OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel)

by Jocks, Yvonne

  His gaze caught mine and didn't waver. Oh my. He didn't think he was lying!

  I didn't know what to say.

  He did. But he had to look away to say it. "Mornin', I'll come by for you, take you to Reverend Wright. He's a fair man; just built a new church. By midday I'll have the herd movin' again, make camp early, come back in the evenin' for..." he lowered his already quiet voice for the next two words, "...for appearances. Head out afterward, the next day. You'll be fine here until spring. By then I'll have a house built, leastwise a cabin. Dependin' on..." again murmured, "...on yer situation, I'll send fer you, or the both of you. You can take a train to Cheyenne, and a coach north from there."

  It had to be the most words he'd ever spoken to me, maybe to anyone, and I even sensed a kind of stubborn pride in the Boss when he finished them without stumbling. That's what made me measure my words so carefully, instead of going with my first, dazed reactions, which were along the lines of:

  Thank you so much for planning my entire life without my input, you jerk.

  You would marry me and then go on to Wyoming without me? Even if I'm pregnant?

  And the ever popular: What part of no didn't you understand?

  Oh sure, I'd always assumed that if a man proposed, he might actually look at me, or touch me, or ask my opinion in the matter. Silly me. But something about his delivery—how he'd planted his palms on his knees, as if to keep them out of trouble, or how his bearded chin had lifted slightly, or even the unnatural number of words—kept me from taking immediate insult. That, and the fact that it really didn't matter.

  Because I didn't belong here. I couldn't stay.

  So instead of attacking his plan, no matter how stupid it was, or God forbid laughing at him, I gently said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Garrison, but much though you honor me, I cannot marry you." There! Let's see Laura Ingalls do any better.

  Then the Boss taught me a lesson in condescension by zinging me with one of his executive looks and drawling, "Ain't got no choice."

  And maybe it would have worked on Lillabit.

  But he was not only a hundred-plus years too early, but a solid week too late to try that on Elizabeth.

  Chapter 17 – Another Chapter

  Damn, but I was glad to know who I was again. It didn't exactly feel good; nothing about this conversation felt good. But it gave me far better reasoning ability.

  Garrison's quaint, old-fashioned manners seemed increasingly less endearing, in contrast, and only the presence of Mrs. Rath in the kitchen kept me from risking my life with a few unfortunate words. But we were chaperoned—lucky for him—and I would handle this better than I'd handled the boarding-house announcement.

  Or even Everett's sexual harassment.

  There had to be a balance between being a victim and doing actual, physical harm. So I said, "I do have a choice, and my choice is to remain single."

  "Gave up that choice this afternoon."

  "No, I—" I glanced toward the kitchen, glad to hear that Mrs. Rath was still generating a polite amount of noise in her soup making. But I lowered my voice to whisper it anyway. "No, I gave up something else this afternoon, but it was hardly my ability to decide my own future."

  His face colored, either from embarrassment or anger. From the intensity of his eyes, I'd say anger.

  "I do not shirk my duties," he informed me stiffly.

  I almost asked him what dumping me in Dodge City for the better part of a year sounded like to him, but he obviously thought giving me his name and an allowance was being responsible. For the 19th-century, it probably was.

  But I had a life waiting for me at home. I had friends, family... pets. I had a comfortable, familiar place waiting for me, a world in which I wasn't helpless and I had a say. Sex or no sex, that world wasn't here.

  Not that I could tell him that.

  "And you've done more than anyone could expect," I assured him, instead. "But the final decision is mine, and I'm deciding no. For one thing, the chances that I'm preg—"

  His disapproving inhalation interrupted me, and we both glanced nervously toward the kitchen. To be honest, this was getting old too. I hadn't been a teenager for a while now... and even when I was a teenager, my grandparents hadn't been much for chaperoning.

  I whispered, "Don't tell me pregnant is a bad word too!"

  From the way his glare gained voltage on the p-word, it was.

  I flopped back in the sofa. "Oh good golly, what isn't a bad word around here?" And I looked back at him. "How about expecting? Is expecting proper enough? The word, I mean?"

  This overcrowded sitting room was beginning to make me almost as claustrophobic as the rules, the nearness of our chaperone and the stubborn principles of my companion. He glowered at me, not deigning to answer. But since he hadn't clapped a hand over my mouth or grabbed for the nearest bar of soap, I took a chance that I'd stumbled on a decent euphemism.

  "Well then, the chances that I'm expecting are slim." I hoped. Not being sexually active—until today—I hadn't exactly had a contraceptive implant or gotten my tubes tied. But still, I'd never had truly regular periods, and I tended to skip in times of stress. If getting a parking ticket could do it, you'd think being shanghaied out of my own freaking existence would leave me less than fertile. "Very slim."

  His reproachful posture hadn't lessened a jot. Surprise surprise, he wasn't a gambling man. Then again, until today I wouldn't have thought he drank or had pre-marital sex, either.

  I tried to remind myself that I was a people person. Getting the Boss angry at me, and getting angry at the Boss, might grow increasingly easy the less I needed him and the more I needed to break from him, but it was not accomplishing anything worthwhile. Taking a deep breath, I sat up again and pried one of his hands off his knee to hold it—the hand—between mine.

  He didn't pull loose. But he watched me suspiciously, as if I was going to throw him back on the sofa and have my wicked way with him. Like I'd do that with Mrs. Rath in the other room!

  "Boss," I tried.

  "Ain't yer boss," he drawled, curt.

  Take a deep breath and count to three, Elizabeth. But I couldn't call him Jacob again. It would seem too manipulative, somehow. So I concentrated on his hand, to better avoid his silent accusations. "Mr. Garrison," I tried, even if that one felt most awkward of all. "I've heard that you were married, once. She died, right?"

  He nodded, suspicious.

  "I'm sorry," I said, and I was. A nice, respectable man like this deserved a nice, respectable life. He didn't deserve to have been caught up in the snarl of corporate and scientific intrigue that I'd apparently brought with me.

  Everett had really better not be dead tomorrow!

  Still, one man at a time. "I don't know if you ever planned to remarry or not. That's your business. But you couldn't have ever pictured marrying someone like me. You would want someone who can cook, and clean, and work right beside you, and behave properly. Someone who would like living with a bunch of cows in the middle of nowhere. Right?"

  He was wise enough not to answer that.

  "Whereas me, I'm from... um... somewhere else, with different needs and values. Definitely a city girl. Not only would I probably disappoint and embarrass you at every turn, which I wouldn't like any more than you would, but I would be homesick and lonely. I would probably complain about it and make a nuisance of myself. An even bigger nuisance." Nervous, I traced my index finger around his hand, in and out of the spaces between his fingers. He had big hands, strong and hard and capable....

  What was I saying?

  Oh yes. "We would make each other miserable, and even if there were children, which there almost certainly won't be, that would be a terrible environment for them. Better to have one happy parent than two miserable ones."

  He snorted at me and my beautiful argument.

  Okay, fine, so now I was glaring too. "What?"

  "No one makes you miserable 'cept you," he informed me.

  And you know, for a second there
I almost bought it. Not enough to marry him, mind you, but enough to feel guilty. Then it occurred to me just how easy it was for him to say that. He still got to keep his cows, his ranch, his horses, his friends, his job, his world. He planned to run off to Wyoming for the year, and have me show up in the spring, maybe complete with baby. Insta-family, no assembly required. Because I was female, I was the one expected to give up everything, everything, more than he could even imagine.

  "Well I'm sorry if my explanations don't matter to you," I told him more coolly, letting him reclaim his hand. "But unless you plan on kidnapping me, I'm not marrying you. I'm going home to my grandmother and my pets and my friends, home to where I belong and where I matter." Where I could be me again.

  Even if I'd had to lose myself to really start learning who that was.

  "How?" Well, he knew it wasn't by train.

  "I don't know yet." But before the truth of that could frighten me, I added, "Are you sure you're doing the right thing, giving everything up for a cattle drive to Wyoming?"

  Sometimes, we just have to take our chances for what's important.

  "That's your final word." The way he gazed at me, stern and reproachful, was almost a dare.

  I bit my lip... and nodded.

  He stood and picked up his hat, just as Mrs. Rath appeared at the door. Her look of welcome faltered slightly as she took in the tension between us. "Are you going so soon, Mr. Garrison?"

  He nodded. "Yes, ma'am. Show myself out. My thanks for your fine hospitality."

  Caroline brightened. "Thank you for having such confidence in my establishment," she said, with an indulgent smile at me, his little jewel, faithfully entrusted into her care.

  He said nothing, just nodded once more and headed, scowling, for the nearest exit. Watching him, I realized he'd left it to me to break the news about our aborted engagement whenever I saw fit. I was in this beautiful house, with this pleasant woman, almost solely on the weight of not only his money but his reputation. Stifling though his standards were, I was sure benefiting from them.

  "The soup is ready, Miss Rhinehart," Caroline told me, but I could hardly hear her over the quiet thump of Garrison's boots in the foyer. It was the right thing, for me to go home and for him to move on. I knew it was the right thing.

  So why did I feel so panicky inside?

  I heard the door open. Maybe it was how he was leaving—in anger.

  Caroline looked a little confused now. "I've also made tea."

  "I'm sorry—could you excuse me for just another minute?" I was backing away even as I said it, and winced when the door shut. "Please?"

  She nodded, even as I took off after the Boss.

  He'd put his hat back on, and had barely left the steps for the path to his horse when he apparently heard the door. He stilled—then turned. I ran to him, put my hands on his chest to steady myself, looked up at him.

  He looked skeptical. Smart man. Drawl or not, ancient artifact or not, he was a very smart man.

  "I didn't want you to think—" I had to gasp some air, more breathless than my little sprint from the parlor warranted. "I didn't want you to leave, thinking that I don't appreciate everything you've done for me. Just because I won't marry you doesn't mean that... well, that you aren't maybe the most admirable man I've ever met. You saved my life, you know. You saved me from the prairie, and from the Army, and even from myself, and I won't forget that. I won't forget you. Not ever. I wanted you to know."

  He didn't say anything, just continued to scowl down at me.

  Oh God. This was the Victorian era, and I'd just embarrassed myself silly, hadn't I?

  Then again, I was a 21st-century woman and I hadn't had the luxury of worrying about embarrassing myself for the past week—why start now? Using his lapels for leverage, I strained upward and kissed the corner of his unyielding mouth. "That's all I meant to say," I admitted, still nervous. "Thank you. And good—"

  But in one smooth move he caught me to him and covered my mouth with his for a more significant, demanding kiss. Oh! I sighed once in happy surprise, crumpled against him... and possibly whimpered.

  Maybe this man alone had been worth the trip.

  When he straightened, his mouth leaving mine, my lips felt cold and tingly, but nowhere near as tingly as the rest of me.

  And I noticed that while I hadn't been paying attention, he'd swept off his hat.

  He made sure I was standing on my own feet again—God, but he was good at that—and then fixed me with a stern, unromantic look. "Behave."

  I nodded and said "Yes, sir." I know, I know—not very liberated of me, but it was practically an inside joke by now.

  He nodded curtly, stepped back... then turned and walked as far as the road, to the horse tied at the hitching post. He put on his hat, collected the reins, and mounted with inhuman ease.

  Then he touched his hat brim and rode away.

  I backed toward the house, less willing to stand and watch him go now than I had been at the Army fort. Too much had happened since the fort. I wasn't questioning my decision—he had his life, and I had my life, and they were really, really different lives. But still....

  Turning away from his departure, I escaped into the boardinghouse. Mrs. Rath put a comforting arm over my shoulder and led me back to her old-fashioned kitchen.

  For some reason I wanted to cry.

  "I apologize for shocking the neighbors," I said stiffly, in an attempt to distract myself. When in the Old West....

  "Oh, they'll survive it." At my surprise, she smiled. "I'm pleased the two of you patched things up before he left. But—Jacob Garrison." And she clucked, more amused than disapproving. "Now there's one I never would have figured."

  "Me neither," I told her softly, thinking that Garrison's kiss might be even more astonishing than the time travel. "Me neither."

  And so ended the search for myself.

  The next morning, I woke up happy.

  The simple act of stretching luxuriously in the embrace of a feather mattress wasn't a betrayal against my now-absent trail-boss sponsor, was it? Because I also had clean sheets—with a seam running down the center, how crazy is that?—and real pillows. Birds sang outside a very close open window with lace curtains that moved gently in the morning sunlight. Turns out there were beds and waking after dawn in the olden days, after all, and I savored it.

  It was a joy second only to knowing who I was, at last.

  I admired the quaint mahogany washstand in my beautiful tiny room, its pitcher-and-bowl set-up not as convenient as a bath tub, but far nicer than a few buckets of cloudy river-water in a claustrophobic canvas teepee. I was thrilled to use the outhouse in the back yard, which was clean as an outhouse can be—you might think it would be horrible, until you've spent a week out on the prairie. Suddenly the simple presence of four walls, a polished wooden seat, and a little door with a diamond shape cut in it for light seemed the height of luxury.

  We humans do adapt, don't we?

  I enjoyed breakfast in a real, if small, dining room—eggs, bacon, sausage, and no crunch of dirt. Other than a few nods, the other three boarders weren't particularly conversational, not even the one woman, who looked to be older than either me or our landlady. Cowboys, they were not. But sitting down at a table went a long way toward making up for anyone's silence.

  It wasn't like a certain trail boss hadn't gotten me used to a general lack of conversation. In fact, he'd given me what might now become survival skills, at least until I got Everett Heard to tell me how to get my butt home. And what Garrison hadn't unknowingly trained me for, he'd paid for. The clothes. The room. The breakfast.

  I might not be a prostitute. But at this rate, I was probably the most expensive kept woman in Dodge City.

  "Folks," said Carrie Rath, pausing in her countless forays into and out of the kitchen to introduce me to the other boarders. "This is Miss Elizabeth Rhinehart. She's engaged to marry a friend of my husband's."

  Finally they spoke, offering names and good
-mornings and best wishes for my upcoming nuptials. Here was my chance to clear up Mrs. Rath's misinformation. Garrison had left that for me to do, after all....

  So why did I just smile and thank them, faking a southern accent of my own?

  Clearly, I was not only an expensive date, but a liar by omission. Temporarily, at least.

  I told myself as I made my way back to the City Drug Store—on my own two feet, thank you very much—that I was just waiting until I'd gathered all pertinent information before I did anything irreversible.

  I mean, it's not like I would default to marrying Garrison even if I got to the drug store to find Everett Heard dead from an overdose. Admiration for the man aside, the trail boss not the scum-pig, and despite the sex—

  OMG, so that was sex!

  —I didn't love him. It would be sweet and romantic to think I did, but I hardly knew the man, and he sure as hell didn't know me. Not to mention, hello—I was from a whole 'nother century!

  A century with computers, and woman's rights, and cell phones. A century where my Nana must be worried to death, where my pets might be alone with nobody but my best friend to check on them. And what about the, whatchamacallit, the space-time continuum? For all I knew, I was screwing up the future, mine and countless others, with every word and deed.

  No, I would find a way home, or die trying!

  Garrison had to stay history.

  But until I succeeded, it sure wouldn't hurt for people to think I still had some claim to respectability—even if that claim wasn't actually my own. Especially when I insisted on doing crazy things like walking down a dirt street, to the Drug Store, without an escort.

  Seriously. I got a few looks.

  Faced with all that, I can't tell you how relieved I felt when Dr. McCarty, on recognizing me, simply nodded and gestured toward the backroom. Apparently, my answer-man was alive and... well, alive.

  I swept my long-skirted self between the high-piled shelves of the drug store and into Everett Heard's sickroom to finally, finally learn the truth.

  "Despite your poor behavior yesterday," I lied primly as I entered, "I have word from your colleague. She—"