Clandestine (37 page)

How was he going to save Kit if his coughing trumpeted his arrival?

Firmly swallowing against the itchy sensation in the back of his throat, Marc continued up the road.

After a minute, he came into the clearing where the house stood.

It looked much as it had when he arrived. Shuttered and lifeless. The front door closed. The guards Arthur had set were nowhere in sight. Most likely drawn away to fight the fire.

Crouching, Marc scurried up to the house, keeping his back to the honey-colored stone wall, carefully circling the building. He rounded to the rear and noted the kitchen door was ajar.

Voices drifted out, though he couldn’t make out the words. Just the tone.

First Kit’s, taunting and fierce.

Jedediah’s, loud and sneering.

Creeping forward, Marc peered into the window.

Jedediah stood in the kitchen, his back to the window. Kit was before him on the floor, her hands and feet bound. Soot and dirt on her face.

“Where are the damn plans! I know you and Vader were involved with this. I grow tired of this game!” Jedediah brandished a pistol in one hand. A wicked-looking knife in the other.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Kit lifted her chin bravely. Her eyes flashed with courage, but there was terror there too.

“You lie! The plans were altered. You had to have been involved with the mix up. Both you and Vader—”

“You have the wrong people!”

“I’m going to give you two minutes to change your mind and then I torch this building too. You tied up inside it, of course. A nice little present for Vader to mourn later. Unless you care to start talking . . . ”

Kit’s eyes widened in fear. But she pressed her lips together. Shook her head. Protecting Marc and her brother.

With a disgusted shake of his head, Jedediah swiveled. Marc ducked down just in time.

Two minutes.

What to do?

He breathed through the panic swamping him, swallowing cough after cough. He couldn’t allow Kit to be hurt. What had he been thinking running off without a pistol?

He was tired, sore and had a sprained wrist at best.

Marc examined his options.

Jedediah was legitimately armed and dangerous. Unlike the encounter with Linwood the previous week, Jedediah would show no compunction in killing them both. No matter how he played through different scenarios, one of them could easily be hurt or killed.

There was no time to go back for help.

Kit was in danger now.

What if Jedediah set Duir Cottage on fire? What would fire do to the portal?

Stemming his panic, Marc settled on a single solution. It wasn’t the fanciest of plans, but it was the only one his panicked mind could focus on.

Marc ignored the tiny thought which insisted there
were
other plans, but this one got him what he wanted most too.

Creeping back around to the front of the house, Marc examined the rape alarm. It appeared to still have battery power, having not been used. With a deep breath, he switched it on and threw it into the brush beside the front of the house.

The noise was satisfactorily loud, sounding like a hyper car alarm.

Without hesitating, he scurried around to the back of the house, peeking through the window just in time to see Jedediah cautiously head out front to inspect the strange noise.

Marc darted through the partially open kitchen door, meeting Kit’s startled gaze. Kit visibly sagged with relief at seeing Marc, tears swimming in her eyes.

Jedediah had disappeared out the front door, but he would find the alarm in less than a minute. It’s frantic beeping cut through the calm.

Kit struggled to get free of the ropes that bound her, indicating with a jut of her chin that Marc should help.

They didn’t have enough time.

Silently, Marc shook his head and mouthed, “I’m sorry.”

Instead of freeing her, he grasped Kit by the waist and pulled her upright. And, then, for the second time in as many hours, he hefted a woman over his shoulder, his wrist throbbing from the effort.

There wasn’t time to dash for the trees. Besides, he hadn’t the strength.

And that had never been the plan.

The rape alarm still screeched frantically. Jedediah hadn’t found it yet. But they only had seconds left.

Without hesitating, Marc made for the closet and cellar door under the stairs. Quickly, he opened the door, set Kit inside. He lifted the large trap door in the floor and then stepped onto the first stair, turning to shut the closet door.

Darkness instantly closed around them in the small space. Their combined breathing loud.

The alarm suddenly stopped.

Not a moment later, he heard Jedediah re-enter the house.

Marc held his breath, as footsteps echoed down the hall outside the cellar door. The footsteps faded into the kitchen.

Only to return as Jedediah dashed out of the kitchen, swearing profusely at Kit’s disappearance.

“Vader!” His voice rang through the house. “This can only be your doing. You have to be in the house still. And when I find you, you will both die!”

Marc paused, but only for the barest of moments. Jedediah
would
find them. And who knows what the outcome of that fight would be.

Without hesitating, Marc caught Kit around the knees and carried her into the cellar. The portal loomed ahead, thrumming with life.

Reading his intent, Kit squirmed against his shoulder, butting him with her head. Indicating in every way her sharp disagreement with his decision.

Marc paused.

The door to the cellar rattled.

That was all the motivation he needed to step forward into swooping, falling darkness.

Chapter 24

Duir Cottage

March 9, 2014

K
it felt the dizzying disorientation of the portal. The sense of falling, falling, falling.

And then suddenly, the world righted itself. Leaving her slung over Marc’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

Her mind reeled in shock. A figurative version of one of Marc’s roundhouse kicks to the head.

Marc had truly done it. He taken her through the portal.

Leaving Daniel behind.

Without so much as a
by your leave.

Without. Even. Asking.

But . . . why?!

He was Marc Wilde, for heaven’s sake. He could take on one slimy, ridiculous, over-primped—

“Put me down this instant!” She all but shouted the words.

She had long considered his shoulders capable of bearing burdens. And even, quite frankly, of bearing her. But she never dreamed they would carry her away from her brother.

She wriggled emphatically just to underline the point.

Obligingly, Marc set her on the ground with a groan, staggering slightly as he did. His breathing labored, wheezing.

Kit stared down at her tied hands and feet and then, in sheer frustration, tried to free them again. She was starting to lose feeling in her fingers.

“Let me get a knife.” Marc choked, stumbling up the wooden stairs, coughing.

Of course. He
would
leave her to stew in the dark cellar.

She was just so . . . so . . . ugh! How could he!

He had no
right
to make this decision for her.

Emotions swamped her.

Loss. Frustration. Anger.

She stood helplessly, tapping her foot as much as possible. Waiting.

When she had gone through the portal last time, she had been too frantic and frightened to really take it all in. Not to mention, the light too dim.

Not this time.

Afternoon sunlight streamed down the steps from the open closet door. Was it really only afternoon still? So much had happened. The fire, Jedediah shoving a pistol into her back and telling her to walk, arriving at Duir Cottage and being tied up.

The light illuminated the cellar with its stone walls and dirt floor. The portal stood a little behind her, its electric pulse thrumming through the ground.

Upstairs, she could hear Marc clattering through a utensil drawer, looking for a knife. And then his footsteps returning to her, backlit as he half fell down the stairs.

Bending down, he quickly sliced through the ropes around her ankles and then moved up to remove the bindings on her wrists.

“Come on.” He rasped and nodded his head, retreating back up the stairs. Still coughing.

Kit stood in the darkness, chewing on her cheek. Anger welling up from deep inside.

Though, it was more like fury at this point. Blind, mind-numbing rage.

How dare he!

How dare he make this decision for her. Return her to 2014 without even
asking
.

She glanced back at the portal, half-tempted to walk right back through it.

No.

Before she did that, Mr. I-have-control-issues Wilde could explain himself.

Marc disappeared through the doorway into the hall, coughing loudly, incessantly.

Shaking some feeling back into her hands, she stumbled up after him, nearly tripping on her long skirts. She stopped in the hall, staring at a large antique-looking trunk across from the door to the cellar.

Daniel’s trunk.

The stabbing pain of it literally robbed her breath. Sharp and vicious.

She turned and walked into the kitchen, jaw clenched. Noted the greatcoat and beaver hat slung over the dining room chair in front of her.

Daniel’s coat and hat.

And then she turned to see Marc. He was at the kitchen sink, guzzling a glass of water.

Drinking water!

He casually dragged her literally two hundred years through time, kicking and (mentally) screaming. And then felt the need to just get a freaking drink?!

That did it. Something snapped.

With two steps, she grabbed the knife Marc had set on the marble island counter. Turning, she flipped open Daniel’s trunk in the hallway. If she knew her brother at all . . .

Sure enough, an antique pistol sat gleaming on top of everything else. Guns were generally illegal in modern Britain. Antique ones, however, got a pass.

Snatching up the pistol, she tromped back down the stairs into the cellar.

If Marc wouldn’t fight for her brother,
she
would.

“Kit?!” Marc’s voice sounded warningly from the kitchen.

Heedless, she strode over to the portal and leaned into the stone.

Nothing happened.

Frowning, she put her back against it and pushed.

Again, nothing.

Turning, she pounded against it with the fist that clutched the knife.

Nothing.

“Kit . . . please.” Marc’s voice sounded behind her. Soft. Raspy.

“How. Could. You!” She whirled on him, hysteria finally getting the better of her. “How could you drag me through? How could you leave him? Leave me without any choice—”

She turned again, pounding on the portal.

Let me through!!
But silently shrieking the words didn’t help either.

With a hiccupping sob, she collapsed to the floor, the knife and pistol clattering beside her.

Awful, wracking gasps tore through her. Ugly crying at its worst.

Her brother was
gone
. Lost to her as surely as if he had died—

Wait! He
was
dead. No one lived two hundred years . . .

Which just made her cry harder. And harder and harder.

She would stay here. She wouldn’t leave this spot until the portal allowed her to return.

Thoughts of Daniel raced through her mind. Her brother’s little hand in hers, teaching him how to look both ways for cars before crossing the street.

Daniel home on school holiday laughing over a prank he pulled on some upperclassmen.

Daniel bent over research with her father, their identical dark heads nearly indistinguishable, voices tangling as they talked.

Daniel’s face the day they buried their father, watching the casket being lowered into the family crypt.

Memory after memory washed over her.

How long she lay on the floor, she couldn’t later remember. Long enough for her hands to go numb from the cold, for her legs to cramp.

Eventually, she realized only half of her was cold. The other half was tucked up against Marc. At some point, he had sat down beside her on the ground, cradling her against his chest.

Comforting. Understanding.

Well, she didn’t
want
that.

She wanted to be angry and hurt. They were much safer emotions.

She pushed away from him, swiping at her tears. Staggered to standing.

“Kit . . .” His voice washed over her, plaintive and quiet. Pleading. He grasped her hand.

She shook it free.

She didn’t want pleading. Or pathetic excuses.

She wanted her brother back.

Stumbling up the stairs, tears welling again when she saw the trunk and greatcoat, she walked to the kitchen sink. Turned on the hot water and scrubbed her filthy hands. And then her face too for good measure. Letting her tears mix with the water.

Finally, she gave up and just stood at the sink, tears falling into the running water.

Sobbing and sobbing. As if a lake of tears could return Daniel to her.