Belmary House 4 Read online

  She tried to make it sound like she was his best friend, trying to catch up after a long time apart. Feeling gross, she batted her eyelashes, just a little. That was supposed to be solely for Ashford, and now she was being forced to use it on this irritating worm.

  “Ah, well, that is a story, my dear. I’m afraid I can’t offer you refreshment, the lads have run off all the servants. It’s been a bit of mess since … well the place could use a woman’s touch.”

  She settled herself into a chair and motioned for him to get on with it. “It’s 1889,” she prodded. “Does your brother know what happened to you? What actually happened to you?”

  It couldn’t have been the portal, could it? He’d clearly been here a while, much longer than when she’d first tampered with it. She felt fairly certain that the existence of “Sir Amos” wasn’t her fault.

  He leaned against his desk, which was strewn with papers and empty wine glasses, and crossed his arms. “It was several months ago, and I was at a ball, bored half senseless mind you, when you appeared.” He paused for effect and she made sure to make a face that showed complete confusion, not a difficult thing to do. “Or at least I thought it was you at first, though I was quite certain you’d gone to France with Ashford. It was shortly after we were all together in Scotland, do you recall?”

  “Of course,” she said. “We had a nice time.” That was true enough back then.

  “Yes, so imagine my surprise to find someone who looked almost exactly like you, and much the same mannerisms to boot. But Ariana was also completely different. Mysterious, elegant, well-traveled—” he paused at her scowl and smirked. “I was smitten with her, and within weeks she had me wrapped around her finger, though she was holding something back, I could tell.”

  “Time travel,” Tilly interjected, wanting to get on with it. “So you never knew about Ashford after all those years?”

  “Yes, that was part of her secret, and no, I never did, though I suspect my brother might have. They were always much closer than Julian and I were. He was always competing with me.”

  She had to hold back a snort at that blatant self-delusion. “She was from this time? You gave up your time to be with her?” she asked instead of sputtering a defense of Ashford.

  “She wasn’t from this time, no. In fact it turned out I would one day know her in her own time, though she was quite a bit younger and I never would have guessed. She jumped around a lot.” His eyes glittered as if he was keeping something from her. “But she’d made a life for herself here, created this whole faction of other witches— that’s the order, or the original order anyway— and I wanted to see what it was all about. It was only then that I realized how powerful she was, and the others were too. But they were using their powers for the most mundane things. Helping people, that sort of thing, and never demanding anything in return. I tried to get her to see what marvelous gains their abilities could grant us, but she was happy with the way things were.”

  “Do you mean you wanted to use magic to make money?” Tilly asked. “But you were already so rich in 1814. And respected and admired,” she added, though it almost choked her to do it.

  “I wasn’t rich at all,” he corrected. “It was all for show, and I was in debt up to my eyes. I was the second son so none of the land went to me, and do you know how many sisters I have? They all need dowries, so there wasn’t much left for me.” He sighed deeply and she gave him a sympathizing look so he’d continue. “I found others who were more like-minded and we sought to change the order, make it more practical. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, everyone accepted me, I mean the new ways, and then poor Ariana disappeared.”

  “You thought she was dead,” Tilly said. “I was told you were sure of it.”

  Once again his eyes glittered, something hard and cold in their depths she’d never seen before. She sucked in a breath, not liking her deductions. He was only annoying, not evil, right? But that look didn’t go away and he didn’t answer. It was as if he was reminiscing about something.

  “You killed her?” she whispered.

  “Goodness, my dear, what a thought,” he said, his face back to normal, but he’d lost all of his handsomeness. He scared her now. And he hadn’t actually denied it. “I thought with her gone, we could concentrate on more practical things and leave off with all the time wasting. I thought I’d gathered enough new blood and that any who didn’t agree with us would leave quietly.”

  “But they didn’t and now you’ve got a civil war on your hands. The old guard won’t give up so easily, and like you said, they’re powerful.”

  “Yes, it’s true,” he said sadly. “Very powerful. I regretted losing Ariana and thought I might have to make my way back to my old life, though things could have been so good here. She’d always told me about a book she knew of, full of the most interesting spells.”

  “Ashford’s book,” Tilly said, still clueless as to how it had ended up in Ermine’s shop, and how anyone could even touch it. “It’s supposed to be under a protective spell. How can you even touch it, let alone use it?”

  He snickered, clearly excited to be getting to the good parts. “When we were still in 1814, I managed to convince her that removing that particular boundary would remove its power to entice. Most people wouldn’t give it a second glance if it was just a moldering old book, but we all know how tempting forbidden fruit is. She liked the idea of making it nothing more than a ridiculous antique that no one took seriously, so she gave me and anyone else permission to look at it. I tried to get a hold of it then, but someone got to it before me and it was missing until I tracked it down in that apothecary. When I saw young Adkins there, and he told me you were also in this time, well, I imagined the tides had turned in my favor.”

  Tilly felt cold all over, her brain barely registering any of it. “You knew I’d come looking for Thomas, and find you. You knew I looked like her … But how could she remove the curse from the book?” She shook her head. Something was very wrong, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Didn’t want to put her finger on it.

  “You were always so clever, just like Ariana,” he said, his once breathtaking blue eyes now cruel as they sliced right through her. “Or rather, she was clever like you. But have you figured out how I knew her yet? She was such a wee thing back then.”

  She leaned over and gripped her knees, trying not to fall to the floor in front of him. He would have enjoyed that far too much. What had happened to him? He’d been completely and thoroughly corrupted, or else he’d always hidden his true colors from them. Apparently he’d remained a trusted family friend throughout the years.

  She thought of Ariana, the girl she may never know. She wouldn’t have been able to travel within her own timeline, but she could have, did, travel back to before she was born. She’d been able to give Nick permission to look at the book because she was of the bloodline of those who created it.

  Her daughter, not yet born, the baby she’d never seen or touched or smelled, had grown up and been murdered by this madman. Like hell was she going to put up with that. She glanced toward the door, ready to run, but he only laughed.

  “Sorry, my dear, but you’ll be staying for a while.”

  Chapter 23

  Dexter rolled over, slapping at his cell phone to turn the alarm off, sad that it was morning already. It had been the first time he’d managed to fall into a good sleep in the four days since Tilly idiotically ran off and he was sorry the night had flown by so fast. However, the obnoxious clanging wouldn’t cease and he realized with a jolt that it wasn’t his phone. When he opened his eyes to complete darkness, he also realized it wasn’t morning.

  With a groan, he catapulted to his computer to see what the portal room sensor had picked up. He hoped it was Tilly, even though he was still angry with her. He wanted her to be safe, and after two days of stewing about it, he understood why she left, feeling like she had nothing here. Of course, the very next day after that, they’d received a call from Piper Sinclair
in the Highlands, eager to help her get back to 1814.

  It had taken all his willpower not to crush the valuable porcelain pot he’d been cataloging. When he’d told Emma she’d burst into tears and hadn’t stopped for close to an hour, certain she’d helped Tilly to her death. Dex felt bad about the way he’d delivered the news of Piper’s return, but he still couldn’t believe Emma had aided and abetted such a truly stupid plan. She’d come back at him that if he hadn’t been such a prat about it, Tilly might have been able to be more patient. It had been their first real row and he’d felt sick about it, enough to almost forget about his cousin’s mess, but now the portal alarm clanged and it all came back to him.

  He clicked around a bit after turning the sound off, not able to get any video. He double checked everything he knew how to check and then recalled that Emma had disabled the video when she helped Tilly with her foolhardy plan. She must have forgotten to turn it back on again. He wanted to write it off as a glitch and get back in bed, or else wake up Emma and make her deal with it, but both options made him feel like a cad. If it wasn’t a glitch, he had to go set the person free, before Emma’s bone-chilling welcome message drove them mad with terror.

  He got to Belmary House in record time, the streets nearly empty in the early hour, and used the key Emma had given him. When he unbolted the portal room door, he didn’t see anyone in the darkness, and no one answered when he quietly called out. He’d been annoyed up until that moment but now he got a little frisson of fear. Not everyone who came through the portal was a confused and frightened victim. Someone might be using it for their own gain, waiting behind the door to bash his head in. He swung the door open, banging it into the wall, assuring him that wasn’t the case.

  “I’m here to help you,” he said, wincing at his overly loud voice. “I’m going to turn on the light, it’s, er, going to be bright.”

  Flipping on the overheads, he walked into the room, finding no one. He knew he had to check on the other side of the bed before he could go home and get back into his own, and crept toward it. He peered over the edge and gasped, rushing around and dropping to the floor.

  Ashford lay in a crumpled heap, his dark hair matted to his head and caked with dried blood. Dex hurried to turn him onto his back, horrified to find his face was deathly pale save for the thick blood that had gushed from his nose and down his neck and chest, staining his cravat and waistcoat. His hands were also crusty with blood, his fingers curled into tight fists. His whole body was stiff, and Dex feared he was too late to do anything. He fumbled with his phone to call for an ambulance, at the same time feeling for a pulse.

  “Damn it,” he swore, unable to feel anything.

  He tossed his phone aside and concentrated, willing to feel something, then shoved aside as much of the soiled clothing as he could and listened at Ashford’s chest. He breathed a sigh of relief as he heard a faint, weak thumping, far too slow for his liking, but mercifully there. Putting his cheek to Ashford’s face, he felt a small puff of breath exhaling.

  He heard the operator’s tinny voice repeating her question and scooped up his phone, spitting out the address and begging them to hurry. The moments it took for an ambulance to arrive felt like ages. He sat there staring at Ashford, afraid to blink lest the man die in that millisecond. He hated doing nothing, but he didn’t think he should try CPR since he’d heard a heartbeat, and smacking someone who was already in such bad shape seemed plain wrong.

  “Tilly’s alive,” he said, feeling compelled to do so, and praying it was still true. “She’s trying to get back to you. So you might want to stay alive a bit longer as well, mate.”

  He couldn’t be sure, but he thought some color returned to Ashford’s pallid face. If he died, he’d never be able to face his cousin again. He realized with a sickening jolt that he may really never be able to see her again. God, why was everything so screwed up, and where was that ambulance? He’d opened the curtains in the hope that he could see the lights when it arrived. The emergency worker had offered to stay on the phone with him but he’d hung up without thinking.

  At the first flash of blue he begged Ashford to hang on and ran down to meet them, not knowing what to tell them had happened. He’d have to tell the truth, which was he didn’t have a clue.

  ***

  Ashford awoke to find he could barely move. He twisted from side to side and tried to sit up, but his lower body was trapped under a stack of tightly tucked blankets. His arms were free but long clear tubes ran from both of them, leading to hanging bags of fluid. Whether something was being added or taken away didn’t please him either way and with a grimace, he pulled them out, ignoring the small wells of blood they left behind.

  What was this place? Had he gone back to the torture time? Was this what they were doing to those poor souls in the rooms of his house? He forced himself to calm down, lest his torturers returned to hook him back up to the bags. Looking around, he noticed a tiled ceiling studded with long lights, electric lights. He almost sobbed with relief that he wasn’t back in the 1600s, that he’d made it to Matilda’s time at last. He registered a gentle beeping sound, more evidence that he was in the future.

  He found he was ridiculously weak, but managed to kick himself free of the blanket prison, and swing his legs over the side of the narrow bed. Now he had to find his clothes, because he was dressed in some sort of humiliating gown that tied up the back, but gapped open, causing an embarrassing breeze on his backside.

  “Well, look who’s up at last,” a woman boomed. She entered the room carrying several items he didn’t instantly recognize, and she was smiling, but also making a tsking sound as if he was a small child. “Why would you take out your IVs, love? You need those fluids. And you really should be lying back under the covers. You may catch a chill.”

  He grasped his flimsy gown in the back and flung a blanket over his legs. “Where am I, madame, and who are you?” He would have felt a lot more intimidating if he’d had his clothes on.

  “I’m Nurse Deirdre, and you’re in hospital, love. Let’s get you hooked back up and then your friends are going to want to see you. They’ve barely left your side since you got here.”

  His friends? He grasped the blanket, so confused and not daring to hope that he mindlessly let her insert the needles back into his arms. Could Matilda be waiting for him?

  “I want to see them now,” he demanded. “Please.”

  “Give me a few minutes to have someone collect them from the waiting area, all right? At least one of them should be here. Doctor will be in soon as well. Now you’re awake perhaps we can get you out of intensive care and into a nicer room, eh?”

  He didn’t care about any of that and only half understood it. He wanted to pace the tiny room as he waited, but realized one of the walls wasn’t a wall at all, but a curtain, and on the other side lay a very old looking man, either asleep or unconscious. He had twice as many tubes as Ashford and didn’t look like he should be disturbed. And when Ashford tried to sit up, he got tangled in his own tubes and realized that he still had quite a few aches and pains in his midsection. Thankfully he was nowhere near the state he’d been in when he first arrived in this time, bleeding, gasping for breath, and barely able to crawl a few inches before he collapsed. Then he woke up here, wherever here was, and he still wasn’t in any condition to go charging through the halls.

  Matilda would have his hide for putting himself in further danger if he did that, and the thought of her waiting patiently for him to recover brought a smile to his face. Where was she? Did that bloody nurse not tell her yet that he was awake? Perhaps he should try and charge through the halls, consequences be damned. He only wanted to see her, hold her, tell her everything would be fine, that he was done being an ass and he’d listen to her more carefully from now on. As he was about to once more pluck out the needles, her cousin Dexter came into the room.

  He looked as if he hadn’t slept in a while, and his face was screwed up in consternation until he saw that Ashfo
rd was about to pull out his tubes, then it changed to outrage.

  “What in hell are you doing, man? You were half dead three days ago. Just be still, will you?”

  Ashford craned his neck around the tall man, waiting for Matilda to appear. Perhaps she’d gone out for a meal? It hurt his heart a little that she could leave when he had been so ill as Dexter said, but apparently it had been days he was unconscious.

  Three days in this place? It was a good thing he’d finally made it to the proper time. Using the spell even once more probably would have killed him.

  A dark haired, pretty woman came into the room on Dexter’s heels, but it was Emma Saito, the woman he had been supposed to take back to her proper time, but had mistakenly grabbed Matilda instead. The best mistake of his life.

  But hadn’t Miss Saito been taken forward to her own time by Liam Wodge? Had she returned? She’d been so hell-bent on getting home it nearly killed her, and them as well, when she unwittingly teamed up with Solomon Wodge. When she took Dexter’s hand and he smiled lovingly down at her, Ashford couldn’t blame her for giving it all up to be with him. He would have done it for Matilda, if she hadn’t chosen to do it for him.

  “Where’s Matilda?” he asked eagerly, knowing the second Dexter’s face changed that she wasn’t here. “Has she gone to America, then?” Of course she’d want to see her mother. He’d have to take one of those airplanes again, that was all. “But blast it,” he continued mostly to himself. “I didn’t think to bring my forged passport with me. I wonder if I could — no, I should leave off magic for a bit. Just get me a telephone so I can call her.”

  Emma looked down and Dexter breathed out long and hard, reminding him of a horse. A horse who didn’t want to tell him something.