A Tale of Two Centuries (25 page)

I grab the book from her hands, searching the page for a clue as to when this could’ve been painted and who I am to marry, hoping to find some mark that will show it is years from now. But I look the same as I do today. I lift my eyes, and Cat nods at my unspoken question. “The date said 1507.”

The book falls from my fingertips. “But when I return it will be 1507.” Even to my own ears, my voice sounds hollow and far away.

She presses her lips together in a thin line, and realization hits me.

“But you knew that,” I say. “The first day I arrived, I told you what year it was when I left. Which means you knew all along that I was to marry soon.”

Cat looks at her bedspread. That is what she has been hiding. All this time she has known what waited when I returned. Betrayal washes over me…and then fades as quickly as it comes.

What good would it have done for me to know the truth any sooner? Would I have changed one moment of the last two weeks? If anything, had I known what lay ahead, I most likely would have focused on that, on my future as a bride, and not on my time here.

With Austin.

I feel the weight of his stare as I ask her, almost scared of her answer, “Do you know whom it is that I am to marry?”

Cat shakes her head. “The title of the painting didn’t say. It just said it was a gift to your bridegroom. I planned to do a full ancestry search soon, to find out what happened to everyone. You, Cipriano, your parents, Patience, Lorenzo.” Her eyes dart to Lucas and back. “But I haven’t had time yet with Christmas break. I found this doing a quick Google search right after I got back. But if you want, we can go to the library tomorrow and find out before you leave.”

Of course, my mind immediately conjures the worst potential suitors in Florence, and how lonely a life with any of the men would be—but I still have to know. “Yes,” I say, even as my stomach roils. “I would like that.”

Austin’s eyes have remained on me for our entire exchange, sitting in relative silence, not even commenting on the fact that I am (apparently) soon to become a sixteen-year-old bride, something quite unusual for his time.

Cat does what I haven’t been able to do since I heard the word
bridegroom—
she looks at Austin. Closing the binder, she takes Lucas’s hand and pulls him off the bed. “We’re gonna go in the bathroom and let you two talk.”

From Lucas’s expression, I have no doubt their conversation will be an interesting one as well.

Austin waits for the telltale
click
of the bathroom door, then interlocks our hands. I stare at the contrast between his thick, roughened fingers and my smooth, slender ones. He lifts our joined hands and places a knuckle under my chin so he can look me in the eye. “So it’s true?”

I give him a halfhearted smile. “You always say I speak like a historical novel.”

The side of his mouth lifts in a grin, and hope flutters in my chest. “You do.”

I fight the urge to squirm and look away as he studies my face, and when his mouth tightens, every cell in my body tenses for his response.

“You know, as crazy as it is, it kinda makes sense. In a surreal, mind-boggling sort of way.”

Deeming it too good to be true, I ask, “You mean…you believe her?”

Austin slowly nods, almost as if he, too, is surprised. “I do. I mean, at first I didn’t. The buildings in Cat’s pictures don’t look much different now, and the rest could’ve been from a really good Renaissance fair. But that painting of you…and seeing your face when you heard about getting
married
…” He breaks off with a low curse. Then he closes his eyes and opens them, the blue so deep I could drown in them. “Yeah, I believe you. But that’s not why you were so upset. You always knew where you were from, so something else must’ve happened before I got here. What?” He narrows his eyes. “Why was that woman here tonight?”

Willing myself not to cry again, I crush his fingers in my grasp and whisper, “She came to take me home.”

Austin bounds off the bed and paces the length of the room. He stops, starts again, and then pulls me up with him. Gathering me to his chest, he curls his shoulders around me as if he can protect me—as if he can stop fate just because he wills things to be different—and says, “That’s not happening.”

His voice is sharp, with a determined edge of steel, and if I weren’t so heartbroken, I would kiss him.

Instead, I lay my hand on his cheek. “It’s all right. Reyna granted me a forty-eight-hour reprieve. I have until after opening night.” I swallow hard, pushing my emotions back down my thickened throat. “But—but then I’ll have to leave you.”

Austin takes my hand and walks back to the bed, placing me on his lap as he sits down. “Baby, I just found you…you really think I’m gonna let her take you away from me? We’ll figure something out, I promise you that.”

“But how?”

I startle from Cat’s sudden appearance in the bathroom’s doorway and look up to meet her troubled gaze.

“I mean, Austin, this isn’t politics. You can’t just argue your point here. This is fate. Destiny.” She wiggles her fingers in the air. “Magic.” She shrugs. “It’s kinda hard to fight.”

“No, Austin’s right.” Lucas glides past her and sits in the rolling desk chair. “The two of you aren’t alone this time. There’s four of us now and only one of her. We’ll start with that ancestry search Cat was talking about; maybe we can find something there. That was Reyna’s big argument, right?” he asks me. “That you’d change history if you stayed?” I nod, and he grins. “Then there you go. Let’s find out who’s in your lineage and what great things we’d be changing if you stayed. There has to be a loophole.”

Austin clasps his arms around my waist from behind. “I’m great at finding loopholes.”

It is tempting to let go and be swept away by their excitement, but the boys do not understand the magic we are dealing with. I look at Cat, who gives me a gentle smile but voices the question we’re both thinking. “And if we don’t? If there’s not a loose thread to pick, or a flaw in her logic?”

Austin’s fingers sink into my skin. “Then I’ll go back with her.”

I must have heard that wrong.

I twist my head around, certain there’s no way he would be willing to give up this world that I desperately want to stay in, all for a girl he just met. But the emotion in his eyes tells me that he is, and that my ears are working just fine.

Austin resettles me on his lap, clasping his arms around my back so I will not fall, and once he is sure I am comfortable, asks, “What does this century have for me that yours won’t? Electricity? My dear devoted dad? My superior academic record?” He gives me a droll look, and even with the trauma of the day, I find my smile.

“And Jamie?” I ask, knowing how close the two siblings are.

As anticipated, sadness rolls across his face, but it is quickly replaced by resolve. “Yeah, you’re right. If I leave—and I don’t think I’ll have to, but if I do—I’ll miss her. But my sister’s a fighter, Princess. And she’s all grown up. More importantly, she’s not
you
.”

I hear the bathroom door creak behind me, and I picture my cousin’s mouth hanging ajar. But nothing, not even Reyna, could get me to look away. Austin bends his head so close to mine and lowers his voice to just above a whisper as he says, “I don’t think you’re getting it. I told you I’m not letting them take you away, so you better get used to this face. One way or another, Alessandra, I’m yours until you get rid of me.”

My heart swells, and I cling to his words like the lifeline they are. “Well, you better get used to mine,” I tell him, “because I’m
never
getting rid of you.” Then I seal my promise with a kiss.

Chapter Twenty-six

The ancestry search had to wait until morning. Shortly after absorbing Austin’s words, Jenna arrived home from touring potential sweet sixteen venues with Lucas’s mom and sister in tow, and as eager as we all were to fight fate, we decided it best we start fresh in the morning. So at nine o’clock in the morning on the day before I am to leave the twenty-first century forever, I join my boyfriend, cousin, and friend at the Beverly Hills public library to research their past—and my future—in an attempt to find a fatal flaw in Reyna’s divine logic.

To admit my hopes are pinned on a very slim chance would not be an overstatement.

“Slumming it with the rest of us lowlife, school ditchers, huh?” Austin teases Cat, grabbing the seat across from her. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

She lifts her head out of a book. “What can I say? My early ancestors set a horrible example.”

I jab her in the ribs with my elbow, and she winks, though the gesture seems a tad…strange.

I knew last night that she was worried, feeling guilty for keeping my marriage a secret for so long, but I told her I understood. I can’t imagine what it must have been like, knowing what my future held and watching me fall more and more for Austin. No wonder she fought against us so much. But I thought that we had moved past that.

Frowning, I shake off the lingering sense of unease. I’ve been overly anxious all morning, imagining conflict where there is none. I guess fighting fate will do that to a girl.

The library is deserted and quiet, and we’ve received more than a few inquisitive looks, wondering why we are not in school. Austin, a professional at making excuses for such things, explains we are gathering research for a class project. Luckily, the woman behind the desk seems to accept his explanation without question. After all, as he told me when I expressed my disbelief earlier, “Why would anyone believe we’d skip
here
?”

I take a thick volume I found on Lorenzo’s life from the top of my stack of books, hoping it will contain a clue about the painting he did of me. It is still strange to think about how well-known he has become in the last five hundred years. If things do not go the way I wish and Reyna sends me home tomorrow night, I’m unsure if I should ever tell him the extent of his fame…he could grow quite insufferable. I smile, thinking of my friend, and crack the spine of the tome.

A half hour and no huge discovery later, I glance up, eyes weary from strain. Austin does the same and shifts his gaze between Cat and me. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice how much you two look alike.”

“You didn’t know to look for it,” I suggest, sitting straighter in my chair.

I’ve long thought Cat and I shared certain attributes—it is one of the reasons I so easily believed she was my father’s niece, Patience, when she first arrived two years ago—but I have yet to hear anyone else say the same. Turning in my seat, I beam at my cousin and observe the deep etches on her forehead.

She nods. “Yeah, I see it, too.”

The difference between my thoughts and her statement is that Cat’s voice catches with sadness as she says it, and instead of smiling at me with equal delight, her gaze flits back to her open book.

Realizing my previous concern was not paranoia, I ask, more than a little hurt by her disappointment in resembling me, “Cousin, are you all right?”

She closes her eyes tight and snaps, “I’m fine.”

Obviously not, but I dare not say so and risk her ire again.

When Cat opens her eyes, she tosses me a quick smile. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to jump on you. I guess I’m just a little stressed that we’re not gonna find anything, but that’s all it is.” Then she looks back at her book, effectively shutting me out.

I have not known my cousin long—nine days during her journey, fifteen now for mine—but during that time she has never lied to me. Well, if not counting the numerous times she claimed to be Patience, but even then, she was never very good at it. Cat never needed to lie about anything important because I have always accepted and loved her unconditionally…which makes her insincerity now even more surprising. And disconcerting. Call it intuition, a familial bond, or just keen observation, but something is definitely bothering her. And it is something she doesn’t want
me
to know about. Another secret.

Lucas looks at me over Cat’s bowed head and shrugs, then reaches for his chirping cell phone. He’s been calling and e-mailing his contacts back in Milan all morning for assistance. He gets up from our table and rushes down the aisle, past the frowning librarian, to accept the call outside. Austin lifts his chin in Cat’s direction, urging me on.

I close my hand around the wooden seat of my chair and scoot closer. The screech of the legs against the floor brings another scowl from the woman behind the desk. Despite Austin’s assurances, I am beginning to think she has her doubts about our alibi.

“Cat?” I ask, wincing at the slight waver in my voice.

“Yeah?”

She turns another page and lifts the book up. What she doesn’t lift is her eyes.

Not a good sign.

I shove my hair behind my ear, then rub my hands along the rough denim of my jeans. In all the questions I assumed I’d be asking today—and I imagined a lot—I never expected I’d have to ask this…or that I’d ever dread the answer.

Feet bouncing beneath my chair, I gather my strength and blurt out, “Do you not wish for me to stay?”

Austin stops writing. Cat drops the book from her hands. And I wait in fear.

The same doubts I had when I first walked up to her door come creeping back. Could she have been pretending this whole time? I think back to her excited greeting and the way she welcomed me so readily into her home, and doubt that can be true. But if she did miss me, and did want me here, could it be that I pushed too hard about Lucas?

I frown, thinking back over the last week. The two of them have seemed so happy now, especially once she settled his fears about his ancestor lookalike.

Finally Cat looks up, stopping my runaway assumptions and ponderings. “Of course I want you to stay, Less.”

Relieved breath rushes out of my lungs, even though I hear a distinct
but
left unsaid.

She puts her elbows on the tabletop and massages her temples with her fingers. “Of course I want you to stay,” Cat repeats, “but I can’t help being scared. Last night Reyna said that if you stayed here, you’d be changing history. Basically you’d be wiping out a whole line, right? So what does that mean for me? What if we find out today that
I’m
part of your line, Less? Does it mean that if you don’t go back, then I’ll just…cease to exist?”

Silence follows her speech.