A Twist in Time dvtt-3

by Susan Squires

  “Wow. You hardly had time to . . . uh . . . get to know each other.”

  This guy was quaint. Most people these days had “gotten to know each other” in the biblical sense long before their wedding night. She gave a pronounced sigh, as though what he said was completely true. “My uncle lent us his boat as a honeymoon hideaway until Galen feels better. Flew us up here and everything. It was really nice of him.”

  “Bet you’re making up for lost time now.”

  The blush rose again. It’s okay. Goes with the story, she told herself. “Well, no, not yet.”

  The guy laughed as he ladled olives into a plastic container. “But soon. Your husband looked like he was recovering fast when I saw him today.”

  “You . . . ?” She feigned ignorance.

  “I went down to welcome you. Saw your lights last night. I . . . I guess I surprised him.”

  “Uh-oh. I hope he didn’t frighten you with that Japanese sword of his.”

  “Not . . . not really.” The guy looked away and then bustled over to the cash register.

  “Oh, I am so sorry. He’s really very sweet.”

  “I’d hate to see him riled up, I’ll say that.” The register spit out a receipt.

  Lucy pulled out a twenty, smiling. Sixteen dollars for some olives and goat cheese. Sheesh. Then she sobered. “I hope we can get a little peace and quiet up here. If people start dropping by . . . It’s just that Galen not speaking the language and being a little protective of me, well, he . . . might react badly and then there’d be trouble.”

  “Normally, I’d say he looks fierce enough to keep anybody away. But believe me, those crazies here all winter are tough nuts themselves.” He counted out her change. “Nope. The way to keep them away is to let them see you canoodling.”

  Canoodling? Who said that? Still, it was just what she’d hoped. But wait. How to explain Galen’s fierce looks? “He’s not really fierce, you know. Well, except about me. He’s a little shaggy right now. Wanted to have a traditional wedding with all of us dressed like . . . like Druids.” Hope the guy is ignorant enough not to realize that Druids were Celt, not Germanic. “He won’t be quite so intimidating when we get him shaved and those braids out of his hair.”

  The clerk just laughed. “Lady, if you think that is going to make him look less scary . . .”

  “If you only knew how kind he is,” she said as though sharing a secret.

  “Don’t worry, miss. I’ll let everyone know you’re newlyweds. The last thing any of those crazies holed up on their boats want is to put up with some cooing turtledoves.”

  She gave him one more smile she hoped looked innocent. “Thanks.”

  As she ran to her car, it began to pour.

  Galen peered out the thin horizontal port holes into the rain. He should have forbidden her to leave. Why go when she had just returned? Where had she gone? Had she left him forever?

  Or she might betray their location to her lover and his warriors, either willfully, because she had a change of heart about disobeying her man, or in innocence. Who would not recognize that red hair? Even now it was all he could do to stand and watch for her. He was dependent on her. She brought food and clothing when it was a man’s place to provide for his woman. . . .

  Of course, she wasn’t his woman. She was just a woman. Any woman. Any woman who was a sorceress in a time of magic. When he bedded her she would belong to him, at least until he left for his own time. He must bed her soon in order to bind her to him. His thoughts were scattered by fatigue. He wanted to return to his soft bed. But he held himself on watch for her.

  There! She scurried down the little dock through the pouring rain, her coat pulled over her head. He went to stand at the bottom of the ladder. Her hasty steps thudded across the deck. The hatch above him opened, letting in spray and wind. She came down the ladder, dripping and breathless, and turned to latch the hatch.

  “Oh, my, but it is wet out there,” she panted. When she turned at the bottom of the ladder, she was very close to him. She was so tiny, so delicate. She wore small gold rings pierced through her ears as though she came from the lands east of the Danube River. Her head came only to his chest. Her eyes were that clear green again. Her face was sprinkled with drops of rain. The red wisps, damp and dark, clung to her cheeks, her forehead. She had a dusting of freckles across her fine, pale skin. He felt a pull in his loins in spite of his exhaustion. It would not be a trial to bed her. She looked up at him and stilled. He imagined her naked body writhing under him, thrusting up to meet him as he plunged inside her. Did she feel that same tightness in her woman’s core? Her eyes grew big.

  “Hwer wert thu?” he growled, not bothering with Latin.

  She pulled back. But she understood him. “I saw your little man.” She pushed past him. “You frightened him.” She caught herself and repeated in her halting and badly pronounced Latin. “He must not tell all of a fierce Viking.”

  “Hwæt spekest thu to him?” Galen couldn’t seem to muster Latin. But she understood.

  She blushed. “That we were new wed. He will tell others. No one will come here.”

  Galen caught himself imagining the first night after plighting their troth. Would she blush all over her milk white body? Would she be shy and try to cover herself, even though she routinely flaunted her body in skimpy clothing? Mayhaps, at least until he made her moan when he suckled her breast.

  Where was his mind? He set his jaw. She had taken care of him yet again by lying to the soft man. That made Galen angry. She should have left it to him to confront the soft man.

  “Go to the bed. You are sick.”

  He wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled for giving him orders, for being right, for his dependence on her, for being so sure of herself. He wanted to make her lie that she belonged to him into a truth. But as he glared at her his vision swam. He felt his knees wobble.

  “Don’t you dare collapse,” she muttered. He didn’t understand. But he understood the blackness in his field of vision. She grabbed his arm and half-hauled him, staggering, through the passageway until he collapsed upon the bed on his good side. She pulled the bedding out from under him, lifted his legs, and covered him. He lay gasping like a hooked fish. She brought him more of her vile tablets. He wanted to sweep away her tablets and her flagon of water, along with the concerned look on her face. But only his wounded shoulder was outside the blankets, and almost any movement made pain wash over him. He could do nothing as she sat beside him and rolled him gently to his back.

  “Leave me, woman,” he ordered, mustering Latin to be sure she obeyed. But she didn’t. She lifted him and presented the pills. All fight went out of him. What choice did he have but to obey her? Disgusted with himself, he took the tablets (there were many this time) and gulped water from the flagon she held to his lips. He could not even turn away from her.

  Chapter 10

  The man was certifiable. Why did he fight her even when he was ashen and wavering on his feet? She stood, glaring down at him. He turned his head away. Just great.

  Well, she had other things to do.

  Lucy left him in the dim cabin. The Camelot rocked more than usual in the water. Rain beat down in waves across the deck above. Rivulets obscured the windows. A worry intruded to crease her brows. The bandages on both his shoulder and his thigh were pink and yellow and wet again. Was that a bad sign? He’d certainly looked ill.

  She sheathed his sword and laid it on the sofa. It wouldn’t do any good to hide it from him. He’d find it if he had to tear the boat apart. Was he dangerous? Maybe when he got his strength back. He’d been angry with her for some reason just now. The man was incomprehensible. She rummaged in her shoulder bag under Leonardo’s book and pulled out the pepper spray. Too big for her jeans pocket. In the end, she put it in the spice rack bolted to the galley cupboards, where it was accessible from the table or the galley itself. She’d have to remember to take the spray with her when she changed bandages or used the head.

 
Leonardo’s book.

  She flipped on a cabin light. The day was dim. She went to her shoulder bag and pulled the book out. The leather with its tooled image of angels ascending to heaven gleamed in the light of the lamp swinging over the table. That book had exerted a power over her for months and now . . .

  Now, nothing. It was just a marvelous book, a precious historical object written in the hand of a great man long dead. But she hadn’t thought about it since she’d shown it to Jake night before last. When had she ever, in the time she’d owned it, not thought about it for even an hour? It had owned her more than she owned it.

  She felt like a jilted lover. Whatever had been between them, her and the book, was over, a memory of passion that seemed incomprehensible, even amusing, now that she’d moved on.

  Or it had moved on.

  What a thing to think! She must be losing it. She put the book in a cupboard above the sofa. That was the first time Leonardo’s book had been out of her shoulder bag, except when she handled it, in several months. There was a time when she would have felt anxious. But not now. Now she felt . . . right. Things were as they should be. How odd. The feeling this morning at Target of not being panicked about anything had grown even more intense.

  She snorted and closed the cupboard. Who was she kidding? She was hiding out with a probably murderous Viking from her own friend. She’d probably changed history. And some CIA type was maybe after her. Things were way not right.

  She glanced at her watch. Nearly two. She had some time before she needed to start dinner. She’d always been chief cook and bottle washer for her father when they sailed up the coast each summer to cruise among the San Juan Islands off the Washington coast. You could cook a decent meal in tight quarters if you set your mind to it. Funny. Her father had tried to make her into a physicist, but he was most content to let her do the woman’s work on their trips. Can’t have it both ways, Daddy. She sighed. The experience would stand her in good stead now, though. Not that the stupid Viking would appreciate her efforts. She grabbed the newspaper, sat at the table, and flipped it open. No mention of the time machine or a search for her and/or her Viking. Good.

  Wait. . . . An article in the metro section said San Francisco General was doing some construction on the parking structure.

  That couldn’t be coincidence. Her mind churned. Of course. They’d have to dismantle either the machine or the parking structure to get it out. She read the article carefully, only a couple of column inches. It said only that the residents nearby could expect construction between the hours of 7:00 A.M. and 9:00 P.M., with a quote from the hospital administrator apologizing for a few days of noise and dust. Why had something like this even made the paper? Maybe to keep people from complaining to city hall or loitering. The world beyond Jake’s boat was taking its own direction. That made her heart thump. Brad and Casey wanted the machine enough to dismantle a parking garage. They must know that without the diamond they could never make the machine work. They would pursue her to the ends of the earth.

  She thought wildly of just mailing Brad the diamond and the book.

  But that thought nearly made her ill, it felt so wrong. Jake was right. Casey would use the machine for his own purposes, and those were guaranteed not to be in the best interests of the world at large.

  They were in a Mexican standoff. If Brad and Casey couldn’t find her and her Viking, she and Galen couldn’t get back to the machine to return him to his time, either. To do that, they had to have a working machine, and that meant giving Casey all he would need to use it. It was a trap, a horrible trap, and she couldn’t see any way out of it.

  Okay, she told herself. Just calm down. There’s nothing you can do right now. Just take it one day at a time. She thought back to that time in Jake’s apartment when she’d looked into Galen’s eyes and known for sure that all they needed was time for him to heal. She wished she had that sureness now.

  Speaking of healing, she pulled out the book she’d bought on nursing. The stupid Viking wouldn’t appreciate her taking care of his wounds, either. But Jake’s blithe instructions to change his bandages and remove his stitches when they were ready didn’t provide anywhere near enough detail. Was his wound infected? When exactly should she try to take the stitches out? She read through the whole section on the care of wounds, then read it again.

  Well. Interesting. Seepage was normal. You bandaged the wounds primarily to absorb draining fluid. Once the wounds had stopped draining there was some controversy over whether you should bandage them at all. The only other reasons for bandages were to reassure the patient and keep the stitches from catching on clothes. In fact, after her second reading, she kind of came down on the side of those who said you shouldn’t bandage at all after the wounds stopped seeping if you could get away without it. The wounds healed better and were easier to keep clean. It was okay to get wounds wet, once they were sealed if you patted them dry, but not the dressings, because they held moisture and collected germs. Pulling the bandages off to disinfect the area just pulled at the stitches. And the book said you should take the stitches out in five to seven days, not the ten she’d thought. At least she still had some time. And she had a plan.

  She put away the book and bustled around the kitchen, marinating some whole snapper, peeling asparagus. Would he know asparagus? There was so much she didn’t know about life in tenth-century England. She found a pan large enough to fry the snapper. Fresh bread and butter—he’d be used to those for sure.

  A couple of hours later she whirled to find him behind her. For a big guy, he moved silently.

  “Stinks good,” he said “Ic am hungry.” At least that’s what it sounded like.

  She nodded to the sofa. “Sit. We eat soon,” she responded in English.

  He nodded. Had he understood that? “After we eat, you will teach me your Englisc,” he said, reverting to Latin.

  She nodded. The sooner the better. Latin was getting to be a real strain.

  The woman could cook. The fish was delicious and the vegetable, too, whatever it was. The bread was sour, but he liked it. She said it wasn’t spoiled. It was supposed to be that way. And when he had insisted on mead instead of water, she had reluctantly produced beer in a glass bottle. Not mead. Not beer as rich or flavorful as he was used to, but better than nothing. She would allow him only one, though. It had something to do with the tablets that kept away pain.

  He sat now and watched her cleaning up. He had been shocked this afternoon that she wore breeches that showed the rounded curve of her buttocks, but at least her legs were covered. Her torso was covered, too, but so tightly that every swell was clearly visible—a contrast to her tiny waist. Did women always dress to provoke a man in this time? And the shirt clearly showed the cleft of her generous breasts. This Brad was a lucky man.

  She did not seem to long for her lover to come to her. She was, in fact, hiding from him with the very man he wanted to imprison. That meant she did not value him. Good. This Brad was not man enough to bind her to him. Galen could make her forget him. He would show her what belonging to a man could mean.

  When she was finished, she got some large parchment from a cupboard aft and laid it out on the table. She patted the padded bench beside her. It was almost a command.

  But it was easy for him to obey her in this small thing. She had something he wanted. He went and sat. She was very close. He could smell the soap she used on her hair and feel her heat. He watched as her nipples peaked beneath her thin, tight shirt. She held a strange wooden stick that appeared to have a charcoal center, for its tip left marks upon the parchment. She drew a line down the center before turning to him.

  “You speak Danish and English very well,” she said slowly, in Englisc.

  He got most of that. “Min moder is Englisc,” he said, also slowly. “Min fæder, Danir.”

  “Do you read?”

  “Ic raede and wrte.” He was proud of that. He was a rarity, if not in the way his mother had wanted, at least in some things.


  “Good.” Here Lucy pointed. “Write your words here and I write my words there.” She pointed to each side of the parchment

  He nodded. “Werds. We beginnen.”

  She was so excited she nearly let him work at it too long. She sat back when she noticed the lines of strain around his mouth and eyes. “Enough. You are tired.” He didn’t understand that. “You work too hard.”

  “I wyrce heard.” He wrote the words on his side of the makeshift ledger and gestured to her to do the same with her version. They had been through four pieces of chart paper, both sides. He already understood that modern English had simpler verb forms and he got the fact that the sentence order dictated whether the noun was a subject or object—you didn’t need a different word ending. He had the pronouns down cold and could name most everything in the boat. She’d gotten through conjugating the basic verbs, “to be,” “have,” “do,” “speak,” “know,” a few others.

  Galen was really intelligent, maybe brilliant. She was nothing short of amazed.

  “You are very good at this.”

  His smile could only be called smug. “I learn swift.”

  “Swiftly.”

  “Swiftly,” he repeated, frowning in annoyance. She had seen that several times tonight. He was smart but also driven. He demanded more of himself than anyone had a right to expect.

  They resorted to Latin sometimes, but it wouldn’t be long before they could stick pretty much to English. What a relief that would be! There had been some surprises in how he spelled the words. His “cn” was like modern “kn” sounds. “G” sounded like her “y” sometimes. “Wh” sounds were spelled “hw” in his time. And there were two letters to indicate the “th” sound that didn’t exist at all anymore. But on the whole, it was starting to make sense to her, too.