Intertwine (34 page)

Excellent questions to which he had no answer.

“I don’t know. What is this medicine they would give Georgiana?”

“Antibiotics.”

James frowned slightly. “Another thing I’m not familiar with.”

“Yes, well, you are over a century away from their discovery. The simplest explanation is that they are like a kind of mold that targets the infection.”

“Mold?” James pulled back to look in her eyes. “Truly?”

Emme nodded her head.

“Well, who knew it was so simple.”

She laughed. “I don’t know that antibiotics are that simple, though they certainly save lives. But there is still time. Georgiana is ill but hardly at death’s door, and from what I remember, tuberculosis takes a good while to kill a person. It is not a fast disease.”

Silent for a moment, Emme rested her head against his shoulder, holding him, her body melting trustingly into his. She shifted slightly in his arms.

“What if the portal doesn’t work?” she asked quietly, her voice muffled against his coat. “What if I never see my family again?”

James pondered it for a moment, running his hand soothingly up her back.

Finally, he said, “I’ve always thought that life is a pattern of opposites. In any relationship, there is a line. A point where you cross over, and you can no longer extricate your life from another’s without pain.” James paused, hugging her more tightly and then continued. “For example, I only feel the terror of Georgiana’s death because I love her so well. The desperation of losing her is directly tied to the joy of having her in my life.”

He stilled for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. Realizing what he needed to say, James gently pulled her away from his shoulder and took her face in his hands.

“I love you, Emry Wilde. You have my heart. And I cannot . . . no . . . I will not live my life without you. Not as long as you are willing to accept me.”

The rightness of his words pounded through him. He watched as Emme’s eyes drank him in, suddenly brimming with tears.

“I love you too, James Knight,” she whispered.

She hiccupped and closed her eyes, catching her quivering bottom lip in her teeth. After a second, she rubbed her cheek against his hand and opened her lovely hazel eyes, bright gold and green and fathomless.

“I have loved you for so long,” she whispered. “So incredibly long. Yearned for you. Sought you. And now to have you here. With me. . .”

Her words faltered. Emotions skittered across her face.

“It’s more than just a dream. It’s a fantasy. You are the most amazing . . . the most unimaginable gift.”

Emme paused, glancing down for a moment before raising her eyes and continuing. “But what if it is not enough? What if the portal doesn’t work? What if I’m stuck here, in 1812?”

James raised an eyebrow.

“I mean, I would struggle if I had to stay here permanently. Not only would I miss my family and friends, but I would feel so helpless watching those I love suffer from easily treatable diseases. There is just so much that I would miss. . . .”

James let his hands drop from her face, taking her hands in his and holding them tightly.

Emme continued, “Or worse, what if you came forward with me and hated it? At least I know what I’m getting into here, but all you have is my word that the future is a decent place. I’ve barely scratched the surface on all the problems of the 21st century. And trust me, there are a lot of them; it’s not just all sleek electronics and Angry Birds and—”

“Emme, there will be difficulties no matter what—”

“Just listen, James. I worry that one of us might come to resent the other, to resent the life we have chosen.” She bit her lip, fighting against emotion. “I would hate for something to slowly eat away at us. At our love.”

James sighed and nodded slowly. Thinking again.

“My love, there are no guarantees. No promises I can make that will ensure everything will be fine ten years from now or next year or even next month.”

He lifted her hand and brushed a kiss across her knuckles.

“But, Emme, I do know this. We have crossed that line. Utterly and thoroughly. It is foolishness to think that life’s greatest joys don’t also come with some of life’s greatest pain. If we wish to be together, one of us will have to give up our current world. Our family. Our friends. Everything. And the other will have to watch it happen—”

“But James—”

“No, now it’s my turn to talk.” He placed a finger over her lips. “I often think it’s harder to watch someone I love in pain than to be the one in pain. Georgiana’s suffering consumes me. But for you and I, darling Emme, there
will
be sorrow and loss. As of right now, that is part of the contract. The price of our being together. Any decision we make will involve some pain. The only decision I cannot make would be to part from you. That, my love, is the one thing I could not bear. The one pain that would be too terrible to endure.”

Emme wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her head into his throat again.

“Why do you have to be so perfect?” she muttered into his neckcloth.

James chuckled and held her for a few long moments. At last, she pulled back and gazed at him, leaning against his arms twined around her waist.

“Fortunately, I think we do have some time to work through this decision,” she said. “Georgiana’s health seems stable and Duir Cottage needs to be built, the portal secured. And, well, there is the locket to consider.”

She touched the locket where it lay around her neck. Since realizing that James actually was the man in the locket, she had begun wearing it more.

James tilted his head, trying to make sense of how the locket continued to be an issue. Emme smiled at his puzzled look.

“I have seen enough movies to know not to mess with the space-time continuum.” Her voice sounded a little prim.

James laughed. “Space-time continuum? I think you are making up words now, my dear.”

Her answering laugh was light and silvery.

“Oh, James, it’s a real thing. Let me try to explain. The locket is where it all began. If the locket isn’t created, then I don’t find it in Portland in 2008. And, if I never find the locket, then I never obsess on you, never come to Marfield, never stay in Duir Cottage. In effect, I never find you. So creating the locket is the most important task to complete before we can even attempt to pass through the portal. Until that is done, all this wondering is actually a moot point.”

James nodded his head. He thought he understood. Maybe.

“So how did the locket get from here to Portland, Oregon?”

Emme shrugged. “I have no idea. I found it in the bottom of an antique traveling trunk. But it can’t end up there if it never existed here in the first place.”

“True, very true,” James nodded. “I suppose that makes sense. I’ll have to check with Arthur, but I do believe Spunto is scheduled to arrive this week to take our portraits. Yours included. If you get a locket of me, then I most certainly get a locket of you.”

She smiled at him, wry and amused, her eyes sparkling in the afternoon light.

He kissed her nose, because really at that moment she looked too adorable not to kiss.

She took a deep breath. “Okay, so we are agreed. We make sure the locket is painted, created and done.”

“Exactly,” James nodded. “And then we move on to settling my affairs so I can travel through the portal, assuming that we can. Or arrange our lives here, if we cannot.”

James watched Emme suddenly blink back tears, her lips trembling. “Agreed. But the decision seems so final,” she whispered. “I could spend the rest of my life here or you could find yourself stuck for forever in 2012.”

“But that’s just it, my love,” James murmured in reply. “Regardless of where we are, I want us to be together forever. I want your forevers. All of them. Past, present and future.”

Haldon Manor

The drawing room

Two days later

June 17, 1812

Giovanni Spunto had arrived to paint the portraits James had commissioned. He was exactly as Emme had imagined: small, wiry and bouncing with an artist’s energy. He surveyed them all and then announced his intention to begin with James.

Emme watched quietly from the drawing room doorway as Spunto positioned James into the three-fourths position of the locket. James had donned the new coat he had received from his tailor. The exact blue-green coat in the locket.

Glancing surreptitiously over Spunto’s shoulder as he worked, Emme watched the image in her locket come to life. Saw the small strokes that created her original obsession, as the artist sketched the portrait.

She lifted her head and caught James’ eye. Held and stared. Feeling the wonder of him hum through her.

Later that evening, after Georgiana and Arthur had retired, Emme followed James into his study.

“You must keep this jacket,” she murmured, tucking her hands around his lapels. “I have loved you in it for far too long.”

James laughed softly and bent down to capture a sweet, lingering kiss.

“That reminds me,” he whispered against her lips and then, with one final peck, he released her and walked over to his desk.

Puzzled, Emme followed and watched as he pulled out a pair of scissors. Turning back to her, James reached up and touched the one stray curl over her ear that always managed to escape. “I think I’m going to need this.” Reaching out, he gently kissed the curl and then snipped it off.

Emme smiled as he walked back to his desk and placed the locket of hair on a piece of paper.

“Not so fast,” she said. She came to his side and removed the scissors from his hand. “Two can play at this game.”

Kissing his cheek, she ran her fingers leisurely through his hair, studying for a moment before snipping. She laid his blond lock next to her dark one on the paper. He carefully folded the paper, trapping its contents.

“You will need this too.” She looped the locket off of her neck. “Let me trace the design off the back. It will need to be on the locket and carved into the stone in the basement of Duir Cottage.”

Emme sat at his desk and carefully copied the intertwined initials, James watching quietly. When she finished, he took the traced design and wrapped it around the locks of hair.

“Now, we just have to wait for Mr. Spunto to finish the portrait. He said it should only take a couple weeks.”

Emme nodded in agreement.

Leaning against his desk, he gazed at her. “Miss Wilde, what strange things are you going to unfold to me tonight? What 21st century wonders await?”

Emme pondered for a moment, tapping her lips. With a mysterious chuckle, she pulled out her phone and pink earbuds. She stepped close to him and placed one earphone into his ear and put the other into her own. Scrolling through her music until she found the right song, she pushed play and then slipped her phone back into her stays.

“Mr. Knight, I think it’s about time you learned something other than a waltz.”

James raised an eyebrow as she assumed a closed dance position with him.

And then he smiled more broadly as Emme proceeded to teach him how to tango.

Chapter 28

Sutton Hall

The ballroom