Across the Winds of Time (27 page)

Darius stiffened, and he gripped my arms.

“No.”

I jerked and stared at him. His face took on a mulish look. I’d seen it before—narrowed eyes, his chin prominent, a muscle working in his jaw.

“Darius! You don’t get to tell me no, no matter what year you think we’re in.” I wriggled and he loosened his grip.

Darius stared down at me.

“Please don’t go out there, Molly. Don’t force this decision on us. We are together now. I am not dead, I am not a ghost. That is what you wanted, is it not? What we both wanted? Don’t tempt fate.”

I backed up a step.

“Darius! I don’t want to leave you either, but I have to know if I can get back...when I need to.”

Darius reached for my hands.

“Please don’t go yet, my love. I do not understand what is happening, but I do not want to lose you right now. What if I cannot return with you? What if I am destined to stay here...in my own time?”

I watched in stunned silence as he took both of my hands and put them against his lips.

“You came once,” I mumbled half-heartedly.

“Do you want to risk it again?”

I shook my head.

“No, I don’t want to take the chance, but I can’t stay here, Darius.”

“Stay for a while. Now that I am back, I have some matters that I have to attend to. Then we will try to travel together. I will return with you...forever. Marriage and children?” He bent to peer into my face.

I blushed and threw myself into his arms, all fears resolved in that respect.

“Marriage and children,” I breathed against his ear.

He captured my lips with his for a long, languorous kiss before raising his head to gaze into my eyes.

“I love you, Molly Hamilton.”

“I love you, too, Darius. I’m so glad you’re not a ghost.”

“As am I, my love. As am I.” He gave me a hard embrace before setting me from him. “We must find something for you to wear, and I fear I must change out of these very comfortable garments.”

I sighed and walked over to the window in the spare room. The view was similar to the master bedroom.

“Why can’t I just wear my clothes—if I can’t leave the property? I suppose I can’t step out into the road like you couldn’t, right?”

Darius came to stand behind me at the window and wrapped his arms around me.

“I assume if you step into the road, you will disappear...return to your time. But there is still a chance that someone might come to the house and see you, perhaps in the garden?” He chuckled. “It certainly happened enough to me while I was in the twenty-first century. You seemed to have many visitors. And Mrs. White will return in the morning.”

I raised my face to look at him.

“I have to be honest with you, Darius. I’m very worried about Sara. She’ll probably send an emergency message to my parents—after she calls the police and reports my disappearance...our disappearance. And the cats. Who’s going to take care of the cats if she leaves the house and goes back to Seattle? I can’t stay, Darius. I have to get home.”

His grip on me tightened.

“Wait! Wait a day or two. I cannot go with you until I have set my affairs in order, and I am afraid that if you leave without me—I will never be able to reach you again.”

I swallowed hard. I could not bear to lose Darius. I turned to him and pressed my face against his chest, listening to the rapid rhythm of his heart.

“What affairs do you have to set in order? Can you tell me?”

His chest rose and fell with a deep breath. He set me from him, keeping his hands on my shoulders and peered down into my face.

“I have to prepare a will. If I leave without designating heirs, it is possible the land and house will pass out of the family. Then it will not be yours.”

“Oh,” I whispered. I couldn’t contemplate such a horrible thought. What if someone bulldozed it? Someone like Bob Nesbitt?

“I need to go into town and see the attorney.”

“Yes, you do,” I urged. “What if we returned and the house wasn’t even there...”

His face looked grim as he nodded.

“Just so,” he said. “And the land is turned over to farming.”

I shuddered.

“Oh, Darius. I can’t imagine. I don’t even want to think about it.”

“So, you will wait for me?”

I nodded quickly.

“I will wait for you,” I whispered.

He pulled me into his arms and buried his face in my hair.

Just then, a thudding sound near the front of the house caught our attention. Darius ran out of the room and down the stairs, with me in his wake. The jingle of livery tinkled, and I could have sworn it sounded like someone pulled up in front of the house on a horse—just like out of a Western movie.

Darius ran to the picture window in front and pulled the curtain aside just an inch to peer out. I peeked around him. I could hear a horse snorting, but I couldn’t see anything from this angle.

“Go,” Darius whispered urgently. His grim expression and set jaw frightened me. I froze, not knowing what he wanted me to do. My shoulder burned, but I ignored it. “Go now. Run upstairs and lock yourself in the bedroom. Go now!”

I gaped at him for a moment, but obeyed without question. The sounds of heavy steps on the porch galvanized me to dash for the stairs. I ran up them as silently as I could, throwing terrified glances over my shoulder. I couldn’t leave Darius down there alone! I just couldn’t.

I paused at the top of the stairs, where Darius could not see me from the living room or the front door. A pounding on the door below raised the hair on the back of my neck.

“Ferguson. Open the door. Where is she? Where’s Molly Hamilton?”

I gasped. Me? Who was looking for me? In 1880? What was going on? My heart pounded in my throat and my mouth tasted like dust. I flattened myself against a wall, unable to see what was happening.

I heard the front door open quietly, and Darius’s controlled voice.

“Calm down, James. She is dead. You should know that. Your brother killed her.”

“Then why did Old Man Briggs say he saw her—not half an hour ago—out there on the road?” the voice shrieked. “If my brother hung for something he didn’t do, I’ll find her and kill her myself,” he raged.

“She’s dead, James. I don’t know what Mr. Briggs said, but he didn’t see Molly. And if they hadn’t hung your brother, I would have killed him myself.” Darius’s voice was unlike how I’d ever heard it—deadly, filled with venom and hate. I couldn’t begin to understand all the references to Molly’s death. Had she died violently? My shoulder burned.

“You da—” I heard a scuffle at the door, and I ran down the stairs with some ridiculous plan of interfering between two raging men. I was just in time to see Darius punch a red-faced, blustering blond man in the jaw who staggered back from the doorway. James fell onto his backside and jumped up quickly, rubbing his jaw. His eyes widened, and he stared beyond Darius—to me.

“Molly Hamilton,” he spewed. “You witch. I knew it. You didn’t die after all.” He wiped at his mouth where spittle gathered. “You let them hang my brother,” he said as he spat in my direction. Darius jumped in front of me and hid me behind him as he had earlier from Mrs. White.

James looked up at him.

“She’s going to prison for this, Ferguson. If they don’t hang her first,” he raged. “Murderer!” he screamed. “She murdered my brother as sure as she killed him herself.”

“This is not Molly, James,” Darius ground out between his teeth. “Molly is dead.” I trembled at his words and he pressed me tighter against him. I didn’t know what nightmare I had awakened in, but I was absolutely certain I wasn’t going to go to prison. Was I?

“I don’t think so, Ferguson,” James blustered. “Just wait till the sheriff and the town hear about this. I hope they get a lynch mob together.”

“James! Wait!”

James disappeared from view, and I heard the sound of his footsteps running off the porch. Darius released me and ran after him. I heard James bellowing what sounded like obscenities, but I didn’t recognize any nineteenth century curses. I peered around the corner to see James mount a brown horse and race away down the drive, turning right when he reached the road.

Darius chased him to the road and stared after him as he galloped away. Then Darius turned and ran back toward the house, bypassing the porch to run toward the back.

I ran out the door and around the side of the house just in time to see Darius run into the shed, although it was in much better shape than the one I was familiar with. I chased him inside just in time to see him step into a stall, grab the halter of a large, black horse, pull himself onto its unsaddled back and urge it forward.

“Darius!” I yelled. “What’s going on? Where are you going?”

“Stay here!” he shouted. “Get back inside and lock yourself in. I will return.”

I dug my heels in. He was leaving me? In the wrong century?

“Please, Molly, go inside,” he yelled. He spurred the horse forward, and they flew out of the back yard kicking up dirt and sod. I ran around the corner of the house to see Darius thunder down the drive and turn right. If I hadn’t been so confused and terrified, I could have admired how absolutely wonderful he looked astride a horse.

I ran back inside the house and toward the front door to peer out the windows, but Darius had disappeared from view. I slumped to the floor and hugged myself, fighting an overwhelming sense of anxiety, and wondering what to do. My shoulder ached, and I couldn’t breathe.

Darius was heading to town—I didn’t doubt that for a moment. I didn’t know whether he was going to try to stop James from telling everyone about me—about Molly, that is—but something awful was going to happen. Darius seemed to have murder in his eyes, and I couldn’t just sit here and cower if I could do something to help.

Surely, I could do something to stop what seemed to be an impending disaster. Coming from the twenty-first century, I had to know something that would be useful in the nineteenth century. Couldn’t I convince them that I wasn’t Molly? That I really had come from somewhere else? I was sure I couldn’t even try to convince the authorities that I had actually come from another time.

I pulled myself up and peered out the window. No one was in sight. I pulled open the door and peeked outside. All seemed quiet, save for a few birds chirping nearby and the small trees rustling in the wind. I ran out onto the porch and down the steps, jogging toward the road. I pulled up short at the end of the drive and peered down the road to the right—where Darius had gone. I knew the road was not long, only about three miles back to town. Surely, I could jog that distance in good time. I had no plan once I got there, but it seemed likely I would see Darius’s horse somewhere.

And Darius had made it onto the road without disappearing. Could I? Of course, the implications for my pending return to the twenty-first century were at stake if I didn’t disappear, but I couldn’t worry about that now. I needed to stop whatever was going to happen.

With moisture on my upper lip and a knot in my stomach, I stepped out onto the road...and I had my answer. A kaleidoscope of images featuring Sara, the cats, the bright blue and pink Victorian house and a cemetery dotted with white tombstones sent me into a dizzying vortex, and I couldn’t see anything. I thrust my hands out blindly ahead of me but felt nothing. My knees buckled and I felt faint. Which way back to the drive?

A pair of strong arms lifted me up into the air and I landed on my stomach over a hard surface...a surface that bounced. Still blinded by the myriad of rotating and colorful patterns reminiscent of a speeding photographic presentation, I kept my eyes closed for a moment. The distinctive smell of horsehair tickled my nose, and I opened my eyes.

“I told you to stay in the house. Yet somehow, I knew you would not, so I returned.”

I looked over my shoulder at Darius, astride the horse and holding me as I lay on my stomach draped over the horse’s back. We were back in the grassy driveway. Darius brought the horse to a standstill, slid down and pulled me with him.

“Forgive me for throwing you over the horse like a saddle bag, but I saw you disappearing, and I knew there was no time for the niceties. I thank my lucky stars that I returned in time.” Darius’s voice was husky. “It seems you cannot go beyond the property line—just as it was for me.”

I hung my head, still shaken and light headed.

“I thought...I thought I could help. I thought I could try to explain.”

Darius pulled me to him and bent to whisper in my ear.

“There is no explanation that will satisfy James, my love. No one will believe that you have come from another time. I could not bear to lose you, Molly. Please do not attempt to leave without me again. We must go together when we go, or we will be parted forever. It is my greatest fear.”

“Where were you going? What were you going to do? Why does this James think I’m your Molly?” I recalled bits of the words I’d heard. I clutched at his shirt. “Someone killed her, Darius, didn’t they? And he hanged for it?”

Darius sighed and covered my cold hands with his warm ones.

“Let me take you back into the house, Molly. I must go after him, before he—” He didn’t finish. “I will return as soon as possible. Then...we can talk.”

I allowed him to lead me back into the house. He bent to kiss the tip of my nose.

“I will return,” he murmured. “Please stay here. It is not safe for you out there.”

He strode out the door, and I followed his progress from the window, my heart cold in my chest. Once again, he pulled himself onto the horse’s back and galloped out of the driveway in a cloud of dust. I could do nothing to protect him because I could not follow him, and I could do nothing to protect myself because I wasn’t quite sure where the danger lay. Running into the road to return to the future—if that’s where I traveled to—without him, wasn’t an option. I might lose him forever, and I might lose the house.

I hugged myself and turned away to face the house that I loved almost as much as I loved the owner. The sense of the surreal continued as I studied the details of the living room—the bright red of the bricks on the fireplace unsullied with no evidence of prior smoke, the bright white paint on the walls, the unmarred sheen of the highly varnished floor. I wanted to commit it all to memory, so that I could re-create the house in its original image...the house that Darius built and loved.