“I see.” She continued to fiddle with her skirts. He could see the steady rise and fall of her chest, and some predatory male instinct told him she was every bit as aroused as he, yet she refused to meet his gaze.
Maybe it was time to go. He stepped away from the bed. “I brought you some other things.”
“I really shouldn’t accept them.”
“Chocolate.”
“Chocolate?”
He had to laugh at the note of interest in her voice. Apparently no matter the time period, chocolate appealed to women. He held up the small gold box of gourmet chocolates for her to see, then set them on the bed. “Before I give you these, I wanted to show you something.” He pulled a can of pepper spray from the bag. “It’s an aerosol can. You press this button and a mist comes out.”
“Is it perfume?”
“No. I want you to be careful with this. Hide it somewhere you’ll be able to get to it in a hurry.”
A half smile curled her lips. “What is it, some sort of twenty-first century magic?”
“It’s pepper spray. If the general, or any of his men, come near you, press this button. Just make sure the opening is pointing at his face and not yours.”
“Oh Jamie, I don’t think I could kill anyone.”
“You won’t kill him, but his eyes will burn like hell for a few hours—long enough to give you time to get away.”
“I can’t begin to tell you how—I’ve lost sleep nights wondering what I would do if ever—thank you, Jamie.” She reached for the can, and her fingers brushed his.
He sucked in a breath at the unexpected contact. “I should go.”
“When will I see you again?”
“I’ll try to come back tomorrow around this same time.” God, he didn’t want to leave her here. But she’d be overwhelmed in the future, not to mention what the sight of her house would probably do to her.
She stood there, looking every inch the prim and proper lady with her hands folded at her waist, and he realized she was waiting for a proper goodbye.
“How would…a gentleman…say goodbye to a lady in your time, Josette?”
“You would kiss my hand,” she said, her voice sounding strained. She lifted her hand slightly.
He took her slender fingers in his, but didn’t kiss them. “I think my century does it better.”
Her gaze met his. He could feel the magnetic pull between them, see the desire that darkened her eyes. “What—what do you do in your century?”
“This.” With one tug, he pulled her to him. Determined not to frighten her, he placed his hands at either side of her face and held her gently. He pressed his lips to hers in a tentative gesture, fully aware she might scream, pull away or slap him. She didn’t. A small whimper escaped her. Emboldened, he leaned in again, this time gently sucking at her lower lip. Her lips softened beneath his. Desperate for one sweet taste, he deepened the kiss, urging her lips to part beneath his. When at last she opened for him, he stroked her with his tongue. Cautioning himself to move slow, he explored her mouth, savoring the taste of wine and something that was uniquely her.
Blame it on the wine, the time traveling or Josette’s bewitching hold on him, but his mind reeled, his head spun and in a heartbeat he knew one taste wouldn’t be enough.
Without a thought for the differences in their time periods, he brought his hands to her hips, pulling her close enough to savor the feel of her soft curves against his body. He slid a hand over the hill of her buttocks to press her more firmly against the body part roaring for contact.
With a gasp, she stepped backward. He winced, mentally cursing himself for pushing it. He held up a hand to ward off the scolding she was about to deliver. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
She stared at him wide-eyed, fingertips pressed to her lips. “My husband never—not even—”
Oh great, just his luck she was the widow of a really uptight guy. They’d probably only made love in the pitch dark. With their clothes on. “I’m sorry.” But he stopped short of promising it wouldn’t happen again.
He took a step backward—and into his own time.
****
Restless, Jamie paced the downstairs parlor. His sleeping bag was spread on the floor, but he had no desire to rest. Sleep wasn’t about to come, not with this hot, nagging erection.
He could still smell her, still taste her. The memory made him even harder, which only made him more restless. He needed to apologize for the kiss, but dammit, if he got near her it would only happen again. And while he wouldn’t ever force a woman, he might at least try to convince her—with his lips and hands—to see things his way.
Despite leaving her with water and food and the pepper spray, he worried about what would become of her. First thing tomorrow, he’d put a dead bolt on her bedroom door. That way, even though the general had her locked in, she could keep him out.
He paced across the room. No he couldn’t. It would only put her in more danger if the general saw a shiny new lock on her door.
Dammit, this had to stop. What if he accidentally changed history? What if the next time he returned to his own time, everything was different because of something he did or said in 1862? After all, Josette Beaumont, the Virginia Rose, hadn’t had a confidante from the future the first time around.
He reached the end of the room, turned to pace back and found his gaze helplessly drawn to her portrait. There had to be a way to help her without changing history. He couldn’t just let her die.
He needed to learn more about her, find out why she risked her neck, even when under lock and key, for the Southern cause. Maybe then he’d have the answer to convince her to stop. Once she was out of danger, maybe this obsession would end.
Relieved to finally have a plan, he settled onto the sleeping bag and lie back, arms behind his head. For long hours he lay there, but the image of her wouldn’t leave his mind.
What was she doing right now? Their time of day seemed to match up, even if time itself didn’t. Was she asleep? And what would happen tomorrow when the restoration team showed up to begin work on the house in earnest? What if one of the workers accidentally happened upon her?
Should he warn her that it might happen?
He rolled over and picked up his watch and shone the flashlight on it. Two a.m. Maybe she was up late, spying.
He rose from the sleeping bag, chiding himself for the need to find an excuse to wake her. The idea of finding her sound asleep in her bed nagged at him as he made his way to the creaky staircase. By now he’d learned which steps not to put his entire weight on, and which ones to skip. What did women sleep in back in 1862? An image of a high necked flannel gown, like something from Little House on the Prairie, leaped to mind. Undoubtedly the lovely Josette would look sinfully delicious even in that.
He entered the bedroom and strode purposefully toward the closet—a closet that didn’t exist in Josette’s time, he noted. He reached the closet. Nothing happened. Frowning, he entered the small room, then turned around and walked back out. Nothing.
This evening all he’d done was walk toward the closet and he’d ended up in Josette’s time.
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and tried once more. Nothing. She wasn’t there.
Had he lost her already?
Chapter Four
Heavy footfalls outside the door had Josette’s heart pounding. Please God, let him pass by.
The sound of a key turning in the lock assured her the prayer had gone unanswered. She swallowed a second before Stillwater stepped into the room. Her heart nearly leapt from her chest when he closed the door behind him and locked it, pocketing the key.
His lips were drawn into a taut line. He didn’t speak, merely clasped his hands behind his back and paced across the room with agonizingly slow steps. She watched each rise and fall of his heels, wincing when he pivoted, but refusing to meet his gaze.
“We have a most interesting development, Mrs. Beaumont.”
Sh
e squeezed her hands together to keep them from trembling. Forcing her chin so high she may as well be staring at the ceiling, she gave the general her best cool stare. “Has your President Lincoln finally come to his senses?”
He met her gaze for a moment, but continued pacing. “It’s interesting that you don’t ask what development. Almost as if you know the answer.”
“Why General,” she said, fluttering a hand to hear heart in an overly dramatic gesture, “I only know what information you allow me to.”
“My intelligence spied a small detachment just outside of the valley.”
Josette briefly squeezed her eyes shut, praying he’d not utter the words she dreaded hearing.
“But when my men arrived, Jackson and his men were gone.”
Her breath came out in a silent sigh of relief.
“How do you suppose, Mrs. Beaumont, that classified information—information discussed by no one save myself and my men right here in this house—made it all the way to General Jackson’s ears?”
“Well it’s quite obvious, General.”
He stopped pacing and pivoted sharply, fixing her with a narrow stare. “Indeed.”
“You have a traitor in your midst.”
One bushy brow twitched.
She rose from the bed and stepped across the room to sit at her vanity. She pulled the ribbon from her hair and took up her hair brush.
“Do you know what a traitor is, Mrs. Beaumont?”
Meeting his gaze in the mirror, she set the brush down and fluttered a hand to her chest. “You know we foolish li’l southern women don’t trouble our minds with such silly things as learnin’.”
He didn’t take the bait, nor acknowledge her overly dramatic performance. “None of my men would dare sell secrets to the enemy. It would defeat our purpose.”
Large clammy hands settled on her shoulders. “There is only one person in this house who wants to see the south succeed in their mission.” His hands tightened painfully.
“I won’t deny that I’m devoted to the Southern cause, General, if that’s what you’re hoping to hear. But please tell me exactly how I obtained knowledge of your secrets—and gave them away—when I haven’t been allowed out of this room. A guard was present the entire time I prayed with Reverend Huckabee the other day.”
His hand moved from her shoulders to slide down her arms in a slow caress. In the mirror she watched his gaze move from her face down her throat to her breasts. Fear and revulsion coiled in her stomach.
“If you’ve seduced one of my men, Mrs. Beaumont, I will find out.” His voice was low, threatening. “And he will be hanged. Can you live with that?”
“I’d never let a filthy Yankee lay a hand on me. Not even for the cause.”
“That’s what you say,” he said, at last removing his hands from her. “But you should be terribly hungry and very thirsty by now. Yet you don’t seem the least bit uncomfortable. Someone has brought you food and water. And I can’t help but wonder what you bartered in return.”
“You are disgusting,” she seethed. “Vile, filthy man.”
“From now on, the only one allowed near this room will be me. And when you are ravenously hungry and weak from thirst, Mrs. Beaumont, perhaps you’ll decide I’m not so vile after all.”
****
“Jamie, you look like you haven’t slept in days.” Len Goldman’s concerned voice barely permeated Jamie’s thoughts. “Is it Ashley?”
“Who?”
Len raised a brow in his direction. She opened another creamer container and added it to her coffee. “The woman who is suing you. Your former fiancée.”
Realizing he was half slumped across the restaurant table like a teenager, Jamie straightened. He tried desperately to force himself to full attention, but the cobwebs dogging his sleep-deprived mind wouldn’t budge. “No, it’s not her.”
“Something else then? Are you staying up late working on the house?”
He traced the handle of the coffee cup with a fingertip, choosing his words carefully. “I’ve been researching the woman who lived there.”
“The spy?”
“Josette Beaumont.” It felt good to have her name on his lips. Saying it aloud made it feel real and less like a dream.
“What for?”
“I want to restore the house to the way it looked when she lived there.”
“I see. Have you considered using the house—when it’s finished, of course, as leverage with Ashley?”
“You mean as in ‘I’ll give you this house if you call off your lawsuit?’ That kind of leverage?”
“Yes, precisely.”
“She’d just sell it.”
“It will be worth a fortune when you’ve finished. Far more than she’d get haggling back and forth with you in court.”
“No.”
A waitress came and set their breakfast plates before them.
Len was silent as she sprinkled pepper on her omelet.
Jamie glanced at the plate of eggs and fruit, but found his appetite lacking. “The Ashley problem needs to go away; I don’t want her anywhere near that house.”
“A few weeks ago you planned to tear it down, sight unseen.”
“That was a few weeks ago. There’s something special there and I want to hold onto it a while.” How long would he keep visiting her room, hoping to find her there? In the past two days, not only had he begun a thorough research of Josette’s life and death, he’d found himself checking into things like the time-space continuum—things existing and moving in a linear fashion through time and space—quantum physics, the theory of time travel and whether or not it was possible to slip through a portal, or worm hole, in time and end up in another period.
More concerning, however, was while nothing had changed in the present; he’d already noticed a change in Josette’s history. Undoubtedly caused by her interaction with him. Instead of now being sent to Old Capital prison and eventually hanging for treason, she was shot and killed by the Union Army after killing General Joseph Stillwell and escaping. Stillwell, the bastard who had her locked her up. The need to get back to her, to warn her was overwhelming. But he couldn’t reach her.
“So has the restoration team begun work?” Len’s concerned gaze moved from Jamie’s untouched food to his face. She frowned in what Jamie recognized as a worried mother expression.
He nodded and to ease Len’s mind, began to eat. “They’re tearing up the floors to see what wood can be restored and what will need replacing.” They’d checked all the flooring for signs of dry rot, including the upstairs—and not one worker had disappeared through a hole in time, or come downstairs to announce there was an irate lady in the upstairs bedroom.
“I’m glad the house has gotten under your skin, but I was hoping to see a little more of the D’Alessandro fire in you. Instead you look like hell.”
“I’m fine.” Jamie assured her. “Just a little obsessed with the life of a certain Civil War spy.”
****
Josette sat on her bed, staring out the window. Beside her, Sebastian purred his approval as she absently ran her fingers over his soft gray fur. She’d never felt so alone. Why hadn’t Jamie come back? Had he lost whatever means he had of contacting her? Or had she been too eager in allowing him that kiss? No, he’d said women in his time did that and much more. Still, she’d never allowed a man she barely knew such liberties. She wouldn’t make that mistake again, no matter how handsome he was.
At first she’d tried to convince herself he was just a dream, that she’d imagined him in her state of distress at being held captive in this room for so long. But the bottles of water and the strange looking packages of food he’d left were proof he’d been here.
She was more than grateful he’d left them. General Stillwater had stepped up his efforts to wear her down. Not only was he not allowing Maisie in to see her and help her dress, he was allowing her very little water and no food.
She was managing just fine by rationing what Jamie had
left for her, but her concerns were more for Maisie than for herself. It seemed the General now suspected her maid of being the contact Josette passed information to. No one, save Reverend Huckabee, had been in to see her other than Maisie.
Wringing her hands, Josette rose from the bed. She would never ask Maisie to do anything that might jeopardize her safety. It tore at her heart to think of the kind, elderly woman being looked upon with suspicion. When Bernard had died shortly after the war had begun, she had let his slaves go free. Maisie, who had been with Josette’s family since she was a child, refused to leave. Nowhere to go, and too old to get there anyway, she’d said.
She paced across the room, as always, taking a deliberate step into the spot near her dressing screen where Jamie had appeared. She’d made the journey across this floor at least a thousand times in the past two days, but neither had he appeared, nor had she been transported to his time. Whatever door, or window, in time that had allowed him to travel back and forth between centuries must have closed.
With a shaky sigh, she pulled her gown from the top of the screen and began to dress. It was difficult to manage without Maisie’s help, but since she’d lost a good deal of weight during her captivity, she could wear the dress without a corset. Twisting and reaching behind her, she attempted to fasten the buttons, but managed only a few. With a shriek of frustration, she yanked the dress off and kicked it across the room.
As she turned, her hair fell into her eyes, reminding her that she had also been unable to manage the unruly curls without Maisie’s assistance. She’d taken to wearing it pulled back with a piece of ribbon. Finding the ribbon there on her wash stand where she’d left it the night before, she grabbed it. Placing it between her teeth, she pulled her hair back with her hands, combing the tangles with her fingers as she stepped from behind her dressing screen.
“Oh!” Her startled cry mingled with a deep, masculine “Umph” as she collided with something warm and solid.
This Moment In Time Page 4