“He was nineteen years older than I,” she
replied, startled by the question.
“That explains much. You are, what? Eighteen?
Twenty?”
“Twenty-six,” she said.
“You look younger. And you have never until
now known a young man’s passion.” He took the teddy from her, as he
had taken the bra. “Later, I will ask you to wear these for me,
because I want to see you covered and yet revealed in them. But for
this moment, come back to bed and know a warrior’s love once more.
You cannot deny the evidence of your eyes, that I want you again.
Touch me now as you did before.” He took her hand, placing it on
himself.
Whimpering with quickly rising desire, she
did what he asked, watching him spring into arrogant fullness as
she caressed and stroked. She stood only a step or two away from
the bed, so when he pushed her backward, she sprawled onto it, her
legs falling apart. He flung himself on top of her, covering and
penetrating her at the same instant. She was more than ready for
his first bold thrust. Passion, never entirely gone since their
initial coming together, flared in her again, wild and sweet and
blazing hot. His mouth was on hers, he was deep inside her, and she
was whirled away into pure sensation and pulsating pleasure.
When, after a long time, she came to herself
again, his full weight was on her and the pair of them were slowly,
inevitably, sliding off the bed and onto the beaten earth floor.
The downward motion of her hips as she fell off the side of the bed
pulled them apart.
“Theu!” She was sitting on the floor. He had
a knee on each side of her hips, her head was forced backward onto
the edge of the bed, and he was kissing her throat. “You are
breaking my neck. And my legs!”
He roared with laughter, pulling her to her
feet to hug her and kiss her again.
“You are wonderful, glorious.” Another long
kiss interrupted his description of how remarkable a lover she was.
“And thanks to you, I am starving.” He swept her up in his arms to
lay her on the bed again, tucking the quilt in around her. “Stay
there. I will feed you.”
He retrieved the stew from the firepit,
cursing when he burned his fingers on the pot, and set it on the
table. He ladled the mixture into a smaller bowl, the fragrant
odors of meat and vegetables making India’s stomach growl in
hunger. He dragged the bench over to the bed and set stew, bread,
and cheese on it. Picking up the only spoon, he began to feed her,
with alternate spoonfuls for himself. She took the knife he had
left on the bench to slice the bread and cheese so she could feed
them to him. They drank the wine later, with Theuderic lying beside
her and filling the cup at intervals.
“Theu, we do need to talk more.” She was
struggling with her desire to tell him what she knew about the
Spanish campaign, while at the same time fearing that if she did,
her action could alter history in frightening and unimaginable
ways. While she sought for the right words with which to warn him
without revealing too much, he spoke.
“You need not say it,” he told her,
misconstruing her intent and distracting her from the speech she
wanted to make. “I understand from what you have already told me.
At any moment your friend
Ahnk
may repair his machine, so
that he is able to return you to your home. When that happens, we
will be separated for all time.”
“Oh, Theu.” She wanted to cry. “When I first
came here, getting home was all I thought about. But when I’m with
you, I’m not sure I want to return home at all.”
“Then stay with me,” he said. “I am powerful
enough to make certain that in Francia you will be treated with
honor, and your life would not be unpleasant.”
“I know Hank well enough to know he won’t
stop trying to get me back. I have no way to contact him, so when
the moment comes, I don’t think I’ll have anything to say about it.
I will simply go, in an instant.”
“You will vanish, as I feared you would when
I tried to keep you with me by tying you to my side? There will be
no time to say farewell, no moment for a last kiss, no clasp of
hands? Even marching into battle is not so dreadful as that. When
we part from our womenfolk, we take proper leave of them. This
Ahnk
of yours is a heartless man.”
“He may not know where I am. He may think I
am drifting somewhere, lost in time, and that if he does not find
me I will die. I told you, I don’t understand exactly what happened
to me.”
“If he does not know where you are, he may
never find you.” Theuderic looked more cheerful. “Since this is so,
we will go on as if you are to stay with me permanently, but we
will treasure each moment we have together, knowing it could be our
last.”
“In my time,” she told him, smiling, “that
attitude is considered the best philosophy of life.”
“No philosopher, no scholar am I,” he said.
“Not like Alcuin or Adelbert or the others in Charles’s employ. But
for as long as you want, or as long as you can stay with me, I
freely offer you a place by my side.”
“There, that should do it.” Wiping the
perspiration off his face, Hank dropped into the chair next to the
computer. “Let’s see how this configuration works.”
“It had better work,” came an angry voice
from directly behind him.
“Willi, I don’t think you fully appreciate
what a significant scientific breakthrough this could be,” Hank
said. “If I can bring India back in one piece and then duplicate
what happened when she hit the wrong button, my name will go down
in history. I just hope she can remember exactly what she did.” He
broke off as a slender hand tipped with brilliant red fingernails
grabbed his hair, pulling his head back hard against a black
leather belt.
“I don’t care one damned bit about your place
in history,” Willi ground out between set teeth. “This is my best
friend we are talking about. How can you be so cold-blooded? I’d
like to wring your neck for setting up a program that would allow
this to happen.”
“Hurting me won’t help India,” Hank gasped.
“Come on, now, you know I want this to work even more than you do.
It’s
my
program and if she – if she – aw, Willi, I’m
sorry.”
“You have tried to get her back five times in
the thirty minutes since she disappeared,” Willi snapped in the
same angry tone she had used before. “What if she’s someplace where
she can’t breathe? What if she’s bleeding?
Get her back
now
!”
“You’re hysterical. I can’t do anything for
India until you let go of my hair,” Hank yelled, jerking his head
away at the same instant that Willi’s fingers suddenly relaxed
their grip. Hank’s forward motion nearly propelled him into a
collision with the computer screen. Recovering himself, he smoothed
down his hair. “I had no idea you could be this violent,” he said,
glancing over his shoulder at her with an injured expression.
“I’ll give you violent if you don’t correct
your stupid mistake,” Willi replied.
“It’s not entirely my mistake.” Hank was
deeply affronted by this suggestion. “I explained before that India
did something to my program. But I’m trying to make it right,
really I am. I feel at least half responsible for what happened. I
just hope she hasn’t forgotten exactly what she did – oh, jeez,
Willi, don’t be mad at me.” Hank uttered this plea when Willi shook
one finger at him in a menacing way. “I promise I won’t think any
more about publishing a paper on this until after it’s over.”
“I’m not interested in your career path, and
I don’t want to hear any more excuses. Push those buttons, damn it!
And make sure they’re the right ones this time.”
But before Hank could begin, there was a tap
at the office door. Without waiting for an answer, a white-haired
man walked in.
“Professor Moore,” Willi exclaimed, “what are
you doing here on a Sunday?”
“Looking for my secretary,” he said.
“India’s not here,” declared Hank.
“I can see that,” replied the chairman of the
Department of History and Political Science. “This is most
irregular. When I saw Mrs. Baldwin yesterday afternoon, she told me
she would be here today.”
“She stepped out for a minute,” Hank said.
“She should be back soon. We’ll tell her you were looking for
her.”
“Yes. Yes.” Professor Moore looked a bit
befuddled. “Do that. I have some last-minute typing for her to do.
I’m retiring next week, you know, and with final exams and the
holiday coming and all, well, I can’t seem to get anything
finished.” With that, he dropped the manila folders he had been
holding, the papers scattering out of the folders and across the
floor.
“Here, let me help you,” Willi offered,
bending to pick up the sheets and hand them to him. “Hank, can you
get the papers that went under the computer?”
“Yeah, sure.” Hank reached down. “Hey, look
at this. Maybe this is the problem.” His attention on the wires
leading out of the computer, he absent-mindedly handed the papers
to Willi, who passed them on to Professor Moore.
“You know, in my time,” said the professor,
“we tried to find romantic places to make out. Isn’t that what you
young people call it nowadays? But you really shouldn’t be doing it
in here. Anyone could walk in. I just did, didn’t I, and
interrupted you?”
“You sure did,” said Hank, who was trying to
move a section of the computer out from the wall.
“Now, I would suggest a walk in the woods,”
said the professor, “or a romantic movie. I courted my wife at the
movies.”
“Thank you for the suggestions,” said Willi,
handing him the last of his papers and gently steering him toward
the door. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“Yes, well, I do try to be broad-minded.
Though I must say, some of the activities young people get up to
today are scandalous. Now, you will tell Mrs. Baldwin that I’ll
need her to do this typing?”
“I’ll tell her the minute she comes back,”
Willi promised. She closed the door behind him and leaned on it,
blowing out a long breath of relief.
“It’s a good thing he’s retiring,” Hank said
from in back of the computer section he had moved. “That old coot
can barely remember his own name.”
“Don’t be so disrespectful,” Willi responded
with some heat. “He’s a nice man. India likes him very much.”
“Yeah, well, the new chairman will probably
work her butt off,” said Hank. “At least the old guy did some good.
When I bent down to get his papers, I noticed something I hadn’t
seen before.”
“What?” asked Willi.
“Just watch. And stand back,” Hank warned,
resuming his chair and reaching for the switch. “If you see a
bright glow beginning, get out of the room fast. I don’t want you
getting lost in there, too. You’d probably mess things up so
completely that I’d never find either of you.”
He flipped the switch on and began to work at
the keyboard. The computer screen slowly brightened until the room
was filled with light. Disregarding Hank’s advice, Willi stayed
where she was, right behind his chair.
“Now here,” Hank said, “just at this place in
Robert Baldwin’s notes, is where India was working when it
happened.”
Inside the light dim shapes formed,
flickered, and reformed.
“There!” Willi cried, pointing. “Do you see
it?”
“I see.” Hank continued to push keys. “That’s
India. Oh, my God, there’s a guy with a sword!”
“India!” Willi shouted. “India, can you hear
me?
With a loud popping noise, the entire
computer shut down. Hank and Willi groaned in unison.
“What happened this time?” Willi asked, her
eyes still glued to the dark screen.
“The computer has a built-in surge protector
that shuts down the machine if too much power enters the
co-processor – and it’s a good thing,” Hank said, “because if
anything happened to the co-processor, we’d never get India
back.”
“I don’t want to hear another one of your
confusing explanations of what that means.” Willi fixed the back of
Hank’s head with a stare that ought to have frozen him into total
immobility. “Just tell me what we do now.”
“Now,” he responded wearily, “we start all
over. We try again. But, hey, we almost found her. We might have
brought her back. That’s a step in the right direction.”
“Great.” With barely controlled rage and the
beginning of real dislike, Willi regarded the man she had until
that day believed she loved.
“Get back to work,” she ordered.
Theu had fallen asleep before the light began
to glow inside his house, so it was India, lying awake beside him,
who saw it first. It began in the corner where the tray containing
his
brunia
sat atop the wooden box, and her immediate
thought was that if something inside the box was on fire, the
valuable
brunia
would be ruined. Fearing she might have to
run into the night if the fire spread, she pulled the coverlet off
the bed and wrapped it around herself in haste, then went to
investigate.
“What is that?” By this time Theu was awake.
India heard the bed creak when he leapt out of it and immediately
afterward heard the soft swishing sound of a sword being drawn from
its scabbard. Moving swiftly, Theu strode forward to place himself
between her and whatever danger had invaded their retreat.
“Innndiaaa!” The distorted voice came from
the very center of the light.
“Demon, show yourself,” Theu challenged,
brandishing his sword. “Come out and fight.” He was crouched in a
warrior’s stance, his naked, heavily muscled form outlined in
peach-gold by the eerie glow. Intent, wary, poised for
instantaneous action, he waited, scarcely breathing. The only
response from the light was another long cry.
“Innndiaaa!”
Theu took a cautious step forward, lifting
his sword a little higher, obviously intending to attack before he
and India could be assaulted.