by Jadyn Chase
I hung my head. “I fear I’ve burdened you with an impossible affliction, Allison. I would beg you to forgive me, but I see no room for forgiveness.”
She drew to a halt and rounded on me, but she didn’t bristle with annoyance as I anticipated. She dropped her voice to a subtle murmur. “This was what you were trying to tell me at the Cliffs, isn’t it? You were trying to tell me about the dragon.”
I compressed my lips and nodded, but I couldn’t meet her gaze. “I wanted to tell you. I truly did, but I was a coward. I didn’t want to frighten you and I came to depend on you so completely. I feared you would send me away if you found out and I couldn’t bear that.”
She laid her hand on my arm. No human touch ever felt more comforting and reassuring. “Well, I know now and I’m not going away. I just need you to tell me everything and don’t leave anything out. You changed into a dragon when those guards shot you with the taser, didn’t you? That’s how you got out of the Castle.”
I could only nod in mute despair. All this time, I kept the truth hidden in the foolish hope it would just vaporize out of my life. I imagined I would wake up one of these days and my problem would magically solve itself.
Now that Allison knew, I couldn’t hope that anymore. I had to face it and accept it. I was that dragon whether I liked it or not.
“Tell me the last thing you remember from before I woke you up just now,” she prompted.
I thought back. “I went for a walk. I left the hotel and took a stroll through town. One of those cars…..I suppose I made a mistake and it hit me. That’s when it happened. Then I woke up here.”
She rubbed her chin. “It sounds like it happens when you get injured or you’re in danger. That must trigger the change somehow.”
“But what am I to do about it, Allison?” I wrung my hands in desperation. “You must have some notion about these things.”
She shook her head. I didn’t like that resigned calm in her at all. I would rather she yelled at me than this. “I don’t think so. I might be able to solve some of your other problems like what to eat and what to wear, but I don’t have a clue what to do about this.”
I could have wept at those words, but she only patted my shoulder. “Stay here. I’ll get you some clothes and we’ll head back to the hotel. That’s all we can do about it right now. Will you be all right to hide here until I get back?”
I nodded, too desolate to answer. She slipped away and I slumped down on the damp ground. She was right. No one could see me through the undergrowth. I leaned against a tree and thought.
I really couldn’t believe my good fortune at finding such a matchless woman. She took everything that happened in her stride. She never flinched from doing what had to be done. From start to finish, she helped me. She acted in my interests even at the expense of her own. She offered me her unwavering support and consolation no matter what misfortune befell me.
I doubt I could have happened upon such a treasure if I hadn’t wound up asleep in Dover Castle for one hundred and eighty years. I lived with privilege and wealth for as long as I could remember. It took this disaster to make me realize what a woman could be, what a human being could be. I could only aspire to be something worthy of her.
She returned with one of my suits and all the accessories to go with it. I dressed as quickly as I could. Afterwards, I felt like a man again.
I looked up to find her studying me. “Are you all right?”
I could return her gaze now. “I realize this may not be the most fortuitous time to express these sentiments, but I want to impress upon you, Allison, how profoundly grateful I am, not only for your help in this matter but for you as a person. I cannot fathom how poor my life was before I met you. I never knew anyone could be so selfless and generous and forbearing.”
A hint of a smile quivered her lips. “Thank you. I’m glad I could be there for you. You deserve it.”
“Do I?” I found myself drifting close to her. In spite of myself, I twined my fingers into her hand and pulled her close to me. “I shall not endeavor to change your mind. If you believe I deserve it, I can only defer to your judgment.”
She shook her hair out of her eyes. When she did, she looked up into my face. Rapt fascination took hold of me so I couldn’t look away. “You’re a true gentleman, Thomas.”
“Am I?” I didn’t know what I was saying or what I was doing? “Would a true gentleman do this?”
I bent down and kissed her. Don’t ask me why. I just needed to be near her right now. I needed to feel her next to me. I needed to feel her body pressing mine through our clothes.
She vibrated with such resonate life she electrified me in a way I never experienced before. She made me feel fully alive for the first time. The instant my lips touched hers, I realized. I didn’t care if I found my family or not. Of course I cared if I found them, but if I did or didn’t it made little difference now.
I wanted to be with her and near her. I wanted to receive the blessing of her presence and her attention. No matter what happened with this search, I wanted to stay with her. I didn’t want that to end when we resolved this matter.
My future lay with her. I knew that now. I wanted to learn what made her so uniquely human to me. I wanted to discover every detail about her and leave no stone unturned. I wanted to spend my life exploring her and everything that made her tick.
All at once, she pulled off my mouth. She burst into a sheepish grin, bowed her head, and laughed. I didn’t understand. “Is something funny, Allison? Is my pathetic attempt at courting so comic to you?”
“It’s not that.” She wiped tears out of her eyes. When she looked up at me, her cheeks shone. “You are the consummate gentleman and you’re a very good kisser. I was just thinking we should get out of here sooner rather than later. Come on. We can kiss back at the hotel.”
She took my hand and we emerged onto the lawn. I cast a wary glance from side to side, but the coast was all clear. We climbed the hill to the Castle on our way back to town.
The closer we got to the giant edifice, the more normal I began to feel. The sunshine evaporated the shadows haunting me. We strolled around Pencester Tower and onward toward the road when, out of nowhere, a figure appeared.
My blood ran cold when I recognized the guide who called the guards on me. She rounded the corner and we both saw each other at once.
For a long terrible moment, we stared at each other in blank astonishment. Neither of us moved. I couldn’t think what to do. Should I run? Should I try to fight her?
Just then, Allison touched my elbow. “Come on, Thomas.”
I staggered after her too dazed to think straight. The guide watched me out of sight. In a minute, she disappeared and I nearly buckled from the strain. “I don’t think I can stand much more of this, Allison.”
She chuckled under her breath. “I’m sure Margorie feels exactly the same way.”
“Margorie?” I looked up. “How do you know her name?”
“Never mind,” she murmured. “I’m sure seeing a guy turn into a dragon and fly out of those tunnels was as harrowing for her as it was for you. Just let it go. No one will believe the stories. Just do your best not to get into any troublesome situations that could make you change again. Do it for me if not for yourself.”
I passed my hand across my eyes. “Believe me, Allison, I have no intention of ever becoming that thing again. I never wanted to become it in the first place.”
14
Allison
Thomas rifled a bunch of papers and threw them down on the desk in a fit of spite. “This is jolly hopeless!”
I didn’t look up from my computer. “You’re supposed to be quiet in libraries, you know.”
“I don’t know how you can keep poring over this dry stuff hour after hour. I really don’t, Allison.” He covered his eyes and let out a broken sigh. “We’ll never find them this way.”
I cast a fleeting glance at him over my glasses. “We definitely won’t find them if we g
ive up.”
He swiveled around in his chair. “How exactly do you do it? How do you spend so much time studying this soulless history without going insane? I don’t understand it.”
I bit back a grin. “I find it interesting. That’s how I do it. Take a look at this.” I rotated my computer toward him.
He narrowed his eyes to squint at the screen. “What am I looking at?”
“It’s a news article about your nephew Julius’s baptism.”
His eyes popped. “My….my what? I don’t have a nephew.”
“He was born after you fell asleep,” I told him. “Mary got married in 1842. She was 22 years old when you fell asleep. That would have made her 24 when she married.”
Thomas snorted. “Gracious me! She would have been well past her prime.”
I restrained myself from taking that bait. “She gave birth to her first son George a year later. Julius was born in 1845. He was christened in Canterbury.”
“And what, may I ask, do you find so all-consumingly interesting about that?”
I flung myself back in my chair. “For Pete’s sake, Thomas, use your brain. You’re getting way too emotional about this and you’re not thinking clearly. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that one or more of your family members woke up and found that letter Mary left for them. They would have tried to track down your living relatives. They would have traveled to Canterbury in the hope of finding someone who knew the story. Maybe Mary told someone else. Maybe members of your family have been waiting all these years for you and the others to wake up.”
His jaw dropped and he gasped. “By gad, Allison! Do you really think so?”
“What’s the alternative—that we drop the whole subject and go straight back to Wichita? I just told you. We won’t find them if we give up. Say your brothers and your parents woke up at the same time. Say they read the letter and they all left together. They could be waiting for you over in Canterbury—or wherever Julius’s and George’s descendants live. It’s our only lead.”
He slapped the desk and sent all the papers flying again. “To think they could all be together somewhere waiting for me!”
“I never said that,” I qualified. “I said they might be. We’re looking for a needle in a haystack.”
He groaned and closed his eyes. “For the love of God, Allison, don’t rob me of all hope.”
“I’m trying to give you hope. Can’t you see that? I looked up Mary’s old address in Canterbury, but from the way I found the letter all folded under that pillow, I don’t think anyone read it. I’d say none of the others know Mary survived. They wouldn’t have the first idea where to look and we have no way of knowing if Mary told anyone the secret.”
He slumped again. “I can see why you find this interesting. I apologize for lashing out the way I did. It was most inappropriate.”
I bent over the computer again. “What did you think I was doing over here all this time—watching YouTube?”
He cocked his head. “Watching what?”
I looked down. “Forget it. I’m a historian. I find history interesting, especially when it relates to something real in our modern world. I’ve spent my career studying Dover Castle and the evacuation of Dunkirk. Now I get to connect it all back to living, breathing people. I live for this stuff.”
He raised his eyebrows and puffed out his cheeks. “You’re right. I just never spent so much time poring over dates of birth and vital statistics of people long dead.”
I shot him another grin. “Most people would consider you long dead, too, and yet here you are. It’s pretty fascinating when you realize that every single individual on those lists went to the toilet and scratched their armpits and coughed and sweated and worried about the future and all that. It really is amazing that so many people live full and complete lives and we aren’t even aware of them most of the time. It’s easy to forget, but studying history brings it home—to me, at least.”
He grimaced. “Please, Allison, can we refrain from talking about anybody going to the toilet? I mean, really!”
I had to smile. I snapped my laptop closed. “All right. I can see you need a break. Let’s get out of this library for a while.”
I took his hand, tucked my device under my arm, and steered him out of the building. The minute we got outside, the sea air blasted us in the face. It stung my eyes and burned my skin, but that pungent smell revived Thomas. No one could feel depressed or daunted when they smelled it. I inhaled life and vigor into my lungs and I beheld it having the same effect on him.
I smiled at him. “How would you like to go down to the docks for a while? We could watch the ships. That’s always fun.”
I pushed him down the street, but when we came to the old shipping quay, all the color drained from Thomas’s face. His expression changed and I realized I may have made a mistake bringing him here.
He stared at ships bigger than Dover Castle itself. Countless cars purred here and there. Some parked bumper to bumper waiting to drive onto the ferry. He blinked at the sight, flabbergasted. What could I say to him to smooth the transition? “It’s not what you remember, is it?”
He shook his head in shock. At another jetty, massive cranes lifted shipping containers onto another gargantuan ship. The whole site made enough noise to deafen anyone.
Thomas snapped his eyes shut and croaked in a hoarse whisper. “Take me away from here, Allison.”
That voice told me all I needed to know. I couldn’t let his distress trigger the dragon again. I hooked my hand through his elbow and we started walking. He kept his eyes closed and didn’t look where he was going.
I didn’t know where I was going, either, but that didn’t matter now. We were together. I got the sense we would be okay if we only stayed together. He was with me. That was all that mattered.
I steered him toward the Castle, but I didn’t climb up to it. I ushered him east around the forest. By the time Thomas opened his eyes, we strolled along a quiet street lined with trees. The Castle raised its tall keeps to the sky not far away.
He stopped in his tracks. “What are we doing here, Allison?”
“You seem calmer around the Castle and you’ll see fewer modern things here. We can take a walk in the woods. Nothing can happen to you there.”
He turned to study me. “Perhaps we should go back to Wichita after all.”
My head spun around. “Why would we do that? We said we were going to find your family.”
He moved on, but he wouldn’t stop shaking his head. “It’s not worth the trouble. As you said, it’s well near impossible. We have no way of knowing what happened to them. We ought to give up.”
I squeezed his arm. “I’m not ready to do that. You need this.”
“Do I?” He pulled me to a stop. “I don’t think I do. I only need you, Allison, and I don’t mean I need you to do this for me. I had a thought in the forest earlier.”
I smiled. “You had a thought? By all means, share it.”
He didn’t laugh at my sad attempt at a joke. “I had the thought that I don’t really need to find my family. I found something so much more important when I found you. If we never find them, I can still be happy as long as I’m with you. I don’t need you to dress me and feed me and drive me around. Those things are nice enough and I can never repay your generosity, but that’s not what I mean when I say I need you.”
The crystal spark in his eyes made me stare up at him in wonder. A whirlwind blasted through my mind. Whatever he said next would be the most momentous words of my life.
“I need you for you, Allison—for your fortitude and your courage and your intelligence and your kindness. I never thought twice about what sort of woman a man ought to love or what a man could be if he found a woman worthy of loving. What am I saying? You’re beyond worthy. It is I who am unworthy to even suggest that you could love me. I cannot begin to fathom how I could rehabilitate this waste of a life in order to be worthy of you. I only know I want to try. I want to spend my life t
rying.”
A thunderclap went off in my head and I knew without a doubt that I felt the same way about him. I never gave the whole concept of love a second thought. Now I wanted it. I wanted to be worthy of him, to earn his devotion and trust the way he earned mine.
Before I could reply, he took my hand and kissed my knuckles. His gaze drilled into my very soul. His words seemed to assemble into thoughts without sound. “I love you, Allison. Can I ever hope that you would return my affections?”
I blinked. “Yes.” Did that broken whisper come from me? “I love you, too.”
By magic, he leaned in and kissed me. Then, without it seeming to happen, we both pivoted and started walking. Dover glided past. I don’t know how. I only knew nothing could ever be the same after this moment.
We wound up back at the hotel. Neither of us questioned going back to the same room and shutting the door like we did last night. Some irrevocable shift took place. How could three little words change the whole world?
They did, though. In one jarring moment, I came to the same conclusion Thomas did. We didn’t need to find his family. It would be nice if we did, but that played second fiddle to this. We came all the way to Dover, not to find them but to find ourselves and each other.
We sat down on the bed side by side, but we didn’t fall into each other’s arms. When I looked up at him, not even that could shatter this spell. We didn’t need each other’s bodies. We only needed this—this silent understanding that we were together.
How did this happen? How did I fall so hard for him without realizing it? When did it happen? I couldn’t remember. I could hardly remember a time when my life didn’t revolve around him. Instead of going back to the way things were before, I couldn’t really grasp anything other than going on with him like this.
The thought of going back to the way things were before made me sick. I would always keep looking for him no matter what I did. I could be certain of that. From now on, something outside of work would consume my attention. All the other considerations of my life would revolve around…. this.
