by Kim Hornsby
I bid my mother and grandmother goodnight at the door to my tiny single room and in the privacy of my bedroom, read the note. I was to meet Caspian on the privacy of the beach. I waited until I hoped they were asleep. Then, I left the house quietly. The stairs down the cliffside were deserted and I quickly descended. I was getting good at all this sneaking around Cove House.
I walked along the beach by the shadow of the cliff, trying to be quiet. No Caspian yet. I hurried to the far end where I knew we would end up watching the smuggling activities and as I got closer, saw a dark shadow move out from behind the largest boulder. I stopped, just in case, then heard his chuckle.
“It’s me, my love,” Caspian said, stepping fully out to embrace me.
I kissed him with the passion of a woman who’s been given one last chance with her dead lover. When we finally pulled apart, I realized I was crying.
“Why the tears?” Caspian wiped my face with his thumbs. He had no idea what awaited him tomorrow night. Or that I was overjoyed to see him alive one more time.
“I’m so happy to see you,” I said. “I’m just emotional because of the pregnancy.” Then I froze, wondering if he knew yet. Soon, I had my answer.
“You’re with child?” His face lit up and his hands went to my belly, my tightly cinched belly.
I nodded, smiling, even though I knew this baby was the start of the Primrose clan that I was to be part of.
“My darling.” He pulled me to him and held on. “Have I put you in a compromising situation?” He really wasn’t sure.
“No. I’m deliriously happy.” I had to fake it.
Caspian picked me up and whirled me around then kissed me like he’d never loved anyone else in his lifetime.
Before he set me down, we heard commotion on the ship in the bay. We stood watching until his hand rested on my shoulder and I remembered this was where I entered the time travel last time.
I felt myself leaving, like fading away and when I opened my eyes everything was black again. I was back to where I’d been in 2019.
I couldn’t wait to tell Eve what had happened on the beach. For one thing, I seemed to be filling in the time travel holes in her chart where I must’ve been with Caspian as Rachel. I raced along the beach, whistling for Hodor and almost made it to the bottom of the stairs when I realized I could see. The outline of the cliff was in view, the stairs, the beach, my feet. I swirled around to search the beach, but I didn’t have to look far.
Caspian was walking up the beach towards me, smiling, his head fully attached. I dropped TapTap and ran towards him, my feet slipping under the moving pebbles. By the time I reached him and threw myself into his arms, I was crying. I buried my face in his damp clothes and held on.
“What’s happened? Was I gone too long?”
I could hardly speak but managed to catch my breath and pull back to stare into his face. “I thought I’d lost you.”
He smiled kindly and tipped my chin up to kiss me. “No, my love. I’m here.”
“It’s been months,” I said like he had any control over this.
“A long time. Judging from this reception, I’d say you missed me.”
“I thought you’d left forever.”
He seemed to grasp the severity of what I was saying and took my face in his hands. “Have you been crying?”
“The thought of you leaving me was …” I couldn’t think of a word for the hell I’d been in, but I didn’t need to. Caspian kissed me long and deep, assuring me he wasn’t willingly going anywhere.
At that moment, I didn’t care if Caspian was my grandfather. And I didn’t care who knew it. I needed this man with every molecule in my body. I never wanted to be without him again even though I was pretty sure that was not possible. Would we continue like this, with him staying away longer periods of time and fading from my vision until I could no longer see or hear him like Belinda McMahon? The thought terrified me, and I put it out of my mind.
We sat on the beach talking while Hodor continued to sniff and dig and play in the waves. I told Caspian about meeting him on the beach again to see the slaves loaded into the smaller ship. He remembered.
Then I told him about the following night, when he’d dropped me off on the beach and walked me to the bottom of the stairs. “I left you only to find a few minutes later that you’d been captured by Stevens’ men and brought to him in the coach house.”
He nodded.
“Why didn’t you struggle, run away? You walked with them willingly knowing they wanted to kill you.”
He looked out to sea, took a deep breath and his gaze found me again. “There are things I’m hesitant to tell you. I don’t believe it’s to anyone’s advantage to reveal certain facts.”
“You’re trying to spare me the details or you have a dark secret?” I wasn’t sure. It could be both.
“I’m trying to spare you,” he said, and then I understood.
The only way Caspian would have gone willingly to his death that night was if they threatened something worse than his own death. “Did they threaten Ten Tooth or your crew?”
“They killed Ten Tooth on the beach before we went to the coach house. Let’s not talk of those moments before I died. Nothing can come of it that benefits us.” He took my hand, fully intending to change the subject but the realization hit me like a two by four in the face.
“Did they threaten to kill me? Rachel?”
Caspian’s expression told me I was correct. Stevens’ men had told him that they’d kill me if he didn’t come willingly to meet with Stevens.
“You died to save me?”
Caspian pulled me to him, and I let the thought of such selflessness sink in.
“Did you know they’d kill you?”
“I believed they would. I told Stevens that you knew nothing, were just a passing fancy, an innocent I barely cared for, and I hoped he believed me. He said he couldn’t let me go with all I knew. Not without a threat that would keep me quiet. I hoped without reason that when I met with him the second time, he would threaten me and set me free. I still wondered if he would use your life as the bargaining tool for my silence.”
That’s why Caspian walked to the coach house without a struggle.
“Our conversation earlier was overheard when I said for you to convince your mother to leave Stevens’ house early. One of Stevens’ men was passing the library and went to Stevens. Soon after, they knocked me unconscious and threw me into the bay where you saved me.”
A cool wind blew in from the sea and I shivered. Caspian engulfed me in his coat. “Why didn’t Stevens just threaten you with my life and let you go?”
“Maybe he believed me when I said you didn’t matter to me.”
“If you weren’t so convincing… I was your unnerving, Caspian. If I’d never time traveled…”
“How do you know that your interference made any difference? That you did anything differently than Rachel? Maybe you followed exactly what she would have done.”
I wasn’t so sure.
Chapter 16
As much as we tried to avoid the big, wrinkly elephant in the room, it made a thundering appearance after I showed Caspian Eve’s chart in the den. This being the first time I’d seen the chart, I was properly impressed with her color coding and Post-it notes, categorizing my time travels and how long I’d been gone, versus how much time I spent in 1850.
“That was you nursing me?”
“Yes. I was with you for days until Ten Tooth came to get you,” I said.
“And it was you at the Opera?”
“Yes, and after the opera that night in the garden.” I looked to him and tried to read his profile as he studied the chart. He would know that we’d had sex.
“And you at the soiree the night before the ball when we were on the beach.” He pointed to the Smuggle Night section on the chart.
“Yes, that was me.”
“It appears I didn’t spend much time with the true Rachel,” Caspian said.
I saw how he was re
ading Eve’s notes about the meeting in the garden and wondered how many nights he and Rachel had been together before I arrived on the scene. I was still extremely jealous of this woman who I apparently looked so much like that Caspian could not tell the difference between us.
“Did you have moments with Rachel beyond what’s on the chart?”
“In the garden the week my ship was in port.”
I cringed to think of it. “And you and Rachel… I couldn’t say what I was thinking so I said something else. “How did you arrange to meet her in the garden the first night? Rachel wouldn’t have known you because it was me who nursed you at Cove House.”
“She knew me. I assure you.” Stepping away from the chart, which we now had put on a giant corkboard propped up against the wall, Caspian remarked on how busy we’d all been since he’d been gone, like most of our time wasn’t spent crying and comforting the cryer.
“This has been the work of mostly Eve,” I said. “I was busy going on these time travel trips.” I gestured to the board.
“It categorizes the events well,” he said, “and seeing my relationship with Rachel in such a form is interesting at the very least.” He looked troubled and I was just about to ask what was on his mind when Jimmy entered the room to see if Eve wanted to go to town. It was just as well, we got distracted.
Jimmy was planning to make Chicken Tikka Masala and we weren’t about to stop him. I happily ushered him and Eve out the door to get the ingredients in town. Having a chef was something I was quickly getting used to in my daily existence and wished Caspian could enjoy the beauty of that. My mother ran out the door behind Eve, presumably to make sure Jimmy got the right spices, which was a lie because I happened to know she hadn’t heard from Vern in two days. She probably planned to waltz into the Mayor’s office saying she was across the street at the grocery store and wanted to say hello. My mother didn’t seem to understand that Vern was the mayor and had stuff to do besides hang around her all day.
In hopes of Caspian sticking around, I asked Eve to get him some clothes at the local Super Store north of town. As much as it hurt to order this studly man sweatpants and T-shirts, I had to think being damp was uncomfortable. He’d been standing in damp pants and bare feet while we dried his clothes. I didn’t know his size but told Eve to think big. “Two pairs of pants, two T-shirts in XXL and two hoodies,” I said. I’d get that man in jeans and a chambray shirt some other day.
As they headed out the door, I remembered something else. “Oh, and boxers and shoes.” I looked at Caspian who was now tinkering around on the computer, fascinated with listings on The History Channel. “Size 13, I’d say. And a nice robe.”
I watched Caspian at the desk, Moonraker on his lap and wondered how to broach the subject we’d been avoiding—our romantic relationship in light of the fact we were related by blood. I decided to just blurt out my concern, which had reared its ugly head now that my initial jubilation at Caspian’s return had evened out to being thrilled and relieved.
I stood in front of the desk staring at him until he looked up. “I’m your descendant.” I stood frozen to the spot. “Rachel is pregnant with your child and gives birth to my great-great-great-grandmother. I’m from your bloodline.”
He turned with a look of sadness that broke my heart. I’d been hoping he would say it didn’t matter, or in his world, it was perfectly fine to date your grandfather. Instead, he looked defeated. When our eyes met, I knew by voicing my concern, we’d never be lovers in this century.
“I love you, Bryndle. There is nothing that will change that.”
“But our love is tainted now, knowing this, isn’t it?” My heart was cracking into thousands of pitiful pieces inside my chest.
“I believe so.” He stood and started towards me, then thought better of it and stopped, folding his arms across his chest. “I hadn’t wanted to speak of this.”
“When you first met me, you were disappointed my hair was short and blue and that I wore manly clothes. That was because you wanted me to be Rachel.”
“I was surprised to see Rachel in such form and with an injury to her lovely face. A face I loved so.”
The final crack to my heart was when he said he loved Rachel. It was never me he loved. It was me acting like Rachel, the real woman who held his heart in her hands. “I love you,” I said pitifully from across the desk. “I love you as Rachel and I love you as Bryndle and you don’t feel like my great grandfather. You feel like the man I never want to be without.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, sitting back down at the desk. “I thought you were Rachel. You are exactly like her. I thought she’d somehow come back to me.”
“No, she hasn’t. It’s just me,” I said.
Caspian looked out the window to the bay in the distance. “Perhaps it’s best to find my bones and let me go.”
“No.” I would avoid that at all costs. If finding Caspian’s bones or skull would banish him, I didn’t want it. “I can’t. I need you.”
“I understand that and I’m grateful I bring your sight back…”
“It’s not that,” I said, hot tears swamping my eyes. “Letting you go forever would feel like a death sentence to me. I need you here with me, whether I have sight in your presence or not. If it means we can’t be lovers, I’ll have to accept that, but I won’t let you pass on. I can’t be without you.” Tears drifted down my cheeks.
Caspian’s expression was still a mask of pain and I could see he wanted to comfort me but didn’t move from his spot at the desk. “And so, it will continue then. I shall remain with you as long as I can. As I did with Belinda.”
I nodded, knowing this was better than nothing. If Caspian disappeared again, it would be devastating, but I would not search for his bones if that’s what would cause me to lose him forever.
Caspian honored his commitment by spending the days with me and giving me sight. If he left the room, I was blind again. He stuck around like a faithful puppy and without the ability to touch him, to kiss him, to think of him as mine, his presence in the room sank to that of a pet on a leash. I hated having him think he couldn’t leave my side.
Every time I looked at him, I wanted to launch myself into his arms, smell him, tell him I didn’t give a flying fig if he was my grandfather, but something stopped me, and it wasn’t my own sense of propriety.
Caspian’s sense of honor had erected a wall between us, and he gave a huge flying fig that we were related. He cared a lot. The baby he’d been so thrilled about in 1850 was my great times three grandmother and to him, that association mattered. He now looked at me with something like sad disgust. At least that’s what it felt like to me.
No longer was I the object of his affection. I was the thing he’d touched that left slime on his fingers. I wasn’t sure how we would exist going forward and even though he stayed with me in my room while I slept each night, he sat by the fire stroking Moonraker, reading books. We were making a huge effort not to get to know each other better, to create this distance we both knew was necessary if we were to continue.
The fifth day of being Caspian’s granddaughter, I knew I had to do something outside the house and told Eve to email the client who needed help to investigate a ghost who frightened patrons of a store in Tacoma. I couldn’t sit around Cove House forever resisting the temptation of Caspian. I asked Eve to set up an investigation and hoped that Caspian would come, maybe not on the car ride, but by showing up when I started to summon spirits, like at the restaurant in Roslyn where the ghost was trying to tell the owner he was being poisoned by his girlfriend.
Eve got preferred dates for an initial investigation of the paranormal activity and with everyone’s schedule going all over the map these days, I consulted my crew at the dinner table that night to pin down an investigation night. We decided to travel to the Tacoma store the following week when the owner said the establishment would be more available for a reading.
Until then, Caspian and I had a week to exist in a house with f
ew distractions from our attraction to each other. He’d tried on the sweat suit and refused to wear it, saying “such things resembled under garments, not clothes that a man would wear in public.” I had to agree. I ordered jeans and a stretchy collared shirt with a leather jacket and a few other pieces of clothing that seemed to fit his pirate, cool-dude style and put a rush on the clothes, in case Caspian disappeared and never returned. I lived with the possibility of him vanishing every hour even though after a good night’s sleep, I’d woken to him sitting in my room by the fire, still reading his book with Moonraker on his lap every morning for almost a week.
Things weren’t getting easier with Caspian and more than once, I’d wondered if I should find his bones and let him go. If he was only miserably sticking around so I could see, maybe I needed to take a big look at my motive for making Caspian stay.
Before bed on the second night, when Caspian settled into the chair by the fire that he just built, I joined him to talk.
“This is just barely tolerable,” I said.
“I believe it will get easier.” He looked at me with such sadness, I almost snuggled into his arms.
“Will it?”
“I have to think so.”
I took a deep breath and tried to look away. “Is it such a bad thing for two people who love each other…”
“It is.” I saw a steadfastness that was not penetrable.
“How could you be intimate with me as Rachel?” I wasn’t sure I understood the intricacies of this unique situation myself. Did he?
“I didn’t know you were anyone but a young woman named Rachel who is not related to me. In those days, I had no knowledge of you, Bryndle.” Caspian was firm and then his voice softened as if he was appeasing a child. “You wouldn’t be alive if Rachel and I hadn’t been intimate.”
I felt like I was spitting on my familial heritage in my lust for Caspian. But the big question needed to be asked and although it hurt to bring the words from my head to my heart to my tongue, I heard myself voicing my thoughts. “When you first kissed me as Bryndle, did you think I was a descendant of Rachel?”
