by Lynn Kurland
She turned away and went back inside the inn. She declined an offer for a sight-seeing tour leaving in twenty minutes and headed up to her room. She needed to pack. She had places to go and people to see.
Her belongings were few, but likely more than she should have brought with her. She had thought long and hard about what, if anything, she should take back with her. It certainly wouldn’t do to have things from the future discovered in the past. But she wasn’t sure she was convinced carbon dating was all that accurate, and even if it was, who would believe what they were seeing? Maybe she should have played by the rules and spent her time in the library instead of shopping.
But she had a do-over and she was going to take it. There were things she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life without, and since she had the choice, she was going to make it. She would take responsibility for it. Most of the things could be burned in a nice bonfire anyway. She laid them out on the bed and began to pack them carefully in her backpack.
She put in the portable CD player with the solar battery rechargers. It had been horribly expensive, but what else did, she have to spend her money on? She put in twelve CDs ranging from Gregorian chant to some slick jazz, and a recording of all her compositions. Richard would want to hear them played on the proper instruments.
She also put in ten pounds of various kinds of chocolate. And a huge peppermint patty for Abby. She would appreciate it.
Then she packed a condensed photographic encyclopedia of the modern world and a photographic exploration of space that would just blow Richard’s mind. He deserved to see what he never would with his mortal eyes.
She also brought an enormous bottle of aspirin, a tube of antiseptic cream, and some hand lotion with a neutral scent. That was, of course, in addition to the entire first-aid kit she’d condensed into, a bag in which it had never been meant to go. No sense in being unprepared for any more of Richard’s scratches.
Her last purchases had been a handful of sable brushes, some charcoal pencils, and some oil paint. The sketch pad had been too big to carry, so she’d passed on that.
Once everything was put away properly, she put on the clothes she’d been wearing the last time she’d seen Richard, sat on the bed, and let herself indulge in the fantasy. She would walk out the door, leave the main road, and walk up to the castle. Somehow, it would be something other than what it had been that afternoon. The drawbridge would work. Men would shout a greeting to her and call for Richard.
The only other thing in her room was the book Lord Henry had sent her. She’d brought it with her, as a test of her resolve and courage. She picked it up and ran her hands over the shrink-wrap. All she had to do to know the truth was to open it to see what had happened.
She sat there and stared at the cover for a very long time.
Then she slowly put it aside. What good could come of it? If she saw that Richard had married Henry’s godniece, would that change her mind?
It wouldn’t.
She looked out the window and waited until the sun had begun to set. It was a perfect time to go. The men would be closing up the castle. Richard would be finishing up his day’s work. She could meet him in the inner bailey and they could go upstairs and have dinner.
She swallowed, hard, and hoped she wasn’t kidding herself.
She took a deep breath, slipped the backpack over her arms, and put a cloak around her shoulders. She had one last thing to do, though, before she left. She picked up the phone and dialed her mother.
Margaret said, “If it’s a girl, name her after me so I’ll know you made it.”
“I’d already planned to, Mom.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
Jessica hung up with a smile.
She left her room, not bothering to lock it. Why should she, when she wasn’t planning to come back? She left the hotel and walked down the main road. It was getting dark and the air was very cold. She walked to the keep, which was a fair distance. She crossed the bridge into the outer bailey and tried to see through the ages to when men walked atop those walls. She knew those men, knew them all by name.
There was no drawbridge, but she hadn’t expected her travels to be that simple. She walked through the barbican and kept her head down. She wouldn’t look up until she was closer to the inner-bailey wall. Then she fully expected it to change, shift into clearer focus, become what she knew it should be.
She stole a look.
It wasn’t happening . . .
Jessica shoved down the panic that rose up to choke her. It would happen. It would just take a few moments. She stopped and closed her eyes, wishing harder than she’d ever wished before. She focused all her energies on a single thought.
Take me back to my love.
She opened her eyes.
Nothing had changed.
She felt a tear trickle down her cheek and she brushed it away impatiently.
I want to go home.
The cold bit into her arms, slapped at her face, whipped her hair into a snarl behind her. But still the walls that faced her were the ones she’d seen from a distance. They were unmanned, desolate, devoid of the life that should have teemed there.
It was a graveyard.
Jessica started to cry. It wasn’t going to work. She’d used up her chance to have Richard, all because she hadn’t had the courage to stick by him. She should have told Henry to go to hell, then run with Richard to France, to Italy, anywhere where they could have been together. It wasn’t as if Richard played the royal game. He’d told his father to go to hell when he’d been just twelve years old. He hadn’t changed in the ensuing eighteen years.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please. Just one more wish.”
But only silence answered her.
41
Richard stood on the roof of his round tower and stared out over the ocean. Twilight was falling. It was damned cold outside, likely because the night was so clear and the wind so strong. Richard could find nothing to recommend the weather to himself, save that the chill tended to numb him.
He didn’t think, however, that he could spend the rest of his life numbing himself thusly without having some harm come to him.
“My lord?”
Richard waved his captain away without turning to look at him. “Not now,” he said curtly. “I’m brooding.”
John grunted in disgust, but he retreated just the same. Richard propped his elbows on the wall and stared morosely out over the sea. By the saints, this was not how he intended his life to go. And where was Jessica? After his demands of the heavens the se’nnight before, he’d half expected to see her come sauntering up the way to the keep as if she’d never left it.
Had she thought better of it?
Had she thought better of him?
He wondered in a particularly gloomy way if he shouldn’t have told her of his past before he wed her. Perhaps she would have turned tail and fled. He would have spared his heart a bruising, that much was certain.
But if he’d never wed her, he never would have known—even for such a short time—what true joy was. And that was a gift beyond price or measure.
All the same, though, he couldn’t help but wish he’d had more time to learn that particular lesson. He fixed a hapless star with a steely glance and made yet another in a long succession of wishes.
And, as usual, the heavens had no answer for him.
He sighed and turned away. Perhaps a walk to the gates and back would clear his head. His bedchamber was painted, his sword was sharp, and his heart was heavy. There seemed to be nothing else for him to do but pace.
He descended the steps to the bailey, ignored the unfinished keep to his left, and continued on toward the gate. And it was then that he noticed there was something amiss. His men milled about, true. There were almost tolerable smells wafting from the makeshift kitchen. Men walked the walls in their usual fashion.
But something had shifted, a shape or a shadow. Richard blinked, certain he was imagining things. He’
d seen something like that before, when . . .
When Jessica had disappeared right before his eyes.
“My lord Richard! My lord, a word with you!”
Richard snarled a curse at Hamlet. “Not now.”
“But, my lord, I believe Queen Eleanor would have had advice for you in your situation—”
Richard looked at Hamlet and scowled. “I somehow doubt your beloved Eleanor ever faced what I do.”
Hamlet seemingly had nothing on hand with which to counter that. Richard hadn’t said anything to his guardsmen about what they’d seen that day when Jessica had disappeared save that she wasn’t a faery and they would be better off forgetting what they’d seen. He’d heard them speculating, but in the end they had noised about the keep that Jessica had been lost to Richard in some terrible way and that the men who rotated in for their temporary service to Burwyck’s lord would be better off not mentioning it. Richard had not elaborated. Let them think what they would.
Hamlet stared up suddenly at the sky. “A strange mist of sorts, my lord, is it not?”
Richard had to agree, but he had no desire to linger and discuss it. He bid Hamlet a good evening, then strode away toward the inner gate. He nodded to his guardsmen there, then came to a slow stop at the head of the road that led to the outer barbican.
Mist? Had there not been mist the first time Jessica had come to his time?
But that had been at Merceham. He shook his head at his foolishness and continued on the way. Perhaps what he needed to do was go to Merceham himself and loiter there. Even though Jessica had departed from another locale, perhaps Merceham was some sort of gate to return.
Then he looked up and blinked in surprise.
Someone was standing along the way, unmoving. That shouldn’t have been all that strange a sight, except that the figure was a slight one. Not one of his men, surely.
Hope leaped in his heart.
“Jessica?” he called.
• • •
Jessica shook her head, just certain she was hearing things. She could have sworn she’d heard someone call her name.
A drawbridge creaked behind her and she turned around in time to hear the portcullis slam home with a bang. Then she whirled around and looked up at the keep.
A man was running toward her.
“Jessica!”
Richard.
She tried to run to him, but her legs wouldn’t work. She started to cry, flung her arms open, and found herself crushed against a broad chest she knew so very well.
He was trembling. He took her face in his hands and kissed every bit of it he could reach. She tried to kiss him back but he wouldn’t stay still long enough for her to do it.
“Jessica,” he whispered hoarsely. “Ah, merciful saints above, I thought I’d never have you again.” He clutched her to him. “Say you’ll never leave me. Vow you’ll never leave my arms again. Nay, I’ll never let you go.” He held her tighter. “Nothing will take you from me again, not even time. No more wishes. No more wishes unless we make them together.”
“You wished me back,” she said, laughing and crying all at once. “You wished me home.”
He buried his face in her hair. “Aye,” he said roughly. “I looked at the star and said the words and I wished with all my soul. And more than once, if you must know.”
She didn’t doubt it, but all she could do was hold on to him and shake. She had made it. The impossible had happened again.
She closed her eyes and held on for dear life.
And after standing there in the middle of the path for long enough that the chill was beginning to get to her a little, she realized there were perhaps a few things she ought to clear up. She tilted her head back to look at him.
“Tell me you didn’t marry her.”
“Of course I didn’t marry her,” he said with a snort.
“Did you refuse the king, then?”
Richard pursed his lips. “Henry decided I was unfit. He foisted the little baggage off upon one of Robin’s kin.”
“Lucky you.”
“Ha,” Richard said. “If you must know the entire tale, Henry arrived at my gates demanding to know where I’d hid you, accepted my chessmen as a token of my esteem, and then congratulated me on our nuptials—nuptials my lord Robin finally saw fit to inform him of.”
Jessica closed her eyes briefly. “I really didn’t mean to go.”
“You shouldn’t have. You should have trusted me.”
“Trust wasn’t the issue.”
He scowled. “The next time such a dilemma arises, will you please allow me to worry about what I can and cannot do without? This pile of stones instead of you was not a bargain I would have agreed to.”
She sighed. “I’m sorry. I never should have left Artane.”
“We never should have left Burwyck-on-the-Sea,” he said. “The entire journey was doomed from the start.”
“I’m sorry about the chess set.”
“We’ll go to Spain and have others made,” he promised.
“Whatever you say.” But Spain would have to wait a few months. She wasn’t about to have her baby in a roadside hut. She would tell Richard as much later, but in a more private location. She smiled up at him.
“Let’s go home.”
“Gladly.”
She paused. “How are you going to explain my sudden arrival?”
“I was certain I heard the men at the gate welcome you. Didn’t I?”
“You most certainly did not.”
“Then I suppose they’ll need to be punished for allowing a strange woman through the gates, since ’tis obvious they didn’t see you arrive.”
“What did you tell your men about my leaving?”
“Nothing,” he said, “except that they would be better off forgetting what they’d seen.” He groped the backpack she wore. “What is this strange growth here?”
“Treasures for you.” She slipped off the straps and hugged the pack to her. “Very private treasures that will get us burned at the stake if anyone sees them.”
“Wonderful,” he said, rolling his eyes. He took the backpack from her and slung it over his shoulder with the same ease a modern college student might have used.
“Well,” she said, “if my disappearance and sudden return doesn’t keep everyone busy speculating on my faery status, this stuff will. We’ll keep it locked in your trunk until we need something to shock the garrison.” She smiled. “I’m sure we can be discreet.”
“You don’t know the meaning of the word, my love. Fortunately, I do.”
He took her hand and walked back up toward the inner bailey. Jessica clutched his fingers tightly.
“I’ve missed you,” she said.
“Aye, I’m sure you have.”
She waited. And when he didn’t say anything else, she elbowed him in the ribs. “Well? Didn’t you miss me?”
He paused and looked at her. The lingering pain in his eyes was plain to see, even by pale moonlight.
“I thought I would die,” he said simply.
Jessica turned and wrapped her arms around him. “Never again,” she whispered.
He sighed and held her closer. “I have more regrets than you know, my love, and likely more than I’ll tell you. But the past is behind us and there it shall remain.” He kissed her, then put his arm around her shoulders and started up the way again. “We won’t make the same mistake again.”
Jessica couldn’t have agreed more.
She expected him to make a beeline to their bedroom, but he stopped in the courtyard. There was something of a crowd gathered there and Jessica wondered if they were hiding kindling behind their backs.
But all she received were smiles and hugs. Hamlet looked ready to begin springing, so she suspected he was on the verge of something really big.
“A lay about your adventures,” he said, rubbing his hands together expectantly.
“Oh, no,” Jessica said, with an uneasy laugh. “I think those are better left alone.”
“But—”
Richard pulled Jessica away while Hamlet was still talking. He ignored the rest of the men who had come to greet her and pulled her up behind him to their bedchamber. Jessica felt as if she were dreaming. She had to admit that in her heart of hearts, she had greatly feared she might never climb those steps again.
Richard opened the door, then stood back. “After you, my lady.”
Jessica walked into the room and gasped. She turned around and around, trying to take in the entire view.
He had painted the bedroom walls. Talk about an unobstructed ocean view. It was more magnificent than she ever could have imagined. She laughed and threw herself at him.
“You’re amazing,” she said breathlessly. “It’s beautiful!”
“Nay,” he said, shutting the door and bolting it. “You are the beautiful one.” He walked over to the fireplace, set her backpack in the chair, and held out his hand.
She took it, then followed him to the alcove.
“We should make a final wish.”
“A final one?”
He smiled. “Very well, then. The first of many wishes—together.”
She nodded and let him draw her up. He wrapped her in her cloak and led her over to the window. He threw open the shutters and was silent.
“There,” he said, pointing to a shooting star. “Wish to stay together. Hurry.”
She watched the star’s arc fade and wished, secure in her love’s embrace.
“I wish that we’ll be together forever,” she whispered.
He pressed his lips against her ear. “I wish that we’ll be together forever,” he echoed. “Now it can’t help but come to pass.” He reached over her and shut the window, then dropped her cloak onto one of the benches. “Where were we?”
“I’m just sure we were about to make glorious love.”
“A fine idea.”
There were a thousand things she had to tell him and show him, but those would wait.
After all, they were both in the same century.
They had all the time in the world.
