Timeless (31 page)

In the thirteenth century, relationships
usually only took one form—marriage—but I appreciated that he was
trying to understand that everyone, male and female, could interact
as friends in the twenty-first century. I was grateful that he was
making the effort to understand and respect my wishes.

As it happened, though, Ben didn’t want to be
friends after the fight. I think he assumed that we were getting
back together until Damien actually arrived. Once he saw for
himself that it was really over between us, he couldn’t handle it.
Since then, I’d caught him watching us only once, a resigned look
in his eyes. I thought that maybe he hated me, and that made me
sad. But there was nothing I could do. I didn’t think Ben and I
could be friends, even if the fight hadn’t happened. We had been
too much to each other before.

Damien and I mainly kept to ourselves. It was
too dangerous for him to try and make any close friends with the
other students since he was still learning about modern life. I was
glad for the time we had by ourselves, though I knew that I was
losing Annie, my best friend. Since I avoided Ben, and Annie dated
his best friend, we no longer moved in the same circles.

I knew Aunt Jo was concerned about the amount
of time I spent with Damien and the fact that I didn’t really have
other friends anymore outside of him. She liked him well enough,
though I could tell she still preferred Ben. I hadn’t told her
anything about the fight, and she often mentioned Ben’s name over
dinner unless Damien was there. She was very sensitive to his
feelings, whatever her personal preference might be. Ben had been
around for years, while Damien was the newcomer. And even though he
was charming, handsome, and clever, he wasn’t comfortable to her
yet. I was hoping that time would eventually remedy that.

I hadn’t yet broached the subject of getting
married to Damien with her. I still had some time, and I knew she’d
be angry and likely forbid me to see Damien until I turned
eighteen, when she wouldn’t have any say in the matter. But I hoped
it wouldn’t come to that.

For his part, Damien frequently wanted to
discuss our marriage and asked me when we could talk it over with
Aunt Jo. I continued to put it off, not wanting to hurt his
feelings or have him think I was rejecting him. But it was going to
come up sooner or later.

One Friday night, we’d ordered take-out and
decided to watch an old film about knights and ladies. Damien
enjoyed watching movies made about our past life, laughing at the
misconceptions modern filmmakers and audiences held about knights
and the Middle Ages. We liked to curl up on the large couches in
what was once an elegant, formal parlor on the ground floor of
Sugar Hill. Damien had converted it—the only room he’d changed in
the house—to a movie room, amazed and delighted by the moving
pictures he saw on TV.

He also couldn’t believe the kinds of foods
we ate. I agreed with him. Though we’d likely eaten tastier fare in
the castle than the average thirteenth-century villager did, food
had definitely improved over the centuries.

I lay curled up on his lap, trying to feed
him noodles with chop sticks. We’d just finished watching the
movie, and the credits were running when Damien put his take-out
box down, looking a little nervous, which was odd. Damien was never
nervous.

“I’ve been doing some research in the
library,” he began.

“Oh yeah? What about?” I asked
absentmindedly.

My attention was mainly focused on rooting
around the bottom of my box in search of chicken pieces. Damien was
frequently researching in the library, so that was nothing new. I
liked to tease him about being a bookworm—though I had to say, his
enjoyment of books had inspired me to read more. I couldn’t say
that I loved books as much as he did, but we often read together on
lazy Sunday afternoons.

“I’ve been reading about marriage rituals,”
he said hesitantly.

Uh-oh, I thought. Here we go again. I
concentrated hard on the noodles.

“Oh yeah?” I asked casually, searching now
for imaginary chicken in my box.

“Did you know that it is customary to give
your fiancée a diamond ring?” he asked.

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Yes, I am aware of the tradition,” I
answered, trying to keep my voice casual.

He moved more quickly than I expected, but
then he always did. It was part of his training as a knight, I
guess.

He took away my chopsticks and then removed
the take-out box, laying it beside his on a nearby end table.
Lifting me from his lap, he placed me on the couch. In a flash, he
was on one knee, holding my left hand—the really greasy one—and
slipping the largest diamond I’d ever seen onto the third
finger.

“Emmeline, will you marry me?” he asked, a
heartbreaking smile on his face.

My speech was temporarily suspended, and I
knew my jaw hung slightly open. I forgot for a moment that this
ring would cause huge difficulties with Aunt Jo and no end of
gossip at school. I wanted to savor the moment.

“Damien, I don’t know what to say,” I began,
stunned. That was true. I was totally speechless.

“You don’t like it?” he asked, a frown on his
face.

“Like it? No, I don’t like it,” I said.

His face fell.

“I love it!” I squealed, throwing my arms
around his neck. I was pretty sure my lips were as greasy as my
fingers felt and that my breath smelled like an eggroll, but I
didn’t care. It was the happiest moment in my life.

“So the answer is yes?” he ventured
tentatively.

Too overcome for words, I just nodded my head
in assent.

“So, I think we should tell your Aunt Jo now,
Emmeline,” he said when my initial euphoria subsided.

My face must have given me away.

“Why can’t we?” he asked.

I sighed. It as an old, familiar story, and I
was so tired of saying no.

“We can, Damien. Of course we can,” I assured
him.

I’d hoped to squeeze out at least another
month before I had to tell her. He just didn’t understand; he only
saw that he wanted to be with me always. No amount of explanations
about modern life was going to change that.

“Let’s tell her now. Tonight,” he urged.

“Tonight?”

I gulped. It had been such a perfect evening.
Why ruin it?

“Tonight,” he said firmly.

****

Overall, Aunt Jo took it better than I’d
expected. She didn’t look particularly surprised, and she allowed
Damien to finish his speech. He’d insisted on asking her for my
hand in marriage, a route I thought quaint but ill-advised. I was
sure Aunt Jo would say no on the spot.

Instead, she looked at us both and
smiled.

“Emily, dear, is this what you want?” she
asked gently.

“Yes, Aunt Jo, it is,” I replied, too stunned
to say more.

“Then there’s nothing more to be said. I’d
like you to finish high school first, of course, but you’ll be
eighteen before then so you can do what you like,” she said, a tone
of resignation in her voice. Damien beamed. It had gone exactly as
he’d expected, and that annoyed me a little. But I was grateful
that Aunt Jo hadn’t forbidden us to see each other or banned Damien
from the house, an outcome I’d worried about.

Something still didn’t seem right, though. I
knew Aunt Jo cared about me, so why didn’t she say more? Or was I
just looking for problems where none existed?

When Damien finally left that night—he was
now, as my fiancé, allowed to stay until midnight—I knocked on Aunt
Jo’s bedroom door. Filled with antiques, her room looked much like
mine did, minus the posters I had pasted over the rose wallpaper.
Her lavender scent, always soothing to me, permeated the room. To
come into Aunt Jo’s bedroom was to enter another time.

I poked my head around the door.

“Can I come in?” I asked tentatively.

“Sure,” she said. She was sitting up in bed
reading her monthly Ladies’ Home Journal, a green mask plastered on
her face—one of her Saturday night rituals.

I smothered a smile. This was an image I’d
remembered from my childhood. I came often to her room as a little
girl, homesick at first for Colorado and the friends I’d left
there. We’d had lots of bedside chats, but not, I realized a little
sadly, recently. There was a time when I’d had no secrets from her.
She’d always been a good listener.

“Aunt Jo,” I began, “about Damien…”

“Hmmm? What, dear?” she asked, stroking the
Duchess, who lay contentedly in her lap.

“Damien?” I repeated a little louder,
wondering if she’d heard me.

“Oh, yes, of course,” she said, putting away
her magazine.

“Are you really okay with this? You took it
much better than I’d expected,” I began, uncertain of what I wanted
to say.

“Emily, if you’re happy, that’s all that
matters. I can’t really say I’m surprised. You two have been very
close since he arrived,” she said nonchalantly. She looked as if
she was going to start reading her magazine again.

“That’s all?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it.
Surely it wasn’t going to be this easy.

“Yes, that’s all,” she answered, smiling as
much as she could beneath the hardened mud that promised to take
years off her skin.

I came in further and sat on the side of her
bed. Something was definitely up.

“I’m not buying it. You always have an
opinion, Aunt Jo, even if you don’t always give it,” I said.

“Who, me?”

“Yes, you. Now out with it. Tell me what you
really think. I can take it,” I said with more bravado than I
felt.

She sighed.

“Emily, I’m going to tell you a story,” she
began, a faraway look coming into her eyes.

I pulled off my shoes and curled my feet
under me, ready for a bedside chat. The Duchess, bored with us,
climbed down. She had better things to do than listen to our human
chatter.

Aunt Jo smiled, but not for me. I knew she
remembered a different time.

“When I was a little girl, my sister—not your
grandmother but my other sister—was the oldest. She and I shared
this room,” she began, her eyes growing misty.

“She was so lovely—she looked much like you
do, Emily,” she continued. This surprised me. To my knowledge, I
didn’t resemble anyone on either side of my family.

“No,” Aunt Jo said as if reading my mind,
“she didn’t have long red hair or green eyes, but there’s something
about the shape of your face, the way you walk. You remind me of
her.”

“I’ve never heard you talk about her, Aunt
Jo. What was her name?” I asked.

“Edwina. There was Edwina, Miriam, and me,
Josephine. It was our baby brother, Sam, who called me Jo. He
couldn’t say the whole name,” she said, stopping for a moment. I
knew she was remembering her brother, the great-uncle I’d never met
who’d died years before in a car accident.

She fell quiet for a moment and then resumed
her story.

“Edwina had blonde hair and dark blue eyes
like sapphires. She had pale skin, like you, and she was so elegant
and tall, the very image of Grace Kelly. She had her pick of the
young men who came by the house. Edwina dated several young boys,
usually all at once. She was a great flirt. She was also my
father’s favorite. No young man was good enough for her. Because
Edwina didn’t seem to prefer any of the young men she dated, this
presented no problem at home. Daddy never paid too much attention
to anyone taking us out, so long as it wasn’t serious.

But everything changed when Richard moved to
town. He had an angelic face, with curling lashes and baby blue
eyes. I can still see him in my mind, standing on the front porch
to ask our father for permission to call for Edwina. With Richard,
I knew it was different immediately. Edwina acted like a woman in
love. She used to dance around our room, planning the outfits she’d
wear for him. Though she was just seventeen, she knew her own mind.
When he asked her to marry him, she planned to say yes.

Richard asked my father for her hand, though
they’d only seen each other for three months—and then it was just
once or twice a week, when he came to take her dancing. He began to
attend church downtown with us. We went every Sunday then.”

Aunt Jo looked a little contrite at this. We
hadn’t been to church together in over a year, not since my mother
had passed away. Damien insisted that he and I attend Mass,
horrified that I didn’t take religion as seriously as I had in my
past life. He didn’t understand that there were other choices,
growing up as he did with only one church available in the
thirteenth century. I knew I’d likely convert sometime in the next
year to make him happy. I didn’t think Aunt Jo would be too upset
at this. She’d always regarded religion as an expression of a
larger faith in God; the details, she’d once told me, were less
important to Him than to us.

“When he came formally to ask my father for
her hand,” she continued, “I thought I’d never seen such fireworks.
My father threw him out of the house, threatening to kill him if he
came back. Edwina pleaded, begging him to change his mind, but he
wouldn’t. She didn’t a say a word to him, which was very unusual
for her. We should have suspected something was amiss, for Edwina
had a terrible temper. As it turned out, she was just biding her
time. She left in the middle of the night without a word to any of
us, even me.”

Aunt Jo’s voice broke then, the tears making
trails in the green mask. I reached over, putting my hand over hers
and squeezing it for comfort.

“Did she marry him?” I asked gently.

“I don’t know. We never saw her again,” Aunt
Jo finished on a sob. I could tell she still felt upset about it,
even fifty-five years later.

“You mean, she never came back, never wrote
or called?” I asked.

“No, nothing,” Aunt Jo said, wiping her eyes
and the rest of the mask off with her handkerchief.