LADY EVER AFTER: A Medieval Time Travel Romance (Beyond Time Book 2)

by Tamara Leigh

  “Did you not mean it?” she whispered.

  Though Collier Gilchrist wanted to reassure her, Collier Morrow balked. He was not prepared for a declaration of love, which one should think on long and hard before making—especially while uncertain of the other’s feelings. Catherine wanted him to stay and desired him, and he was inclined to believe she would come to love him if she didn’t already, but the timing was wrong.

  “Or…” Her fingers curled into the fur. “…do you speak it only out of gratitude for my not revealing the truth about Strivling’s wealth?”

  He covered her hands with his. “Of course not. It’s just that when I said…” He stopped himself. It was happening again. Though he did love Catherine, he risked losing her the same as Aryn if he denied what she needed to hear. Though the admission threatened to open wide a vein in his neck, making him as vulnerable as Aryn had made herself in professing a love on which he had remained silent, it was time.

  “It’s just that when I said you needed to know whom I loved before you, I surprised myself perhaps more than I surprised you.”

  “But you do…?” Her lashes fluttered.

  “Catherine, there are things we must discuss first, starting with Aryn.”

  “Why?”

  “To be certain you truly wish me to stay.”

  “You know I do.”

  “You think you do.”

  Fingers trembling, she said, “I shall listen.”

  He steeled himself for the sharpening of what had become a relatively dull ache. “Just as I’ve struggled to trust you, I struggled to trust Aryn, unable to admit—or show—I loved her. Until it was too late.”

  “Too late?”

  Feeling the blade of his betrayal of Aryn press hard against the whetstone, he said, “She died before I could prove worthy of the love she risked—and, wasted—on me.”

  Catherine stared. And was ashamed that fear of losing Collier to another woman should move her to relief. The one he had first loved was dead and undeserving of jealousy—and not only because Catherine had never been in danger of losing her husband to another. Having earned Collier’s love, Aryn had surely been a good woman, and had she lived and Collier not agreed to Montagu’s plan to punish the one who had refused to yield Strivling…

  She frowned. If Aryn was dead, why would he not commit to staying with her?

  Before she could ask, he said, “I believe the reason I’m with you is because, after learning of Aryn’s death, I prayed for a second chance with her.”

  Jealousy stirred. But when she tried to snatch her hands from beneath his, he held them firmly.

  “Listen to me.”

  “Just because I look like her—”

  “I am not of your world.” It was said with such force, her protest slammed down her throat. “I’m not from this time.”

  “This time?”

  “The fifteenth century.”

  Had he imbibed too much whilst with Edmund? She smelled the air between them but caught only a wisp of the ale he had partaken of at meal. “I do not understand.”

  “I was born five hundred years from now. My time is the twenty-first century.”

  She searched for a gleam in his eyes, a tug of his mouth, prayed to find one or both, but her prayer went unanswered. If this was no jest, he must be mad.

  She forced a laugh in the hope he would respond in kind. “You say you are not even born, yet here you are? You play with me.”

  Far too serious, he said, “If you can dream of the future, why is it inconceivable I came from the future?”

  His logic making her stomach clench for how much it tempted her to consider he was neither jesting nor mad, she wrenched her hands from beneath his and stood. But as she stepped around him, he rose and barred her way.

  Keeping her head down, setting her teeth, she said, “Pray, let me pass.”

  He did not move.

  “Let me pass, Collier Gilchrist!”

  He slid a hand along her jaw, lifted her face, and before she could pull free, said, “Collier Gilchrist Morrow.”

  Morrow? Why did he set that man’s name alongside his as if—

  She gasped. “You say Edmund and you…”

  “Through him I was born—will be born—hundreds of years from now.”

  “Impossible! Such things do not happen.”

  “I would have agreed months ago, but it did happen—is happening.”

  She raised a hand between them. “I wish you to speak no more of this—to me or anyone.”

  His lids narrowed. “Just as your father didn’t wish you to speak of your dreams?”

  “I—”

  He nodded, then retrieved the fur that had fallen between them.

  “Please, Catherine, sit and let me explain. If still you don’t believe me, I won’t say another word.”

  Fearing what else he would tell, but fearing more her refusal to listen would leave her no choice but to accept he was mad, she resumed her seat.

  He settled the fur on her lap, then drew the other chair so near their knees nearly touched as he lowered into it. “When I was young, there was a picture in the library of my home—a landscape painted during the sixteenth century. On the surface, it was hardly deserving of display, but because of its age, it was valuable.”

  Once more, he leaned in and clasped his hands between his knees. “At the age of fifteen, I was in the library procrastinating over my history studies—at that time, my most hated subject—and something brushed my face. I thought it an insect and waved it away, but it pestered me until I decided to end its miserable life. But when I looked up, all I saw was what appeared to be scraps of paper drifting on the room’s current, beyond them the landscape, and at the center of the picture a red stain—or so I thought until I looked close and discovered the top layer of paint had begun to peel away to reveal the red of a rose beneath.”

  Remembering a rose that had been Yorkist white before she insisted the artist paint it red, a chill traveled her limbs.

  “My father consulted specialists, and when it was determined the original painting was from the fifteenth century—far more valuable than the landscape—restoration was attempted. However, the top layer of paint wouldn’t be forced. By the time I was seventeen, enough of it had fallen away to reveal what lay beneath was an unfinished portrait of a woman, though most of her features remained hidden.”

  Catherine wanted him to stop, but she was too entranced to protest.

  “Since the picture had come from my family’s ancestral home of Striving Castle, my father believed the lady was the one legend said held that stronghold against the Yorkists during what later became known as the Wars of the Roses.” He smiled sorrowfully. “Her name was Catherine Algernon, and she died defending the winch room when a mercenary named Walther turned her sword on her.”

  A pitiful cry escaped Catherine, and she beseeched, “Speak no more!”

  He laid a hand on her knee. “Isn’t that your dream? The one you had before I entered your chamber that first night?”

  It was. Frightfully so.

  “You said all your dreams of the future have come to pass except the one of your death. That’s because my journey here changed that.”

  She shook her head, but he continued, “When I moved to London, I took the portrait with me, and for years it hung in my house, slowly continuing to shed its sixteenth-century paint. But the night I received news of Aryn’s death and prayed for another chance with her, the rest of the landscape came away. And there was the legendary Catherine Algernon, looking just like the woman I had loved and lost.”

  She trembled, and more violently when she recalled him standing over the portrait in her chamber and hearing him speak that woman’s name.

  “I am not Aryn,” she whispered.

  “Though you are nearly her image, I know that now.”

  “You do not say I will live again in this Aryn?” Not only did it seem unholy, but she longed for assurance that what he felt was for her alone.
/>
  “I do not. I don’t understand exactly how and why I came to be here with you, but I believe it was an answer to prayer.”

  “Why would God do such a thing?”

  His mouth curved. “Only God knows. But what you and I both know is when you were swept into the sea and it was impossible for me to reach you, I did.”

  The water closing around her, accepting her life was forfeit, feeling Collier’s unreachable hand pull her to him.

  “Though I prayed I would find Aryn beneath your hatred, it’s you I found, Catherine. And I don’t regret it.”

  As loudly as her mind protested him traveling across five hundred years to be with her, her heart whispered it was possible. And it explained much that made little sense—his peculiar speech and behavior, as well as his knowledge of numbers and passable facility with letters that few men of lowly birth possessed. More, it explained how he had known she should have died in the winch room, and how that dream was altered.

  The realization she was close to accepting his tale causing panic to constrict her chest, she said, “I would do better to think you mad.”

  He smiled wryly. “For a while, I feared that if this wasn’t a dream, I must be mad. But this is real, Catherine, and now maybe you understand why it took so long to tell you the truth.”

  Certes, she would not have believed him earlier. And whilst she yet regarded him as her enemy, she would have wielded his fantastic tale against him, but now…

  Dear Lord, she silently beseeched, I am near to believing him!

  “As for Strivling’s wealth, I returned it to the storeroom where you had hidden it before dying at Walther’s hands.”

  For that he had asked her to reveal its hiding place.

  “I’ll show you when next we’re at Strivling.”

  She moistened her lips. “Why did you not give it to Morrow?”

  He ran a hand back through his hair. “Though I haven’t always succeeded, since accepting this as reality, I’ve disturbed history as little as possible. I don’t know what originally became of the coin, gold, and jewels—whether they were found by Edmund or his descendants or if they’re still buried in the twenty-first century—but whatever their fate, they had to be returned to the place the legendary Catherine Algernon left them.”

  Her, a legend. All because she had acted as Hildegard demanded of her, sacrificing others’ lives before giving the dead a small measure of justice in sacrificing her own.

  Not wanting to think there, she asked, “Why did you change the entries in the ledgers?”

  “I didn’t. I’m guessing my ancestor doesn’t know his numbers well. As for your portrait, I insisted on leaving it behind for the same reason I returned the coin to the storeroom. And another reason—it’s how I got here.”

  Though part of her longed to bury her head beneath a pillow, she said, “Tell me all of it.”

  Collier spoke of how he had met and pursued Aryn, of his climbing accident and addiction to what he called painkillers, and of his failed attempt to purchase Strivling Castle. He told her of Aryn’s anger when she discovered he had lied about the painkillers, the treatment he had gone through to win her back, the letter awaiting him when he returned from the treatment center, and the portrait drawing him into the past.

  When he sat back and closed his eyes, she looked to the sword atop the trunk at the foot of the bed. It was the one he had said had been displayed beneath her portrait in the future, the same Walther had turned on her. How could she not believe the tale?

  “Now you know,” he said.

  Finding Collier watched her through half-hooded lids, she asked, “What of King Henry? Is it true he will not be king again?”

  “That’s a sticky thing. Providing I haven’t thoroughly upset the course of history, six years from now he will retake the throne.” At her sharp breath, he held up a hand. “And Edward will unseat him one last time.”

  Part of her wished him to elaborate, part of her did not. And so she turned to that fearful thing which had yet to be known. “After I died in that other past, what happened?”

  “As now, Edmund Morrow was awarded the barony.”

  “And Irondale?”

  After some moments, he said, “Though Rudd Walther rejoined the Lancasters after I sent him from Strivling, in that other past, he was given charge of Irondale.”

  “Dear Lord, my family…”

  “What matters, Catherine, is that they are safe now.”

  She nodded, then leaned forward and gripped his hands. “I feel I must thank you.”

  “You believe me?”

  “I wish to. ’Tis only that…” She gave an apologetic shake of her head. “It is most unbelievable.”

  “I know. My brother would have had me carted to the loony bin.”

  She nearly asked him to explain what the latter was, but the former was of greater import. “You barely spoke of your family. Surely they are missing you whilst you are here.”

  “No.”

  “Have you not a mother and father?”

  “My father is dead, and I haven’t seen my mother since she walked out on our family twenty years ago.”

  “Walked out?”

  “My father was a hard man to live with, and so she traded him in for a new life.”

  Catherine didn’t understand anything about trading in a husband, but she felt his pain even if he pretended he did not. “She left you with your father.”

  “Me and my older brother, James.”

  “Is she the reason you did not trust Aryn to tell her you loved her?”

  Collier’s eyebrows met. “Playing psychologist, Catherine?”

  “Psychol…? Am I?”

  His brow cleared. “You are, and fairly well. Though our father gave our mother good reason to leave, I haven’t been able to forgive her for breaking all contact with her young sons.”

  “What of your brother? Will he not miss you?”

  Collier grunted. “More likely, he’s rejoicing. When we were young, we got along well despite our father’s efforts to pit us against each other, but that changed.”

  “Why?”

  “Whereas I started working for our family’s company immediately after University, James pursued a career that put distance between our father and him—as I should have done. But though Winton Morrow tried to control my life as if I were still a child, I resisted his resentment over my pursuit of extreme sports and interest in history that began when your portrait came to light.”

  “Extreme sports?”

  His eyebrows jumped. “Rock climbing.”

  That which had led to his near fatal accident. And allowed him to save her from the sea.

  “My father believed the time and effort expended on outside interests was better spent on the business, and so we had heated arguments. But for all that, the business thrived. Then he persuaded James to join the company, and that’s when things went bad between my brother and me. Though I had put in years of hard work, our father believed birth order was more important than commitment and ability.” Collier smiled grimly. “An attitude straight out of your middle ages.”

  My middle ages, she mused over what, for her, was the age of now.

  “So he decided I should answer to James, though I knew the business front to back and my contributions accounted for a good portion of its revenues. I didn’t handle it well, and my clashes with our father accelerated when I refused to compete with James on a level that would have required me to give up outside interests. Thus, I shouldn’t have been surprised upon our father’s death that he willed the majority of his estate to my older brother, leaving me a token share in the business. As another slap in the face, he left to me what he had grown to hate because of my obsession with it—the landscape that wished to be a portrait again.” His eyebrows rose. “He wouldn’t be pleased to know it proved of greater value to me than the entirety of his estate.”

  Her heart braced itself. “Are you certain of that?”

  He hesitated, and she th
ought he must have surprised himself again—and perhaps he had, for when he answered, he seemed sincere. “I am, even if you believe I’m mad.”

  Her chest ached. “I do not, but if you are, methinks I might be content being mad alongside you.”

  Her words eased the furrows in his brow, and she said hopefully, “Things got better between James and you following your father’s death, aye?”

  His jaw shifted. “We went our separate ways, and when I started a company in competition with his, there was no possibility of reconciliation. In fact, he’s the one to whom I lost Strivling.”

  “Oh, I am sorry.”

  “As am I. I didn’t have to go down that path, but I was determined to outdo him. And each time I did, I took great pleasure in it. But now… If I could make things right with him, I would.”

  A thought struck her. “Can you return to your own time?”

  “I believe so. The night you found me in your chamber with the portrait, I felt pulled toward it.”

  “Then you can make things right with James.”

  “Only if I risk being unable to return to you.”

  She smiled. “You are staying.”

  “Though I doubted there could be anything good between us with you on one side of the war and me on the other, I was responsible for keeping you in the world your death had allowed you to escape. Thus, it seemed best that after doing all I could to assure your safety under Yorkist rule, I return to my own time. But now… Unless I’m wrong about what you feel for me, you’ve given me the reason I need to stay.”

  She knew what he asked, but now she hesitated. “Truly, ’tis for me—Catherine Algernon—you would remain?”

  “For Catherine Algernon Gilchrist.”

  She clasped that to her, but there was something dark between it and her. “Even though I…”

  “You?”

  “There is a reason you thought there could be nothing good between us.”

  Understanding lit his eyes. “I know you struggle over the lives lost at Strivling, Catherine, but doesn’t my traveling over five hundred years to prevent your death…being here with you now…loving you…tell you forgiveness is as much yours to accept as it is others? That you should look to the future, not the past?”