Mary Balogh - Timeswept Brides

Unspoken was the fact that he spent most of his time with Amelia.

He could be heartbreakingly romantic, and they took long walks with the dogs over the rolling green hills. John worked on in the tower room alone, not minding this particular interruption one bit.

They were having a picnic down by the boathouse one afternoon when it happened. They'd both finished Mrs. Edwards's sumptuous repast, and were lying on the blanket Hugh had spread beneath the huge walnut tree.

"I love the swans," she said drowsily. "They're always together and they look so graceful."

"They mate for life, you know." Something in his tone made her turn toward him. The minute she saw his face, she knew.

"Hugh-"

"Marry me, Amelia."

How like Hugh. Not will you marry me, but marry me. Then she saw the uncertainty in his blue eyes, and her fear lost its edge.

She did love him. Attraction had been instantaneous, passionate, out of control. What had happened in the weeks that followed had deepened that first feeling into something much more. Something she'd never felt before. Something she couldn't have described if she'd tried.

"Yes."

The joy that lit his eyes made tears come to her own.

"Don't be frightened," he said into her hair. He'd taken her into his arms, and they lay like that, content with each other. She wished she could be as strong as he was, as sure. But she wasn't that way, and no amount of wishing could make it so.

"I'm not-I am." She laughed into his shirtfront, dangerously close to tears.

"I'll show you every day, for the rest of my life, how much I love you. You'll come to believe it."

"Yes," she whispered again, against his strong chest. Against the rapid beating of his heart. "Yes."

******************

Amelia sat in the leather chair, listening to the silence of the tower room. She had to get back downstairs to her bedroom and try to sleep. But she had a feeling she would just lie in her bed, willing the morning to come and put an end to her feelings of apprehension.

Why couldn't she just marry Hugh and be done with it? Why did she have to go through such emotional agony over a decision countless young women made every day? She knew, on an intellectual level, why she was scared. Her father had been seriously ill before she'd reached her seventh birthday. He'd died when she was nine. Six marriages had followed for her mother, and Amelia had stopped trying to get close to any in the long succession of stepfathers a long time ago.

She still missed Max Jamison terribly. The only memories she had left of her father were the home movies her mother had transferred to video. There was the father she remembered, frozen in time. Leading her pony as a four-year-old Amelia practically screamed with joy. On a carousel, riding the prancing wooden stallion next to hers. Sharing an ice cream cone at the beach.

Would life have been better, emotionally, if he'd lived? Would she have these terrible fears of ultimately being abandoned?

Her fingers traced the delicate paper of the letter.

My dearest Poppet…

To love like that. So fearlessly. Passionately. Suddenly depressed, she wondered if she'd ever really been in love. Even with Hugh.

A cloud passed over the moon, and the tower room was plunged into darkness. Amelia was afraid for only a second, then she felt her eyelids drifting shut, the letter slipping from her fingers. The leather chair was so soft, and she was so tired, she'd rest just for a moment… a moment in time…

The sharp rapping sound awakened her.

Amelia struggled to consciousness, wondering who would be up in the tower at this time of night. The moon was still obscured by clouds, the night still dark.

Someone was trying to get into the tower room.

Perhaps John. Maybe he was having trouble sleeping as well, and wanted to escape to the past, to his study filled with letters, journals, pressed flowers, and sketches. She understood the older man and his fascination with history.

"Let me in!" whispered a voice.

Strange. She didn't recognize it. Amelia got up from her chair. Her back ached, and she wondered at that. The leather seat had grown cold and hard as she'd slept in it. Well, it was nothing like a bed.

She found the doorknob in the dark, then turned it. The door stuck.

How odd.

She tried again. Pulled harder.

"Open this door!" a female voice demanded.

"I will; give me a minute-"

With one last yank, the door yielded. It felt as if the wood were swollen within the frame, and that was strange because it was a door that normally opened without any trouble at all.

The clouds parted, and a thin, cool moonlight slipped through the window, illuminating a scene Amelia knew she would remember throughout eternity.

Jane Stanton stood in the doorway-Amelia recognized the girl from the engagement portrait she'd seen. And this was no simpering chit who couldn't cope with what life handed her. This was no coy miss who simply gave up. She was furious.

"I suppose this is your way of saying you're not coming with me!"

Amelia couldn't answer as shock assailed her, a peculiar roaring in her head, a weakening in her limbs. She steadied herself, a hand grasping the rough stones in the tower wall. How could it feel the same? How could it look the same?

But it didn't. John had put in carpeting. This stone floor was bare; she could feel it through her shoes.

Shoes. No. Slippers. I was wearing slippers.

She didn't have her nightgown on, either, but a wool dress that itched against her skin. All she could see of herself was her hands, and they were broad and square, with freckles on the backs.

She'd never freckled in her life.

"Where am I?" she whispered, then looked at Jane as she started to tremble.

"Stop it! Come back right now, Emma! I won't have you going off in one of those trances like your aunt. Now. you agreed to help me and you shall. Come."

Jane grabbed her hand and started away from the tower room. Though her hand was small, it was surprisingly strong and warm. Vital. Alive.

Alive. No, no, Jane is dead, she hung herself…

Terrified, Amelia pulled her hand away, but Jane grabbed it again and dragged her further down the stairs.

"Stop it," she hissed. "If you get us caught, I'll make your life a living hell, I swear it!"

Alive. Jane Stanton is alive. I have to be dreaming. This has to be a dream. I've just gone a little mad…

She almost missed the bottom step, and the sharp pain that shot up her shin was no dream; this was no dream, this was real, and she had no idea where Jane was leading her, or why, or how she'd come to this place…

For it was Lindsey House, but not the Lindsey House she'd come to love. This was a strange, dark manor house, and she knew with a sharp instinct honed purely by survival that she'd never been to this house before.

A light, misty rain had started to fall as the two women approached the great front door.

"Quiet! Someone may still be about." Jane let go of her hand, then grasped her upper arm with steady fingers. This woman knew exactly what she wanted and how to go about getting it.

"Here." She handed Amelia a cloak and she put it on gratefully. The weather was bitterly cold and damp, and even the wool dress didn't offer her much in the way of protection.

Then they were outside, running across the grounds, dashing and slipping over the wet grass, away from the dark, silent house. Amelia had no idea where they were headed, but as she moved she suffered yet another shock. Her body didn't feel like hers-it was shorter and considerably plumper. Sturdy. Unfamiliar. Strange.

She'd always been thin as a child. Wiry. Miserable because she'd been one of the tallest in her class, almost always the last ever asked to dance. Now she was eye level with Jane-and Jane was not a tall woman.

Was she running away to marry Jonathan? Was that where they were going? As she followed Jane further away from the manor house, Amelia thought furiously, tried to remember every detail of the story John Lindsey had told her.

She couldn't think. The shock was too great. Her breath came in great gasps; her lungs hurt from the cold spring air. She stumbled, and Jane jerked her upright.

"Come on, Emma! Once they know we've gone, we haven't got a chance."

She was a tough one, Amelia thought. Tough and strong and smart. She was a survivor; that was the first thing she'd thought upon meeting her.

What has happened?

She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. One after the other. Breathing through her nose because it warmed the cold night air. Trying not to let the cloak whip open and the frigid wind crawl up her legs.

They reached the main road, and Amelia was struck by how absolutely black the night was. Even when she and Hugh had taken evening walks with the dogs, they'd come back to see the windows of Lindsey House ablaze with light. Not now. Everything was black, except what little was silvered by the new moon.

She stopped, and Jane was yanked back by the force of her strength.

New moon. No. Not new, the moon was full…

The truth began to close in all around her. She couldn't shut her mind off to the final possibility, the only possibility, the reality of what had happened to her. She'd fallen down the hole, like Alice after the White Rabbit, only this was real, this was real…

"Emma! The carriage!"

And there it was, at the end of the dirt road. The road she and Hugh had just walked this evening, three of the house dogs at their heels, Charlie in her arms because his legs were too stiff, Hugh's arm around her…

Tears blurred her vision, but her legs kept moving because she didn't know what else to do.

She assisted Jane into the carriage, then climbed in after her. There was nothing for her here at this Lindsey House, more than two hundred years in the past. She'd been flung back in time, and who knew if she'd ever see anyone or anything familiar again?

The horses started up, and the carriage bounced around horribly. Amelia gritted her teeth, then gave up on that idea when a bone-jarring jounce almost caused her to bite off her tongue. Though she and John were both fascinated and passionate about history, neither had ever romanticized it, and she longed for the safe confines of the Range Rover.

"It won't be much farther now," Jane whispered. She sounded so very pleased with herself.

"Until what?"

"Oh, Emma, don't go off like that again! Jonathan's mother would have let your aunt go had she not been so terribly accurate with those visions." She sighed, then sat back on the seat. The small lantern on the one side of the carriage illuminated her animated face. ' 'I must confess, I'd love to see what the future has in store for Robert and me-"

"Robert?" Her tongue suddenly felt thick, her head filled with cotton wool. "Robert? I thought you loved Jonathan-"

The look on Jane's face stopped her cold.

"Jonathan? Jonathan? To marry him and live that carefully planned out, boring life in that huge old house? Oh, no, not for me! I want more than that, I told him-"

"Does he know about-"

"Robert?" Jane laughed, then glanced out the carriage window, eager to see where they were in their journey. "No." Her expression grew thoughtful. "Even though I didn't want to be Jonathan's wife, I couldn't bear to hurt him. He thought we were betrothed, and I let him continue to think it until tonight. Tomorrow, once he realizes I'm gone, he'll find another girl, much more suitable than I am."

Amelia was quiet, thinking of the letters. Of that last letter. Those passionate words. Jonathan had loved this Jane Stanton, no matter how hard-hearted and cold she seemed to Amelia now.

She ventured a guess. Perhaps this Emma, this woman whose body she'd appropriated, would have known both men.

"I think you're tossing away a good man."

Jane gave her an incredulous look that instantly told her she'd overstepped her station in life. The girl had an incredibly expressive face; it registered her emotions quite clearly.

Once again, Amelia found herself an American misunderstanding British customs. Obviously, this Emma was a maid. Jane's maid. Amelia, in the first shock of tearing through time, had overlooked the plainness of the wool dress she was wearing. But now, seeing the way Jane related to her, there could be no doubt concerning her station in this life. She couldn't meet her mistress's expression and glanced away, embarrassed.