Aching for Always (35 page)

“Exmoor,” he said. “In 1706.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-NINE
 

Joss thanked the servant for helping her into the gown of her host's dead wife, said she would be down to breakfast in a few moments and closed the bedroom door with a
click
. This was her first solitary moment in the light of day since they'd arrived, and she needed to find out if the precious contents of her case had survived.

The generous and apparently lonely owner of the carriage had insisted they spend the night at his estate and had provided blankets, bandages, food, wine and fire in large supply. He was a widower and utterly charmed by Hugh's story that he had absconded with Joss and had been on his way to Gretna Green to marry her when their horse had stumbled and fallen on Tarr Steps—charmed enough, at least, to agree not to insist on sending a message to Joss's parents or the local magistrate.

Of course, Hugh's story had meant they were deposited for the night at opposite ends of the house, with two footmen and a locked conservatory between them, for which Joss was grateful, given her strongly conflicting feelings about her traveling companion. She was thank
ful he had saved her, but she had not forgotten the bitter ending to the events in front of Dollar Bank, nor that tomorrow was to have been her wedding day. She looked guiltily at her hand. Rogan's diamond still sparkled there. It had not been swept away in the freezing river, and she thought perhaps that was more fate than chance.

She removed the tote from under the bed. Her hands shook as she unsealed the plastic tube. Would everything be ruined so that, guilt-free, she could say to Hugh his quest would go unfulfilled, or would the maps she'd so carefully gathered at work a day ago have survived?

She slipped her hand in. The paper was dry. She removed the sheets carefully and unrolled them on the bed. First, the map of London that Hugh had taken from the map room. Next, the map of Edinburgh that Joss had found under Fiona's chest on the ship. Third, a full-size color copy of the Manchester map she'd found yesterday in the electronic archives, matching the map they'd seen in Rogan's study in all aspects except one: there was no hand-lettered excerpt from the
Aeneid
on it, though she had found the excerpt online and slipped a printout of that in the tube, too.

And last, but certainly not least, another surprising find in the Brand O'Malley archives: a full-color photocopy on a sheet of perfectly preserved parchment of a map of two small properties in East Fenwick, Sussex, with their borders redrawn to allow one owner to enjoy more arable land and the other access to a stream in the Sussex hills.

*  *  *

Joss gazed at Hugh in his fitful sleep, his head propped awkwardly into the corner of the carriage as they hurried toward Portsmouth. Despite the pills, he was still weak, and the adventure in the river had not helped him any. It had taken half a day and a trip to the market town of Taunton for Hugh to negotiate an advance of funds against his naval salary, funds they had used to rent this carriage and would need again to purchase passage aboard a ship bound for the North Atlantic. That was Hugh's stated destination, though she wondered if his objective might change if she told him about the map in her tube.

She had not brought herself to tell him about the map of East Fenwick, and she wrestled with her reluctance. Surely he was right: that people whose futures had been taken deserved to have it restored. Yet, if what he told her was true, none of them except Fiona had any idea what they had lost. Of course, if what he said was true, no one in the Brand family would realize it when their centuries of fortune and ease were stripped away, either—no one, that is, except Joss, who, being currently lodged in another time, would feel the loss upon her return most painfully and for the rest of her life.

And while Joss had no doubt she could live with privation, it would be the rendering as false all the memories that had come with her life—her father showing her how to ride the ski lift outside their Aspen home, playing princess with her friends in the back of the family limousine, sitting on her mother's lap for a surprise visit to New York or Disney World or Paris—that would make the loss painful.

Balancing that was the notion of an old man in a
prison somewhere in England who hadn't seen his family in ten years. She felt an unexpected lash of guilt knowing that the power to reverse his fate sat literally and figuratively in the palm of her hand.

She reached for the tube and it slipped, hitting the floor with a bang. Hugh opened his eyes.

“What is that?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. “You've been clutching it since Pittsburgh.”

“It's nothing. My notes. I managed to save the map you took and the one of Fiona's.”

“Did you?” He sat up. “Why did you not tell me earlier?”

“We've been a little busy.”

“Shall we open them? There may be something even yet you haven't noticed.”

Tell him about the copies, Joss. Tell him.

She remembered the feel of his hands upon her that night as she translated the Latin, and in his gaze relived both the spark of conspiratorial adventure and the undeniable desire she'd felt as she bared herself to him. That was twice she'd skirted the line of propriety, twice she'd betrayed Rogan, and still he—Hugh—had had the audacity to ask her if she'd had something to do with the tailor shop break-in. Self-centered man.

She knew she'd been playing with fire. She needed to make a choice. She held up the diamond that had survived so much and looked at it.
Is there a reason you're still here?

She looked up and Hugh looked away. He had caught her examining the ring.

“How long will it take?” she asked, flushing. “To Portsmouth?”

“A day, if you do not mind riding all night.”

She did not. Contemplating the alternative, in fact, made her stomach churn. Given the telltale zippers and tailoring of their twenty-first-century clothing, they had taken care to dispose of them as soon as they could outside their host's house, and Hugh now wore a suit that had once belonged many years ago to their host's son. It was, according to Hugh, in a “decidedly old-fashioned cut,” though she had to admit the plum velvet and bleached linen gave him an elegance that surprised her. The pale primrose color of the low-cut silk she wore contrasted well with the blue in her eyes, and she had twice found Hugh staring at her since she'd descended at breakfast.

He'd told her they would go to Portsmouth, where they could buy passage under assumed names on a merchant ship to the North Atlantic, hoping they might cross paths with Mr. Roark. Though Hugh had many naval captains among his acquaintance, he could hardly appear before them to ask for passage looking as if he had abandoned his ship.

“Will they be worried?” she asked. “Mr. Roark and Nathaniel, I mean.”

The corner of his mouth rose slightly. Had he noticed her omission of Fiona?

“Worried?” He chuckled, as if the word weren't in an English sailor's vocabulary. “They will wait there until I return or until they're down to five days' worth of supplies.”

“How long will that take?”

“Three months. Longer if they cut down to half rations.”

“Then your hurry is for . . .?”

“For you, Joss. I am quite sensible of the timing of your wedding.”

The warmth on her cheeks turned to heat. He thought their unexpected voyage past Tarr Steps had ruined her chances of attending the ceremony. Little did he know that if her plans lay in ruins, she had only herself to blame. She thought of those hard arms and that furious kiss by Dollar Bank. “I'll explain my absence somehow.”

“A runaway bride?” he offered without the hint of a smile.

“Full of regret.” She met his gaze.

“You could blame me.” His eyes were unreadable.

She knew it would hurt Rogan more if he believed she hated him than if he thought she'd slept with another man. “I'll think of something.”

For a long moment, the clanging of the wheels was the only noise in the carriage.

“Thank you for saving me,” she said at last. “I was absolutely paralyzed. I've been terrified of water since I was a little girl. Never learned to swim.”

He looked out the window as if he were gazing back into another time. “You're welcome. I would have been unhappy to lose you. I'm afraid I've come to feel responsible for you.”

She felt a flutter in heart, and the sound beneath the wheels changed. The carriage was crossing a bridge.

“I was thinking of something you said to me,” she said.

He stiffened. She was sure there were parts of the last few days neither of them wished to remember.

“You said something about steps when we were in the river,” she added.

His shoulders relaxed. “Tarr Steps, aye. 'Tis the name of that stone bridge.”

“You recognized where we were?”

His gaze returned to the window. “I have seen the place before, though from an admittedly more comfortable perspective. My parents—and I, I suppose, though I do not remember it—lived in Williton for a time before they died and my brother took me into the service with him.”

“If you do not remember it, how do you know Tarr Steps?”

His finger began to work the seam of his pants. “I came here with my brother once a long time ago.”

“To visit relatives?”

“To bury him. He lies in the churchyard at Crowcombe.”

“Crowcombe?” she cried, for she had seen that very name on the inn in the town they had just passed. “We were just there. Shouldn't we stop?”

“No,” he said, paling, “I do not think—”

“But when was the last time you were here?”

“Then,” he said carefully.

“Oh, Hugh, you were a boy. You must stop.”

“'Tis not a happy memory for me, Joss.”

She thought of her own mother's ashes being scattered over the waters beyond Nova Scotia, a place Joss had imagined at the time was as far from Pittsburgh as her mother thought she could convince her father to take her remains. With no grave to be the focus of her mourn
ing, Joss's sadness had spread to fill every place she'd ever occupied. “Think of what it would mean to him . . . and to you.”

He looked at her and after a long pause made a noise that she took as assent, though the sorrow in his eyes made her wonder.

“Driver,” he called uncertainly. “Turn around.”

He gazed at the distinctive round stones of the church and the noble, squat bell tower as he climbed the path. The hillside that rose above it clung to the last withered vestiges of summer, and the grave markers lay scattered there like ancient flowers, in varying colors and states of repair.

He knew the sight of the hastily engraved stone would wrench his heart, and he ascended the hill reluctantly. The only things left for him to sell that day twenty years ago had been his brother's medals, which he'd dug out of the box Bart had helped him make. He'd been too shamed to tell the silversmith he was selling them to pay for the headstone of the man who had earned them, even though it might have brought him a few shillings more. He remembered the long ride from Wych Cross, his home with Maggie, Bart and little Jo, to Crowcombe, lying in the wagon beside the casket and marker, hungry and alone, gazing up at the stars, wondering how he would ever pay for his return.

And now here he was, two decades later, coming here without having swung the sword of justice on his brother's behalf.

He reached the end of the path and let his eyes trail over the meager stone.

C
APTAIN
B
ARTHOLOMEW
H
AWKSMOOR
E
XCEPTIONAL
H
ERO IN THE
C
AUSE OF
H
IS
C
OUNTRY
B
ORN
1655, D
IED
1685
N
EVER TO BE
F
ORGOTTEN

Bart had not been given the obsequies of an officer. He had left the navy a year earlier to hide his new family from Brand and broken all ties with the service as well as his seafaring acquaintances. So Hugh had made the words on the stone as fitting as his eleven-year-old imagination would allow. He had been the only person apart from the curate who stood in this churchyard when the casket was laid in the ground.

He touched the cold stone. Granite for Granite, he thought, remembering that long-ago nickname. He dropped to a knee, wincing at the pain in his shoulder.

Oh, Bart.

His eyes began to sting, and as always he seized upon the thought of Alfred Brand to defend against the onslaught he feared would follow. The sorrow was no match for the anger, which had been carefully honed over time, made sharper with each passing year, until it stood like a chevaux-de-frise, capable of fending off even the most daunting attack.

He felt the tension harden his shoulders and descend like steel over his chest. He closed his eyes, cutting the fuel upon which the sadness feasted.