do so will be to become acquainted through your words, of the place where you live, what you do there, etc.

  “Sure thing,” Kate replied. “I love the place where I live—Dolphin Beach. It’s a small town, part of the County of San Diego, in California. I lived most of my life there. My parents moved there when I was about two or three.”

  “I have a small apartment close to the beach and a partial view of the ocean from my bedroom window on the second floor.

  “On the day that I made the decision to follow in my mother’s footsteps, I took a long walk on the beach, something I often did.”

  Kate sat back on her chair and closed her eyes.

  “I put on my sandals and grabbed my windbreaker for it was a bit chilly o
ut and walked on the beach to the water’s edge, increasing my walk to a brisk step.

  “I felt the sand under each step and after a while I took off my windbreaker and tied it around my waist. I also took off my sandals and continued walking.

  “There were a few people here and there on the beach but too few to make it seem crowded. I love the rustic solitude of that beach and feel a proprietary pride in it. The air smelled strongly of the sea and the lacy patterns of the rushing surf made me sigh with joy. The fat bulbs of the seaweed crunched under my feet as I stepped over them. There was nothing I loved better in this world than to walk along the water’s edge, feel the salty wind on my face and the surf rushing over my feet.

  “I reached the pier and walked under it and around its heavy black pillars and felt pride in it. Then I continued on along the sand dunes toward where the sea joined the sloughs. A few pelicans and gulls shrieked overhead and the sun showed its face through a few clouds. Sandpipers that were pecking around the mounds of seaweed skipped away from me as I walked close to the water and stepped over broken sea shells.

  “Go. The voice in my mind said to me. It was a very insistent voice, as if I was hearing my mother’s voice.

  “No matter how much I thought about it I knew that in the end I would go to the psychic’s place because otherwise I would wonder about it all my life and regret not having gone.

  Kate opened her eyes and looked at Lanquest. She suppressed a sigh. Could one be so incredibly attracted to someone at first sight?

  “The following day was my birthday,” she went on. “I would be thirty years old, the same age my mother was when she had gone to see the psychic woman. I decided that after I called Stacy in New York I would do what I had wanted to do for a long time.

  “My mother had described the magical golden canopy in a way that made me eager to see it. My time was now completely mine and I wanted to follow in my mother’s footsteps.”