Linda Lael Miller Bundle

by Linda Lael Miller

  Jonathan stepped into the room and closed the door against the distant tinkle of piano keys, probably not wanting their voices to carry to Trista and Miss Calderberry. His eyes were narrowed. “When I first met you, you were wearing my wife’s necklace, and when it disappeared, so did you. Tell me, Elisabeth…do you know Barbara?”

  Elisabeth shook her head. “H-how could I, Jonathan? She—I live in another century, remember?”

  He arched one dark eyebrow and hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his black woolen vest. “Yet, somehow, my wife’s necklace came to be here. Without Barbara. She never let it out of her sight, you know. She claimed it had powers.”

  A hard lump formed in Elisabeth’s throat, and she swallowed. If Barbara Fortner had known about the necklace’s special energy and had used it, she could have crossed the threshold into the modern world….

  “This is all getting pretty farfetched,” Elisabeth said, squaring her shoulders. “I didn’t know your wife, Jonathan.” She looked down at the lovely dress. “I truly am sorry for presuming on your hospitality this way, though.”

  “Keep the dress,” he told her with a dismissive gesture of one hand. “It will raise a lot fewer questions than those trousers of yours.”

  Elisabeth felt as though she’d just been given a wonderful gift. “Thank you,” she breathed softly, running her hands down the satiny skirt.

  “You’d better hunt up some calico and sateen for everyday,” he finished, moving toward the door. “Naturally, women don’t cook and clean in such fancy getup.”

  “Jonathan?” Elisabeth approached him as he waited, his hand on the doorknob. She stood on tiptoe to kiss his now-stubbly cheek, and again she felt a powerful charge of some mystical electricity. “Thank you. But I won’t need special clothes if I go back to my own time.”

  He rolled his eyes, but there was a look of tenderness in their depths. “Something tells me you’re going to be here for a while,” he said, and then his gaze moved slowly over Elisabeth, from her face to the incongruous toes of her sneakers and back again. His hands rested lightly on the sides of her waist, and she felt a spiritual jolt as he looked deeply into her eyes, as though to find her soul behind them.

  It seemed natural when his lips descended toward hers and brushed lightly against them, soft and warm and moist. A moment later, however, he was kissing her in earnest.

  With a whimper, Elisabeth put her arms around his neck and held on, afraid she would sink to the floor. The gentle assault on her senses continued; her mouth was open to his, and even through the dress and the bra beneath, her nipples hardened against the wall of his chest. A sweet, grinding ache twisted in the depths of her femininity, a wild need she had never felt with Ian, and if Jonathan had asked her, she would have surrendered then and there.

  Instead, he set her roughly away from him and avoided her eyes. Trista’s labored piano playing filled their ears.

  “There’s obviously no point in keeping you locked up in your room,” he said hoarsely. “If you encounter Miss Calderberry, kindly introduce yourself as my wife’s sister.”

  With that, he was gone. Elisabeth stood there in the center of her room, her cheeks flaring with color because he’d kissed her as no other man ever had—and because he was ashamed to have her under his roof. She wanted to laugh and cry, both at the same time, but in the end she did neither.

  She crept down the back stairway and out the kitchen door and headed in the direction of the stream where she had picnicked by herself almost a hundred years in the future. The scent of apple blossoms filled her spirit as she walked through the recently planted orchard. Birds sang in the treetops, and in the near distance, she could hear the rustling song of the creek.

  It occurred to her then that she could be blissfully happy in this era, for all its shortcomings. On some level, she had always yearned for a simpler, though certainly not easier, life and a man like Jonathan.

  Elisabeth hurried along, the soft petals billowing around her like fog in a dream, and finally reached the grassy bank.

  The place was different and yet the same, and she stood in exactly the spot where she’d spread her blanket to eat lunch and read. The covered bridge towered nearby, but its plank walls were new, and the smell of freshly sawed wood mingled with the aromas of spring grass and the fertile earth.

  In order to protect her dress from green smudges, Elisabeth sat on a boulder overlooking the stream instead of on the ground. She removed the hat and set it beside her, then lifted her arms to her hair, winding it into a French knot at the back of her head even though she had no pins to hold it. Her reflection smiled back at her from the crystal-bright waters of the creek, looking delightfully Victorian.

  A clatter on the road made her lift her head, her hands still cupped at her nape, and she watched wide-eyed as a large stagecoach, drawn by eight mismatched horses, rattled onto the bridge. The driver touched his hat brim in a friendly way when the coach reappeared, and Elisabeth waved, laughing. It was like playing a part in a movie.

  And then the wind picked up suddenly, making the leaves of the birch and willow trees whisper and lifting Elisabeth’s borrowed hat right off the rock. She made a lunge, and both she and the bonnet went straight into the creek.

  With a howl of dismay, Elisabeth felt the slippery pebbles on the bottom of the icy stream give way beneath the soles of her sneakers. As the luscious hat floated merrily away, she tumbled forward and landed in the water with a splash.

  Jonathan was standing on the bank when she floundered her way back to shore, her lovely dress clinging revealingly to her form, and though he offered his hand, Elisabeth ignored it.

  “What are you doing?” she sputtered furiously, her teeth already chattering, her hair hanging in dripping tendrils around her face. “Following me?”

  He grinned and shrugged. “I saw you walking this way, and I thought you might be planning to hitch a ride on the afternoon stage. It seems you’ve been swimming instead.”

  Elisabeth glared at him and crossed her arms over her breasts. Because of the unexpected dip in the creek, her nipples were plainly visible beneath the fabric. “It isn’t funny,” she retorted, near tears. “This is the prettiest dress I’ve ever had, and now it’s ruined!”

  He removed his suitcoat and laid it over her shoulders. “I suppose it is,” he allowed. “But there are other dresses in the world.”

  “Not like this one,” Elisabeth said despairingly.

  Jonathan’s arm tightened briefly around her before falling to his side. “That’s what you think,” he countered. “Go through the trunks again. If you don’t find anything you like, I’ll buy you another dress.”

  Elisabeth gave him a sidelong look, shivering inside his coat as they walked toward the orchard and the house beyond. No one needed to tell her that nineteenth-century country doctors didn’t make a lot of money; many of Jonathan’s patients probably paid him in chickens and squash from the garden. “Did this dress belong to your wife?” she ventured to ask, already knowing the answer, never guessing how much she would regret the question until it was too late to call it back.

  Jonathan’s jawline tightened, then relaxed again. He did not look at her, but at the orchard burgeoning with flowers. “Yes,” he finally replied.

  “Doesn’t it bother you to see another woman wearing her things?”

  He rubbed his chin, then thrust both hands into the pockets of his plain, practical black trousers. “No,” he answered flatly.

  Elisabeth thought of the two graves inside the little fence, back in modern-day Pine River, and her heart ached with genuine grief to think of Jonathan and Trista lying there. At the same time, she wondered why Jonathan’s mate wasn’t buried in the family plot. “Did she die, Jonathan? Your wife?”

  They had reached the grove of apple trees, and petals clung to the hem of Elisabeth’s spoiled dress. Jonathan’s hands knotted into fists in his trouser pockets. “As far as Trista and I are concerned,” he replied some moments later, “yes.�
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  Pressing him took all Elisabeth’s courage, for she could sense the controlled rage inside him. And yet she had to know if she was feeling all these crazy emotions for another woman’s husband. “She left you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, technically, you’re a married man.”

  Jonathan’s eyes sliced to Elisabeth’s face and the expression she saw in them brought color pulsing to her cheeks. “Technically?” He chuckled, but there wasn’t a trace of humor in the sound. “An odd word. No, Elisabeth, I’m not the rogue you think I am. When it became clear that Barbara didn’t plan to return, I went to Olympia and petitioned the legislature for a divorce. It was granted.”

  “All of this must have been very difficult for Trista,” Elisabeth observed, wondering why Barbara Fortner hadn’t taken her daughter along when she left. Perhaps Jonathan had prevented that by some legal means, or maybe the woman had doubted her own ability to support a child in such a predominantly male world.

  The house was within sight now, and twilight was beginning to fall over the fragrant orchard. Elisabeth felt a tug in her heart as they walked toward the glow of lantern light in the kitchen windows. She knew she’d been homesick for this time, this place, this man at her side, all of her life.

  He shocked her with his reply to her remark about the effect the divorce had had on Trista. “My daughter believes her mother died in an accident in Boston, while visiting her family, and I don’t want anyone telling her differently. Since the Everses have disinherited their daughter, I don’t think there’s any danger that they’ll betray the secret.”

  Elisabeth stopped to stare at him, even though it was chilly and her wet dress was clinging to her skin. “But it’s a lie.”

  “Sometimes a lie is kinder than the truth.” Having spoken these words, Jonathan picked up his stride and Elisabeth was forced to follow him into the kitchen or stand in the yard until she caught her death.

  Inside, Jonathan turned the wicks up in the lamps so that the flames burned brightly, then he opened a door in the stove and began shoving in wood from the box beside it. Elisabeth huddled nearby, gratefully soaking up the warmth.

  “A lie is never better than the truth,” she said, having finally worked up the courage to contradict him so bluntly. He was bull stubborn in his opinions; Rue would have said he was surely a Republican.

  He wrenched a blue enamel pot from the back of the stove, carried it to the sink and used the hand pump to fill it with water. Then he set the pot on to heat. “You’ll be wanting tea,” he remarked, completely ignoring her statement. “I’ll go and find you a dressing gown.”

  Elisabeth drew closer to the stove, wanting the heat to reach the marrow of her bones. She had stopped shivering, at least, when Jonathan returned with a long flannel nightgown and a heavy blue corduroy robe to go over it.

  “You can change in the pantry,” he said, shoving the garments at Elisabeth without meeting her eyes.

  She took them and went into the little room—where the washer and drier were kept in her time—and stripped in the darkness. The virginal nightgown felt blissfully warm against her clammy, goose-pimpled skin.

  She was tying the belt on the robe when she came out of the pantry to find Jonathan pouring hot water into a squat, practical-looking brown teapot. “I’d be happy to cook supper,” she said, wanting to be useful and, more than that, to belong in this kitchen, if only for an hour.

  “Good,” he said with a sigh, going to the wall of cupboards for mugs, which he carried back to the table. “Trista doesn’t cook, and Ellen—that’s our housekeeper—tends to be undependable on occasion. She was here earlier, but she wandered off and probably won’t be back until tomorrow.”

  Elisabeth opened the icebox she’d discovered the first night and squatted to look inside it. Two large brook trout stared at her from a platter, and she carried them to the counter nearest the stove. “Did you catch these fish?” she asked, mostly because it gave her a soft, bittersweet sensation to be cooking and chatting idly with Jonathan.

  He poured tea into the cups and went to the base of the back stairs to call Trista down. Evidently, she’d dutifully returned to her room after Miss Calderberry left.

  “They were given to me,” he answered presently, “in payment for a nerve tonic.”

  Elisabeth found a skillet in the pantry, along with jars of preserved vegetables and fruit. She selected a pint of sliced carrots and one of stewed pears, and carried them into the kitchen. By this time, Trista was setting the table with Blue Willow dishes, and Jonathan was nowhere in sight.

  “He went out to the barn to feed the animals,” Trista offered without being asked.

  Elisabeth smiled. “Did you enjoy your piano lesson?”

  “No,” Trista answered. “How come your hair is all wet and straggly like that?”

  Elisabeth put the trout into the skillet, minus their heads. “I fell into the creek,” she replied. “Is there any bread?”

  Trista went to a maple box on the far counter and removed a loaf wrapped in a checkered dish towel. She set it on a plate, then brought a bowl of butter from the icebox. “I fell in the creek once,” she confided. “I was only two, and I think maybe I would have drowned if my mama hadn’t pulled me right out.”

  Elisabeth felt a small pull in the tenderest part of her soul. “It’s a good thing she was around,” she said gently, remembering a small tombstone with Trista’s name carved into it. She had to look away to hide sudden tears that burned hot along her lashes.

  “Maybe you could play the piano for us, after supper,” Trista said.

  Subtly, Elisabeth dried her eyes with the soft sleeve of the wrapper Jonathan had brought to her. Like the spoiled dress, it smelled faintly of lavender. “I haven’t touched a keyboard in weeks, so I’m probably out of practice,” she said with a cheerful sniffle. She took her first sip of the tea Jonathan had made for her and found it strong and sweet.

  Trista laughed. “You couldn’t sound worse than I do, no matter how long it’s been since you’ve practiced.”

  Elisabeth laughed, too, and hugged the little girl. Through the window, she saw Jonathan moving toward the house in the last dim light of day. In that moment, she was as warm as if the noontime sun had been shining unrestrained on her bare skin.

  She dished up the fish and the preserved carrots while Jonathan washed at the sink, then they all sat down at the table.

  Elisabeth was touched when Trista offered a short grace, asking God to take special care that her mama was happy in heaven. At this, Elisabeth opened her eyes for an accusing peek at Jonathan and found him staring defiantly back at her, his jawline set.

  When the prayer was over, Jonathan immediately cut three perfect slices from the loaf of bread and moved one to his plate.

  “Don’t you have any cows?” Elisabeth asked. She’d noticed that Jonathan hadn’t carried in a bucket of fresh milk, the way farmers did in books and movies.

  He shook his head. “Don’t need one,” he replied. “I get all the butter and cream we can use from my patients.”

  “Do any of them give you money?” Elisabeth inquired, careful not to let so much as a trace of irony slip into her tone.

  Still, Jonathan’s look was quick and sharp. “We manage,” he replied crisply.

  After that, Trista carried the conversation, chattering cheerfully about the upcoming spelling bee at school and how she’d be sure to win it because she had so much time to practice her words. When supper was over, she and Elisabeth washed the dishes while Jonathan put on his suitcoat—it had been drying on the back of a chair near the stove—and reached for his medical bag.

  “I won’t be long,” he said, addressing his words to Trista. “I want to check and see if Mrs. Taber is any closer to delivering that baby.”

  Trista nodded and hung up the dish towel neatly over the handle on the oven door, but Elisabeth followed Jonathan outside.

  “You mean you’re leaving your daughter all alone here, with a
total stranger?” she demanded, her hands on her hips.

  Jonathan took a lantern from the wall of the back porch and lit it after striking a wooden match. “You’re not a stranger,” he said. “You and I are old friends, though I admit I don’t remember exactly where we met.” He bent to kiss her lightly on the cheek. “In case I don’t see you before morning, good night, Lizzie.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Lizzie.

  Being called by that name made Elisabeth sway on her feet. She grasped at the railing beside the porch steps to steady herself.

  Jonathan didn’t notice her reaction, which was probably just as well because Elisabeth was in no condition to offer more explanations. She watched, stricken, as he strode toward the barn, the lantern in one hand, his medical bag in the other.

  The moment he disappeared from sight, Elisabeth sank to the steps and just sat there, trembling, her hands over her face. Dear God in heaven, why hadn’t she guessed? Why hadn’t she known that she was the woman accused of setting the fire that probably killed Jonathan and Trista?

  “Elisabeth?” Trista’s voice was small and full of concern. “Is something the matter?”

  Elisabeth drew in a deep breath and made herself speak in a normal tone of voice. “No, sweetheart,” she lied, “everything is just fine.”

  The child hovered in the doorway behind her. “Are you going to play for me?” she asked hopefully. “I’m still in trouble, but I know Papa wouldn’t mind my staying downstairs for just one song.”

  Elisabeth rose from the step, feeling chilly even in the warm robe and nightgown Jonathan had brought her. What a scandal her state of dress would cause in Victorian Pine River, she thought in a wild effort to distract herself. But there was no forgetting—if she didn’t do something to change history, two people she already cherished would die tragically and she would be blamed for their deaths.

  “One song,” she answered sadly, taking Trista’s hand and holding it tightly in her own.

  “Elisabeth played a boogie,” Trista told her father the next morning as she ate the oatmeal Ellen had made for her. Jonathan frowned, and the housekeeper stiffened slightly in disapproval, her shoulders going rigid under her cambric dress.