A Whisper in Time (22 page)

“Do not worry. We can none of us determine how you vanished so completely from the other bank of Rocky Creek. Jedidiah once spoke of it as magic, for he could hear you speak but could not see where you were. But Papa quickly hushed him. Joan is most anxious that we do nothing to alarm the townsfolk, lest they think us mad. Therefore, we keep our ideas and questions to ourselves.”

“Indeed. It is the best course of action.” I wouldn’t tell more and she wouldn’t ask. It was an advisable way to enjoy our friendship. “Does the new Mrs. Pratt treat you well?”

“Oh, yes. She must. She is the same age as Deborah and not much older than I am. Papa could not tolerate for the three of us to have any unpleasantness.” She bobbed her head. “He is most proud of my beauty and speaks of me with the same pride he uses with his favorite horses. No, indeed, Joan does not dare upset me. I should not get away from the house as often as I do if she had her way.” Dorcas lowered her voice, as if to share a secret. “Joan enjoys our position in the town, although she does overlook an important truth. She married Papa a short while before my baby brother was born. I am sure the entire village has noticed.”

I smothered a laugh. “But we shall not speak of such things.”

“No. It is enough to think of them.” She brightened. “How do you fare in your new home?”

“Quite well, thank you.”

“And Mr. Lewis?”

“He is well, too.” I smiled as I hurried to return the conversation to her. “Tell me about the rest of your family.”

“Deborah has abandoned all thought of Jacob Worth. She is trying to catch the eye of one of Mr. Foster’s sons instead.” She frowned. “Papa has sold the mill to Solomon Worth.”

“Indeed?”

“Oh, yes. Papa could not make the mill prosper. It was dreadful for a time.” She gestured behind her. “Shall we sit in the cave and continue our chat? I have so much more to say.”

“I cannot.”

She nodded, smile still bright. “You will return. I shall write you letters.”

Her confidence was charming and misguided. “I cannot give you an address, little one.”

“I do not mind. I shall write them, and perhaps one day you will find them.”

“Dorcas, I shall not—”

“I know what you plan to say, Susanna, but do not. They said you had drowned, but you are here. I have waited in this cave, hoping to see you, and you have come. I believe that, if I write letters, you will one day answer them, and we
shall
meet again.”

“Do you think so?” Her words dredged a yearning from deep inside me. For two months, I had kept my need for Phoebe and Dorcas locked away. It made the risk of the visit worth the reward of their smiles. “Perhaps I shall receive those letters, if you leave them in the cave—”

“Dorcas,” a harsh voice shouted. “Where are you?”

We looked up.

On the bluff high above us, a man appeared, leading a magnificent bay horse. It was Dorcas’s father. My former master. As his gaze locked on mine, he seemed to expand, his cloak flapping around him like a bird of prey. “Susanna, stay.”

At the sound of his command, my limbs became sluggish with dread and the remembered sense that doom would soon follow. It was as if the habit of obeying his voice had not relinquished its hold on my body.

In an instant, Mr. Pratt had dropped the reins and stormed toward the bluff‘s edge. “You will not escape me this time.”

Dorcas stepped between me and the granite wall. “Susanna, run.”

Her words urged me into action. I stumbled backwards and landed against the rock wall, my gaze never leaving Mr. Pratt’s. He scrambled down the granite cliff, his laugh of imminent victory jolting through me with an electric shock that broke the spell over me.

I had to go. Now. With a mighty leap, I passed through the waterfall and two centuries. Once on the safety of Mark’s rock, I spun around to view the world I’d left behind.

Mr. Pratt had just made it down the cliff and charged past Dorcas, knocking her aside. Her scream of agony mingled with his grunt of effort as he lunged for the falls. Once again, the falls sent him backward, flinging him against the mouth of the cave.

“Merciful heavens—Dorcas!” Every instinct urged me to return to her.

Before I could decide what to do, an arm clamped about my waist. I gasped and tried to twist away.

“No, you don’t,” Mark said, staring down at me with fierce eyes.

“Dorcas,” I said, pushing at his arms. They didn’t budge.

A sob echoed from the other side. I peered through the falls to see Dorcas lying on her side, clutching her ankle, her face contorted with pain. Mr. Pratt lurched closer to her.

“Let me go,” I said, straining away from Mark, but it was too late. Whisper Falls had lost its sparkle, restoring itself to normal water.

“
No
,” I shrieked. What had happened to Dorcas? Would I ever know?

She had saved me again, and a veil had fallen across time before I could know the consequences.

My body ached from emotions it could hardly absorb. The joy of being with Phoebe and the despair of saying goodbye. The pleasure at meeting a new niece and the horror of my brother’s rejection. The delight of Dorcas’s sweet nature and the fear for the results of her courage. And, underpinning it all, anger that Mark and Whisper Falls had worked against me.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

F
AVORITE
C
URE

Relief ripped through me as Susanna jumped through the falls.

When I’d seen Jethro Pratt appear at the top of the bluff, it had nearly driven me crazy. I wanted to get to her, and the waterfall wouldn’t let me. I’d had to stand there, fighting the urge to yell, silently begging her to run.

Once she reached on our side of the falls, I didn’t even think. I grabbed her and hung on. Now that she was safe, not even wild relief would affect my hold.

“What happened to Dorcas?” she asked. “Tell me quickly.”

I’d heard screams like that at sporting competitions, and they usually resulted in doctors running onto the field and stretchers taking the injured athlete to the hospital. “I don’t know for sure, but it’s not good.”

“Is she hurt badly?”

“Yeah, I think so.” I loosened my hold on Susanna’s waist as waves of reaction rippled over me. “Pratt almost had you.”

She peeled my hands away. “Please. Not now.”

The three words were like a match to a bonfire. “Excuse me?”

She inhaled deeply. “I am not prepared to discuss this trip with you.”

“Too bad, ‘cause I plan to discuss it a lot.” My arms ached to yank her back into them, to feel her solid and alive and safe. Instead, I ran my fingers through my hair to give my hands something to do. Anger was beginning to smother my relief. “Are you insane?”

“Indeed not,” she said, her voice clipped and icy. “I was quite clear in what I wished to do, and I successfully completed that task.” She circled around me and started up the path.

It took me four strides to catch up. “There’s no way you can outrun me.”

“I am not trying to outrun you. I am merely attempting to elude your voice.”

Talk about pressing all my hot buttons. I’d never become so mad so fast at anyone in my entire life. “Where are you going?”

“To learn how history changed.”

I grabbed her arm. “Stop. You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what happened the last two days.”

“I went home.”

A thousand questions crowded into my brain. Where exactly had she gone? Was Phoebe’s problem so awful that Susanna had been willing to risk capture? And why did she call the past her home?
Here
was home now.

But I’d wait to ask questions until I was less pissed off and might actually remember the answers. All I wanted to do at the moment was chew her ass out. “That was incredibly stupid.”

“I am weary. Might this argument wait until later?”

“No. It’ll take a long time to finish. No reason to postpone getting started.”

She jerked her arm from my grasp and continued down the greenway. “I shall not speak with you when you are acting this way.”

“Acting what way, Susanna? Like I’m justifiably horrified that you put your life in danger? That I’m freaked out by how much effort you put into hiding your plans? That you went all sexy on me to divert my attention?” My voice almost cracked over that last one. How long was it going to take me to get over
that
? “What about the way you’ve kept secrets from me?”

She stalked along, head high, ignoring me.

I kept up easily. “Do you remember the last time you screwed with history? That didn’t turn out so well until I rescued you.”

“Thank you for the reminder that, without you, I lack competence.”

“Holy shit. That isn’t what I meant and you know it.” Some of the pedestrians stared at us as they walked past. Guess I’d better bring my voice back under control. “What makes you think that tampering with the past will work this time?”

“I had to try. My sister needed me.”

“You can’t race back there every time she has a little problem.”

“This problem affects the entire course of her future.”

“So will other problems. Life is full of decisions that have serious impacts. Just because Phoebe has someone living in the future to watch out for her doesn’t mean she gets a free pass on bad stuff happening. She has to learn how to handle things.” We’d reached the back gate to my yard. “You can’t jump through Whisper Falls every time you feel the urge to mess with history. You’re safe, but Dorcas is hurt and Jethro Pratt knows you’re alive. What if there’re long-term consequences? Why can’t you admit that what you did was stupid?”

Susanna stared into space, jaw flexed. “I shall be most grateful when you have run out of words, for I have run out of interest in hearing them.” She banged open the gate and strode purposefully across the lawn.

“Stop and look at me.”

She spun around. “What else can you want?”

“Did you at least find Phoebe?”

“Yes.” Her face softened. “She is well and happy.”

“What were you trying to solve?”

“She will get a puncture wound in her thumb. They were going to amputate as a result.”

“That’s bad. I get it. But bad enough for you to risk arrest? Jail time? Being controlled by Pratt again?”

“She would’ve been unable to work. She would’ve lost a great talent—one that she loved. She would’ve been forced to accept marriage to someone who viewed her as a burden.”

Okay, her sister’s life would’ve been awful after that, but Phoebe wasn’t exactly a wimp either. “She would’ve figured it out.”

“She does not have to anymore.”

Did Susanna feel any remorse at all? “Because you gave her antibiotics that you stole from my parents.”

“I did,” she said, averting her face. “I regret the necessity.”

“It’s against the law to give drugs written for one person to someone else.”

“This crime will be hard to prosecute.”

“Dammit, Susanna. It’s not only against the law. If they’re administered incorrectly, they can actually harm her.” Her gaze narrowed on me, assessing the truth of what I said. That just upset me more. “It looks like you may have given your sister different types of pills. Not cool. Antibiotics aren’t interchangeable. You could make her sicker.”

Her chin lifted. “You’re saying that to frighten me.”

“I hope it does, because I’m not making this up.”

She turned her back on me. “Must I listen to this now?”

“You scared me shitless, Susanna.”

“I apologize, Mark. I’m sorry that I frightened you, your parents, perhaps even the cat. May I go?”

Hands on hips, I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth against a stream of expletives.

The security system beeped.

She went inside? Really? I looked up in time to see the door swing shut.

By the time I caught up with her again, she was in the apartment, yanking pins from her hair.

She looked at me over her shoulder. “I would prefer my privacy.”

“No.”

“Should you not be in school?” She pulled out the last of the pins. Her braid swung free.

“I would’ve been worthless not knowing if you were okay.”

Her shoulders slumped. When she spoke, the words ached with something soft and sad. “I had to take the risk, Mark. I could not enjoy this life while knowing Phoebe lived in misery.”

I crossed the room, ready to do…I didn’t even know what. I wanted to yell and argue and shake her and kiss her and never let her go. I hauled her into my arms, clinging to her like she was a lifeline. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“I didn’t mean to frighten you.” She nuzzled against me, her arms locking about my waist. “I shall not do that to you again.”

“Waiting was like a living hell.” What if she had never come back? I pressed kisses all over her face, every square inch of skin, eager for the taste and feel of her. When our lips touched, it was like an explosion of hunger. We had to break the kiss to breathe.

“I’m sorry that you suffered.” She sighed, her breath warm against my neck. “I have suffered too. Today I said goodbye forever to my sister. I lay beside her all night and barely slept, knowing what the morning would bring.”

“You said goodbye to her the day she was indentured.”

“I said goodbye with a heart full of hope that I might see her again someday. I do not have that hope any longer.”

It hurt to hear the pain and yearning in her voice. The twenty-first century was so much better than the nineteenth, but damn, she’d given up her family. Yet as awful as that must be, she couldn’t have stayed there, or Pratt would’ve killed her. Which was why she should never go anywhere near him again.

“Okay, Susanna,” I said, pressing a kiss to her brow. “Done.” The whole scene had left me drained. I disagreed with her decision. She’d risked too much, and it hadn’t been a bad enough problem. Nothing either of us said to the other was going to change our opinions. “Let’s take care of you now. When was the last time you ate?”

“At dawn.”

“Do you want to take a shower?”

“Are you telling me that I need to?” Her lips twitched. “Yes, I wish to be clean.”

I untangled our arms and turned toward the door. “I’ll fix you something to eat. Come down when you’re ready.”