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Here and Then
Selected praise for
LINDA LAEL
MILLER
“Linda Lael Miller is the greatest.”
—Affaire de Coeur
“Her characters come alive and walk right off the pages and into your heart.”
—Rendezvous
“Linda Lael Miller knows how to reveal the hearts of her characters, creating memorable people readers care about.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on One Wish
“A complex plot, blended with sinister motivations and genuine emotions, makes this one terrific page-turner.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Never Look Back
Here and Then
Linda Lael Miller
LINDA LAEL MILLER
grew up in rural Washington as the daughter of a town marshal. The self-confessed barn goddess was inspired to pursue a career as an author after an elementary school teacher said the stories she was writing might be good enough to be published.
Linda broke in to publishing in the early 1980s. She is now a New York Times bestselling author of more than sixty contemporary, romantic-suspense and historical novels, including McKettrick’s Choice, The Man from Stone Creek and Deadly Gamble. When not writing, Linda enjoys riding her horses and playing with her cats and dogs. Through her Linda Lael Miller Scholarships for Women, she provides grants to women who seek to improve their lot in life through education.
For more information about Linda, her scholarships and her novels, visit her Web site, www.lindalaelmiller.com.
For Jane and Dick Edwards,
the kind of friends I always hoped I’d have
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter One
Aunt Verity’s antique necklace lay in an innocent, glimmering coil of gold on the floor of the upstairs hallway. An hour before, when Rue Claridge had been carrying her suitcases upstairs, it had not been there.
Frowning, Rue got down on one knee and reached for the necklace, her troubled gaze rising to the mysterious, sealed door in the outside wall. Beyond it was nothing but empty space. The part of the house it had once led to had been burned away a century before and never rebuilt.
Aunt Verity had hinted at spooky doings in the house over the years, tales concerning both the door and the necklace. Rue had enjoyed the yarns, but being practical in nature, she had promptly put them out of her mind.
Rue’s missing cousin, Elisabeth, had mentioned the necklace and the doorway in those strange letters she’d written in an effort to outline what was happening to her. She’d said a person wearing the necklace could travel through time.
In fact, Elisabeth—gentle, sensible Elisabeth—had claimed she’d clasped the chain around her neck and soon found herself in the 1890s, surrounded by living, breathing people who should have been dead a hundred years.
A chill wove a gossamer casing around Rue’s spine as she recalled snatches of Elisabeth’s desperate letters.
You’re the one person in the world who might, just might, believe me. Those wonderful, spooky stories Aunt Verity told us on rainy nights were true. There is another world on the other side of that door in the upstairs hallway, one every bit as solid and real as the one you and I know, and I’ve reached it. I’ve been there, Rue, and I’ve met the man meant to share my life. His name is Jonathan Fortner, and I love him more than my next heartbeat, my next breath.
A pounding headache thumped behind Rue’s right temple, and she let out a long sigh as she rose to her feet, her fingers pressing the necklace deep into her palm. With her other hand, she pushed a lock of sandy, shoulder-length hair back from her face and stared at the sealed door.
Years ago there had been rooms on the other side, but then, late in the last century, there had been a tragic fire. The damage had been repaired, but the original structure was changed forever. The door had been sealed, and now the doorknob was as old and stiff as a rusted padlock.
“Bethie,” Rue whispered, touching her forehead against the cool, wooden panel of the door, “where are you?”
There was no answer. The old country house yawned around her, empty except for the ponderous nineteenth-century furniture Aunt Verity had left as a part of her estate and a miniature universe of dust particles that seemed to pervade every room, every corner and crevice.
At thirty, Rue was an accomplished photojournalist. She’d dodged bullets and bombs in Belfast, photographed and later written about the massacre in Tiananmen Square, covered the invasion of Panama, nearly been taken captive in Baghdad. And while all of those experiences had shaken her and some had left her physically ill for days afterward, none had frightened her so profoundly as Elisabeth’s disappearance.
The police and Elisabeth’s father believed Elisabeth had simply fled the area after her divorce, that she was lying on a beach somewhere, sipping exotic tropical drinks and letting the sun bake away her grief. But because she knew her cousin, because of the letters and phone messages that had been waiting when she returned from an assignment in Moscow, Rue took a much darker view of the situation.
Elisabeth was wandering somewhere, if she was alive at all, perhaps not even remembering who she was. Rue wouldn’t allow herself to dwell on all the other possibilities, because they didn’t bear thinking about.
Downstairs in the big kitchen, she brewed a cup of instant coffee in Elisabeth’s microwave and sat down at the big, oak table in the breakfast nook to go over the tattered collection of facts one more time. Before her were her cousin’s letters, thoughtfully written, with no indications of undue stress in the familiar, flowing hand.
With a sigh, Rue pushed away her coffee and rested her chin in one palm. Elisabeth had come to the house the two cousins had inherited to get a new perspective on her life. She’d planned to make her home outside the little Washington town of Pine River and teach at the local elementary school in the fall. The two old ladies across the road, Cecily and Roberta Buzbee, had seen Elisabeth on several occasions. It had been Miss Cecily who had called an ambulance after finding Elisabeth unconscious in the upstairs hallway. Rue’s cousin had been rushed to the hospital, where she’d stayed a relatively short time, and soon after that, she’d vanished.
Twilight was falling over the orchard behind the house, the leaves thinning on the gray-brown branches because it was late October. Rue watched as a single star winked into view in the purple sky. Oh, Bethie, she thought, as a collage of pictures formed in her mind…an image of a fourteen-year-old Elisabeth predominated—Bethie, looking down at Rue from the door of the hayloft in the rickety old barn. “Don’t worry,” the woman-child had called cheerfully on that long-ago day when Rue had first arrived, bewildered and angry, to take sanctuary under Aunt Verity’s wing. “This is a good place and you’ll be happy here.” Rue saw herself and Bethie fishing and wading in the creek near the old covered bridge and reading dog-eared library books in the highest branches of the maple tree that shaded the back door. And listening to Verity’s wonderful stories in front of the parlor fire, chins resting on their updrawn knees, arms wrapped around agile young legs clad in blue jeans.
The jangle of the telephone brought Rue out of her reflections, and she muttered to herself as she made her way across the room to pick up the extension on the wall next to the sink. “Hello,” she snapped, resentful because she’d felt closer to Elisabeth for those few moments and the caller had scattered her memories like a flock of colorful birds.
“Hello, Claridge,” a wry male voice replied. “Didn’t they cover telephone technique where you went to school?”
Rue ignored the question and shoved the splayed fingers of one hand through her hair, pulling her scalp tight over her forehead.
“Hi, Wilson,” she said, Jeff’s boyish face forming on the screen of her mind. She’d been dating the guy for three years, on and off, but her heart never gave that funny little thump she’d read about when she saw his face or heard his voice. She wondered if that meant anything significant.
“Find out anything about your cousin yet?”
Rue leaned against the counter, feeling unaccountably weary. “No,” she said. “I talked to the police first thing, and they agree with Uncle Marcus that she’s probably hiding out somewhere, licking her wounds.”
“You don’t think so?”
Unconsciously, Rue shook her head. “No way. Bethie would never just vanish without telling anyone where she was going…she’s the most considerate person I know.” Her gaze strayed to the letters spread out on the kitchen table, unnervingly calm accounts of journeys to another point in time. Rue shook her head again, denying that such a thing could be possible.
“I could fly out and help you,” Jeff offered, and Rue’s practical heart softened a little.
“That won’t be necessary,” she said, twisting one finger in the phone cord and frowning. Finding Elisabeth was going to take all her concentration and strength of will, she told herself. The truth was, she didn’t want Jeff getting in the way.
Her friend sighed, somewhat dramatically. “So be it, Claridge. If you decide I have any earthly use, give me a call, will you?”
Rue laughed. “What?” she countered. “No violin music?” In the next instant, she remembered that Elisabeth was missing, and the smile faded from her face. “Thanks for offering, Jeff,” she said seriously. “I’ll call if there’s anything you can do to help.”
After that, there didn’t seem to be much to say, and that was another element of the relationship Rue found troubling. It would have been a tremendous relief to tell someone she was worried and scared, to say Elisabeth was more like a sister to her than a cousin, maybe even to cry on a sympathetic shoulder. But Rue couldn’t let down her guard that far, not with Jeff. She often got the feeling that he was just waiting for her to show weakness or to fall on her face.
The call ended, and Rue, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, put on a jacket and went out to the shed for an armload of the aged applewood that had been cut and stacked several years before. Because Rue and Elisabeth had so rarely visited the house they’d inherited, the supply had hardly been diminished.
As she came through the back door, the necklace caught her eye, seeming to twinkle and wink from its place on the kitchen table. Rue’s brow crimped thoughtfully as she made her way into the parlor and set the fragrant wood down on the hearth.
After moving aside the screen, she laid twigs in the grate over a small log of compressed sawdust and wax. When the blaze had kindled properly, she added pieces of seasoned wood. Soon, a lovely, cheerful fire was crackling away behind the screen.
Rue adjusted the damper and rose, dusting her hands off on the legs of her jeans. She was tired and distraught, and suddenly she couldn’t keep her fears at bay any longer. She’d been a reporter for nine eventful years, and she knew only too well the terrible things that could have happened to Elisabeth.
She went back to the kitchen and, without knowing exactly why, reached for the necklace and put it on, even before taking off her jacket. Then, feeling chilled, she returned to the parlor to stand close to the fire.
Rue was fighting back tears of frustration and fear, her forehead touching the mantelpiece, when she heard the distant tinkling of piano keys. She was alone in the house, and she was certain no radio or TV was playing….
Her green eyes widened when she looked into the ornately framed mirror above the fireplace, and her throat tightened: The room reflected there was furnished differently, and was lit with the soft glow of lantern light. Rue caught a glimpse of a plain woman in long skirts running a cloth over the keys of a piano before the vision faded and the room was ordinary again.
Turning slowly, Rue rubbed her eyes with a thumb and forefinger. She couldn’t help thinking of Elisabeth’s letters describing a world like the one she’d just seen, for a fraction of a second, in the parlor mirror.
“You need a vacation,” Rue said, glancing back over her shoulder at her image in the glass. “You’re hallucinating.”
Nonetheless, she made herself another cup of instant coffee, gathered up the letters and went to sit cross-legged on the hooked rug in front of the fireplace. Once again, she read and analyzed every word, looking for some clue, anything that would tell her where to begin the search for her cousin.
Thing was, Rue thought, Bethie sounded eminently sane in those letters, despite the fact that she talked about stepping over a threshold into another time in history. Her descriptions of the era were remarkably authentic; she probably would have had to have done days or weeks of research to know the things she did. But the words seemed fluent and easy, as though they’d flowed from her pen.
Finally, no closer to finding Elisabeth than she had been before, Rue set the sheets of writing paper aside, banked the fire and climbed the front stairway to the second floor. She would sleep in the main bedroom—many of Elisabeth’s things were still there—and maybe by some subconscious, instinctive process, she would get a glimmer of guidance concerning her cousin’s whereabouts.
As it was, she didn’t have the first idea where to start.
She showered, brushed her teeth, put on a nightshirt and went to bed. Although she had taken the necklace off when she undressed, she put it back on again before climbing beneath the covers.
The sheets were cold, and Rue burrowed down deep, shivering. If it hadn’t been for the circumstances, she would have been glad to be back in this old house, where all the memories were good ones. Like Ribbon Creek, the Montana ranch she’d inherited from her mother’s parents, Aunt Verity’s house was a place to hole up when there was an important story to write or a decision to work out. She’d always loved the sweet, shivery sensation that the old Victorian monstrosity was haunted by amicable ghosts.
As her body began to warm the crisp, icy sheets, Rue hoped those benevolent apparitions were hanging around now, willing to lend a hand. “Please,” she whispered, “show me how to find Elisabeth. She’s my cousin and the closest thing I ever had to a sister and my very best friend, all rolled into one—and I think she’s in terrible trouble.”
After that, Rue tossed and turned for a while, then fell into a restless sleep marred by frightening dreams. One of them was so horrible that it sent her hurtling toward the surface of consciousness, and when she broke through into the morning light, she was breathing in gasping sobs and there were tears on her face.
And she could clearly hear a woman’s voice singing, “Shall We Gather at the River?”
Her heart thundering against her chest, Rue flung back the covers and bounded out of bed, following the sound into the hallway, where she looked wildly in one direction, then the other. The voice seemed to be rising through the floorboards and yet, at the same time, it came from beyond the sealed door of the outside wall.
Rue put her hands against the wooden panel, remembering Elisabeth’s letters. There was a room on the other side, Bethie had written, a solid place with floors and walls and a private stairway leading into the kitchen.
“Who’s there?” Rue called, and the singing immediately stopped, replaced by a sort of stunned stillness. She ran along the hallway, peering into each of the three bedrooms, then hurried down the back stairs and searched the kitchen, the utility room, the dining room, the bathroom and both parlors. There was no one else in the house, and none of the locks on the windows or doors had been disturbed.
Frustrated, Rue stormed over to the piano on which she and Elisabeth had played endless renditions of “Heart and Soul,” threw up the cover and hammered out the first few bars of “Shall We Gather at the River?” in challenge.
“Come on!” she shouted over the thundering chords.
“Show yourself, damn it! Who are you? What are you?”
The answer was the slamming of a door far in the distance.
Rue left the piano and bounded back up the stairs, because the sound had come from that direction. Reaching the sealed door, she grabbed the knob and rattled the panel hard on its hinges, and surprise rushed through her like an electrical shock when it gave way.
Muttering an exclamation, Rue peered through the opening at the charred ruins of a fire. A trembling began in the cores of her knees as she looked at blackened timbers that shouldn’t have been there.
It was a moment before she could gather her wits enough to step back from the door, leaving it agape, and dash wildly down the front stairs. She went hurtling out through the front door and plunged around to the side, only to see the screened sun porch just where it had always been, with no sign of the burned section.
Barely able to breathe, Rue circled the house once, then raced back inside and up the stairs. The door was still open, and beyond it lay another time or another dimension.
“Elisabeth!” Rue shouted, gripping the sooty doorjamb and staring down through the ruins.
A little girl in a pinafore and old-fashioned, pinchy black shoes appeared in the overgrown grass, shading her eyes with a small, grubby hand as she looked up at Rue. “You a witch like her?” the child called, her tone cordial and unruffled.
Rue’s heartbeat was so loud that it was thrumming in her ears. She stepped back, then forward, then back again. She stumbled blindly into her room and pulled on jeans, a T-shirt, socks and sneakers, not taking the time to brush her sleep-tangled hair, and she was climbing deftly down through the ruins before she had a moment to consider the consequences.
The child, who had been so brave at a distance, was now backing away, stumbling in her effort to escape, her freckles standing out on her pale face, her eyes enormous.
Great, Rue thought, half-hysterically, now I’m scaring small children.
“Please don’t run away,” she managed to choke out. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
The girl appeared to be weighing Rue’s words, and it seemed that some of the fear had left her face. In the next instant, however, a woman came running around the corner of the house, shrieking and flapping her apron at Rue as though to shoo her away like a chicken.
“Don’t you dare touch that child!” she screeched, and Rue recognized her as the drab soul she’d glimpsed in the parlor mirror the night before, wiping the piano keys.
Rue had withstood much more daunting efforts at intimidation during her travels as a reporter. She held her ground, her hands resting on her hips, her mind cataloging material so rapidly that she was barely aware of the process. The realization that Elisabeth had been right about the necklace and the door in the upstairs hallway and that she was near to finding her, was as exhilarating as a skydive.
“Where did you come from?” the plain woman demanded, thrusting the child slightly behind her.
Rue didn’t even consider trying to explain. In the first place, no one would believe her, and in the second, she didn’t understand what was going on herself. “Back there,” she said, cocking a thumb toward the open doorway above. That was when she noticed that her hands and the knees of her jeans were covered with soot from the climb down through the timbers. “I’m looking for my Cousin Elisabeth.”
“She ain’t around,” was the grudging, somewhat huffy reply. The woman glanced down at the little girl and gave her a tentative shove toward the road. “You run along now, Vera. I saw Farley riding toward your place just a little while ago. If you meet up with him, tell him he ought to come on over here and have a talk with this lady.”
Vera assessed Rue with uncommonly shrewd eyes—she couldn’t have been older than eight or nine—then scampered away through the deep grass.
Rue took a step closer to the woman, even though she was beginning to feel like running back to her own safe world, the one she understood. “Do you know Elisabeth McCartney?” she pressed.
The drudge twisted her calico apron between strong, work-reddened fingers, and her eyes strayed over Rue’s clothes and wildly tousled hair with unconcealed and fearful disapproval. “I never heard of nobody by that name,” she said.
Rue didn’t believe that for a moment, but she was conscious of a strange and sudden urgency, an instinct that warned her to tread lightly, at least for the time being. “You haven’t seen the last of me,” she said, and then she climbed back up through the charred beams to the doorway, hoping her own world would be waiting for her on the other side. “I’ll be back.”
Her exit was drained of all drama when she wriggled over the threshold and found herself on a hard wooden floor decorated with a hideous Persian runner. The hallway in the modern-day house was carpeted.
“Oh, no,” she groaned, just lying there for a moment, trying to think what to do. The curtain in time that had permitted her to pass between one century and the other had closed, and she had no way of knowing when—or if—it would ever open again.
It was just possible that she was trapped in this rerun of Gunsmoke—permanently.
“Damn,” she groaned, getting to her feet and running her hands down the sooty denim of her jeans. When she’d managed to stop shaking, Rue approached one of the series of photographs lining the wall and looked up into the dour face of an old man with a bushy white beard and a look of fanatical righteousness about him. “I sure hope you’re not hanging around here somewhere,” she muttered.
Next, she cautiously opened the door of the room she’d slept in the night before—only it wasn’t the same. All the furniture was obviously antique, yet it looked new. Rue backed out and proceeded along the hallway, her sense of fascinated uneasiness growing with every passing moment.
“Through the looking glass,” she murmured to herself. “Any minute now, I should meet a talking rabbit with a pocket watch and a waistcoat.”
“Or a United States marshal,” said a deep male voice.
Rue whirled, light-headed with surprise, and watched in disbelief as a tall, broad-shouldered cowboy with a badge pinned to his vest mounted the last of the front stairs to stand in the hall. His rumpled brown hair was a touch too long, his turquoise eyes were narrowed with suspicion, and he was badly in need of a shave.
This guy was straight out of the late movie, but his personal magnetism was strictly high-tech.
“What’s your name?” he asked in that gravelly voice of his.
Rue couldn’t help thinking what a hit this guy would be in the average singles’ bar. Not only was he good-looking, in a rough, tough sort of way, he had macho down to an art form. “Rue Claridge,” she said, just a little too heartily, extending one hand in friendly greeting.
The marshal glanced at her hand, but failed to offer his own. “You make a habit of prowling around in other people’s houses?” he asked. His marvelous eyes widened as he took in her jeans, T-shirt and sneakers.
