There and Now

by Linda Lael Miller

  Standing behind her chair in front of the fireplace, he bent and kissed the crown of her head. “Play something for me,” he urged, and Elisabeth went immediately to the piano. Strange as it seemed, making music for his ears was a part of their lovemaking; it warmed Elisabeth’s blood and made her heart beat faster and her breathing quicken.

  She played soft, soothing Mozart, and she was almost able to believe that she belonged there in that untamed century, where life was so much more difficult and intense. When she’d finished, she turned on the piano bench to gaze at Jonathan, who was standing at the window.

  “Have you decided?” he asked after a long interval of comfortable silence had passed.

  Elisabeth didn’t need to ask what he meant; she knew. Although Jonathan had never once said he loved her, he wanted her to marry him. She smoothed her skirts. “I’ve decided,” she said.

  He arched one eyebrow, waiting.

  “I’ll marry you,” Elisabeth said, meeting his eyes. “But only on one condition—you have to promise that we’ll go away on a wedding trip. We’ll be gone a full month, and Trista will be with us.”

  Jonathan’s expression was grim. “Elisabeth, I’m the only doctor between here and Seattle—I can’t leave these people without medical care for a month.”

  “Then I have to refuse,” Elisabeth said, although it nearly killed her.

  Dr. Fortner held out a hand to her. “It seems you need a little convincing,” he told her in a low voice that set her senses to jumping.

  Elisabeth couldn’t help herself; she went to him, let him enfold her fingers in his. “May I remind you,” she said in a last-ditch effort at behaving herself, “that there’s a child only a few rooms away?”

  “That’s why I’m taking you to the bridge.” Jonathan led her through the dining room and the kitchen and out into the cool spring night. There was a bright silver wash of moonlight glimmering in the grass.

  She had to hurry to keep up with his long, determined strides. She thought fast. “Jonathan, what if someone needs you…?”

  “You need me,” he answered without missing a beat, pulling her through the orchard, where leaves rustled overhead and crushed petals made a soft carpet under her feet. “I’m about to remind you how much.”

  In the shadow of the covered bridge, Jonathan dragged Elisabeth against his chest and kissed her soundly, and the mastery of his lips and tongue made her knees go weak beneath her. He pressed her gently into the fragrant grass, his fingers opening the tiny buttons of her high-collared blouse. He groaned when he found her breasts bare underneath, waiting for him, their sweet tips reaching.

  Elisabeth surrendered as he closed his mouth around one nipple, sucking eagerly, and she flung her arms back over her head to make herself even more vulnerable. While he made free with her breasts, Jonathan raised Elisabeth’s skirts and, once again, found no barrier between him and what he wanted so much to touch.

  “Little witch,” he moaned, clasping her in his hand so that the heel of his palm ground against her. “Show me your magic.”

  He’d long since aroused Elisabeth with words and looks and touches, and she tugged feverishly at his clothes until he helped her and she could feel bare flesh under her palms. Finally, he lay between her legs, and she guided him into her, soothing Jonathan even as she became his conqueror.

  Chapter Ten

  “Prove it,” Jonathan challenged in a whisper when he and Elisabeth had finally returned to the house. They were standing in the upstairs hallway, their clothes rumpled from making love on the ground beside the creek. Jonathan had lit the lamp on the narrow table against the wall. A light spring rain was just beginning to fall. “If you can leave this century at will, then show me.”

  Elisabeth paused, her hand resting on the knob of the door to the spare bedroom. “It’s not a parlor trick, Jon,” she told him with sad annoyance. “I don’t have the first idea how or why it works, and there’s always the chance that I won’t be able to get back.”

  His eyes seemed to darken, just for a moment, but his gaze was level and steady. “If you want me to believe what you’ve been saying, Lizzie, then you’ll have to give me some evidence.”

  “All right,” she agreed with a forlorn shrug. She didn’t like the idea of leaving Jonathan, even if it was only a matter of stepping over a threshold and back. “But first I want a promise from you. If I don’t return, you have to take Trista away from this house and not set foot in it again until after the first of July.”

  Jonathan watched her for a moment, his arms folded, and then nodded. “You have my word,” he said with wry skepticism in his eyes.

  Elisabeth went silently into her room to collect the necklace from its hiding place. Then she went into Trista’s room. After casting one anxious look at the sleeping, unsuspecting child, Elisabeth put the chain around her neck. She could see Jonathan clearly, standing in the hallway.

  She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and stepped over the threshold.

  In one instant, Elisabeth had been there, closing her eyes and wishing on that damned necklace as though it were some sort of talisman. In the next, she was gone.

  Shock consumed Jonathan like a brushfire, and he sank against the wall, squinting at the darkened doorway, hardly daring to trust his own vision.

  “Lizzie,” he whispered, running one hand down his face. Then reason overcame him. It had to be a trick.

  He thrust himself away from the wall and plunged through Trista’s quiet room. The inner door was fastened tightly. Jonathan wrenched it open and bounded down the steep steps to the kitchen.

  “Elisabeth!” he rasped, his patience wearing thin, his heart thrumming a kind of crazy dread.

  Jonathan searched every inch of the downstairs, then carrying a lantern, he went out into the drizzling rain to look in all the sheds and check the barn. Finding nothing, he strode through the orchard and even went as far as the bank of the creek.

  There was no sign of her, and fear pressed down on him as he made his way slowly back to the house, his hair dripping, his shirt clinging wetly to his skin. “Elisabeth,” he said. Despair echoed in the sound.

  Elisabeth stood smugly on the back porch of Jonathan’s house, watching him cross the rainy yard with the lantern and waiting for him to look up and see her standing there on the step.

  When he raised his eyes, he stopped and stared at her through the downpour.

  “Get in here,” she said, scurrying out to take Jonathan’s free hand and drag him toward the door. “You’ll catch something!”

  “How did you do that?” he demanded, setting the lantern on the kitchen table and gaping at Elisabeth while she fed wood into the stove and urged him closer to the heat.

  She tapped the side of the blue enamel coffeepot with her fingertips to see if it was still hot and gave an exasperated sigh. “Your guess is as good as mine,” she said, fetching a mug from the cabinets and filling it with the stout coffee. “You must have seen something, Jonathan. Did I fade out, or was I gone in a blink?”

  Jonathan sank into a chair at the table and she set the mug before him. He didn’t even seem to be aware of his sodden shirt and hair. “You simply—disappeared.”

  This was no time for triumph; Jonathan’s teeth were already chattering. Elisabeth got a dry shirt from his room and a towel from the linen chest upstairs and returned to the kitchen.

  He was standing close to the stove, bare chested, sipping his coffee. “I’ve had enough nonsense from you, Lizzie,” he said, shaking a finger at her. “You fooled me, and I want to know how.”

  Elisabeth laughed and shook her head. “I always thought my father was stubborn,” she replied, “but when it comes to bullheaded, you beat him all to hell.” Her eyes danced as she approached Jonathan, laying her hands on his shoulders. “Face it, Jon. I vanished into thin air, and you saw it happen with your own eyes.”

  His color drained away and he rubbed his temples with a thumb and forefinger. “Yes. Good God, Lizzie, am I losing
my mind?”

  She slipped her arms around his waist. “No. It’s just that there’s a lot more going on in this universe than we poor mortals know.”

  Jonathan pressed her head against his bare shoulders, and she felt a shudder go through him. “I want to try it,” he said. “I want to see the other side.”

  It was as though Elisabeth had stepped under a pounding, icy waterfall. “No,” she whispered, stepping away from him.

  He allowed her to go no farther than arm’s length. “Yes,” he replied, his gaze locked with hers. “If this world you’ve been telling me about is really there, I want a glimpse of it.”

  Elisabeth began to shake her head slowly from side to side. “Jonathan, no—you’d be taking a terrible chance….”

  His deft, doctor’s fingers reached beneath her tousled hair to unclasp the necklace. Then, holding it in one hand, he rounded Elisabeth and started up the short stairway that led to Trista’s room.

  “Jonathan!” Elisabeth cried, scrambling after him. “Jonathan, wait there are things I need to tell you….”

  She reached the first door just as he got to the one leading out into the main hallway. Her eyes widened when he stepped across the threshold. Like a rippling reflection on the surface of a pond, he diffused into nothingness. Elisabeth clasped one hand over her mouth and went to stand in the empty doorway.

  She sagged against the jamb, half-sick with the fear that she might never see him again. Heaven knew how she would explain his absence to Trista or to Marshal Haynes and the rest of the townspeople. And then there was the prospect of living without him.

  It was the damnedest thing Jonathan had ever seen.

  A second ago, he’d been standing in Trista’s bedroom, on a rainy night. Now, a fierce spring sun was shining and the familiar hallway had changed drastically.

  There were light fixtures on the walls, and beneath his feet was a thick rug the color of ripe wheat. For a few moments, he just stood there, gripping the necklace, trying to understand what was happening to him. He was scared, but not badly enough to turn around and go back without seeing what kind of world Elisabeth lived in.

  Once he’d regained his equilibrium, he crossed the hall and opened the door to the master bedroom.

  Like the hallway, it was structurally the same, but there the similarities ended. Jonathan’s scientific heart began to beat faster with excitement.

  When the shrill sound of a bell filled the air, he jumped and almost bolted. Then he realized the jangle was coming from a telephone.

  He looked around, but there was no instrument affixed to the wall. Finally, he tracked the noise to a fussy-looking gadget resting on the vanity table and he lifted the earpiece.

  “Hello!” he snapped, frowning. There were telephones in Seattle, of course, but the lines hadn’t reached Pine River yet, and Jonathan hadn’t had much practice talking into a wire.

  “Who is this?” a woman’s voice demanded.

  “This is Jonathan Fortner,” he answered, fascinated. “Who are you, and why are you telephoning?”

  There was a pause. “I’m Janet Finch, Elisabeth’s friend. Is she there?”

  A slow grin spread across Jonathan’s mouth. “I’m afraid not,” he replied. And then he laid the receiver in its cradle and walked away.

  Almost immediately, the jarring noise began again, but Jonathan ignored it. There were things he wanted to investigate.

  Just as he was descending the front stairway, an old woman with fussy white hair and enormous blue eyes peered through one of the long windows that stood on either side of the door. At the sight of Jonathan, she gave a little shriek, dropped something to the porch floor with a clatter and turned to run away.

  Jonathan went to the window, grinning, and watched her trot across the road, her legs showing beneath her short dress. If this was truly the future, the elderly lady probably thought he was a ghost.

  He just hoped he hadn’t scared her too badly.

  With a sigh of resignation, Jonathan proceeded to the kitchen, where he made an amazed inspection. He figured out the icebox right away, and he identified the thing with metal coils on top as a stove by process of elimination. He turned one of the knobs and then moved on to the sink, frowning at the gleaming spigots. When he gave one a twist, water shot out of a small pipe, startling him.

  One of the spirals on the stove was red hot when he looked back, and Jonathan held his palm over it, feeling the heat and marveling.

  By far the most interesting thing in the room, however, was the box that sat on the counter. It had little dials, like the stove, and a window made out of the same stuff as Elisabeth’s medicine bottle, only clear.

  Jonathan tampered with the knobs and suddenly the window flashed with light and the face of an attractive African woman with stiff hair loomed before him.

  “Are you tired of catering to your boss’s every whim?” she demanded, and Jonathan took a step backward, speechless. The woman was staring at him, as if waiting for an answer, and he wondered if he should speak to her. “Today’s guests will tell you how to stand up for yourself and still keep your job!” she finished.

  “What guests?” Jonathan asked, looking around the kitchen. Music poured out of the box, and then a woman with hair the same color as Elisabeth’s appeared, holding up a glass of orange juice.

  “No, thank you,” Jonathan said, touching the knob again. The window went dark.

  He ambled outside to look at the barn—it had fallen into a shameful state of disrepair—and stood by the fence watching automobiles speed by. They were all colors now, instead of just the plain black he’d seen on the streets of Boston and New York.

  When half an hour passed and he still hadn’t seen a single horse, Jonathan shook his head and turned toward the house. He walked around it, noting the changes.

  The section that contained Trista’s room and the second rear stairway was gone, leaving no trace except for a door in the second-story wall. Remembering what Elisabeth had said about a fire, he shoved splayed fingers through his hair and strode inside.

  He could hear her calling to him the moment he entered, and he smiled as he started up the rear stairs.

  “Damn you, Jonathan Fortner, you get back here! Now!”

  Jonathan took the necklace from his pocket and held it in one hand. Then he opened the door and stepped over the threshold.

  Elisabeth was wearing different clothes—a black sateen skirt and a blue shirtwaist—and there were shadows under her eyes. “Oh, Jonathan,” she cried, thrusting herself, shuddering, into his arms.

  He kissed her temple, feeling pretty shaken himself. “It’s all right, Lizzie,” he said. “I’m here.” He held her tightly.

  She raised her eyes to his face. “People were starting to ask questions,” she fretted. “And I had to lie to Trista and tell her you’d gone to Seattle on business.”

  Jonathan was stunned. “But I was only gone for an hour or so….”

  Elisabeth shook her head. “Eight days, Jonathan,” she said somberly. She pressed her cheek to his chest. “I was sure I’d never see you again.”

  He was distracted by the way she felt in his arms, all soft and warm. With a fingertip, he traced the outline of her trembling lips. “Eight days?” he echoed.

  She nodded.

  The mystery was more than he could assimilate all at once, so he put it to the back of his mind. “You must have missed me something fierce in that case,” he teased.

  A spark of the old fire flickered in her eyes, and a corner of her mouth quivered, as though she might forgive him for frightening her and favor him with a smile. “I didn’t miss you at all,” she said, raising her chin.

  He spread his hands over her rib cage, letting the thumbs caress her full breasts, feeling the nipples just against the fabric in response. “You’re lying, Lizzie,” he scolded. His arousal struck like a physical blow; suddenly he was hard and heavy with the need of her. He bent and kissed the pulse point he saw throbbing under her right ea
r. “Are we alone?”

  Her breath caught, and her satiny flesh seemed to tremble under his lips. “For the moment,” she said, her voice breathless and muffled. “Trista isn’t home from school yet, and Ellen is out in the vegetable garden, weeding.”

  “Good,” Jonathan said, thinking what an extraordinarily long time an hour could be. And then he lost himself in Elisabeth’s kiss.

  Elisabeth knew her cheeks were glowing and, despite her best efforts, her hair didn’t look quite the same as it had before Jonathan had taken it down from its pins.

  “Imagine that,” Ellen said, breaking open a pod and expertly scraping out the peas with her thumbnail. “The doctor came back from wherever he’s been, but I didn’t hear no wagon nor see a sign of a horse. Come to that, he never took his rig with him in the first place.” She paused to cluck and shake her head. “Strange doin’s.”

  Elisabeth was sitting on the front step, while Ellen occupied the rocking chair. Watching the road for Trista, Elisabeth brushed a tendril of pale hair back from her cheek. “There are some things in this life that just can’t be explained,” she informed the housekeeper in a moderate tone. She was tired of the woman’s suspicious glances and obvious disapproval.

  Ellen sniffed. “If you ask me—”

  “I didn’t ask you,” Elisabeth interrupted, turning on the step to fix the housekeeper with a look.

  Color seeped into Ellen’s sallow cheeks, but she didn’t say anything more. She just went on shelling peas.

  When Elisabeth saw Trista coming slowly down the road from the schoolhouse, her head lowered, she smoothed her sateen skirts and stood. She met the child at the gate with a smile.

  “Your papa is back from his travels,” she said.

  The transformation in Trista stirred Elisabeth’s heart. The little girl fairly glowed, and a renewed energy seemed to make her taller and stronger in an instant. With a little cry of joy, Trista flung herself into Elisabeth’s arms.