by Sarah Hegger
Laura peered at the carton nearest her. “They’re organized by date and then alphabetized by patient name,” she said.
At the end of the row she turned right to where the newest patient belongings were stored. A quarter down the half-filled rack from this year, she found it. Patient name: Fitzwilliam, Oliver. Patient Number: 151204, the date of his arrival, followed by his initials, FO and his birthdate, 0000 since his birthdate remained unknown, SM, for Singen Montgomery and then four randomly generated computer numbers.
Laura tapped the carton. “This is it?”
The sword crackled along Oliver’s nerve endings and lifted all the hair on his arms. It sang to him, “I am you and you are mine.” A lullaby pulsing in time to each beat of his heart.
“Stand back.” Placing himself between her and escape, he lowered the carton to the floor. The sword’s power grew stronger. It knew he was near, and like always, responded to him.
Doctor Rose, Laura in his mind no matter what she insisted he call her, stood about five feet away. Gaze flickering beyond him, she took a step back.
“If you run I will catch you before you reach the lift.” He pried the top off the carton. Neatly folded and waiting for him to don them again lay his boots, chausses and tunic. He would miss the softer fabrics of this time. Truly regretting they would not come with him, he toed off his runners.
With wide, panicked eyes, Laura watched him. “What are you doing?”
“It would cause no end of strife for me to arrive in my time dressed as I am now.” She thought him mad, but soon she would wonder at her own sanity. He wished he could spare her that, spare her all of this, but necessity demanded he act thusly. “I need to change.”
Every muscle taut and ready, she froze.
He unzipped his jeans.
She shot past him, screaming loud enough to wake the dead.
“Shit.” Oliver kicked his legs free of his jeans and ran like hell after her.
She reached the lift and punched the call button. The doors opened.
Grabbing the back of her hoodie Oliver hauled her out of the lift. Fastening his arm about her waist, he covered her mouth with his free hand and dragged her back and away from freedom.
She fought ferociously, nails raking his restraining arm, heels drumming against his bare legs. As her heel made contact, pain lanced up from his knee. Her head caught him on the chin and he tasted blood.
“Settle down.” He shook her. As much as he didn’t want to hurt her, she needed to calm the hell down. Carrying a fighting, wriggling woman took strength and effort. Sweat poured down his face by the time he had wrestled her back to his open carton. He snatched up his rope belt, and used his body weight to bring her to the ground. One knee to her chest, he tied her hands.
He sprang free.
She writhed and kicked. Her legs caught his ankle and brought him down hard on his knees. “Stop it.” Stubborn wench insisted on believing the worst of him. Part of him understood, but a bigger part had no more patience. Not with the sword murmuring to him.
Keeping his eye on her, he stripped his modern clothes and donned the tunic and chausses Mother had made for him. The tunic stretched tight over his shoulders. He had gained muscle since being in his time. Swinging his arms, he tried to ease the fit. The right tunic arm tore at the armpit. As Doctor Rose would likely lose her mind if he stripped naked, he kept the modern braes on. She already thought he meant to kill her and he would not add the fear of rape to her overwrought mind.
With his thinner waistline, his chausses bagged at the waist. He needed his rope belt to hold them up. The same rope belt Doctor Rose attempted to gnaw her way through. He had no belt with his modern garb. Holding his chausses up with his left hand, he took up the sword.
Sweet, sharp power flowed up the hilt into his arm. It surged through his muscles. At the touch that felt better than sex, his cock hardened.
Doctor Rose gasped and she scooted away from him. Her back hit the rack behind him.
“I am going to show you a thing now, Doctor Rose.” He stepped closer to her. His biggest regret from this time that he hadn’t found his way between her long, slim thighs.
She paled, her breathing a harsh pant.
“In the days to come when you doubt your own sanity I want you to remember this clearly. Look at me.”
Her gaze snapped to him.
“Look at me and keep your eyes on me. This really happened. Neither of us is mad.” He raised the sword.
Laura screamed. “No!”
“Take me home.”
Laura lunged.
Power surged.
6
The pain started in her hands and tore through her. It ripped through every vital organ. Her heart stopped beating. Her lungs contracted, screaming for air.
This was death. No white light, no Mom and Dad waiting for her and ready to lead her into forever. Death splintered and whirled in dark so intensely nothing it tore her apart. Shards of her sheared off and got absorbed by the nothing.
Something pounded her back hard enough to start her breath again. Light burned her retinas and she blinked her eyes shut and then open again.
Oliver’s angry face hung above hers. “What the fuck did you do?”
She could breathe again. Pressing her hand to her chest, she almost cried when she registered the steady thump of her heart. “Oh.” Ass in the dirt, she sat in some kind of field. Trees, fresh air, birdsong and sky all hit her at about the same time. “Oliver.”
“Aye.” Scowling, he sat beside her, arms resting on his upraised knees.
“I don’t think I’m in Kansas anymore.”
“Nay. You are not.” He stood up, and brushed dirt from his pants. “Jesu. What a sodding mess.”
At the edge of the field a small, thatched cottage squatted. The kind you saw on TV, like if you were watching Game of Thrones or something. Her head refused to go there. “Where are we?”
This had to be a dream. The whole thing. Oliver breaking into her flat, the trip to the institution, the sword, all of it. “I’d like to wake up now.”
Oliver glanced at her and shook his head. With sharp, angry movements, he untied her hands. “I’m going to need that.”
The rope tying her hands came free and her fingers prickled as blood flow returned to them.
Oliver tied the rope around his waist, then bent and picked up the sword. Tucking it into his belt, he glowered at her.
She would really, really like to wake up now. The air smelled different. It tickled her nose and she sneezed. Did you sneeze in dreams? She’d never done it before. So real. She dug her fingers into the warm, damp earth.
“Listen to me.” Oliver crouched beside her. “I’m going to tell you how this is and you had best listen and save yourself some time.”
The sun hung low over the trees. A chill frosted the air and made her shiver. She’d never been here before. That she was certain of. Had the boredom and loneliness finally driven her around the twist and led her mind to conjure a frighteningly real scenario?
“You are not going mad.” Oliver pinched her chin. “You are not dreaming and you are not drunk. This is real, and the sooner you accept that, the better for you.”
“No, it isn’t.” She slapped his hand away. “The mind is a powerful thing. I should know. I study the mind.”
With a hand beneath her armpit he dragged her to her feet. “Stubborn wench. I tried to save you the headache. Never mind.” Holding her hand he strode across the field toward the house. “You will come to your senses soon enough. For now, try not to speak too much. I need to work out how to fix this.”
“Fix what?” She stumbled over the loose earth.
“Somehow you have travelled back in time with me. I think it happened when you grabbed my wrists.”
Wow! Her imagination had taken this to unplumbed depths. For a logical woman, she certainly had a wild fantasy side going on. Time travel? It struck her as unbelievably funny and she laughed. She laughed so hard she
couldn’t walk anymore and bent over to catch her breath. Her belly ached from laughing so hard.
“Stop it.” Oliver grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “We do not have padded cells for the nutters here. We tend to let them die.”
Suddenly her laughter stopped. She took it all in. The field, the cottage, Oliver, the lightening sky, the loud drone of an insect. “Make it stop.”
“I cannot.” Oliver shrugged. He actually had the gall to look as if he empathized with her.
“Make it stop.” How dare he look like he pitied her? How dare he stare down at her with regret, like he knew how she felt? Laura punched him. Something inside her snapped and she hit him again. Nothing else was real but the pounding of her fists against his chest, the solid smack of flesh against flesh.
“There now.” He gathered her close.
Trapped between their chests, her fists were useless. Refusing to draw comfort from him, she held herself rigid.
He cupped the back of her head, pressing it to his shoulder while his other arm tightened like a metal band about her waist. “You cannot fight this, Laura. Believe me, I tried when I landed in your time. You have to find a way to accept it.”
“No.” She didn’t believe in this. Oliver Fitzwilliam was the insane one, not her.
“Hush,” he whispered. “Neither of us is insane.”
“Take me back.” She sounded like a small, petulant child.
“I will.” He pressed his head to the top of hers. “I swear to you I will, Laura. But first I must complete my heart’s desire.”
Who gave a shit about his heart’s desire? She wanted to go home to her crappy flat and her awful job. Back to her lonely, pathetic existence. “Take me back now.”
“I can’t.” He genuinely sounded regretful. “The sword is...complicated.”
“What?” She wriggled free of his hold.
Grimacing, he held her at arm’s length. “I am not sure if I take you back now, whether I can return here or not.”
Laura took in this new information, but her mind vomited it out immediately. “Are you telling me that you have hauled my ass through time with a sword that you don’t know how to use?”
“Maybe.” He flinched and marched across the field toward the cottage.
Laura couldn’t very well stand there, so she followed. Damp sod stuck to the treads of her Nikes. Her session with Fitzwilliam had crept into her subconscious mind and taken root. It had expanded into her dream state and painted an elaborate picture. Time travel didn’t exist. It really didn’t or someone, somewhere would have heard of it by now. God, if they could travel through time, there would be people zipping about all over the place. Imagine the opportunities for travel agents, for instance. Sumptuous Versailles, only a time flip away. Call now and secure your place. But wait...there’s more. Book your dream trip to Versailles and we’ll throw in a free trip to Henry VIII’s Hampton Court. BOGO, time travel style.
A dog shot around the side of the cottage, barking. It spotted Oliver and stopped barking.
“Hello, boy.” Oliver dropped to his haunches.
Tongue whipping out and catching whatever part of Oliver it could, the dog writhed and wriggled into his arms.
Oliver glanced up at her. “This is Arrow. He’s my dog.”
“So, this is your home.” Talk about your DIY project. The thatch wore thin in places, and a crack zig-zagged down the front wall. The window openings were covered in a sort of waxy parchment type material. Weeds sprouted from where the foundations met the wall.
Oliver stood and looked about with a frown. “I must have been away for a while.” He approached the house. “It seems to be in some disrepair.”
It didn’t seem polite to point out the obvious. The place was a dump.
Oliver opened the cottage door and peered inside. “Mother!”
Great, even in her dreams men took her home to meet their mothers.
“She isn’t here.” Oliver widened the door and stepped inside.
“And she left the door open?” Laura followed him in. “She went somewhere and left the door open.”
He blinked. “Arrow was here.”
Arrow wagged his tail.
Laura absorbed the cottage in one glance. Not because she had Ninja-eyeballs or anything, but because it was one room. Fireplace and pots on one end, stalls on the other. In between, a table with two benches and a large bed. The stalls concerned her the most. “Who sleeps there?”
Oliver’s face went suspiciously blank. “In the winter, we bring the animals into the house with us.”
“You are kidding me.”
Eyes brimming with laughter, Oliver shook his head. “You get used to the smell.”
“No, no, you don’t.” Laura marched over to the bench and sat down. It felt reassuringly solid beneath her butt. “Because I won’t be here come winter. You’re going to do whatever it is that you need to do and take me home.”
“Right.” Oliver cleared his throat. “Would you like some warm milk?”
No coffee. Or tea. Not for another five hundred years or so. “Do I have to milk a cow?”
“Nay.” Oliver chuckled. He crouched and fiddled around with the fire.
A fat orange cat landed on the table with a thump. It blinked at her and sat.
She liked cats. Laura reached out to stroke its silky fur.
Oliver turned. “Do not—”
The cat lashed out.
“Motherfucker!”
Oliver shrugged. “She’s my mother’s cat and she’s not really friendly.”
A thin scratched oozed on the back of her hand. It stung. She pressed a forefinger into the blood and put it in her mouth. The bitter coppery taste of blood hit her like a tsunami. She wasn’t dreaming. She wasn’t delusional. She was sitting in a cottage in medieval year who-the-hell-knew with a man she had to reevaluate in terms of everything she thought to be true about him.
“Hey.” Oliver crouched at her feet. “You will get through this.”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded past the buzzing in her ears. “Except right now I think I’m having a panic attack.”
“Breathe.” He pressed her head between her knees and stroked her back. “Breathe in and out.”
Her voice came out muffled by her position. “You are being very nice about all this. You haven’t said you told me so once.”
“I’m saving them.” He sounded like he was smiling. “Should I lock you in a padded cell instead? Maybe strap you to a table, stick needles in you, shine things in your eyes? Make you spend countless hours with that horse’s ass Montgomery while he asks you if you masturbated as a child?”
“Ouch.” She sat up slowly. “He asked you if you masturbated as a child?”
Oliver’s dark eyes gleamed. “We spent a lot of time on the subject.” He stroked her cheek. “Now, if the lovely Doctor Laura Rose had asked me the same question, I would have been far more interested in answering.”
“Don’t.” She caught his hand and pushed it aside. “Don’t flirt with me, right now. I can’t handle it.”
“Noted.” He stood and went back to his fire. “I will warm milk instead.”
He filled a kettle from a bucket by the hearth and swung it over the flame. He moved competently within this space. Duh! But then he’d moved with ease through the modern world as well.
“Um, Oliver. Do you have anything stronger than warmed milk?”
Oliver grinned. “I think it is time to introduce you to mead.”
“That’s alcoholic, right?”
He pulled a jug down from a high shelf and shook it. Once the stopper was out, he took a huge sniff. “Ah! I made this myself.” Two beakers hit the table beside the jug and Oliver poured. Laura took a sniff. “It smells like honey.”
“That is what it is made of.” Like a sommelier at a New York restaurant, Oliver sipped and swirled it around his mouth, then grinned at her. “I have missed mead.”
When he stayed standing, she risked a tiny sip. “It’s dry.�
� Very dry when she had braced for sweet. “And tastes a little bit like white wine.”
“Mead is made to preference.” Oliver took a sturdy glug. “Some is sweeter, some is dryer.”
“Huh!” Mead didn’t totally suck and it carried a nice little buzz with it. “What is this thing that you have to do? Your heart’s desire.”
With his cup halfway to his mouth, Oliver cleared his throat. “Revenge.”
Laura choked on a mouthful of mead and came up spluttering. “I’m sorry. I thought you said revenge.”
“I did.” His face got cold and grim, and a little scary.
Arrow stood up and barked. He dashed over to the door and pawed at it.
Oliver peered out the window. “Ah.” He stuffed his hands into his belt. “My mother is coming.”
“Your mother?” Laura bolted up right. The revenge thing would have to wait because right now they had some explaining to do. “What will you tell her?”
“Let me think.” Oliver paced the tiny space. “She knows what the sword does, so that will not be a problem.”
Relief made her knees weak and she took her seat again. “That’s good.”
“Indeed.” Oliver didn’t look at all comforted by the news. He paced back to the window and peered out. “My mother is...strange.”
Great! Time traveling home to meet his strange mother. Her day kept getting better. Laura drained her mead.
The cottage door flew open. “Oliver.”
Laura jumped, her heart pounding.
A middle-aged woman in a plain dress of ugly brown fabric stomped into the cottage. Some sort of white cloth covered her hair.
She tried not to stare but Laura had never seen an honest-to-God wimple. Talk about your dodgy fashion choices.
The woman stopped in front of Oliver and made a grab for the sword. “Thank you Lord, you brought it back.”
“Aye, Mother.” Oliver evaded her snatching hands. “How long have I been gone?”
“All of winter and the following spring.” Freezing, she blinked at Laura. “Who are you?”
This might prove tricky. Laura glanced at Oliver.
He shrugged.
“I’m...uh...Laura. Doctor—”
