Belmary House Book One (12 page)

He alternated between stiffly polite and mildly condescending, with the rarest flashes of friendliness. She wanted more of those moments, and wished he’d relax and be comfortable around her since they had to be together for so long.

As much as she worried about Dex and Emma, and what would happen if her mother found out what had become of her, she was greatly enjoying the early nineteenth century. Nora helped her to the point she barely had to lift a finger, and that had caused her some guilt at first, but every time she tried to do something for herself, she got a wounded look, and finally settled into being taken care of like a baby.

The fresh food and the politeness of the innkeepers made up for the lumpy mattresses and less than steaming hot baths at the inns where they stopped, and she had become adept at stamping on anything that scuttled across the floors. Between her and Nora ruthlessly beating the bedclothes at each place, she’d avoided too many flea bites. The horses and pigs and goats that were everywhere she turned delighted her, and she hardly noticed the smell anymore.

Once they were well away from London, the air became ridiculously fresh and clean, and whenever Ashford let them stop, she ran as far and as fast as she could over the vast green spaces. She hadn’t eaten a single processed food in a week, she didn’t really count dried bannocks as being processed, and she felt light and bursting with health.

And while Ashford was overbearing sometimes, she definitely found him to be eye candy. When he closed his eyes to rest, he was far more interesting to look at than the endless hills outside the window. There was a line between his eyes that never relaxed, even when he fell asleep, and she itched to press her finger against it, try to smooth it for him, smooth away his worries over his sister, and herself, and the other poor souls who were unlucky enough to go into that room of his house at the wrong time.

She’d asked Ashford a few questions about his sister, but other than finding out her name was Camilla and they were indeed twins, he refused to speak of her. It seemed at first like he wanted to say more, but after looking at her for a long time, shook his head and stayed silent.

She also longed to know more about how he did what he did. After he’d dropped the bombshell about witchcraft, he’d been maddeningly tight lipped, always finding a way to get her to talk about herself whenever she asked him a question he didn’t want to answer. And she fell for it every time. When he bestowed his grey, interested gaze on her, she felt as giddy as a schoolgirl at his attention.

It was only after she’d babbled on about her childhood dog or the backstage antics at a beauty pageant, that she realized what he’d done. It irritated her that she was so easily led by him. She longed to get him back. Going the extra mile in her faux seduction, she pressed her arms together in front of her, and his eyes narrowed on her chest, rivalling the clouds that were quickly rolling in on them. Triumph raced through her.

“I think you can certainly call me by my first name by now, don’t you?” She blinked at him with all the innocence she could muster.

“Very well, Matilda,” he said, calmly looking back out the window.

Oh goodness, she hadn’t expected that, and quickly straightened up, the picture of modesty. The way he said it, Ma
til
da, seemed to curl around her like an embrace, making her catch her breath. She hated her name, always wished she had a cuter, more modern one. Normally when someone called her by her whole name, she got a sick, pea soup feeling and ordered them to call her Tilly.

But the way he said it, purred it almost, she wanted to beg him to say it again. Tiny prickles rushed across her skin as she imagined him saying it while stroking the side of her face and leaning closer. She struggled to get the window down for a much needed gust of air. It had to be his accent, that was all. Pulling herself together with great effort, she asked what she should call him.

“Lord Ashford,” he answered. She kicked him in the shin, and he looked disapproving again.

“No shoes, either, Matilda?” He edged the hem of her skirt up with his booted toe. “Are you even wearing stockings?”

“Be careful,” she said, pulling her legs up onto her seat and tucking them safely under her skirt, flustered all over again. “If you see my calves, will you have to marry me?”

A crack of thunder as loud as a cannon blast, coupled with the carriage hitting another rut, startled her, and she pitched forward. With her legs under her skirt, she couldn’t get her feet to the floor fast enough to regain her balance and went tumbling headlong into Ashford, their bodies colliding and their faces just inches apart.

He gripped her waist and steadied her before they knocked heads, her hands slamming against him. Her breath whooshed out of her at the feel of his strong shoulders, and the sight of his lips so close to hers. Her childish plan completely backfired and she was the one in a tizzy of desire, while he seemed completely unphased by her proximity.

The carriage lumbered up the other side of the rut, finally settling back into its steady pace, and she found to her extreme consternation that she was straddling his lap. And felt something very hard pressing against her thigh. She shrieked and pulled his jacket aside.

“What is that?”

He closed his eyes in his infernal long-suffering manner and got her off him. “Do you really not know what it is?” he asked, turning so she could better see.

She moved further away, her head swimming. “I’m an American, of course I know what it is. I also know you shouldn’t have it.”

“Ah, yes, well. I do. Would you like to hold it?” He looked as pleased as a little boy with a freshly caught frog.

“I would not,” she said firmly. “Why do you have a twenty-first century gun in the year 1814?”

She tamped down the panic she still got whenever she saw a gun up close. She’d learned over the years to barely take notice of them, working in an office full of cops as she did. But being around capably trained people who carried one safely holstered for their job was different than having one bump against her leg.

Strapped under his dark blue broadcloth jacket, nestled next to his peacock silk waistcoat, the lethal automatic weapon looked frighteningly out of place. Up to that moment she’d viewed Ashford as mildly eccentric, perhaps a tad bossy, but after she laid to rest the initial worry he was a serial killer, she’d never once been scared of him. She was a bit scared of him now.

She looked out the window to keep the onslaught of memories at bay, always shocked at how readily they appeared, as if no time had passed at all. The thumping of her heart filled her ears as the images played out cruelly in her mind. She wrestled them back into the deep recesses where they belonged, and after several slow breaths, she turned to him for answers.

“Do you want to explain your gun from the future?” she asked, wiping her palms on her skirt and gripping the fabric to hide her shaking hands. “Isn’t that against some sort of rule? I mean, after the fit you threw over my plastic buttons.”

“I make sure no one ever sees it,” he said. “It’s so much better than the ones from this time.”

She rolled her eyes at him. Men and their toys. “Is it for highwaymen and such?”

Have you ever used it? she wanted to ask. He must have noticed her discomfort, even though she thought she was doing a good job of hiding it, and covered the firearm back up.

“It’s for defense, yes.” He looked at her for a long time before continuing. “I’m telling you this not to frighten you, but because you should know.”

Another long pause in which she wanted to shake him. How could he say something like that and then just stop talking? He smiled and she wondered if he could read her thoughts.

“You need to be more reticent,” he said. “Not around me, mind, I quite like knowing where your wayward thoughts lie. But around others.”

She dropped her chin to her chest to keep him from seeing her fire engine complexion. Did he really know what she was thinking? And he liked it? She got the same swishy feeling as when he’d called her by her first name. Could he possibly know how she felt about that, or the fact that she’d liked him checking her out? This wasn’t good at all. Did he know she was scared of his blasted gun? She’d show him reticent, and looked up again with what she hoped was a serene expression. He laughed at her.

“I’m not the only person who can use the portals,” he said. “There’s one man in particular who is the main reason I keep this marvelous weapon. His name is Solomon Wodge and he’s quite serious in wanting me dead.”

“Why?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Because I can do what I do, because of my house, because of my accursed family lineage that made it all possible from the beginning. Mostly because he’s quite mad. And he doesn’t like anyone who comes through, not even if it’s an accident. He’ll hunt them down, to try to get to me, if nothing else.”

That didn’t make her feel better at all. He’d given her a lot of information to sort out, and something seemed more important than the rest, but she was still focused on the gun, and the fact that someone actively wanted to kill Ashford, and by extension, her.

“He’d kill me?” she asked, staring at his jacket, then pulling her eyes up to meet his. Dark and serious. Very serious.

“Yes. If he got the chance. But you needn’t worry because I won’t allow him to get the chance.” He put his hand over hers. “It’s unlikely he’s around now. He recently caused some trouble for me in another time, messed about with my schedule somehow. Hopefully he’s found something else to occupy him for a while.”

“How did he mess with your schedule?” she asked, looking down at his hand, which still rested on top of hers. “You mean for the time portal thing?”

“Yes. I have very specific schedules that don’t usually go wrong, especially not in my house. There are other portals, one way up in the Highlands, and another in Wales, a few scattered around Europe, and those I don’t have as much information about, but my house has always been, well, mine.”

“You said it was a witch’s spell?” she asked, eager to hear more. The need to get some answers overrode her fear.

He nodded. “My many times great grandfather married a Scotswoman. This was back in the early seventeenth century, and to get her to come all the way from the Highlands—”

“Where there’s another portal?” Tilly interrupted.

He looked sourly at her as if he wouldn’t continue and she grabbed his arm and apologized, swearing she wouldn’t say another word. She was a little disappointed that she knocked his hand free and he never replaced it on hers. She rubbed the back of it where she’d so recently felt his cool palm.

“Yes, there’s another portal. The tiny village she came from is called Castle on Hill. It’s a bit of a tourist town in your time. The current owner of the castle has all but turned it into an amusement park. American, like yourself.”

“What?” she cried, offended. “You don’t have to say it like that.”

He ignored her and continued. “The woman my ancestor loved lived in that grand castle, and to entice her to marry him, he built her Belmary House. It used to be called Belle Marie, because her name was Marie and he thought she was quite beautiful.”

“Oh, that’s so romantic.”

“Honestly, Matilda. Can you not keep it clappered for even twenty seconds?” She giggled and pretended to lock her lips, waving him to go on. “She came to England and married him, but as it turned out, she was descended from a long line of witches.” He paused, and when she dutifully kept her mouth closed, even though it nearly killed her, he smiled appreciatively at her. “She and some others in her clan learned how to control passing through time. They can do it without the portals, just using a spell, anywhere they want.”

“Can you do that? And, whoa. Does that mean you’re descended from a long line of witches?”

He shook his head. “No, I can’t. And, yes, technically, I suppose I am. I’m getting to that part. Don’t make me be rude.”

“More rude, you mean,” she muttered. His eyebrows flew up and she bit her lip, looking demurely down at her lap.

“I cannot travel that way, nor could my many times great grandfather. Hence, the creation of the portal. It was so he could experience the wonders of time travel as well, since no matter how she tried, apparently her spells wouldn’t work on him.”

“Is that the end of the story?” she asked, after he fell silent for a while.

He shrugged. “As it turned out, he wasn’t interested in traversing time, and they ended up parting ways. She returned one day to find him with a mistress and cursed the portal, causing it to go all wonky. People kept falling through it from various points in time, as they do to this day. Not everyone can use it, not even everyone in my family. My sister never could. I stumbled into it quite by accident when I was fifteen, and it was only luck that kept me from dying in 1649 before I could get back.”

“Witchcraft,” she breathed. “Magic. I wouldn’t believe it if I weren’t sitting next to you in this wobbly carriage.”

“Wobbly? This carriage has fine wheels. And yes, I suppose I’ve been entrenched in it so long I hardly find it fantastical anymore. As long as my wretched house stands, I’m responsible for the trouble it causes. Believe me, I’ve thought more than once about burning it to the ground. I’m too afraid of who might be left behind though, if I did.”

His words sank in slowly, then resounded like a gong in her mind. She repeated them to herself, then out loud. “As long as it stands,” she said, feeling a distinct lack of oxygen in the carriage. She fanned her face and tugged at her neckline. “What would happen if it wasn’t standing?”