Journey in Time (Knights in Time) (48 page)

"Why wouldn't you?"

"Well, funny you should ask. Let me try and get the quote right," she challenged back, remembering the hurt she felt. "On the day you proposed, romantic event that it was, you told me you'd be better able to protect me if I was your wife." She shot an acid half smile at him, "Then you added, ‘after all it's not like we're really married.’ When did that change, Alex? When did I become the wife you wanted and loved?"

There was a flicker of shame before he countered, "I also said, I couldn’t think of another I would want as a wife."

"Forgive me for not taking consolation in your acknowledgment that if you
must
marry, you were glad it was me, which is very different than I love you."

She hung her head emotionally drained by the confrontation, drained from feeling the pain again. "It took you months to realize you loved me. A part of me wants to know why, but then, I think I can guess why." Looking up, she said, "You got used to me. I've loved you so much Alex and hoped you would fall in love with me too. Me," she stressed, "for the woman I am, not the convenient habit I became." Her voice broke. She tapped into a tiny reserve of new strength and composed herself.

"I loved you, all along,” Alex said. “We didn't need to marry for you to have my protection. It was the excuse I told you, told the world, and told myself. When you asked if I loved you, I couldn’t admit my feelings but a deeper part of me feared you’d decline my proposal, so I added the caveat about not being really married. I never wanted to fall in love or worse, marry. I--” he paused, “I was afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"Time and loss are cruel partners, the one enabling the other to increase exponentially. Over the centuries, I suffered under the two. The possibility fate might force that existence on me a second time has haunted me for five years.” His eyes darkened with the admission, flattened with remembered pain. The same pain she saw in them when he told her of the murdered mother and child. “The idea of losing a wife...I didn’t think I could bear it.”

“I can imagine.”

His eyes locked on her. “No, you can’t.”

She ventured to hug him. The muscles of his shoulders bunched beneath her touch and he pulled her arms from his neck.

“It simply took me awhile to discover I’d rather take my chances with you, than without you. I returned to find my nightmare had come true. You were lost to me—by choice. Your choice.”

He wasn't going to forgive her. She retreated to her previous spot.

"As misguided as my actions might’ve been, I didn’t
choose
to return without you. You can't imagine how distraught I was afterward. I sent messages back explaining what happened, explaining about the magnetic field."

"The metal cylinders."

"Yes. Why would I do that if I didn’t love you? Did you think all those notes were just lies? Did you?" she asked again when he didn’t answer.

"I didn’t read them."

"You must’ve seen my initials on the wax seal, how-"

"Whether you sent a hundred explanations or none isn’t the point. You didn’t trust me to take care of you, to take care of us. You ran away. I’d never have gone to the portal without you, under any circumstances."

The tough wall she worked so hard to build to get through the day began to crack. "You're not going to make me cry Alex. I cried an ocean of tears over you. Then, when I thought I had no tears left, I cried another ocean for our baby. I'm done crying.

"I stopped to see if the gauntlet was gone and for your sake, hoped it was. Fortunately or unfortunately, thunder rumbled, lightning flashed, like the day we were transported, and poof I found myself here. Not quite as heinous and premeditated as you think."

"Did you know you were pregnant?"

"No. I didn't find out until I returned. I thought stress made my period late."

"Why didn't you tell me about the miscarriage?"

"Why would I? You didn't want to know about the baby."

Shakira went over to a stack of letters on her kitchen counter. She hadn’t packed them, didn’t want them, but couldn’t bring herself to throw them out either. She picked one, walked back and showed him the envelope.

"This is the note I sent telling you, you were going to be a father." She touched her finger to the word "refused" written across the front in bold print.

"Miranda should’ve told me."

"I swore Miranda to secrecy. She’d talk you into contacting me. Yes, I wanted you in my life, but only if you wanted to be there, not out of obligation."

"I’d have come and not out of obligation. Whatever our problems, I’d try to be a good father. I certainly wouldn't have let you deal with the miscarriage by yourself."

"Jack was a big help."

His expression tightened. "Are you sleeping with him?"

Astounded and offended, Shakira debated whether to respond with words or a heavy object and a bash to his skull. "You got some bollocks. Let me give you the two-pronged answer. First, it’s none of your business. Second, do you really think after a miscarriage I’m itching to go hot and sweaty between the sheets?”

On the verge of telling him to leave, “God damn you,” came out instead.

He lifted his palms in mock surrender. "Sorry-"

"Oh no, you don’t. There’s no, King’s X, sorry I asked," she said, forcefully talking over him. She threw the unopened letter down. From another stack on the side counter, she grabbed a handful of magazines. “Hold out your hands."

He did and she laid the magazines one-by-one onto his outstretched arms. All were folded to specific pages.

"You have the balls to question me. Now it’s my turn. Should we start at the beginning? Here you are with a blonde model days after your return." She let him get a good look then flipped the magazine onto the sofa and pointed to the next photo. "This one you're with a redhead from some soap opera." Shakira cocked her head and tossed the magazine, "No one can say you're not egalitarian in your tastes, here we have a brunette wannabe of some kind. Shall I go on?"

Alex took the rest from her and laid the pile on the coffee table. "I can't deny those first weeks I buried myself in as many women as possible. I didn't want to remember the good things between us, the love. I wanted to forget what it felt like to be with you. It didn't work. In fact, I haven’t seen anyone in awhile."

Alex shoved his hands in his pockets. For a man with the confidence of a bull elephant he looked hesitant. Finally, he conceded, "I had no right to ask about Jack. At the end of the day it doesn't matter," he said low and with finality.

If it didn’t matter to him, then why say he was here to ‘
claim his wife
?’ It was just something he told Jack. Why come other than for retribution for his hurt, the satisfaction of seeing her fall apart?

She wrongly thought herself beyond any pain he could dish out. Shakira held her breath and concentrated on not allowing tears to form while she counted to ten and released the breath. She turned away to wrap the few porcelain figures left unpacked focusing on the mundane task.

"Why are you here, Alex? That was the original question."

"I told you. I've come to claim my wife."

"So, you told Jack. What's the real reason?"

"Isn't that reason real enough?"

"What do you need Alex? Do you need to see the flood of tears? What?"

The fragile figurine slipped from her fingers and landed in a nest of wrapped items. In spite of her efforts, tears brimmed and quivered on top of her lower lashes for a split second then streamed down. She wiped at her runny nose with a piece of packing tissue and reached for another to use on her cheeks.

Gentle hands drew her into his arms and embraced her. He dabbed at her nose, her cheeks and upper lip with a handkerchief. "Don't cry Rocky. I’m sorry I’ve made such a cock-up of this. I know I’ve hurt you. For awhile I meant to. I ached, and I wanted you to ache too, so I sent your notes back unopened. But, I didn’t feel better for it. I didn’t miss you less.

"I wake up some mornings, forget, and roll over expecting to hold my wife...expecting to breathe and have her feminine scent mingled with the scent of warm linens and the musty fragrance of our lovemaking surround me. I miss having her to talk to. Some nights I come home desperate to share a funny moment that occurred. But my wife's not there to enjoy it with me. I long to hear the variance in her laughter, the way she can giggle like a girl, or laugh out loud, throaty and deep. I miss her passion, the way she moves, her soft moans of pleasure. I even miss her snoring. I want my wife back.”

Shakira, hearing words she despaired of ever hearing, stared in shocked silence. She didn’t want to interrupt him. He was on a roll and it sounded great to her.

"I didn't come to fight. I came for answers."

He stopped dabbing at her tears. Still keeping her in his loose embrace, the proud man she always knew returned. The hesitant man of a few minutes ago gone.

"I need a reason to hang on Rocky, or heaven help me, a reason to let go.

"Marry me. Be my wife in this world and have no doubts, this is really, truly married. I was a fool to ever suggest we were anything less." He held her face in his hands and laid a soft kiss on her lips. "I love you, Mrs. Guiscard. Marry me, and let me love you as Mrs. Lancaster."

"Repeat that," Shakira said.

"Which part?"

"All of it."

"Only if you give me four or five decades to do it."

"Only four or five? I'm shooting for six."

Epilogue

     
Shakira adjusted the velvet band of her headpiece. “How does my hair look in the back?”

"You’re the only woman I know who hasn't planned every detail of her wedding," Miranda said as she tugged a few more strands of Shakira's hair through the headpiece.

"I did most of it, as you know since you were my forced labor,” Shakira said and checked her hair in the mirror. “I love that Alex had my medieval wedding dress copied by the costumers for Ian’s shows. He even remembered the mesh veil."

Shakira pulled the sides of the gown’s skirt out and swung her hips back and forth in front of the full-length mirror. She glanced at Miranda’s reflection. “Do you like your dress?” The costumers had created a medieval dress for Miranda too, in indigo blue and bronze. Basil’s family colors and by extension, Ian’s.
 

"Yes, except all this material makes me feel fat."

"You look fab. Ian will be dazzled."

"That's only fair. He dazzles me all the time. Of course, between you and Alex, I don't know who has more stars in their eyes." Miranda hugged her friend. "Outside of Ian and me, I can't think of two people more suited to one another. Are you sticking with the plan to live at the cottage?"

"Yes."

"There aren't many women who'd agree to living so far from town, not when they have a fantastic flat in London. Alex has more money than he can ever spend and you have to admit the cottage is on the simple side."

"I don't miss the city. We have our music, which we love, books galore, and conversation. We have fields of green as far as the eye can see and hills dotted with fat sheep. On clear days we have a view of the Vales of Berkeley and Gloucester. What we don't have is smog or the pounding of jack hammers. We have the whinny of happy horses instead of the blare of car horns at all hours." Miranda gave her a curious look. "What?"