Magical Weddings (93 page)

“Eighteen hundred and eighty-one,” I mumbled with downcast eyes.

Jonas was silent for a moment, and I looked up. He stared at me with an expression I could only describe as a combination of disbelief, regret, and sorrow. Then he set his jaw and nodded.

“This year,” he said flatly. He turned to look toward the kitchen window. “Was there a specific date? Will I live to see this year’s harvest?”

Tears slipped down my face. I rarely cried, and the pain in my chest was unbearable.

“I don’t know, Jonas. The inscription only gave the year as 1881.”

He sighed heavily and leaned his elbows on the table.

“What else did it say? I think not beloved husband or father.”

I shook my head again.

“Rest in peace.”

The corner of his mouth lifted, albeit with effort.

“A kind sentiment,” he said.

I reached for his hand and gripped it.

“I think I was sent back here to stop your death, Jonas! I know that sounds ridiculous, but that can be the only reason that touching your stone threw me into the past.”

He brought my hand to his lips before lowering our conjoined hands to rest on the table. A smile lightened the dark expression on his face.

“And how might you do that, Miss Hamilton, if you do not know the date or manner of my death? I appreciate your sentiment, but I cannot help but think your task, if it was so, would be most difficult to complete.”

The kiss on my hand lingered, and I wanted to throw myself at him in some foolishly romantic, totally impractical and entirely unpredictable way. But I held fast to my chair.

“I’ve seen strange things happen with time travel, Jonas. Darius and Molly returned to the past by accident, and Molly was thrown forward again in time by accident, though the mechanism of their travel seemed to be the house and grounds. At first, Darius could not leave the area, or he would travel back in time. Now, for some reason, he can.”

I remembered seeing the first Molly’s tombstone in the cemetery, and then I remembered something else.

“Oh wait! I remember now what your tombstone said—‘Jonas Ramsey. Born 1855, died 1881, aged twenty-six years, four months, three days. Rest in peace
.
’ What day is that?”

Jonas stared at me for a moment, but I knew he was mentally calculating the date. He then closed his eyes and pulled his hand from mine. I saw his shoulders slump slightly, and I knew the news would not be good.

“That is tomorrow. Tomorrow, I will be twenty-six years, four months and three days old.”

A cold chill grabbed my chest, and I couldn’t breathe for a second.

“Tomorrow?” I exclaimed. “No!”

Jonas looked at me. “Unless you are mistaken in the inscription, yes, tomorrow.”

I did the oddest, most unexpected thing then. I rose, slipped into his lap, wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his neck.

“No! I won’t let it happen. I’ll watch you every moment. Nothing will happen to you, Jonas. I won’t let it.”

The smell of his skin was earthy, human, the smell of a man who had worked hard but with the faint lingering smell of soap. Bristles from his shaved stubble rubbed my cheeks.

He turned his face toward me and found my mouth. No kiss I had ever exchanged with Brad could possibly measure up to the intensity, the depth, the bittersweet tenderness of Jonas’s kiss. To kiss a stranger was so unlike me that I no longer felt like myself. I didn’t care. Jonas had to survive, and I would find a way to make that happen.

I pulled back after a while, and Jonas smiled at me.

“You have either come into my life at the most opportune moment, Miss Hamilton, or just a bit too late. Perhaps the fates brought you to me so that I could meet you before my time on earth ends. I am grateful that they did.”

I grabbed the collars of his shirt and shook him. “Don’t you dare give up,” I muttered. “Time on earth ends, my foot!” I said, overwhelmed by emotion.

He grinned then, those dimples pulling at my heart.

“What would you have me do, dear Sara?”

Dear Sara.
I wanted to hear those words again.

“I don’t know. I don’t know if you’ll have an accident, be struck by lightning, fall ill. I just don’t know,” I said in frustration.

“Exactly so,” he said. I moved to stand up, but Jonas seemed predisposed to keeping me on his lap, and he held my waist firmly.

“Forgive me if I have thrown good breeding to the winds. Once I found you in my arms, I decided to keep you there,” he said.

My face flamed.

“Well, I don’t know that you found me so much as I threw myself into them. And by the way, I don’t
ever
do that!”

Jonas helped me to my feet and stood, taking me into an embrace.

“I am very glad that you did,” he whispered against my hair. “If this is my last day, I can think of no other person with whom I would wish to share it more than you.”

I pulled back and looked up into his blue eyes. Who knew the farmer was such a romantic man?

“It’s
not
your last day, but you don’t even know me.”

He cupped my face.

“I know that you are intelligent, kind, beautiful, loving, passionate about your beliefs, and that you care for me, even though you do not know me either. Fate has drawn us together much more quickly than it might have done otherwise.”

I laid my palms against his cheeks, and he lowered his head to mine.

“I only regret that I could not court you properly, win your heart, and ask you to marry me, to stay here with me,” he murmured.

“You’ve already won my heart,” I breathed, “probably from the first moment I met you.”

He lowered his head and kissed me, and I clung to him, one part of my brain succumbing to the sweetness of his kiss, the other searching for a solution. If I could take him back to the future with me, he would not die tomorrow. But how?

“The answer is in the cemetery,” I murmured as I broke off the kiss.

“I beg your pardon?”

“It has to be! Come to the cemetery with me...today...now!”

His lips curved into a smile. “Sara, I do not think I wish to enter the cemetery early. Will not tomorrow be soon enough?”

I grabbed his collar again and brought his face down to mine.

“This is not the time for jokes, Jonas! Come with me now.”

He folded his hands over mine. “As you wish, my dear. Let me saddle the horses.”

“Can’t we just run across the field and up to the cemetery?”

“Well, yes, but I cannot see you traversing corn fields in those shoes.” Jonas’s eyes traveled not to my shoes but to my bare legs.

I looked down at my flats. They would hold up under an off-road hike, but I supposed the dress wouldn’t in the event we were seen.

“Then there is the matter of your dress.” Jonas echoed my thoughts. “As attractive as it is, if you are seen, people will talk. I had hoped to ask the housekeeper to loan you a dress or two while you were here, but she will not return until tomorrow.”

“Well, I’d ask to borrow something of yours, but I’m sure nothing you own would fit me, nor do I want to see a look of shock on your face.”

“Good!” he said, bending to kiss my forehead. “You are much too tiny to wear my clothing, and I would be shocked.”

I followed him outside while he rounded up the horses and hitched them to the wagon. I hadn’t told him what I hoped to achieve at the cemetery, and I knew that I should. It would break his heart to leave his farm. It was breaking mine. But what if I found a way back, and he refused to come with me? As I watched him saddle the horses, a war raged within me. Tell him? Keep quiet and hope for the best?

“Jonas,” I said as I approached him from behind. He turned to look at me.

“When I said I think the answer is in the cemetery, I meant that I wanted to try to travel forward in time and take you with me.”

Jonas dropped the reins and turned toward me. He eyed me for a moment before turning to survey his farm. I remained silent, holding my breath. He sighed heavily before looking at me.

“I cannot leave my farm,” he said in a husky voice. “Who would care for it?”

“If the tombstone inscription was right, you’ll be leaving it anyway,” I said softly.

He moved toward me and clasped me by the upper arms, bending near to look into my eyes.

“Are you sure of the information on the tombstone?”

I nodded. “I am.”

“Then I must stop in town for a moment before we reach the cemetery, in case you are able to effect travel to the future. I must leave instructions for my lawyer.”

“Yes, I think that’s a good idea. What will you do with the farm? Do you have family to leave it to?”

He looked around again.

“I have not thought this through, but I will devise a plan before I reach town. Come now. The horses are ready.”

He helped me up into the wagon and climbed in after me to drape the jacket over my shoulders and the blanket on my lap, as he had done before.

Jonas looked over his shoulder before pulling away.

“Look, I don’t even know if this will work, Jonas, or how. For all I know, we’ll just end up right back here by late afternoon, sitting on your porch, watching the sunset.”

I could not resolve my conflicted thoughts. I was certain something would happen to him the following day, and I wanted to take him away before something did. Yet I knew he didn’t really want to go. Neither did he want to die.

“It is an appealing thought, you and I on the porch,” Jonas said with a brief smile. His face was tight, and my throat ached.

“We don’t have to try this,” I conceded. “Maybe by coming back, my presence will simply prevent whatever occurrence was about to happen.”

I turned my eyes to the stream, now on our left, a beautiful meandering strip flowing through the trees.

“I do not want to die, Sara. I am not ready. I think if there is a possibility this will prevent my untimely demise, then I must try.”

I didn’t say anything.

“And now that I have met you, I am particularly eager to live.”

He leaned over and kissed the top of my head, and I nestled against him until we reached town, at which point I straightened. The thickness of traffic had not changed in the past few hours, and I assumed it was mid-afternoon.

Jonas pulled the wagon over in front of a two-story, false-fronted building.

“I would not normally leave you outside, but I cannot think how best to huddle you inside wrapped in a blanket. Would you prefer to come inside?”

I smiled.

“No, I can’t even imagine what that would look like. I’ll wait here. The horses won’t take off, will they?”

Jonas grinned. “Not at all. They are very docile, and I will tie them up.”

He gave my hand a quick squeeze and jumped down. I tried to ignore images of runaway wagons from Western movies I’d seen, and I watched Jonas whisper into the horses’ ears, pat them on their necks and give me a reassuring smile before entering the building.

For the next half hour, I watched the comings and goings in town, nodding in response to greetings and facing down inquisitive stares. Though many of Lilium’s citizens appeared to be farmers by their practical and sturdy clothing, others looked as if they were town dwellers, and wealthy ones at that. I focused on the women more than anything.

Those women, managing ankle-length dresses in shades of dark blue, brown and black, sported small hats of every configuration, which were decorated and tied under the chin by large ribbons. Even the plumpest women had impossibly tiny corseted waists.

By contrast, the women who I assumed were less affluent or worked on farms, dressed less severely in lighter-colored cotton dresses, blouses and skirts, in varying shades of blue and brown. Some sported wide-brimmed straw hats, some went without. Even those women, though, appeared to cinch their corsets very tightly.

It was the well-heeled women who stared at me the most, and I knew that Jonas’s work jacket, the blanket and my lack of hat or even appropriate hairdo appeared odd. Not so much as to raise an alarm apparently, but enough to turn a head more than once. I reached up to wrap my ponytail in a bun and secured it with the hair tie I wore, but I dared not shuck Jonas’s jacket. I assumed sleeveless bare arms would attract a great deal more attention than his oversized jacket.

Thankfully, Jonas finally came out and jumped into the wagon.

“All set?” I asked.

“Yes, everything is provided for. I could see that my lawyer had many questions, but he asked only those that were pertinent. Whether I leave by traveling through time today or death tomorrow, at least the farm is provided for.”

He maneuvered the horses out into the street, and we made our way through town and turned toward the cemetery.

“What about the horses?”

“If I do not stop to see my lawyer by tonight, he will send someone to pick up the horses, and they will be taken care of.”

“You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?” I asked. “I’m so afraid that I can’t save you, that it won’t work.”

Jonas looked down at me. “It is not your responsibility to ‘save me,’ Sara. I know you feel that was why you were thrown back in time, but I believe you were sent to me because I needed you. I did not realize how lonely I was, how much I longed to love someone, until I met you. I knew I wanted to be with you always within moments of meeting you. Your fantastical story touched my heart. That you had no place to stay and no one to help you ensured that I would not lose you, a selfish wish, I know.”

I couldn’t breathe, so candid and poignant were his words. Brad had never spoken to me like that, had never made me feel so significant and important to his being as Jonas did now.

I laid my face on his arm.

“I can’t lose you,” I whispered

“Nor can I, you. We will see what happens. If we succeed in simply visiting the cemetery, then so be it. We will face tomorrow when it comes. I no longer worry for me. Should I die, my concern is that you will be trapped in the nineteenth century, alone and without family or friends.”

I leaned up to kiss his cheek.

“You won’t die. You just can’t.”