The Highwayman Incident

by Kristy Tate

  “Very good.” Montgomery stood. “Mary, will you show the good doctor to Miss West’s room?”

  “May I come? She is, after all, my sister.”

  The women in the room gasped.

  “Are you sure that she would wish you there?” Montgomery asked, concern wrinkling his forehead.

  “We’re very close,” Jason lied.

  Montgomery nodded, and although it rankled that he needed permission from Montgomery to see his own sister, Jason followed Mary and the doctor up the stairs without a word.

  Montgomery’s house, or WestHaven as Montgomery called it, was even more lavish and opulent than where Penelope lived with her uncle. Jason trailed after Mr. Jones who followed Mary down a dimly lit corridor. Even though it was the middle of the day, the hall lacked any windows or natural lighting.

  Mary stopped at a door and knocked. A maid let them in.

  One look at Celia’s small, pale face surrounded by her startling red hair, and Jason knew he had to get home. She needed antibiotics. She needed him to save her.

  And just as he thought the words save her, he felt himself falling.

  CHAPTER TEN

  He came out of the water sputtering. The Witching Well. He was back. Relief flooded through him, as he hoisted himself onto the stones. Shaking the water from his eyes and hair, he looked around. All of his relief drained away.

  The most horrible thought occurred to him. He stared into the bottom of the well, but saw only blackness. If Celia had drowned, who would believe he didn’t have something to do with her death?

  Panic gripped him. Jason picked up his phone, wallet and shirt and ran for his car. Just like the last time, he couldn’t tell if any time had passed at all. He found it awkward trying to run in wet clothes and knee-high boots, but he went as fast as he could. When he broke through the woods, he saw the sun still lingered on the horizon and Celia’s grandmother still snored inside his car.

  Jason clicked his fob and the Porsche’s headlights flicked at him. He ran to the passenger side door. Celia’s grandmother didn’t even stir as Jason reached over her to dig through his glove compartment. When his fingers closed around the bottle of antibiotics his dentist had given him after his last root canal, he breathed a sigh of relief.

  Celia’s grandmother snorted.

  Jason held his breath, waiting for her to wake up and demand to know what had happened to Celia. Since Jason didn’t know the answer to that question, he ran back into the woods as fast as his sloshy, waterlogged boots could take him.

  As he ran, he thought about Celia’s grandmother. Some long ago memory tugged at him.

  He needed help. He didn’t know if he could save Celia on his own. He needed someone on his side, someone he could trust.

  He knew his ancestors had once lived in Cornwall. When he was in college and so fascinated with the Arthurian legends, his grandfather had told him that his parents had come from Cornwall and had lived in Trevena, the village near Tintegal Castle and Arthur’s birthplace. As he ran, a plan, of sorts, formed in his mind.

  #

  Shadows played against the wall, morphing from dancing tree branches into monsters. Celia tried to clear her head, but the wind whistling through the cracks of the window was trying to tell her something. She thought if she could hold very still and focus, she would be able to understand what the wind was trying to say.

  She knew she didn’t belong in this giant bed in the massive room with the roaring fire. What she didn’t know could fill a book: who was the woman sitting in the wooden chair in the corner, snoring? What was the white sheet-like thing she wore, and why did it keep tangling around her legs? Why was she so hot? And then cold? Where was she? And someone should be with her…not the snoring woman in the corner, but Jason…where was he?

  Voices murmured above her head. She focused on a man dressed in black and a girl with brown curls tied back with a blue ribbon. The man had a bottle and he pressed it to her lips.

  She sputtered as the burning liquid slid down her throat.

  Then the world went black.

  #

  Before Jason drank from the well for the third time, he worried. What if he didn’t end up in the same place as Celia? What if the ergot-tainted barley water carried him to the land of the dinosaurs? Or to a Nazi concentration camp? Or to a million and one other places he didn’t want to be?

  As he lifted a handful of the Witching Well’s water to his lips, he knew with stunning clarity that all he ever wanted, and all he would ever want, was to be with Celia. Maybe they didn’t know each other as well as they could. So what if they had never even been on a date. He knew he wanted Celia the way he knew he wanted to take his next breath. She had to be a part of his life.

  Blinking, he raised himself up to one elbow and looked around at the hay-strewn ground and the sleeping stallion sharing his stall. The animal’s breath puffed like a gray cloud into the cold, clear night. Outside, the trees swayed in the wind, and the moonlight shone on the quiet and dark pasture.

  Relief flooded through him when he realized he was exactly where—and when—he needed to be.

  The house was also dark. Not one candle flickered behind the windows. Jason stood and tried to brush himself off, but the hay clung to his wet pants. Beside him, the slumbering stallion nickered without opening his eyes.

  Jason patted his pocket to make sure the pills were still there. Satisfied, he headed out of the stall and toward the house. The size of it overwhelmed him. How would he ever find Celia when he didn’t even know how to find the front door? But of course, he couldn’t just walk in the front door—just like he couldn’t go to the second floor and open every door looking for Celia.

  He paused in what looked like a garden past its harvest. Corn stalks, brown and dead, lay in bundles on the ground. Small wooden cages made of sticks and string stood empty, the ground beneath them over-turned as if the plants had been recently uprooted. Something smashed beneath Jason’s boot, and he pulled out an onion. Feeling lost, he chucked it into the woods behind him.

  “Hey!” A kid with hair falling over his eyes stepped out from behind an outbuilding. He held Jason’s onion and looked as if he was debating on whether or not to chuck it at Jason’s head.

  “Who are you?” Jason asked.

  “Robert,” the kid responded. “Who are you?”

  “Jason. So, tell me, Robert, what are you doing here?”

  “Killing rabbits.” He held up a crudely made slingshot.

  “Does that work?” Jason asked.

  “You tell me.” Robert pointed at a grizzly collection of lifeless rabbits near the base of the outbuilding.

  Jason’s gaze returned to Robert. He looked like a kid who should be playing video games chasing angry birds, not rabbits. “How does Lord Montgomery feel about you killing his bunnies?”

  “He pays me ha’penny each, plus, I get to keep the rabbits for stew.”

  “Double prizes,” Jason murmured.

  “So, I told you what I was doing here, how about you?”

  “I’m a guest.”

  “Then why you wandering around here in the middle of the night?”

  Good question. “Are you, by any chance, familiar with the West family? They live in Trevena.”

  Robert lifted an eyebrow. “Sure, I know old lady West. Everyone does.” Robert stepped an inch closer and lowered his voice. “Some say she’s a witch.”

  “A witch,” Jason repeated. He opened his mouth to tell Robert that there was no such thing as a witch, but then he remembered that until yesterday he would have also told him that no one could time-travel, and yet, here he was. “Do you think you could take me to her?”

  “What, now?” Robert’s face blanched in the moonlight. “She’d be putting a spell on me for sure if I bothered her at midnight.”

  “Tomorrow then?”

  Robert nodded.

  “You don’t have school or anything?”

  Robert looked at him as if he was dense. He straig
htened back his shoulders. “I’m an apprentice groundskeeper.” Pride tinged his voice.

  “Ah. So killing rodents isn’t just for ha’pennies and rabbit stew, it’s occupationally advantageous.”

  Robert gave him another you’re-a-lunatic stare.

  Jason cleared his throat. “How about I meet you right here tomorrow at ten—will you take me to Mrs. West?”

  “On one condition,” Robert said.

  “What’s that?”

  “That you get your hide out of here now.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “You’re scaring away the rabbits.”

  “Oh right.” Jason looked around, wondering how to get into the house.

  Robert pointed at a Dutch door hiding behind a row of bean trellises.

  “Good.” He nodded at Robert. “See you tomorrow.”

  Jason thought that he might find the door locked, but it opened with a noisy creak. A cat sleeping on the window sill peeked open an eye to watch him slide into the house.

  He stood in what he guessed to be a kitchen. A large stove dominating the room glowed orange. Jason spotted a back stairway and headed for it, his footsteps echoing on the stone floor.

  The second story was easy to find, but which of the doors had an empty room? Walking as quietly as he could, he paused at every door. The first one rumbled with snores, so he hurried to the next. Nothing.

  At the end of the hall, a door creaked open. Jason plastered himself against the wall, trying to disappear.

  “Jason?” Celia whispered.

  Her red hair was wild and her white cotton gown gauzy and sheer. In the dimly lit hall, she looked ghostly pale and yet incredibly beautiful. He hurried to her.

  “How are you feeling?” He wanted to touch her, but didn’t dare.

  She took his hand and pulled him into her room. “Better knowing you’re here. I thought you had left me.”

  “I did.”

  “What!”

  Jason nodded. “I brought you these.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the antibiotics.

  “I don’t want those! I want to go home! Why didn’t you take me with you?”

  Jason shook his head. “I would if I knew how.”

  Celia went to the bed and sank down on it. “What did you do?”

  Jason sat down beside her. “I don’t know. I really only know how to get here. I don’t know how to get back.”

  Celia pinned him with a feverish look. “But you did it.”

  Jason nodded.

  “Then we’ll do it again.”

  “What if I can do it and you can’t?”

  Celia slipped her hand into his and held on tightly. “Tell me what you did.”

  Even Celia’s hand felt warm…too warm. He put his hand to her forehead the way his mother used to when he was sick. “Take these first.” He held out the pills.

  “What are they?”

  “I’m not sure, but my dentist gave them to me after I had a root canal.”

  “You want me to take random pills?”

  “We drank random water!”

  “If you remember correctly, I technically didn’t drink the water.”

  Jason rolled his eyes. “You’re here. I’m here. How we got here isn’t important. What is important is that you don’t die here.”

  “I’m not going to die.”

  Jason dropped her hand, stood and fetched a glass of water from her night stand. The water looked gray and he thought he spotted things floating in it. He sighed and decided that it would have to do. “Celia, right now we’re in an age when people died all the time from dog bites to contaminated water. Take the damn pills.”

  “You don’t need to swear.”

  “Take the pills,” he growled and shoved the water glass at her.

  “You’re cranky,” she said, but she took the glass.

  Jason shook the vial and two pills rolled out into his palm. “And you’re sick.”

  Celia put the pills in her mouth, swallowed a slug of water, and made a face. “Will you stay with me?” she asked, scooting over to make room for him.

  “Of course.”

  She rolled away from him. “Good, but you have to stay on your side of the bed, because you’re all wet.” She hesitated before rolling back toward him. “Unless you’re going home, then you have to take me with you.”

  Jason grinned and pulled off his boots. After unbuttoning his shirt and breeches, he hung them both over the chair beside the fire. He felt her gaze on him.

  “Nice boxers.”

  “Thanks.” He looked down at his paisley underwear, grateful that they were one of his more respectable ones.

  “So, how did you do it?” she asked, tucking her pillow beneath her head.

  Jason shrugged with one shoulder. “I’m not really sure. I knew I had antibiotics and I knew that you need them.”

  “Okay. I’m going to close my eyes and think about how much I want to go home. I have so much that needs to be done…” her voice trailed away, and after a moment, Jason thought she’d fallen asleep. Then she said quietly, “Thanks for coming back for me. I don’t want to stay here without you.”

  Jason smiled. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” His smiled deepened. “It might be the only nice thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’ve said nice things before.”

  “I’m sure you have…just not to me.”

  Celia closed her eyes. “If I hadn’t said it before, I’m really glad you’re here.” She slid a hand toward him. “Can you hold me?”

  “Okay?” He took her hand, not liking how warm she still felt.

  “That way if you leave again, you’ll have to take me with you.”

  “I don’t think it works that way.”

  “Well, I don’t know how it works, so if you don’t mind, I’m just going to hold onto you.”

  “Good. I’ll hold onto you, too.”

  “Thanks,” Celia muttered right before she fell asleep.

  Jason listened to her breath turn slow and rhythmic. He wished he could take her back to Connecticut and the twenty-first century. He really did. And he would if he could. He really would.

  But there was no chance in hell that the twenty-first century Celia would ever invite him to her bed.

  And that was something.

  #

  The next morning, Celia felt well enough to dress for breakfast. She suffered through Kitty’s hair up-do, and only slightly winced when the doctor came to change her bandaging.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to wear,” Celia said to Kitty. “My one dress was ruined.”

  “No problem, Miss. My Lord Montgomery said you are welcome to wear any of his mother’s gowns.”

  “Goodness. She won’t mind?”

  Kitty dipped her head. “Well, if she were alive, she just might. But she won’t be wanting any of her gowns where she is now, so my Lord Montgomery thought they could be of use to you.” Kitty hesitated. “But perhaps you are used to finer things?”

  “No,” Celia said quickly. “I’m sure Lady Montgomery’s things will be lovely.”

  “Very good, Miss. I’ll find something appropriate for you to wear this morning.”

  Kitty disappeared and came back minutes later with a gorgeous blue taffeta gown with white ribbons and pearl-like buttons. Celia, so in love with the dress, itched for a pencil and paper.

  “Kitty, do you think you could find me a sketch pad?”

  “Surely, Miss. Would you like to draw after breakfast?” Kitty’s tone implied what she thought proper.

  “Oh, of course. Very good.”

  #

  Montgomery bounced to his feet when Celia entered the breakfast room, and Jason also stood, although a bit more slowly. They both sat when she slid into an empty chair.

  “My dear,” Montgomery began, “you are looking well this morning. I’m glad you found my mother’s gown acceptable.”

  Jason, who still wore h
is black highwayman pants and the now dingy white shirt, studied her. She flushed beneath his gaze.

  “I’m feeling better, thank you, and the dress is gorgeous.”

  “I’m so glad,” Montgomery said with a slow smile.

  She didn’t know if he was glad that she was well, or glad that she could wear his mother’s dress, or both. Deciding it didn’t matter, Celia unfolded her linen napkin, picked up her fork, and waited for the man standing nearby to deliver her breakfast.

  “I was hoping you would be well enough to allow me to show you our gardens,” Montgomery said. “John Miller, our groundskeeper, takes such pride in his work.”

  Jason looked as if he had something to say, but after a moment, he went back to eating.

  “That would be great,” Celia said.

  “Not too taxing?” Montgomery asked with a concerned wrinkle on his brow.

  “No. I think I would like that.”

  “Mr. West, I thought perhaps you and Miss Hargrove would like to take a ride. I have several horses you may choose from.”

  Jason choked on his beans. “I’m actually meeting someone at ten,” he said after clearing his throat and taking a sip of juice.

  “Who?” Celia asked.

  “Someone you don’t know.”

  Celia stared at him through slit eyes, her suspicions growing.

  “Oh, well…I can stay here with Mary,” Penelope said.

  “I’m sure you can join us in the gardens,” Celia told Penelope.

  To Celia’s annoyance, neither Montgomery nor Jason said a word. “Where is Mary this morning?” Celia asked.

  “Still abed,” Montgomery said. “A tray will be sent up if she continues in her lie-in.”

  That should be fun for Penelope, Celia thought. She slid Penelope a quick glance. She had her head bowed over her plate, and she didn’t look happy to be Mary’s assignment. Celia gave Jason another dirty look, but he kept his attention on his food.

  Celia lifted a spoonful of beans to her lips and wished she was at home eating a raspberry-filled croissant and drinking a tall chocolate latte topped with whipped cream.

  #

  Montgomery took her arm and led Celia out the wide French doors.

  Penelope, who sat on the sofa with a book in her hand, tried to look like she didn’t mind being left behind.