The Bride of Time (18 page)

But it wasn’t the bus that came rattling along the narrow, windswept lane, with a single lantern swaying from a metal crook. It was a rickety old wagon. A woman was
driving it, an old Gypsy woman. Tessa shielded her eyes from the wind and squinted toward the image emerging from the darkness. Vaulting to her feet, she gasped. It was Moraiva, the old Gypsy on the moor who had read her palm. But how could this be?

The Gypsy pulled the wagon to a halt. “Get in,” she charged.

“Y-you’re the Gypsy from the moor. You read my palm. How can you be here?”

Moraiva smiled her curious smile that did not reach her eyes. “The same way that you have come here, daughter,” she said. “What? You think you are the only one that knows the secret of the time corridors? We Gypsies have crossed over since time out of mind. Get in! Time matters gravely. This you do not know, but Moraiva knows. Climb up, daughter.”

Tessa scrambled into the wagon. “Giles…is he—”

“He fares well but for worry over you,” the Gypsy said.

“Does he know?”

“About the lay lines? Yes, daughter.”

“And that I…?”

“He knows.”

Tessa wasn’t thrilled about that, but she was relieved that the old Gypsy had spared her the telling of it. One thing still bothered her, however. “And he chose not to come for me?” she queried. It did not bode well.

“He could not come after you. The corridors are closed to him presently.”

“For how long?” Tessa asked.

“Who knows these things?” the Gypsy replied with a shrug. “The gate keepers decide who may enter the corridors and who may not. There is naught to be done about it.”

Moraiva was turning the cart around in the narrow lane, heading back in the opposite direction, and Tessa
grabbed her arm. “No!” she cried. “I must go back the way I’ve come…to the place where the bus that brought me here found me by the side of the road.”

Again the Gypsy smiled her patronizing smile. “The lines run north to south and east to west. Where had that bus just come from that picked you up?”

“L-London, I believe,” Tessa said.

“Do you wish to go there, then?”

“
No
, of course not! I want to go back…I want to go to Giles!”

“Then keep still and pay attention. One day you will need to remember this lesson, daughter; much will depend upon it. Where were you coming from when you entered the corridor that brought you here?”

“I…I was running from Giles. He told me to run, and I ran. I…we were taking a shortcut across the moor to the Abbey after leaving you, when the suspension straps on the chaise broke and the horse ran off.”

“I know it,” said the Gypsy. “If you would return to the place you’ve come from, you must access the same corridor, for what runs one way also runs the other—and no other. Access a different corridor, and you could come out anywhere in time. You never should have gotten on that bus. When you did, you left the corridor you’d come through. You changed direction. You should have turned ’round and re-traced your steps the way you’d come. It would have brought you back.”

“Even though I’d already crossed over?” Tessa asked.

The Gypsy nodded. “You would have simply faded into the mist.”

“And you came how…?”

“The way you did,” the Gypsy told her. “But I know how to navigate the passages. We go back now to the place where you left Longworth, where we leave this corridor and access the other, then over the open moor to the Abbey, the way you would have gone if the chaise
had not broken.” She nodded toward the wound on Tessa’s lip. “You were injured?” she probed. “That is dried blood I see there.”

Tessa hesitated, touching her mouth gingerly, for it was still tender. Her mind reeled back to the moment she’d been flung from the chaise, then to Giles’s embrace, and she froze, reliving Giles’s teeth piercing her lip in the heat of passion.

She had been
bitten
.

Riveting chills visited her spine. Did that mean…? No! She couldn’t even think it. But the look in Moraiva’s eyes all but made her blood curdle. After a moment, the old Gypsy looked away and gave the lane ahead her full and fierce attention.

It was some time before Moraiva broke the awful silence between them. “See there,” she said, pointing toward the blackened shape of Longhollow Abbey silhouetted against the star-studded sky. “We are home, but you will not find the master in the house, not for a while yet.”

“Why not?” Tessa asked.

“He has joined the search.”

“What search?” Tessa queried.

“The boy has gone missing,” Moraiva said, and said no more.

Chapter Fourteen

Moraiva was right. Giles was not in residence when Tessa arrived at Longhollow Abbey. The Gypsy left her on the threshold and drove off to join the others in the search for Master Monty. The end had been put in motion with the child’s disappearance, and Tessa’s heart sank. She knew it would happen, but she’d had no idea it would be so soon.

There was nothing to be done but ride out the firestorm that loomed over the mansion, and Tessa dragged herself inside to be met by a full complement of anxious servants beside themselves over her absence. Everyone thought she had joined in the search also. It was best to let them continue to think it. The truth would not help them, even if through some miracle they did believe it.

Pleading exhaustion, she asked that the French-enameled bathtub be filled in her dressing room. Once Rigby, the butler, and Evers, the footman, lent their strength to the chore, she dismissed them. She sought no help from the maids. She was accustomed to bathing on her own. She had never had the privilege of a lady’s maid, being a maid herself, and she promptly sprinkled rosewater and lavender oil into the steaming tub, shed
her soiled and torn frock and hose, and climbed into the silky water.

The tub was lined with a fine linen sheet, and she leaned her head back against it and shut her eyes, inhaling the hot, steamy water. It was heaven. The servants at Poole House were only allowed one tub bath a month. The rest of the time they were restricted to what Mrs. Poole called whore’s baths. These were slapdash affairs executed with pitcher and basin, and with water that was tepid at best but for the most part cold, and in winter, frozen, at least the top layer, which would have to be broken to gain access to the icy water beneath.

Tessa reached for the cake of soap resting in a shell-shaped dish on a little table beside the tub. She raised the cake to her nose and inhaled deeply. Lavender. And it was soft-milled, making rich lather the minute it touched the water. She moaned in approval. At Poole house, the soap was either carbolic or lye, except during the holidays, when the servants were treated to leftover slivers of pine tar soap donated from above stairs.

There was a sea sponge on the table, and she soaked it in the water and began squeezing handfuls of fragrant lather over her skin, over her throat, her breasts, over her long, slender legs, and over her belly. The sponge slipped lower, between her thighs, bringing her sex to life, reminding her of Giles, of his anxious fingers probing her there. A soft moan escaped her, rekindling his volatile embrace, reliving the passionate lips that wounded hers. She wouldn’t think about that now, not while the fragrant steam was rising around her. Not while her loins were on fire. Not while every nerve in her body throbbed a steady rhythm, and that secret place, that forbidden mystery deep inside at her very core palpated to the rhythm of the memory of his hard-muscled flesh in her arms.

Leaning her head back against the damp sheet, Tessa
closed her eyes again. The water was still hot around her, cradling her, the fluffy lather gliding over her wet skin. The sponge fell from her hand and floated to the side of the tub. She was totally relaxed, her arms floating at her sides. Across the way a fire in the hearth crackled pleasantly, lulling her to sleep, as she lay cradled in the gently lapping womb of lavender and rosewater caressing every recess, every pore, every orifice and crevice of her body.

She didn’t wake until the third pin was lifted from her hair and it fell loose about her. All at once, Tessa gave a lurch and seized the sides of the tub, attempting to sit upright. Water sloshed over onto the floor as strong hands held her back, and a familiar voice crooned softly.

“Shhhhh,” Giles said, dropping to his knees, his hands gentle but firm upon her shoulders. “I left the search and came back the moment Moraiva said you’d returned. Lie back and relax, Tessa.”

At first she thought she was dreaming, that he was a figment of her imagination brought on by reliving his embrace on the moor, but then he took up the sponge and soaped it, moving it over her shoulders in slow concentric circles. This was no apparition. He was real! She should slap his hand away. Every instinct in her begged that she put him from her—demand he leave her; but the firelight was gleaming in his eyes, dilated black in the shadow-steeped chamber. It picked out auburn glints in the mussed mahogany hair curling about his earlobes, and defined the angles and planes of his bronzed face. It played wickedly about the sensuous shape of his lips, and deepened the thumbprint cleft in his strong chin.

It was no use. She wanted him. She had always wanted him, from the first moment she’d set eyes upon his self-portrait in the little gallery. He was wearing a similar shirt to the one in the painting, though the
sleeves were rolled back to the biceps, exposing the hard rippling muscles clenching as he continued to soap her. The shirt gaped open in front, giving her a glimpse of dark hair pointing arrow-straight to disappear beneath the waistband of his breeches.

The sponge had reached her breasts, and she writhed in the water as it scraped her nipples, overflowing with suds. The water was like silk, his touch as light as air. Though his fingers trembled as they grazed the hard, tawny buds, he played them like a skilled musician plays his instrument, with reverence and adoration. Just under the surface of his skin, Tessa could feel the pent-up passion, the harnessed volatility she’d seen in him that first night in the drive and more recently on the moor. It was bewitching and frightening all at once, and it took her breath away.

“Tell me,” he murmured, lifting her leg to soap it. “What is it like at the turn of the twentieth century?”

Tessa gave a start. It was a sobering question, though her body was on fire for him, and she hardly knew which emotion to embrace. “Moraiva told you,” she said.

He nodded. Returning her leg to the water, he lifted the other and began soaping it as well. “Why did you not tell me, Tessa?”

“Would you have believed me?”

He hesitated. “After what has happened to me, I might have,” he said. “At any rate, I do now. Like so many Doubting Thomases in the world, I saw you disappear with my own eyes, and Moraiva has brought you back to me. There is naught to fear, the moon has waned.”

“I’m not afraid of you, Giles. I’m afraid of myself, of loving where there is no hope.”

“You haven’t answered my question,” he said. “What
is it like in your time? What did you do there? Where did you live? Who reigns? There is so much I want to know…so many questions…”

Tessa took a deep breath. It was so hard trying to concentrate upon trivia while his skilled hands were soaping every inch of her body. “I come from the year 1903,” she began. “Your Prinny finally took the throne in 1820, followed by William IV in 1830, then Queen Victoria in 1837, and in my time, Edward VII, who took the throne in 1901.”

“Amazing,” Giles said distractedly. His eyes had become glazed, hooded with desire, his breath audible as he stroked her.

“I come from London,” Tessa went on. “That was the truth. I…I was a scullery maid in the home of a noted optician.”

“Did you tell me the truth? Have you no family, no beaux, no…husband back in London?”

“No, none,” Tessa told him. “I am quite alone.”

“How did you come here?”

Tessa hesitated. “I would rather not say,” she murmured.

“Why? I want no secrets between us. How could it possibly be graver than mine?”

“I…I’m afraid you won’t believe me, and I have no way to prove myself…”

Giles laughed. “My beautiful little fool,” he said. “Here I kneel, so hard against the seam that I fear my breeches will burst, so bewitched by your charms that all I can think of—all I can dream of—is you. Do you really think anything you could tell me would change that?”

“I don’t want to take the chance,” she murmured.

Giles swooped down and took her lips in a smothering kiss that stole her breath away. He deepened the kiss, and she melted against him, a soft moan escaping
as his fingers stroked her wet breast slickened with lather, fondling the hard, dark nipple. Tessa winced as he bore down on her wounded lip, and he pulled back, wiping blood from his mouth, and tilted her head up to the firelight.

“What’s this?” he asked her, washing the blood from her lip. “Did you do this when you fell from the chaise?”

Tessa hesitated, looking long and hard into his worried eyes. He didn’t remember biting her, and she dared not tell him now, not
now
. Maybe it was nothing. It wasn’t deep. Maybe it wasn’t serious enough to pass on the infection; oh, how she prayed.

“Yes,” she said. “When I fell from the chaise.” It wasn’t really a lie. That was when it did occur, after all. She had just omitted the particulars. But if he continued to look at her so intensely, he would know there was something wrong. She was not skilled at deception, and she pulled him close in her arms to avoid that analytical artist’s stare, wetting the front of his shirt with the embrace. “It’s nothing,” she murmured in his ear. “Nothing at all.”

After a moment, he leaned her back against the sheet-draped tub again and gazed into her eyes. “I want to make love to you,” he said, his voice husky with desire. “I have wanted to do this from the moment I first clapped eyes upon you in the drive.”

Tessa didn’t answer. There was no need. Reaching, her hand dripping warm, fragrant water, she laced her fingers through his shaggy hair. How handsome he was with those dark mahogany waves combed by the Cornish wind. They fell just so, across his brow in a rakish attitude even after she brushed them back, and curled randomly about his earlobes. Yes, his was a handsome face, but ruggedly handsome, all angles and planes; oddly, she thought, the kind of face an artist would love
to paint. He had done well at that, but he hadn’t done himself justice. He had captured the volatile Giles, not the sultry, passionate Giles gazing at her now. He had captured the wolf.