Linda Lael Miller Bundle (36 page)

The idea left a keen, biting sense of loneliness in its wake, but Rue was determined to accept the fact and get on with her life.

Of course, before she could do that, she had to see Bethie just once more.

Instead of going home, Rue drove into Seattle.

She visited a coin shop first, where she purchased an expensive selection of bills and coins issued between 1880 and 1892. After that, Rue visited a dusty little secondhand store tucked away in an alley behind a delicatessen, and bought herself a graceful ivory gown with tatting on the cuffs and collar, and a waist-length capelet to match. A little searching unearthed a pair of brown, high-button shoes and a parasol.

Rue coughed as the shop’s proprietress shook out the ancient garment and prepared to wrap it. “Is this a theatrical costume, or was it a part of a real wardrobe?”

The other woman smiled wistfully. “I suspect this gown came from a camphor trunk in someone’s attic, since it’s in relatively good condition. If you’ll look closely at the handwork, you’ll see it’s made to last.”

“Is it washable?”

“I wouldn’t try that. The fabric is terribly old; water or dry-cleaning solution might dissolve the fibers.”

Rue nodded, feeling fond of that romantic old relic of a dress already, and hoping she could make it hold together long enough to get back to 1892, have a couple of practical calico dresses made and find Elisabeth. Between her poker winnings and the old currency she’d purchased at the coin shop, Rue figured she’d have enough money to catch a boat or a train to San Francisco, where Elisabeth and Jonathan were supposed to have gone.

As Rue was driving back to Pine River, a light rain began to fall. She found a classical station on the car radio—Rue’s musical tastes covered the full range, but on that particular night, Mozart had the greatest appeal.

It truly startled her to realize, just as she reached the outskirts of Pine River, that there were tears on her face.

Rue rarely cried, not because she was in any way above it, but because she’d long ago learned that weeping solved nothing. In fact, it usually just complicated matters.

Nevertheless, her cheeks seemed as wet as the windshield, and her feelings were an odd, explosive tangle. Methodically, she began to separate them.

Meeting Michael Blake had given her a shattering sense of the gossamer threads that link the past with the present and the future. If for some reason Elisabeth changed her mind about staying in 1892 and following through with the new destiny she’d created for herself by making that choice, Michael and a lot of other people would simply be obliterated.

To make matters worse, the problem wouldn’t stop with Michael’s generation. Whole branches of the family tree that might have lived and loved, laughed and cried, would never come into being at all.

Rue’s hands began to tremble so badly that she had to pull over to the side of the road and sit with her forehead resting against the steering wheel.

Finally, after several minutes, she was able to drive on, but she was still crying, and there were more feelings to be faced and dealt with.

Next came the most prickly fact of all, the one Rue could no longer deny: she was lonely. From an emotional standpoint, she sometimes felt as though everyone on the planet had stepped into a parallel dimension. She could see them and hear their voices, but they seemed somehow inaccessible, forever out of reach.

Only her grandfather, Aunt Verity and Elisabeth had been able to reach through the invisible barrier to touch her, and now they were all gone.

Rue sniffled. There was one positive aspect to this experience she and Elisabeth shared, however: it opened the door to all sorts of possibilities. Maybe the philosophers and poets were right and she
would
see her loved ones again someday. Maybe Aunt Verity and Gramps were carrying on happy lives in some other time and place, just as Elisabeth seemed to be.

It was all too mystical for a pragmatic mind like Rue’s.

Darkness had fallen by the time she reached home but, as always, the atmosphere of the house was friendly.

After carefully hanging up the dress she’d purchased and setting the high-button shoes side by side on the floor of the armoire, Rue went downstairs and made supper: a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of microwave soup.

She was too tired and overwrought to think clearly or make further plans. After a warm bath, Rue crawled into bed, read two chapters of a political biography and promptly drifted off to sleep.

In the early hours of the morning, Rue dreamed she was back in Baghdad, at the start of the Gulf War, hiding out in the basement of a hotel with several other news people and trying not to flinch every time a bomb exploded. She forcibly woke herself from the nightmare, but the loud noises continued.

Rue’s fingers immediately rushed to the necklace at her throat. Once again, the pendant felt warm, almost hot, to the touch. And the predawn air reverberated with gunshots.

Muttering, Rue tossed back the covers and stumbled through the hallway to the sealed door. Sure enough, it opened when she turned the knob, and now she could hear drunken male laughter and the nervous whinnying of horses on the road, though the thick darkness prevented her from seeing anything.

There was more shooting, and Rue cringed. Obviously, a few of the boys where whooping it up, as they used to say on TV, and that made her furious. Someone could be shot!

She gripped the sooty sides of the doorframe and yelled, “Hey, you guys! Knock it off before you hurt somebody!”

Surprisingly, an immediate silence fell. Rue listened for a moment, smiled and closed the door. True, she had unfinished business in 1892, but she wasn’t going to attend to it in her nightgown.

There was no point in trying to go back to sleep, thanks to the James Gang. Rue set up her portable computer at the kitchen table and brewed a cup of herbal tea in the microwave. Then she sat down, her toes hooked behind the rung of her chair, and began tapping out an account of the things that had happened to her. Like Bethie with her letters, Rue felt a fundamental need to record her experiences with an orderly succession of words.

Rue had been writing steadily for over half an hour, and the first thin light was flowing in through the window above the sink, when suddenly the keyboard vanished from beneath her fingertips.

Rue looked up, stunned to see that the room had changed completely. Dr. Fortner’s cast-iron cookstove stood near the back door. There was no tile, only rough wood flooring, and the wooden icebox had returned, along with the bulky pump handle and the clunky metal sink.

Just as quickly, the modern kitchen appeared. The computer keyboard materialized in front of Rue, and the sleek appliances stood in their customary places.

Rue swallowed hard, remembering the time she’d been standing in the front parlor, looking into the mirror above the mantel. The room had altered that day, too, and she’d even caught a glimpse of a woman dusting a piano.

These experiences gave new credence to Aunt Verity’s hazy theory that the necklace had a mind of its own.

She sat back in her chair, pressing her palms to her cheeks, half expecting to find she had a raging fever. Instead, her face felt cool.

After a few moments spent gathering her composure, Rue got out Elisabeth’s letters and read them again, carefully, word by word. Not once did Bethie mention seeing a room change; she’d gone back and forth between the present and the past all right, but only by way of the threshold upstairs.

Clearly, the common denominator was the necklace.

Rue rubbed the antique pendant thoughtfully between her thumb and forefinger. She, unlike her cousin, had twice caught glimpses of that other world while just going about her business. Did that mean the invisible passageway between the two eras was changing, expanding? If that were the case, it might also shrink just as unpredictably, or disappear entirely.

Forever.

Rue sighed and shoved splayed fingers through her hair, then began pounding at the keys of her computer again, rushing to record everything. She had always believed that reality was a solid, measurable thing, but there was something going on in and around the house that superceded all the normal rules.

There were no more incidents that day, and Rue spent the time resting and making preparations to return to old-time Pine River. She carefully aired and pressed the fragile dress she’d bought, watched a few soap operas and made herself a tuna sandwich for lunch.

Then on a foray into the dusty attic, she found one of Aunt Verity’s many caches of unique jewelry and helped herself to a brooch and set of tarnished, sterling combs.

Later, in her bedroom, she put on the dress and sat at the vanity table, putting her hair up and learning to use the combs strategically. When she’d mastered the technique, Rue sat looking at her reflection for a long time, liking the wistful, romantic image she made.

The faintly musty scent of the fabric was a subtle reminder, however, that she and the garment belonged to two distinctly different times.

Carefully, Rue unpinned her hair, took off the dress and got back into her jeans and sweatshirt. She felt a strong draw to 1892, but she wasn’t quite ready to go back. She needed to gather all her internal forces and make this trip count.

Just to make certain there wouldn’t be any unscheduled visits to the Outer Limits, Rue unclasped the necklace and carefully placed it inside an alabaster box on the vanity. She wondered briefly if the pendant was capable of slipping back and forth between then and now all on its own.

That concept caused Rue a case of keen, if momentary, panic. She reached for the necklace, drew back her hand, reached again. Finally, she turned purposefully and walked away, determined not to be held hostage by a chunk of antique gold on a chain.

The pull of the necklace was strong, though, and Rue had to leave the house to keep away from it.

She decided to call on the Buzbee sisters, the two spinsters who lived on the other side of the road, and find out if they could shed any light on the situation.

Roberta Buzbee, a plain and angular woman, greeted Rue at the door. She seemed pleased to have company and, after explaining that her sister was “indisposed,” invited Rue in for tea.

They sat in the front parlor before a blazing applewood fire. It was a cozy room, except for the shrunken head prominently displayed on top of the piano. Rue didn’t ask how the sisters had come to acquire the memento because she was pretty sure Miss Roberta would tell her. In detail.

“Have there been any developments in the search for your cousin Elisabeth?” Miss Roberta asked. The sisters had been among the first people Rue had spoken with when she’d arrived in Pine River and begun to look for Bethie, and she knew they’d never bought the official theories.

Rue shrugged and avoided the older woman’s gaze for a moment, wishing she dared admit the truth. The situation was simply too delicate. “I’m going to find her,” she said, and all the considerable certainty she possessed was contained in those words. “No matter what it takes, no matter what I have to do, I’m going to see Bethie and make sure she’s okay.”

Miss Roberta nodded primly and took a graceful sip of her tea.

Rue cleared her throat softly and began again. “Miss Roberta, have other people disappeared from that house? Temporarily or permanently?”

The other woman looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Not just that. People have
appeared,
too,” she confided. “Folks in old-timey clothes, mostly.”

This was new to Rue; she scooted to the edge of her chair. “Like who?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“Well, there was a woman—never liked her. Verity took her under her wing, though, and she finally left town. Once in a while, Sister and I catch sight of a buggy that comes along and turns in at your driveway. And there’s another woman who can be seen hanging out clothes on a fine spring morning.”

Ellen, Rue thought. Lizzie’s housekeeper. “Ghosts?” Rue asked, to keep the spinster talking.

Miss Roberta clucked her tongue. “Oh, my, no. There aren’t any such things—just places where the curtain between our time and theirs has worn a little thin, that’s all. Time’s all of a piece, Sister and I believe, like a big tapestry. Would you like some lemon cookies? I just baked them this morning.”

Rue loved homemade sweets, no matter how agitated her state of mind might be, and she eagerly agreed.

While her hostess was in the kitchen, though, Rue was restless. She picked up a small book that was lying on the coffee table—the title,
My Life in Old Pine River,
suggested the subject was local history. She began thumbing through page after page of old pictures in the center of the book.

Rue’s heart twisted when she came across a photograph of Elisabeth standing with the townsfolk in front of a new-looking covered bridge, a slight and mysterious smile curving her lips.

S
eeing an impossibly old photograph of Elisabeth left Rue shaken. Even though she knew from personal experience that time travel was possible, the mysteries of it all still boggled her mind.

“Is something wrong, dear?” Miss Roberta asked as she appeared in the doorway with the promised cookies. “You look as though you wouldn’t trust your knees to hold you up.”

Rue sighed and rubbed her temple. “This picture…”

Miss Roberta put the platter of cookies down on the coffee table and bent to look at the book in Rue’s lap.

Even as she acted, Rue knew discretion would have been a better course than valor, but she was tired of being the only one who knew. She needed the understanding and support of another human being.

She tapped the page lightly with an index finger, and when she spoke, her voice was thready and hoarse. “This woman, standing here by the bridge…this is Elisabeth.”

The spinster perched gracefully on the arm of the sofa, took the volume from Rue and raised it for a closer view. “My land, that does
look
like Elisabeth. I’ve been through this book a thousand times…. This little girl sitting on the big rock by the stream grew up to be our mother…but I swear I’ve never noticed this woman. Well, well, well. What do you make of that?”

“What, indeed?” Rue murmured, longing to take an aspirin.

Miss Roberta was pensive. “Maybe she was an ancestor of yours. That would account for the resemblance. What I can’t understand is how something so obvious could have escaped my attention.”

Rue accepted the book when it was offered and scrutinized the picture again. The woman standing in that crowd was definitely Elisabeth herself, not just someone who resembled her, and the handsome, dark-haired man at her side was probably Jonathan Fortner.

Rue smiled, though she could just as easily have cried, so fragile were her emotions. Elisabeth and Jonathan looked right together.

“Next thing you know,” Miss Roberta said irritably, “we’ll be appearing on
Unsolved Mysteries,
the whole lot of us. We’ll have our pictures on the front of those dreadful newspapers they sell at the supermarket, and all because of that troublesome old house of Verity’s.”

Lowering her head for a moment to hide her smile, Rue nodded. She suspected the neighbor woman secretly hoped an explosion of notoriety would thrust the boundaries of Pine River outward, thus bringing some excitement to an otherwise humdrum town.

Rue ate a cookie and finished her tea, but only to be polite. Now that she’d seen the photograph of Elisabeth, she was more anxious than ever to make contact with her cousin. Bethie looked happy in that old picture, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t in over her head in some way. After all, during her marriage to Ian McCartney, Elisabeth had put a brave face on things, but she’d also been miserable for the duration.

Dr. Fortner looked like a hard-headed, autocratic type, though there was no denying he was a formidable hunk, and the male sex had virtually ruled the world in the nineteenth century. Maybe the good doctor was dominating Elisabeth in some way, forcing her to stay when she really wanted to come back to her own time.

Just the idea made Rue’s blood simmer. Nobody, but
nobody
was allowed to mistreat Elisabeth.

When she could leave without seeming hasty, Rue thanked Miss Roberta for the cookies and tea, and set out for the other side of the road. By that time, it was already getting dark, and a crisp autumn wind was stirring the flame-colored trees.

Reaching the house, Rue built a fire and then carefully assembled all the items she’d purchased for her journey back to 1892—the dress, the brown high-button shoes, the musty, fragile old money, the silver combs.

Since she hadn’t bought stockings, Rue made a concession and wore panty hose. She put on a bra, too, because there were certain comforts she just wasn’t willing to sacrifice, even for the sake of authenticity. Besides, nobody in 1892 was going to get a look at her underwear, anyway.

Once she’d donned the dress—she had to suck in her stomach and fasten the buttons in front, then turn the gown around again and put her hands through the armholes—Rue did up her hair. Then, reluctantly, wishing she could wear her sneakers as she had before, she slipped her feet into the pinchytoed shoes.

She folded the money she’d bought in the coin shop, along with the funds she’d won in the poker game, and tucked the bundle securely into her bodice. The hated red-and-white gingham dress was carefully folded into a neon pink designer sports bag, along with a toothbrush and toothpaste, a paperback book, a bottle of aspirin and some snack-size candy bars.

Once she was seated at the kitchen table, the bag perched on her lap, Rue put on the necklace and waited. A sense of urgent excitement buzzed in her stomach, and she was certain something was about to happen.

Rue sat waiting for so long that she finally unzipped the bag and brought out the novel. She was halfway through chapter two when suddenly the necklace started to vibrate subtly and the light changed, dimming until she could barely see.

The first thing Rue was aware of after that was an incredibly bad smell. The second was the moon shape cut out of the crude wooden door in front of her.

Realizing she’d landed in somebody’s outhouse, Rue bolted to her feet, sending the book and the sports bag tumbling to the floor.
“Yuk,”
she grumbled, snatching up her belongings again and then turning the loosely nailed piece of wood that served as a primitive lock and bolting out into the sunlight.

An elderly cowboy touched his hat and smiled at her, and the gaps between his teeth made Rue think of a string of Christmas-tree lights with some of the bulbs burned out. “No hurry, ma’am,” he said. “I can wait.”

Rue’s face throbbed with the heat of embarrassment. It was disconcerting enough to be flung back and forth between two different centuries. Landing helter-skelter in somebody’s privy was adding insult to injury.

She hurried past a line of laundry flapping in the breeze, not recognizing the house in front of her or the ones on either side, possessed by an entirely new fear. Maybe she wasn’t in 1892, or even in Pine River, for that matter.

Rue’s hand tightened on the handle of her bag. Reaching a side gate in the white picket fence, she opened it and stepped out onto a wooden sidewalk. She glanced wildly up and down the street, looking for anything familiar.

She swayed slightly, so great was her relief when she saw Farley come out of a saloon and amble toward her, holding his rifle casually in one hand. With his free hand, he pushed his hat back a notch, and the sigh he gave was one of exasperation.

“You’re back,” he said.

Rue wrinkled her nose. “How long was I gone?”

Farley’s marvelous turquoise eyes narrowed as he studied her. “How long were you…what the sam hill are you talking about?”

“An hour?” Rue shrugged and smiled charmingly, pleased that she was confusing Marshal Haynes. He deserved it for being so arrogant. “Two hours? A week?”

“I haven’t seen you in about four days.” He frowned, and his expression was pensive now. “I figured you’d gone back to your folks or something.”

Rue wanted to ask if he’d missed her, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to take the risk. “I’ve been…around,” she said, holding out the skirts of the gown she’d bought especially for this trip. “Like my dress?”

Farley wasn’t looking at her outfit, however. He was staring at the blindlingly pink bag she was carrying. “That’s the damnedest colored satchel I’ve ever seen,” he muttered, reaching out to touch the material. “Where did you get that?”

“Nordstrom,” Rue answered with a slight grin. “It’s a store in Seattle.” Obviously, she couldn’t go into much more detail. As it was, if Farley went looking for the place in the Seattle
he
knew, he’d never find it.

“Where are you staying?” he asked suspiciously.

Much as Rue enjoyed Farley’s company, she had no desire to do another stretch in his jail. She looked around, biting her lip, and fortunately caught sight of a sign swinging from the lowest branch of an elm tree in a yard down the street. “There,” she said. “At Mrs. Fielding’s Rooming House.”

Farley sighed again. “That’s interesting,” he commented at some length, “because Geneva Fielding only takes in gentleman boarders, as a rule.”

Rue bit her lower lip. “Okay, so I lied,” she blurted out in a furious whisper. “If I’d told you the truth, you wouldn’t have believed me. I don’t
have
a place to stay, since you won’t let me set foot inside Elisabeth’s house, but you don’t need to worry. I’m not going to loiter or anything. I plan to buy a ticket on the next stagecoach out of town.”

The marshal raised one eyebrow. “That so? There won’t be one leaving for nearly a week.”

“Damn!” Rue ground out. If it weren’t for the inconvenience this news was bound to cause her, she would have laughed at the expression of shock on Farley’s face. She set the bag on the sidewalk and placed her hands on her hips. “Now I suppose you’re going to say it’s illegal for a lady to swear and I’m under arrest!”

One corner of Farley’s mouth twitched almost imperceptibly. “It’s true enough that a lady can’t cuss on the street and still be within the law. Thing is, I’m not sure whether that ordinance could cover
you
or not.”

Rue opened her mouth, closed it again. As a child, she’d been a tomboy, and as an adult, she’d thought more in terms of being a woman than a lady. It hurt that Farley wasn’t sure how to classify her.

He allowed her a smile so brief it might have been nothing more than a mirage, then took her elbow in his free hand. “Miss Ella Sinclair takes in roomers now and again. Do you still have that poker money you won the other night?”

It was a moment before Rue could speak, since a series of small shocks was still jolting through her system from the place where Farley was touching her. “Ah…er…yes, I have a little money.” She swallowed hard, awed at the cataclysmic shifts taking place in the deepest, most private passages of her spirit. Farley began to walk purposefully onward, and Rue hurried to keep up. “I’ve got to be careful, though, because I don’t know how much I’ll need for train fare to San Francisco.”

“It’ll cost you about seventy-five cents to go from here to Seattle by stage. As for the train ticket, that’ll be considerably more.”

Mentally, Rue was counting the currency tucked into her bodice, but she kept having to start over because of the distracting sensations Farley’s grip on her elbow was causing. She figured she probably had enough money for the trip, provided she skimped on meals and didn’t run into any emergencies.

“Is there a place around here where a woman can get a job?” she asked. Farley stopped in front of a narrow blue house with a white weather vane on the roof.

His look was one of wry annoyance as he cocked his thumb back toward the main part of town. “Sure. They’re always looking for dancing girls at the Hang-Dog Saloon.”

“Very funny,” Rue whispered, stepping away from him. “I’ll have you know that I’m a trained journalist, with a college education….”

Farley grinned. He plainly knew full well that what he was going to say would infuriate Rue, and so did she…long moments before he actually spoke. “I guess that’s where your kinfolks went wrong. Sending you to college, I mean. That’s probably how you got all those muddleheaded ideas you’re always spouting.”

After telling herself silently that it would be immature to stomp on the man’s instep, Rue managed to reply in a relatively moderate tone of voice. “It would serve you right if I told you
exactly
where I got all my ‘crazy ideas,’ Mr. Haynes. However, since you’d almost certainly be too boneheaded to absorb the information, I won’t bother.” She opened the gate latch. “Goodbye.”

Farley was right beside Rue as she strode up the flagstone walk. “You’ll need me to vouch for you,” he said, his eyes laughing at her even though his sensual mouth was somber. “Even that might not be enough, given the reputation you’ve made for yourself in this town by wearing pants, playing poker and getting yourself thrown into jail.”

Before Rue could answer, the front door of the house swung open and a woman appeared. She was tall, with blue eyes and thin, blond hair, and she wore a paisley shawl pulled tightly around her shoulders. Her smile was tremulous and hopeful—and it was entirely for Farley.

A laughable stab of jealousy knifed through Rue, but she didn’t feel at all amused.

Farley touched his hat brim in a courtly way. “Miss Ella, this is…er…a friend of mine. Miss Rue Claridge.” Rue didn’t miss the fact that he’d remembered her last name, though she had no idea what conclusions to draw from the discovery. “She needs a place to stay, just until the stage pulls out on Tuesday.”

Miss Ella folded her arms and assessed Rue with disapproving eyes, and her nostrils flared slightly in rebellion. “I’m sorry, Farley.” Her voice was irritatingly shrill. “I don’t have a single room left.”

“Then I guess she’ll just have to stay at my place,” Farley said, resigned. With that, he took hold of Rue’s elbow again and propelled her back toward the gate.

Miss Ella took only a few moments to weigh the implications of that. The hard leather heels of her shoes clicked purposefully against the floorboards of the porch as she hurried after Farley and Rue. “Wait!” she warbled. “There is Mama’s old sewing room…. It’s just a matter of moving out a few trunks and the like.”

Rue smiled to herself, though in some ways she’d found the idea of being Farley’s houseguest appealing.

Farley winked at her, causing Rue’s heart to go into arrest for at least five beats, before turning to look back at Miss Ella. “That’s very kind of you,” he said cordially.

For the first time, it occurred to Rue that Farley Haynes was a well-spoken man, for a small-town, nineteenth-century marshal. Silly questions boiled up in her heart and rose into her mind like vapor, and Rue was grateful that he’d be going on about his business soon. Hopefully before she made a complete fool of herself.

Sure enough, he escorted the ladies only as far as the porch, then tugged at his hat brim, muttered a polite farewell and left.