Timeless (A Time Travel Romance)

by Jasmine Cresswell

  “Very well. And please don’t forget that the first life you must save is your own.”

  “No,” he said, “the first life I must save is my brother’s.”

  Chapter 18

  The clock in the bleak and chilly room behind the priest’s hole showed that it was past midnight, but Zachary and William still argued, their voices harsh from the strain of being kept constantly low. Most of Zachary’s plans for escape were wild to the point of utter recklessness, and Robyn could understand why William was hard put to control his impatience. But she could also see that her brother-in-law was fast approaching the point of frustration where he would prefer capture and execution to the torment of continuing to live in a windowless, six-by-eight-foot cell.

  He had been confined to the room behind the priest’s hole for over five months, and he showed the effects of his captivity physically as well as mentally. His face was pale and his features—more classically handsome than his brother’s—were fine drawn to the point of emaciation. His body, still wire-thin from the bout with fever caused by his battle wounds, seemed ready to explode with thwarted energy. Robyn suspected that only the realization that his capture would condemn the entire Bowleigh family to prosecution kept him locked into his self-imposed prison.

  “Wait,” she said softly, breaking into a particularly heated exchange. The tension between the brothers seemed all the greater for being expressed in whispers. “Let me be sure that I have fully understood the difficulties we are facing. Captain Bretton has the harbor at Poole surrounded. He also has roadblocks set up on each and every road between Starke and Poole. Why is that such a formidable barrier? Can’t you simply ride across country and escape his net?”

  “He has dragoons posted at lookout points around the entire estate,”‘ Zachary explained curtly.

  “And dogs,” William said. “Literally dozens of hunting and tracking dogs.”

  “Why is he so obsessed with capturing Zachary?” Robyn asked. “Even though he dislikes both of you for personal reasons, surely that isn’t justification for such a massive expenditure of men and effort. How long will his superiors support him in such a costly effort?”

  Zachary shrugged. “The captain has convinced his colonel that when he captures me, he will also capture the valuable remains of Prince Charles Edward’s treasure. The combination of my head, the Bowleigh estates, and Stuart gold is irresistible to everyone on the Duke of Cumberland’s staff.”

  “And is their belief true?” Robyn asked. “Do you have the Jacobite treasure?”

  Zachary’s fingers drummed on the table. “No longer,” he said tautly. “My brother has chosen to hide the treasure and refuses to tell me where.”

  Robyn looked up, but William stopped her before she could ask. “No, my dear, I will not tell you where the treasure is hidden. The fewer people who bear the burden of that dangerous knowledge, the better. What’s more, Zachary already knows that I have not the slightest intention of wasting any more gallant lives trying to ship the prince’s treasure chest to France. The Stuart cause is lost, and no amount of gold would now buy victory, so I shall use the prince’s money to bribe jailers, to pay fines, and to support families whose lives have been ruined by the aid they offered to the Stuart cause. There could be no more useful way to spend Jacobite gold than the rescue of suffering Jacobites.”

  Zachary’s jaw clenched. “I promised Prince Charles Edward to see that the treasure was shipped to France.”

  “And you fulfilled your promise to the point of near-death,” William said tersely. “‘Tis I who refuse to honor the prince’s request, and I take full responsibility for my refusal.”

  The discussion was clearly old and painful, and Robyn intervened quickly. “All right, now I understand why the captain is pursuing you with such fervor, but I still don’t understand why Zachary must go to Poole in order to make good his escape. The south coast is full of natural coves and harbors. Surely there’s some stretch of deserted beach somewhere that the captain hasn’t the manpower to guard?”

  “There are plenty of unguarded beaches, but no unguarded access to those beaches,” William said. “The captain has us in a vise. The Isle of Wight lies to the southeast of Starke, and half the British navy would be on our heels if we tried to escape in that direction. To the southwest, the captain has been strengthening his dragnet around Poole for weeks. In my opinion, we have no hope of evading his patrols and reaching safe harbor by traveling anywhere to the southwest. We have made three attempts to breach his defenses in that direction, and we have failed each time.”

  “Well, then, since you can go neither southwest, nor southeast, obviously you must go north,” Robyn said.

  William smiled with determined patience. “Impossible, my dear. If we go north, the closest seaport would be Bristol, and by the most direct post road, that is a distance of almost sixty miles. Discovery would be inevitable over so great a distance.”

  So great a distance. An hour by car, Robyn thought, even if you obeyed all the speed limits. “How long does it take to travel sixty miles?” she asked.

  Zachary squinted at her, puzzled by the need to ask such a question. “At this season of the year? Possibly seven hours if the frost holds firm and the roads are not mired in mud or buried in snow. But time and distance are not the obstacles. William himself is now under suspicion, which he was not five months ago, and that makes everything more difficult. Before I can make a run for freedom, I must have a horse, and William cannot hope to saddle two horses late at night without raising a hundred questions—and bringing a dozen soldiers in instant pursuit.”

  “It seems to me that if you can’t travel secretly at night, then you must travel openly by day,” Robyn said, once again applying her version of Sherlock Holmes’s law that when everything impossible has been discarded, what remains, however unpromising, must be the solution.

  It was late, William’s leg was obviously hurting him a great deal more than he wanted to admit, and his patience snapped. “Arabella, I know you mean well, but I beg you to refrain from making silly suggestions. If Captain Bretton is able to detect a lone rider on horseback, clearly he would have no difficulty in spotting a coach and pair, complete with driver and outriders, within minutes of our leaving Starke.”

  “That’s the whole point,” Robyn said. “Instead of trying to sneak past the captain’s guards at the dead of night, I am suggesting that we set off in broad daylight, on a harmless shopping expedition to Bristol, with all the servants standing in the front yard waving good-bye.”

  William and Zachary stared at each other, their bodies stiff with sudden excitement. Then Zachary’s shoulders slumped. “That is a deuced fine suggestion, Bella, but it would not work in the end. How could I enter the carriage unnoticed? The servants would all recognize me instantly.”

  “Not if you were disguised,” Robyn said. “Couldn’t we fire Jackson and have William hire you in his place?”

  “Fire Jackson?” William sounded appalled. “My dear, I know the man has betrayed me, but I could never approve of setting him alight. Burning is a barbaric punishment, even for murderers.”

  “No, no, I didn’t mean you to burn him!” Robyn was horrified. “I used the wrong word. I just meant that you should dismiss him from your service, and hire Zachary in his place.”

  William looked thoughtful, then shook his head. “It is an intriguing suggestion, but a position as my valet would not provide Zachary with a sufficient disguise.”

  Zachary nodded in reluctant agreement. “Too many of the servants have known me since I was in leading strings. Wearing servants’ livery isn’t going to deceive them for a moment.”

  “Even if they recognized you, would they betray you to Captain Bretton?” Robyn asked.

  “Probably not,” William said. “But we cannot impose the burden of keeping silent on our servants. The Duke of Cumberland is so crazed with hatred for the Jacobites that aiding my brother is tantamount to signing your own death warrant. Such a choi
ce must be made freely, not imposed by me.”

  “Then we must think of a disguise for Zachary that is so effective the servants can’t penetrate it,” Robyn said crisply. “That shouldn’t be impossible if we give the servants very little time or opportunity to see him up close.” She eyed him assessingly.

  “Fortunately, he isn’t nearly as tall as you, William, so we should be able to pass him off as a woman. Could we find him some skirts and petticoats in the attics that would fit him? Mary takes such scrupulous care of my clothes that she would notice at once if some were missing.”

  “Disguise me as a woman!” Zachary exclaimed. “Deuce take it, Bella, I could never dress up as a woman!”

  “Why not?” Robyn asked. “What’s so dreadful about pretending to be a woman? That’s how Bonnie Prince Charlie managed to escape to France.”

  William stopped his pacing and stood very still. “What do you mean?” he asked. “What is this about Prince Charles Edward?”

  In her eagerness to convince them both, she didn’t pay any attention to the curious note of tension in William’s voice.

  She smiled at him sunnily. “You, of all people, must know the story of how the prince escaped his pursuers after the Battle of Culloden. He hid out for months in crofts and villages all over the Highlands, until finally a woman called Flora Macdonald gave him some of her own clothes, and with his head wrapped in a plaid shawl to disguise his russet curls, the pair of them managed to make the sea crossing from the Scottish mainland to the island of Skye. By a stroke of good fortune, a mist came down and blanketed the whole area for days, so that the British naval patrols couldn’t see anything, and the prince was able to board a frigate and escape to France. It’s a very romantic tale.”

  “It is, indeed,” William said, and for the first time in weeks his voice was chilled with the ice of bitter mistrust. “And perhaps you would now be good enough to enlighten us as to how you came to be familiar with this ‘romantic’ tale.”

  Because I saw a rerun of the movie on late night TV, she wanted to say, but of course she couldn’t. Too late, she realized she had recounted facts that Lady Arabella couldn’t possibly have known in January of 1747, when the prince’s whereabouts were still shrouded in secrecy, and news from the Jacobite court in France traveled along closely guarded routes to the faithful in England. She sought frantically for a credible explanation of her knowledge, aware that every second ticking by made her appear less truthful, less worthy of trust.

  “I can’t remember where I heard the story,” she said when the silence had stretched out to distressing lengths. The excuse was so feeble, she winced. “Perhaps from one of the servants—”

  “Enough,” William said, leaning forward and gripping her wrist with painful force. “Do not compound your lies, Arabella. The story of the prince’s safe arrival in France is known to almost no one, and certainly not to any of the servants here in Starke.”

  She tried again to gloss over her mistake, hoping that communications between the defeated prince and his supporters were erratic enough that William wouldn’t know how accurate her account had been. “Well, you know, that was only my version of how the prince managed to escape. Probably I was mistaken in many of the details—”

  “On the contrary, my lady, you recounted the details with remarkable precision. The story of the prince’s escape is a closely guarded secret, and only someone intimately connected with the Jacobite cause—or deeply involved with the Duke of Cumberland’s high command—could have known such particulars.”

  William looked across the table at her, his gaze hard, cold, and condemning. “Many people have entrusted me not only with their own lives but also with the safety of their families,” he said. “I cannot afford betrayal. Heed me well, my lady. I will lock you in this room, bound hand and foot, gagged and blindfolded, before I will allow you to go free and reveal what you have heard tonight to Captain Bretton.”

  “I told you she couldn’t be trusted,” Zachary muttered.

  With supreme effort, Robyn managed to ignore Zachary’s remark. She got up and walked swiftly around the table to kneel beside William. “Look at me,” she commanded, covering his hands with her own. “Look at me, William, and tell me that you believe I am preparing to betray you and your brother to Captain Bretton.”

  William’s eyes were shadowed with doubt, but he looked away without speaking. Robyn wasn’t sure she could count that as a victory. She drew in a deep breath. “If I am planning to betray you, why have I not done so already?”

  William’s voice was remote, and he didn’t turn to look at her. “Mayhap you wait to charm from me the location of Prince Charles Edward’s treasure. That information would indeed be a prize to carry to Captain Bretton.”

  “Damn the treasure,” she said, her voice husky. “And damn you, too, William Bowleigh, for being a blind fool.” She was tired to the point of exhaustion, and tears gathered in the comers of her eyes. She dashed them away, angry with herself for betraying weakness in front of William. She would not weep for a man who scorned her, still less for a love too shallow to survive its first test. She rose to her feet.

  “I’m going to bed,” she said. “I need to sleep for an hour or two before Annie brings me the baby to nurse in the morning.”

  She walked quickly to the narrow entrance to the priest’s hole, but Zachary was there before her, barring her exit. “You cannot believe that we will let you simply turn tail and walk out of here!” he exclaimed.

  “What else are you planning to do?” she asked wearily. “For heaven’s sake, Zachary, stop and think for a moment. If I disappear, Captain Bretton will be at Starke before nightfall, and his troops will be tearing the paneling from these walls before daybreak. You have no choice other than to let me go free.”

  “Arabella is right, Zachary.” William rose to his feet. “We cannot keep her locked away. My threats were idle, and she has called my bluff.”

  “Then what are we to do with her?”

  William finally looked at her, his gaze diamond-hard. “We shall have to trust her,” he said. “We have no other choice.”

  Zachary leaned against the wall, his face deathly white in the candlelight. “My God,” he said, “then we are doomed.”

  Robyn was energized by a sudden urge to deliver Zachary a swift kick in the pants. “Try not to be such a horse’s ass,” she said to him, and squeezed through the doorway into William’s bedroom.

  * * *

  Zach woke up in the middle of the night, his body slick with sweat and his breath coming in tearing, heaving gasps.

  He knew Robyn was in deadly danger and it was his job to protect her. He had been running as fast as he could to get to her side, but he was too late. She was going to be shot and it was his fault. He couldn’t remember what he’d done, but he knew it was his willful stupidity that had led her straight into deadly danger.

  The nightmare was so powerful that it took him almost a full minute to realize that he was sitting up in his own bed, waking from a dream, and not racing across the parking lot of the Starke Manor Hotel in a vain effort to rescue Robyn. The shadowy outlines of his bedroom furniture took on solid shape and he got out of bed, adrenaline still pumping so fast that he was shaking.

  He walked to the bathroom and poured himself a glass of water, drinking thirstily. Even though he was now aware that he was awake, the threads of the nightmare wouldn’t let go. His pulses thrummed with the knowledge that he had somehow put Robyn in danger, not months ago, but recently.

  He pulled on a pair of sweats and a cotton sweater and walked into his living room, flicking on the lights as he went. Right now, he didn’t want darkness, or shadows where obscure demons could lurk.

  He flung himself onto the sofa, the place where he and Robyn had first made love. Lady Arabella stared down at him, her gaze curiously direct, as if she were seeing him and not the artist.

  Looking at the portrait, Zach was impressed all over again with the skill Robyn had shown in desig
ning her piece of needlepoint. She hadn’t copied the portrait precisely. Instead, she’d set herself the more difficult artistic task of depicting the same woman, wearing the same dress, but posed in a much more formal position, surrounded by a border of stylized flowers.

  The portrait of Lady Arabella had obviously made a deep impression on Robyn’s subconscious. He wondered what would happen if he made arrangements to bring Robyn to New York so that she could see the portrait again. Given her hysterical fear of him, he couldn’t decide if a visit to his apartment would jog loose important memories, or topple her over the edge into outright insanity. He jotted down a note to have her parents bring the question up with the psychologist at Robyn’s next visit.

  Despite the fact that the portrait was an original Gainsborough, it was so much a part of his daily life that Zach hadn’t looked at it closely in years. Now he scrutinized Lady Arabella with an intensity that seemed as much a lingering effect of his nightmare as a wish to view the portrait anew. The beads of sweat on his skin cooled, leaving goose bumps in their place.

  How damned odd, he thought. He’d never noticed before that Lady Arabella’s eyes bore a haunting similarity to Robyn’s, although the two women were dissimilar in every other aspect of their appearance. Looking at the portrait, it was almost as if he could see Robyn again. Smiling, good-humored, intelligent Robyn as she had looked before some woman in England took aim at her skull and left her gaze haunted with the shadows of madness.

  The gun that had been used to shoot Robyn was owned by a woman named Gloria. Gloria Hasskins was a teacher who had relatives she visited in the United States.

  Gerry Taunton had a sister who was called Gloria. A sister who lived in England, somewhere not too far from Starke, and taught at the local school.