Trapped in Time Read online

  “Goddess?” Richard asked hoarsely. He could scarcely believe it. Could it really be the Mother of All Life speaking to him? Was she angry that he had turned Caroline away?

  The Goddess seemed to know his thoughts.

  “You have been extremely stubborn in this matter,” she said severely. “I took care that you and Caroline—the Caroline from this world who is meant for you—should be Dream Sharing for years—much longer than is usual in order that she might feel for you. But you chose to deny that fact as long as possible.”

  “So then…Caroline really is my destined mate?” Richard asked. “This one—not my late wife?”

  “This is what I have been trying to lay upon your heart all this time. But now you force me to come and tell you directly.” The silhouette of the Goddess made an irritated moue with her mouth. “Truly, there are none so blind as though who will not see.”

  “I must beg your pardon, Goddess.” Richard bent his head penitently. “Truly I have been, as you say, willfully blind. For that, I have no excuse.”

  “I would be more angry with you if I did not know the conflict in your heart,” the Goddess told him. “I know the claim that blood has on you—and your wish to protect another innocent from the cruelty of your old world.”

  Suddenly the window cleared and showed a picture of Emmeline. She was dressed in a deep burgundy gown, worked in one of the new bustle-type fashions which were just coming into vogue. Her long, golden brown hair was tucked up under a smart little black hat and her appearance was neat and clean and eminently respectable. She was standing at the service entrance of a grand house—her own former home, Hastings Hall, Richard saw—and arguing with someone.

  When he looked again, he saw that the woman she was having words with was none other than her own mother—his Aunt Agatha. Beside her mother was a nurse holding a baby in her arms and, to Richard’s trained medical eye, it didn’t look quite well. It was crying—a fitful, sickly sounding wail that never ceased and its tiny fists waved weakly in the air.

  Failure to thrive, he thought and wished he was there to give the child a full examination.

  Emmeline seemed to know something was wrong as well, for she was reaching for the baby, a pleading look on her face. But her mother frowned and made a shooing motion with one hand. Clearly his cousin had come to see her son and just as clearly, she was being turned away.

  “Go on now, Emmeline, before you cause a scandal!” her mother said.

  “But he’s ill, Mother. At least let me hold him for a moment,” Emmeline begged. “I can quiet him for you—I am the only one he will stop crying for.”

  “I assure you, Higgins has him well in hand.” Her mother nodded at the wet nurse who clutched the crying baby tighter. “She comes highly recommended and the baby is fine.”

  “No, he’s not—he’s ill. I can tell!” There were tears in Emmeline’s eyes now but she was too proud to let them fall. “Please, if I could but hold him for a little while…”

  “Do you not remember our agreement?” her mother snapped. “I told you that your father and I would raise him as our ward but only if you absented yourself from his life and from ours. You can do no one any good here, Emmeline. Go back to wherever it is you call home.”

  Then the door was slammed in her face and Emmeline was left standing there, fighting back the tears that threatened to overflow her eyes and roll down her pale cheeks.

  Richard felt his heart leap into his throat at the sight.

  “Emmeline,” he said hoarsely. “Poor, dear cousin! She needs someone to champion her cause—someone my Aunt cannot ignore.”

  “And so she shall have,” the Goddess assured him.

  The scene of Emmeline fighting not to cry faded and a new one took its place. It showed a huge, muscular male who must be a Kindred. He was stripped to the waist and wearing a kind of loincloth that crossed low on his hips. It was his only clothing other than intricately worked leather braces which covered his forearms from the bases of his thumbs to his elbows. His eyes were hooded in shadow so that Richard could not see their color, yet they seemed to gleam like those of an animal.

  But the most startling thing about the huge male was his scars. They were large, jagged, and prominent—silver-white lines that crossed his dark tan skin with startling effect, like streaks of lightning. One bisected his face diagonally, marching from the right side of his forehead across the bridge of his nose and crossing his left cheek just under the eye.

  Another, much larger scar, bloomed upon his muscular left pec. It spread like a seven-pointed star just over his heart and looked like it must have been inflicted by a mortal wound. Yet here the warrior stood, still living and breathing, despite it and the other silver scars which also marked his torso, biceps, and muscular thighs.

  “Who is that?” Richard asked. “And what manner of Kindred is he?”

  For the male had to be Kindred—no human male could attain such height and musculature.

  “He is an Esk’hara Kindred,” the Goddess told him as the male’s picture faded, to be replaced by her silhouette again. “And his name is of no consequence to you. Sufficient to say, he will be Emmeline’s protector. You are relieved of your blood duty to her—another will share his life with her so that you may share yours with Caroline.”

  “Caroline!” Richard’s heart leapt into his throat when he remembered that she was already gone—gone to seek another life without him.

  “You must hurry,” the Goddess told him and there was urgency in her voice. “She will be in grave peril soon and you must be there. Go!”

  With that, her silhouette faded from the window and it showed nothing at all except the far wall.

  But Richard didn’t waste time staring at it—he had urgent business.

  “Quickly—I need to take a shuttle down to Earth!” he exclaimed, looking at Sylvan.

  “My brother Baird can fly you,” Sylvan said. He looked at Olivia, who nodded, a look of concentration on her face.

  “Already bespeaking him. He’ll meet Richard at the Docking Bay right away.”

  “Come,” Sylvan told him. “I’ll take you there at once. It sounds as though you have no time to lose.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  “Hey, are you Mandy?”

  Caroline looked up at the speaker—a tall man with a scruffy-looking beard and a T-shirt which read, I’m not Perfect—I’m AWESOME!

  “Um, no. Sorry,” she said, attempting to go back to her tepid cup of coffee.

  After arriving down on Earth a few hours before, she had realized she didn’t really have a place to go. She had given up her apartment when she moved to the Mother Ship, so she had to find herself a hotel room for a few nights, until she could get herself together. It also meant having dinner at the rundown diner nearby the Holiday Inn she was staying in—not that she had much appetite.

  Really, her decision to immediately vacate the Mother Ship right after speaking to Richard for the last time hadn’t been too smart, she admitted to herself. But she’d felt the need to get out of there—to get anywhere that didn’t remind her of the painful separation.

  Not that it was painful for him, she thought bitterly. He couldn’t wait to get back to his own world and never see me again. He’s probably there right now, doing his best to put me and this whole nasty incident out of his mind. He’s probably glad he’ll never see me again. He—

  “I said, are you Mandy?” the guy with the scruffy beard and the “I’m AWESOME!” T-shirt asked again. “Because you look just like the description of the girl I’m supposed to meet.”

  Caroline realized she had never answered him.

  “No, sorry,” she said shortly. “I’m not her.”

  “Well, who are you then?” Without asking if he could, he slid into the booth across from her, grinning widely. “And why is a pretty girl like you eating dinner all alone?”

  Actually, Caroline wasn’t really eating. She had ordered a French Dip sandwich and fries—comfort food—b