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  “What good will that do?” Zoë asked, sitting upright and out of Faith’s embrace. “Russell is here, not there. Even if I take another three weeks with him, that’s all I’ll get.”

  “I think you need to find out what happened to you in our time,” Faith said in a motherly way.

  “Look who’s talking. I think you should find out who killed your boyfriend.”

  As soon as she said it, Zoë clamped her lips shut. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.”

  Faith looked at Zoë, then Amy. “What is it that you two know that I don’t?”

  “I don’t think now is the time to go into this,” Amy said. “I called you two here to talk about Tristan.”

  Faith stared at Zoë. “I want you to tell me what you know.”

  “Go ahead and tell her,” Amy said, frustrated that she could never seem to get the women to talk about what she thought was their reason for being there.

  Zoë took a breath. “I saw it on the Internet. Six months ago a skeleton was found at the bottom of a cliff in your hometown. He was identified as Tyler Parks.”

  Faith looked as though she’d been slapped. “Ty is dead?” she whispered. “When did it happen?”

  Zoë looked at Amy as though asking her for help.

  “Tell her all of it,” Amy said.

  “He didn’t just die,” Zoë said as she reached for Faith’s hand. “He was murdered about fifteen years ago.”

  “How?” Faith whispered.

  “A blunt instrument,” Zoë said. “Maybe a…a rock.”

  Faith got up from the chair and walked to the far end of the room. “That’s why Ty never came back,” she said. “After we had our fight I never saw him again. We all thought he left town. The money he made from the sale of the land was given to his mother. I talked to her once and she also thought he’d run off. I always thought it was because of me, because of our argument. And because I married Eddie soon afterward.”

  When Faith looked back at them there were tears in her eyes. She put her hand to her mouth. “But he didn’t leave me.”

  “Is that better than death?” Zoë asked.

  “Yes. I mean, no.” Faith sat back down. “I…He didn’t leave me.”

  Zoë looked at Amy.

  “Someone murdered him,” Amy said. “It was a long time ago, so I doubt if they’ll ever find out who did it, but—”

  “My mother,” Faith said. “She killed Ty.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t understand it until now, but on her deathbed she told me she’d killed him. I thought she meant she’d killed the love that Ty and I had. It looks like she meant she actually killed Ty. She so wanted me to marry Eddie that she killed to attain it.”

  Amy raised her eyebrows to Zoë.

  “I can go back,” Faith said. “Just like you went back to change your past, I can go back and change my life with Ty. When he climbs in my window, I’m going to be packed and ready to leave with him. We’re going to live in that old farmhouse and I’m going to have a ten-acre herb garden. If I could figure out a way to take Beth’s seeds back with me, I might make some of her products.”

  “Put them in your hair like Amy’s ribbon,” Zoë said, and Faith’s eyes widened as she remembered that the ribbon Amy had been wearing was still in her hair when they arrived in the eighteenth century.

  “What a great idea,” Faith said. “I could—”

  “Would you two mind if we talked about why we’re here?” Amy said. “We have three days left and I’m worried about Tristan being killed.”

  “I’m sorry, Amy,” Faith said, “but I have to leave now and think about all this. This is a big change in my life and…” She didn’t say anything else as she seemed to float out of the room.

  “Wow,” Zoë said. “I thought she’d be angry to hear that her old boyfriend had been murdered.”

  “Better dead than to have dumped her,” Amy said. “I think we just released the source of Faith’s lifelong depression.”

  “Let’s send Jeanne a whopping great bill,” Zoë said.

  “Let’s talk about what we need to do to keep Tristan alive.”

  “When you saw him dead in your dream wasn’t he in his bedroom in this house?”

  “Yes,” Amy said.

  “So why don’t you move him to that greenhouse Faith lives in and let lots of people sleep around him?”

  “I don’t think Tristan would agree to that. He has a real stubborn streak in him.”

  “Then get Faith to drug him. Or tell him you’ll sleep with him if he’ll do it.” She raised her eyebrows at Amy’s look. “We all have to make sacrifices.”

  For the first time, Amy smiled. “This meeting has not gone as well as I hoped it would, but it has certainly been interesting. I think you’re right and I’ll do everything short of sex or murder to get Tristan out of this house.”

  “Good,” Zoë said, standing up. “Then we’re done. I’m—”

  “Everyone in this village, and probably for about three over, know what you’re going to do today and have been doing since you arrived here.”

  “Celibacy can sure put a woman in a bad mood,” Zoë said.

  Amy ignored that remark. “Is it too much to ask if you did what you said you were going to do and talk to the maids about anyone who might be harboring a grudge against Tristan?”

  “I did better than that, I asked Russell. He put the word out to the women and they’re to tell him anything they hear. So far, there’s been nothing. Now, if you don’t mind, I have something else to do.” She left the room.

  Amy put her head in her hands. “Oh, Stephen,” she moaned. Just three more days, and she’d be back with him. Just three more days.

  Twenty-two

  “Are you feeling all right?” Faith asked Amy. “You look—”

  “I don’t need another person to tell me how bad I look.” They were standing in front of the orangery and Amy was studying the glass walls. “I don’t think this place is safe.”

  “If it were a prison it wouldn’t look safe to you.” Faith took her hands. “Amy, everything that can be done is being done. Tristan will have Thomas to look after him. He’s going to sleep in a dormitory with lots of other people.” It was all Faith could do not to let her displeasure show. In these past weeks her life had become very comfortable. True, it had been hard on her to see the line of people who came to her with diseases that she couldn’t cure, but aside from that, she and William and Thomas had formed a nice life. William was very easy to live with. His constant good humor had kept a smile on her face, and as he healed, he began to help her with the herbs. One morning, in a moment of honesty, he’d told her that his life had never been useful.

  “I am sure my nephew has told you that I have never achieved much. I was much younger than my ambitious older brothers, and I was my mother’s favorite. I stayed with her until she died, but by that time I had no inclination to marry and burden myself with children. She left her money to me and I spent years traveling about the world. I even went to that America of yours.”

  “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “If I had, I might have missed out on the stories that you have told me. I did not see it as a place of great advancement that you seem to know it as.”

  Faith had to turn away to hide her red face. She’d joined Zoë in coming down hard on Amy for telling Tristan the truth, but she realized she’d told William a great deal more than she thought she had.

  “I know you plan to leave here,” he said, then held up his hand when she started to speak. “I listen more than you think and I hear you whispering with the other two women. I know that the time is coming soon. I was wondering…”

  Turning, Faith looked at him.

  “If you feel that you need to leave because you have no real place in this world, I would like to make you an offer. The old house, the one you have ranted about having cows in it, is mine.”

  She smiled at his use of the word “ranting.” She wanted to p