Echoes of Tomorrow (20 page)

The thick cypress door to the study swung open just as Elise grabbed for the doorknob.

In the early morning light, he looked endearingly rugged.  Shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, his collar stood open with a healthy expanse of tanned skin waiting to be caressed.

A sob broke from her throat, and she launched herself into his arms, covering his face with kisses.  Her fingers alternated between a frantic sifting through his hair and tracing the outline of the rigid muscles in his back, reassuring herself that he was real.

She felt his arms tighten around her.  She rained kisses on his face until her lips settled onto his, the kiss building to incendiary proportions, until they both had to stop and gasp for breath.

"Oh, darlin'!  I can't believe I'm here!  I've missed you so much!"  She nuzzled her face into his chest, then gazed up at her husband with adoring eyes.

A deep furrow appeared on Reed's brow, and he squinted down at her, a question in his eyes.  Elise felt her heart stop when he spoke.

"Do we know each other, madam?"

Reed was completely taken aback. 

What in the name of glory is this woman doing...Good heavens!  All she has on is a man's shirt!  My shirt, if I'm not mistaken.

Though he would swear he had never laid eyes on her, he'd felt he’d known her an eternity when her lips had come to rest on his in such an earth-shattering manner.  There was a familiar feel to her enticing body pressed against his, but he was forced to write it off as
deja vu
.  He had no doubt in his mind that he would remember if this woman had ever crossed his path before.

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.