Wartime priorities were quickly reducing beautiful Worthington to a large working farm.
After dinner Mrs. Rolfe retired to her bedroom, exhausted from more duties than she’d taken on in years while Maudie chose to stay in the kitchen with mother and daughter as they cleaned up.
Feeling dirty and unkempt with only her face and hands having been washed, Violet put off the temptation of bathing and going to bed early, even though she ached in every bone and her damaged leg and blistered hands burned with pain. She went, of course, to the library.
Betsy went without protesting back to the farm on the far south side of the Lavender community. She was beginning to suspect that Zan was right and that Violet was, like her, a time-walker. Which somehow made her less significant, less important now there were two when there had been one.
Talented and attractive, she’d never been jealous of any other girl with the single exception of a very slight envy of the half-sister she barely knew, her father’s other daughter who lived with him and his second wife back in 21st century California. But she was irrationally jealous of Warne’s girlfriend from England.
This was her life and her place and she couldn’t help feeling that Violet was horning in.
“Feeling good?” Caleb asked as they plodded through the summer countryside in their old wagon at the fastest speed that their strong but aging team could manage.
“I’m fine,” she said with a distinctly icy air. She wasn’t going back to the farm because she wanted to, but only because Caleb insisted. She reached over to pat Ben, asleep on the straw-covered wagon floor, his little sister at his side. The children, over-excited at the family goodbyes and at the return to their own home, had been wild until they finally sank down from sheer exhaustion about halfway through the drive.
Betsy, exhausted and extra-emotional herself, enjoyed the quiet even as she simmered with resentment.
Her husband was the gentlest of men where she was concerned, openly delighted that he’d won Betsy as his wife. Normally he was kind and considerate, but suddenly there at her family home on Crockett Street he’d become Mr. Patriarch, the macho man himself.
He would leave those with scientific inclinations to look into matters involving Lavender, he’d said with a nod to Zan, but his work was waiting at the farm and he would take his wife and children home where they belonged.
Too shocked to protest, Betsy had allowed him to gather them up, had submitted to the kisses of her parents and sisters and before she had hardly known what was happening had found herself being driven out of town with two screaming children on her lap.
As though she were a meek little housewife with no more responsibility for Lavender than the children at the grade school.
The more she thought about it, the angrier she got. Caleb, always so sweet and loving, sat next to her on the wagon seat looking . . .smug and self-satisfied. It was as though he felt he’d finally taken control of his family the way he should.
As though she were some little Victorian woman brought up to believe her husband ruled the household.
Abruptly Betsy’s sense of humor broke through. Of course that was just what he did believe having grown up in the middle of the English queen’s reign with all its influence on the western world. Not only that, but he was an old fashioned Texan.
Having conducted the whole argument with him in her own mind, she truly realized what she’d gotten herself into when she fell in love and married Caleb Carr. Talk about a time gap. He’d been born in 1831 and she’d come to life in the late 20th century. Socially they barely spoke the same language.
“Caleb,” she said. “I think we have a problem.”
He looked at her stubbornly. “No problems,” he disagreed, “not now that we’re going home.”
She wished she had something to throw at him.
Chapter Twenty Four
Warne and Zan huddled in conference. Zan had spent the previous night with his wife who had briefed him with details from her great-grandfather’s journal.
“We can work on it,” he said, “but he left out the specific formulas. Guess he was afraid somebody else might try to dislodge Lavender from the safe place in time where he put it.”
“Because of the fear of spreading the flu,” Warne elaborated.
A flicker of disagreement crossed Zan’s face. “Not entirely. The bad things he’d been through, wars in Europe and the one between the north and the south here had turned him into a doubter. He forsaw the day when weapons became so powerful and people so belligerent they were capable of destroying themselves.”
“But that never happened,” Warne declared. Then remembering Zan knew of a future a hundred years from his own current world, he asked meekly, “Did it?”
Uncharacteristically Zan sighed. “Sometimes it’s as if we’re working hard at it.” It seemed to Warne that his friend evaded answering his question.
Zan and Eddie kept most of what they had learned to themselves, voicing the opinion that the people of Lavender were better off not knowing what lay ahead for the rest of the world.
“I saw what was happening in London,” Warne said. “I reckon that was some of what Doc Tyler saw coming.”
Zan nodded. “Years before the flu and even the war between the states, he was planning and working on how to take the people he loved most out of time and into a safer place. Apparently the epidemic just provided the final push that sent him into action.”
“So why is this happening now? Why is Lavender being chiseled away?”
Zan shook his head, disrupting his dark hair even worse than usual and he was never a man to pay attention to the way he looked. “Wish I knew. We’ve got to talk some more with your Violet. She said she actually saw him there in the house in England. Things don’t often occur randomly. Violet and Tyler Stephens are connected in some way that affects Lavender.”
“I haven’t seen her in days,” Warne voiced aloud his own fears, “maybe something terrible has happened to her and Maudie.”
“Let’s hope not. If so, we’re all in big trouble.”
Warne didn’t say out loud that this was a long way from his greatest worry. He didn’t have to because Zan loved Eddie the way he loved Violet. He would know how it felt to be helpless when the person you loved most in the world was in terrible danger.
Violet had not meant to fall asleep, but as she shifted her aching body in the big chair next to the fire, she knew that was exactly what had happened. She’d been so tired from the unaccustomed field work that the minute she sat down she’d been out.
And now, even before she opened her eyes, she recognized that she was back in that time where winter sent its chill through old walls and around windows so that a fire burned in the fireplace. She heard the soft murmur of voices and awakened to find the young Lady Laura and her lover seated cozily next to each other in chairs on the opposite side of the fireplace from her.
“I really think we should wake her up,” Lady Laura was saying.
“But she looks so tired,” Dr. Tyler responded, his tone warm and loving. “And I want to look at her a bit. We’ve missed all her growing up years. Surely we have a right to this much.”
Violet kept her eyes closed, wanting to hear more.
“If you hadn’t run away, Tyler!”
“If you hadn’t sent me away, telling me I’d ruin your life if I stayed.”
“You gave in too easily and then I did what I had to and took the child to become a foundling in my family’s own house in London. Nobody ever suspected.”
“And we lost our daughter and the chance to be a family.”
Her laugh sounded, soft and bitter. “You had a family later, a wife and a son, and from what I gather you were no better with them than you were with me. It’s always been your work that consumed you, Tyler. Now, looking at all the length of your years, admit that.”
He fell silent, which Violet thought was an admission of its own.
Lady Laura was the one who finally broke the
silence. “I was no better. If ever there was a thoroughly self-centered woman who had little or no interest in children, it was me. She was born unwanted and my family rejected her so I gave her away, told myself she would be fine, and lived my own life.”
“And yet here she is, sweet, intelligent and kind. Perhaps the best thing that ever came out of our two lives.”
“When I grew old and got up to the time where I’d sent her, I loved her. I stayed alone in the house in London with only Mrs. Rolfe and my maid Margaret as company so that she could be mine for a little while. But she was afraid and wanted nothing to do with me.”
Violet finally opened her eyes to stare at the two of them. The thing she’d never dreamed of happening had come to pass. Her two parents, a mother and father, were in the room with her and she didn’t know if she could stand it.
“Violet, my dear,” her father said.
“Sweet child,” her mother said.
She couldn’t bear it, but closed her eyes and this time willed herself to sleep and to dream. She had to see Warne right away and this was the only way to him.
The children were awake and fussing by the time they drove down the narrow trail that led to their cabin on the farm and meager as the comforts were there, even Betsy began to be eager to be once more in their own home.
Then they drove past the little copse of trees that hid the cabin from sight on the road and saw . . .nothing.
Caleb muttered some expletives he’d learned during the war, dated but still effective, and pulled the team to a halt. “Where’s the dadburned cabin?” he asked.
“Gone, ” little Ben said. “Our house is gone. And our cows and the pony and the chickens and the outhouse . . .”
Gently Betsy pressed her hand over his mouth. “It can’t be gone,” she said, even as she recognized that her home had indeed disappeared along with the ground underneath it and the animals around it. Like the Clarences’ house, all had gone elsewhere.
“We live on the south edge,” she whispered more to herself than to either husband or children. “Our place has been chipped away from Lavender.”
Caleb sent the team into motion again but they only continued in a kind of circle, blocked from passage straight south. “Can’t be,” he said. “Not possible.” Emilee whimpered and Betsy lifted her into her arms.
Finally he stopped the team once more. “You hated living out here,” he accused.
“Not hated exactly. It just wasn’t the lifestyle I would have chosen.” Then she took in the smoldering eyes of the man she loved. Caleb thought that somehow she’d done this purposefully, sending away the cabin and the farm that she had been less than enthusiastic about.
That was a whole lot more power than she possessed. “We should go back home,” she said. Oops. He didn’t like her to speak of the house on Crockett Street as home. “Back to Lavender,” she corrected, “so we can tell the others what’s happened.”
His mouth tight and his eyes stony, Caleb turned the team and the wagon about and headed back in the direction from which they’d just come.
As constable of Lavender he patrolled the downtown streets, Violet walking at his side without limping. She’d been with him for about half an hour and so far hadn’t said a word. He waited until she was ready to talk, knowing by the look on her face that something disturbing must have happened.
Finally he could bear it no longer. “Maudie all right?” he asked.
She nodded and smiled. “She’s staying at one of the Worthington farms with her piglet and having the time of her life. Since I told her that her family is well, she seems much better.”
“Piglet?”
“It’s a runt that needed special feeding. She’s making a pet out of it.”
“Her cat showed up a couple of days ago, wandering along the edge. Her sisters are looking after it.”
“I’ll tell her. She’ll be glad.”
They seemed to be getting nowhere at talking about what was really bothering her. She seemed to want to just be near him without either of them saying anything in particular.
He finally blurted out the words that rested so heavily on his own mind. “I love you Violet. I want to marry you.”
Then he wanted to kick himself. How romantic! The words had come out in his usual awkward way and women liked things said in pretty words. He didn’t have it in himself to talk like a poet. All he knew was to be straight-forward and honest. “It makes all the difference to me,” he concluded, “to hear how you feel.”
Then he wished he hadn’t said it. What if she was embarrassed to hear of his feelings because she could only think of him as a friend.
She stopped and he turned back to face her, ready to take his medicine. “We’ll always be friends, no matter what,” he assured her, even though inside he was feeling that if she said she didn’t love him, he wouldn’t be able to stand going on as they had before.
Her face softened from that set in stone look she’d been wearing and she stepped closer so that, if it had been possible, they would have been touching. “You’re the only man I’ve ever loved,” she whispered softly, “the only man I could ever love.”
Inside he exploded with joyous disbelief. How could someone as lovely and special as Violet love plain, ordinary him? He reached down to her slighter form and almost, almost pressed his kiss against her lips. He couldn’t feel her mouth, nor could she feel him, but he knew that in both their minds they were reveling in that almost contact.
So many things were wrong in their mutual worlds; they were separated, the Clarences’ little girl was lost to them, Lavender might be crumbling away. But nothing else really mattered if they loved each other. And they did! Violet had just said so.
Chapter Twenty Five
A loud and commanding voice reached through to where she was gazing into Warne’s eyes. “No,” Violet said. “Not yet. I don’t want to wake up yet.”
“Violet! You must listen to us. It’s most important,” the voice that in a way called to her from beyond the grave yanked her from her dreams of happiness.
She yawned. “Yes, Lady Laura,” she said, opening her eyes back in the Worthington house library and feeling cheated of her own right to romance. “Or perhaps I should say ‘mother’?”
“You should not,” Lady Laura sounded absolutely horrified. “We must have time to get acquainted before we even think of mother and daughtering each other.”
Tyler gave a hoot of laughter. “You’re fast running out of time, my dear,” he told her. “Anyway we must seem more like grandparents to a young woman like Violet.”
Not the way they looked now, Violet thought, though she dared not dispute Dr. Tyler Stephens’ words. They appeared too young to be the parents of a grown girl, but then this visit was taking place at a long-ago time in the world to which she had been born. They had drawn her into their visit to their own past.
She wondered why. It did not seem to have been planned from an excess of emotion as neither was particularly parental.
“We must tell her,” Tyler urged. “Time is running out.”
“Thank Heavens,” Lady Laura returned. “I’ve had more than enough of the stuff.”
“Oh, you made the most of your years. I heard that even when some would have called you an old woman, you had your choice of men in attendance.”
“And why not? You had a wife and a son!”
They were still arguing when the door from the hallway began to open and they and the time in which the three of them had met vanished from before Violet’s sight.
The room was warm and dark with the blackout curtains again and Maudie tiptoed into the room, her fat little piglet dozing in her arms.
“I got lonesome,” she whispered, “and so I came back.”
Violet supposed that in the little farmhouse she had not been able to exit without others being aware, though hard as they worked the women and children of the household might not wake until morning.
She opened her arms and Maudie came into
them, settling into her lap once she sat down, squeezing the piglet so that it squeaked before settling back to sleep in the girl’s arms.
“I want to go home,” Maudie whispered. “I feel sick inside when I think of Mama and Papa and my sisters being so far away.”
“I understand,” Violet whispered back. “But I have good news. Warne tells me your cat showed up safe and sound and your sisters are looking after him.”
A slow smile moved her mouth upward. “When I go home, can I take my pig?”
Violet started to laugh, then realized with those earnest eyes on her face that this was a very serious question. “We’ll do our best,” was the only promise she could make.
Maudie seemed satisfied.
Warne was still on duty, lost in his thoughts of Violet, when Sylvie came running up to him. “Grandpapa says come to our house right now. Betsy and Caleb are back and they say their farm has fallen into the void.”
“The void?” he questioned in bewilderment.
“I added that part. It means it fell into nothingness,” she added importantly. “Betsy just said it was gone.”
The two of them ran down the street toward the house on Crockett Street. Sylvie pushed open the big front door and without knocking to announce his presence, he followed her in, both of them panting and out of breath.
Once more the family had gathered in the living room. Betsy talked rapidly to her parents and grandparents while Caleb hung back, looking dejected. His little farm was all he owned in this new world where he’d come to live, Warne remembered and went over to give him an encouraging clap on the back.
“Sylvie, take your niece and nephew upstairs and put them to bed,” Evan Stephens told his youngest daughter. She flashed him a rebellious gaze, but when he gave her his fatherly look, she took the two children and led them away with cheerful promises that she would sing to them once they’d bathed and dressed for bed.
Lavender Dreaming: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series Book 5) Page 15
