Elisabeth’s attention had strayed to the calendar page on the wall. April 17, 1892. It was incredible. “I was curious,” she said distractedly, thinking of a documentary she’d watched on public television recently. “In a few more months—August, if I remember correctly—a woman in Fall River, Massachusetts, will be accused of murdering her father and stepmother with an ax. Her name is Lizzie Borden. She’ll be acquitted of the crime because of a lack of evidence.”
His gaze held both pity and irritation. “Is that supposed to have some kind of significance—the fact that she has the same first name as you do?”
A chill went through Elisabeth; she hadn’t thought of that. “No. Besides, nobody ever calls me Lizzie.”
“I do,” Jonathan answered flatly, pouring water into a clean basin and beginning to wash his hands.
“I’m glad to see that you’re taking antisepsis seriously,” Elisabeth said, as much to change the subject as anything. She still had that jittery feeling that being around Jonathan invariably gave her. “Most disease is caused by germs, you know.”
Jonathan leaned forward slightly and rounded his eyes. “No,” he said, pretending to be surprised.
“I guess maybe you’ve figured that out already,” Elisabeth conceded, folding her hands in her lap.
“Thank you for that,” he answered, drying his hands on a thin, white towel and laying it aside.
Just then, the door opened and a tall man wearing a cowboy hat and a battered, lightweight woolen coat strode in. He needed a shave, and carried a rifle in his right hand, holding it with such ease that it seemed a part of him. When he glanced curiously at Elisabeth, she saw that his eyes were a piercing turquoise blue. Pinned to his coat was a shiny nickel-plated badge in the shape of a star.
Wow, Elisabeth thought. A real, live lawman.
“’Morning, Farley,” Jonathan said. “That boil still bothering you?”
Farley actually flushed underneath that macho five-o’clock shadow of his. “Now, Jon,” he complained in his low drawl, “there was no need to mention that in front of the lady. It’s personal-like.”
Elisabeth averted her face for a moment so the marshal wouldn’t see that she was smiling.
“Sorry,” Jonathan said, but Elisabeth heard the amusement in his voice even if Farley didn’t. He gave her a pointed look.
“The lady is just leaving. Let’s get on with it.”
Elisabeth nodded and bolted out of her chair. They wouldn’t have to tell her twice—the last thing she wanted to do was watch Jonathan lance a boil on some private part of the marshal’s body. “Goodbye,” she said from the doorway. “And it was very nice to meet you, Mr. Farley.”
“Just Farley,” rumbled the marshal.
“Whatever,” Elisabeth answered, ducking out and closing the door. There was something summarial in the way Jonathan pulled the shades on both windows.
Since her senses were strained from all the new things she was trying to take in, Elisabeth was getting tired. She walked back through town, nodding politely to the women who stared at her from the wooden sidewalks and pointed, and she hoped she hadn’t ruined Jonathan’s practice by marching so boldly into town and walking right into his office.
Reaching Jonathan’s house, she found Ellen in the backyard. She’d hung a rug over the clothesline and was beating it with a broom.
Elisabeth smiled in a friendly way. “Hello,” she called.
“If you want anything to eat,” the housekeeper retorted, “you’ll just have to fix it yourself!”
With a shrug, Elisabeth went inside and helped herself to a piece of bread, spreading it liberally with butter and strawberry jam. Then she found a blanket, helped herself to a book from Jonathan’s collection in the parlor and set out for her favorite spot beside the creek.
She supposed Janet was probably getting worried, if she’d tried to call, and the Buzbee sisters would be concerned, too, if they went more than a few days without seeing her. She spread the blanket on the ground and sat down, tucking her skirts carefully around her.
A sigh escaped Elisabeth as she watched the sunlight making moving patterns on the waters of the creek. She was going to have to go back soon, back where she belonged. Her throat went tight. Before she could do that, she had to find some way to convince Jonathan that he and Trista were in very real danger.
The book forgotten at her side, Elisabeth curled up on the blanket and watched the water flow by, shimmering like a million liquid diamonds in the bright sunshine. And her sleepless night caught up with her.
When she awakened, it was to the sound of children’s laughter echoing through the trees. Elisabeth rose, automatically smoothing her hair and skirts, and left the blanket and book behind to follow the path of the stream, walking beneath the covered bridge.
Presently, she could see the schoolhouse across the narrow ribbon of water. The children were all outside at recess. While the boys had divided up into teams for baseball, the girls pushed each other in the rustic swings and played hopscotch. She spotted Trista and wondered if the plain little girl at her side was Vera, who would eventually give birth to Cecily and Roberta Buzbee.
Deciding that her presence would just raise a lot of awkward questions for Trista, Elisabeth slipped away and, after fetching the blanket and Jonathan’s book, went back to the house.
By this time, there was a nice stew simmering on the stove and fresh bread cooling on the counter under a spotless dishtowel. Ellen had apparently left for the day.
Relieved, Elisabeth opened the icebox and peered inside. There was a bowl of canned pears left over from breakfast, so she dished up a serving and went out onto the back step to eat them. She was enjoying the glorious spring afternoon when Jonathan pulled up alongside the barn, driving his horse and buggy. He sprang nimbly down from the seat and walked toward her, his medical bag in one hand.
Elisabeth felt a sweet tightening in the most feminine part of her as he approached. “Must have been an easy day,” she said when he sat down beside her.
He chuckled ruefully. “’Easy’ isn’t the word I would use to describe it,” he said. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you, Elisabeth.”
Elisabeth drew a deep breath, and suddenly her heart and her spirit and all of her body were full of springtime. She lifted one eyebrow and forced herself to speak in a normal tone. “I suppose you were wondering if I was chasing poor Ellen all over the farm with an ax.”
Jonathan laughed and shook his head. “No, I’ve considered doing that myself.” His expression turned solemn in the next moment, however, and his sure, callused hand closed over one of Elisabeth’s. “Who are you?” he rasped out. “And what spell have you cast over me?”
Never before had Elisabeth guessed that tenderness toward another person could run so deep as to be painful. “I’m just a woman,” she said softly. “And I wouldn’t have the first idea how to cast a spell.”
He stood slowly, drawing Elisabeth with him, discounting her words with a shake of his head. She knew where he meant to take her, but she couldn’t protest because it seemed to her that she’d been moving toward this moment all of her life. Maybe even for all of eternity.
She closed her eyes as he held her hand to his mouth and placed featherlight kisses on her knuckles.
Once they were inside the house, he lifted her easily into his arms and started up the back stairs. Elisabeth buried her face in his muscular neck, loving the smell and the strength and the substance of him. She looked up when she heard the creak of a door and found herself in a version of her room back in the world she knew.
The bed, made of aged, intricately carved oak, stood between the windows facing the fireplace. The walls were un-papered, painted a plain white, and Elisabeth didn’t recognize any of the furniture.
Jonathan set her on her feet and just as she would have found the wit to argue that what they were about to do was wrong, he kissed her. So great was his skill and his innate magnetism that Elisabeth forgot her objections and lost
herself in his mastery.
He unpinned her hair, combing it through with his fingers, and then very slowly began unbuttoning the front of her dress. Uncovering the lacy bra beneath, he frowned, and Elisabeth reached up to unfasten the front catch, revealing her full breasts to him.
Jonathan drew in his breath, then lifted one hand to caress her lightly. The pad of his thumb moved over her nipple, turning it button hard and wrenching a little cry of pleasure and surrender from Elisabeth.
She tilted her head back in glorious submission as he bent his head to her breast, pushing the dress down over her hips as he suckled. Elisabeth entwined her fingers in his thick, dark hair, her breathing shallow and quick.
When both her nipples were wet from his tongue, Jonathan laid her gently on the bed, taking no notice of her sneakers as he pulled them off and tossed them away. She crooned and arched her back as he slipped her panties down over her legs and threw them aside, too. He caressed her until she was damp, her body twisting with readiness.
His clothes seemed to disappear as easily as hers had, and soon he was stretched out on the mattress beside her. The April breeze ruffled the curtains at the windows and passed over their nakedness, stirring their passion to even greater heights rather than cooling it.
Elisabeth moaned as Jonathan claimed her mouth in another consuming kiss, his tongue sparring with hers. Her fingers dug into the moist flesh on his back as he moved his lips down over her breasts and her belly. Then he gripped her ankles and pressed her heels to the firm flesh of her bottom. Boldly, he burrowed through the silken barrier and tasted her.
Elisabeth’s head moved from side to side on the pillow. “Oh, Jonathan—please—it’s too much—”
“I want you to be ready for me,” he told her gruffly, and then he enjoyed her in earnest, as greedy as if she were covered in honey.
The exercise moistened Elisabeth’s skin, making small tendrils of hair cling to her face, and her breath came hard as she rose and fell in time with the rhythm Jonathan set for her. A low, guttural cry escaped her when he set her legs over his shoulders and teased her into the last stages of response.
She called his name when a sweet volcano erupted within her, her body arched like a bow drawn tight to launch an arrow. He spoke gently as he laid her, quivering, upon the bed and poised himself over her. She was still floating when he began kissing her collarbone.
“Shall I make love to you, Elisabeth?” he asked quietly, and a new tenderness swept over her in that moment because she knew he would respect her decision, whatever it might be.
“Yes,” she whispered, twisting one finger in a lock of his hair. “Oh, yes.”
He touched her with his manhood, and Elisabeth trembled with anticipation and a touch of fear. After all, there had only been one other man in her life and her experience was limited.
“I promise I won’t hurt you,” Jonathan said, and she was diffused with heat when he teased her by giving her just the tip of his shaft.
She clutched at his back. “Jonathan!”
He gave her a little more, and she marveled that he filled her so tightly. “What?”
“I want you—I need you—”
In a long, smooth glide, he gave her his length, and Elisabeth uttered a muffled shout of triumph. An instant later, she was in the throes of release, buckling helplessly beneath Jonathan, sobbing as her body worked out its sweet salvation.
She was embarrassed when she could finally lie still, and she would have turned her head away if Jonathan hadn’t caught her chin in his hand and made her look at him.
“You were beautiful,” he said. “So—beautiful.”
Elisabeth’s eyes brimmed with tears. Jonathan had given her a kind of pleasure she’d never dreamed existed, and she wanted to do the same for him. She cupped his face in her hands, moving her thumbs slowly over his jawbones, and she began to move beneath him.
He uttered a strangled moan and his powerful frame tensed, then he began to meet her thrusts with more and more force, until he finally exploded within her, filling her with his warmth. When it was over, he collapsed beside her, his head on her chest, one leg sprawled across her thighs, and Elisabeth held him.
After a long time, he asked quietly, “Who was he?”
Elisabeth braced herself, knowing men of Jonathan’s generation expected women to come to their beds as virgins. “My husband,” she said.
Instantly, Jonathan raised his head to stare into her eyes. “Your what?”
Her face felt hot. “Your honor is safe, Doctor,” she assured him. “Ian and I were divorced a year ago.”
He cleared his throat and sat up, reaching for his clothes. The distance in his manner wounded Elisabeth; she felt defensive. “Now I suppose I’m some kind of social pariah, just because my marriage didn’t last,” she said. “Well, things are different where I come from, Jonathan. Divorced women aren’t branded as sinners for the rest of their lives.”
Jonathan didn’t answer, he just kept dressing.
There was a black-and-blue-plaid lap robe folded across the foot of the bed. Elisabeth snatched it up to cover herself. “Jonathan Fortner, if you walk out of here without speaking to me, I swear I’ll never forgive you!”
He watched as she tried to dress without letting the lap robe slip. “Why did he divorce you?”
Elisabeth was furious; her cheeks ached with color. “He didn’t—the choice was mine!”
Jonathan’s shoulders slackened slightly, as though pressed under some great weight, and he sat down on the edge of the bed with a sigh. When he extended a hand to Elisabeth, she took it without thinking, and he settled her gently beside him, buttoning the front of her dress as he spoke.
“I’m sorry. I was judging what you did in terms of my own experience, and that’s unreasonable.”
Elisabeth couldn’t resist touching the dark, rumpled hair at his nape. “Did she hurt you so badly, Jonathan?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he answered simply. And then he stood and started toward the door. “Trista will be home soon,” he said, without looking back. And he was gone.
Barely fifteen minutes later, when Elisabeth was in the kitchen brewing tea, Trista came in, carrying her slate and a spelling primer. The child set her school things down and went to the icebox for the crockery pitcher.
“How was school?” Elisabeth asked.
Trista’s gray eyes sparkled as she poured milk into a glass and then helped herself to cookies from a squat china jar. “When Miss Bishop opened her lunch pail, there was a love letter inside—from Harvey Kates.”
“The blacksmith?” Elisabeth took a cookie and joined Trista at the table.
The little girl nodded importantly, and there was now a milk mustache on her upper lip. “His sister Phyllis is in the seventh grade, and he gave her a penny to put the note where Miss Bishop would be sure to find it.”
“And, of course, Phyllis told all of you exactly what her brother had written,” Elisabeth guessed.
Trista nodded. “He said he was crazy for her.”
Before Elisabeth could respond to that, Jonathan came into the kitchen. He gave Trista a distracted kiss on the top of her head, without so much as glancing at the houseguest he’d taken to bed only a short time before. “You’ve paid your debt to society,” he said to the child. “You don’t have to spend any more afternoons in your room.”
Trista’s face glowed with delight and gratitude. “Thank you, Papa.”
Elisabeth might have been invisible for all the attention Jonathan was paying her.
“I’ll be on rounds. Would you like to go along?”
The child shook her head. “I want to practice my piano lessons,” she said virtuously.
Jonathan looked amused, but he made no comment. His gray eyes touched Elisabeth briefly, questioningly, and then he was gone. Sadness gripped her as she realized he now regretted what had happened between them.
While Trista trudged bravely through her music, Elisabeth made her way slowly up the
back stairs and into the little girl’s room. She was becoming too enmeshed in a way of life that could never be hers, and she had to put some space between herself and Jonathan before she fell hopelessly in love with him.
The decision was made. She would say goodbye to Trista, go back to her own time and try to make herself believe that all of this had been a dream.
Chapter Seven
The necklace was gone.
Elisabeth dried her eyes with the back of one hand as relief and panic battled within her. After drawing a very deep breath and letting it out slowly, she made her way downstairs to the parlor, where Trista was struggling through Ode to Joy at the piano.
Elisabeth paused in the doorway, watching the little girl practice and marveling that she’d come to love this child so deeply in such a short time. “Trista?”
Innocent gray eyes linked with Elisabeth’s and the notes reverberated into silence. “Yes?”
“I can’t find my necklace. Have you seen it?”
Trista’s gaze didn’t waver, though her lower lip trembled slightly. “Papa has it. He said the pendant was valuable and might get lost if we left it lying around.”
“I see,” Elisabeth replied as righteous indignation welled up inside her. The fact that they’d been so gloriously intimate made Jonathan’s action an even worse betrayal than it would ordinarily have been. “Do you know where he put it?”
Moisture brimmed along Trista’s lower lashes; somehow, Trista had guessed that Elisabeth meant to leave and that the necklace had to go with her. She shook her head. “I don’t,” she sniffled. “Honest.”
Elisabeth’s heart ached, and she went to sit beside Trista on the piano bench, draping one arm around the little girl’s shoulders. “There are people in another place who will be worrying about me,” Elisabeth said gently. “I have to go and let them know I’m all right.”
A tear trickled down Trista’s plump cheek. “Will you be back?”
Elisabeth leaned over and lightly kissed the child’s temple. “I don’t know, sweetheart. Something very strange is happening to me, and I don’t dare make a lot of promises, because I’m not sure I can keep them.” She thought about the impending fire and a sense of hopelessness swept over her. “I’ll tell you this, though—if I have any choice in the matter, I will see you again.”
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