Now and Forever (21 page)

Which, it occurred to her, was exactly what it seemed Zane had done.

This was probably the longest period of time he'd ever spent in one place since he was in diapers. In another week or two his arm would be healed and she wouldn't hazard a guess what course of action he would take after that.

He still talked about finding his way back to their old lives. She'd caught him once, drawing designs in the dirt with a stick. "Our escape hatch," he'd said when she asked what he was doing.

Obviously he was still unable to accept the reality of their situation. For all she knew he was out scouring the countryside in search of a wicker gondola and a few thousand square yards of silk.

"Rebekah told me I would find you here."

Emilie jumped, pricking herself with the steel needle. "Andrew!" She popped her finger into her mouth, and looked up at him. "You snuck up on me."

He squatted down next to her. "I have not heard that expression before."

She grinned. "Consider yourself lucky. We've done terrible things to the language in my time. You would be appalled."

"Yesterday you told Rutledge that his socks would be knocked off by Rebekah's apple betty. I spent much time trying to envision that occurrence but came up wanting."

"It's slang," she said, noting the touch of green in his hazel eyes. "Common talk."

"What does it mean?"

She thought for a moment. "Overwhelmed, but in the best possible way."

"And if the situation was dire?"

"You'd be bummed out," said Emilie. "Of course that only applies if you're a surfer--or from California."

He looked at her blankly. "Those words mean nothing to me."

"California is the state that curves along the western coast. They found gold there in 1849 and that really put it on the map." She told him about the perfect climate, the perfect beaches, and the perfect specimens who rode the waves.

"A man stands on a wooden board and sails through the waves?"

"Women do it, as well."

"This world of yours," he said, sitting down a few feet away from her. "Rutledge would sell his soul to Beelzebub to return but you--" He stopped abruptly.

"I don't seem to care if I go back. You're right. I don't." There. She'd said it. She hadn't intended to, but now that she'd given voice to the words she felt as if she'd crossed into alien territory.

"I do not understand. All the wonders you've left behind." He shook his head in bewilderment.

"We've told you only about the wonders, Andrew. There is much wrong in our time. Many people fear that the earth will not survive our stewardship."

The world he knew was one of bounty, of clear skies and clean water. She tried to explain the differences to him but when she came to garbage dumps the size of mountains he started to laugh.

"Forget it," she said, laughing too. "What difference does it make? Maybe it will never happen."

"But you have seen them with your own eyes, have you not?"

"I've also seen myself pulled back two centuries through time. Who knows what else is possible?"

"You are unlike any woman I have ever known, lass."

"Given the circumstances, I'd have to agree." She tried to sound bright and breezy, the opposite of the way she felt.

"You are so full of life, so strong and--"

"Andrew." She placed a hand on his forearm. "Please don't."

He placed a rough hand over hers. "I cannot stop, lass. There is so much I have to say and I fear that time is my enemy."

She made to withdraw her hand but he would not allow it. "Andrew, you must believe it is just the circumstances that make you feel this way. It has nothing to do with me."

"It has everything to do with you."

"We shouldn't be talking like this."

"Do you love him still?"

"Andrew!"

"'Tis a logical question."

"We're divorced," she said. "Whatever existed between us is long gone." It was less than the truth but not quite a lie.

It was also the best she could do.

"He abandoned you and still you are friends. I find it easier to comprehend a man walking on the moon."

"The truth is a little more complicated than that." She hesitated. "Actually I walked out on Zane, not the other way around."

"Do not try to shield him."

"Andrew, I'm not trying to shield him. I'm telling you the truth. We wanted different things from marriage. I was very unhappy and so I left him."

"And he allowed this?"

"It's a free country," she said. "Or at least it will be in a few years."

"Did he beat you?"

"If he tried it he'd be walking funny today."

Andrew's face turned beet red. "Then why was it that you left him?"

Emilie sighed deeply. "I wanted a home. He didn't. I wanted a family. He didn't."

"You speak as if there are choices to be made. Only the Almighty can decide when a couple will start a family."

She wasn't up to a discussion on birth control. She cleared her throat and changed the subject. "Have you uncovered anything about the assassination plot?"

It took Andrew a moment to regain his emotional balance. "Nay, I have not. Our troubles have been of a more personal nature."

"Tell me." Emilie moved her needle and thread through the fabric of Josiah's shirt as Andrew told her of Fleming's disappearance, and of the arrest warrants issued against two more members of the spy ring. "And what of the messages you've been passing through to General Mercer?"

"It grows more difficult with each day." An important dispatch of a very sensitive nature had fallen into British hands two nights ago and Andrew feared the Jersey spy ring might be coming to the end of its usefulness.

Emilie watched the rhythmic motion of the sewing needle as she pulled then pushed it through the fabric of Josiah's shirt. "Maybe you're going about it wrong," she said thoughtfully. "Letters can be stolen."

"And what alternative is there, lass?"

Sunlight glittered off the silvery needle. "Embroidery," she said, meeting his eyes. "A message could be embroidered onto a garment then handed over to a courier without arousing undue interest."

Andrew frowned. "No man would wear a schoolgirl's sampler on his back."

"Not a sampler," she said. "What I'm thinking about would be tiny." Quickly she rethreaded her needle then stitched her name along the seam of the shirt.

"'Tis no bigger than a grain of rice."

"Exactly. An entire message could be embroidered beneath a collar or inside a cuff."

"Not many are skilled enough to do such work."

"I am," she said without hesitation.

His heart felt light inside his chest. Surely there was more to her eagerness than patriotic fervor.

"The thinnest floss of tan or grey will disappear...."

Her voice carried the sound of angels.

"Inside seams or on the underside of a lining...."

Her eyes flashed with the fire of priceless emeralds.

"...work clothes or uniforms or even a baby's blanket...."

Her skin smelled sweeter than the roses blooming by the front door.

She looked up at him and smiled. "I think it will be wonderful, don't you?"

"Aye, lass," he said, his heart soaring. "Wonderful."

Chapter Ten

"Are you going to tell Ma?"

Zane looked down at the lanky youth. "I don't know, Isaac. What do you think I should do?"

Isaac Blakelee, carrying a parcel of muslin fabric for his mother, considered the question with almost comical deliberation. "I think it should remain a secret between men."

Zane had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. The boy was still wet behind the ears. Barely fifteen years old and already burning with the righteous fires of independence, both personal and patriotic. Rebekah had sent the boy into town for fabric with strict orders to return home without delay. Isaac, however, had been unable to pass the Plumed Rooster without paying a visit.

He cleared his throat and struggled to look stern. "Next time I would avoid rum, Isaac, and stick with ale."

Zane felt better than he had in weeks. Money might not be able to buy you happiness but it went a long way toward buying a man his freedom. Those chunks of gold from his watchband had translated into a considerable stack of notes like the New Jersey three-shilling with the warning
To Counterfeit is Death
printed on the front. His pockets bulged with coins, most of which bore the likeness of King George II and dates in the 1740s.

If he had any doubts as to the reality of his situation, they were gone now.

He and Isaac walked together in silence for a while. Zane had been enjoying a tankard of ale in the Plumed Rooster, with the mixed clientele of farmers and Continental soldiers, when he noticed Isaac engaged in an altercation with the proprietor. The boy had been vigorously defending his father's honor, but the owner of the pub had been having none of it.

"Out with you, boy. I'll not be servin' a traitor's son."

Zane had stepped in, settled Isaac's tab, then dragged the hot-tempered teenager out into the sunshine and pointed him in the direction of home.

"Feel like talking?" he said as they waited for a coach and driver to rumble past.

Isaac shrugged his narrow shoulders. "They think my pa's a traitor but I know that ain't so."

"People say a lot of things," Zane said. "Sometimes you have to forget them."

"I can't forget my pa," the boy snapped. "Old man Carpenter's a Tory and he says my pa and the others are in jail by Little Rocky Hill and next week they're going t'be moving the lot of them up to the Hell Ship."

Zane's interest was piqued. "What's the Hell Ship?"

"Floating prisons," said Isaac. "They say Wallabout Bay's fillin' up with bodies of dead prisoners." The boy's eyes glistened with tears but he fiercely blinked them away. "We ain't got enough soldiers to stand against the Lobsterbacks. My ma's got to--"

"Forget it," said Zane. "She needs you with her, Isaac. At least until your father comes back."

"What if my pa don't come back?" the boy asked, voice trembling. "What then?"

There was, of course, no answer for a question like that, and there never would be an answer for it, at least not in either of Zane's lifetimes.

Isaac looked up at him with curiosity. "The army'd be needing lots of help. I know my pa will join sooner or later. How about you?"

"I don't think I'm military material."

"Neither's my pa, but he says you do what you can to help."

"It's something to think about." And he'd been thinking about it a lot lately as he watched McVie and the Blakelees and Emilie strive toward a goal they couldn't see or hear or touch but knew was as necessary as air and water.

He draped an arm around the kid's shoulders and they walked the rest of the way home in companionable silence.

"One of the cows has been feelin' poorly," Isaac said as they started up the lane that led to the farmhouse. "Would you give this to Ma so I can go straightaway t'the barn?"

Zane motioned for the parcel and Isaac tossed it to him.

"Much obliged," the boy said, then dashed off in the direction of the barn.

Isaac was a good kid, filled with energy and loyalty and high ideals. Zane couldn't help but wonder how life would treat him. Sooner or later Isaac would make good his threat to join the Continental Army and he found himself hoping that fate would treat the boy with kindness.

He climbed the front steps and was about to go inside when the sound of Emilie's laughter, sweet and high, drifted toward him on the heavy summer air. He glanced across the front yard, expecting to see her walking toward him.