By the Bay (20 page)

He looked past her to the two women who sat in nearby chairs. 
Florence
and Christine, he was acquainted with one and had heard much of the other. Neither matched his knowledge.
Florence
was a little less warm. Christine was considerably more competent than he’d expected from what he’d heard.

Fervently he wished to be back out on the Belle Fleur, sailing in the wind. The need was so real that he could almost smell the sea air and feel the wind blow across his body.

Jillian! He needed Jillian. He closed his eyes, reminding himself that she stood at his side. And then the whole cycle of doubt and questioning began all over again.

“
Philippe
,” he heard his name whispered in her voice and his lashes lifted.

Two of them stood looking at him, one at his side and the other in the doorway with the man who said he was her father standing just behind her.

They looked just alike. He would never have been able to select his Jillian from the other, but when the newcomer rushed to his side and he opened his arms to receive her, he knew. All the magic was there, the rush of love and desire mixed, and his whole mind and body reacted to her.

“You’re alive! You’re alive!” the exclamation was smothered against his chest. He was still tender from his surgery, but he welcomed the pain of the pressure against the healing wound.

“Of a certainty,” he responded gruffly, looking past her at the image of herself staring at them hungrily. He wished everybody would go away and leave them alone, but the four stayed resolutely in place.

Florence
and Christine seemed startled by the presence of the second Jillian, but the other Jillian only looked very, very angry.

“You didn’t think I would go and die without telling you goodbye,” he chided the woman in his arms. “Besides they wouldn’t bring a priest, so how could I go to God with my sins unconfessed?”

“And we have really good medicine.” The man who looked so much like the two Jillians stepped closer. “I told you, Jillian, that we would save him for you.”

Then everybody tried to talk at once, but the first Jillian’s voice rose above them all.

“Who is she? And why is she kissing my fiancé?” she sounded beyond hysteria.

The second Jillian whirled on her. “He’s my husband.”

The two Jillians faced off, staring at each other with open antagonism. Then the father of one of them stepped forward while her aunt and mother remained frozen with shock in their chairs.

He took his daughter in his arms. “Hush, dearest, it’s only an illusion, a hologram created by the institute.  Come, let’s get back to normal.” Nodding to the two older women to follow him, he led his  daughter from the room.

Jillian stared as the door closed firmly behind them. “I wonder if that’s what happened with my mother. Did he tell her that what she was seeing wasn’t real so many times that eventually she didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t.”

To Philippe’s relief, her attention focused back on him. “I forgot for a moment there that she has only the memories that ripple through to her with each change. She doesn’t have the overall picture and of course Davis hasn’t enlightened any of them. I don’t suppose he’s allowed to
do so
.”

Philippe, who remembered bemoaning the fact
that he had a mixture of memories
, tried to understand, but this was beyond his experience.

“I’m only grateful you’re finally here.”

“I would have come sooner, but they wouldn’t let me.”

“They?”

As briefly as she could, she explained what had happened since she’d been brought forward in the same alternate world where he’d been fighting the British.

“Oh, my love,” he interrupted. “I must tell you that we lost, the Americans lost.”

She didn’t seem to
o
disturbed. “That was what was happened when the Timers took you away. Who knows what’s going on down there today.”

Then she had to do some more explaining.

Davis and the Timing team granted them two hours together, which they managed to spend most pleasantly, and then showed up to demand Jillian’s immediate assistance.

“We wouldn’t insist,” Davis said apologetically, “but things aren’t going well outside this building.”

Quickly
for Philippe’s benefit,
Jillian added the new information that they were inside the Timing headquarters where time stood still.

“We’ve had three ripples while you were in here. The last one was so bad we couldn’t wait any longer,” this time it was Roderick making the explanations. “It’s pretty bad.”

She nodded and got to her feet, allowing her hand to unlink from Philippe’s very slowly. She so hated to let him go.

“Stop!” Philippe shouted as she turned toward the door. “You will not depart without me.”

His French accent was particularly
dominant
today, almost as though he was having to remember with each word how to speak English.

“We have to take her away with us” Davis said, “She just might make the difference. We’re beating ourselves to death with these changes, we’ve got to do something to stop them.”

They forgot who he was and what he’d been. They thought they’d just sa
y
a few sensible sounding words and he would give in and allow them to separate him from his wife once more.

He commanded men in life and death decisions. His life was a hard one that these soft men of the future couldn’t understand. He would not take orders from this man and his people. “You are not to leave, Jillian.”

She stared at  him,
then grinned. “Why, captain,” she said. “I do like it when you go all manly on me like this.”

He ignored her tone. She wasn’t taking him seriously, but it was his place to make certain she was not used by these people in a way that was not good for her. He began to climb from the bed, embarrassed that the garment in which they had dressed him displayed an uncomfortably large area of his body.

Jillian gave a long,
low whistle of appreciat
ion
. He found he didn’t mind that, though he didn’t care for the stares from the others. “Bring my clothes to me. I must dress.”

It was humiliating to find that he was less than steady on his feet, but when Jillian slipped under one of his arms so that she could serve as his crutch, he was able to remain standing. “My clothes,” he said again in his best command voice.

“I’m ssssorry,” one of the women
stuttered
an awkward apology, “but they were incinerated. They were blood soaked, you see.” She stared at him as though she found him fascinating.

“
T
hen bring me appropriate garments for outside wear. I’m going with Jillian.”

“You can’t do that,” the young man protested. “The doctors will never release you. You’re still recovering from surgery.”

“No one will tell me what to do. You will bring me clothing and a weapon. I will not allow my wife to go out from this place unless I have the means to defend her.”

He pulled her closely against him. If they tried to
take
her away, he was ready to do battle. It would not be the first time he had fought when he was weak and injured.

“Jillian,” Davis Blake ordered. “Talk sense to this man.”

He felt her sag slightly as though air went out of her. “He’s right, my darling.  You’re in no condition to leave the hospital. I’ll just go with them and get back to you as soon as I can.”

This time he grabbed her arm to keep her in place. “You do not go without me.”

“But Philippe . . .”

“We are together,” he insisted. “Always.”

She looked up into his face, their eyes met and she seemed to recognize the determination within him.

Davis saw it too. He sighed as though this was just too much to bear. “Get his clothes and a gun,” he said, “and get him a wheel chair. “

When they brought the clothes, he made them leave while Jillian helped him get into garments that were strange and boringly plain, but functional. He would have preferred boots, but the shoes they brought
fit well
enough. The weapon was strange and Jillian had to show him how it worked and made sure that it was not only loaded, but extra ammunition was included. He secured it beneath his shirt and then she went to summon the others back inside.

He absolutely refused the chair with wheels and walked out under his own power.

Chapter Twenty
Eight

Braced for something awful to come into view the instant she stepped outside, Jillian was surprised to find a scene of relative normalcy. Not many people were on the streets
;
nobody was fighting a war or shooting at each other.

Palms stood sentinel nearby, huge gorgeous blooms burst with color. It was winter in the Rio Grande Valley, a season, she thought, like nothing she would have seen in Kansas.

She glanced indignantly at Davis, certain he had hurried her from Philippe’s hospital room under false pretenses of an emergency. He shook his head, understanding her doubts. “Just wait,” he said.

He led them to a small vehicle and climbed in the driver’s seat, motioning to Jillian and Philippe to join him. The others stepped back and simply watched as they drove away.

Philippe took her hand in his and she looked anxiously into his face. He was a little pale, but otherwise didn’t look too bad for a man who had just emerged from the hospital after major surgery.

After they drove about a block, the landscape abruptly changed. It was winter still, but real winter with snow blowing against the windshield of the car and even beginning to pile on the grass along the sides of the road. A sudden sharp chill cut through the air.

She glanced at Davis, but he kept his gaze resolutely fixed on the street ahead. Philippe’s grasp on her hand tightened.

Three more blocks and the snow changed to rain. People on the sidewalks strained against a regular gale as they tried to walk. Jillian recognized the feel to the air, the strange sense of expectancy. This was hurricane weather.

She looked at Davis. “What is going on?”

He kept driving,
edging
around a large branch that had blown into the street.

The heavy rains lasted quite a while, at least a
few
mile
s
. She recognized the direction in which Davis was determinedly heading. He was going back to Port Isabel.

Once she saw by the flash of lightning
in
the darkening day that a man trying to get into his car suddenly vanished, but if there was a ripple in the air, it was so slight that she didn’t feel it.

Philippe pulled her close to his side as though to keep her safe, but seemed otherwise unalarmed. She supposed he had been through much worse storms on board the Belle Fleur.

Then the weather changed abruptly for the better and they drove through relatively normal times until they reached Port Isabel. The town they entered was one she remembered.

They drove past
Owen
and
Florence
’s café, the little grocery downtown, D
oc
Hockaday’s office. The old lighthouse, no longer in use, set as a landmark to the Point Isabel days
when it had guided ships safely to shore
. “This looks like home,” she whispered. “Are we back?”

“As I said before, the doorway to your reality is firmly closed,” Davis contributed, “the ripples are fast and localized now. This is one which seems normal to you, maybe caused by your presence and Philippe’s.

             
They got out of the car, Philippe moving a little slowly so that she knew his pain was getting worse. She grabbed his arm and only barely managed to keep him from falling. He straightened indignantly, refusing to admit to weakness.

She savored the look of the little cottage with the shutters
Owen
had painted green last spring and the porch swing where Mother liked to sit. The
Stewart
s
’
cottage next door was better kept up, though in the years when the couple had been raising their large family, the yard had been worn down by the constant stepping of feet. The short, squatty palm out
front
was green and healthy.

Nothing
wrong
here. Jus
t lots of normal, everyday life going on next door the way it always had. She’d played with the younger
Stewart
children when she was growing up. As a teen, she’d even briefly dated one of the boys. Now they were all grown up and married and had homes of their own.

She savored the view of the bay and thought she saw a glimpse of porpoises leaping above the water, but her main focus was on the cottage that was her home. She couldn’t help hoping that Davis was
wrong
and this really was her home and not some alternative location in his reality.