Always

by Jude Deveraux

  Darci drew in her breath. “Go home, then come back when your wife is alive and heal her heart—if that was what was wrong with her, that is?”

  “Yes, exactly,” Adam said.

  “You seem to trust a lot,” Jack said. “If I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t believe any of this. Who believes in time travel?”

  “I don’t have to believe,” Adam said. “I just have to try it. If you’re liars I lose nothing but some of the money that I have too much of. If you’re telling the truth I have everything to gain.”

  “What money?” Jack asked. “Did I hear anyone ask you for money?” His voice was rising in anger.

  “Don’t pay any attention to him. His father is a billionaire so he’s overly sensitive about money.”

  “A billionaire?” Adam asked, eyes wide. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “From a son’s point of view, it’s not great. I would’ve traded him for a chauffeur for a father. Actually, I did.”

  “None of it matters anyway,” Darci said, “because we don’t have a key to the box and I don’t have my Touch of God, so—”

  “Your what?” Adam asked.

  “Touch of God. That’s what the ball is.” Adam looked at her as though he wanted her to explain further. “God gave the angels a touch from His fingertip, then each angel blew on the touch. They enclosed the touch and their breath in what looks to be glass, but it’s quite indestructible.”

  “And how did you find this extraordinary object?” Adam asked.

  “Finding it was easy. It was locked inside a ball of crystal and I felt its energy. The hard part was getting the ball out.”

  “And how did you do that?”

  Darci looked down at her hands. “I passed a test.” She looked back at him. “A woman had done a terrible thing to me and I knew it, but I saved her life anyway.”

  When Darci said no more, Adam looked at Jack and he shrugged. “I don’t know anything about that,” Jack said. “That happened before I met her, but I have seen her paralyze a room full of people. Pretty scary sight.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe I did that,” Darci said, teasing. “Greg said that you had a logical explanation for everything I did.”

  “Yeah, well, that was before I woke up in a land where they’ve never seen a computer or MTV.”

  “And what are these things?” Adam asked.

  “If I stay here, I’ll draw you pictures,” Jack said. “In fact, maybe I’ll invent them.”

  “MTV?” Darci asked. “Do you think any age really needs lewd videos?”

  “They aren’t all lewd and just because you’re a virgin queen doesn’t mean that the rest of us—”

  “How about if you wake up tomorrow and Lavender is gone? Think you’ll want to jump into bed with someone else right away?” Darci shot back at him.

  “Who are you to judge me? I can see that you’re lusting after Drayton here so hot that the silverware’s about to melt,” Jack said with rage in his voice.

  Adam stood up so quickly that his chair almost turned over. “Sir! You will not speak that way at my table. You will apologize to Miss Marshall or I will throw you out!”

  Jack stood up and glared at Adam. They were nearly the same height, but Adam was brawnier. “You think you can?” he spat at Adam.

  “Jack!” Darci shouted.

  Jack seemed to come to his senses and all the anger left him in an instant. “Sorry,” he said to Adam. “I don’t know what came over me.” He ran his hand over his eyes. “For a minute there I felt like my old self.” He looked back at Adam. “I really do apologize. I guess you know that Darci and I aren’t really brother and sister, but we do sometimes fight like we are.” When Adam said nothing, Jack turned to Darci. “I apologize for my words and for my attitude. I don’t know what happened. It was like…”

  He glanced at Lavender, sitting quietly, her head on her elbow and happily and silently watching the three of them, unaware of the content of what was being said.

  “Apology accepted,” Adam said. “Shall we sit back down? There’s dessert yet to be eaten.”

  When Jack sat down, he looked at Darci in alarm. “I don’t know what happened, but for a moment I felt that old anger, as though there was something inside of me that was telling me to give pain before someone hurt me. I don’t understand it. Lavender’s here. She’s alive and in a body. Her spirit is anchored inside of her.”

  Darci said nothing, just looked at Jack in alarm. If only I had my powers, she thought. If only I could see and feel what was wrong! “Maybe it was temporary. Maybe it was just prewedding jitters. Or maybe you feel guilty for getting an innocent like Lavender drunk.”

  Truthfully, Darci knew what Jack was thinking because it was the same thing she was thinking. Earlier she’d said that maybe John had killed Lavender. Maybe John had been the one who pushed her off the building. It was true that the high school boy’s paper had said that John was at the church when Lavender fell, but so much time had passed that maybe that fact was wrong. Jack had taken over John’s spirit, but Darci knew that spirit was still inside him.

  Reaching across the table, Darci took Jack’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “If Lavender was being made to marry a man she doesn’t want to marry, John is probably angry about that. Or maybe he’s angry at you for taking over and making love to his girl.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Jack said, squeezing her hand back. “But I wish you could paralyze him. At least until after the wedding.”

  Darci smiled and leaned back in her chair. “Yeah, me, too.”

  “What do you think will happen tomorrow?” Adam asked as he handed around plates for the dessert. It had been natural to Darci to get up and help him. Adam started to protest, but then he’d smiled at her in a way that made her blush. That little smile had been so intimate that for a moment Darci was flustered. He’s not your husband, she reminded herself yet again.

  “What?” she asked when she felt both men staring at her, then she remembered Adam’s question. “Don’t ask me, I know nothing more than anyone else does. Jack, you know all that I do. Or, actually, you should know more than I do because you’ve been with Lavender all day. Have you spoken to her for even two sentences?”

  “I’ll tell what I know as soon as you tell me who Simone is.”

  Adam looked at Darci. “Did you go to Simone?” When Darci nodded, he said, “What did she tell you?”

  “That I must return. Not that I should return, but that I must.”

  “I should have guessed she was another psychic,” Jack said. “I told you that I don’t believe—”

  The abrupt laughter of Darci and Adam cut him off, and when Jack got the joke, he looked a bit sheepish. “Okay,” he said, smiling, laughing at himself. “So maybe now I do believe a little bit. Okay, so I believe a lot.” He glanced at Lavender, saw that she had her head against the back of the seat, her eyes closed, giving a soft snore now. He turned back to Adam and lowered his voice. “The truth is that all we know is what we pried out of some high school kid who seemed to be in love with the beauty of Miss Lavender Shay. On her wedding day, she climbed to the top of a building and jumped off. Or was pushed.”

  “How did this affect the future?” Adam asked.

  “It didn’t,” Jack said. “Not really.”

  “It affected Jack,” Darci said. “You see, Lavender was so full of hate that she attached her spirit to him. He was the quintessential angry young man when I met him.”

  “As we just saw,” Adam said, looking at Lavender, who was still sleeping. “Forgive me for being naive, but I can’t see her ever being full of hate. And if this event is to take place in less than twenty-four hours, how does she build up that much hatred?”

  “A woman scorned,” Jack said, lifting Lavender’s hand and kissing it.

  “I would never leave you, Jack,” Lavender said abruptly, coming awake suddenly.

  “Perhaps that’s your answer,” Adam said. “Perhaps she didn’t leave you a
nd her anger came from things that she saw you do later, in your time. You said you thought you were in love with another woman. Perhaps that set her off.”

  Darci was thinking about what Adam was saying. “The only thing that could make Lavender so very angry is if she were betrayed by Jack—not John, but Jack. She loves him and knows that he loves her, so if he—”

  “If Jack harmed her—”

  “That might make her angry enough to stick to him forever,” Darci said.

  “Wait a minute!” Jack said.

  “You wouldn’t betray me, would you, Jack?” Lavender said and began to cry.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” Jack said, his arms around Lavender protectively.

  Darci gave a look at Adam and an unspoken agreement passed between them. In the next second she left the table and went upstairs to summon the nanny. The woman was in her nightgown and reading, and she was in a bad temper that she was being asked to do anything for anyone other than the children. No wonder the girls asked me to stay, Darci thought. She had to promise the woman extra pay to get her to come downstairs.

  Thirty minutes later, the nanny and Darci had undressed Lavender and put her to bed. Grateful to get away from the bad-tempered nanny, Darci went downstairs.

  “Give me a drink,” she said as soon as she reached the library where Jack and Adam were sitting on comfortable chairs in front of the fireplace, both of them drinking glasses of port. “You have to get rid of that dreadful woman,” Darci said to Adam. “You can’t force your beautiful daughters to endure her.”

  “No one will stay because of the talk of a ghost,” Adam said as he poured her a glass of port. “And don’t tell me to move because I have to be near…” He looked away.

  “Yes, I know,” she said, accepting the drink.

  “Now, about this key,” Adam said.

  “The key that I don’t want to find,” Jack added.

  “Who said you have to return?” Darci snapped. “Maybe you stay and I go home.” She wasn’t about to tell him what Simone said.

  “Okay,” Jack said. “Point taken. Adam suggested that he and I get some lanterns and some men and go look for the key. We could search the ground where you and I first appeared.”

  “I doubt if it’ll do any good,” Darci said gloomily. “I figure that if the key wasn’t in the box then it’s lost. Or maybe it’s gone back to its original container.” She held up her glass and looked at the amber liquid. “Somewhere in this world is probably a cute little ceramic man sitting on a shelf. With my luck, he’s probably in Istanbul—or somewhere where they’re at war.”

  She turned to Adam. “You haven’t seen a little ceramic man about four inches high, have you? He has on blue overalls, a brown cap, and great big ears. Sort of a gnome, or maybe a hobbit, only he has on thick-soled brown shoes.”

  When Adam didn’t say anything, she looked at him harder, but his eyes were unreadable. “Excuse me a moment,” he said, then left the room.

  “Think he went to get your little man?” Jack asked.

  “No,” Darci said, frowning into the fireplace. “That would be too easy. If I’ve learned nothing else in my life, it’s that I’m to be tested for absolutely everything.”

  “And if you win, what do you receive? Besides the great and glorious Adam Montgomery, that is?”

  “I don’t know and, to tell the truth, when I think about it, I get scared.”

  “Scared? You?”

  “Oh yes. Very scared.”

  Adam entered the room carrying a black portfolio, sat down, and untied it to reveal an art kit. Inside was drawing paper and a dozen pencils. Curious, Darci watched as he took one of the pencils and began to sketch. Within minutes, he had drawn the little ceramic man exactly.

  “Does he look like this?”

  Eyes wide, Darci took the drawing from him. “Yes,” she said. “That’s him. But where…? How…? Do you have him?”

  “No,” Adam said, “but I know where he is.”

  “Let’s go.” When Adam didn’t move, Darci sat back down with a sigh. “So tell me the whole horrible story. Where is it? Top of a mountain? A volcanic mountain? With snakes covering the path?”

  Adam looked at Jack. “Is this normal in your world?”

  “That’s just her—I think. I really have no idea. So where is this little man?”

  “Locked in a safe,” Adam said.

  “Not so bad,” Jack said. “I’ve dealt with safes before.”

  “The safe isn’t as much of a problem as where it is. It’s at the end of some tunnels and they…”

  “Tunnels?” Darci asked, staring at Adam. “In Camwell? Tunnels in Camwell?” She whispered the last.

  “Yes. You know of them?”

  “I believe she killed some people in some tunnels in Camwell,” Jack said smoothly. “At least I was told that she did.”

  “Are you all right?” Adam asked, reaching for Darci to steady her.

  She leaned back against the chair and stared into the fire. So, at last, she was coming to the truth as to why she’d been sent back in time. Why had she been so naive as to think that Jack could have had anything to do with their return? He was merely the means so she could find the box. That an angry spirit had been hanging around him was secondary. After all, didn’t millions of people have spirits hanging around them? Angry, jealous, insane, and/or whispering spirits were hovering over many people.

  “Tell me everything,” she said to Adam, her voice sounding as tired as she was beginning to feel.

  “What do you know of Nokes garnets?” Adam asked.

  “Never heard of them,” Jack said, and Darci shook her head.

  “Things in your world and mine are so different. Nokes garnets are what all the ladies want now. I wish we had time to talk about your time and mine,” Adam said. “I wish I could spend the night here asking both of you questions, but it can’t be. We must go tonight and get this little figure.”

  “Yes, of course,” Darci said softly. “I was sent back in time to Camwell, Connecticut, so of course I’ll have to go back into those tunnels. Why didn’t I think of that in the first place?” She looked at Adam. “Is it possible that we could destroy those tunnels tonight? I’m not sure it will help the future, but we can try. I’m sure she’ll just dig them out again. A backhoe can do in weeks what it takes men years to do.”

  She was aware that both men were looking at her in consternation, but she didn’t explain. “Tell me about these garnets,” she said.

  “Fontinbloom Nokes was—is—a man who was always coming up with schemes to get rich quickly. Do you have this type of man in your time?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Jack said. “Too many of them. But no Fontinblooms that I know of.”

  “At one time Fonty worked for me and I rather liked him. He was a bombastic liar, but I found him entertaining, and I could trust him with money. One time when he was accused of stealing, I stood up for him and helped find the real culprit. In the end, everything turned out all right and I got him released from prison, but I’m sorry to say that the episode turned Fonty against the whole town. He was already a man who believed that people wished him ill, but after that he became worse. But then he found the little man.”

  “Where?” Darci asked.

  “He was very secretive about that, would tell no one, but he said it was a lucky object and it was going to give him a way to get back at everybody who’d never believed in him.”

  Adam took a drink of his port. “He found silver, or at least what he thought was silver, on a piece of land that belonged to his father. There was a falling-down old house on the property—”

  “Built in 1727,” Darci said.

  Adam looked at her with one eyebrow raised. “Probably so. It looks to be that old, but how did you know? The place is little more than a fire hazard and ought to be torn down.”

  “It won’t be,” Darci said. “It will survive and become a bed-and-breakfast. What he found wasn’t silver?”


  “No,” Adam said. “It was some worthless mineral that looked like silver, but what the assayer did find in the rubble was a boring little rock that contained a garnet that no one had ever seen before. It was named Nokes garnet after Fonty.”

  “Never heard of it,” Darci said, “but until I watched the Gem Network I’d never heard of Tsavorite garnets or Mandarin garnets either.”

  “Gem Network?” Adam asked.

  Darci waved her hand. She didn’t have time to explain that now.

  Getting up, Adam went to the hearth, picked up a little wooden box, opened it, and withdrew something that he handed to Darci. It was a gem, white and clear, but when she held it up to the light it had tones of blue and purple inside it. “It’s beautiful,” she said, handing it back to him, but Adam didn’t take it. “Keep it. Perhaps when you leave you can take it with you. It belonged to my wife.”

  As Darci’s hand closed over the gemstone, she couldn’t look at Adam’s face. “So this man dug the tunnels to get to the garnets.”

  “Yes,” Adam said. “With heavily armed guards all around, he dug the tunnels, looking for the garnets. He’s made a fortune as the garnets are in high demand now, and as far as anyone knows, they come only from here. In the past ten years Fonty has dug miles of tunnels.”

  He looked at Darci. “You seem to know these tunnels. What are they used for in your time?”

  “Witches,” Jack said quickly.

  “But there is no such thing as a witch,” Adam said. “Has your time gone back to burning them at the stake?”

  “No, it was left to me to get rid of them,” Darci said. “As for witches, evil exists, and in this case the woman owned the Mirror of Nostradamus, so whatever she was, she was truly evil.” When Darci saw that both Adam and Jack were staring at her she said, “What?”

  “The Mirror of Nostradamus?” Adam asked in a whisper. “Surely that’s a myth. Like Aladdin’s lamp.”

  “The mirror is no myth, and as for the lamp, I think that might be real, too,” Darci said. “I’m not sure, but something someone said once made me think the lamp is on my list of twelve objects I’m supposed to obtain.”