Carousel (30 page)

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Nicholas surveyed his carving with a critical eye. His gaze flowed along the lines of the horse from fetlock to tail. He smiled, his hand caressing the hard apple wood he had selected. Once, he had thought building furniture and carving carousel animals would be his life's work. At the age of eighteen, he had rebelled against his father's authority and had gone to work for Gustav Dentzel. There he had discovered the magic of bringing a piece of wood alive in form and shape with his hands. Over the years, he had forgotten about that magic.

After he sanded the rough edges and added detail, he would paint the four-foot replica of Wind Dancer and place it on a permanent pedestal. He hadn't carved it with the intention of giving it to Dentzel for one of his carousels, although he heard they were fast becoming a favorite amusement ride.

No, this horse would be his gift to Jaci. He wanted to add, if only to himself, that it would be a wedding present, but he was afraid to project that far into the future. Right now, it was enough that she stuck with him, day after day, forcing him to take hold of his life and concentrate on the task of walking again.

He recalled how she had looked, standing at the other end of the parallel bars, worrying her lip with her teeth. Even though each step he took had brought him closer to her, those steps had felt like a thousand needles jabbing his legs at once. His legs bore his weight, but as he forced the muscles to work, they twitched and rebelled so strongly, the pain sometimes caused brief blackouts. Every time he stopped, even for a minute, she would encourage him, and he didn't have the heart to deny her.

So he had kept at it; forcing his legs to move along the wood base, his hands tightly gripping the railings, until he came to the end where she stood. God, how he had wanted to kiss her. She had given him the most glorious smile, and the pain had slipped away. In its place, an intense pleasure coursed through him from his head to his toes, along with an incredible desire to make love to her.

Instead, he had turned around within the confines of the bars and shuffled back to the edge of his bed. Nicholas Westbrooke, who until recently had thought himself a man among men, was afraid of a slip of a woman. Even though she had accepted his apology for his boorish behavior the last time, he was hesitant to touch her again. He didn't think he could bear her rejection, and he didn't want her to accept him out of pity. Until he knew what direction his life would take, he decided to keep her at a distance, no matter how difficult that decision.

He concluded his inner conversation as he finished carving the notch that would hold the leather reins. Jaci would soon arrive with his lunch, and he didn't want her to see the carousel horse until it was finished.

"Hello. It's a lovely day out. We should see about getting you outside."

He turned at the sound of her voice, her smile reaching him across the room. She tilted her head, trying to see around him to his work. He bent over the arm of his chair and reached for the drop cloth.

"What's that? Is this your big secret project?" She teased him, moving quickly across the room. She stood across from him, lunch tray in hand, staring at his carving. He held his breath in anticipation of her response. He had wanted to surprise her, but now he hoped she at least liked it.

"Why, Nicholas, it's beautiful. It looks like a carousel horse." As she said the words, he watched her eyes widen and her breath catch. The tray slid from her hands and crashed to the floor.

Unable to reach her, he sat helplessly as the color drained from her face and she began to tremble. "Jaci, what is it?" He pushed himself up, for a moment forgetting, and fell against the arm of the chair. The wooden horse stood between them, effectively blocking his ability to reach out to her.

She backed away, a shaking hand pressed against her lips. "Jaci, talk to me." Her acute reaction to his carving scared him. "It's the carousel horse."

"Well, yes, I'm glad to see it at least resembles that from which I modeled it," he said, trying to tease her out of her fright.

"No, I mean it's
the
carousel horse--the one in the photograph." Her voice quivered. With jerky steps, she backed away from the horse as though it were a ghost.

He shook his head in confusion. "I don't understand. What photograph?"

"Huh?" Her eyebrows bunched together, her gaze searching his.

"What photograph are you talking about?" Her behavior frightened him, but he didn't know what to do other than get her to talk.

This time her face transformed, registering recognition instead of shock. "Of course, the picture." She turned and raced from the room. He heard her steps as she ran up the stairs.

He gazed from the empty doorway back to the horse he had been carving. It most definitely had been a surprise, but she hadn't reacted with joy he'd anticipated. He reached for the bell cord to ring for Selkirk to clean up the luncheon mess scattered across the floor.

"Here, here, look at this," Jaci spoke as she rushed back in, digging through some sort of bag. She came to stand beside his chair, but he noticed she carefully avoided looking at the almost completed wooden horse.

She quickly unfolded a paper and shoved it into his hands. "Look. There's a picture of you, and this horse." Still without looking, she pointed behind her to the accused statue.

He surveyed the paper, which did contain a horse. He wasn't at all convinced that a person stood behind it; the shape was shadowy and blurred, at best. "It is a painted miniature of a horse similar--"

"It's not a painting, it's a photograph--a
color
photograph."

He scrutinized the picture more carefully. "It's a very good likeness--how did they get the detail?"

"Nicholas!" Her screech effectively caught his attention. "Look at the horse, Nicholas. This horse," she thumped the picture for emphasis, "and your carving are identical. How is that possible?"

He did as she requested and studied the picture. Suddenly his breath caught. "Dear God, it's true."

"It's the same horse, Nicholas. The same horse."

He shook his head at her comment. "No, this." He pointed to a corner of the picture and she bent close to see the spot. "It's the airplane you told Amanda about." He looked up at her, his voice incredulous. "I thought you were making it up--that you had a vivid imagination."

She knelt beside his chair as he continued to stare at the picture. He tried to convince himself that it was a flaw in the paper; that in folding and unfolding this photograph, she had scratched it somehow. But the more he studied it, the clearer it became. Against the blue of the sky was a large object suspended in the air--an airplane flying across the sky.

She confirmed it. "I hadn't noticed the airplane before. When I took the pictures and developed them, I was only concerned with the carousel horses, and how this image had ruined the photo session." Again, she pointed to a spot behind the horse.

Her wild stories were true. The photograph convinced him. Through some fluke of nature, Jaci had been thrown back to Wildwood from somewhere in the future. All her comments, all the times she hadn't understood their culture, came flooding back to him. She had made references to Dallas as though it were a large metropolis, when the town had only existed some thirty years in his time. She had cooked food he had never before tasted, and had created stories and taught Amanda things that had no bearing on anything within his realm of knowledge.

"Nicholas, I know how hard this is to believe. It was just as hard for me to understand when I first got here. But it did happen." She dug into the strange bag. "Here; look at these." She identified the objects as she dropped them into his lap. "A roll of high speed film, a plastic credit card; car keys. How else would you explain these?"

"We have keys," Nicholas answered the only possible part of the question. "It's logical to assume somewhere across the United States these other objects might exist." He said the words, but he didn't believe them. He believed her, even though his very logical self said such a thing as time travel was impossible. He fingered the smooth canister that she said contained film. He ran his thumb over the raised letters which spelled her name on a calling card. No, she had called it a credit card. "What use does this have?"

"It's a credit card. I use it to pay for things, instead of money."

"Instead of money? You mean you don't have currency?" He turned the card over and over in his hand.

"Yes, we do, but this is used instead of writing a check against the money in a bank account."

"Well, there you have it. It's not new for we have letters of credit from banks now." He shrugged off what she said.

She got up and began to pace. She waved a hand in the air, and he thought she looked delightful all flustered and confused. He tried to see her as he had the first day she appeared--wearing strange clothes and covered in mud. He tried to imagine her in some future world. He shook his head. The Jaci Eastman he knew, regardless of where she had come from, was the soft, feminine creature who now strolled back and forth across his study.

"There's got to be an explanation you'll understand," she muttered.

Even though he didn't think he wanted to know, he asked anyway. "
When
do you live?"

"In 2008," she whispered.

"I'm long since dead." The wonder of it all struck him.

"And I have yet to be born in 1875. How do you explain it?"

He shook his head, neither wanting nor having an explanation. "I don't need an explanation. Some things are not meant to be explained--like lightning and storms and death and disease. Some things you simply have to accept on faith." Although he realized he was taking a chance by giving voice to his emotions, he felt it necessary to make her understand. "It doesn't matter. All that matters is that you are here with me now. I need you here with me."

His words stopped her in her tracks. She turned a slow circle until she faced him, the silent wooden horse now separating them. Her gaze searched his face and he hoped she realized how sincere he was--how desperately he still loved her.

"I can't ask you to give up your life for me. I can't make a commitment to you right now, but I hope you realize how I feel."

She stood still as a statue, staring, and Nicholas wondered if she had heard any of what he said. Here he had almost declared himself, and she wasn't even listening.

"You have to quit carving this horse. You have to stop right now." She rushed over to the table which stood near his carving. Snatching the lunch tray from the floor, she began scooping his carving tools onto the surface.

Nicholas reached out and grabbed her wrist, bringing her movements to a halt. "Jaci, stop; what are you doing?"

When she turned, tears streamed down her face. Her hand trembled as she touched the horse, turning it around to face the same way as the photograph.

"Look at the picture, Nicholas. The pose and position of the head and tail; the legs you have carved. You had never seen this photo before, and yet it's exactly the same as this carving you're doing in 1875. But I took the picture in 2008. Remember when you took me to Mr. Dentzel's that first time and you thought I was crazy because I was looking for a particular carousel horse?"

"Well, not crazy, maybe." He wanted to tease her out of her mood, for her words were scaring him. Deep down in the pit of his stomach a knot had formed, growing larger with each statement she made. He wanted to stop what she said, for somehow he sensed where her words would lead.

"This was the horse I was looking for, even though you hadn't made it yet." She moaned softly and put both hands to her head as though in pain. "Oh, this doesn't make any sense at all, but please, I beg you, stop carving it. If you finish, somehow it will bring the process full circle, and that might very well send me back to my own time."

Even as she said the words, he denied them in his mind. It was too incredible an idea to comprehend. He looked at the other things she had carried in her bag, yet decided to pursue a different reasoning. "I had forgotten about your feelings when you first came here," he said. "As I recall, you kept saying you wanted to go back to Dallas. I simply didn't understand exactly what you meant."

He watched her face as he carefully made his next statement. "Perhaps if, as you say, the carousel horse will transport you back to your Dallas, I should finish it posthaste." He was only testing her, a knot of fear almost causing his heart to stop beating.

"No!" she cried.

"Whyever not?" He was taunting her and he knew it. But he wanted to know; had to have her confession of what she felt for him. He wondered if it wasn't more crucial to his recovery than the use of his legs.

Her gaze met his, but she quickly looked aside, refusing to give away too much.

"Because..." she began.

"Why, Jaci? What would it make a difference if I did finish the horse and if it did, by some miracle, send you back?"

"Because, maybe I don't want to go back yet. Maybe there's some purpose for my being here that I haven't thought of yet." She shrugged her answer, but Nicholas knew she held back, afraid to commit, just as he had. For now, her words were enough. He breathed easier.

"A purpose for being here? Other than to wreck havoc with my life, you mean?" He grinned at her.

"That's not funny," she weakly protested.

He dumped the odds and ends of her bag onto the tray with his carving tools. He held out his hand. "Come here."

She faltered and he wondered if she was afraid to touch him for fear he, or she, would disappear. "You're safe; you'll see." He gestured with his hand.

Tentatively, she raised her hand to his, the touch of her fingers against his palm lighter than butterfly wings. His fingers closed around her slim hand and he tugged her to him, pulling her down onto his lap. He wouldn't allow her to hesitate. One arm curled about her waist to hold her close. He reached up with the other hand and tilted her chin.

"A promise," he whispered as he kissed her soft lips. "My pledge." He kissed her again, tenderly, for he wanted her to ache for him as he did for her. "Regardless of some phenomena which might have happened to bring you to me,
this
is real." A third time, he touched his lips to hers. "
We
are real."