Read The Changeling Bride Online
Authors: Lisa Cach
Tags: #Romance, #Paranormal, #Romantic Comedy, #Time Travel
He counted down from the end, and there was Elle’s house. He jogged up the path to it. The mat was there, and the basket with shiny metal, just as Mossbottom had said.
Elle heard a thump against the bathroom door and froze, listening, her eyes closed against shampoo suds. When it didn’t come again she resumed her scrubbing. Must have been Tatiana. She sometimes lay against the door if Elle was in there for a long time.
The rings clattered on the rod as the shower curtain was yanked open and cold air rushed in. She screamed, and strong arms reached into the spray to enfold her, dragging her from the tub and squeezing her breathless against a hard chest, her feet dangling above the ground.
She blinked her eyes, then yowled anew at the sting of soap.
Kisses rained down upon her sudsy head and across her wet face. “You shall never leave me again, never! I have crossed the bowels of Hell to fetch you back, and I will not be made to do it again.”
She felt herself carried back into the shower, only he didn’t release her. He stepped in as well, holding her as the water rinsed away the soap, one hand pushing back her wet hair, his fingertips brushing aside the last drops of water from her lids so she could open her eyes.
“Surprised?” Henry asked.
He was soaked from the shower, his linen shirt transparent against his skin, the front of his hair misted with spray. Her only answer was to throw her arms around his neck and bury her face in his chest.
He broke the hold first. “There is little time, Elle.”
“How did you get here? How did you find me?”
“There is no time to explain. Only time to ask—Hell, I cannot do this here.” He got out of the shower, dragging her after him. She reached back to shut off the water, and then the room was quiet but for the soft whir of the ceiling fan. Elle grabbed a towel off the rack and wrapped it around herself as he pulled her from the bathroom and into her bedroom. He sat on the end of the bed and pulled her down onto his lap.
“What is there only time to ask?” she asked, only slightly curious, too overwhelmed by his living, breathing presence to think. This couldn’t be real, couldn’t be happening. It was a hallucination brought on by shock and grief.
“If you will come back with me. I love you, Elle. I loved you even before I knew you were not as crazy as a bedbug.”
She
must
be dreaming.
His arms tightened around her. “Can you forgive me? For not understanding? For not trusting in you?”
“I could ask the same of you.” She traced his face with shaking fingers. “I gave you up without a fight.”
“Then come back with me. Stay with me, Elle. Be my wife in the true sense of the word.”
“To have and to hold?”
“From this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health—’
“To love and to cherish, till death us do part.”
“And thereto I plight thee my troth,” he said solemnly and slipped her wedding ring back onto her finger.
“I don’t know what a troth is, but yes, Henry, I’ll plight thee mine.”
He kissed her, then stood, scooping her up with him. “We have to go.”
“I’m not going outside in a towel.” She could see the protest forming. “Trust me, Henry.”
He grimaced and set her down. She ran to the dresser and yanked out jeans and a sweatshirt, and pulled them on in half a minute. Bra and panties were forgone in the service of speed. She slipped on a pair of loafers.
“Okay, done.” She smiled up at him. “Bet you never saw a woman dress so quickly.”
He shook his head, grabbed her hand, and pulled her through the living room. “Tatiana!” he called. “Come on, girl.”
“Wait, wait, do we have to go this moment?” She pulled against his hand.
“Yes.”
“But . . .”
“What, Elle? They promised me only a sliver of time.”
“My brother, I wanted to call him, maybe see him.”
Henry stopped his tugging at her. “I did not even know you had a brother.”
“Two minutes? Can I have two minutes?”
His expression told her that he could not deny her. She dashed to the phone and dialed Jeffrey’s number.
She had to at least hear his voice before she went. She had to say good-bye.
The machine picked up after the second ring. She listened impatiently as every member of the family capable of speech said their name, and Jeff went through the completely unnecessary litany of how to leave a message. The beep finally came, and she found herself at a loss for what to say.
“Jeffrey, this is Elle.” She paused, listening to the tape fill with silence. “I love you.” There was nothing else to say.
She hung up the phone and put her hand in Henry’s. “Take me home.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Elle watched the fluffy white cumulus clouds drifting across the clear blue summer sky, her mind wandering as freely as those puffs of wind-borne vapor. It had been a month since her return to Brookhaven, a month that had wrought deep changes not only in her relationship with Henry, but in the lives of the inhabitants of the estate as well.
The saddest occurrence had been the death of Lady Annalise, on the day of her return. When Henry brought her back through the hill, Lady Annalise had been waiting, bundled in layers of blankets, sitting on the ground with the dignity of a queen. It had been through her efforts that the fairies were persuaded to open the window of time for Henry, and it had been the final act of her long life. She was buried now on the hill that overlooked Brookhaven, the fairy hill. It had seemed more suitable than a churchyard.
Elle shifted her head on Henry’s lap, turning to look
at his sleeping face. He was leaning against the trunk of a chestnut tree, the hand that had been stroking her hair now palm-down against the grass. The ground was bumpy beneath her, but she didn’t want to move. She had learned to take full pleasure from the present and had no intention of spoiling the moment, even if he was emitting the slightest of snores.
The matter of Louise and ethical concerns over Eleanor Moore’s money had been difficult to settle. The issue of truth was weighed against reality, and they had reluctantly decided that reality carried the stronger weight. The Moore family simply would never believe that Elle was not their daughter, Louise notwithstanding. The best solution she and Henry had come up with was to claim that Elle’s bout with influenza had erased significant portions of her memory and altered her personality, but that she was completely sane. If Dr. Simms could argue the influenza could give a person an accent, why not a new personality, as well? Useful thing, influenza.
They had also made it a priority to use Henry’s position to find Louise a wealthy, aristocratic husband who would love her for herself. And who wouldn’t ask for a big dowry.
Elle shifted a bit, her physical squirming a reflection of the moral ambiguity of the situation. She still didn’t know if they had made the best choice.
Her eyelids fluttered closed, and she was almost asleep when Henry’s fingers resumed their stroking of her hair. She opened her eyes and smiled, and lifted her face to meet his as he bent down to kiss her. This relationship as well had changed, as she had known it must. There was so much they didn’t know about one another, but somewhere, in the events that had brought them together, they had learned to accept that they would see the world from different eyes and to value that difference.
Henry pulled her up into his lap, and together they
gazed out across the farmlands of the estate, and the glittering water of the lake. The house stood sentinel, strong and protective, its stones silently promising to stand beyond the length of brief human life. Her sons and daughters would grow up here, and hundreds of years from now someone with her eyes would look up at her portrait in the gallery, and ask her mother who she was.
Epilogue
The electric chime of the doorbell barely penetrated the wailing maelstrom of human activity within the house, but Tina’s ears, so well-trained at picking out the anomaly amidst the chaos, managed to discern it.
“Jeff, the door! Someone’s at the door; can you get it?”
Jeff dragged himself to the front door, his eyes sunken from two weeks of grieving for a sister who had mysteriously disappeared, only to be found buried beneath a mudslide. It was Sunday morning, and he hadn’t shaved. He was wearing old sweat pants, athletic socks with holes in the toes, and a T-shirt covered by an unbuttoned flannel shirt. His hair stuck out at odd angles.
He opened the door. A small woman in a brown uniform stood there, holding a clipboard out to him.
“Sign here,” she instructed, tapping a line with a ball-point pen.
“I didn’t think anyone delivered on Sundays.”
“It’s a growing market,” she said cheerfully, her odd green eyes sparkling. Two short men came around the corner of the garage, carrying a large, flat crate. “Do you want it inside?” the woman asked.
Jeff shrugged and stepped aside, and the men carried the crate into the living room, leaning it against the mantel of the gas fireplace.
“Now you have yourself a nice day, sir!” the woman chirped, and the three filed out, closing the door behind them.
Tina emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel, Clarence following her with a half-chewed slice of apple in his hand. The repetitive banging of pots could be heard from where his little sister sat denting the cook-ware on the linoleum floor.
“Did you order something?” Tina asked.
“No. You?”
She shook her head. “Who’s it from?”
Jeffrey searched the crate for a label, but found none. “Maybe it was delivered to us by accident.”
They both stood and looked at the crate.
“Well . . .” Tina began, “I don’t suppose we’ll really know unless we open it.”
“Open it! Open it!” Clarence chorused.
“There’s a crowbar in the garage,” Tina said.
Jeff bowed to familial pressure and went to fetch the crowbar. Several minutes later the crate was open, and Tina was helping him remove layers of padding and waterproof coverings.
“I think it’s a picture of some sort,” Tina said, as the thick, ornate edges of the frame became visible.
They lifted off the final layer of wrapping, exposing the painting that hid beneath. It was nearly five feet wide and nearly as many tall, and depicted a family dressed in a style from two centuries past. The date in the corner said 1799.
“Oh, God, Jeffrey . . .” Tina gasped, her hand going
to her mouth. She looked at her husband, and saw the film of tears in his eyes. He sniffed once. “Look, there’s an envelope attached.” She squatted down and carefully tugged loose the square of thick paper from where it had been wedged into the bottom corner of the frame and handed it to him. His name was written on the outside in faded ink, in handwriting that he recognized as belonging to Elle.
He stepped back, dropping down into the recliner, and stared at the painting. That was his sister sitting there in that dress from another time and Tatiana panting happily beside her. A dark, handsome man stood behind the sofa on which she sat, leaning his elbows on the back of the sofa, one hand playing with a lock of her reddish hair. She held a tiny baby in her arms, and beside her a little boy sat playing with a blue ball.
Jeffrey’s hands shook as he turned over the envelope. It was sealed with deep red wax, imprinted with a heraldic device. He broke the seal, and unfolded the letter—it had not been an envelope at all, just the back side of one of the sheets.
December 25, 1799
Brookhaven, England
Dearest Jeffrey
,
If all goes as planned, you will be reading this some short while after I left that too-short message on your machine. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t have time to explain further, and now I have all the time in the world. There are benefits to knowing your descendants will be around to fulfill your wishes two centuries hence, making sure paintings and letters get delivered when they should. Or at least, Henry assures me they will follow the instructions of a long-ago ancestress, however unreasonable. And so you have this painting and this letter, and a chance to hear me tell a tale such as you have only read in books
. . .
When he had finished reading the letter, he carefully folded it and sat staring at the face of his sister, smiling enigmatically from the painting. Slowly, and for the first time in many days, he smiled too.
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