Aching for Always

by Gwyn Cready

  Hugh’s fingers ached with the desire to strangle the blackguard. His fingers ached and his heart suffered.

  “When did he know? When was this supposed deathbed confession?”

  “In September.”

  When had Joss and Reynolds fallen in love? Was it possible Reynolds had purposefully seduced her after he’d discovered her father’s secret? It was all he could do to keep from ordering Fiona out of the room and calling for Joss immediately.

  “Listen to me. Joss is ignorant of her father’s wrongdoings. I will not allow her to be hurt in any way.”

  “I’m not asking you to hurt Joss,” Fiona spat. “I’m asking you to do your duty.”

  “I will determine my duty,” he said hotly. “Joss is innocent, and she loves Reynolds. I will not destroy her in that way.”

  Nathaniel appeared in the doorway with eyebrows raised, and Hugh knew he had overheard. Fiona jumped to her feet. “You’re a fool,” she said to Hugh, and pushed past him into the passageway.

  “Perhaps. Do not say a word to her about Reynolds. If you do, our quest here will be over. The ship will return to England immediately, with you on it.”

  “I hope you do not live to regret this.” She banged the door as she left.

  Hugh didn’t know which would be worse: living to see Reynolds hurt Joss or living to see him love her.

  “Nathaniel,” he said, “find the girl. Bring her here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Joss finally found Roark on the lowest deck of the ship, examining a pile of chains with links the size of her bathroom mirror. “There you are,” she said.

  Roark snapped upright, banging his head on the low ceiling. “How can I help you, Miss O’Malley?”

  “I need to be transported to the islet. I was told to speak to you.” She was peering down at him from several steps up in order to avoid the water sloshing back and forth across the floor. She had fulfilled her obligations here. The adventure, as it were, was over. She’d abandoned her business, her fiancé and her friend. She probably needed the time-travel equivalent of a Concorde flight to a confessional booth, but she’d settle for a bumpy Royal Mail drop-off next to some garbage cans in Pittsburgh. I bring the antibiotics and Fiona gets to do the bedside hand-holding? It hadn’t exactly been the fairy-tale ending she’d imagined, and she could feel her pique like an angry wasp buzzing inside her head.

  “Aye, well, it cannot be attempted at present,” Roark said, rubbing his head. “Perhaps tomorrow, when the conditions will be more favorable.”

  “What conditions?”

  “Unfavorable ones.”

  “Such as?” The sea for once was calm.

  He chewed his lip. “The gears on the taffrail have broken. ’Tis a most pressing situation.”

  “Oh.” Gears on the taffrail? “Is that why you’re down here?”

  “Aye.”

  “Will it take long to fix? I mean, they are fixable, right?” The thought of spending a week on board this tub with Hugh and Fiona playing bedroom hide-and-seek every night was not appetizing.

  “They are fixable, but as always in these matters, the timing is uncertain.”

  “I see. Well, please let me know.”

  Roark, who hadn’t bumped his head since his first month at sea, bowed, checked his crown for blood and wished the captain could settle his romantic problems on his own.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Joss crested the stairs onto the floor she now referred to as the Lido deck and made her way to her room.

  When she stepped inside, Fiona shoved her into the wall.

  “Where’s my map?”

  Joss shoved her back, hard enough to knock her into the desk. “Back off, sister. I can take your ratty-ass butt.” She doubted she could, but she’d heard Di’s son Peter say the line while playing Transformers and she’d been dying to use it ever since.

  “Hugh could be dead because of you.”

  “Apparently, you haven’t checked Google News lately. He’s alive because of me.”

  “You and your precious fiancé.”

  Joss narrowed her eyes. “What about my fiancé?”

  Something flickered behind those green eyes. “Nothing. Marry him. He’ll be just like your father.”

  “You don’t know my father.”

  “You are mistook, my friend. I know your father. One may know a man by the deeds he’s done.”

  Joss had just about had it up to her eyeballs with the obtuse accusations and far less obtuse resentment. “What could he have possibly done to you?”

  The fury glowed in Fiona’s eyes like fire pits in hell. “Ask Hugh. If you dare.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Joss nearly bowled over Nathaniel at the top of the stairs.

  “Miss O’Malley.” He beamed. “What a happy coincidence. I was just looking for you.”

  “Were you?”

  “You are needed down below,” he said. “Captain’s orders, m’um.”

  “The captain’s orders?” Perhaps a lifetime of wealth had affected her more than she cared to admit, but she did not appear on command.

  Nathaniel shifted under her glare. “Aye.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  Two sailors fixing holes on a spread of canvas beyond the landing stopped their work and looked up. Nathaniel, who had clearly never confronted such a possibility before, moved his lips wordlessly.

  “Would I be thrown in the brig?” she asked.

  “I-I cannot recommend refusing.”

  She flashed a look at the sailors, who immediately returned to their work. “Tell me, Nathaniel, when will the gears be repaired?”

  “The gears, m’um?”

  “On the taffrail?”

  One of the sailors broke into a laugh.

  “Two days without grog,” Nathaniel barked in the man’s direction, and added more patiently to Joss, “I am most sorry to report that taffrails lack gears of any sort, Miss O’Malley.”

  “No gears?”

  “None. They are, well, the railings that surround the stern. Wood,” he added, unnecessarily.

  “I see.” She felt her ears begin a slow burn. “Then perhaps the captain will be good enough to explain why Mr. Roark cites the state of the gears as the reason for keeping me from making my way to the islet.”

  “I feel certain he will find that most fulfilling,” Nathaniel said, and breathed a loud sigh of relief as she clattered downstairs.

  When she opened the sickroom door, Hugh was trying in vain to pull his twenty-first-century shirt over his bound arm. Pique deferred momentarily to horror. “What in God’s name are you doing out of bed? You can barely stand!”

  “I’m fine,” he said, though sweat trickled freely down his temples. “I’m glad you’re here. I need to speak to you. ’Tis a matter of some importance.” He fought to get his shirt inside his trousers. She noticed his clothes had been brushed and pressed.

  “Get back into bed. I insist.”

  “Ah, if I had a crown for every time a woman’s said that to me. I need your help.”

  “And if I had a crown for every time you’ve said that . . . Is that why I’ve been summoned?”

  He frowned for an instant. “What? Oh. No, I read the letter you left. Why didn’t you tell me in the map room there was a map missing?”

  “I didn’t think it was relevant at the time. For the record, I do not respond to orders.”

  He stopped his awkward one-handed buttoning to give her an amused smile. “And yet, here you are.”

  Grrrrrrr. “I am not here because of your order. I do not respond to orders—yours or anyone else’s.”

  “’Tis hardly worth an unhappy word between us, I assure you, but everyone on this ship obeys my orders, you included. Should you care to test the proposition, I would be happy to oblige.”

  His steely-eyed gaze made her unwilling to continue the argument, let alone test the proposition. Even in his weakened state, he seemed entirely able to prove his thesis. She too
k a small step back. “What do you want?”

  “Tell me about the missing map.”

  The map was no longer missing. One of the voice mails she had listened to in Pittsburgh was from Marty, the map tech. He’d looked it up in the assets register. Rogan had signed the map of Manchester out three days ago with the notation “Personal.” There was no reason why he shouldn’t take it. Though it had hung on the wall of the Brand O’Malley map room, it was a Brand Industries asset, and Rogan and his investors owned the company. She herself had brought more than one particularly beautiful map to her office or condo over the years. She refused to let herself believe Rogan’s by-the-book borrowing was an issue, though added to the odd visions she’d had in the dome, it was unsettling.

  “What about it?” she said.

  “You say it has the same cartouche?”

  “I think it has the same cartouche. I don’t know. I haven’t looked at it for a while.”

  “And where do you think it is?”

  She hated that he had zeroed in on the one topic she wanted to avoid. “I think it might have been taken out on loan.”

  “By whom?” He gave her a look. “Reynolds?”

  “Yes.” She waited for a witty reply or an accusation, but he face remained emotionless.

  “To his office?”

  “No,” she said, “I don’t think so. At least, it wasn’t there yesterday.”

  “Then his house?”

  She hated to answer. “I guess. I don’t know.”

  “When did the two of you begin courting?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “August. Why?”

  “I . . . I thought there might be a connection to something else. ’Tis of no import. Can you get me in there?”

  “His house?

  Hugh nodded.

  “I can,” she said. “I live there, too.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  PITTSBURGH, PRESENT DAY

  Joss paced the familiar length of Grant Street, furious. She felt like she’d been led around like an ox with a nose ring since she met the man who trailed two steps behind her. She’d been tricked, stripped, manhandled, robbed and forced to lie. All that remained was being forced to walk the plank and doing his laundry. If this was sexual adventure, she’d stick with late nights at the office.

  “You’re unusually quiet, Joss.”

  She made an indeterminate noise and continued along the darkened sidewalk. Worse than the things he made her do, though, were the things he seemed to know, about her mother, about her father, about the maps—things he wouldn’t share. She felt like a kid, too young to be let in on the secret. It made her feel frustrated and powerless.

  He said, “I only ask because—”

  “I hope you remembered to bring your pills.”

  “I did,” he said. “And I thank you for your efforts on my behalf. Mr. Lytle says they may have saved my life.”

  “May have?” She snorted.

  He caught her with his good arm. “Joss, please. I hope you do not think—”

  She shook herself free. “I want you to answer some of my questions.”

  His face flickered. “I will answer what I can.”

  “How do you know my mother?”

  The question seemed to shock him. “I-I—”

  “Look, my mother died when I was eight. My memories of her are almost all good. Of course, I didn’t know her as an adult. I wish I had. But when you act like you know something about her, but keep me in the dark, it’s like you’re holding back something that belongs to me. Maybe you don’t understand that, but it hurts.”

  “I do understand, Joss. I told you I lost my brother when I was a boy.”

  “If that’s not a lie.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Fine. Okay. Then you know what I mean.”

  He shifted. She could see him considering. He said, “You’re asking me to tell you things I’d prefer not to tell.”

  “You’re asking me to violate a trust I have with the man I’m going to marry. I’d prefer not to do that, either.”

  He sighed. “Your mother and father were in the past.”

  She felt like she’d had the wind knocked out of her. Her parents? In the past? Were they denizens of the past, or had they visited it like she just did? And why did they go? And why didn’t they ever mention it to her? “Did they come through the same place we did?”

  “They returned that way. I don’t know how they arrived.”

  There was more. He was holding something back. Would he force her to chip this story out like bits of silver in a mine? “Why?”

  Hugh plucked at his thumb. “Your father wanted a map.”

  A map. Just like Hugh. There was more he wasn’t saying. She could see it in the hazy gray of his eyes. If he was going to treat her like a child, she was going to damn well act like one. “Why? Why did my father want a map?”

  “You’re asking me to guess his motive, Joss. I didn’t know what he was thinking.”

  “You and your bloody companions have been acting like you’ve known it since this whole mess began. Tell me. Dammit, Hugh, tell me.”

  “He wanted to change the future.”

  She felt the impact of his words like a blow. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “You can’t change the future.”

  “Of course you can,” Hugh said gently. “We do it every time we cross a street or help a friend or ignore a wrong. ’Tis the easiest thing in the world.”

  “But you’re talking about something else, something bigger.”

  “Am I? The impact of a small change grows over time. Think of a sum of money accruing interest. A ha’penny now may look very different than the fortune of a sultan in a hundred years, but that does not mean it can’t produce it.”

  Her father had wanted a map so that he could change the future. She felt dizzy thinking about it. It would certainly be in the range of her father’s ambition. But her father had never shown any interest in maps. In fact, he’d seemed to belittle her mother’s love for them.

  “I take it he found it, then?” she said. “The map, I mean.”

  Hugh nodded grimly.

  “Of course he did. He failed at very few things. And what did he change with the discovery of this map?”

  “He prevented the transfer of a small parcel of land out of his family.”

  “When?” Her brain was whirring like one of Di’s calculators.

  “Sixteen eighty-five. Does ‘Edgemore Cut’ mean anything to you?”

  She gazed at him with suspicion. “Sir James Brand, one of my forebears, lived on an estate called Edgemore. He’s the one that made us rich.”

  Hugh nodded. “Do you know how?”

  “Quite by accident, a laborer discovered a huge vein of tin on a piece of his land in England, and tin was almost as valuable as silver then, used in every sort of manufacturing.”

  “That’s right.”

  She began to sway. She could see the workings of her father’s brain, felt his objective like it was her own. “On a piece of his land whose transfer my father prevented.”

  “Aye. The map we seek redrew the border between two neighbors in East Fenwick who each sought something the other’s land offered. The neighbors were James Brand and Fiona’s grandfather, Jonathan McPherson. It was a fair trade, a good trade. It satisfied both men, and the vein was discovered on your forebear’s land after it had been traded away.”

  She felt a wave of relief that left her breathless. “Then my father didn’t stop the transfer.”

  “Your father did stop it. In the world the way it should be, the transfer took place, and for several hundred years, until your father went back to change things, Fiona’s family, the McPhersons, enjoyed the same wealth you enjoy now.”

  “No.” Joss shook her head. What he said violated every principle she had ever understood about the world. “That’s impossible to know.”

  “It’s not if you lived it. I met someone like us—like you and me, Joss—who was lost in
a different time for fifteen years. He had come from Fiona’s grandfather’s time and knew Fiona’s grandfather. When you leave you take your memories with you, just as you did when you landed on the islet with me. The first time he tried to return, he landed in 1718 and saw that everything had changed for the McPhersons. The McPhersons didn’t know it, but he did. The second time he tried to return, he landed in 1706 and told Fiona what he knew.”

  “But that was a long, long time ago.”

  “Not for Fiona. Not for her grandfather. He’s not been knighted like your forebear, though the tin was found on land that was rightfully his. He rots in prison. Right now. In the time we traveled to. When I sail back to England, Fiona will go once again to the magistrate to beg for his release. He is very ill, Joss. And he will die there if we can’t help. He will die there without having seen his family once in the last ten years.”

  “But the map . . .”

  “If we find it, the map, along with the deed of intent that we already have, can be filed. It should have been filed in 1685, the year the transfer was intended to have—and did once—take place. But the best we can do is file it in the year that exists when we reach the islet, the year 1706. It must be accepted by the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, a man named Sir William Cowper. I think your mother’s maps may hold a clue. None of the three is the map of East Fenwick we seek, but together they may tell us something about where to look.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Two reasons. The first is something your mother told me.”

  Her jaw dropped. “You knew my mother?”

  “I did, Joss. She told me a tale about a woman who made maps.”

  It was more than she could believe. That story was the reason she’d held on to her virginity until now, though she’d never told anyone except Di and Rogan. The girl who lived like a princess waited for the knight who saved her. And the dark, handsome man who sought the map so he could find the gold—he was the sort of man from whom the girl had to guard herself against.