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  “Feeling better?”

  Turning her head, she looked into the beautiful face of her husband, Adam Montgomery. For a moment she just gazed at him, drinking in what, to her, was the most beautiful face ever created. His hair was as black as she remembered, and there were the wings of gray just above his small, flat ears. Her stare moved from his deep-set blue eyes down to his soft lips, to his cleft chin. She glanced down at his strong body, the body that had given her so much pleasure for the few years they’d had together.

  She looked back up to his eyes. They were Adam’s eyes, still seeming to carry the weight of the world in them—but yet, there was a light inside them now, something new that she’d never seen before.

  When she lifted her hand and put it to his cheek, he turned and kissed her palm. For a moment she closed her eyes, then held out her arms to him. “Come to me,” she whispered. “Come to me.”

  Adam looked as though he meant to envelope her in his strong arms, but the next moment the door opened and Jack stood there. Adam moved away.

  “How are you?” Jack asked, genuine caring in his voice. He took Adam’s seat beside the chaise where Darci lay.

  Puzzled by everything, Darci looked past Jack to Adam and he put his finger to his lips for her to be quiet. She tried to get the frown off her face and look at Jack, but all she wanted to do was put her arms around her husband.

  “What happened?” Darci asked.

  “You passed out on us again,” Jack said, smiling. “Lavey and I came back with half a boar’s head and Mr. Drayton was carrying you out the front door. We put you in the buggy, let Lavey drive, and you were here faster than an ambulance could have done it. I think she ran over four chickens, a cat, and two pedestrians.”

  Darci managed a smile at his joke. “Where is here?”

  “At my house,” Adam said. He was wringing out a white cloth in a basin of water. “I should introduce myself. I’m Adam Drayton and I found you in my old house.”

  “He’s been great,” Jack said. “He caught you trespassing and when you fainted he still helped you.” His eyes were warning her not to say too much and screw things up.

  “I think she should rest now,” Adam said. “Perhaps you and Miss Shay would care to dine with me.”

  Jack’s back was to Adam, and he winked at Darci. “Please get well, dear sister,” Jack said, then leaned forward as though to kiss her cheek. “He likes you, he’s rich, and he’s a widower. Maybe we’ll stay here after all.”

  Jack stood up and looked at Adam with a little smile. “We’ll have dinner, then we’ll all go back to Camwell.”

  “It’s much too late to be on the roads,” Adam said. “You must be my guests for the night. I’ll send my driver to tell your families where you are.”

  “How kind of you,” Jack said facetiously, still making faces at Darci. “Well, I guess I’ll just mosey on downstairs and see what Lavey’s up to. You two behave now. Just like we’re going to.”

  Both Darci and Adam watched the door close behind Jack, then Adam said, “You can’t choose your relatives.”

  Darci laughed—and cried at the same time. It was so wonderful to again hear Adam’s sarcastic humor. She opened her arms to him. “Come to me.”

  Adam sat down on the chair beside her, but he didn’t take her in his arms. “We must talk. You were in your faint for nearly an hour so I had time to think. I don’t know what cruel trick fate has played on us, but we must lift ourselves above it.”

  When Darci tried to sit up, Adam put a pillow behind her head. As he leaned near her, she could smell the fragrance of his skin. She inhaled it, closing her eyes for a moment.

  Adam moved away from her, and stood behind the chair. “I am not who you think I am, and you are not my Diana.”

  “Diana?” Darci asked, still trying to understand what was going on. It had been easier to adjust to having awakened in a different time in history than it was to understand what Adam was saying. “You are my husband,” she said.

  “No, I’m not.” He walked to the far side of the room.

  Darci lay back against the pillow, watching him, and trying to understand. She tried to look at the room they were in. It was a pretty sitting room, much like the ones in the other houses she’d seen since she’d traveled back in time. But there was a subtle difference here. The carvings on the furniture were finer, the porcelains over the fireplace had the look of art rather than what could be bought at the local flea market. Here and there was the sparkle of silver. The paintings on the walls looked to be one of a kind. Lavender had said the Draytons were wealthy and this room showed it.

  Just like at home, she thought. If her Adam had lived in the 1840s, he would have lived in a house like this one.

  She watched Adam go to a cabinet on the wall, open it, and reach inside. “I brought you up here to this room to show you something,” he said as he withdrew a beautiful silk case from inside the cabinet. Slowly, he began unbuckling the straps from around it.

  “As I said, I’ve had more time to adjust to this than you have. When I first saw you in that room I thought you were another intruder, one of the sick people in this town who can’t allow a man to have any peace. But then you looked up at me and I saw…”

  Turning, he smiled at her. “I saw what I think you see in me.” From the package he withdrew what looked to be a framed picture, but she could only see the back of it. “You say that I look like your husband. This is my wife,” he said, and handed the picture to her.

  It was a portrait of Darci. It was her as she looked in modern times, with strawberry-blonde hair and dark lashes and eyebrows. She doubted if the woman in the portrait was wearing makeup, but she looked like Darci did after about an hour’s worth of work.

  “Your wife?” Darci managed to ask. If she had her powers now maybe she’d be able to see that this Adam was not her Adam. Their auras were probably so different that anyone with any psychic ability would never confuse them. Looks are superficial, she told herself.

  As Darci looked at the portrait of a woman who was as much like her as this man was like her husband, she knew that being sent back had been no accident. It looked as though Jack and Lavender’s problems might be secondary, or maybe they were the catalyst to get Darci back to this time.

  “Is she the woman who haunts the old house?”

  “She haunts nothing!” Adam said fiercely. “Don’t you think that if there was a chance she was there that I’d never have moved from that house? If I could see her for another moment…if I could touch her…” For a long moment he looked at Darci with such longing, with such lust, that her heart seemed to leap into her throat.

  Adam looked away. “Is this God’s sense of humor to play such a trick on me? To give me a woman to love then take her from me, then to give me a replica?”

  Darci put the portrait on the table by the chaise and lay back. She felt defeated. Was this why she’d been sent here? To find a man who looked like her husband? Or was she to make a choice? Adam was in one century, but her daughter was in another century.

  “My husband disappeared,” she said slowly. “He and his sister left one day and never came back. I’ve been searching for them for years, but I can’t find them.”

  Adam was frowning at her as he took the portrait and carefully put it back in its silk sheath. “But I thought you lived in Camwell. Your brother—”

  “Jack isn’t my brother. He’s—” How could she explain something that she didn’t understand? “Will you call the local witches’ council if I tell you that I’m from another time period?” she asked, trying to sound lighthearted.

  Adam sat back down on the chair near her and crossed his legs in a way that was so familiar to Darci that she wished she could faint again. How many times had she sat down on her husband’s lap and wiggled until he…?

  “Time travel? It’s been debated, of course, but it’s not possible.”

  “I wish it weren’t,” she said, trying not to look at him.

  “Al