by Bess McBride
He made soothing noises as he moved toward the carriage. He lifted her inside the carriage and called out his address to the driver before joining her.
Matthew ignored all notions of propriety and gathered Sara into his arms, pulling her onto his lap. She shuddered with cold, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her.
“It is all right,” he whispered. “Everything will be all right now. We will get you home and warmed up.”
“What will your parents say when they find out I’ve been in jail...again?”
“Please do not worry about that, Sara.”
“But I do,” she cried.
“Yes, I know,” he said in a soothing voice.
“And I worry about what you think of me. I must stink.”
“Not to me,” he said, breathing in the scent of her hair. “Not to me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said in a hoarse voice, burying her face in his neck. “I’m sorry to be so much trouble.”
“Do not be. You are not trouble. These things just seem to happen to you. I cannot bear to hear your apologies for the rest of our lives.”
She stilled, and he held her even more tightly.
“The rest of our lives?”
“Yes, the rest of our lives. I love you. I still know so little about you, but I know I cannot bear to lose you. Will you marry me, Sara Reed?”
She stiffened, but he would not loosen his hold on her. Her body was still cold, and she continued to shiver.
“You’re right,” she whispered near his ear. “You don’t know a lot about me, and you should before you decide you love me and want to spend the rest of your life with me.”
He turned and kissed her. Her lips, cold at first, warmed under his. He lifted his head and stared into her tear-soaked eyes.
“You will tell me someday. But until then, know that nothing you can say will change my love for you. You have brought chaos and uncertainty and joy into my staid life. I would not have it any other way.”
“What about Emily?”
“I cannot marry Emily. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Matthew,” Sara whispered as she pressed her lips to his. “I feel like I’ve fallen in time to fall in love with you.”
Matthew considered her cryptic words for a moment before succumbing to the sweetness of her kiss. He would ask her the meaning another day, but not this day.
Epilogue
Sara heard the toot of a car horn, and she turned from watching the kids play to look out the window. Matthew pulled up in front of the house and jumped out of the car. His pride and joy, the topless bright-red 1903 Packard Model F could only be driven on pleasant days, and this was one of them.
He had called on the telephone to say that he was leaving work early and taking them for a ride. Sara still struggled to understand the mechanics of the phone, but she managed.
She turned as he entered the drawing room, or what she referred to as the living room. Matthew no longer found her expressions strange, and he valued her input on new and modern inventions.
Rather than entrap Matthew into marriage without full knowledge of her origins, Sara had described—soon after he had rescued her from her second jail stay—her cryptic statement regarding falling through time.
At first, she worried that he thought her slightly crazy...or himself. He had shaken his head and stared at her as if he’d never seen her before. She had waited and watched the emotions cross his face—confusion, disbelief, more confusion, thoughtfulness, love and finally a tentative form of acceptance.
“I am not saying that I disbelieve you, my love, because I trust you implicitly, but you can appreciate how hard your story is to comprehend.”
She had nodded and said nothing, waiting for him to process the concept of her travel through time.
“It would explain so many of the things that I could not understand about you, the secrets I felt you withheld.”
She nodded again, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.
“Your odd appearance in my compartment, your long johns, your unfamiliarity with customs, food and even language. I knew that residency in Spokane could not account for such a vast difference in experience.”
She grimaced with embarrassment and nodded.
“I know. Poor Spokane. Some of the stuff I attributed to that city was ridiculous.”
He shook his head. “You were desperate to give me answers to my incessant questions.”
“Not incessant.”
“They must have seemed so. You probably felt trapped at times, wishing yourself well away from my curiosity.” His cheeks bronzed, and she lifted a hand and caressed the side of his face.
“No, Matthew, never from you. I never wished myself away from you.”
He pulled her hand to his mouth and kissed the palm. Her heart pounded as it always did when Matthew kissed her.
“I loved you,” Sara said. “I think I fell in love with you almost as soon as I met you. I didn’t want to frighten you with my story, to see you turn away from me.”
“I could never turn away from you,” Matthew said. “It was not possible then, and it is not possible now. No matter where you come from, you are the love of my life.”
A lump formed in Sara’s throat. “I hope we have lots of children,” she said. A flush spread to her cheeks.
“A large family,” he agreed. “And I shall be there as their father, and you their mother.”
He knew her well. In some strange way, he had always known her. Maybe she had been born in the wrong time. Maybe time had corrected an error and sent her back to fall in love.
Now, three years later, they had two children and were on their way to a third. Matthew was a wonderful, caring, loving father, and she couldn’t have been happier.
Emily had surprised them all and fallen madly in love with the Greenwoods’ young Irish nephew, whom she met at her parents’ dinner and dance the evening Sara had disappeared. Following their swift wedding, Emily had moved away to her new husband’s estate in Ireland, and she wrote that she had two children and was very, very happy.
Mrs. Webster had encountered Mrs. Feeney at the Williamses’ dinner and dance, and she had given that poor woman a verbal lashing when she heard Mrs. Feeney gossiping about Sara. Mrs. Feeney, faced with the wrath of a leading matron of society, soon changed her tune and begged Mrs. Webster’s forgiveness. She returned to Kalispell shortly thereafter, and they had not heard of or from her since.
Matthew entered the house and pulled Sara into his arms, humming to a tune as he twirled her around in a circle, to the children’s delight and handclaps. Having made her a promise a long time ago that he would dance with her, he never failed to take her into his arms— to make up for the night they should have first danced together, the night she disappeared for the last time.
And she fell in love with him all over again.
Books by Bess McBride
Time Travel Romance
Caving in to You
(Book One of the Love in the Old West series)
A Home in Your Heart
(Book Two of the Love in the Old West series)
Forever Beside You in Time
Moonlight Wishes in Time
(Book One of the Moonlight Wishes in Time series)
Under an English Moon
(Book Two of the Moonlight Wishes in Time series)
Following You Through Time
(Book Three of the Moonlight Wishes in Time series)
A Train Through Time
(Book One of the Train Through Time series)
Together Forever in Time
(Book Two of the Train Through Time series)
A Smile in Time
(Book Three of the Train Through Time series)
Finding You in Time
(Book Four of the Train Through Time series)
Train Through Time Series Boxed Set
(Books 1-3)
Across the Winds of Time
Love of My Heart
Short cozy
mystery stories by Minnie Crockwell
Will Travel for Trouble Series
Trouble at Happy Trails (Book 1)
Trouble at Sunny Lake (Book 2)
Trouble at Glacier (Book 3)
Trouble at Hungry Horse (Book 4)
About the Author
I began my first fiction-writing attempt when I was fourteen when I shut myself up in my bedroom one summer and obsessively worked on a time travel/pirate novel set in the beloved Caribbean of my youth. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to hammer it out on a manual typewriter (oh yeah, I’m that old) before it was time to go back to school. The draft of that novel has long since disappeared, but the story still simmers within, and I will finish it one day soon.
I was born in Aruba to American parents and lived in Venezuela until my family returned to the United States when I was twelve. I couldn’t fight the global travel bug, and I joined the U.S. Air Force at eighteen to “see the world.” After twenty-one wonderful and fulfilling years traveling the world and the birth of one beautiful daughter, I pursued my dream of finally getting a college education. With a license in mental health therapy, I worked with veterans. I continue to travel, my first love, and almost all of my books involve travel.
Please visit my website at www.BessMcBride.com. You may also sign up for my newsletter on my web site.
Many of you know I also write a series of short cozy mysteries under the pen name of Minnie Crockwell. Feel free to stop by my web site and learn more about the series at http://www.minniecrockwell.com/books.html
