I was heartbroken and hopeless. I had no choice. Not only had I brought on the brutal murder of Cassie and her husband—I had now enabled this monster who had complete control over all of us.
He told me never to contact Rachel, nor to allow either of her sisters to contact her. He was as good as his word, and I signed over my parental rights. I never saw Rachel again. The money was delivered in cash the next day.
Jimmy soon revealed himself to be the sort of cad that I had always chosen, and as I tried to cope with the children, he began to spend the fortune I had hoped to use to raise my granddaughters.
When Jimmy began to abuse me as the others had, I no longer cared. I no longer wanted to live. I knew that the children were in fact much better off with a stranger than with me—but now I came to a place where I could neither eat nor sleep, terrified that Max Sheppard would follow through on the rest of his promise.
I wished I could somehow go back to the day before I met James Manning, a time when Thomas still loved me. In the same moment, I knew that for me, too much time had passed. I was as broken as a person ever could be, and I knew in my heart that I could never undo all the events that had made the person I had become.
At last, a solution came to me. The appropriate talisman lay in the gifts Thomas had given me the day I met Manning. That day was the last happy day in my life, and the safest time I could imagine for the girls—before Manning had existed in my life.
I filled the pillbox with painkillers and left it at home, intending to return home and swallow them all. But I did bring the silver hairbrush that Thomas had given me that day. I drove the girls down to Rosalie. I walked them to the portal, and I hugged them both close to my breast and kissed them and whispered my fondest hopes for them in their lives.
Then I lay the hairbrush across Juliana, her arms holding it in place. I placed one portrait in each of their hands, in case they were separated—Rachel’s portrait into Merrilea’s, and Merrilea’s portrait into Juliana’s tiny fist.
At last, there was no more putting off to be done. I stood still and waited to see clearly into the portal. Eventually, it did appear, as Godfrey’s friend Malcolm had indicated it would.
Then I held Juliana in one arm and Merrilea’s hand with my free hand. Staying firmly on this side of the portal, I knelt and placed Juliana on the ground where the Trelawneys would quickly find her, and I gently nudged Merrilea, telling her to be a big girl and take care of her sister.
As bad timing went, who should be there besides Godfrey Hastings? He would’ve been perfect, had he not seen me—but see me he did, and he angrily called out to me. Until that moment, I had believed that Godfrey was incapable of such passion.
You would abandon two young children in a field?
Godfrey, it’s my grandchildren, Juliana and Merrilea. Take them and raise them as your own.
Merrilea, come here! he said.
And I rushed away from the portal and ran toward my car. Only when I was perhaps twenty yards away and stopped to look back did I hear the tiny voice.
Nan! Nanny-nan! Don’t forget Marley!
Oh, dear God—my little Merrilea had stepped back through the portal, holding her arms out to me as she began crying and toddling after me.
What had I done?
I rushed back to gather her in my arms, my tears pouring freely, wetting her cheeks as I held her close. And I hurried back to see if I could snatch back little Juliana—but the portal was closed. As long as I stood there, it would not open again, and my Juliana was lost from me for all time.
Chapter Forty-Four
The storm had continued to rage through the afternoon, and now the rain drummed against the stones with quiet persistence as Hannah fell silent.
Marley was numb. She glanced without expression at her husband, who sat in the chair at her side—his elbows propped on either knee, his fingertips touching, his own gaze on the floor—and then at her sister, sitting on the couch. Juliana had paled, looking as if she might faint—or vomit.
Beside her, Mary held her hand and sat as stoically as Malcolm, on Juliana’s other side.
Camisha and Ashanti sat near the fire—much the same as Bronson, regarding the floor in grim silence.
Standing beside his mother, Rashall’s gaze focused on Juliana. The sight was a welcome distraction—he was fascinated, and the thought pleased her. Then she realized she knew nothing about her sister. For all she knew, she might be engaged to be married. She might be married.
Godfrey Hastings sat in a chair alone, grimly staring at his walking stick.
Thomas, at the window, watched the rain without expression, as if unaware that his fiancée had been speaking for the better part of an hour.
In the end, the person who broke the silence was the one who had begun it when she finished her soliloquy. She still stood near the tea service. “Malcolm, why was I allowed to travel back to my natural time again? I expected to spend the rest of my life where I was.”
He tugged at his ear, then rubbed his chin, selecting his words. “You know the answer to that. You have explained it in the past hour.”
“I truly don’t. I thought it might be a second chance to love Thomas.”
“You are a dangerous actor and cannot be trusted with such knowledge, to the point that we must take action to remove this threat.”
This startled everyone in the room except Mary, who went on, “Tomorrow you will awaken in your bed with all memory of those events related to the time travel wiped away.”
Malcolm continued. “Everyone you know, as far as you are concerned, has always lived in the eighteenth century.”
“But—my daughter, Cassandra. Those memories? And … Marley’s childhood?”
“Listen to me. You will remember nothing of the twentieth or twenty-first centuries. You lived here, gave birth to your daughter, she married Robert Miller, a neighbor boy; both died in a way you do not remember but have no native curiosity over. Even if someone were to ask you how they died, you will deftly change the subject without realizing it.”
Then Mary spoke. “Look at the people in this room. Look at the suffering you caused. To overcome your own suffering as a child, you came to be a person who felt no sympathy toward anyone else. Through your recklessness, you caused the death of your own daughter and her husband. You sold your granddaughter to a man you knew would abuse her, and you abandoned your other granddaughters—mere days after all the trauma these little girls had already undergone! When you were forced to deal with poor little Merrilea, so confused at that abandonment, you raised her in a home where she grew as fearful as a mouse, and you allowed a man without honor to waste the resources that could have been used to improve her life. You left Juliana unattended in a field, and her barely two months old. And has it not occurred to you even yet that you yourself and Cassandra were still living in 1753, the year you left your granddaughter? Did that not occur to you as a catastrophic anomaly in time?”
One glance made it clear that it never had—not even during the decades that had passed.
“Godfrey was running a plantation, and as much as he would have loved to raise the child, he recognized the potential for disaster. You would have had no idea who these foundling girls were, and God knows what you might have done with them. Godfrey dislikes this time travel business already. For all your rude eavesdropping, you might have understood that. Fortunately, he knew a couple ideally equipped for rearing a foundling, or a wild animal may have otherwise slain our beloved Juliana. You betrayed Thomas—”
“Stop it.” From the window, Thomas turned, grimly surveying the room. “This endless haranguing helps no one.”
At this Hannah rushed to him, grasping his free hand between hers and bringing it to her lips. “Oh, Thomas! Can you then forgive me?”
He looked down at her, his silver gaze sad. “Today, no.” After a long moment in which she peered at him with naked humility, he sighed. “I no longer know what to believe from you; even this seems affected. But no
w I am angry and later that will pass. I have wronged others and know that God can work miracles of forgiveness in a person’s heart. I have known forgiveness when I did not deserve it. Who can say. If what I have heard today is possible, perhaps this is. Mayhap along with the time-travel in your memory will go those terrible things that were done to you, that left you incapable of accepting love from an honorable man. In the meantime I will pray for us all, and I suggest you do the same.”
He disentangled his hand from hers, placed it on his walking stick with the other, and returned his attention to the rain, which was beginning to slow.
“Very well, then. I understand your anger and for now merely hope that all of you can forgive me in time. I love each of you as much as I know how. Juliana, may I impose on you that I might retire to a spare room? If not, I understand. I am ready to put this day behind me.”
“Of course.” Juliana, the one with the fewest memories of this woman, rose from the couch and led her down the hall.
When she returned to the room, she hesitated at the doorway. “Forgive me for my poor hostessing. I know all of you must be hungry. Allow me to make some bread and reheat our stew, and we will have supper.”
Marley and Camisha joined her in the kitchen. Camisha retrieved dishes even as Marley opened the silverware drawer, oddly comforted to find that 240 years before, forks and knives were kept in the same place.
They worked silently to set the table, then returned to the kitchen, where Juliana was mixing cornbread. She passed another large bowl to Marley. “Perhaps you could mix up some pan bread or biscuits, so they have a choice?”
Marley mixed up a simple quick bread, and they placed the skillets into the oven.
When she straightened, Camisha touched her shoulders. “Juliana, I am—or was—very good friends with your sister, Rachel. We were quite close, thirty years ago.”
“What happened to her?”
“She has a family with Grey Trelawney, in the future.”
“Ah! This very thought is beyond my imagination.”
“You’ll understand, in time.”
They joined the others in the front room. They were speaking as men ever did—the weather and what the travel going home might be like.
As they spoke, Marley stood next to the desk on the wall opposite the fireplace. The men discussed what Dunmore’s next trick might be, after the spectacular loss at Great Bridge.
She glanced down at the desk idly, noticing the silver hairbrush that had delivered Juliana to this time. Beside it, she saw a tiny framed portrait. “Oh, my!”
Bronson rose and walked to her, resting his arm on the wall above her head as he bent to see what she held. “My Marley. You’ve found your other half.”
“One of my other thirds, perhaps. I’ll never stop missing Rachel. I don’t believe in harboring anger, but it flabbergasts me that I could have known her at any time, but for my own grandmother being dishonest with me about my own name—or Rachel’s adopted name. And all those years, spent with that awful, abusive Jimmy.”
He kissed her temple. “I know. It is not fair. Did you get nothing from the relationship?”
“I learned to sail.”
“That, you would have learned anyway, although perhaps it did make my way easier. I am selfish to say it, but I am glad you’re here with me. And if what Hannah said earlier is true, in doing it, she saved your life.”
She leaned against him, comforted by his smell. Then she joined Juliana on the couch, holding out the framed miniature to her. “Yes, it’s you. Aunt Mary told me about you, some years ago. I had no idea you lived in another time.”
Silently, Marley opened the pillbox, showing her its twin. “This is our oldest sister, Rachel. They were kept in a locket our mother owned. On the back, it was engraved. It said, As time is, so beats our hearts—tender, immortal, forever. I stole it from our mother’s jewelry box to give to Rachel for her birthday. Rachel was so angry with me—she always looked out for me. Mama was so amused, she insisted that Rachel keep it. It was a gift from our father, you see. It was before you were born, or you can bet he would’ve made sure there was room for three.”
“What were they like—our parents?”
“I was three when they passed away, but I remember them so well. Twenty years later, my heart still hurts for them. Mama was beautiful—she looked like Nan, except that she had a beauty mark on her cheek. She had the faintest English accent, also like Nan. She was kind, and intelligent, and generous.
“Our father was—as you just heard—a professor at William and Mary and an historian. Nan mentioned once to me that our other grandmother was beautiful and exotic looking. I think that you and I probably look more like our father’s side of the family than of Nan’s.”
“And the scars we share … do you know where those come from?”
“The man who killed our parents did it.”
“Our poor Papa and Mama. Do you suppose they suffered much?”
And in one of those rare moments of her life, Marley lied without a single regret. “I think not. I believe it ended quickly.”
Anxious to turn the topic of conversation in another direction, Marley called out to Rashall, who stood chatting with Bronson and Thomas and Ashanti.
“I’d love for you to meet someone. He’s the funniest, most charming man I’ve ever met—aside from my husband.”
His eyes flashed suspiciously toward her, and she impatiently gestured him over.
“Rashall, have you met my baby sister?”
He scratched his neck suddenly, then shook his head silently. She had the strongest urge to ask him if he’d been drinking.
“Well, Juliana, this is Rashall Adams, my husband’s partner on the Immortal, their ship. Rashall, this is my sister, Juliana Miller.”
He bent low over her hand, bringing it to his mouth in a shy gesture.
“Hello, Mr. Adams. Are you enjoying yourself?”
“No. I mean, yes, I am enjoying myself. I mean, no, this is all terribly sad. I mean—please, call me Rashall.”
She gave him a wide smile in genuine pleasure at his halting words, her lips parting and revealing even, white teeth. Like her sister, her mouth was shaped so it seemed each corner held a small dimple, and her smile deepened her beauty.
Rashall fidgeted, staring at her uneasily.
“All right, then. Merrilea tells me you’re a ship’s captain.”
“No. Bronson’s the captain, I’m just, well, not a captain. I’m more of a, well, no captain. I’m actually an ordained—well, as ordained as I can be—but I’m not a priest, I can, you know—I’m, well, yes I am ordained.”
Marley watched, mystified as he stammered like a child. And, abruptly, he pressed his lips together as if to staunch the babbling flood of syllables. She glanced back at Juliana, who met her gaze with an innocent smile, as if nothing at all were amiss.
“Soup’s on,” Camisha called from the kitchen.
“I’ll go help,” Rashall and Marley said in unison.
Marley swallowed down laughter, but she couldn’t keep herself from smiling broadly at him, then lay her hand alongside his forearm as she rose. “Ray, why don’t you see if Malcolm can direct you to any wine that might be available? Or would you rather help Juliana—”
By then he was already ducking his head in a hasty bow, then heading off on the quest for vino.
The women exchanged a smile. “I’m not sure, but either he’s sweet on you, or he’s having some sort of nerve fit.” Marley patted Juliana, and together they joined Camisha in the kitchen.
Chapter Forty-Five
As Bronson gazed out over the Sargasso Sea, he filled his lungs with the warming sea air. With each tick of the rising mercury, his spirits had lightened. Now, he squinted for any sight of the British island on the horizon. It had been a long winter, and he was ready for April’s sunshine on his back.
On New Year’s Day, John Murray, the Fourth Earl of Dunmore, had ordered the burning of Norfolk. Although the to
wn had been infested with loyalists, they—like Boston’s Tories—had deserted their homes for the Royal Navy ships in the harbor. The British Navy began bombarding the town, but then came ashore to selectively destroy patriot homes. Likely the good Tories stood at the gunner’s elbow wringing their hands and imploring them to “aim it that other way.” At that point, the patriots had taken it upon themselves to loot and destroy what was left.
Dunmore remained floating in the Chesapeake Bay for the time being, but Bronson was certain his days as an American governor were numbered.
In February, the Virginia Gazette had published excerpts of a small book—a pamphlet, no more. Bronson had secured the entire work since and read it to his wife, the Adamses, and a goodly group of Trelawneys at Rosalie, over lunch.
Naturally, Marley already knew all about the book and its author—an English defender of American freedom, named Thomas Paine. She had called it America’s clarion call to equality.
The winter grew miserable and by January Bronson, Rashall, and all of their men were mad with the cold and the deprivation of war.
They had returned to Boston in March to collect Helen and the smaller children for their journey to St. George’s. As a reward for some good deed certainly performed in another life, he had arrived to the majestic sight of the entire blockaded British fleet evacuating the harbor.
They had waited just offshore to watch the spectacle, but they were close enough to hear the cheers and the laughter. Bronson had grown close enough to many of the citizenry to feel their tears of relief.
“I hear tell me patron saint drove the snakes out of Ireland, but I be ready to ask the Pope to name a St. George Washington!”
Padraig, of all people, had appeared that day to witness the promenade of warships. The old Irish cook rarely made an appearance above deck. That the British chose to leave the city on the seventeenth of March was something for those who had grown up there, like Padraig, to celebrate always.
Immortal (The Trelawneys of Williamsburg Book 2) Page 39
