Spirit of the Ruins

by Jenny Lykins

  Regardless of their reasons, she could not tell Tylar he had a son while Evan and Stephen stood by watching. If accepting her husband’s death would buy her some peace from them, then accept it she would. She looked up at Tylar, then squeezed Evan’s hands.

  “Very well,” she said, her voice not much more than a whisper. “I shall try to come to terms with this.” She looked at Stephen. “But you must promise me one thing.”

  Stephen cocked his head, eyes narrowed, waiting for her request.

  “You must allow him,” she looked up at Tylar, “to stay here, if he wishes, until he remembers who he really is.” Which is my husband, she mentally added.

  Stephen’s very posture warned her he would deny the request, but surprisingly, Evan took up her cause.

  “He is obviously Tylar’s kin,” Evan pointed out, “as well as our brother in arms against the Yankees.” He stood, fidgeting with his hat until he finally slapped it on his head. “Of course, staying in the big house would be highly improper, but could he not use the overseer’s cottage? It has been empty since his...Tylar’s father died.”

  The overseer’s cottage! She could have kissed Evan for his intervention. The cottage had never occurred to her.

  Tylar rubbed the back of his neck. “I...I...uhh...” he stammered, then let the comment die as he stared at Callen. Stephen glared at them all, a sharp flash of resentment in his dark eyes at the very suggestion.

  “It is clear he has paid a dear price for his loyalties,” Evan insisted.

  Tension all but hummed in the silence.

  “Do what you will,” Stephen finally barked. “I suppose it is the least we can do.”

  Callen fought to keep the joy from showing while her heart lifted and soared, until she looked up into the eyes of her husband...and saw more than a degree of uncertainty.

  She still believes I’m her husband, Ty thought as their gazes locked. She’s only telling them what they want to hear.

  Callen made no attempt to hide the fact from him, and he wondered for the hundredth time what he’d gotten himself into. Hell’s bells, he was falling in love with a woman in 1867 who thought they were already married, and he had a teenage brother who needed him a century and a half in the future.

  Well, he just wouldn’t let it happen. Simple as that. His life was complicated enough. The last thing he needed was a romantic entanglement. The very last thing he needed was a romantic entanglement with a woman in the nineteenth century, for crying out loud. Just putting the thoughts into words seemed surreal.

  He stared at Callen, her look inquisitive now, and he realized they all expected a response to the offer of the cottage.

  “I appreciate the invitation,” he began, intending to decline the offer, but looking at Callen, her dark gaze turning joyful, he couldn’t manage to push the words past his lips.

  What could it hurt, he rationalized, to stay another day or two? The housesitter staying with Dan didn’t expect him home for at least a week. If the portal was still open – which he planned to check at the first chance - this was a once in a lifetime…impossible…opportunity. How many other people in the history of time had been given a chance to live in the past, if only for a few days? And surely by the time he left – if he could leave – he would have Callen convinced that he wasn’t the Tylar on whom she bestowed those soul-stirring kisses.

  Somehow that particular thought didn’t cheer him.

  “Wonderful!” Callen took his silent musing for acceptance. “I shall see you settled.”

  “He can see himself settled,” Stephen all but growled. His look spoke louder than words that he would rethink the begrudged invitation if Callen argued with him. “We’ve an invited guest to entertain.”

  Callen glanced at Evan, who looked clearly uncomfortable at Stephen’s words.

  “Well, of course.” After only a brief hesitation, she slipped her arm through Evan’s and started strolling toward the house. “It was never my intention to make you feel unwelcome, Evan.” She turned and glanced at Ty, her tone deceptively dismissive, yet her eyes full of silent promises.

  Ty wanted to rip Hennessey’s arm off.

  “We shall see you at luncheon, Tylar. If you have need of anything, Jacob will be happy to help you.”

  Ty stood in the gardens and watched the three until they disappeared into the house. He lingered there, pulling his thoughts together, trying to sort out the feelings bombarding him, then he went in search of Jacob. First things first - find out where the hell the overseer’s cottage was.

  *******

  “You be needin’ anythin’ else, Mistah Tylar?” Jacob asked.

  Ty shook his head and looked around the cottage. “Call me Ty,” he said automatically as he peered up the worn, narrow stairway that divided the small house down the center.

  “Yessir, Mistah Ty.”

  Ty turned back to tell Jacob to drop the “Mister,” but one look at the man’s ramrod straight back and he knew he’d be wasting his breath.

  “I’m fine, Jacob. I’ll let you know if I need anything.”

  Once Jacob went back to his duties, Ty left the homey parlor with its small fireplace, horsehair sofa, and doily-covered whatnot tables. He stuck his head inside the doorway across the hall to find a sparsely furnished dining room, then headed up the bare wooden stairs to the second floor. Every other step creaked and groaned as he made his way to the bedrooms.

  The room to the left faced the big house and back gardens. The other faced acres and acres of fields, mostly overgrown, but a few with neat rows of some kind of sprouting green crop. A handful of workers moved about the field; another sign that the family had the means to pay employees.

  For reasons he couldn’t explain, the bedroom with the view of the big house appealed to him more than the larger, airier room opposite the stairs. He sat on the quilt-covered bed, testing it out. The ropes beneath groaned under his weight, but he decided the mattress would sleep comfortably enough.

  Not that he expected he could do much sleeping. Not until he checked out the portal. Or even then.

  His gaze wandered the room. He still couldn’t get over where he was, how he got there.

  He blew out a long breath and raked back a handful of hair, half tempted to pinch himself. But the ache of abused muscles and the dull throb where Stephen had managed a solid blow to his jaw made the idea of pinching himself a little redundant.

  “Snap out of it, McCall,” he muttered. The sun rose higher in the sky and he sat there burning daylight instead of making the most out of his time there. He walked to the window and looked out at the house.

  How strange to see the home with sharp edges, the columns neither crumbling nor half missing, all of the black wrought iron enclosing the upper veranda instead of the half dozen or so rusty pieces connecting a few pillars in the future, suspended eerily high, that had somehow survived fire, storms, and decades of neglect.

  As he studied the house, Callen appeared at the back door with a basket on her arm. She roamed into the garden, clipping a flower every now and then and placing it in the basket. She held one to her nose, then tucked it into the neckline of her dress.

  Ty’s heart raced at the sight of her; the image of southern femininity incarnate, in her billowing peach gown and armful of flowers, with a live oak dripping Spanish moss in the background and the early morning sun casting long, pale shadows.

  “Yes,” he whispered to himself. If only he had a camera! He framed the imaginary shot in his mind’s eye. “Now just look up. Look up at me,” he coaxed. Almost as if she’d heard him, she stopped and lifted her face to stare at the cottage.

  “Perfect!” he breathed, his finger actually moving to squeeze the nonexistent shutter button.

  He wanted to scream. Why hadn’t he grabbed his camera when he’d gone to investigate the column?

  Because, you idiot, you never expected to end up in 1867!

  Would a modern camera have even worked, though? The flashlights had died when he’d
tried to take them into the cellar. He had a feeling that was no coincidence.

  With bitter disappointment he turned away from the window. Photographs were out of the question. Even if he could get his hands on an 1867 camera, he had no knowledge of processing the collodion on the plates of glass. It would be several years before Maddox would create the dry plate method that didn’t have to be developed immediately.

  He turned back to the window, ready to settle for doing a little Callen watching, just in time to see the flutter of peach stripes disappear into the house.

  Hell.

  The bed ropes creaked as he flopped onto the bed and glared at his surroundings. A large chest of drawers stood between the two windows, a small fireplace graced the wall opposite the bed, and a shaving stand and mirror stood in the corner. An oil lamp sat on the night table by the bed, full of oil and ready to light.

  His gaze drifted back to the chest of drawers. He stared at it, narrowed his eyes, then rose from the bed to stand in front of it. Without really thinking, almost instinctively, he knelt and pulled out the bottom drawer.

  A leather-bound, portfolio type sketchbook, charcoal sticks, watercolors, and paint brushes slid forward with the drawer. Now there’s a thought, he mused. He’d been pretty darned good at sketching in his art classes.

  The sketchbook, though well-worn, had nothing but blank pages. He picked up a couple charcoal sticks, confident that the owner of the pad wouldn’t begrudge him a sheet or two of paper.

  “They are just where you left them.”

  Ty jerked and spun on his knee, jolting already sore muscles into screams.

  “Judas priest,” he said, the sight of Callen doing nothing to slow his pounding heart. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  She smiled, standing in the doorway with a vase full of the flowers she’d picked in the garden.

  “You were always that way with your drawing. I vow, horses could stampede around you, and you’d not notice unless they obstructed your view.”

  Her skirts whispered when she walked into the room, a floral scent swirling in with her. He stood, legs stiff and sore, sketchpad in hand, while she sat the vase on the chest of drawers, then perfected the arrangement with nervous little adjustments. Finally she turned, took a deep breath, and looked about her with a sad little smile.

  “I stayed here after you left, you know.” She moved to the shaving stand and centered the porcelain bowl and pitcher. “Up until...” She looked up at him with a faraway look, then wandered to the bed. “Until I moved back into the big house. Even then, after they told me you were dead, I would come here and spend hours at a time.” She smoothed the quilt, then ran her hand across it lovingly. “It gave me peace. I could still feel you here.”

  Ty stared at her, wanting to put his arms around her and comfort her, knowing it would be a mistake. He couldn’t blame her for not believing him. If he’d had a wife and was told she was dead and buried in a far away place, then one day a woman looking exactly like her walked into his house and called him by name, he would have a hard time believing she wasn’t his wife. Or believing her story of traveling in time. That is, until now. Nevertheless, he couldn’t let her give in to this fantasy.

  “Callen.” He stared at her back, her fingers trailing on the quilt. “You have to believe—”

  “I know.” She turned to him, her eyes misty, her look pleading. “But let me have this. If only for a little while. Whoever you claim to be, let me believe you are my Tylar. Give me this chance to say goodbye to you...to him. Can you not allow me that chance?” Her voice caught on the last word.

  Ty rubbed the back of his neck, a lump in his throat the size of a golf ball. How in the world could he say no to that? How could he ignore her pain and insist she accept the truth?

  He couldn’t.

  But he had to draw the line, let her know this wasn’t forever. She could say goodbye to a long dead husband. She could finally get some closure. But he would only stay a couple of days. For both their sakes.

  “All right,” he finally said, dropping his hand, wondering how many ways he would come to regret this. “But I have to leave by...” What the hell day was it in this time, anyway? “I can stay the next three nights.” Unless he was stuck there forever. Dan! Dan would think he’d abandoned him, too! He had to get to the cellar. He had to make sure he could still get home.

  “Sunday? Only until Sunday?” She sank to the edge of the bed. “But where will you go? Why must you leave?”

  He gave her a long, steady look. She didn’t want the truth. She’d already heard it more than once. She would refuse, yet again, to believe what he told her. There was only one thing she wanted to hear, desperately wanted to hear, and, that, he couldn’t tell her.

  “I thought you wanted me to be your Tylar,” he said instead. “To say goodbye.” Why did those words rip through his chest like the claws of a wildcat? The look she gave him poured salt on the raw, bleeding wounds. She lowered her gaze to her lap and stared at her hands.

  “Yes. I did ask that of you.” A bird chirped outside the window. The sound of his pulse pounded in his ears. He never wanted anything so badly than to pull her into his arms and tell her everything would be okay.

  He fought down a groan. Why this woman? Of all the women he’d ever met, of all the women he could have fallen for, why did this woman - a woman he could never have - have to be the one to light the fire in his blood? A fire he had spent years keeping meticulously banked.

  She took a deep breath and raised her face, wearing a bright, plastic smile.

  “Well, I must see to luncheon.” She stood, shaking out skirts, looking everywhere but at him. “The day is so fair, I believe we should dine on the veranda.”

  Damn, he wanted to grab her by that ridiculously small waist, fold himself around her, kiss that forced smile into a real one, pull her right into his soul and keep her safe.

  Yeah, McCall. And then walk right out on her and go back to your own life.

  No, as much as he wanted to, as much as she wanted him to, he would be doing neither of them a favor. Instead, he stood still while she edged past him and escaped down the stairs, murmuring that she would have Jacob bring some of Tylar’s clothes.. The flowery scent lingered, the feel of her lingered. He turned and looked at the bed, imagined her curled up there, aching for someone to hold her, finding comfort in the only place she could, and that same ache, that same longing, crept into his mind, his heart, his soul, and he knew exactly how she felt.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Callen escaped Stephen and Evan, relieved beyond words when the discussion turned to business and she could excuse herself without a glare from her brother.

  Stephen’s behavior since the war convinced her beyond a doubt that Tylar had suffered something terrible as well. Stephen had left for the war a loving brother. He’d had a carefree, teasing way about him, and very nearly earned the reputation of a rake, so popular was he with the ladies. Any lady. He had doted on Callen so, the only real contention between them had come when Callen had wed Tylar before her father could marry her off to Morton Thom. Stephen had sided with their father’s misguided notion that she should be wed and under a husband’s care before they left for the war. Morton Thom had been too old to fight and wealthy enough to maintain her lifestyle. And he would look after her mother as well.

  Unfortunately, the very sight of the man made her skin crawl. Nothing she could put her finger on; her father would never have forced her to marry someone cruel. But aside from the fact that she could not abide the man was the fact that she loved Tylar McCall, and all men would pale in comparison. When Tylar had found her packing a valise to escape to New Orleans, he had proposed the scheme for her to avoid the marriage. Callen had been ecstatic, certain that she could win his love. After all, what better basis for love than first a friendship?

  They had angered her father and Stephen by marrying in secret the night before Tylar rode off to war. Her father and Stephen had left several days later, ne
ver knowing that her mother had conspired to help them. Callen never learned if her father’s anger had stemmed from her defying him, or from the fact that, in his opinion, she had married beneath her station. He’d died of dysentery only months after the war had started.

  Even now, the thought brought tears to her eyes. What he must have endured. What they all must have endured; the abominations they had witnessed, or even committed, in the name of their country. The good Lord knew she had seen for herself the atrocities of war, through both her endeavors now to find missing soldiers, and when Windsor had been garrisoned as a hospital for all those months. There were still bloodstains on the wooden floor in the parlor, now hidden by the fraying Persian carpet, that no amount of scrubbing had ever removed.

  And then Stephen - happy, carefree Stephen – had come home bitter, withdrawn, prone to dark, pensive moods. He carried no unsightly scars, had lost no limbs, yet he bore something from the war that had changed him more drastically than the plunge of a bayonet’s blade.

  And Tylar, of a certainty, had experienced a thing so ghastly, so heinous, he had blocked it from his memory. And with it he blocked the memory of her, of their lives together, of their childhood.

  Of their marriage.

  She sighed, refusing to give in to her melancholy. Tylar had excused himself after a very uncomfortable noon meal. Now she went in search of him, to apologize for Stephen’s rudeness, but more to simply be with him, to cherish every precious moment she could before... No, she would not think on that now.

  She found him sitting on one of the huge roots of a live oak, leaning against the trunk, knee drawn up with the sketchbook resting on it as his hand darted, quick and deft, across the paper. That tree, that root, had always been his favorite place for drawing. She had teased him that he would wear the bark smooth. How could he remember to go there, and not remember that he had married her? Had he come to regret their union so deeply that he chose to forget her?