Linda Lael Miller Bundle

by Linda Lael Miller

Elisabeth pushed away the last of her soup, feeling nauseous. Destiny had apparently decreed her death, as well as Jonathan’s and Trista’s, and she had no way of knowing whether or not their singular fates could be circumvented.

  She took her bowl to the sink and rinsed it, then went upstairs to take a long, hot shower. When that was finished Elisabeth brushed her teeth, put on a lightweight cotton nightgown and crawled into bed.

  Unable to sleep, she lay staring up at the ceiling. It would be easy to avoid being tried and hanged—all she would have to do was drop the necklace down a well somewhere and never go back to Jonathan’s time. But even as she considered this idea, Elisabeth knew she would discard it. She loved Trista and, God help her, Jonathan, too. And she could not let two human beings die without trying to save them.

  Throughout the rest of the night, Elisabeth slept only in fits and starts. The telephone brought her summarily into a morning she wasn’t prepared to face.

  “Hello?” she grumbled into the ornate receiver of the French telephone on the vanity table. Having stubbed her toe on a chest while crossing the room, Elisabeth made the decision to move the instrument closer to the bed.

  “There you are!” Janet cried, sounding both annoyed and relieved. “Good heavens, Elisabeth—where have you been?”

  Elisabeth sighed an sank down onto the vanity bench. “Relax,” she said. “I was only gone for a couple of days.”

  “A couple of days? Give me a break, Elisabeth, I’ve been trying to reach you for two weeks! You were supposed to come to Seattle and spend a weekend with me, remember?”

  Two weeks? Elisabeth gripped the edge of the vanity table.

  The question was out of her mouth before she could properly weigh the effect it would have. “Janet, what day is it?”

  Her friend’s response was a short, stunned silence, followed by, “It’s the first of May. I’m on my way. Don’t you set foot out of that house, Elisabeth McCartney, until I get there.”

  Elisabeth’s mind was still reeling. If there was no logical correlation between her time and Jonathan’s, she might return to find that the fire had already happened. The idea set her trembling, but she knew she had to keep Janet from coming to visit and get back to 1892.

  She ran the tip of her tongue quickly over her dry lips. “Listen, Janet, I’m all right, really. It’s just that I met this fascinating man.” That much, at least, was true. Bullheaded though he might be, Jonathan was fascinating. “I guess I just got so caught up in the relationship that I wasn’t paying attention to the calendar.”

  Janet sounded both intrigued and suspicious. “Who is this guy? You haven’t mentioned any man to me.”

  “That’s because I just met him.” She thought quickly, desperately. “We were away for a while.”

  “Something about this doesn’t ring true,” Janet said, but she was weakening. Elisabeth could hear it in her voice.

  “I—I really fell hard for him,” she said.

  “Who is he? What does he do?”

  Elisabeth took a deep breath. “His name is Jonathan Fortner, and he’s a doctor.”

  “I’d like to meet him.”

  Elisabeth stifled an hysterical giggle. “Yes—well, he and I are taking off for a vacation. But maybe I can arrange something after I—we get back.”

  “Where are you going?” Janet asked quickly, sounding worried again.

  “San Francisco.” It was the first place that came to mind.

  “Oh. Well, I’ll just come to the airport and see you off. That way, you could introduce Jonathan and me.”

  “Umm,” Elisabeth stalled, biting her lower lip. “We’re going by car,” she finally answered. “I promise faithfully that I’ll call you the instant I step through the doorway.”

  Janet sighed. “All right but, well, there isn’t anything wrong with this guy, is there? I mean, it’s almost like you’re hiding something.”

  “You’ve pried it out of me,” Elisabeth teased. “He’s a vampire. Even as we speak, he’s lying in a coffin in the basement, sleeping away the daylight hours.”

  The joke must have reassured Janet, because she laughed. A moment later, though, her tone was serious again. “You’d tell me if you weren’t all right, wouldn’t you?”

  Elisabeth hesitated. As much as she loved Janet, Rue was the only person in the world she could have talked to about what was happening to her. “If I thought there was anything you could do to help, yes,” she answered softly. “Please don’t worry about me, Janet. I’ll call you when I get back.” If I get back. “And we’ll make plans for my visit to Seattle.”

  Mollified at least for the moment, Janet accepted Elisabeth’s promise, warned her to be careful and said goodbye.

  She showered and put on white corduroy pants and a sea green tank top, along with a pair of plastic thongs. Then after a hasty trip to the mailbox—there were two postcards from Rue, one mailed from Istanbul, the other from Cairo, along with a forwarded bank statement and a sales flier addressed to “occupant”—Elisabeth made preparations to return to Jonathan and Trista.

  As she looked at the copies of the June 1892 issue of the Bugle, however, she began to doubt that Jonathan would see them as proof of anything. He was bound to say that, while the printing admittedly looked strange, she could have had the articles made up.

  Elisabeth laid the papers down on the kitchen table and went up the back stairs and along the hallway to her room. In the bathroom medicine cabinet, she found the half-filled bottle of penicillin tablets she’d taken for a throat infection a few months before.

  The label bore a typewritten date, along with Elisabeth’s name, but it was the medicine itself that would convince Jonathan. After all, he was a doctor. She dropped the bottle into the pocket of her slacks and went back out to the vanity.

  Aunt Verity’s necklace was lying there, where she’d left it before taking her shower that morning. Her fingers trembled with mingled resolution and fear as she put the chain around her neck and fastened the clasp.

  Reaching the hallway, Elisabeth went directly to the sealed door and clasped the knob in her hand.

  Nothing happened.

  “Please,” Elisabeth whispered, shutting her eyes. “Please.”

  Still, that other world was closed to her. Fighting down panic, she told herself she had only to wait for the “window” to open again. In the meantime, there was something else she wanted to do.

  After riffling through a variety of scribbled notes beside the hallway phone, she found the name and number she wanted. She dialed immediately, to keep herself from having time to back out.

  “Hello?” a woman’s voice answered.

  Elisabeth had a clear picture of Chastity Pringle in her mind, standing in that quilting booth at the craft show, looking at the necklace as though it was something that had slithered out of hell. “Ms. Pringle? This is Elisabeth McCartney. You probably don’t remember me, but we met briefly at the craft fair, when you were showing your quilts—”

  “You were wearing Verity’s necklace,” Chastity interrupted in a wooden tone.

  “Yes,” Elisabeth answered. “Ms. Pringle, I wonder if I could see you sometime today—it’s important.”

  “I won’t set foot in that house” was the instant response.

  “All right,” Elisabeth agreed quietly, “I’ll be happy to come to you. If that’s convenient, of course.”

  “I’ll meet you at the Riverview Café,” Chastity offered, though not eagerly.

  “Twelve-thirty?”

  “Twelve-thirty,” the woman promised.

  The Riverview Café was about halfway between Pine River and Cotton Creek, the even smaller town where Chastity lived. Elisabeth couldn’t help wondering, as she stared blankly at a morning talk show to pass the time, why Ms. Pringle was being so cloak-and-dagger about the whole thing.

  At twelve-fifteen, Elisabeth pulled into the restaurant parking lot, got out of her car and went inside. Chastity hadn’t arrived yet, but Elisabeth allowed a
waitress to escort her to a table with a magnificent view of the river and ordered herbal tea to sip while she waited.

  Chastity appeared, looking anxious and rushed, at exactly twelve-thirty. She was trim and very tanned, and her long, dark hair was wound into a single, heavy braid that rested over one shoulder. She focused her gazeon Elisabeth’s necklace and shuddered visibly.

  Elisabeth waited until the waitress had taken their orders before bracing her forearms against the table edge and leaning forward to ask bluntly, “What was your connection with my Aunt Verity, and why are you afraid of this necklace?”

  “Verity was my friend,” Chastity answered, “at a time when I needed one very badly.” The waitress brought their spinach and smoked salmon salads, then went away again. “As for the pendant…”

  “It was yours once,” Elisabeth ventured, operating purely on instinct. “Wasn’t it…Barbara?”

  The woman’s dark eyes were suddenly enormous, and the color drained from her face. “You know? About the doorway, I mean?”

  Elisabeth nodded.

  Barbara Fortner reached for her water glass with an unsteady hand. “You’ve met Jonathan, then, I suppose, and Trista.” She paused to search Elisabeth’s face anxiously. “How is my little girl?”

  “She believes you’re dead,” Elisabeth answered, not unkindly.

  Barbara flinched. Misery was visible in every line of her body. “Jonathan would have told her something like that. He’d be too proud to admit to the truth, that he drove me away.”

  Elisabeth’s hands tightened on the arms of her chair. Her entire universe had been upended, but here was a woman who understood. Whatever Elisabeth’s personal feelings about Barbara might be, she was relieved to find a person who knew about the world beyond that threshold.

  “Did he divorce me?” Barbara asked quietly, after a long moment.

  Elisabeth hesitated. “Yes.”

  Jonathan’s ex-wife took several sips of water and then shrugged, although Elisabeth could see that she was shaken. “How is Trista?”

  Elisabeth opened her purse and took out the folded copies of the newspaper articles. “She’s in a lot of danger, Barbara, and so is Jonathan. They need your help.”

  Barbara’s face blanched as she scanned the newspaper accounts. “Oh, my God, my baby…I knew I should have found a way to bring her with me.”

  A quivering sensation in the pit of her stomach kept Elisabeth constantly on edge. She was aware of every tick of the clock, and the idea that it might already be too late to help Jonathan and Trista tormented her. “Sometimes I can make the trip back and sometimes I can’t,” she said in a low voice. “Do you know if there’s some way to be sure of connecting?”

  Tears glimmered in Barbara’s eyes as she met Elisabeth’s gaze. “I—I don’t know—I only did it a couple of times—but I think there has to be some sort of strong emotion. Are you going back?”

  Elisabeth nodded. “As soon as I can manage it, yes.”

  Barbara sat up very straight in her chair, her salad forgotten. “You’re in love with Jonathan, aren’t you?”

  The answer came immediately; Elisabeth didn’t even need to think about it. “Yes.”

  “Fine. Then the two of you will have each other.” She leaned forward, her eyes pleading. “Elisabeth, I want you to send Trista over the threshold to me. It might be the only way to save her.”

  Barbara’s statement was undeniable, but it caused Elisabeth tremendous pain. If she put the necklace on Trista and sent her through the doorway, she would disappear forever. Jonathan would be heartbroken, and he’d never believe the truth. No, he’d think Elisabeth had harmed the child, and he’d hate her for it.

  And that wasn’t all. Without the necklace, Elisabeth would be trapped in the nineteenth century, friendless and despised. Why, she might even be blamed for Trista’s disappearance and hanged or sent to prison.

  She swallowed hard. “Jonathan loves Trista, and he’s a good father. Besides, your daughter believes you died in Boston, while visiting your family.”

  Barbara’s perfectly manicured index finger stabbed at the stack of photocopies lying on the tabletop. “If you don’t send her to me, she’ll burn to death!”

  Elisabeth looked away, toward the river flowing past. “I’ll do what I can,” she said. Presently, she met Barbara’s eyes again, and she was calmer. “How could you have left her in the first place?” she asked, no longer able to hold the question back.

  The other woman lowered her eyes for a moment. “I was desperately unhappy, and I’d had a glimpse of this world. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was like a magnet.” She sighed. “I wasn’t cut out to live there, to be the wife of a country doctor. I had a lover, and Jonathan found out. He was furious, even though Matthew and I had broken off. I was afraid he was going to kill me, so I came here to stay. Verity took me in and helped me establish an identity, and I left the necklace with her because I knew I’d never want to go back.”

  “Not even to help your daughter?”

  Color glowed in Barbara’s cheeks. “I don’t dare step over that threshold,” she said, almost in a whisper. “I’m too afraid of Jonathan.”

  Although Elisabeth would never have denied that Jonathan was imposing, even arrogant and opinionated, she didn’t believe for a moment that he would ever deliberately hurt another person. He was a doctor, after all, and an honorable man. She changed the subject.

  “How long have you been here, in the twentieth century?”

  Barbara dried her eyes carefully with a cloth napkin. “Fifteen years,” she answered. “And I’ve been happy.”

  Elisabeth felt another chill. Fifteen years. And yet Trista was only eight—or she had been, when Elisabeth had seen her last. She gave up trying to figure out these strange wrinkles in time and concentrated on what was important: saving Trista and Jonathan.

  “If I can find a way to protect Trista while still keeping her there, that’s what I’m going to do,” she warned, rising and reaching for her purse and the check. “Jonathan adores his daughter, and it would crush him to lose her.”

  Barbara lifted one eyebrow, but made no move to stand. “Are you really thinking of Jonathan, Elisabeth? Or is it yourself you’re worried about?”

  It was a question Elisabeth couldn’t bear to answer. She paid for the lunches neither she nor Barbara had eaten and hurried out of the restaurant.

  CHAPTER 8

  By the time Elisabeth arrived at home, she was in a state of rising panic. She had to reach Jonathan and Trista, had to know that they were all right. She glanced fitfully at the telephone and answering machine on the hallway table, not pausing even though the message light was blinking.

  Could you please connect me with someone in 1892? she imagined herself asking a bewildered operator.

  Shaking her head, Elisabeth went on into the kitchen and tossed her purse onto the table. Then she crossed the room to switch the calendar page from April to May. She was still standing there staring, her teeth sunk into her lower lip, when a loud pounding at the back door startled her out of her wonderment.

  Miss Cecily Buzbee peered at her through the frosted oval glass, and Elisabeth smiled as she went to admit her neighbor, who had apparently come calling alone.

  “I don’t mind telling you,” the sweet-natured spinster commented after Elisabeth had let her in and offered a glass of ice tea, “that Sister and I have been concerned about you, since we don’t see hide nor hair of you for days at a time.”

  Elisabeth busied herself with the tasks of running cold water into a pitcher and adding ice and powdery tea. “I’m sorry you were worried,” she said quietly. She carried the pitcher to the table, along with two glasses. “I don’t mean to be a recluse—I just need a lot of solitude right now.”

  Cecily smiled forgivingly. “I don’t suppose there’s any lemon, is there, dear?”

  Elisabeth shook her head regretfully. Even if she’d remembered to buy lemons the last time she’d shopped, which she
hadn’t, that had been two weeks before and they would probably have spoiled by now. “Miss Cecily,” she began, clasping her hands together on her lap so her visitor wouldn’t see that they were trembling, “how well did you know my Aunt Verity?”

  “Oh, very well,” Cecily trilled. “Very well, indeed.”

  “Did she tell you stories about this house?”

  Cecily averted her cornflower blue eyes for a moment, then forced herself to look at Elisabeth again. “You know how Verity liked to talk. And she was a rather fanciful sort.”

  Elisabeth smiled, remembering. “Yes, she was. She told Rue and me lots of things about this house, about people simply appearing, seemingly out of nowhere, and other things like that.”

  The neighbor nodded solemnly. “Sister and I believe that young Trista Fortner haunts this house, poor soul. Her spirit never rested because she died so horribly.”

  Unable to help herself, Elisabeth shuddered. If she did nothing else, she had to see that Trista wasn’t trapped in that fire. “I can’t buy the ghost theory,” she said, sipping the tea and barely noticing that it tasted awful. “I mean, here are these souls, supposedly lost in the scheme of things, wandering about, unable to find their way into whatever comes after this life. Why would God permit that, when there is so much order in everything else, like the seasons and the courses of the planets?”

  “My dear,” Cecily debated politely, “reputable people have seen apparitions. They cannot all be dismissed as crackpots.”

  Elisabeth sighed, wondering which category she would fall into: crackpot or reputable person. “Isn’t it just possible that the images were every bit as real as the people seeing them? Perhaps there are places where time wears thin and a person can see through it, into the past or the future, if only for a moment.”

  Miss Buzbee gave the idea due consideration. “Well, Elisabeth, as the bard said, there are more things in heaven and earth…”

  Anxiety filled Elisabeth as her mind turned back to Jonathan and Trista. Would she return to 1892 only to find them gone—if she was able to reach them at all? “More tea?” she asked, even though she was desperate to be alone again so that she could make another attempt at crossing the threshold.