Trapped in Time Read online

  “Very good…very good.” He pulled the rag away and stood back, nodding. “She should be extremely biddable now,” he told the other mother. “The effects last about five to six hours which ought to be enough time for you to get her to the park and have her annul her Joining to the Kindred.”

  “No!” Caroline moaned, her throat feeling rusty and dry. “Don’t…want…annulment.”

  “No, no, my dear.” Doctor Lovings shook his finger at her reprovingly. “You must say, ‘I do want an annulment.’”

  To Caroline’s horror, she found herself repeating him obediently.

  “I do want an annulment,” she parroted back to him in her dry and dusty new voice.

  “Very good.” He nodded and looked at the other mother, who seemed overjoyed.

  “Oh Doctor—how can I ever thank you? You must let me pay double your usual fee!”

  Dr. Lovings gave her a broad, self-satisfied smile. “That will not be necessary, dear Lady. For my fee has already been paid by an interested party.”

  “What? By whom?” the other mother exclaimed.

  “Why, by the very Viscount you mentioned yourself—Lord Harkens,” Doctor Lovings said. “He approached me and told me—in the most delicate and discrete manner possible, I assure you—that your sweet daughter was having some difficulties.”

  “He did?” The other mother fanned herself. “But Doctor Lovings, you must own that such behavior on the part of the Viscount is highly irregular!”

  “Certainly not,” Doctor Lovings said heartily. “It is simply that he is extremely interested in seeing poor Caroline cured. He is, as you say, a most eligible suitor and it seems he’s taken quite a fancy to your daughter.”

  “Oh my!” The other mother was all of a flutter at this news. “And to think, I had no idea when Lady Armouth told me of your great success with her own intractable daughter…”

  “As to that, I believe it was Lord Harkens who asked her Ladyship to give you news of me.” Doctor Lovings smiled and stroked his mustache again. “And may I say, how happy I am that he did. It has been a pleasure to serve you, Madam. And to treat your daughter. Shall we go downstairs and discuss an appropriate time to admit her to my clinic for hydro-electric therapy? The sooner, the better in extreme cases such as these.”

  “Oh yes, of course!” the other mother exclaimed. She turned back to Mary Ann. “I’m going to discuss matters with the doctor, Mary Ann. Be certain that you get Miss Caroline all dressed and ready for the park.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Mary Ann dropped a respectful curtsey.

  All this time, Caroline had been struggling to speak again. As the drug continued to work on her, she felt like a mummy wrapped in bandages that impeded her every movement. Finally, she was able to force out some words.

  “Can’t…do this…to me,” she panted out at last.

  “I most certainly can, Caroline,” the other mother snapped. “If you refuse to act in your own best interest then I must do it for you. Now…” She leaned down and poked a finger in Caroline’s face. “I don’t want to hear another word out of you from now until we get to the park. And when we get there, you’ll only say what I tell you to say! Do you understand? Don’t talk—just nod,” she added.

  Caroline wanted to shout and scream and spit in her face but she couldn’t—the drug wouldn’t let her. Instead, she felt her head nodding, like a puppet whose strings have been pulled.

  “Good.” The other mother looked vastly pleased with herself. “I’m glad that’s settled. Now, Doctor Lovings, we can finish our business downstairs.”

  As the two of them left the room, Caroline stared after them in hate and despair. She couldn’t do or say anything on her own now—she had no free will! And in a matter of hours, she was going to be forced to stand up in front of a crowd and publicly renounce Richard forever.

  What was she going to do?

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “Oh no, this is terrible!” Sophie exclaimed. “They drugged her—did you see that?”

  “It’s like some kind of a crazy Victorian soap opera over there,” Kat muttered, shaking her head. “I didn’t even know they had mind-control drugs in the Victorian era.”

  “They might not have in your own Earth’s past time period,” Sylvan said grimly. “But remember, Terra—as they call their version of Earth—is in a different universe. There may be elements there that are unavailable here. Just as their historical events shadow but do not exactly mirror the events in your own history, their medicines and science may be slightly skewed as well.”

  “Well that stuff, whatever it is, certainly seems to be working on poor Caroline.” Sophie sounded like she might cry. “And all she wants is to be with Richard—you can tell they’re meant to be together—they’ve been Dream Sharing for years.”

  “Yes, it is obvious that Richard is her intended mate,” Sylvan acknowledged. “In fact, in researching him—or rather, his double in this universe, last night—I found out something rather startling about him.”

  “You did? What?” Sophie demanded. “What?”

  “Well,” Sylvan began. “It turns out that he—”

  “What did I miss? I came as fast as I could!” Liv came racing into the lab.

  All of them had been spending every spare minute here for the past several days, ever since Sylvan had gotten the PORTAL up and running again. Through trial and error, he had found a way to focus in on Caroline, but no way to bring her back yet. His theory was that she would have to come back in the exact same place she had left—i.e. the park. And so far she hadn’t gotten there, so they had been unable to draw her back to her own world.

  “That awful mother of hers drugged her,” Sophie said, filling her sister in on the latest plot-twist in Caroline’s bizarre Multiverse adventures. “And they’re going to make her say she doesn’t love Richard and wants to annul their Joining.”

  “That’s horrible!” Liv exclaimed. She looked at Sylvan. “Can’t we do anything at all?”

  “Not as far as I can see,” he said, shaking his head. “Until and unless she goes back to the park and stands in the exact spot where she was brought through to the alternate universe in the first place, we will be unable to draw her back into this one.”

  “But what happens when we bring her back?” Kat objected. “It seems like she’s willing to give up everything to be with Richard. Can we send her back again if she wants to go?”

  “That, I do not know,” Sylvan admitted. “My theory is that she was drawn there in the first place by the void created by the other Caroline’s death. I do not know if that same void will pull her back again or not.”

  “Should we risk it then?” Liv asked. “What if she can’t get back? She’ll hate us forever if she doesn’t get to be with the man the Goddess meant for her.”

  “And it is in the Goddess’s hands that we must place this matter,” Sylvan said firmly. “If she truly meant for Richard and Caroline to be together, then she will make it possible for them to spend their lives with each other.”

  “Well I don’t see how!” Sophia exclaimed. “Not now that she’s drugged and under the control of that awful woman—the other Caroline’s mother, I mean!”

  “We will have to wait and see and watch for our chance to bring Caroline back into our world once she gets to the park,” Sylvan said. “Until then, all we can do is pray.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Richard got to the park just as the ceremony was beginning. Why Caroline’s mother insisted on an out-of-doors event, he didn’t understand. Perhaps she thought she could invite more people that way and the word of his rejection and Caroline’s subsequent freedom would spread more quickly to her suitors.

  Happily, he no longer had to concern himself with such matters. He thought of the way Caroline had melted against him the night before—the way she had given herself so completely as he brought her to the peak again and again. Gods, she’d been so responsive—so loving, finally returning his passion and emotion