by Jenny Lykins
He became aware of her staring at him, her face aghast. He put an arm's length between them and repeated his question.
"But Reed, darlin', you must remember me! Elise? Oh, Reed, don't tease me like this! It's cruel!"
Her attire, or lack of it, coupled with the blood boiling kiss she had bestowed, had muddled his brain. Was she claiming an acquaintance with him? He turned on his heel and marched into the study. After sweeping his jacket from a nearby chair, he settled it around her shoulders. It did little to cover her exposed appendages, but he'd had to try.
"Please forgive me, madam, but I do not believe we've..."
His statement was cut off by a gentle rap at the door. Nell slipped inside without waiting for admittance, then came to stand beside Elise. She wrung her hands for a moment before laying them on Elise's shoulders when she spoke.
"Mistah Reed, I couldn't help but hear this poor child. Mayhap she gots some kinda brain fever. Why don't I takes her up to a room and gives her a tisane. Mayhap she feel better in a bit and we can make some sense of all this."
Reed stared at the wild-eyed woman in front of him. He felt certain she was a demented relative someone had been keeping under lock and key. A very beautiful relative. With her golden brown hair swirling about her shoulders she looked as if she'd just awakened. But he couldn't have it. The very idea, gallivanting around, invading one's home clad in nothing more than a...
"Nell, is that not my shirt she is wearing? The one that was missing along with my trousers and boots, after that disastrous ball?" He didn't mention that he'd awakened after that ball to find himself in a field dressed only in strange trousers and shoes, with even stranger smallclothes beneath.
Nell scrutinized the girl and gave a noncommittal answer, but Reed was positive it was the shirt in question.
"Perhaps you are right, Nell. Take her upstairs and see if you can find her some...er...clothing. Someone is bound to come looking for her soon."
"Would you guys not talk about me like I'm deaf?" The woman jerked her shoulders out of Nell's grasp as she voiced this strangely worded request.
"My apologies. Please allow Nell, my housekeeper, to show you to a room. I will see that you have time to collect yourself, then perhaps we can talk."
He saw a protest forming on her lips, but Nell leaned over and whispered something in her ear. She jerked her head back and stared at the housekeeper but followed her willingly enough out of the room.
Elise’s euphoria evaporated.
This is a bad dream! I haven't woken up yet, and that damn tea is causing nightmares. Wake up, stupid! Roll over and start a new dream!
Even as the thoughts ricocheted through her mind, she knew she was wide awake. She only wished she was asleep.
She failed again, on her second journey through the house, to notice her surroundings. She was intent on getting Nell alone and finding out what her cryptic statement meant when she'd whispered, "This be my fault, Miz ‘Lise."
Nell led Elise into the same bedroom Reed had used in 1994. The irony didn't escape her, but she ignored it and grabbed the old woman's arm as soon as the door shut behind them.
"Nell! What are you talking about? What've you got to do with this?"
The whites of Nell's eyes had yellowed with age, and she turned a rheumy gaze of sympathy to Elise.
"Child, I be the one what sent Mistah Reed to you."
"What?" Elise virtually squeaked.
"That boy be eatin' his heart out for a body to love, but he cain't abide none of the women he meets. I watched him look for years and years. I tells myself he ain't never going to find hisself a wife what'll make him happy."
"Nell," Elise interrupted, "how did you send him one hundred and fifty years into the future?"
"One hundred and...Lordy, Lordy."
The housekeeper straightened her bowed spine and threw back her shoulders in a proud stance.
"I is a Voodoo priestess." Elise could not believe her ears. "I puts a spell on his tea to send that boy to his true love. I didn't know where he be endin' up. I knew he be gone because I watch him go. Then he no sooner fade away than he come back that same day. Why he come back, Miz ‘Lise?"
Elise wanted to scream.
"You mean he came back on the same day he left? He was in 1994 for seven weeks."
Nell's eyes widened.
"Sure ‘nough?" she whispered. "Then why he come back?"
"He found some of your tea in the basement - I mean the cellar. In a hidden closet. He was so homesick, he fixed some and drank it. I didn't drink any. It was only after...well, it took me a couple of weeks to figure it out. That's how I got here. I drank the tea.
"Why doesn't he remember me? He loves me. I love him." Elise paced the floor, wringing her hands and trying to make sense of the situation. "Why didn't I come back on the same day he did? What day is this, anyway?"
Nell shook her head in ignorance.
"I not be knowin' the answers to them questions, Miz ‘Lise, 'cept the brew work two ways. Drink it once and it send you to your true love, drink it twiced and it send you home again. All I know is it be nigh on two months since that party here in the big house. Mayhap more."
Elise felt the hope rush from her body like a deflating balloon. Two months. And he doesn't even remember me.
"Miz ‘Lise?" Nell broke into her thoughts with reluctance in her voice.
"Yes, Nell?"
"There be some bad news."
Elise moaned to herself. Oh, dear Lord, I can't take this. No more bad news. Please.
"What is it?"
"Mistah Reed...he be going to marry somebody else."
"WHAT?" Elise's shriek caused the servant to jump back several inches.
"He told me he wasn't engaged! He said there was no one special here. He can't be getting married! He's married to me!"
Nell's mouth fell open.
"I don't know what in-gaged is, but they ain't nothin' special about this girl. She meaner than a snake when she got a mind to be. And that be most of the time when Mistah Reed ain't lookin'. And he weren't gettin' married afore, but after that night of the ball, he wake up all sad. He say he feel a big, empty hole in his life, and he gots to fill it somehow. Miz Angeline, she be chasing that boy even when she still wearin' her hair in braids. He figure she give him babies good as anybody else. They’s going to announce the nuptials at a party here in ten days. I hear Mistah Reed say it be on the first of June. Lordy, Miz ‘Lise, he cain't marry her if he be married to you. But he don't even remember you. What we gonna do?"
Elise sank to a lifeless lump onto the bed. Her feet dangled limply over the side of the high tester, her shoulders so slumped she was nearly doubled over. Tears burned the backs of her eyes, but she blinked them away. No time for tears now. She had to think - and think with a clear head.
She threw herself off of the bed and did some furious pacing.
"I've got ten days, Nell. He fell in love with me once. We're still both the same people. I've got to make him fall in love with me again. Or somehow make him remember me."
Telling him she was from the future was out of the question. She'd had a hard enough time dealing with his story, and she was a century and a half ahead of Reed in open-mindedness.
"What you going to do, child?" Ten days ain't much time."
A slow smile spread across Elise's face.
"It'll take some work, Nell, but I think I have a plan."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Nell and Elise set to work immediately. Elise had to play the part of gentle bully when Nell balked at one request.
"No self-respectin' lady be caught dead in a gown like you describin'. It too plain. Let me have Sukie put a frill or two on it. Maybe some bows here and there."
Elise remained adamant. She'd described the gown she'd worn when Reed had arrived down to the last, plain detail. Nell was appalled, but it had to be an exact duplicate. So much for the authentic period gowns of the pilgrimage.
In the meantime, a service
gown had to be borrowed from Verda, the little housemaid Elise had nearly knocked down. The only women's clothes in the house belonged to the help.
Nell had taken the gown to have it pressed, so Elise was expecting the soft knock on the bedroom door.
"Come in," Elise said, more than ready to get dressed and get her plans underway.
Reed pushed the door open and strode in, then turned on his heel to leave. Did the woman have no modesty?
"I beg your pardon, madam. I thought I heard you say ‘come in.'"
"No! Wait," Elise yelped, and grabbed the counterpane from the bed. She looked like an overdressed Grecian goddess by the time she finished wrapping it around herself. Her shiny, brown hair glinted with gold in the streaming sunlight, and she'd pinned it up at the sides, creating a mass of curls at the back. The only incongruity was the sleeves of his shirt - he was sure it was his - peeking from beneath the pink brocade.
He felt his heart jump in response to the vision she created. How very beautiful she is, he thought. Where have I seen eyes that shade of green before?
He snapped his mind back to the matter at hand and made certain the bedroom door was still open.
"I trust you are feeling somewhat better?"
Elise turned a most endearing smile on him.
"Oh, yes. Somewhat. However, I'm very confused."
"Perhaps you could tell me how you came to be here, and why you seem to be...er...wearing my clothing."
She reached up to rub her temples but had to grab to catch the slipping counterpane.
"You know, I can't seem to remember that. All I know is I woke up like this. Maybe it'll come to me if you'll be kind enough to give me a little more time." The innocent look in her eyes wasn't completely convincing.
"Do you not even remember your surname? I believe you called yourself Elise when you...when we met."
"Oh sure. I remember that much. My name's Elise Gerard." The last two words were enunciated slowly and precisely, as if she were talking to a very slow-witted child who had forgotten her name.
She stepped forward and offered her hand, her head cocked as if in anticipation of his reaction to her name. Reed stared at her hand for a moment. She had offered it, not as a lady, but as one gentleman to another. He finally took her fingers gently in his and turned them to present the back of her hand to his lips. Another sense of deja vu struck him.
"You are not from these parts," he said more to himself than to her after releasing her fingers. He had never heard a speech pattern such as hers before, and he had certainly never had a woman attempt to shake his hand. In fact, everything about her was foreign.
*******
"That poor gal don't know nothin' but her name, Mistah Reed. Her name and yours. She say it be like she woke up screamin' yo name and then there you be standin' in front of her."
The master of Oak Vista stared across the desk at his long-time housekeeper. He had an eerie feeling that all was not as it appeared. Nell was not a good liar, but he couldn't decide if she was prevaricating, or if she was merely uncomfortable about the strange arrival of an even stranger visitor.
The crunch of carriage wheels alerted the household that yet another visitor had arrived. Reed was dismally aware of the probable identity of that person. Knuckling his eyes and shaking his head in denial, he rose from behind the desk and made his reluctant journey to the door. No sense in putting this off.
A veritable cloud of ruffles floated on the breeze in the open door as Angeline sashayed into the foyer. A fleeting thought struck Reed that he much preferred his shirt as feminine attire over this abundance of frippery.
"Reed, sugar, aren't you ready to go visiting?" The pouty look of reproach on Angeline's face had the stamp of being well rehearsed.
Reed had forgotten. The morning's bizarre events had wiped the scheduled activities completely from his mind. He smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand, and after a mental note to never repeat that painful gesture, he wondered where on earth he had ever picked up such a thing.
"I am sorry, my dear. I will be ready in a moment. Business, you know."
He almost - but not quite - cringed at the sound of several elephants galloping down his staircase. For some reason he couldn't quite pinpoint, he wasn't surprised when he turned and found only one small woman creating all the ruckus. Strangely enough, he'd known it was her before ever looking.
"Is this the business you spoke of?" Angeline's voice dripped with such ice, he half expected to see her breath plume in a mist when she spoke. He sent up a prayer of thanks that Elise no longer wore his shirt.
"Angeline, may I present Miss Elise Gerard. Miss Gerard, Angeline Simon."
Elise marched up to Angeline and stuck out her hand, exactly as she had done earlier to him.
Reed groaned.
"Miss Simon, how do you do?"
Angeline turned her frosty stare of disbelief to Elise's out-stretched hand.
"I am fine, thank you." She ignored Elise's gesture and gave her an almost imperceptible nod of her head. Elise withdrew her hand and knocked some imaginary lint from her skirts.
Silence reigned as the trio stood; one bristling, one itching to remove himself, and one seeming to be happily unaware of the tension vibrating the air.
Reed interrupted the silence by clearing his throat.
"It seems Miss Gerard has met with some sort of accident or illness. She...appeared at Oak Vista this morning, knowing only her name."
"And yours." Elise volunteered this useful piece of information in a much too cheerful fashion. When two sets of eyes turned to her, she immediately lowered her eyebrows into a look of studied confusion.
"She knew your name? Are you and Miss Gerard acquainted?"
"Not to my knowledge, my dear. I don't recall us ever having met, but Miss Gerard, indeed, knew my name."
"There you guys go again. You know, I'm not deaf, or mute, for that matter. If you'd like to include me in this conversation about myself, I'd be more than happy to participate."
Angeline's face again took on that look of horror. Every time Elise opened her mouth, Angeline reacted in that same manner.
"Miss Gerard, are you someone's servant?" The petite blond's eyes scanned the length of Elise's slim, soberly garbed figure.
"I'm sure she is not," Reed jumped in and cut off Elise's answer. "When she arrived, her clothing was somewhat... somewhat..."
"Inappropriate?" Angeline offered.
"Oh, no. Not precisely. Perhaps ill-advised for this climate is a better way of stating it. However, Nell located a frock that would do until we can..."
"We?" she interrupted again, her toe tapping a violent tattoo on the floor.
"Yes, confound it. I do feel somewhat responsible for her. Until we find out who she is and return her..."
Elise's gaze bounced back and forth, as if following a ball being tossed between Reed and Angeline. After several passes, she shrugged, rolled her eyes, and turned on her heel to walk the length of the hallway and out the rear doors.
Reed noticed Elise's departure, but he hesitated to end his conversation with Angeline until he had it resolved. He wanted her to know in no uncertain terms that he was master of his life, and she was not.
"Reed Blackwell, you absolutely cannot have that woman stay here. Why, it isn't done. You are still a single man, and heaven knows what she is."
Reed felt an unaccountable anger rise at this veiled slur against his houseguest, uninvited though she may be.
"She will stay here, Angeline. I will hire someone from town, if I must, to stay here as chaperone. I feel it is imperative she remain if her family is to find her. This subject is no longer open for debate."
It was no easier to explain his reaction to himself than to the irate blond who drummed the toe of her tiny, leather boot against the floor.
When Reed's expression made it clear he would brook no argument, Angeline released her outrage with a huff and switched on a sugary smile.
"I suppose you know
best, darlin'. Just please do find the poor creature's family and return her to them as quickly as possible. Promise me?"
Reed hadn't heard her request past the first sentence. For some strange, inexplicable reason, when Angeline had called him "darlin'," he'd been struck with an overwhelming urge to seek out Elise.
What kind of spell does this woman have over me? I have not had a rational thought since the moment she vaulted into my arms.
He interrupted Angeline's interminable speech, which at the moment droned on about her reputation and what people would think.
"Angeline, you will have to excuse me, but I must beg off of our little excursion today. I think it wise to send a few messengers out to make discreet inquiries about Miss Gerard. Someone must be very worried."
He didn't notice his betrothed's mouth drop open as he held her elbow and escorted her out the door and down the steps of the veranda. He waved away the coachman and nearly threw her into the carriage himself. She plopped onto the seat with a thud, golden ringlets dancing wildly around her shoulders.
"Reed!"
"Oh, terribly sorry, Angeline. Very clumsy of me." Reed tried to restore his manners and fought down an urge to slap the carriage horse on the rump and send it barreling back down the road.
"I will try to make this up to you, my dear. Perhaps you will allow me to call on you tomorrow."
"Why, certainly, darlin'."
As soon as she spoke that last word, Reed bowed stiffly and turned on his heel, the need to see Elise overpowering. He cut across any further speech on her part by mumbling "Good day" and trotting back up the veranda steps. He didn't notice Angeline craning her neck, or her mouth forming a silent, disgusted "Oh" as he closed the huge mahogany door.
*******
Elise wandered the paths of his garden, wrapped in total enjoyment. She had often tried to picture her home as it would have been in its glory. Even her most elaborate daydreams had failed to concoct the beauty of the house and grounds. The garden sprawled out in a natural setting, with trees, shrubs and flowers all interspersed to give one the feel of walking through a beautiful forest. Meandering trails wound through the foliage, and Elise wasn't quite sure where she would come out. What a pity the garden didn't still exist in her time.
