by Kim Hornsby
The pressure was off in July to produce new shows. We were officially on hiatus and that left me with a lot of time to think about my new life without Caspian. I took to swimming with Hodor off the beach, something I’d been looking forward to ever since seeing the cove. Carlos and Jimmy had put a buoy line around a safe swimming spot so I didn’t start swimming out to sea, and it seemed to be working. If I hit the line, I turned around. I wasn’t sure if Eve stood on the cliff, biting her fingernails in worry while I swam but the freedom to do something normal was wonderful and I always returned from the beach happier. Some days my mother joined us and once, Vern came to watch her swim. Things seemed to be going well with the Mayor and he’d become a cheerful addition to our little group in Cove House when he wasn’t tending to mayor duties. We teased him about being local royalty and had taken to calling my mother, Mrs. Mayor. My mother seemed happy with him, strangely enough, and her insults towards me had all but disappeared.
I had begun to settle back into normal life again until I found myself at the kitchen table one morning, drinking coffee alone, thinking about how I missed the scent of my sea captain. His smile. His penetrating stare when he was calling me out for something. I recalled the night of the Summer Ball when he’d said he’d return for Rachel in a few months.
I didn’t know how far along in the pregnancy Rachel was, but as her, my waist had been pulled unmercifully in a corset, so I assumed she wasn’t too far into it. How had Rachel discovered her pregnancy? Had she missed her period or was she nauseous? As Rachel I hadn’t felt any different at the ball or in the library. Although I’d never been pregnant before, I wouldn’t have guessed Rachel had a bun in her oven on the Smuggling Night or at the ball.
Would Rachel have lied for Caspian to get the divorce? I hoped not.
Thinking about this night so intensely led to me finding myself in the 1850’s, in the library, unfortunately after our lovemaking if that’s what you called up against the wall nookie.
Caspian had my face in his hands, looking intently into my eyes. “Remember,” he said, “when the festivities end tonight, tell your mother you’ve had too much excitement and need to return to Portland as soon as possible.” Caspian’s eyebrows were furrowed, his eyes serious. “Don’t stay here for the week you’ve planned. I’ll set sail tonight for Portland to tell the authorities what we saw on the beach last night and have them alerted to the slave ships arriving in San Francisco. Once I alert them, I’ll set sail for San Francisco.”
We kissed once more, and I slipped out of the library and back upstairs to join my mother and grandmother at the ball, who didn’t think anything of my absence.
The ball continued with me trying to not look like I was frantic about how and when I must head to the beach to save Caspian from drowning. If it was a given that I needed to get down to the beach to save him, how did I manage to sneak away and do that? Or would Rachel handle that?
When the party ended and my mother and grandmother and I ended up in two of the Cove House bedrooms, I realized that we didn’t need to high tail it back to Portland the next day like I promised Caspian. He would never make it to Portland tonight to tell the authorities about Stevens. He’d be dead before morning. I had no interest in staying at Cove House knowing Caspian was dead and hoped I’d be taken out of the 1850’s before the murder took place.
With my own bedroom, I could easily slip out undetected to the beach to save Caspian from drowning, an act I’d already participated in when I first traveled back in time. With my mother and grandmother in the room next door to me, the same room I now inhabited in 2019, they would be none the wiser when I left for the beach. I’d earlier decided if I was still here when the time came to go to the beach, I would re-enact what I’d already done in a past time travel. Not mess with the future.
After bidding my mother and grandmother goodnight at their bedroom door, I crept along the hallway and downstairs to head out the kitchen door and to the beach. The house was deserted and quiet. It was almost too easy to escape undetected, but I found my way to the dark beach, nonetheless. When I saw the men loading an unconscious Caspian into a rowboat, I followed exactly what I’d done the first time I’d traveled to this moment.
Onboard the Isabella, I revived Caspian with artificial respiration and said my name was Rachel. After he changed clothes, he rowed me back in to shore with Ten Tooth, dropping me off on the beach. This time I didn’t leave the beach and wake up in 2019. This time, he walked me to the trailhead by the stairs, kissed me fiercely and thanked me for saving his life.
“I’ll be back for you, my love,” he said. “Make haste and be careful.”
I hurried up the stairs to the house knowing he wouldn’t be back for me. Tears choked my throat as I ran across the lawn, leaving Caspian to whatever was to happen next. At the kitchen, I found the door was locked. Someone must’ve come along while I was on the beach and locked the door thinking everyone was in for the night. Dang. I could try the front door, but I didn’t hold out much hope for that thing being open.
Creeping along the edge of the house, I worried that if anyone looked out a window and saw me, I’d be wet, shivering, and looking bedraggled, like I’d just been for a swim in the bay, which I had.
But that became my last worry when I heard voices at the top of the stairs to the beach behind me. I ducked back into the shadows and stayed perfectly still, tucked in behind a shrub while I watched men appear on the cliff.
They walked across the grass towards the coach house and I was horrified to see they had Caspian, hands tied behind his back, his mouth bound. Why wasn’t he struggling? Did he think these men would let him go after trying to kill him only an hour earlier?
The group entered the side door to the coach house and although I knew I shouldn’t, I had to get closer to see what was happening. My instinct told me to slip back in the house and stay out of this, but something made me sneak along a hedge towards the coach house. I found a dark spot under an upstairs window that was open. Voices drifted out in faint murmurs. Caspian’s was not one of them.
There was shuffling inside and then Stevens spoke. “Again, Captain? Must we kill you twice tonight? When my men dumped you in the bay, I realized that I didn’t just want you dead to prevent you from reporting me to the authorities, but I had to somehow silence the lovely Rachel Primrose as well. You should never have put her at risk by telling her about my business.”
There was a pause in which I was sure Caspian would be protesting his restraints. Stevens must’ve been close to the window I was under because his words were clear.
“I’m willing to let her off with a warning. A very severe warning. Something so grizzly that she’ll fear for her life and be silent about what she’s heard from you.”
I wondered what was happening up there until the next sounds I heard made me think they’d killed my beloved Caspian. A thump, a drop, shuffling, then I heard what made me horrified. A chop on wood and a heavy thud had me almost cry out in horror until I bit my lips together. I wanted to throw a rock in the window, anything to distract them and allow Caspian to escape. My heart beat furiously against my chest and bile rose in my throat. I thought I might pass out and grabbed on to a branch nearby to steady myself.
There was more shuffling upstairs.
Then…
“Take the head to Miss Primrose and warn her to keep quiet or else her head will join his in the middle of the bay.”
They’d beheaded Caspian! I crumpled to the ground, wanting to wail in grief. I clutched myself knowing this was it. This was the night he died, and I’d just heard how. I might have stopped it by providing a distraction, but I didn’t. Would Rachel have tried?
As I sat in a slump on the ground, I told myself that I’d always known he died tonight. This was not the end of Caspian as a ghost, the man I’d fallen in love with. Still, my heart bled for the honorable man who’d been captured and beheaded in the coach house.
I wanted to wake in 2019 but fate wasn’t so
merciful. Instead, I watched Stevens cross the lawn with two of his men, one of whom carried a box big enough for a head. They mounted the front stairs and entered Cove House as I fought against the wild emotions that might reveal my hiding place.
Then, another group of men carried a long, heavy body rolled up in a sheet out the side door and towards the cliff. If what I believed was true, they had Caspian’s headless body. I fought the sobs from emitting, my hand against my mouth. When the men headed down to the beach and were out of sight, I wondered what I should do now.
A horse, inside the coach house, whinnied softly.
Stevens was on his way to my room, only to discover that I wasn’t there. What would he do then? I didn’t want to go back in the house. I didn’t want to be threatened and I did not want to see Caspian’s head inside that box, something I was sure was in their plans.
Just then, the wide doors to the coach house opened and Jacqueline emerged leading two horses by the reins. Had she been listening to the murder take place upstairs, like me? She turned to where I stood in the shadows. “I know you’re there, Rachel.” She came closer. “I’m going to help you. You aren’t safe here tonight.”
I walked towards her. “He killed Caspian.”
“I’m sorry. I know you loved him,” she said. “This horse is for you. We’ll ride to a farm north of here, a place where you can hide. You’ll be safe there, tonight.” She handed me the reins and I followed her as we silently led the horses away from the house to the road.
Once we got down the road, she took my arm, her face close. “I’ll come back here, tell your mother what’s happened tomorrow and have her send the family coach for you to the farm. When you get back to the safety of your family and house, under your father’s roof, do not tell anyone about what you’ve seen and heard. You’ll be safe in Portland as long as you’re quiet about this incident. Stevens is afraid of your father but don’t ever speak of what you know and saw and don’t ever come back here again.”
“My mother?” We mounted the horses.
“She’ll be fine. Stevens would never do anything to hurt your father’s wife. He only wants to frighten you tonight into silence, knowing you love Caspian. I’ll tell Stevens I saw you going down to the beach and everyone will think you’ve killed yourself.” She mounted her horse and I copied her.
“And you? Are you safe?” Why was Jacqueline staying with Stevens?
“For now. It’s not a bad life here.” She nodded for us to take off.
“Wait. How do you know I love Caspian?” I almost choked on the words.
“Your eyes gave you away.” With that, she took the reins and flicked them on the horse’s hide end and took off.
I did the same.
Chapter 15
“Bryndle?” Eve said, setting my coffee cup on the table in front of me. Had I been frozen at the kitchen table while I time traveled? One moment I was thinking and the next moment, I was roaming around in another century. Time traveling was an enigma I couldn’t attach guidelines and rules to, it seemed.
“What time is it?”
“Just after eight,” Eve said.
I’d been gone not quite an hour this time. There seemed to be no formula for the amount of time spent away.
“Stevens beheaded Caspian,” I blurted. I let the tears fall and laid my head on my arms on the table to sob for my sweet Caspian.
Eve patted my back until the crying minimized and I sat up to try to pull myself together.
“I knew he died eventually but to be there and to know how…”
Eve handed me a wad of napkins to dry my tears and blow my nose.
“I couldn’t intervene.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
I told Eve the story of Caspian’s last moments. How he’d come in by dinghy with me, seen me to the trail and must’ve been ambushed on the beach by Stevens’ men who’d been waiting for him. I recounted how Jacqueline saved Rachel that night by riding with me to a small farm where she knew the people. When I finished my story about hiding in the barn that night, I was exhausted. Physically and mentally.
“Caspian might have lived if he hadn’t walked me to the trail,” I muttered.
“I doubt it,” Eve said. “They would have figured out some way to kill him. Sounds like Stevens was jonesing to keep Caspian from reporting the slave trade.”
“I wonder who eventually blew the whistle on Stevens if Caspian didn’t.” We knew Stevens was arrested shortly after.
“Maybe Rachel,” Eve said.
I went to my bedroom grieving, even though I already knew Caspian had died that night and Rachel lived. I knew it would be heartbreaking for her. To have lived through the moment that his life was taken away had affected me greatly and I couldn’t stop the emotion from taking me under. I lay on my bed all day, hoping the pain would get easier as the days progressed.
I’d thought I was done with time traveling but apparently, I’d had one last moment to experience. A moment I would have gladly let Rachel take for me. Caspian’s death. Imagining my beautiful lover’s head chopped off was one of the worst things I’d ever experienced and brought back all the horrors of the car accident that took Harry’s life.
Although Harry died on the way to the operating room and I got to hold his hand and tell him to hang on because I loved him, he hadn’t been able to make it as far as surgery. I sat in the ambulance beside the gurney, a bandage to my head, one arm hanging uselessly at my side, my eyesight gone. Later, I couldn’t help but think how my husband’s life slipped away because someone in a Hummer hadn’t seen us come around the corner and swerved into our lane to avoid a pothole on his side. Harry died on the rolling stretcher at the hospital and I wasn’t there. I’d been taken to another room with assurances my husband was going into surgery. I’d had them take care of me for a full hour before I was told my husband had died.
Experiencing this again was just too much to process.
Eve brought me tea, my mother offered to read to me, even Carlos came in to try to cheer me up, but I was inconsolable. I had to hurt this badly today, face Caspian’s death. In both centuries. I was sure that I’d seen the last of him in this life and in the past.
This was it.
I’d experienced my final time travel. It felt final. And in the present, it felt like Caspian had crossed over. Somehow, I’d done whatever needed to be done to help the ghost of my sea captain move on to that place where souls go after death.
I was empty at the thought.
Later, that night, after Eve brought me a mug of lukewarm chicken noodle soup and insisted I ingest something, I got out of bed, put on a heavy blue sweater, my Frye boots and with the help of Hodor, arrived downstairs to announce I was going to the beach.
“Is it dark?” I asked, not sure why it mattered.
“Yes, it’s almost eleven,” Eve said from where she, Jimmy and Carlos were playing Scrabble. “Please don’t do anything rash,” she said.
“I just need to be on the beach. I know he’s gone, and I want to look down that tunnel and say goodbye,” I said.
They probably watched as I headed out the door with Hodor, TapTap leading the way. I made a stop at the coach house, not entering, just standing nearby to see if I got anything from what I knew about that building.
Nothing except my own sadness.
I flicked out TapTap and made my way with Hodor across the lawn to the beach trail. The railing guided me down the stairs where the surf was rolling in.
I sat at the far end listening to the waves slide in and out, the night air fresh and salty, thinking about what I might have done differently with Caspian. How I could have changed anything so that in the end he didn’t die? What might I have changed so he was there for the birth of his daughter and he lived happily ever after with Rachel? If I’d insisted only Ten Tooth take me in that night to the beach, Caspian might have lived longer. If I’d never saved him from drowning, he’d have met his maker sooner. If I’d never nursed him or professed my l
ove for him, he might not have been at Cove House for the Summer Ball.
My eyes were puffy and sore from crying, my heart hurt, and I wanted to take a magic pill to get through the next months. I closed my eyes, willing myself not to cry again. I felt empty.
When I opened my eyes, I stood on the upper deck veranda at Cove House with a group of people, more guests gathered inside the salon. I tried to not shout out loud that I’d traveled again. Caspian stood in my group talking amicably with the others. Eventually, I moved off to the railing to enjoy the view until Caspian moved in beside me, six feet off my right elbow.
“It’s a lovely view, the ship,” he said.
“Is it your ship?”
“No. Mine arrives tomorrow. This is Stevens’ ship, just come from the Orient.”
I smiled as if I didn’t know the ship was full of slaves waiting to be herded into the beach.
Caspian gestured to the house. “The others are retiring to the salon for a musical agenda.” He sounded so formal and I wondered if I’d dropped into a time when I didn’t know Caspian. I wore a grey dress so if that was a clue, this might be the Smuggling Night.
Caspian moved off and I noticed a note had been left on the railing which I grabbed quickly. I didn’t dare open the note in front of everyone. I tucked it into my bosom discreetly.
I was careful to pretend to be Rachel for the remainder of the party, sticking close to my mother and grandmother. Apparently, my father and the Major, as my mother referred to him, were not with us, unable to attend the grand ball tomorrow. Tonight’s gathering was only a small party for the house guests that had come early for the Summer Ball. Stevens had thrown this lovely little soiree tonight with the help of his faithful cousin, Jacqueline.
