Until Forever (19 page)

R
oseleen was still in the cottage upon waking, and Thorn was still lying beside her, one arm draped over his eyes to block the morning light. She smiled at him and leaned over to place a gentle kiss on his chest. He didn’t stir. He had to have been as exhausted as she was last night, and yet he didn’t skimp when it came to giving pleasure.

She sighed, wishing she could just curl up next to him and go back to sleep, instead of confronting the same dilemma she had faced yesterday. But it wasn’t something that she could postpone, now that she was wide-awake. She might have her cottage back, but something was still changed in the past, because David was definitely not the David she knew.

And if his life had changed drastically, she had to wonder about her own again and if her career was still the same. If it wasn’t, then she wouldn’t have the research books here that she needed, would instead have to go out and
hunt down the answers to what else had gone wrong. The trouble was, she didn’t have the slightest clue this time to lead her to what she needed to look for.

She sat up in bed, then had to smile as she noticed the spread of clothes that littered the floor in front of her. As difficult as that yellow gown had been to get into, Thorn had had no trouble getting her out of it. She didn’t even recall his doing it…

“’Tis hoped that smile is for me,” Thorn said from behind her.

Before she could answer or even glance back at him, his arm slipped around her waist to prevent her going anywhere, and his lips began pressing against her bare back, producing a stream of shivers that broadened her smile.

“Well, if it wasn’t,” she said with a chuckle as she turned and leaned across his chest for a good-morning kiss, “it is now.”

He hugged her close. “You are pleased this morn?”

She arched a brow, teasing, “Are you fishing to hear what a great lover you are?”

“Nay, a wench named Delilah once told me how widespread was my reputation—umph!” he ended on a grunt when she poked him in the ribs, but he was quick to retaliate.

Suddenly, she was on her back and shrieking as he began tickling her. A while later, out of breath, holding his head to her chest, she shook her head at his playfulness. The man was definitely wooing her bit by bit out of the disciplined shell she had encased herself in so
long ago. And she decided that wasn’t such a bad thing.

It was with regret that she broached the subject that had to be faced. “We have to talk, Thorn.”

“Aye.”

He sighed and rolled until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. He searched through the clothes on the floor to find his braes, then stood to work his way into them. With him standing there in that tight underwear, his chest bare—she blushed when she finally noticed a hickey above his left nipple—his hair tousled about his shoulders, it was damn hard to concentrate on what needed to be discussed. At the moment, she would prefer he come back to bed.

But she forced herself to sit up, wrapping her arms around her knees, and began, asking him, “Your other self didn’t do anything different, did he, after meeting me? Please tell me that meeting didn’t change anything, because I really don’t want to have to go through meeting him again.”

“Nay, he searched for you, he asked William about you, but otherwise, he did naught else different. There was no time, Roseleen, for him to cause further mischief. He still returned to Valhalla the next day.”

“But he must have done something different that night, because previously, he got Sir John drunk and then entertained that tavern girl that Sir John was supposed to have for the night. But if you got Sir John out of there,
did you—he—still get the girl, or did he choose another?”

“When I could not find you, I returned to camp instead. I was in no mood by then to entertain another female.”

She blinked. “Really?”

That got her a scowl that had her grinning for a moment. “All right, so the only thing different is that you
didn’t
spend the night with that girl—” Now she was scowling as she realized, “If that’s what has to be corrected, I’ll keep this altered present, thank you, even if I have to put up with a stick-in-the-mud brother.”

He chuckled. “You forget that originally, Sir John was to have the girl, not I. That has been corrected now, so wouldst not need changing again.”

“Good, because I don’t really want to be stuck with that new David. But if we didn’t change anything else…I guess it’s time to dig into the books. Why don’t you go down to the kitchen and find us something to eat while I head for the library, where I hope to find my research books.”

He nodded and left the room. She rummaged through her closet and quickly discovered that her taste in clothes had not improved in this new present, had gone from plain to gaudy, in ridiculously bright colors. With nothing there that she cared to put on, even temporarily, she grabbed a robe that was at least a simple white, and headed for the door.

David was standing there as she opened it,
about to knock, and before she managed even to get out a gasp of surprise, he was saying in a tone that reeked with censure, “That man you wallowed in sin with all night long is now destroying your kitchen. You’ll be lucky if you don’t lose your housekeeper when she sees the mess.”

“Mrs. Humes wouldn’t—”

“Who?”

Damn, she groaned inwardly as she rushed down the hall. No Mrs. Humes here? And
why
had she sent Thorn to the kitchen, of all places?

She arrived to find an electric blender shattered on the countertop; three cans of vegetables hacked right down their centers, their contents splattered everywhere, a battery-operated carving knife spinning in circles on the floor; the top chopped off of a juice carton now sitting in a puddle of spilled juice. There was also a large dent the size of Thorn’s foot in the refrigerator, which unfortunately had latch handles he probably hadn’t been able to open. And Thorn was standing there now, his sword in hand, glaring at more cans in a cupboard because he couldn’t figure out how to open them without destroying their contents.

She shook her head at the mess. All the modern wonders were there, and some she didn’t even recognize. And apparently Thorn had pressed some buttons, turned some things on, then hacked them to pieces with his sword when they started doing things he figured they shouldn’t.

“I don’t think you’ll ever make it as a cook,” she said, tongue in cheek.

He swung around to complain, “There is no food to be had here, Roseleen.”

“Yes, there is.” She grinned as she walked to the refrigerator. “You just have to know how to get at it, like so.” She twisted the handles on the doors and swung them open. “Voila, lots of goodies. So why don’t I cook you some breakfast, an omelet maybe, some bacon and sausage, toast and jam—how does that sound? You have to be as hungry as I am. The books can wait a bit more.”

Cooking breakfast for Thorn was one of the more satisfying things she’d ever done. It was also amusing to watch him examining everything she set before him. Toast didn’t come so thin and smoothly cut the last time he’d been summoned, bacon hadn’t come precut in a package, jellies had never been so clear before, and butter certainly hadn’t come out of a box two hundred years ago. But he was willing to try anything and everything, and he put away a mountain of food before he was done.

They managed to get to the library without running into David again. And Roseleen’s luck was holding. She had research books there. Not all of them were familiar, but it was reassuring to find that some were. However, she was in for another unpleasant surprise.

Having curled up in a reading chair, she merely skimmed over one of the history books, so it wasn’t all that long before she glanced over at Thorn, who’d settled in one of
the other chairs, and was able to relate, “It’s worse than I’d thought, not just a small change this time, but another major one. The Norwegians lost in the north as they did originally, and the Normans sailed on the correct dates. Everything seems the same, and yet the Normans lost again. This time, incredibly, England won both wars.

“Harold Godwineson even went on to rule England for twenty-four years. From his lines there were two kings who did great things for their country, a couple tyrants, one of which was murdered by his queen, and the rest were mediocre, doing little more than enjoying their power.”

Thorn sighed. “So Lord William died again ere he should have?”

“No, not this time. But he went home in defeat and never made another bid for England. Some of his descendants started a war with France a few centuries later and lost, making France the major power in Europe for a while. England prospered and started its Industrial Age sooner. It still warred frequently, but closer to home, with the Scots and the Welsh, which is nothing new.

“But there is a major change later on, and this one is widespread and can certainly account for that moralistic prude I have here for a brother. The Puritan sect that formed in the sixteen hundreds didn’t just migrate to America, they gained such power in England that they have retained it to this day. And because it was so strong, America never found a need
to go independent. Incredibly, England still owns and governs it.”

That subject held no interest whatsoever for Thorn. As before, he was concerned with only one thing, and he asked now, “But why did William lose this time if, as you said previously, the English came exhausted to the battle, after fighting the Vikings in the north?”

Roseleen shook her head. “I don’t know. It all reads the same here as it originally happened. The north wind that kept William landlocked for an extra two weeks is mentioned, as is his sailing on the evening of September twenty-seventh, even how his ship, the
Mora
, got separated from the others late in the night. The landing is the same, early the next morning at Pevensey Bay, with Harold still far in the north. Immediate construction was started on fortified strongholds, but Pevensey was still too exposed, so the Normans moved eastward, clinging to the coast, to capture the port of Hastings.

“Harold was still in the north at this time, having dispersed his army, so he didn’t actually arrive back in the south until October fourteenth. He took a strong defensive position on a high ridge and stayed there, forcing the Normans to attack, and they had no luck breaking through Harold’s tightly held ranks.”

Roseleen sighed before she continued, “Even the retreats are the same, the first one real, because the Normans became demoralized at their lack of success. The English, though exhausted, gave chase and were slaughtered
when the Normans turned again to fight. The Normans retreated twice more, but these retreats were feigned, not real, in order to draw the English away from their solid defensive, and both of these worked for them as well, cutting down large chunks of Harold’s army. But the last charge they made, the one with their cavalry, the one that originally gave them their victory—it didn’t work here. Harold remained tightly guarded; his housecarles rallied to fend off the Norman cavalry and finish them off when they started a fourth retreat.

“
That
is where this history begins to change. The original account has the Norman cavalry victorious on that last charge, with Harold dying under the blade of a mounted knight, already wounded from an arrow that struck his—wait a minute!” Roseleen gasped. “It’s not mentioned here.”

“What?”

“William’s unprecedented order to his archers, to fire their arrows up into the air. That order has been termed famous because it brought about the turning point of the battle, the arrows falling into the English ranks killing enough of them that the Norman cavalry that then charged was able to break through their gridlocked shields and finish them off. And one of those arrows caught Harold in the eye. The accounts vary on whether the arrow killed him outright, or merely wounded him enough that one of the mounted knights easily killed him, but all accounts say he took that arrow in the eye.”

“Except this one,” Thorn said, nodding toward the book in her lap.

“No, this one doesn’t mention it,” she said, bent over the book again to double-check, her finger skimming down the page. “There is no mention of the famous order to the Norman archers, no mention of Harold’s being wounded at all.” She looked up to finish. “That order wasn’t given this time, and because it wasn’t, the English won instead of the Normans.”

Thorn shrugged with apparent unconcern. “Then that is what needs be corrected.”

“But how?” she cried. “When we don’t know why the order wasn’t given. We would actually have to be there with William at that moment in time to find out what went wrong.”

At that, he began a slow grin. “Verily, I find that an excellent suggestion.”

She glared at his eagerness to get into another battle. “This isn’t a battle where you know everyone is going to die anyway. There were survivors on both sides, so you don’t dare kill anyone. And you can’t just pop us into that battle, because you weren’t in it to begin with, so you can’t envision it to get us there. We’d have to return to the last time that you can envision, when the ships were finally about to sail, and that means we’ll be stuck for weeks on the English coast, waiting for that battle to finally take place.”

“Do you see any other alternative?” he said.

She slumped back in her chair before she mumbled, “No, damnit, I don’t.”

R
oseleen shook her head at the yellow gown she held up before her. “Since it’s a good guess that I won’t find a washing label anywhere on it, I’d be afraid to run this through the washer.”

“You mean ‘to,’” Thorn corrected as he finished dressing himself.

“To what?”

“Run it
to
the washer.”

She looked over at him and grinned. “No, my washer is a machine, not a person—never mind. I suppose it won’t kill me to wear it again as is, wrinkles and all. But for the next three weeks? No way. Will Guy be able to scrounge up something else for me to wear, or should I hunt down a costume shop while we’re still here?”

“Scrounge?”

“Acquire, as he did this gown.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding his understanding.
“The lad is an excellent scrounger, so worry not.”

“If you say so,” she replied, and began working her way back into the medieval outfit. “But since Guy isn’t here at the moment, you get to tie me back into these ‘raiments.’”

Thorn chuckled as he came over to assist her. “I much prefer—”

“Yes, I know,” she was quick to cut in, her tone exceedingly dry. “Removing clothes is more your specialty, which you do very well. But that will have to wait until we’re back in your nice, barbaric camp tent. And since this is going to be an extended stay, I’ll just gather a few of what I call essentials to take along this time.”

She moved off to grab a handful of underwear out of the bureau and stuffed them into a pillowcase. One of her suitcases just wouldn’t go over well in 1066. Then she headed for the bathroom, dropping in things as she noticed them, her toothbrush and toothpaste, deodorant, perfume, brush, razor, her small travel kit of first aid items, and a bar of soap—she hadn’t been looking forward to trying the medieval kind that would undoubtedly take off several layers of skin—that she wrapped in a washcloth.

Coming back into the bedroom, she said, “Don’t let me leave this behind.” She held up the sack so he knew what she was talking about. “A rusted aerosal can showing up in some nineteenth-century excavation would send shock waves around the world—and
would be something else we’d have to go back to correct. And I think we’ve messed up enough history to prove that time hopping is something that shouldn’t be tampered with.”

He nodded curtly, looking unhappy about her last remark, so she added, “Cheer up, Thorn, you can still participate in your fights in Valhalla whenever you feel the urge. You don’t need to hunt down fights in the past.”

“I will not be returning to Valhalla” was all he said to that.

She blinked. “Why not?”

He gave her a look that said, “Stupid question,” and his own question explained it. “Once we marry and you give me children, why wouldst I leave you?”

“Now hold on—”

“But you still needs be trained first.”

She clamped her mouth shut. His grin suggested that he might be only teasing her. He
knew
what she thought about his “training.” But she wasn’t going to get into that subject again, in either case. She wasn’t even sure yet that she’d be able to get back to her own present, so she was certainly in no position to think about settling down with anyone.

But the mention of Valhalla had made her remember a few unusual things that he had said in passing, that she’d never had the chance to question him about. When he’d been telling her about Guy’s sister apparently dying, to explain why he wouldn’t be running into himself, he’d said he’d been “released from your world’s time and returned to
mine.” And last night, when she’d pointed out to him that so many centuries separated his age from that of the other Thorn, he had replied that only a
few
years separated them.

She couldn’t believe she’d let that one pass, but she got back to it now. “What did you mean last night when you said only a few years separated you from your other self? Have you lived so long that you consider centuries only a few years? And before, you spoke of your time and my time as being different. How is it different?”

He raised a brow at her. “Am I to assume we are not ready to depart?”

“Don’t even think about avoiding those questions, Viking. I’m not budging from this spot until—”

His chuckle cut her off. “You do not tease well this morn, Roseleen. And ’tis no secret that time moves differently in Valhalla.”

“But how is it different?”

“One day there can equal a full stretch of years here in your time.”

“Full stretch?”

“What you call a century.”

She was incredulous. “Are you saying you aren’t a thousand years old?”

He laughed. “Nay, at the last date of my birth, I reached only a score and ten.”

“Twenty and—you’re saying you’re only
thirty
years old?” She gasped.

“Think you I look older?”

He was grinning widely. She felt utterly foolish herself. Of course he didn’t look any
older than thirty. She had just assumed, because he had been born a thousand years ago, that logically, he had to be that old and thus, immortal. She hadn’t considered that time practically stood still in his Viking heaven.

“How old were you when you were cursed?”

“Less than a score in years.”

“So you aren’t really immortal, are you? You’re actually aging—just at a different rate of time.”

Typically, his nod was curt. And she was having a hard time accepting this unexpected news, when she had thought him so
old
—too old for her anyway. Now—he was barely a year older than she was. Apparently, he only aged whenever he was summoned. He could actually grow old with her…

She had to tamp down that thrilling thought. This was no time for it, and there was still one other thing she’d never gotten around to asking him, which she got to now.

“Why did that witch, Gunnhilda, curse you in the first place? Was she just having fun, flexing her magic muscles, and you happened to get in the way? Or did you do something to warrant getting cursed?”

He snorted at that. “All I did was refuse to marry her daughter.”

Roseleen blinked in surprise. “Her daughter wanted to marry you?”

He shook his head. “Nay, she liked me not. ’Twas Gunnhilda who coveted an alliance with my family. But she had not the nerve to
approach Thor, so ’twas me she came to, suggesting the match.”

“And you refused?”

“Her daughter was a hag in appearance, Roseleen, twice my age. Gunnhilda was mad even to suggest it. But my mistake was to laugh at her offer. That enraged her, and she cursed me and my sword on the spot. Yet that was still not enough for her. She also killed my enemy, Wolfstan the Mad, just so he would bedevil me for eternity.”

“I haven’t seen much of that bedeviling,” she said carefully, now expecting a ghost to pop in on them at any moment.

Thorn chuckled. “Wolfstan, he had not too much up here to begin with,” he explained, tapping his head. “So he has much difficulty in finding me each time I am summoned. The few times he has managed to make an appearance, I merely dispatched him back from whence he came. ’Tis a shame, though, that he does not have better luck, for he is a skilled fighter and offers me good sport.”

Good sport as in the only time his life is actually in danger, she thought. She could have hit him for that remark. And good old good sport Wolfstan could stay the hell away as long as she was around. If she had to watch Thorn in a fight where he might actually die…She wished she’d kept her questions to herself.

In a grumble, she said, “Okay, we’ve wasted enough time. Let’s get this correcting
stuff over with so I can get back to my real life.” And, she added to herself, figuring out what she was going to do with a Viking who intended to stick around.