Time to Love Again (38 page)

“You said to call anytime.” She told him what
had happened, told him, too, about Hank’s Saturday visit, which she
had previously not mentioned to him. “Now I wish I had told you. It
was just an excuse for Hank to get inside the house and look
around, wasn’t it? Mark, he asked me not to tell anyone he had been
to see me, and then he urged me to go to Professor Moore’s
party.”

“So he could be sure you would be out of the
house for a few hours, giving him enough time to search the place,”
Mark finished the thought for her. “Hank is so damned clever, he
probably had no trouble at all picking the lock on your door or on
the drawer in your study, and then relocking them both.”

“We have to get those floppy disks back,”
India cried. “And Robert’s notebook. Mark, he’s sure to try to
recreate what happened to me. Someone has to stop him.”

“Let me check on this. I’ll get back to you
as soon as I can.” Mark hung up, leaving India to wait in restless
concern until the telephone rang some forty-five minutes later.

“It’s being taken care of,” Mark told her.
“We have a good man on the job, and he’s on Hank’s trail right now.
I talked to him; he’s planning to watch Hank for a few days in case
Hank contacts someone else engaged in a similar project. That way,
we might catch two birds at once. This means you won’t get your
property back for a while, but you don’t have to worry about Hank
anymore.”

“Thank you, Mark. I knew I could count on
you.”

“Anytime. Sure you won’t change your mind and
go to the airport with Willi and me tomorrow?”

“I don’t think so.”

“My brother is not as bad as you might
suppose after meeting me,” Mark teased. “Give him a fair chance,
and you two could become good friends.”

But when Willi stopped by to see India on New
Year’s Day, her report on Theodore Brant was not encouraging.

“You can tell Mark and his brother really
love each other,” Willi informed India, “but Theodore Brant is not
at all like Mark. He has been teaching in Europe, and I guess they
are more formal there, because he seems to be a bit uptight. If I
were you, India, I would walk carefully around him until you know
him well.”

“Is his wife uptight, too?” India was
surprised to find herself holding her breath until Willi
answered.

“Mark says she died a few years ago,” Willi
said. “At least you will have that much in common with him. You’ll
meet him on Monday. You
are
going back to work on Monday,
aren’t you?”

“I need the job, and I have no logical reason
for leaving it,” India replied. “On Monday I will have to walk into
the history department office and meet my new boss. But not yet.
Thank heaven, I still have a few days left.”

During those few days, India faced the fact
that where returning to work was concerned, her courage was rapidly
failing. Emotionally bruised by what had happened to her, still
devastated by Theu’s death, she was terrified of meeting Theodore
Brant, fearing that he would prove to be as much like Theu as Mark
was like Marcion. She did not know how she could deal with a man
who looked and sounded and acted like Theu, but who did not know
her and who would treat her like the stranger she would be to him.
It would be like losing Theu a second time.

Much as India wished she could do so, she
could not stop the passing of the days. Monday arrived, the
university was scheduled to reopen after the holiday vacation, and
she could no longer put off going to work. Armoring herself in the
tightest self-control she could muster, deliberately wearing the
cheerful cranberry skirt and sweater Willi had chosen for her on a
night that seemed years in the past, she returned to the history
department office.

Classes had not started. Registration for the
new semester was still in progress, so there was no one else in the
office that morning. In the outer office there was no sign as yet
of anything belonging to Theodore Brant, and the substitute
secretary, who had taken over for India during the days before
Christmas, had left her desk clean and neat. When the mail came,
India sorted through it before taking the important-looking pieces
into the chairman’s office, entering the room for the first time in
more than two weeks.

Professor Moore had been endearingly
absent-minded, leaving books and papers scattered about in great
disarray and keeping the file cabinet so full that its contents
constantly spilled out onto the floor. Now that he was gone, the
room looked bare, with books precisely lined up on the bookshelves,
the file cabinet drawers closed, the Venetian blinds tilted at just
the right angle to let in plenty of light without glare.

India laid the mail in the center of the
desk, lining up the edges of the papers until the pile was neat.
Without warning, her hands began to shake.

“I have to get out of here,” she muttered,
starting toward the door. She had almost reached it when she
stopped, her eye caught by the picture on the wall. No, it was not
a picture. What the foot-square frame contained, what the glass
covered, was not a picture at all, but a jagged, triangular section
of chain mail. She stepped closer to see it better.

She could not breathe for the sudden pounding
of her heart. At the long edge of the metal links, where the armor
had been torn, the head had broken on a single rivet, and the rivet
itself had been partially torn out of its link.

India could not stop herself. She placed one
finger on the glass, covering the spot where the broken rivet
was.

“Be careful, you’ll smear the glass.”

“Oh!” She spun around to face the man who had
come into the office so quietly that she had not heard him.

“Theodore Brant.” He nodded briskly. “I
presume you are the elusive department secretary? Mrs. Baldwin,
isn’t it? I understand you’ve been sick. I hope you are feeling
better, because we have a lot of work to do.”

“Yes,” she faltered, uncomfortable under his
steady, deep blue gaze. She recalled Willi’s warning to be careful
until she knew this man. “I’m sorry about the glass. I’ll clean it
right away.”

Having prepared herself to encounter a
remnant of the long-distant past, she was bitterly disappointed to
discover that Theodore Brant did not look like Theuderic of Metz.
The man before India was several inches taller than she, in his
mid- to late thirties, and obviously in perfect physical condition.
His hair was dark and curly, like his brother’s. He wore a nicely
tailored grey suit, a white shirt, and an expensive-looking striped
tie. Very conservative, very cool, more like a banker than a
college professor – and there was not a trace of fire or warmth in
him. He was not a bit like Theu.

India thought her heart would break. It was
indeed like losing Theu all over again, but not in the way she had
expected. She had been foolish to allow herself any hope at all.
Theu was dead – long dead and buried – and it was time for her to
accept that fact.

Theodore Brant walked across the room to
stand beside her while he looked at the chain mail on the wall.
Amazingly, his cold expression relaxed, as if he were seeing an old
friend, and his blue eyes warmed. India’s heart skipped a beat when
he glanced toward her.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said.
“It’s just that I don’t want this to be damaged in any way. Perhaps
I shouldn’t have brought it here to the office, but I like to look
at it, and I’m not at home very much. Are you interested in antique
armor?”

“Only in chain mail.” When he looked
surprised, she sought for an acceptable reason for a statement she
had made in haste and emotional pain. “My late husband was a
medievalist.”

“Oh, yes, I did hear something about
that.”

He touched the frame, straightening it. “This
piece is from the eighth or ninth century.”

“Eighth,” India said.

“It’s a rare piece because iron that old has
usually oxidized until it is a ruined mess of rust. For some
reason, this has been well cared for over the centuries.”

“Where did you get it?” India asked.

“It has been in my family for generations.
Tradition has it that it was once worn by an illustrious ancestor.
Unfortunately, I have never seen any proof of that claim. Still, I
have felt an attachment to those links ever since I was a boy. My
grandfather had them mounted in that frame, and I used to sit in
his library making up stories about the man for whom the armor was
made and the battles he fought wearing it. I guess that’s why
Grandfather willed it to me.” His voice trailed off, as if he was a
little embarrassed at having spoken so openly and so emotionally to
someone he did not know.

“Theuderic of Metz,” India said, feeling
oddly compelled to speak and with her voice remarkably steady
considering the way her heart had just gone on a wild roller
coaster ride. “He died at Roncevaux.”

“Do you know something I don’t?” he
asked.

“I believe I do,” she said, smiling for the
first time in weeks. Her heart settled down and began to beat
steadily once more. From somewhere deep inside her a reviving
happiness began to grow, along with the certainty that Theu was not
gone, not lost and dead in some far-distant past. He was with her
and he always would be.

Theodore Brant watched her with a question in
his eyes, and India found herself regretting the days when she had
avoided meeting him. But that was all she regretted. Nothing
else.

“It’s a long and complicated story about an
incredible adventure,” she said to him. “When I know you better, I
may tell you about it.”

“Why do I have the feeling that ours is going
to be an interesting association?” His blue eyes were laughing now,
all his initial coldness vanished. One corner of his mouth quirked
upward in a half smile, and suddenly she recognized in him the
humor and spirit of the man she would love until time ended.

“You have no idea,” she told him, “just how
interesting you are going to find me.”

September, 1992.

It was a lovely wedding, albeit a quiet one.
The bride had insisted on having it that way. The small,
gothic-style church was decorated with white roses and many tall
candles, and the bride wore an ankle-length cream lace dress. The
fifty invited family members and guests noted that the usually
self-possessed groom was extremely nervous.

The reception was held at a nearby restaurant
that had been remodeled from an old mill, and all through the
golden late September afternoon, the guests danced on a deck
extending out over the rushing stream and the waterfall that had
once powered the mill.

“Nice place,” said the best man to the
maid-of-honor. “This is like dancing in a giant tree house. When it
gets dark, we’ll have a great view of the stars.”

“It is beautiful,” Willi replied, smiling
into his eyes.

Mark pulled her closer, resting his cheek
against hers while they moved slowly to the music. Willi’s hair had
grown out of its tough, spiky cut until it hung to her shoulders in
soft curls. Her grey eye shadow made her eyes look large and dark.
The pale green chiffon of her gown drifted about her ankles.

“You’re my girl,” Mark murmured into her ear.
“Always have been, always will be. I knew it the first moment I saw
you.”

“I knew it, too.” Willi snuggled a little
closer to him. “Right away, I felt as if I had known you forever.
Amazing, isn’t it?”

On the other side of the deck, India shook
hands with a departing couple, then glanced toward Willi and
Mark.

“They look so happy together,” she said.

“They can’t possibly be as happy as I am,”
her new husband told her, slipping an arm about her waist. He
spared one quick look for his brother. “I have a feeling there will
be another wedding soon. I think Mark plans to make your best
friend into your sister.”

“It’s about time,” India said, laughing at
her own private joke.

“Speaking of time, shouldn’t we be making our
getaway about now?” Theo’s tender expression as he regarded his new
wife held the promise of all the wonders of love still unexplored
and awaiting them.

“Yes, my dear love,” India said, taking his
hand. “It is time. Our time. At long, long last.”

Late in the summer of 778, the Saxons did
revolt against their Frankish overlords, taking advantage of
Charles’s absence in Spain, as many of his nobles had feared they
would. It required swift action and much hard fighting to subdue
them that autumn. But the Saxons were a determined people.
Eventually they rebelled yet again, and stubbornly continued to
fight for their freedom for another quarter of a century before
they were finally conquered.

The story Theuderic recounts to India, of men
who come in flying machines from a land called Magonia, is a tale
that was current in Europe during the late eighth and ninth
centuries. It seems that even in those days, more than twelve
hundred years ago, there were rumors of mysterious unidentified
flying objects.

Of the twin sons born to Charles’s wife
Hildegarde at Agen during the summer of 778, the smaller died in
early autumn. The second boy, Ludwig, later re-baptized as Louis,
was made King of Aquitaine by his father. Unlike his older
brothers, he outlived his father, and on the death of Charles in
814, he became the second emperor of the Carolingian empire. He is
known to the French as Louis I, Louis the Pious.