A Wife In Time

“I said I could use some help,” Kane told her.

Was that what she’d heard? Kane asking for her help? Had she just imagined the ghostly presence communicating with her?

“Would you stop going all mistily sentimental on me and help me out, here?” Seeing her hesitation, Kane quickly added, “Do you want to be stuck in the past forever? Women don’t even have the vote yet.”

Sighing, Susannah acknowledged that he did have a good point. Their first priority had to be finding a way home. The idea of helping out a ghost did sound a little farfetched. Not that the concept of jumping a century in the blink of an eye was an everyday occurrence, either. “What do you want me to do?”

Stepping back inside the room, Kane said, “Try pushing on the walls.”

She did so, while asking, “What are we looking for?”

“I don’t know. Anything unusual. A time portal, maybe.”

“Sounds like something out of a science-fiction novel,” she noted with a nervous laugh. This entire situation was too bizarre for words. So much of it felt dreamlike, yet there was a hard-edged reality to it that dispelled any hope she had that she was dreaming.

Between them, they pushed on every square inch of wall space in the relatively small room. Nothing happened. After nearly an hour had passed, Susannah became more and more discouraged. As a last resort, she closed her eyes, clicked her heels together three times and whispered, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”

Upon opening her eyes, the first thing she saw was the derisive expression on Kane’s face. “Stop looking at me that way! It worked for Dorothy,” she said defensively.

“Well, it didn’t work for us,” he noted.

His glance lowered to the low neckline of her dress, which Susannah was disconcerted to discover he appeared to be studying with more than casual interest. Suddenly the words he’d thrown at her in the convention center that afternoon came back to her. A Mata Hari who played bedroom games with younger, married men—wasn’t that what he’d said? Or something to that effect. With that in mind, Susannah didn’t like the way he was eyeing her one bit.

She was tempted to put a hand up to shield her exposed skin from his hot gaze. But that would be admitting that he bothered her, and she wasn’t about to give him that advantage over her. So she threw back her shoulders instead and narrowed her eyes, as if daring him to make a comment. When he did, it was far from what she expected.

“Where did you get that necklace you’re wearing?” he demanded curtly.

Now her hand did fly up, to cover her necklace rather than her skin. “Why do you want to know?” she countered distrustfully.

“Because the woman in the portrait along the stairs is wearing one identical to it.”

“Elsbeth?” Stepping into the hallway and down a few steps, Susannah studied the portrait of Elsbeth Whitaker. Kane had blocked her view when she’d hurried upstairs an hour before. Now she could see the black bunting draped around the portrait. That hadn’t been there when the tour guide had talked about the painting in their own century. Susannah was familiar enough with Victorian tradition to know that such bunting was only used on a portrait to indicate the subject’s death. Her heart fell.

“She’s died already. We’re too late to save her,” she murmured.

“Save her?” Kane repeated. “Listen, I may not know much about time travel, but even I know that you’re not supposed to mess with things like life and death. What if this woman later had children who went on to become mass murderers or something?”

“Then why did she bring us here?”

“Who said she did?”

“I do. I can feel it here.” She pressed her palm against her heart. She’d also gotten confirmation from Elsbeth, but she didn’t think this was the best time to confess she’d communicated with a ghost. For she now felt sure that that’s what she’d done—communicated with Elsbeth. She hadn’t imagined it.

“Is the woman some kind of relative of yours?” Kane demanded.

Susannah shook her head. “I don’t have any relatives in Savannah.”

“How can you be sure?” he argued.

“Because I recently did a family history—a family tree, if you will—for my parents’ anniversary and I traced our ancestry back to the 1700s. Elsbeth Whitaker’s name didn’t show up, I’m sure of it.”

“Then how do you explain the necklace? It’s exactly the same as yours. Were a lot of them made during that time?”

Again, Susannah shook her head. “This one was specially made to order for my great-grandmother.” Looking into the sad eyes of the woman in the portrait, she felt a strong sense of kinship. Her instincts told her that her necklace, the one that so exactly matched the one Elsbeth was wearing, was some kind of tie.

She scrambled to put the pieces together. Had her great-grandmother gotten the necklace from Elsbeth somehow? Perhaps the two women had known each other. Whatever the case might have been, Susannah only knew that she was here for a reason. All she had to do was figure out what that reason was. She didn’t realize she’d spoken her words aloud until Kane replied.

“And how do you plan on doing that?” he demanded.

“By getting more information about Elsbeth Whitaker.”

“How? By asking the people downstairs about her suicide?”

“Of course not. Nothing that crass. That’s more your style than mine.”

“Oh, right,” he retorted. “Like you’re the soul of discretion. I think not.”

“Think whatever you please,” she countered.

He groaned. “God, you’re even starting to sound like this time period.”

“I happen to have edited a book or two on this era, luckily for you.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m certainly counting my blessings about now,” Kane returned sarcastically.

“Just keep quiet and listen. You might learn a thing or two.”

“From you?”

“From the people at the party downstairs. The faster we can figure out what’s going on here, the faster we can get back to our own time period,” she reminded him.

* * *

Having attended more publishing cocktail parties than she cared to, Susannah had the moves down pat—just stand around the edge of the room, with eyes downcast, and tune in to the conversations going on all around. It was her way of surviving the stifling artificiality of the business functions she was required to attend. By nature she was more a romantic dreamer than a go-getting extrovert.

To her right, two bearded men—one with a black beard, the other with a red one—were talking about some book they’d recently purchased. It took Susannah a moment to realize they were talking about none other than Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper.

To her left, two women were speaking about the joys of matrimony. “It has ever been my opinion that a woman must learn to relinquish self and live for another in order for her to have a truly happy marriage.”

“Verily so. Perhaps that’s why Elsbeth wasn’t happy in her marital situation. But to have things end so tragically....” The words were a mere whisper now, and Susannah had to strain to hear them. “The scandal is unimaginable. Such things simply don’t happen in our circles.”

The other woman nodded. “I wasn’t sure about attending tonight’s function, but we’d accepted months ago. My husband said that tonight was primarily a business gathering and therefore wouldn’t be inappropriate, considering the circumstances. My etiquette manual said nothing about an instance such as this, so I was left to depend upon my husband’s judgment in this matter.”

“As you should in all things.”

Susannah’s feminist blood was boiling, but there was no time for that now. She was getting curious looks from several of those attending the gathering. Looking at the other women present and comparing her dress to theirs, she realized that her outfit was off by a couple decades or more. And no one had a purse the size of hers. They all had dainty little reticules dangling from their wrists, while her shoulder bag felt like it was the size of New Jersey. The bottom line was that she was attracting attention, and she certainly didn’t want to do that.

Nodding at Kane, who was a short distance away, she shot her gaze toward the door in a hopefully discreet indication that it was time to make a fast exit. To her relief, Kane got her silent message and a minute later they were outside once again.

“So what did you find out?” Kane demanded.

“That the women of this era were downtrodden and brainwashed,” Susannah tartly replied.

“Wonderful. That’s extremely helpful.”

“Okay, so what did you find out?”

“That they’re still talking about the first baseball game held under electric lights in June of last year. In Fort Wayne, Indiana, of all places. Oh, and that a horse named Buchanan won the tenth annual Kentucky Derby a few days ago.”

“That’s it?”

“No. I also found out these people dislike Republicans and they don’t approve of the way the government is being run. I didn’t recognize any of the names they mentioned. Even though it’s been twenty years since the Civil War ended, apparently they still have a few lingering carpetbaggers from up north to contend with.”

“We’re lucky we didn’t land in the middle of the war,” Susannah noted.

They were walking as they talked. The night was still and the air thick with humidity. Susannah could feel her hair going berserk, corkscrew curls forming in rebellion against being unnaturally restricted. Sure enough, a hairpin slid down and dangled over her left ear while several strands of her hair spiraled in uncontrollable wildness. Muttering under her breath, she jabbed the hairpin back in place.

“Are you listening to me?” Kane demanded impatiently.

“Not really,” she readily admitted. “And you can stop glaring at me. You’ve done it so often in the past twelve hours that I’ve become immune to it.”

To her amazement, he actually smiled at her—a slow, riverboat gambler’s smile that made his blue eyes gleam in the gaslit evening. He looked dashing. She remembered thinking so when she’d first seen him at the party earlier.

Then she’d seen that fateful blue light, a lighter blue than his eyes, she absently noted. His smile really did have a devilish edge to it. She hadn’t expected that. Nor the breathless feeling it caused.

Of course, after zipping back 111 years in a single step, who wouldn’t be breathless? It had nothing to do with his smile, she silently defended herself. Or his incredibly blue eyes.

“Wha-at—” She had to pause to clear her voice. “What are you looking at?”

“At you. You’ve got a hairpin hanging over your eyebrow.”

“Where?” She automatically reached up.

“No. It’s over here.” He brushed her left temple with his index finger. The merest of touches and yet it branded her with unexpected intensity.

“Yes, well...” She cleared her throat again. “We need to decide what to do next.”

“That answer is obvious. The first thing we have to do is get some nineteenth-century money,” Kane stated.

“And how do you propose we do that?”

By this time they’d reached another area of fairly heavy foot traffic. As before, Susannah only saw one other woman in the area. She was standing in front of what appeared to be a tavern of some kind. While Susannah was no expert in nineteenth-century fashion, she sincerely doubted that the amount of bare leg and petticoat the blowsy blonde was showing was appropriate for anything other than a lady of the night.

Seeing Kane, the other woman’s eyes lit up. With dollar signs, no doubt, Susannah cynically reflected.

Kane noticed the woman, too, which aggravated Susannah for some reason. “What are you going to do?” Susannah addressed her mocking question to Kane. “Ask her what year it is?”

The woman apparently overheard them. “What year do you want it to be?” she asked Kane while moving closer to walk her fingers up his shirt buttons. “I can do whatever you want. Cost you only two bits.”

“Such a bargain,” Susannah noted caustically. “Cheap at half the price.”

“Watch who you’re callin’ cheap!” the woman loudly exclaimed.

A man with a white apron tied around his waist came outside to investigate. “Now, Polly, you know better than to accost the customers. You know how the boss feels about that. He’s trying to run a proper place now.”

“Aw, Jed...” The woman’s voice turned wheedling.

Jed ignored her. “Do come on in, sir. And please excuse Polly’s boldness. Polly, take your friend—” the man pointed at Susannah “—and move along.”

Susannah couldn’t believe her ears. In 1995 Kane called her a Mata Hari, and here in 1884 she was being mistaken for a streetwalker! Clearly she was suffering from an image problem. Was it her perfume? she wondered with wry amusement. Her walk?

Don’t go off the deep end on me now, she lectured herself, snapping out of her momentary reverie to curtly say, “I am no friend of Polly’s.”

“That’s right,” Kane confirmed. “She’s with me.”

“Begging your pardon, sir. I didn’t mean no disrespect. It’s just that we don’t get many decent women in here.”

“Well, you’re about to get one now,” Susannah haughtily informed him, striding through the doorway, only to stop in her tracks at the force of fifty lascivious eyes turned to focus on her.

“What happened to keeping a low profile?” Kane dryly inquired in her ear.

She told herself her shiver was caused by the fifty-or-so eyes still trained on her. But the truth was it was caused by the feel of Kane’s warm breath tickling her ear. Since she’d always been ticklish that way, it was no big deal. Or so she told herself.

Getting out of this bar was a big deal, though. And something she planned on doing immediately.

But Kane had other ideas. Sensing she was about to bolt, he circled her arm with his fingers. “You’re not going anywhere. I told you that we need money.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “Well, I’m not about to earn it the way Polly out there does!”

For one split second his gaze slid down her body as if he were mentally undressing her. It was what the twenty-five other men in the room had done when she’d first walked in. But where their looks had turned her stomach, Kane’s heated look curled her toes. And the feel of his fingers on the sensitive skin just above her elbow was creating more-than-justifiable havoc.

“Stop jumping to conclusions,” he reprimanded her, his cool voice decidedly at odds with the intimate look he’d just given her. “Stay here a minute.”

Without further ado he released her in order to stroll over to the bar where he began speaking to the bartender—Jed, the streetwalker had called him. Susannah stood nearby, close enough to Kane that the other men in the room wouldn’t get any ideas about approaching her themselves, but too far away for her to hear what Kane and Jed were quietly discussing. While waiting, she fanned herself with her right hand. It was incredibly warm in the tavern. Downright stifling, in fact.

Remembering she had a fold-up fan in her purse, a convention giveaway, she dug inside the large bag hanging from her shoulder until she found what she was looking for. As she did so, she was struck by culture shock. When she’d gotten the free fan that morning, the year had been 1995 and she’d been a woman confident of her agenda.

Now she wasn’t confident about much of anything; but one thing was sure—that old saying about you not missing something until it was gone was right on the money. Now that the conveniences of modern life were gone, Susannah missed them more than she could say. Air-conditioning topped the list. Air freshener and deodorant were right up there, too, she decided with a dainty sniff. The room could use the former and the men in it, the latter.

A few minutes later, Kane returned to her side. “Are we leaving now?” she asked hopefully.

“No. We’re going to play some poker. Or more precisely, I’m going to play poker. You’re going to stand nearby and keep quiet.”

“Surely you jest,” she retorted.

“Not at all.”

“And how do you plan on playing poker with no money?”

“I suppose I could try and use you as the stakes,” he responded teasingly.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Try and die.”

“Somehow I figured you’d say that. So we’ll use your jewelry instead.”

“What’s with this ‘we’ business? And you’re not getting your grubby hands on my jewels.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, which gave him a devilish look that went well with his dark tux and tails.

“You know what I mean,” she muttered.

“You have a brighter idea?”

“There must be another way. A more reliable way than gambling.”

“If there is, we don’t have time to find out,” Kane said. “Jed tells me there’s a game just beginning in the back room. You’re welcome to wait outside with Polly, if you’d rather.”

She gave him a look that would have withered a rattlesnake before coolly informing him, “I’d rather have an iced cappuccino in front of an air conditioner set on High, but that doesn’t appear to be an option at the moment.”

“You’ve got that right. You’ll just have to make do with me.”

The man was laughing at her, damn him! She was prepared to give him a tongue-lashing—to use the vernacular of the time—when he put his arm around her, as if to solicitously lead her through the crowd in the tavern to the back room and the poker game. As he did so, he whispered a warning in her ear. “Don’t cause a scene here. Remember Bellevue.”

Bellevue? He had that right! She belonged in a mental institution for agreeing to this harebrained plan of his. Unfortunately she couldn’t come up with an alternative moneymaking scheme of her own at the moment.

So she kept quiet as Kane used the two rings she always wore—one a wide gold antique filigreed band she wore on her left hand, the other a half-carat channel-set diamond ring her parents had given her for her twenty-first birthday—as an opening stake into the game. Wryly wondering if her insurance policy covered losing her jewelry in a poker game held in 1884, Susannah was all too aware of the interested looks she was getting from the men in the smoky back room. Again, she was the only woman present.

The blue haze of cigar smoke was enough to make her stomach turn. Her queasiness was increased by the speed with which Kane began losing. Next he demanded her bracelet.

She immediately protested. “This was my—”

“Favorite bracelet. I know,” Kane said in a curt voice. “I’ll buy you another one.”

Despite the fact that he was losing, something about his confidence had her handing over her garnet-and-gold bracelet. And then her matching earrings. But she’d refused to take off her great-grandmother’s necklace. She absolutely drew the line there!

She watched with concern as the stack of coins Kane had been given dwindled to one. Kane had warned her not to say anything, but he was crazy if he thought she was going to stand here and watch him go into hock.

As if sensing her thoughts, he sent her a warning look before drawling, “Gentlemen, I appear to have a problem with dwindling resources.”

“Too bad,” a cigar-smoking man named J. P. Bellows said after spewing a series of perfect smoke rings. He was the most talkative of the bunch. “Appears I’ve won, then.”

“Not so fast,” Kane replied. “There’s still my wife’s necklace.”

Wife? Susannah doubted her hearing. Her ears were starting to ring from exhaustion. She’d gotten up at four that morning to catch a flight from New York to Savannah and had arrived at the convention center a little before nine, spent the day on her feet with little to eat—not to mention time traveling 111 years. A person was bound to get a little jet-lagged under those circumstances.

Which no doubt explained why she thought she’d heard Kane describe her as his wife. Not that she was going to argue the point now. She’d seen the heated looks the Southern so-called gentlemen had been sending her way and she had a feeling their thoughts were as blue as the air. She had no intention of becoming the center of their unwanted attention. Kane was the lesser of two evils. For the moment, at least.

While she’d been momentarily distracted by her thoughts, Kane had finalized the arrangements for using her necklace as collateral for his latest bet. And, to her horror, he bet the entire amount on the cards he was holding.

“You’re going to need more than a garnet necklace to call my bet,” J.P. told Kane.

The room was suddenly still. Into the silence fell a sudden beep-beep.

“What was that?” J.P. demanded.

“My watch,” Kane replied.

“I never heard a watch make that sound before.”

“It’s a very unusual watch.”

“Let’s see it, then.”

Kane held out his wrist and showed them his watch, with its LCD digital display and numerous function buttons.

“That’s no watch,” J.P. scoffed. “Where’s the face?”

“Doesn’t need one. See, the time is displayed in numbers.”

“Toss in that strange watch of yours and you’ve got a deal,” J.P. declared.

“Done.”

Susannah wished she knew enough about poker to know if his hand was good or not. The expression on his face gave nothing away. The dismay on hers no doubt encouraged the other men around the table.

Susannah clung to her necklace, which Kane had been wise enough not to try to remove from around her neck. Closing her eyes, she sent up a prayer.

Moments later she heard the collective groans from the other men at the table. Was that good or bad?

Her eyes flew open to see Kane raking a large pile of coins and paper money in his direction. “Did we win?”

“We won,” he confirmed.

A wave of wild relief overtook her common sense. “Yes!” She let out a triumphant whoop worthy of a football fan while making an elated victorious gesture, fisting one hand and rocking back on one foot.

Seeing the openmouthed, wide-eyed stares of the men around the table, Kane knew he had to act fast. “My wife is prone to fits,” he quickly stated. “There’s only one cure.”

“Fits?” she exclaimed in protest. The next thing she knew, he’d taken her in his arms and was kissing her. Totally caught off guard, Susannah didn’t know what to do. She’d never expected such behavior from Kane. And who could have known he’d kiss like this—devilishly seductive, swooping down to capture her parted lips with utter confidence.

The heat, she told herself desperately. It was the heat. And he was generating plenty of it! Her lips quivered beneath his as he continued kissing her for another heart-stopping moment. She’d never been kissed this way in her entire life—as if she were Eve in the Garden of Eden. The passion was direct and all-consuming. Temptation. His kiss represented it. Promised it.

Desire shot through her system, rendering her speechless, even after he let her go. She blinked up at him, and saw in his eyes a flash of the same startled amazement she was feeling. That had been no ordinary kiss he’d just given her. It had been as sudden and intense as a bolt of lightning, coming out of nowhere and zapping her.

Okay, so traveling through time had rattled her. Shaken her to the soles of her feet, if the truth be known. That was understandable. Being rattled and shaken by his kiss wasn’t. And it wasn’t acceptable.

Unless it was just that the thrill of victory had momentarily left her senseless? Yes, that must have been it. She’d been that relieved that he’d won the poker game that she’d had a temporary bout of insanity. It was as good an explanation as any. It was less disturbing than the reality of being attracted to Kane Wilder.

She watched in silence as Kane gathered up his winnings. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he told his fellow poker players. “It’s been a very pleasurable experience.” He shot a fiery look at Susannah as he said that.

“Wait, sir,” J.P. protested. “You must give us the chance to recoup our losses.”

“Another time, perhaps,” Kane replied. “I must see to my wife’s health. Could one of you recommend a respectable boardinghouse nearby?”