The Sapphire Brooch (The Celtic Brooch Trilogy Book 2) (14 page)

“Yes, but first I need a commitment from you to take me back to my time. If you won’t, then let Jack. But in two days, I must leave.”

“You’re not—”

“I don’t require coddling. You have to let me go.”

Her phone beeped, and she silently thanked God for the interruption. She checked the message. “I have to return this call. We’ll talk about it later. I’ll bring you a dinner tray, or if you’d like, you can join us in the kitchen.”

“I’ll join you. I need to get up and move around.”

“Okay. Dinner isn’t fancy. Come as you are.”

He glanced down at what he was wearing, smirking. “A gentleman would never present himself at the table dressed so informally.”

She laughed as she headed for the door. “What do you think Jack’s wearing? A suit? Not likely. He’ll be dressed just as casually. If you’d feel more comfortable wearing a robe, there should be one hanging on the back of the bathroom door.”

She closed the door and rested her head against it while her hand continued to grip the doorknob. She had to emotionally swim against the current to disengage from the intimacy they had shared, and from intruding memories. She had dipped into a swirling stream, and the surface was rippling from the force of the undercurrent.

Fear of the ambiguous gemstone, memories of being in danger, and an attraction to a man from the nineteenth century she couldn’t possibly have a relationship with, propelled her away from the door and up the stairs. She ran into her old bedroom she still used on weekends, stripping off her clothes as she headed toward the shower, hoping to restore her equilibrium. Her call could wait another ten minutes.

Thirty minutes later, she entered the kitchen, composed.

Jack was standing on one side of the counter, Braham sat on a barstool on the other. They were clinking their glasses of red wine, participating in a toast.

“To a profitable venture,” Jack said.

Charlotte grabbed a glass from a wall-mounted wine rack, picked up the bottle of an Australian Pinot Noir, and read the label before filling her glass. “What profitable venture are we celebrating with a four hundred and fifty dollar bottle of wine?”

“Since you have an overbooked schedule, I decided to take Braham home.”

She covered her mouth so she wouldn’t spew the sip she’d just taken. “
What? You
decided? Don’t you think I have a say here?”

He gave a deliberately nonchalant shrug. “It’s the only logical solution.”

“There’s nothing logical about your proposition. You’re always chasing a story, Jack. If you go back in time, I can’t even begin to imagine the damage you could do.”

Jack gasped, slapping his chest. “Oh, ye of little faith.”

“When it comes to you, there is no ‘little faith.’ Only a huge faith telling me you’ll get so caught up in researching the war that trouble will find you a willing victim. So forget it.”

“Then I’ll go with you. Remember, I’m a better fighter.”

Her nightmares kept her from wanting to go back, but if she had to go, having Jack along would certainly help her feel safer. “Okay, but we’re not staying. We’ll drop Braham off in Washington and come straight home.”

“You make it sound like we’ll do a drive-by. Isn’t it more complicated?”

“I don’t even know if it will work again. And if we get there, can we get back?”

Jack picked up a piece of cheese from a snack tray of crackers and Brie. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

Charlotte plopped on a stool next to Braham. “I don’t want to venture anything or gain anything. I only want…I don’t know what I want, but I know what I
don’t
want. I don’t want to land in the middle of a battle again. It scared the crap out of me. I shiver in the night remembering the screams and the cannon fire and the bleeding, dying men I couldn’t help.”

Braham’s jaw was squarely set and his upper lip compressed. He listened intently, his eyes roving from her to Jack and back.

“Take all the time you need to decide, sis. I’ll give you five minutes.”

When she caught Braham’s eye, he smiled, but the smile was seemingly in contradiction with the weariness in his eyes.

Jack gave her his book jacket smile, the irresistible one capable of triggering emotional highs in complete strangers and making fans see things in a more favorable light. Like forking over twenty-five bucks for one of his hardcover books. He squeezed her shoulder. “Come on, sis. You met Sheridan, Lincoln, and Grant, and toured Washington and Richmond. The least you can do is give me a few hours to explore.”

This would be a perfect time for a snappy retort at the smiling co-conspirators who were so busy manipulating her, but nothing came to mind. She’d already been to the past, thank you very much, and had discovered time travel was fraught with danger and rife with long-term consequences. But Jack would never believe her until he experienced it for himself.

It wasn’t a Japanese puzzle box she had opened. It was Pandora’s, and it had arrived without a warning label telling her to keep it sealed or suffer the wrath of the time-travel god.

If it was possible, Jack’s smile grew across his face, to his eyebrows, and even his body was smiling. She finally acquiesced. “We’re not staying overnight. A couple of hours, max. That’s it. It should give you time to see Washington and stop by the White House.”

Laughing, Jack said, “Let’s eat. The steaks are ready.”

After a delicious dinner which left them all moaning from too-full stomachs, they took cups of coffee to the library and settled into the deep, tufted leather chairs. Braham told the story he had promised during dinner.

“Although I was born in America, I was raised in Scotland from a very early age. My friend Cullen and I finished our education at the University of Edinburgh, then studied law at Harvard. When we finished our studies, we joined a small firm in San Francisco. Cullen met his wife on a wagon train heading west in 1852.” Braham paused and studied the mug in his hand. His face betrayed nothing other than a look of fond remembrance, but then his eyes darted as if trying to grasp an annoying thought.

“They settled in San Francisco,” he continued, focusing his attention once again on his listeners. “The next year they bought land in the Napa Valley and started a winery. A year later I started one, too. I discovered I loved nurturing the vines, putting my hands in the rich soil—” He examined his fingers, and he seemed to be surprised to find there was no dirt under his nails, “—and spending time with my horses rejuvenates my soul.” He gave a one-shoulder shrug and sipped his coffee. Then added, “I solve problems working outside, even in the rain.”

“The only problem I try to solve in the rain is how to get out of it,” Jack said, chuckling.

Charlotte set her cup on the table next to her, checked her phone for emails, scrolled through several, but none of them seemed as important as listening to Braham’s story. She put the smartphone down. “What about your law practice?”

“I spend most of my time in San Francisco, but I get restless and go to the winery every month or two for several days. If I run for a senate seat, it’ll be harder to get there as often.”

“State Senate or U.S. Senate?” Charlotte asked.

“By the time this conflict is over, I’ll have had enough of Washington.”

Charlotte and Jack laughed. “A hundred and fifty years, and some things haven’t changed,” Jack said.

Charlotte yawned. “It’s late. I need to get back to town.”

“Why don’t you stay?” Jack said.

“I’ve got an early-morning lecture. It’ll be easier if I go home tonight.”

Braham glanced around the room, then looked at Jack. “You’ve got a lot of books. I’d like to select one to read tonight, if you don’t mind.

“You mentioned reading Plato. I’ve got
The Republic, The Symposium, Phaedo,
and
The Trial and Death of Socrates.”

“I’ll take
The Republic.
”

Jack put his coffee down, went to the floor-to-ceiling shelves, and scanned the collection. “It’s here somewhere. It was my grandfather’s favorite book, too.”

Charlotte found her thoughts drifting back to her earlier examination of Braham’s wound, the pajamas, and his muscular arms. Her face heating, she yanked her attention back to the conversation. “It was also his father’s favorite and his father’s and his father’s and his father’s ad infinitum.”

Jack gave an amused snort. “As far back as I can remember the book sat on the bedside table. He read passages every evening. If he traveled, he packed it in his suitcase. I’m surprised my grandmother didn’t put it in the casket with him.”

Braham joined him, moving slowly from one bookcase to another. “I think this is it.” He removed a book, opened it, and thumbed through several pages. “He made notations in the margins. I’ll enjoy reading his thoughts.” He then nodded to Charlotte and Jack. “Goodnight.”

Before he reached the door, he stopped. “There’s a newspaper clipping in here dated April, 1965. It’s for a memorial service to pray over the hundredth anniversary of the death of Abraham Lin—” Braham stopped reading and glanced up, ashen-faced.

“If April, 1965 was the one hundredth year,” he rasped, “it means Lincoln died in April of 1865.” Braham’s hands shook so hard the laminated clipping tapped against the book’s cover. “What killed him? This doesn’t say.” His voice was an anguished whisper.

Charlotte’s panic hoarsened her voice. “We can’t tell you.”

Braham pounded his fist on the edge of a table, rattling the lamp and glass candy dish. “What the hell do you mean, you can’t tell me? Lincoln’s dead, and you can’t tell me what happened?” He scanned the titles in the bookcase. “You’ve got hundreds of books here. One of them will tell me what I want to know.”

“Stop him,” she said quietly to Jack. “The Sandburg titles are right in front of him.”

Jack squeezed Braham’s shoulder. “Come. Sit down. Let’s discuss this.”

Braham shrug off Jack’s arm. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“No,” Jack said.

Braham grabbed a book from the bookcase. “
Abraham Lincoln: The War Years Volume IV
by Carl Sandburg. This will tell me.” He glared at Charlotte and continued in a steely voice, “You’ve known all along he might be dead by the time I got back. Yet you never said a word. Why?”

Charlotte had the sensation of losing a patient on the operating table, knowing there was nothing she could do to salvage the situation. “Life is full of uncertainties. None of us knows what the future holds. You can’t come here, soak up what’s happened in the past hundred and fifty years, then take the knowledge back to your time and manipulate history. I won’t be responsible for it happening.”

“
Damn it
. You should have let me die.”

Something in his voice and the way he looked at her made her heart knock against her ribs. “I couldn’t. Lincoln recruited me to save your life.”

He slapped the book against the doorjamb. “You saved the wrong man, Doctor Mallory. I don’t have to read this to know he was murdered. We begged him to be careful. But he refused to listen.” Tears glittered in his eyes. “I have to go home and stop this madness before it happens.” Braham turned and left the room with shoulders hunched in sorrow.

Charlotte moved to follow, but Jack held her back. “He doesn’t need us right now.” He poured brandy into two glasses. “When he reads what Booth did, he’ll demand to go back and stop the assassination.”

Charlotte gulped her drink. “We’ve got a problem, then. If that’s his plan, we can’t let him go.”

“We can’t keep him. He’s not a stray. He has a life he’s entitled to live.”

“Braham lost the life he had. We can’t give him another one, and then let him loose to shake the fabric of our lives. Can we?”

“No.” Jack freshened his drink, then tipped the decanter to pour more into Charlotte’s glass.

She placed her palm over the top. “No more for me. I have to drive.”

Jack sat and crossed his legs, his slipper dangling from his toes. “Braham’s never questioned the whole concept of time travel. It’s as if he already knew it was possible.”

Charlotte tilted her head, considering the possibility. “He’s opened-minded and accepts situations that aren’t easily explained.”

“He won’t accept being stuck here.”

“He can’t see it from our perspective, and we can’t see it from his. To us, Lincoln has always been a man carved in white Georgia marble, larger than life, the nation’s quintessential self-made man.”

Jack finished off his drink. “You’re waxing poetic, sis.”

“What? Are you jealous? Afraid I’ll write a book of my own and compete with you?”

“I’d love for you to write a book. You’ve got an entertaining writer’s voice.”

She kissed his cheek. “Thank you. But I’ll stick to surgery. I’ve got to go. Take Braham’s temperature in the morning.”

“I assume you mean figuratively.”

She rolled her eyes. “If he’s still set on a plan likely to derail the country, we’ll keep him here. Maybe you should take him to Washington and let him see the Lincoln Memorial.”

Jack’s face brightened. “That’s worth a try.”

She slipped on her jacket and grabbed her purse off the entryway table. “Check on him later. I’ll text when I get home.”

She opened the door and a black cat darted between her legs and into the house. She jumped and slapped her hand over her heart. “
Where’d he come from
?”

Jack crouched down and called to the cat. “
She
showed up a couple of nights ago. Come here, girl.” The cat rubbed up against Jack’s leg, meowing. “She’s healthy and well fed. Her owner probably dumped her in the field, hoping she’d find a home here.”

“Just because we have a farm, people think they can dump their animals here. Did I miss seeing a signpost saying
strays welcome?
What are you going to do with her? You can’t keep her. You’re hardly ever home.”

Jack eyed Charlotte with a speculative gleam in his eyes. “Isn’t that what I’ve been trying to tell you?”

She threw up her hands. “Apples and oranges.” She left the house, letting the door slam behind her, feeling a hard, un-movable knot in her throat, and cursing brothers, cats, and green-eyed cavalrymen.