by Elena Lawson
“Delicious.” I immediately grabbed my spoon, preparing to dig into the soup that smelled of butter and sage, when I noticed all of their eyes on me. Self-consciousness flared within me, and I dropped the silverware as if it was acid. “What?”
Was I supposed to say grace?
Kiss their feet?
I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. I was running this race blind and with my feet tied together. Twin weights dragged me down, hindering my progress, but still I ran. I was tired and sweaty, but I knew the finish line would be within my reach. I just had to run faster, run further, and ignore the obstacles that assaulted me at every turn.
With bated breath, I waited for the men to scream at me, to call me a phony, to realize I wasn’t who I appeared to be.
I’d decided before leaving the room that telling them the truth—that this lass was from a year over one-hundred years in the future—would do little more than land me a nut house. And those kinds of places were bad enough in modern day. The thought of entering one in this time? Yeah, that was a hard no from me.
The decision left me only one option. Lie. Lie through my teeth for as long as it took to figure out how the fuck I was going to get out of this place and back to my own time.
My stomach turned just to think of it. I pushed the thoughts away. Food, first. I would need my strength. I could figure out everything else later. But the fluttering in my stomach didn’t fully subside, I only managed to keep it at bay.
It didn’t help that they were all still staring at me. I was about to repeat myself—ask them what the hell they were staring at when Jasper spoke.
“Ladies eat first,” he explained kindly.
“Oh.” Feeling stupid, I took a tentative swallow of the broth. It settled on my tongue, filling my taste buds. It was unlike anything I had ever tasted before, the tiny chunks of chicken contrasting with the creamy broth and intermixed with celery and carrots and herbs. Holy fuck.
A dark hand appeared in my field of vision as Ellis piled a plate to my right with what Jasper explained was pigeon. I had never heard of “Pigeon” before, and a part of me was appalled at the thought of eating a bird that wasn’t chicken. The other part of me wanted to moan at the salty fragrance permeating the air, infiltrating my nostrils until I was salivating.
I smiled shyly at Ellis through my fringe of lashes. “Thank you.”
His answering smile was glorious, showcasing a row of perfectly white teeth.
The asshole, whose name I couldn’t recall, scowled, eyes flickering between the two of us. He hadn’t touched his meal, and his large arms were crossed over his burly chest. He was glaring at me with an almost incandescent fury, as if he wished to burn through my layers of dress, through my corset, and brand my bare skin. It was unnerving to be the sole target of his gaze. His hatred. It practically oozed out of him like a green sludge.
“So, Beck, where are you from again?” the asshole asked with a quirk to his brow. Both Ellis and Jasper swiveled their heads to glare at him. Alex seemed oblivious, devouring his food as if he were starving.
“I’m sorry. I don’t believe I caught your name,” I said with feigned sweetness. Hell, I even batted my eyelashes for effect as if I was a simpering female in a romantic comedy. Asshole seemed unperturbed, muscles bulging and eyes narrowing. Oh yeah. This man really did not like me.
When he didn’t answer, maintaining eye contact that had the air cackling with electricity (oh wait, electricity hadn’t been invented yet, right?), Jasper chimed in, “His name is Everett.”
Asshole—Everett—whipped his head in the masked man’s direction, the skin around his eyes tightening even further. With his brows furrowed, the worried creases on his forehead and between his eyes deepened. While he looked only a few years older than me, his eyes were ancient. And that scowl…it aged him in a way years couldn’t.
“Aren’t you hungry?” Everett asked mockingly, eyes still locked on Jasper. The other man’s lips twitched downward. “Why aren’t you eating, Jasper?”
God, I wanted to disappear. To shrink into my seat and become one with the woodworking. Instead, I focused on the elegance of the dining room.
Like the rest of the house, it was grand and beautiful. The table was large and wooden, polished even, and five chairs surrounded it. A three-tiered chandelier hung low, flames flickering intermittently and chasing away the shadows. The woodworking was phenomenal as well, every trim crafted from hand and depicting vines I yearned to study in detail. A Persian rug covered a shopworn carpet.
“This is our house, and you should be free to do what you want to,” Everett hissed to Jasper angrily, once more ensnaring my attention. I turned to see Jasper frowning and Everett glaring.
It was only then that I realized Jasper’s plate was as full as Everett’s. The man hadn’t been eating either. My confusion only lasted a moment before I looked once more at the mask obscuring half his face. Half his lips.
Was he keeping his mask on because I was here? Because I was eating with them?
What did he have to hide?
We all wore masks, I realized, but we didn’t know when it was appropriate to take them off. I wore one frequently. With my dad. With my friends. Each mask was different, but each one kept my true feelings a secret. The true me a secret.
If you didn’t share all of yourself, you could never be hurt. At least, not in a way you couldn’t recover from. Like when mom…
But now wasn’t the time to think about that.
“If you’ll excuse me…” Jasper dropped a cloth napkin, pushed back his chair, and stomped out of the room.
Everett glared after him, a muscle in his jaw twitching.
Before I could stop myself—before I could reel myself back in, I snapped, “What’s your problem?”
Suddenly, I was the main act on a stage with a rapt audience of three men. Three strangers.
I swallowed audibly, folding my hands in my lap and twisting them.
Fuck, what was I thinking? I was a long ways from home…hell, a hundred-and-some-odd years away from home…and I was at the mercy of these men. They may have shown me nothing but kindness, except Everett, but they were still strangers. They would not hesitate to put a knife in my back if it meant they were protecting their own. That was how things worked in this century, right?
“Excuse me?” Everett asked darkly, dangerously.
Ellis leaned forward and signed something, his hands moving rapidly. Everett watched his hands as they moved, eyes slitted. After a long moment, he took a deep, calming breath, hand snaking up to pinch the bridge of his nose. His eyelids fluttered closed, twigs of ebony against his tanned cheekbones, before he reopened them. He still looked angry, livid, but he was no longer glaring. His eyes grazed my features once before he, too, stood up abruptly and stomped from the room.
“Apologies for the pack o’ savages I call brothers,” Alex drawled, though his eyes were alight with amusement.
I almost laughed at his comment, remembering how he behaved earlier when he found me in his house. Pack of savages? Maybe he should speak for himself.
He leaned back indolently, crossing his ankles beneath the table. One of his shoes brushed against my foot, and I jumped.
Ellis began to sign something as well, but I held up a hand to stop him.
“You need to slow down. I haven’t studied sign language in years.”
Not since my middle school elective when I had to pick a foreign language. It was either ASL or Spanish. Either way, ASL was so very different than what Ellis was signing. I recognized only maybe a quarter of what he was trying to say.
When I continued to stare at him blankly, he released a heavy breath and procured a piece of paper out of a drawer behind him. He rushed out of the room, in the direction of the office, and returned with a bottle of ink and a quill pen.
Alex snorted, muttering something beneath his breath I couldn’t catch, before he too stood, stretching his arms above his head. I didn’t fail to notice the wi
ry muscles of his arms and chest, or the whisper of tiny red hairs beneath the crudely cut off white tunic he wore. He tilted his head to one side, cracking his neck, and the firelight caught the sharp lines of his face, casting shadows in all the right places.
I cleared my throat and hurriedly glanced away when I noticed Ellis was watching me. Drooling over a man was definitely one of the things they would think improper of a lady. God, how the hell was I going to pull this off?
I’m no lady.
“A good night to you, lass. I feel as though I havena slept in days. If I dinna retire I’ll be slippin’ into my bowl o’ soup.” He winked cheekily at me before sauntering away, hands in his pockets and whistling beneath his breath. Ellis watched him go, expression conflicted, before he sighed heavily. His shoulders slumped as if he had an immense weight pressing down on them.
“I’m sorry if I ruined dinner,” I said softly, staring at the spread. If I understood them correctly, this was only the first course. There was still more inside the kitchen. My fingernails dug into my palms, crescent moon indents appearing on my skin.
In a span of seconds, everything I knew had changed. Had been altered so completely I didn't recognize up from down, left from right. I was fumbling, tripping, my precarious grip on sanity loosening as the seconds dredged on. Somehow, someway, I had found myself…in a different time. It sounded surreal even to my own ears.
Honestly, you couldn’t make this shit up.
Was it the drug?
Was it something the men did?
Had I died in that icy water and this was a circle of hell I’d been condemned to?
My heart hammered erratically in my ribcage at the thought. But, staring into Ellis’s serene and kind eyes, I couldn’t find it within me to believe that. I didn’t automatically dismiss it, but I allowed my mind to sift through all the possibilities.
The most likely conclusion was the tiny golden capsule I had consumed.
Amy consumed.
Oh god!
I bolted upright, glancing anxiously from side to side. Was she here with me?
She would be terrified, confused. When we were younger, I was always the adventurous one. She would hang back and allow me to take the lead, but she never jumped. She never took that final leap I so desperately wanted her to.
If she was here, she wouldn’t survive. At least not mentally. She was too fragile, too vulnerable, to understand. I was barely hanging on by a thread, and that thread was unraveling by the second. Soon, I would sink into a pit of sharks and snakes and death.
As my mind raced, so did my heart - anger and fear battled for dominance, vied for attention. I pushed a hand through my hair, grunting.
How did this become my life?
Only a few days ago, I was a down-on-my-luck college student, and now I was in an immense house over a hundred years in the past. It wasn’t fair.
A piece of paper was slid in front of me, and I read the elegant scrawl.
I am sorry about my brothers. They are not usually this rude.
I sighed, releasing a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. My muscles were coiled, ready to spring at a moment’s notice like a striking snake. At the soft smile on Ellis’s face, my muscles relaxed and it felt like I could breathe again.
“I don’t understand why Everett hates me so much.”
Lie. I understood just fine.
I was a stranger disrupting his family dynamic, intruding in his home. I may not have done it intentionally, Jasper may have been the instigator, but I was the predator in his mind preying on his unsuspecting family. He really gave me more credit than I deserved.
He doesn’t hate you. Everett is protective of our family.
“Family?” I tapped my chin thoughtfully. “I heard you guys refer to each other as brothers, and yet you don’t look anything alike.”
Ellis chuckled, grabbing the paper once more to write his reply.
Brothers are more than just blood.
He didn’t need to explain more. I understood exactly what he meant. Sometimes, the bonds that were forged went deeper than familial ties. I couldn’t even look my own father in the eyes anymore, my disgust too perverse.
Before I could reply, Ellis was scribbling once more.
Where does your aunt live? She’s no doubt worried.
She would be fucking terrified. My aunt had always been a worrier, especially when it came to her family. She would be scouring the city searching for me, calling in the cavalry.
Calling in my dad.
Tears filled my eyes, but I angrily shoved them away, hid them beneath lock and key. I wouldn’t cry, not yet. Crying was for the hopeless, and I still held onto a sliver of hope.
I stared at the crinkled paper as Ellis stared at me
“I lied,” I whispered, staring at my hands. They fiddled with the off-white cloth napkin, the color of eggshells. A thread was beginning to loosen on the edge, and I tugged half-heartedly at the string. “My aunt…doesn’t live around here.”
Where does she live?
His eyes implored me to tell him the truth, to trust him, but how could I? He had been nothing but kind to me, yet at the same time trust was a fickle thing. It went both ways.
We both needed to trust each other, a feat I was beginning to think was impossible to accomplish.
“I don’t remember.” I was a fucking verbal freight train. Once the lie started, I couldn’t stop. It exploded out of me like molten lava. “I don’t remember a lot, actually. I remember my name and that I have an aunt, but I don’t know where she is. I don’t know how I ended up in the Thames to begin with.”
The napkin was unraveling, my fingers continually pulling and twisting the thread.
Fuck. What did I just do?
Ellis’s eyes were comically wide in his face. His hand settled on mine over the table. As quickly as his skin touched mine, he pulled back with a horror-struck expression on his face. His hands fisted on the top of the table.
Grabbing the quill, he began to write again.
We can send the doctor out here tomorrow.
“No!” I blurted, my voice louder and harsher than I intended it to be. When he blanched, hurt flickering in his umber eyes, I softened my gaze. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. It’s just…this is all so confusing.”
He nodded his head sympathetically.
We’ll help you. I promise.
I smiled back, but I wasn’t sure if it went to my eyes. What could they do to help me? Make a time machine? The thought made me snort.
“Thank you.” I placed my hand over his, mimicking the position he had done previously, and smiled softly. He used his free hand to write once more.
Come. Let me show you the guest room.
His dark fingers held my hand gently as he tugged me down the hall. It was only as we were at a fork, turning, did I feel the eyes boring a hole into my back.
Subtly glancing over my shoulder, I met Everett’s dark and piercing gaze. His expression was surprisingly thoughtful, almost cautious, as he watched me with Ellis. Before I could wish him goodnight, he turned on his heel and vanished into a room down the hall.
Chapter 10
ALEX
I canna sleep.
The ticking of the damned clock on the wall was like a knife strikin’ wood. Slicin’ away minutes so slowly it made my teeth grind. Blasted thing! I shouldna been able to hear the clock from my room.
A distant part o’ me knew it was all in my head. No doubt the fault of my habit.
The thought of it alone sent my skin pricklin’ wi’ anticipation. I could almost taste the acrid sweetness on my tongue. Feel the swellin’ and numbin’ in my lungs. The heaviness.
Tossin’ the covers from my legs, I grunted as I got up, shiverin’ against the chill. I’d tear the bloody cogs from the thing and hide them where Ellis wouldna be able to find ‘em. Yes. It was a good idea.
It would buy me at least a few days o’ peace before he could replace ‘em from the cloc
ksmith.
My tunic just grazed the tops of my thighs, coverin’ what needed to be covered, but no more. The coldness of the eve made my fists clench white as I slipped out o’ my room and into the hall. I rushed along, the familiar shakin’ in my fingers already beginnin’. Och no. I wouldna listen to it. The devil it was—this cravin’ I couldna ever seem to shake.
I turned the corner, my head bent, eager more than anythin’ to stop the damned infernal ticking. I was in such a state, I dinna notice her standin’ there in her white shift, like a phantom in the dark.
“Aye,” I hissed as I collided wi’ her, one hand raised to strike, and the other reachin’ for a sword I wasna wearin’.
“Fuck!” She squealed, and whirled ‘round. “Oh,” she said in a gush o’ breath, seein’ who I was in the dim—droppin’ her own fists.
“Did ye mean to fight me, lassie?”
Wi’ her fists raised and a brawlin’ stance. A braw one at that. I wagered this lass kent a thing or two ‘bout how to fight. Certainly seemed that way.
She gulped, her greenish eyes shiftin’ this way and that. Even in the lack o’ light, I noticed how she blushed, her cheeks turnin’ a pretty shade o’ pink.
“N-no,” she said. “I’m sorry, I—"
That was when I realized I was barely dressed. In only my tunic. My bits and pieces hanging down low, only just covered by the thin bit of shirt. It was my turn to blush. I cleared my throat.
“It’s alright,” I told her. “Not plannin’ on leavin’ us in the middle o’ the night though, are ye? The streets at night are—”
“No place for a lady,” she finished for me, sighin’, an edge to her words.
I nodded. “That’s right. Especially no one as braw as you.” I hadn’t meant to say it, but there it was. And it was true.
Beneath the thin shift she wore I could see the twin mounds o’ her breasts—nipples hardened like tiny pebbles from the cold air. The shadows o’ her waist and round curve of her arse.
Damn.
My cock twitched beneath my tunic and I straightened, lookin’ the lass pointedly in the eyes. “Back to bed wi’ ye lass. You’ll be needin’ yer rest.”
