Downtime (45 page)

I had an inkling, then, of what was going on in that smart but oh-so-Victorian mind of hers. “How long have you known?”

“Last night,” she said quietly. “After you came in.”

I thought she had already gone back to bed when Ezra kissed me on the stairs. It sure as hell hadn’t been a kiss she could mistake for mere friendly affection. “I’m sorry, Kathleen. I didn’t mean for you to find out that way.” Or at all. “Guess it was a shock.”

It took her a long minute to reply. “I cannot permit it in this house.” She still couldn’t look at me. “Mr. Cotton’s room is fitted up—”

“Kathleen,” I interrupted gently. “I’m sorry we deceived you. This is your house, after all, and you have every right to dictate the rules and enforce them. But I can’t spend my last night here apart from Ezra. So,” I continued before she could cut in, “we’ll go somewhere else.”

She looked at me then, dismay mingling with her uneasiness. “Somewhere else?”

“Yeah. It’s all right. Ezra probably knows some place. And you’ll still come to the museum tomorrow, won’t you? To see me off?”

Her troubled expression deepened. “You do understand, I am grateful to you for so many things. But—”

“I know. A relationship like mine and Ezra’s, it’s not exactly stamped with approval, not even in my time. You think we’re bad guys?”

“No….”

“Do you think we’re mentally ill?”

“No.”

“So in your estimation, we’re fairly decent fellows.”

Her frown eased a fraction. “Fairly. In my estimation. But—”

“God disagrees?”

“You won’t be changing my mind, Morgan Nash, nor His.” Flustered, she dropped a wet plate and I caught it and handed it to her with a grin.

“How about if I just broaden it a little?”

Her gray eyes locked with mine, stern and searching. “Charm and a clever tongue do not put one in the right.”

“Do you really believe I’m so far in the wrong? In my time, it isn’t so much looked upon as illness or perversion, but just another way two people fall in love and fulfill the need to express it. Ezra and I—”

“Are you telling me you love him?”

She had a way of getting to the heart of the matter, I had to give her that.

“Well, I do, but….”

“You do—and you’re leaving all the same?”

I didn’t know if I could explain why I had to go. A shuffle at the door spared me having to try. Arms tight around her bundle of linen, Hannah looked at me, then dashed into her room and shut the door.

Ezra wasn’t the only one who’d gotten too damned attached to me. I was a jerk for not realizing what my leaving might do to Hannah. I started after her, but Kathleen caught my sleeve. “Let me go to her. It would be best.” At the door, she looked back at me. “Do make sure the street door’s locked before you go up, if you please. We may be safer in our beds from the likes of Leather Apron, but cracksmen are still common enough.”

Not sure I’d heard right, I gave her a quizzical look. She snorted impatiently. “What sort of creature would I be, to send you searching for any meager lodging when you’re leaving us tomorrow? Certainly after all the good you’ve done,” she added quietly, “the Lord Himself might overlook it, just for the night.”

“I’m more interested in your decision to overlook it.” I moved nearer, to see her face in the lamplight. “Mind if I ask—who was he, Kath?”

“Derry never told you?” There was a wistful hint to the curve of her mouth. “I was just seventeen. A sheltered girl not old enough to know her mind—”

“You knew your heart.”

Gray eyes took me in with gentle if guarded humor. “How would you be so sure of that?”

“Because after all these years, you still love him. Your parents put an end to it?”

“And his parents, as well.” The hurt and regret in her voice was as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. Her demeanor did not invite a hug but I slipped my hand around hers and offered a comforting squeeze, one from which she didn’t pull away.

“Let me guess,” I said quietly. “He attended a different church down the road.”

She nodded. “Derry had already hied himself to London and told me to run away with the lad and we might stay with him until we were settled. But our mother was ill and I could not leave.”

“If you had it to do over—”

“I prefer not to think of it. I did what I believed best and you must do the same.” She pulled gingerly from my grasp and patted my arm. “Go along now. There’s someone wanting to say his farewell. I won’t keep him waiting, nor will you.”

I found Ezra tucked in a corner of the window seat, watching the last light fade. He beckoned me over without a word and, smiling mysteriously, handed me something wrapped in brown paper and tied with a bit of string.

“What’s this?”

“Your birthday is not until the twenty-seventh, I know, but….” He slid closer as I tugged the string loose. “It’s something to remember me by. I can’t imagine any harm could come in taking it with you.”

It was a watch and chain like Ezra’s, a handsome piece of work that I would have no opportunity to ever wear back at home. I loved it. As I opened it to look inside, he rambled on, “I know the one you wore about your wrist was broken on the journey here. If this one is damaged on the way back, there will surely be someone who can repair it?”

“Sure….” I cleared my throat, but the ache at the back persisted. He’d had the watch inscribed. My voice was still a little rough as I read it. “To Morgan, all the time in the world. Ezra.” Well, so much for staying dry-eyed. I looked up at him and managed to form something like a grin. “You probably should’ve given it to me in the morning. You’ll never get any sleep now.”

“I didn’t intend to.” He put his arms around me and closed his eyes, resting his head against mine.

“I could do a lot of damage, spending a lifetime in the wrong century,” I said softly. “I could change the future in ways we couldn’t imagine.”

“You’ve changed mine.”

“You changed yours. By the way, I forgot to thank you for saving my ass last night.”

“Thank Annie, Polly, Catherine, and Elizabeth. I would have been patrolling the street-door in vain, if not for them.”

“Yeah? I’d like to thank them. Are they around?”

He shook his head. “I shall pass along your thanks if I see them again.”

“I guess they hustled you upstairs after me at the brothel too?”

“No, that was your Mr. Sullivan, concerned—and rightly so, I think—that Sid might do you harm.”

I was glad I didn’t have to turn in a report to Faulkner on this one. “Saved by ghosts all ’round, huh?”

“You very nearly became one, yourself.”

“If I had, I’d have come around to cheer you up.”

“Dear God. Haunted by Morgan Nash. What a thought.” The banter, light and teasing as it was, didn’t mask the emotion he was trying to keep under wraps.

“Who better to be haunted by? Anyway, you’ll forget all about me in a month or two.”

“Whatever may be said about you, you’re not a man easily forgotten.”

“You will meet someone else.”

I knew he didn’t want to hear that. The idea that he would meet someone else bothered me too, though I wanted him to be happy. He exhaled a warm steady breath against my ear. “I suppose I shall.” There was a spark of good humor in his eyes as he lay back against the pillows and studied my face. “The thing of it is, he won’t be a rather daft FBI agent from the future who happens to be much too handsome and far too full of himself for his own good.”

I grinned. “Well, yeah. Gems like that are few and far between.”

“Just so,” he murmured with an indulgent snort. “Then you must tell me how I will get along without you.”

We should have said good night and gone to sleep. It would have been smarter and maybe even less painful. But tender kisses kindled fiercer ones and not even the bittersweet awareness that this was good-bye kept us from making the most of our last night. Ezra might not have verbalized the full measure of his feelings for me, but he didn’t need to. It scorched my skin under his touch, consumed me until my muscles quivered, bones ached, and all the time I encouraged it, just about begged for it. Ezra’s eyes gleamed without apology, and I knew if there was a time he might ask me to stay, that time was now. But he only settled beside me and pressed a kiss on my shoulder. “You’ll remember me, I think,” he whispered.

I was grateful to him for managing to sound cheerful. “There’s no way I’d forget you, Ez.”

“And if I come along in some other form in your own time, will you know me? Suppose I am Reese—”

“You’re not Reese,” I said emphatically, then wondered why I was so sure. “Anyway, I don’t think I really want to think about it. Unless you can arrange to show up as Ezra Glacenbie.”

“I’m afraid Ezra is restricted to this particular lifetime.” He rested his cheek on my shoulder and closed his eyes. “Byron was right. Farewells should be sudden, when they will be forever.”

The knot that formed in my throat kept me from replying. Not that I had anything especially wise or comforting to say. I wished I had. I wished a lot of things. I wanted to wish that I hadn’t ever come here to begin with. But never meeting Ezra at all, that felt like a circumstance far worse than knowing him and giving him up.

His hand found mine and interlaced our fingers. “Hence, and be happy,” he murmured. “Good night, Agent Nash.”

We’d pushed the morning as far away as we could. As the hands on my new watch moved steadily toward three, I listened to the familiar stomp of Dr. Gilbride returning from his late shift. I heard him speak briefly to Derry, probably discussing the fact I was leaving tomorrow, and then he went on up. Footsteps that must have been Derry’s paused for a long moment at our door, then shuffled on. The house fell quiet and the sound of Ezra’s even breathing was all I could hear. It was a sound I’d fallen asleep to for days—and two weeks from now, I probably wouldn’t even remember it. Life would return to normal in the noisy, fast-paced, steel and concrete mecca I knew best. Ezra and the quieter, more intimate world he inhabited would be a vivid dream that would fade as the days passed.

When I woke, I thought at first I was alone. Then I saw Ezra sitting beside me and I knew by his fleeting smile as he got up and put on his coat that he’d been watching me sleep, making a memory when he ought to be letting them go. We had a quiet breakfast together, everyone else gone to work, including Hannah, who was upstairs somewhere, lugging around her pail of coal. I had a feeling she was avoiding me. At least Kathleen wasn’t. She greeted us with a brisk good morning as she came into the kitchen with a basketful of washed sheets. I realized she was going outside to hang them up and I offered to help.