And still she talked of these things as if they were of little value, as if she cared not if she returned to her own time and place.
Not so the man she'd traveled through time with. Zane Grey Rutledge had no use for Andrew's world. He was a man of his own time and Andrew knew Zane would move heaven and earth to return there again with Emilie, to the world where they belonged.
And there was the rub.
To Andrew's everlasting dismay, Emilie had traveled backward through time with the man she'd once been married to. Andrew had watched helplessly as the couple had found their way back to each other, wishing with his entire being that he could be the man she loved. That she could somehow make him whole again in a way that neither rum nor revolution could accomplish.
But it wasn't to be. Emilie and Zane belonged together. In truth Andrew had known it from the start, known it deep in the part of his heart that had died with his wife and child so many years ago. A man might say Emilie and Zane were bound by the past they shared, the world they'd left behind, but Andrew believed a force more powerful than commonality linked their souls together.
Had it been that way with his Elspeth? Andrew could not remember. Late at night, in those moments before sleep claimed him, he saw her beloved face, heard the sound of her voice, felt the satin of her skin beneath his hand, but what she had thought and wished for and needed still danced somewhere beyond his ken.
"Aye," he muttered, wishing for rum or whiskey to blunt the edges of his pain. He had made so many mistakes, directed so little attention to matters of true importance that now he was doomed to go to sleep each night and wake up each morning in a world that held nothing for him but the shadows of what could have been.
His wife and child were dead and buried. The woman who'd captured his imagination loved another man. Not even the battle for independence that raged all around him was enough to ignite the fires of passion inside his cold and weary heart. It seemed he existed to do naught but take up space, counting down the days until he breathed his last.
Mayhap that was his destiny, he thought as he rose to his feet and walked to the edge of the outcropping of rocks that overlooked the water. To live alone there on the rugged island with only his own despair for company, as useless as the lighthouse was without a flame burning from the tower windows to guide the way for other lost and lonely souls.
If the Almighty had other plans for him, Andrew couldn't fathom what they might be.
He stood there at the edge of land for a long time, scanning the horizon for a sign, something - anything - that would show him the wrongness of his thinking, prove to him that there was still a purpose to his existence. But he saw nothing, save an odd cloud cover drifting in from the Atlantic, vertical bands in shades of pewter that moved steadily toward him, casting shadows across the harbor and whipping the still waters into a froth.
The hairs on the back of his neck rose.
"'Tis naught but a storm gathering force," he said into the wind over the mournful call of the gulls. The Jersey coast was known for the unpredictability of its weather. A fortnight ago he'd heard a sailor at the Plumed Rooster weave a tail of a towering waterspout that had toppled his frigate and drowned half his crew. Surely a band of grey clouds was no cause for alarm.
Still the sight tugged hard at his memory, as if it held some significance he had forgotten. Enough, he thought, turning away. He had felt the need to see the lighthouse again and he had done so. Surely there was no reason for him to linger, not with a storm threatening. He would row back to the mainland, mount his horse, then reach Princeton before nightfall. Rebekah, the good wife of Josiah Blakelee, would provide a roof over his head and food for his rumbling belly. Tomorrow morning he would see Emilie and Zane, tell them about this foolish trip to the lighthouse, and--
A spot of crimson caught his eye. He narrowed his eyes, focusing in on the billowy fabric floating atop the choppy waters.
...a big red balloon, Andrew...that's how it happened....
Beads of sweat formed at his temples and across his forehead. He could hear Emilie's voice as clearly as he had on that first day.
Where is that red balloon, Mistress Emilie? he had asked, disbelief dripping from every syllable. Where is the basket?
I don't know, she had answered him simply. We crashed into the water. I assume all was lost.
He looked again but this time he saw nothing but the choppy water. Had the scrap of crimson been his imagination playing tricks upon his addled brain?
"No," he said aloud, gaining strength from the sound of his own voice. "'Tis there. It exists."
The cloud cover was settling itself around the island, obscuring the top of the lighthouse. A damp wind, too chilly for late August, stung his face with salt as a sense of destiny began to build inside his chest.
And the sight of Emilie and Rutledge rowing toward the island from the mainland made his heart soar.
A few minutes later Emilie embraced him. "Andrew! What--?" Her face was taut with anxiety. "How--?"
"I was on my way to the Blakelees'," he said.
"We were on our way to Philadelphia," said Zane.
Andrew and Rutledge clasped hands in the awkward way of men who shared more than either would admit.
"The cloud cover," Andrew said, pointing. "It seems most familiar to me but I cannot say why."
"Oh God...." Emilie's face went pale and she sagged against Rutledge. "Please not now--"
"Why exactly are you here?" Rutledge asked him.
Suddenly he knew beyond doubt. "Because there is no other place for me in this world."
"Let's get out of here," Emilie said, her voice holding a touch of panic. "We can row back to the mainland before the storm hits." She started for the rowboats but Rutledge grabbed her by the wrist.
"Look," he said, pointing beyond the lighthouse.
Andrew turned slowly. His breath caught sharply in his throat as he saw the magnificent sight before him. A large basket danced lightly across the rocks, suspended by ropes attached to a crimson balloon so large it dwarfed even the lighthouse.
"Sweet God in heaven," he whispered in awe. Despite its size the vessel seemed so fragile, so insubstantial, that he wondered how it was it had survived such an amazing journey.
Rutledge swept Emilie into his arms. For the first time Andrew felt not the smallest pang of envy. She belonged to Rutledge and she always would. "This is our chance, Em!" Rutledge spun her around. "You said it wouldn't happen but it did. This is our chance to go back home where we belong."
Andrew heard the squeak of rope against wicker. "It's beginning to rise!"
Emilie pulled away from Rutledge. "This can't be," she murmured. "You just don't understand."
"We don't belong here, Em," Rutledge pleaded. "Let's--"
"Zane--" Her voice broke. "I can't...there are reasons I--" She tossed her embroidered purse to Zane but it fell to the ground at her husband's feet. Gathering up her skirts, she ran toward the lighthouse.
"Stay or go, man!" Andrew bellowed as the winds howled around them. That glittering world they had described was calling to him. "The chance may ne'er come again."
"You're right, McVie." Suddenly Zane smiled, a smile that could mean but one thing. He swept up Emilie's purse and its contents then tossed it to Andrew. "Good luck."
With that Rutledge turned and went to join his wife.
The basket shuddered then rose higher. Andrew had never imagined braving the mysteries of time without his friends from the 20th century but there was no hope for it. He would not turn back now. He was sick unto death of struggle. The happiness others took for granted was not part of the Almighty's plan for him but this grand adventure was and he'd be more than a fool to let this opportunity slip through his fingers. In the glittering world Zane and Emilie described, he could lose himself in the wonder of it all and maybe - just maybe - forget that there'd been a time when he'd wanted more.
He tucked Emilie's fabric purse into the cuff of his leather boot.
"Stay or go," he said again. If only someone could prove that his existence here mattered, that one small thing he said or did lived on. But he was asking for the impossible. Hadn't Emilie said his name vanished from the history books, never to reappear?
Maybe the reason he vanished from the history books was because he vanished from the 18th century entirely. Maybe he had accomplished all he was meant to accomplish in this world and it was time to seek newer worlds to conquer.
And maybe he was crazy as a mad dog baying at the full moon. Did any of it matter a whit in the greater scheme of things? When you'd already lost everything, not even death seemed too much to risk.
The world Andrew McVie had known since birth no longer seemed familiar. This was the reason he'd been drawn to this place, at this moment in time. Moments ago his future had seemed as bleak as the skies overhead. Now, in the blink of an eye, he found himself filled with hope for the first time in years. His life here was over and his new life in the future was about to begin. He prayed God there would be a place for him when he got there.
His dreams were of other times, and to deny hose dreams would be to consign himself to an early grave and so he climbed into the basket just before it floated free of the earth's shackles and headed into the unknown.
The last thing he saw as the balloon rose up into the clouds was Emilie and Zane silhouetted in the window.
They were waving goodbye.
Chapter One
Somewhere over New Jersey
"Yo, man! Lookin' good!" The dark-haired wench in the basket of the green dragon balloon waved at Andrew as she drifted by.
Andrew wasn't certain what manner of address she used, but he nodded politely and lifted his hand to salute in kind.
Was that the sixth person to address him thus or the hundredth? He no longer remembered. Indeed it seemed he had scarcely ascended above the clouds before he was joined by balloons in the shapes of houses and half-moons and oddities for which he had no name. And to make matters even more perplexing, each balloon held a basket and each basket held a passenger bound for the same adventure.
Emilie and Zane might believe they had lived a miracle, but they were wrong. Traveling through time was as commonplace as riding the Post Road between Trenton and Princeton. They had said what happened to them was an act of fate, a once in a lifetime occurrence, but the evidence to the contrary was there right in front of his very eyes.
A balloon in the shape of an elongated dog drifted close. A man and woman waved to him from the bright yellow basket. "Party at the Forbes mansion at 9," the woman called out. "Champagne supper."
The man cupped his hands around his mouth. "Great costume! I have one like it at home."
No one had ever seen fit to comment upon his attire before. Andrew glanced down at his faded brown breeches and tobacco-colored waistcoat and found it to be a most ordinary outfit.
"What century would ye be from?" he called out but the flames beneath their balloon roared, and with it the basket rose up and away. They had the look of the future about them, but for all Andrew knew they were farmers from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
All things seemed possible.
He peered over the side but the clouds obscured his view of the ground below. Save for one heart-stopping view of the lighthouse growing smaller beneath him, he had seen naught but clouds and more clouds. And now to discover that he did not make the journey alone - it was enough to make him wonder if he would find himself back at the point from which he had begun, an hour older and much wiser.
A huge striped balloon of green and white crossed his path but the occupants were too engrossed in conversation to pay him any heed. It would appear he was the only one on God's earth who found it unusual to sail above the clouds with nothing but the wind beneath him.
He wondered how it was that he would be returned to the ground below. Zane had suffered a broken arm when he and Emilie came down from the sky. All that stood between Andrew and a painful death was the fragile basket that shuddered beneath him.
The magic fire propelling the balloon sputtered, hissed, then finally died. Andrew, heart thundering inside his chest, gripped the edge of the basket as it began to drop. As a child he'd imagined clouds to be soft pillows of down suspended in the air but that was far from the truth. Each cloud hid an unpleasant surprise, rocking the basket to and fro, rattling him to his bones. He considered the wisdom of leaping to the ground but he had no idea how far away the ground might be or how many broken limbs such a feat might entail.
Gritting his teeth, he prepared to find out.
#
Shannon Whitney believed in three absolutes: the necessity for clean air, clean water, and the Sunday New York Times. Or, more specifically, the crossword puzzle from hell that was tucked away in the magazine section each week and whose sole purpose was to drive sane people to madness.
Of course, there were those who would say doing the puzzle in ink was the first sign of incipient lunacy and Shannon was among them. Still that didn't stop her from uncapping her favorite pen every Sunday morning and spending more time than she would care to admit wrestling with six-letter words for crustaceans and eight-letter words for undergarments worn by 17th century courtesans.
"Pantaloons...too long," she muttered, gnawing on the cap of her Bic. "Bloomers...too practical." She tossed the pen across the backyard and watched as it skittered along the flagstone path and rolled toward the pool. What was the point to trying to exercise her intellect when she could scarcely hear herself think over the rumble of propane tanks overhead?
Every year members of the blasted Central New Jersey Hot Air Enthusiasts club pleaded with her to allow them to use her land for their festival and every year she refused. "We won't hurt a thing," their president promised. "You have our word we'll leave your land exactly as we found it."
That, of course, wasn't the point but she didn't expect a man who spent the better part of his life flying around in a hot-air balloon to understand.
That was one of the many things wrong with the rich, she thought. The more money a man had at his disposal, the more ridiculous his toys. And what could be more ridiculous than flying over central New Jersey in a wicker basket suspended from a balloon filled with nothing but hot air.
She'd grown up in a world of privilege where polo ponies and private tennis courts were as common as guest rooms and finished basements, where grown men who should know better bet fortunes on the outcome of a chukker or the spin of a roulette wheel. People said that money couldn't buy happiness but Shannon wasn't convinced. Delinquent mortgages, bankrupt business, parents unable to pay their children's medical bills - money could do a lot more than gather interest in a Swiss bank account.
She tilted her head and listened as the rumble came closer. Whether or not the members of the club understood her reasons, she'd made her stand perfectly clear. She valued her privacy and wasn't about to compromise her stand on the issue just because some idiots liked to take to the air like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. If the Wizard could give them brains, she might re-think the position but until then her land was off limits.
#
Disappointment clogged Andrew's senses as he brushed dirt and twigs from his hair and clothing. The adventure of a lifetime had turned out to be another folly in a lifetime of abundant folly.
There was nothing exciting about falling through the branches of a silver maple tree and landing with a thud on the ground. In truth he was fortunate to have escaped with his limbs intact but he took little consolation from that fact.
When the clouds had finally given way he'd been granted a clear view of the Raritan River and of a landscape most familiar to him, even from this peculiar vantage point. He sailed over roof of a house identical in form and size to the houses he'd left behind. The only unusual sight was the rectangular pond behind the dwelling. He'd heard sailors speak of the turquoise waters of the Caribbean but he had never thought to encounter such a thing.
He wasn't in
the glittering world of the future Emilie and Zane had beguiled him with. He wasn't even in another colony. He was still in New Jersey, perhaps no more than a few miles from where his journey had begun.
The basket had come to rest upside down in a thicket while the deflated balloon dangled from the branches of a towering silver maple. There was no sign of the contraption that fired the mechanism that kept the balloon aloft. Whatever it was, it had been lost in the plummet to earth.
"'Tis of no consequence," he said, heading for the footpath that led to the house. His chance to leap forward through the centuries had passed him by. He tried to tell himself it was not meant to be but the words held cold comfort.
He would inquire of his whereabouts, partake of a cool cup of water, then be on his way. If he put a good foot under him, he might be able to reach the lighthouse before nightfall. He had much he wished to discuss with Emilie and Zane.
There was an odd smell to the air, he noted as he made his way along the path. The wet rich smell of rotting leaves and earth mingled with something heavy and sharp, something he'd never smelled before. Smoke? The tang of pine teased his nostrils but not the sting of burning wood. This was something different, something that made his eyes feel scratchy and his throat ache.
He glanced up through the canopy of trees. Indeed the sky held a yellowish tinge that was unfamiliar to him. He was not a man who spent time contemplating the wonders of the natural world yet even he could see that all was not as he knew it should be.
The balloons, he thought. Fires had propelled them into the air. Surely those fires were responsible for the strange yellow haze that blanketed the sky. He felt a surge of relief that a logical answer could be found to explain the occurrence.
Somewhere in Time (The Crosse Harbor Time Travel Trilogy) Page 22
