Hearts Under Fire

by Kathryn Kelly

  Vaughn looked around her. The Indians would find them now. There was no doubt. The old man's incantation had to work.

  The fierce wind sent debris flying. The clouds darkened. Thunder crashed over their heads. His focus was unaffected by the rain or the wind as his deer-hide robe was assailed by the fury of the wind.

  Vaughn squeezed her eyes closed.

  I am going to die.

  She should never have come to this new world. Should never have listened to the call of adventure in her blood. Only by a twist of fate would that very blood not be spilled upon the ground of this wild, untamed territory.

  Her ears rang, blocking out the commotion. Then she felt something that felt like the warmth of the sun on her skin. She opened her eyes. There was no sign of rain or wind or brambles... or the strange Indian.

  Her clothes were soaked and her hair sodden. She still gripped her valise with the wedding dress in her hands. She stood up slowly and turned around.

  She gasped. A young gentleman on a large black horse towered over her.

  She blinked, clearing raindrops from her eyelashes. He was smiling.

  "You seem to have had some sort of mishap. My name is Nathaniel Becquerel. Perhaps I can be of assistance," he said, stretching his hand out to her.

  Chapter 1

  Twist of Fate

  Something was wrong. The minute she walked through the door, Erika Becquerel sensed it. Chandelier lights reflecting off the polished mahogany floor blended with the musty odor of the house to bring back a deluge of jumbled, but familiar memories.

  But the silence struck her like a cruel blow.

  The grandfather clock stood with a blank expression.

  Silent.

  "Jonathan?" she called out, but a rumble of thunder drowned out her voice. As the noise faded, she set down her bag and dripping umbrella and called out for her grandfather again – louder this time. "Grandpa?"

  No response.

  Frowning, she stood in front of the nearly black rosewood clock and looked up into the faded dial. Its case was decorated with ornate columns. The clock’s face wore a battle scar from the Civil War in the form of a jagged rip between the Roman numerals six and seven.

  The first thing Jonathan did each morning was wind the two-hundred-year old family heirloom. It was one of his prized possessions. His ancestors had brought it with them when they left France to settle in the colonies.

  Something was wrong.

  A sense of panic gripped her. Jonathan could lie here for days before anyone discovered him. He could die and no one would know.

  She started toward the kitchen, but a sound on the stairs caught her attention. Relief washed over her. Jonathan was alright. She, however, was the victim of an overactive imagination.

  She turned with a smile, but the smile quickly faded.

  Stepping briskly into the foyer, a woman in a loose, flowered kimono glared at her through a pair of narrow glasses.

  "Who are you?" Erika asked.

  "That's a good question. Who are you?" the woman echoed, folding her arms across her ample chest.

  "Where is Jonathan?"

  "I will not discuss Mr. Becquerel until I know who you are."

  Erika took a deep breath and slowly let it out. Her leather ankle boots resounded as she walked across the hardwood floor toward the woman and stopped inches in front of her.

  "Where is he?" she demanded, looking down into the woman's cold dark eyes.

  The woman retreated back a step, her gaze darting toward the stairs. Erika immediately closed the gap between them. Her hands clenched at her sides as the tension and fear for her grandfather returned, stronger than before.

  "I want to know who you are and where my grandfather is."

  Jerking her head up, realization spread over the woman's face and her skin blanched to a deathly pallor. For a moment Erika thought she glimpsed fear in her eyes. Then she blinked and the harshness was back. "I'm Mable," she said, "Jonathan is upstairs in his bedroom. I'll bring your luggage in, Erika."

  Erika didn't respond. The woman's sudden change worried her. Yet even more disconcerting was the fact that this stranger knew her name. She’d never known Jonathan to hire help.

  Erika sprinted up the stairs, turned left, and stopped in front of her grandfather's bedroom. A weak cough answered her knock.

  Pushing the door open gently, she stuck her head around the corner. Darting past her feet, Smokey, her grandfather's large gray cat, pounced onto the bed and went to stand on the pillow behind Jonathan’s head.

  Jonathan Becquerel lowered the handkerchief from his nose. He blinked and a smile spread across his wrinkled face, lifting for a brief instant the veil of sadness in his silver-gray eyes. Almost immediately, it settled back into place. As she hurried to his side, he struggled to push himself up on the pillows. "Ah, Erika," he said, "you do look so much like my Vaughn. For just a moment, I thought…." He shook his head.

  His words sent a stab of pain through her heart. Vaughn. Her grandmother - her friend.

  "Are you sick?" she asked, kneeling on the floor beside the bed, pushing threatening thoughts of her grandmother back into the shadowed depths of her mind.

  In the six months since his wife's death, Jonathan had seemed to grow old quickly. Instead of months, he seemed to have aged years. The sparse hair on his balding head was silver and his eyes were lackluster. Even his skin had taken on an ashen shade.

  "No. No. Just a bit under the weather," he said with a smile that seemed more like a lopsided frown.

  "Who is that woman downstairs?"

  "Mable?"

  She nodded.

  "She's the one your mother hired to take care of me," he said, studying her curiously.

  "Really?" Erika replied, forcing a calmness into her voice she didn't feel. She placed her wrist against his forehead. His skin was cool. "What do you mean she's taking care of you? What's wrong?"

  "I can't seem to shake this darned flu. It's probably just old age settling in." He paused to squint into her eyes, as though to read her thoughts.

  "I didn't know you were coming," he added suddenly. "You haven't been to see me since the... since Vaughn..."

  "I know. But I'm here, now. I'll take care of you." She stood up and leaned over to place her arms around his thin, feeble shoulders. Swallowed the lump in her throat. He'd grown so frail since she'd seen him last at the funeral service. I should have come sooner.

  He patted her back and reached for his handkerchief. "The doctor is coming on Monday. I’ll be ok until then. And Mable is here. Your mother and you and Brad all have lives of your own. I don't want to be in your way." There was no self-pity in his voice. She knew he was just stating the facts as he saw them.

  At Vaughn's memorial service, he had been in good physical condition for a man of seventy-three. The deep sadness in his eyes had been there, though. It had become a part of him.

  "Maybe you could stay until Monday though," he said, his face brightening with the idea.

  "I'll try," Erika said softly. She sighed. There was no need to tell him now; she didn't have to leave until Sunday afternoon. Perhaps with two days of her care, he would be able to get up and around.

  He reached over to the nightstand and picked up a key. "Would you mind winding the clock for me? This silence is driving me crazy."

  Erika smiled. "Of course." She and Jonathan were the only ones allowed to wind the clock. She’d been seven years old when he had first begun to instruct her on what he called the magic of winding the clock.

  Slipping the key into her pocket, she left him resting, and stopped by the room that had been hers since she could remember. Mable had been true to her word. Her luggage stood in front of the wardrobe. She felt a twinge of guilt at having the woman bring it in for her, especially in the rain, but she quickly shrugged it off. If she knew her mother, Mable was being paid well enough. If Erika had her way, Mable would be dismissed as soon as possible. The woman gave her an eerie feeling.

  Som
ething was wrong. But then nothing had been the same for the past six months. Shifting her gaze, she studied the portrait on her nightstand.

  Her grandmother, Vaughn, had been so full of life. Delighted by everything and everyone that touched her life. Even though the black and white photograph had been taken when her grandmother was still a young woman, Erika pictured her clearly. She saw the slender, beautiful woman staring back at her with a smile that spread upwards to touch her sea-green eyes and a fragile oval face framed with long midnight curls.

  Except for her straight, hair, Erika was a mirror image of Vaughn Becquerel.

  Her mind, still spinning in confusion, returned to the situation at hand. Why didn't her mother tell her about hiring Mable to care for Jonathan? They talked often enough; surely she would have mentioned that Jonathan needed someone to help care for him. Determined to find the answers and confront Mable, she got up and started back downstairs.

  Halfway down, she stopped on the landing. The dark clouds had drifted off toward the horizon, and a patch of pale evening sunlight streamed in through the wavy glass in the eight foot high window. Placing one hand on the thick indigo French brocade draperies tied back on either side, she leaned her forehead against the smooth wooden frame and rested her eyes. Suddenly dizzy, she fought to steady herself.

  The soft ticking of the grandfather clock drifted upstairs.

  Clouds wafted over the sun and a cool wind whispering through a young oak tree lightly brushed her cheeks and played about her hair. At the sudden loss of the sun's warmth, she opened her eyes. Had the window been open moments before?

  She shivered.

  Beyond the well-tended garden area to the left, fields of sturdy cotton plants stretched to the horizon. There, a wagon stirred up a cloud of dust. Like mounds of new fallen snow, the gray-white cotton covered the land. Workers in straw hats, brightly dyed shirts, and burlap sacks trailing along behind them, bent as they pulled cotton from the open brown shells and dropped it into the sacks.

  Dazed, Erika stared out the window. A movement to the right of the house caught her attention. A girl, not more than ten, sitting beneath an oak tree, was playing with a calico cat. A doll fell unnoticed from her lap. There had been no children here since Erika and her brother, Brad, had grown up.

  She was startled out of her daze by a flurry of activity below. A black horse cantered into view, chased by two baying red hounds. Coming to a halt beside one of the outbuildings, the tall dark-haired rider slid easily from the saddle and tossed the reins to a black boy who had run out to meet him.

  Absently, the man brushed dust from his white cotton shirt, black riding trousers, and tall black boots. His arms and chest visible beneath his shirt, unbuttoned at the throat, revealed a healthy tan. He was a trim man, yet sturdy. He removed his hat and a stray lock of black hair fell across his forehead.

  He strode toward the house, stopped directly in front of the window, and stared up at her. The man held her gaze for a moment before his clear, intense eyes slowly slid down the length of her. A shiver tingled up her spine as the wind whispered against her cheeks.

  A frown briefly crossed his features and he ran a hand through his hair, sweeping it off his forehead. He blinked and his eyes came back to hers; his lips slowly tipped up in an arrogant smile. Despite the arrogance, he was ruggedly handsome. Bowing slightly, he started toward the front of the house.

  The contact was broken with a jolt. Erika's heart raced and her body trembled. She took a deep breath, commanding herself to be calm and in control. It had always worked in veterinary school.

  It didn't work now. She couldn't slow her racing pulse. She was at a loss to explain her trembling hands and light-headed feeling at the bold perusal of this man. This stranger who seemed familiar somehow.

  What was happening to her? Did she know him? Of course not. He wasn't the kind of man a girl would easily forget.

  Her heartbeat pounded loudly in her ears, blocking out the steady ticking of the grandfather clock. She leaned against the window frame and closed her eyes again.

  The feeling of light-headedness swept over her once again and then was gone. The silence of the house rang in her ears.

  A door opened downstairs, jarring her back to her senses. She hurried down the stairs and turned just in time to see Mable step through the back door with her purse and raincoat. At least she and Jonathan would be left alone now.

  Erika sighed in frustration and turned around to check the time. She stood face to face with the silent grandfather clock.

  The clock!

  Jonathan had asked her to wind it, but she hadn't.

  She thought back through the last several minutes. It had definitely been ticking. She knew the sound as well as she knew the voice in her own head. Reaching into her pocket, she squeezed the key in her hand.

  Suddenly she felt very tired. Maybe she shouldn't have taken on teaching that zoology class at the community college, but with just one more semester of internship before becoming a licensed veterinarian, she had decided not to pass up the school's offer. It was good experience.

  This Thanksgiving holiday was the first time off she'd had since Vaughn's accident. All the hard work would pay off next summer when she could finally open her own clinic. She looked forward to specializing in cute, cuddly pets, not the large farm animals her employer catered to.

  Trying to keep her thoughts focused, she wandered into the parlor and found herself in front of the arrangement of portraits displayed on the wall. Jonathan and Vaughn were there as well as her mother and father. She and Brad were the last ones added to the group. At the far end were William and Abigail, the ones who built the house in the early 1800's. Scanning the row of faces, she paused somewhere near the center.

  The hairs prickled on the back of her neck. She focused on the man's familiar face. A face that was far too familiar – yet shouldn’t have been.

  Of course it was familiar, she thought, frustrated with herself. She had seen these paintings hundreds of times. She used to come here as a child and study them. Then why did this one stand out now?

  She warmed her cool fingertips against her palms.

  Fear and disbelief collided in her mind.

  It was him! It was the man on the horse. This painting was almost two hundred years old. How could she have just seen him, living and breathing?

  Disconcerted, she went back up to the landing and stood in front of the now closed window. Wondering briefly who had closed it, she realized that if the rider had entered the house, she would have seen him. Taking a deep breath, she pulled the heavy curtain aside and peeked out.

  Her grip on the soft fabric tightened and her breathing came in shallow, quivering gasps. Where were the rows of cotton that had been there minutes ago? Familiar pine seedlings and briars had taken over the fields that had been neatly plowed only moments before. One of the two remaining outbuildings had caved in and was no more than a heap of rotten lumber.

  The child was gone, too, and there was no sign of the cat or the doll. But, the oak tree... The tree the girl had been sitting beneath was no longer a young sapling. It was a full grown tree with its limbs stretching skyward.

  She turned and numbly continued to the top of the stairs. A breeze stirred and cooled her sweaty palms. It was like someone had flipped a switch and for a moment she had seen a page of history. Perhaps she had wished for things to be the way they had been when Vaughn was alive so much that she had hallucinated. She shook her head. Impossible. Her imagination was much too vivid.

  At the top of the stairs, she stopped with one hand clutching the rail. Her vision wavered and she blinked, trying to regain focus. Her entire world careened in front of her and she grabbed the rail with both hands.

  Then the world righted itself and was still.

  A soft ticking sound drifted from downstairs.

  It can't be the clock.

  She had the key. In a panic, she reached into her pocket and wrapped her fingers around the small, silver key.<
br />
  "Excuse me, Miss? You must have come in while I was out."

  Erika whirled around, startled. A tall, heavy-set man in a black cloak and hat towered over her. In a state of confusion, she studied his kind ebony face and tried to block out the clock's incessant ticking.

  With an embarrassed chuckle and a grin that flashed his white teeth, he swept the hat from his head. "I'm sorry, Miss. I just came in. We didn't expect you so soon."

  This was not her imagination. She swallowed and closed her mouth, dry with the onset of panic.

  "Who are you?" she asked, her voice cracking in mid-sentence.

  A flicker of hurt swept over his face. "Don't you remember Villars? But of course, you're wore out from the trip. I'll show you to your room so you can rest."

  The clock began to chime the half hour. Erika started and nearly tumbled down the stairs. Grabbing her elbow, Villars caught her as her left foot slipped off the top step.

  "Be careful, Miss Sierra," he warned as he steadied her.

  Erika leaned against the banister. The color drained from her face.

  Sierra?

  "Are you feeling all right, Miss Sierra?"

  Erika looked up into that dark face and fear suddenly grabbed at her heart. He had set out to confuse her in order to rob them or murder them - or both. She took a step backwards.

  "What are you doing here?" she asked.

  "I'm the butler, Miss," he said with a puzzled expression.

  "Sure." She took another step backwards. "You're no more a butler than I'm Sierra."

  "Please, Miss. Let me send some vittles up to you. We have some fresh biscuits."

  Erika turned and ran like a fleeing rabbit to her grandfather's room. Instinctively she wanted to protect him from this intruder. She slammed the door behind her and frantically turned the lock.

  Leaning against the cool wood, she listened to her erratic heartbeat pounding in her ears.

  She feared for them both. She had to warn Jonathan and call the police. Taking a deep breath, she turned with an explanation on her lips.

  Her mind soundlessly screamed.