by Tamara Leigh
What? That Collier Gilchrist Morrow would most likely be found five hundred years from now in a world where people flew and light could be had at the snap of fingers? That in that place of computers and—
She caught her breath. Collier believed the portrait was the means by which he had traveled through time, and yet it was at Strivling. Had he been wrong? If so, how had the twenty-first century snatched him away? Had it something to do with the sword? Regardless, if he was in his world, she was long dead to him. In her world, she felt as if she might break into a thousand pieces.
“You think I will not cut your pretty face?” Walther demanded.
“All I can tell,” she whispered, “is that where he has gone, you will not find him.” And unless it was possible for him to return to her, neither would she.
As Walther spewed curses, she prayed to God to allow Collier to make the journey to her one last time—told Him that if He refused, it mattered not if she died this day. And quickly snatched herself out of that mire.
It did matter. Even if never again she saw Collier, he had given her someone to live for. To love.
Gathering strength from the tiny life inside, she looked through her tears at Walther. “Methinks, mercenary, you keep your liege waiting.”
He thrust her away from him.
Unable to get her feet beneath her, she dropped onto her backside, then her back, and nearly cried out as she felt all the aches of her first fall.
“When he is done with you, Catherine Algernon, you and I shall finish what we started.”
Though she longed to refute that, she put all her loathing into her stare.
“Bring her!” he shouted and started toward Irondale.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Strivling Castle, Northern England
Present Day
He had been here before, moving out of a great, dark still into this same vortex that had transported him to the fifteenth century. But this time, no ring of chain mail, and it felt as if he flew rather than fell. Higher and higher, farther and farther—away from Catherine.
He tried to call to her. Reached for her. Prayed as he had not prayed since he had nearly lost her to the violent waves and treacherous rocks.
Then like Icarus whose wings failed in flying too near the sun, he tumbled into the sea. Though a softer landing than when he had fallen into the fifteenth century, he lay there a long while, not wanting to open his eyes for fear of where he would find himself. But he knew.
He raised his lids and painstakingly brought the ceiling into focus. Lit by the somber light of a clouded day, it was too low and rustic for this to be his Knightsbridge house. Then he had not left the fifteenth century?
Praying he remained in Catherine’s world, he turned his head to survey the room and glimpsed what appeared to be a chrome rail before squeezing his eyes closed to parry the ache radiating through his skull.
He gripped his temple and was surprised by the ridge of a well-healed scar traveling back into his hair, and when he brought his hand before his face, there was no blood on it to evidence Walther’s blow. Walther who had Catherine.
He thrust up onto his elbows and was immediately struck down by a swell of pain, fatigue, and faintness. What was wrong with him? His body felt more foreign than it had following the climbing accident—as if all of him were ill.
“You’re awake.”
The words brought Collier’s head sharply around. Before he could visually confirm the voice belonged to his brother, pain once more pierced his skull, forcing him to close his eyes. And pray it wasn’t James.
“Dear God, I did it!”
Definitely James. Meaning Sir Collier Gilchrist had been cast out of the fifteenth century where he had married and started a life with Catherine. Unless it had all been a—
He rejected the thought. He had journeyed to the middle ages. Had begun a life with Catherine. “Not a dream,” he rasped.
“For your sake, let us hope not.”
Collier drew a deep breath that made him cough and his lungs burn, then slowly peeled back his lids.
Beyond a railing reminiscent of when he had awakened in the hospital following his climbing accident, James sat forward, the whites of his eyes red beneath raked-through hair, jaw shadowed by several days’ growth of beard, shirt askew.
“Where am I?” Collier croaked out of a throat that felt scraped raw.
“I brought you home.”
How strange James’s accent, and yet not so long ago it was one thing the brothers had in common.
Moving only his eyes, Collier looked past James to an elaborately carved writing table, the shutterless clear-paned window above it, and stone walls on either side. Though five hundred years had altered the room, he was in the solar at Strivling Castle.
“This isn’t my home,” he said and silently acknowledged that neither was his house in Knightsbridge. His home was with Catherine at Irondale, so far back in time she was dead. And likely by Walther’s hand.
As helplessness and anger flayed him, James pushed up out of the chair and grabbed hold of the bed’s railing as if to steady himself. “Of course Strivling is your home.”
It was said with humor, but of greater note, a slur that evidenced the bottle of Scotch on the bedside table wasn’t merely for show.
“Indeed, it is.” James nodded. “Thanks to some long-dead Morrow, this bloody money pit has been in our family for…” He looked up. “What? Five hundred and…” He shrugged. “Over half a millennium, if you don’t count us losing it for awhile.”
Certain alcohol made him speak nonsense about Strivling belonging to anyone other than himself, Collier said, “Why did you bring me here?”
And how? he wondered. He’d been fairly certain he had disappeared from the twenty-first century, but James’s choice of words and the state in which Collier found himself suggested otherwise.
But what, exactly, was this state? Something serious considering he was so incapacitated he required a hospital bed. And yet, the worst that had happened to him after learning of Aryn’s death was cutting his hands on the sword. True, Catherine’s portrait had fallen, but it had missed him.
Or had it? He touched the scar at his temple.
Before he could ask his brother to verify the events that had led to this day, James said without drunken wit, “I brought you home to Strivling to die.”
That last word assaulted as if shouted. But it made sense. He must have been in a coma, as further evidenced by the hospital bed, bone-deep weakness, and muscle wastage.
He swallowed hard, but the effort did little to ease the pain of pushing voice up out of his throat. “The portrait struck me when it fell?”
James gave a bitter laugh ripe with the scent of alcohol. “Corroboration! At last!”
Though this was not a conversation Collier wanted to have, it being imperative he return to Catherine, he was in no condition to seek a way back to her. Not yet. Too, James might know something that would aid in once more departing the twenty-first century.
“Corroboration?” Collier prompted.
“Matilda, the woman filling in for your regular housekeeper.” James flicked a hand at his brow. “Silver hair, dark streak.”
Known to him briefly in this century, and as well as it was possible to know Tilly in the fifteenth. “What of her?”
James folded his arms atop the railing and sank into his shoulders. “The night before the morning I found you on your bedroom floor, she called me all in a worry—said you had been locked in your room for days but didn’t respond the last time she asked after you.”
Thus, the answer to the question of whether or not the passing of days following the news of Aryn’s death had been real or imagined.
“The next morning, I drove into London and busted down your door.”
Collier was stung by resentment James had not come sooner, but it was immediately replaced by wonder he had come at all.
“Finding you unresponsive, your head bloodied, I sent th
e housekeeper to call an ambulance. When she returned, she assured me…” He gave a grunt of disgust. “…in the fullness of time, you would come out of the experience better than before. Then she said she heard the ambulance and went downstairs She let in the medics, and that was the last anyone saw of her.”
Tilly-Matilda, Collier mused. When he had asked who she was, she had said she was but a servant. If that was true, she surely had not referred to her service to Catherine. And yet, did angels really move among men?
“So,” James said on a sigh, “your big brother became a person of interest.”
Collier frowned. “You were suspected of foul play?”
“For awhile. Bloody hell, I’m probably still a suspect, but they don’t have any evidence. Not that it matters to the tabloids or those with whom I do business.” He blew a breath up his face. “It’s put a pinch on my dealings.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, what you are is just another question mark down at Scotland Yard,” James snapped, then pushed off the railing, dropped into the chair, and reached for the Scotch.
What was he doing drinking? Though in his younger years he had drank excessively, Collier had thought he had it under control. But then, he knew as little about James’s personal life these past years as his brother knew about his.
“Don’t, James.”
“What?” he growled, ever offended at being corrected.
“You know what.”
James narrowed his lids. “Why so concerned about my health, baby brother?”
The sarcasm reminiscent of James’s call the day Aryn had arrived at the house in Knightsbridge, Collier fell in step with him. “Because I need you as sober as possible.” The moment he said it, he regretted it. This was not the way to make right what was wrong between them.
“Well, don’t we easily pick up where we left off?” James drawled.
Despite protesting lungs, Collier breathed deep. “Forgive me. I do need you sober, but what I should have said—and what I feel—is that I don’t like seeing you in self-destruct mode.”
“Really? But all this could be yours.” James threw his arms wide, then slowly lowered them. “Though that’s not much incentive to let me light my own fuse.” After a long moment, he said, “This old castle means a lot to me, but unless I get the business back on track, it’s going to suck me dry.”
As Collier had known would happen unless it could generate sufficient income to offset expenses and maintenance. He just hadn’t expected James would be enlightened so quickly. Doubtless, bad press about Collier’s accident was responsible.
James returned the Scotch to the table. “Why do you need me sober?”
“I have to get to London, and it’s clear I’m in no condition to do it on my own.”
“Quite the understatement,” James muttered. “What’s in London?”
“The portrait of Catherine Algernon.” By way of which he had journeyed to her.
James snorted. “That would be a wasted trip.”
“What do you mean?”
“It isn’t there.”
Panic rose through Collier. Had it been irreparably damaged in the fall? Or had James sold it? It was worth a small fortune, especially now the portrait was revealed in its entirety.
Though the struggle to sit up was humiliating, he made it onto his elbows. “Where is it, James?”
“Not in London.”
Even drunk, he was his usual infuriating self. Were Collier not bedridden, he would use his greater height and breadth to wring the answer from him. “Listen to me—”
“There.” James jutted his chin. “Once the police released her—evidence, you know—I brought her home to Strivling.”
Angled against the wall opposite the bed, the portrait was draped with a sheet. “Show me.”
James levered out of the chair and crookedly crossed the room.
As he neared the portrait, Collier was once more struck with doubt that had made him briefly consider his journey into the middle ages was only a dream, this time positing the landscape had not come away. But when James dragged off the sheet, the portrait showed the lady in all her unfinished glory. Not Aryn. Catherine. Two different loves, one forever lost, the other…
Lord, he silently entreated, whatever You did and for whatever reason, do it again.
“Happy?” James said.
Relieved was the better word. “Thank you. Why did you have it covered?”
“Her eyes. They’ve always bothered me—too much life there for someone long gone to bone.” James blinked. “What is it?”
Collier talked himself down from the anger heating his neck and face, assuring himself James wasn’t trying to incite him. “It’s nothing,” he said and wished he could make things right with his brother. But there wasn’t time.
“How did you do it?” James asked.
For a moment, Collier thought he referred to time travel, but that wasn’t possible. “Do what?”
“Remove the landscape. When I found you in your bedroom, you were surrounded by flakes. How did you remove the paint when the best restorers said it was impossible without damaging the portrait beneath?”
Another wish—that he could explain what had happened in Knightsbridge and reveal where he had been these months while he lay comatose. But he would be thought mad.
“It took some work,” he said.
James gave one of his devil-may-care shrugs. “I’ve been tempted to sell it at auction.”
Once more longing to put his brother up against a wall, Collier snapped, “It doesn’t belong to you.”
A slight smile evidencing he was amused by Collier’s reaction, James said, “No, but according to the doctors, it wasn’t going to belong to you much longer. And it has to be worth a great deal now.”
Though the funds would probably be only a Band-Aid, they would plug the hole in his finances for awhile. That calmed Collier, and he further eased his constricted chest with the reminder the portrait wasn’t in a stranger’s collection. “Why didn’t you sell it?”
Rather than attempt to cover his discomfort with sarcasm, James said, “It turns my stomach to admit this—or maybe that’s the Scotch—but the portrait has been in our family as long as Strivling Castle. And you…” This time his shrug was apologetic. “For some reason, it means a lot to you, just as Strivling means a lot to me.”
“Thank you.”
James averted his gaze. “What’s so pressing you need the portrait now?”
Collier dragged breath past the doors his lungs tried to close against it, pushed off his elbows to sitting, and hung his head. “Dear Lord, I’m so weak!”
“I wasn’t being facetious when I said I brought you home to die.” James returned to the bed. “It’ll take some time for you to regain your strength—”
“I have to get back now.”
“Get back?”
Collier swayed and, feeling James grip his shoulder, said, “You wouldn’t believe me.”
“Lie down, and I’ll call a doctor.”
“Nay!” Though the medieval word shot from him, it sounded wrong in the here and now.
“Nay?”
As it sounded wrong to James.
Collier lifted his weighty head. “No doctors. Just…bring the portrait here.”
“Listen, Collier—”
“Now!” As James’s face darkened, Collier amended, “Please, James, bring it here.”
Setting his jaw, his brother crossed the room. The portrait’s weight, coupled with alcohol was hardly conducive to a safe journey. Fortunately, the distance was short, and the one time the portrait dropped the few inches onto James’s foot, the only damage was to Collier’s aching head when his brother cursed.
James set his burden to the right of Collier, propping it against the chair he had earlier occupied.
“Would you lower the railing?” Collier asked.
“If you think you’re getting out of bed, I need to get you a mirror.”
It took C
ollier some moments to understand the implication. “That bad, hmm?”
“Worse. You’ve never looked less my baby brother and more our father.”
Collier hated the comparison, but he doubted it was cruel exaggeration. James had brought him here to die. And Collier’s wasted body probably couldn’t even stand upright. “I’ll stay put, but please lower the railing.”
James released it and rotated it down. “Now may I call the doctor?” Sarcasm, though almost teasing.
“No.”
Whatever the response, it was lost on Collier as he slowly shifted to the edge of the bed, fixed his gaze on Catherine, and reached. He touched her face and felt the fine ridges the brush had long ago left in the paint, but that was all—no pull as experienced when he had discovered the portrait at Strivling.
Think! he silently commanded. How did you do it the first time?
Prayer. Yes, there had been that, too. Raising his face to the ceiling, he closed his eyes and asked for another chance with Catherine, that he might once again deliver her from Walther, and for their unborn child to know him. Over and over, he asked it, but nothing time-shattering happened, and each time he opened his eyes to a different slant of light or another shade of darkness, his compressed emotions threatened to burst.
But he would get back to her. He would keep the promises made her.
Daylight again.
Dropping his lids over aching eyes, Collier collapsed back against the pillows. “God!” he groaned.
“No idea what you’re after, but I don’t think He’s listening.”
Collier looked around. Grateful the sudden movement and pain didn’t cause his world to blacken, he stared at James whose eyes were closed where he reclined in a chair on the other side of the bed. Had he been there all this time?
Distantly, Collier recalled being plied with water that soothed his throat and biscuits he’d been unable to swallow, a hand on his shoulder, and a slurred voice—one moment coaxing, the next demanding.
“I have to get back to Catherine,” he said without thinking.
Though James’s lids remained lowered, he frowned. “I know you’re not talking about The Catherine. So?”
