“Amy, please,” he said. “I am safe. I think your dream is just that, a dream and nothing more. It is something you think could happen, certainly not what will happen.”
She couldn’t tell him that she’d read of his death in a book in the twenty-first century. All it said was that Tristan had been stabbed to death by an unknown assailant in 1797. There were no details. When Amy wished to return to the past she’d said she wanted to go back “three weeks before Tristan was killed.” She’d thought that would give her time to find out who wanted him dead. But so far, she’d found no one who even disliked him.
She drank more of the wine. That and the warm day, the bees buzzing about them, the beautiful lake before them, and most of all, Tristan near her, were making her relax.
“Come to me,” he said, and held out his arms to her.
Amy did the best she could to stiffen her back. She had made it this far in turning down his advances; she couldn’t let fear and exhaustion weaken her.
“I will not make advances toward you,” he said. “But put your head on my lap and close your eyes. In your dream, you did not see yourself with me, did you? No? Then I am safe when I am with you. Perhaps you should stay with me every second.”
She couldn’t help smiling, and when he kept his arms extended, she went to him. She put her head on his lap and closed her eyes. Within minutes she was asleep.
When she awoke, she was lying on the blanket with another one over her. It was near sunset and Tristan was nowhere to be seen. Immediately she sat up, fear in her throat.
“Ssssh,” he said as he came into view. “I am here.”
She rubbed her eyes. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Hours. You needed it. Amy, if you’d—”
She gave him a hard look that made him laugh.
“I was about to say that if you stayed in your bed at night you would not need so much sleep in the daytime.”
“When I know you are safe, then I will sleep.”
“And when will that be, Amy?” He sat down by her.
“I don’t know,” she said, but even to her ears, she sounded as though she were lying. When he was safe she’d be taken away from here, away from him.
“I do not understand any of this,” he said.
It was warm outside and his coat lay on the edge of the blanket. He had on tight black trousers and a big white shirt. Amy was afraid to look at him. Between the setting and the beauty of the man, she was having trouble concentrating on her being in this time for a reason. The smell of flowers, the setting sun on a blue lake, and warm breezes, did not help her to remember another time and place, another man.
“Your friends are enjoying themselves,” Tristan said in his deep, beautiful voice. “They have lives here. Your friend Faith has set up an apothecary shop in the old orangery. She tends to a dozen people a day and they have nothing but good to say about her. And Beth has started to spend part of each day with her.”
He looked at the lake. “And your Zoë…”
“Don’t tell me,” Amy said. “I hear the whispers in the kitchen. Two of the youngest women want to pull Zoë’s hair out. They wanted Russell for themselves.”
“Your friend and my painter work together,” Tristan said in a faraway voice. “How I envy them. He was to work on Beth’s portrait, but he has set it aside. I do not have the heart to tell him to get back to work.” He leaned back on his arm, just a few feet from where Amy was sitting upright.
“Do you know what I did?”
“What?” she asked, turning toward him, then was intrigued by his half smile.
“I sneaked into his room to see what he has been doing.”
“And what did you find out?”
Tristan drank some wine, then lay back on the blanket, his arms behind his head. “He has been drawing the workmen.”
“He’s always done that,” Amy said. “I’ve seen him when he thinks no one’s looking.”
“Ah, but there was something else.”
“Will you stop teasing me and tell me what you saw?”
“I think not. It would shock you too much.”
“Shock me?” Amy said. “Tristan, if you know something bad about Russell, I think you should tell me. Zoë is just a girl and she’s been through some really bad things in her life. I need to protect her.”
“From Russell?” he asked. “He is a good man.”
She bent toward him. “You don’t know about these things like I do. I watch Law & Order SVU all the time and people—”
He was looking at her with curiosity. “You say the most unusual things. Why don’t you tell me what you have seen?”
“I’m not going to indulge your prurient interests. Now tell me what you know that Russell is doing to Zoë.”
“What the man is doing to her?”
“Tristan!” she said.
“Look in my coat pocket and you will see.”
She picked up his coat and looked in the two outside pockets but found nothing. In the inside pocket was what felt like a piece of single-ply cardboard. She pulled it out and looked at it. It was a sketch of a muscular man, bending slightly, one leg forward. It was Russell and he was nude and smiling at the artist in a way that left no doubt as to what was in his mind.
After a moment’s shock, Amy laughed. When Tristan reached for the card, she pulled back. “Oh no you don’t. This is mine!” She set the card on the far side of the blanket, then stretched out beside him, two feet of space between them. “And here I’ve been worried about her.”
“There were other pictures in his room.”
“Let me guess. Pictures of Zoë. Starkers.”
“If you mean nude, yes. She certainly is an attractive young woman.”
Amy looked up at the sky that was fading in light. “So Faith has William, and Zoë has Russell.”
“I do hope your Faith does not think she has my uncle. He has always had a wandering eye. He could have had any of many women for a wife, but he could not bear to think that he would have to stay with just one woman.”
“Like you,” Amy said.
“Me? I—!”
“I didn’t mean to imply that you’re not faithful. I meant that you could have any number of women for a wife.”
He moved his hand out to take hers. “Amy, I do not want other women. I want—”
“Tristan, I can’t,” she said, turning her head toward him, but she didn’t move her body closer.
His hand went up to her wrist.
“Please don’t,” she said, her eyes beseeching. “There are things about me that you don’t know.”
“Then tell me!” he said as he sat up abruptly. “Tell me and I will listen to everything you have to say.”
Amy didn’t sit up, nor did she let his anger upset her. “You wouldn’t believe me. You couldn’t believe me.”
“Try me.”
Amy lifted up on her elbows. She was very tired. She couldn’t help it but she felt as though she were alone. Faith and Zoë had come with her, true, but it was as though they had abandoned her. She’d wanted them to help her guard Tristan, but they hadn’t. Faith had moved out of the house after only one night. It was true that Tristan’s uncle would probably have died without Faith’s interference, but there was a part of Amy that wanted to scream that they’d been returned to the past to save Tristan. They hadn’t been sent back in time to help an affable, philandering uncle who would probably never marry, never leave any mark on the world. Amy felt sure that Tristan’s life would mean something to her family, especially to Stephen, and maybe even to the world.
But Amy was absolutely alone in trying to save Tristan. Zoë spent every day with her clothes off, drawing nude pictures of her boyfriend, and Faith was the local healer.
“Tell me what secrets are eating at you,” Tristan said as he sat down by her and took her hand in his.
“I can’t—”
“Yes!” he said. “Amy, you cannot keep this up.” He put his hands on her shoulders and
turned her to look at him. “I know I am not your husband—would to God that I were—but I am not. But I am here and he is not and I am taking his place.”
When she moved back from him a bit, his fingers sank into her shoulders. “Do not look at me like that. I think I have shown you that I will not force myself on you. If nothing else, I have too much pride for that. Amy, do you think that I do not see what is happening to you? Have you looked at yourself in a mirror?”
He didn’t wait for her to answer. “You have lost over a stone of weight and your face is drawn. Your clothes hang on you. Your eyes are sunken into your face and you look twenty years older than you did just a week ago.”
He moved his face closer to hers. “I admit that I want you for my lover, but if I cannot have that, then I want you for my friend. You tell me that you have a recurring dream that I will be found dead, but I think it is more than that. Dreams fade with the daylight. I want you to tell me what is making you so ill.”
“Or what?” she said, her face just inches from his.
“Or nothing,” he said. “There is no threat between friends. I care about you and I want to know what is wearing you down.”
She wanted to talk to someone. She wanted help from someone. She’d tried to get that help by bringing two women with her, but she may as well have come alone for all they were interested in Tristan.
“Everyone thinks I’m so strong,” she said. “My husband, Stephen, and now Zoë and Faith, think I’m a bulwark of strength, but I’m not. I lost a baby and…”
When she trailed off, he moved back on the blanket until his back was against a tree, then he extended his arm to her. “Come and let me hold you while you tell me all of it. I know what it is like to lose a child.”
She told him. The sun set, the stars came out, they finished the wine and the food, but still, they stayed there and Amy talked. She told him about losing the baby, then how her husband arranged for her to go to a cabin in Maine to stay with strangers.
Tristan said nothing. For a long while he didn’t ask a question. She told him about the bookstore and the book that said he’d been killed.
“It was not a dream,” he said, as though reassuring himself that he’d been right all along.
When she got to the part where she found herself in a barn and she was in another time, his arm tightened around her, but he said nothing.
When she finished, she turned to look up at him. The moon was out and it bathed his face with a silvery light.
“If all that I know did not fit with what you have told me, I would not believe you. But I have noticed more than you think and I believe that what you tell me, impossible as it is, is true.”
He moved so he was facing her. “I want to hear every word about your world. What is different in your time?” His eyes were bright with excitement.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Amy said. “If I tell you about my world you’ll write it all down and it’ll mess up the future.”
“Is the future so perfect that it could not stand a little of what you call ‘messing up’?”
“Actually, I think it could stand a lot of changing, but I don’t think I’m supposed to do it.”
“What makes you think that? Did the witch who sent you here warn you of doing anything to hurt the future?”
“No,” she said. “We were given three weeks to change the future. My future, that is, and I truly believe that you’re somehow connected to my future. Faith and Zoë get to go on their own trips back to whenever they want. From the way things are going, maybe they’ll want to come back here for three more weeks.”
“Perhaps I’m to go to the future with you.”
Amy looked at him in horror. “And do what? Sleep in my guest room? I don’t think so.”
Tristan got up to stand on the grass. He put his hands behind his back and began to pace. “If what you say is true—”
“As opposed to my being a lunatic.”
“Exactly,” Tristan said. “If this is true, then you are to change something here. To that end, you already have.”
“What have I changed?”
“My uncle will live.”
“That was Faith, not me. Tristan, no matter what you say, or how you put this under a microscope, I think I was sent here to keep you from getting killed. And that’s what I’ve tried to do.”
“I think there is something more here. I wish—” He looked at her with such pain in his eyes that she gasped.
“What is it?”
“I wish you had come back before my wife died. I wish Faith had been here to save her and the baby.”
“Cleanliness,” Amy said. “That’s all that was needed. Your horrible old doctor delivered some twins in the village and didn’t bother to wash his hands before or after. Then he went to your wife and delivered her with his filthy hands. It’s called childbirth fever and no one will find the cause of it until Victorian times, about a hundred years from now.”
“It could be that simple?” Tristan said.
“Yes, it could. Tristan, I’m sorry. It’s not as though my world has found cures for everything, but we have found out about washing our hands. I’ve seen old paintings of men wearing suits while they operate on someone.”
“And what do the men in your time wear?”
“The men and women who operate wear specially made sterile gowns and thin rubber gloves on their hands. They work in a sterile environment.”
Tristan put out his hand to pull her up to stand beside him. “I want you to tell me everything about this.” His voice lowered. “I want to prevent what was done to my wife and my uncle from happening again.”
“You want to be a doctor?”
“No, I just want to take care of my family.”
“Will you keep a guard with you?” she asked. “At all times? I want to keep you alive until…”
“Until you leave?”
He looked at her, then pulled her into his arms and kissed her. For a moment he held her in his arms, her head against his chest, his heart beating against her cheek. “Do not tell me that I cannot touch you. He will have you for the rest of your life. You will go back to him and it will be his children that you have. I have only now, these few days with you.”
“Tristan…” she said, but she didn’t push away from him.
It was he who put her at arms’ length. “You and I are going to do what the others are doing. We are going to learn. You are going to tell me what you can that will help me in my world. Never again do I want to have a woman die in my arms, her blood flowing out of her like a stream of death. Never again do I want to see someone I love lie in a bed and waste away when all he needed was a bath and some good food. Will you help me?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll do what I can, but I still must save your life. Someone here hates you and wants you dead.”
He smiled at her. “I will find him even if I have to sit up all night and watch for him. Come! We must go to the house and get food, then you must tell me everything.”
Twenty-one
“You look horrible,” Zoë said.
“Thanks,” Amy said. “You’ve made my day.”
“If you’re having trouble sleeping I could give you something,” Faith said.
They were in the main house, sitting at the round table in the south parlor, a full tea in front of them. It was the first time they’d all three been together in nearly a week.
“Do you know that you’re beginning to sound like a drug dealer,” Amy said to Faith. “Are those things you’re giving people legal?”
Zoë and Faith looked at each other.
“Don’t look at me like that. Yes, I know where I am. I haven’t forgotten. A few days ago I told Tristan everything.”
For a moment neither Zoë nor Faith could speak.
“You did what?” Zoë said at last. “What do you mean by ‘everything’?”
“Time travel, the works.”
Both Zoë and Faith fell back against their chairs and stared at her.
“I had to explain why he and I couldn’t…” She looked down at her plate, then up at Zoë defiantly. “Why we couldn’t do what you and Russell are doing all over this estate.”
Instead of being embarrassed, Zoë smiled. “Lusty man is my Russell. Think I could take him back with me?”
“You don’t fool me,” Amy said, her eyes narrowed. “When we leave here you’re going to leave your heart behind.”
“And you aren’t?” Zoë shot back. “The way you and that gorgeous babe look at each other could melt the silver. I hope you aren’t trying to make us believe that you aren’t bouncing around in his bed every night.”
For a second Amy’s eyes blazed with anger, then she let out her breath, put her elbows on the table, and her head in her hands. “I should be so lucky. It was easy when all he wanted from me was sex. I could get away in ten minutes, then go cry myself to sleep. But now he wants information about the future.”
“What kind of information?” Faith asked. “About cell phones and that sort of thing? Or who’s going to win the next election?”
“The stock market?” Zoë asked.
“No,” Amy said tiredly. “He wants to know all I can dredge out of my tired brain about modern medicine.”
“Good thing he didn’t ask me,” Zoë said, “or he’d be out the door in five minutes. Why don’t you send him to Faith?”
“He’s already sent the village to me,” Faith said. “How can I take on more? Most of what I do is tell them to take a bath and brush their teeth. If I stayed here…” She looked at them. “I think I might end up being burned as a witch.”
“Wrong time period,” Zoë said. “I think. When did that happen in Salem?”
“Could we get back to the problem at hand?” Amy said. “We only have three more days.”
“Yes,” Zoë said, and there were tears in her voice. “Three more days. How will I live without him?”
Faith put her arms around Zoë and hugged her. “And I don’t know how I’ll be able to return to a life of uselessness.”
“You both have your times to go back and change your futures,” Amy said. “Remember Madame Zoya whom neither of you believed in? She said you will have your own lives to fix.”