After the Storm (38 page)

"Fine," he called back.

She sagged against the cool stone in relief. "Thank God."

"Damn. I can't find the key."

"What key?" Since the world insisted on spinning, she closed her eyes and ignored it. She fought the dis-orientation as well. It wasn't as if she hadn't had practice. She knew what was happening, and wasn't going down into the darkness without a fight.

"The key to those cuffs."

"Sikes locked me into these things."

"You mean Hemmons didn't have it?"

"No. Bas, turn off the time machine before it gets us. We'll worry about the key later."

He swore. She heard him move, but the machine was not turned off. He came to kneel beside her instead. "Olivia, I have some bad news."

She opened her eyes, and concentrated hard on his face to keep the swirling background at bay. That was ail right. She didn't really want to do anything but look at him anyway. "Why can't you turn it off?" she asked, before he could explain that he couldn't. Why question the obvious?

He put his hands on her shoulders. "Because Warin was getting instructions on Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

making the thing work from a madman. All he succeeded in doing was creating another time bomb."

Sharp needles drove into her mind, and fighting off darkness was becoming harder. "It's happening again." She didn't have time to say the things she wanted to, or to ask any more questions. She was about to lose her memories once more, maybe even her life, but there was something she had to make sure of first. "Get out of here," she told her husband. "Get away right now, before it gets us both."

Instead of getting up, he pulled her close. With his arms tightly around her, he whispered into her ear. "No." He cradled her protectively.

She welcomed his strength, his closeness. She didn't want to face the cold emptiness alone. "Please go," she begged. "I don't want you to go through hell again."

"I won't. Not while we're together."

There was actually a smile in the damn fool's voice. She might have hit him if her hands hadn't been chained. She did start crying. Not in fear of the impending tragedy, but because he was the most wonderful man in the world. Also crazier than a loon to put himself through this for her. And she was crazy, too, because she knew she would have done the same thing for him.

She supposed there was nothing more they needed to say. So she turned her head into his shoulder, and pressed herself as tightly to him as she could. Together they waited for a storm made of time to smash them down into the dark.

"Are you sure they're up here?" Marj asked as she followed Reynard toward the cave mouth.

In answer he pointed at the sleek deerhounds who raced up the path ahead of them. The dogs had explored the settlement while she, Reynard and Bastien's men had seen to emptying the place of Sikes's outlaws. The outlaws had been Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

easy enough to rout once they knew it was the sheriff who attacked them.

Stopping Bastien's men from fleeing when they'd first approached them had been the hard part. Promises of pardons for their help had worked wonders, and the battle, such as it was, had been joined. Now that the action was over, the dogs had set about their quest once more.

"I suppose Luke and Leia know where they're going," she agreed with Reynard.

He still had his sword in his hand, and he walked at a brisk, determined pace.

She tried not to let the pain of knowing she was going to have to leave him as soon as Libby was rescued stab at her. She tried to just concentrate on getting Libby back, and not on leaving the man she'd come to desperately love. It was hard not to think about him though, as she watched the spare grace of his movements.

"Damn," she muttered to herself as a mingled ache of love and pain shot through her, only to be replaced at her next step with a disorienting wave of dizziness.

She stopped as nausea hit her. "What the—" It felt like her head was being twisted off from the inside.

Reynard grabbed her arm. "Don't go any closer," he said. Then he ran toward the cave mouth. He was hurrying toward some awful danger, and she suspected she knew what it was. So she raced after him, whether to warn him or just to be with him, she didn't know. It got worse with every step, but she wouldn't let him face a monster from her own time alone.

He was standing in the cave entrance when she reached him, his sword held before him. Like a cross in front of a vampire, she thought as she saw the way he gripped it. The disorientation flowed out from the center of the cave. It hit with almost solid force. Like waves, she thought, like an inexorable tide. It hurt.

In the distance, like looking through a wall of glass, she could see Bastien. Libby Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

was with him, though hardly visible in the shelter of his embrace. "Are they dead?" she wondered.

She didn't think she had the strength to brave the tide to find out. She had another obligation more important than Libby's safety. She had to get Reynard away before he was injured. She couldn't allow a local to be exposed to danger that emanated from her own time. Besides, she loved him.

But when she put her hand on his arm he ignored her. She had to focus hard through the growing disorientation, but she was able to see that he was doing something with his sword hilt. He was performing a magic spell, she thought, or a prayer for some saint's aid. As he pressed the jewels set in the steel one at a time, she managed to say, "Religion isn't—"

"What's going on here," he said, as the merciless, mind-rending waves abruptly stopped. The hideous, sub-vocal screeching she hadn't noticed before ended as well. In the sudden, dead silence he hurried into the cave.

The dogs, who had sensibly stopped when they'd hit the invisible wall, raced in behind him. Marj didn't move for a few seconds. She couldn't. She watched from the cave mouth as Reynard pushed the animals aside to get to Libby and Bastien.

He carefully separated them, gently laying Bastien on the ground. Libby, she saw, was handcuffed to the heavy stone in the center of the floor.

Laser cutter, she thought absently at the flash of green light when Reynard touched his dagger hilt to the chain and it separated as if by magic. One by one he checked their pulses.

"Are they alive?" she asked in a voice she didn't recognize when he was done.

The dogs began to lick and nose worriedly at the unconscious pair.

"They're alive," he answered. "I just hope they're sane. We'll have to wait until they wake up to find out." He'd spoken in English.

Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

Of course. That made sense. One had to be conscious to judge whether or not one were mad. Marj wished she wasn't conscious, because she certainly thought she was crazy. No, she wasn't crazy. She was confused, and she was beginning to be angry, but she was sane enough.

"Who are you?" she asked as he came to stand in front of her.

"Not the Sheriff of Elansted," he answered.

"I guessed that much."

Before she could say anymore. Libby groaned and Bastien sat up, and she and Reynard raced to their sides. Marj settled next to Libby. "Are you all right?" she asked anxiously. "Who am I? Who are you?"

Libby ignored the headache. She wanted her husband, but she answered the questions. "I'm fine. You're Marj. I'm Olivia Bailey. Where's Bas? There's a dog licking my toes."

"Who's Olivia Bailey?"

"I am. I got married while you were in Carmarthen." She looked around anxiously. "Bas?"

"Here," he answered. He had to push Marj aside to do it, but he swept Libby into a tight embrace. "Are you all right?"

Marj stood up and exchanged glances with Reynard while the couple on the cave floor checked to make sure they had all their fingers and toes and brain cells in working order. After a few minutes of listening to them, she pointed at Bastien and asked, "Who is he really?" She wanted to know the same thing about Reynard, but one thing at a time.

Reynard ran a finger along the edge of his mustache, and explained. "Somebody Time Search security thought was dead, which is why I wasn't briefed on what he looked like. Sorry, Sebastian," he apologized to the man who probably wasn't Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

an outlaw. "I would have hauled you in sooner if I'd connected Bastien of Bale with the fellow in the wedding video Libby's mom sent me. That church was really too dark to shoot a videotape in, by the way." While everyone stared at him in consternation, he went laconically on. "Libby'd already run off with you by the time I figured out who you were, so I let things take their course for a while. Sorry for the inconvenience," he said as he looked at Marj.

"Inconvenience," Marj repeated. Then she blinked, and shouted, "Who the hell are you?"

"Sam Wolfe," Libby answered. Bas helped her to stand. Then they leaned against each other, for support and the sheer pleasure of touching. She squinted in the torchlight as it flickered over the craggy-featured, graying man. He smiled, showing deep dimples. "That is you, isn't it, Uncle Sam?" He was twenty years younger than her father, but the resemblance was there just the same. She hadn't seen him since she was ten, and he'd left to work as a Federal marshal on the Mars colony. She still wished she'd made the connection sooner. "What are you doing here?"

"Came home on leave and your dad recruited me. Wanted somebody he could trust to look after his little girl. I should never have let your mom train me in all this medieval crap when I was a kid." He brushed his finger across his mustache again. He gave a quick glance at Marj. "Playing Reynard's been kind of fun, though."

"You've been teasing me," Libby accused.

He nodded. He smiled at Marj, as well. "Shamelessly."

"You kept telling me I ought to get married—when you knew I already was,"

Libby accused.

He looked from her to Bas, and grinned. "Just trying to jog your memory.

Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

Thought the shrinks were stupid not to let anybody tell you your past. Something started itching in the back of my head when I saw you with Bastien. It seemed right for you two to be together, rules or no rules." He spoke to Marj again. "I'm truly sorry I couldn't tell you. I was tempted. More than tempted about a lot of things. He took her hands as Marj began to blush. "You know how tight security is."

"I know," Marj said. Libby thought that Marj looked angry, but relieved as well.

"I didn't want to hurt you, Marjorie. I love you."

"I know you do," Marj answered. "I love you. And I'm also going to make you pay for every minute you spent pretending to be Reynard of Elansted."

He was not intimidated. "I can play payback, too,
Lady
Marjorie."

"Wait a minute," Bas said before Marj and her uncle could go off into a corner to discuss their future. "You saved us, didn't you? How?"

In response, Sam tossed his sword to Bas, who easily caught it by the hilt.

Macho men
, Libby thought, and exchanged a smile with Marj.
You gotta love

'em
. Bas took his arm from around her waist and began examining the sword.

"Well?" she asked after he'd played with it for a while.

"Looks like your dad solved some of the flaws in my design while I was playing Robin Hood."

"Yep," Sam said. "Sent that little thing along with me just in case I ran into a stolen time machine. He suspected sabotage all along." Sam looked down at the body of Elliot Hemmons. "Or at least since this fool disappeared. Come on, we have to talk," he said, and led Marj out of the cave.

Libby didn't want to stay in the cave with Hemmons's body any longer, either, but she took the time to take the sword from Bas and lay it on the dead time machine. She put her arms around her husband once more. "You weren't Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

playing," she told him. "If you'd been playing you wouldn't have saved my life half a dozen times."

"I wasn't playing," he agreed. "Maybe I'm not the mild-mannered sort I thought I was."

"Of course you're not."

"I guess not. But I never want to do this again." He took her face between his hands and smiled into her adoring eyes. "But, so help me, if you try to program this adventure into your virtual reality chamber, I'm getting a divorce."

"Oh, no," she told him, and turned her head to kiss his palm. "I think this will just have to stay an adventure for us to remember. Forever and ever and ever."

"Promise?"

"I swear by the sun, the stars and the Great Khan Temujin."

He rubbed her temples with his palms, then he smiled. "Sweetheart, you've spent too much time in Mongolia. Let's go home."

Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

Bastien was from the belt sensor the slower and cooler the pulses became. By the time he was out of sight the signal had stopped altogether. Libby touched the numb spot over her stomach. For a moment it seemed that she was missing the thrumming of a second heartbeat that was as necessary to her life as her own.

The momentary loneliness was broken when Matilda tugged on her sleeve. "My lady, look!"

She was looking, but his form had disappeared beyond the thick stone walls of the keep. "He's gone," she told the girl.

"No, he hasn't even arrived yet."

There was fear in Matilda's voice. Fear and excitement. When Libby looked at the girl, she saw hope as well. "Who?"

Matilda pointed toward the road. "Henry."

Oh, God, not Henry too. Libby felt like dropping her face into her hands and crying. She didn't know why they'd bothered to come back to a secret installation that was turning out to be the main tourist attraction in Kent.

"Maybe I should just open up a bed and breakfast," she muttered. Then she gave Matilda a hard perusal. The girl looked like she was getting ready to sniff. "No crying. You haven't cried since you got here and I don't want you starting now.

He isn't worth it." No man's worth it, she added to herself, and found that she was thinking of Bastien's abrupt retreat back into Blean Forest.

As Henry and his men rode noisily through the gate she almost wished she'd gone with him.