Читать книгу A Wife In Time - Cathie Linz - Страница 6

“So you’ve got a bad feeling,” Kane retorted. “Probably caused by that crab dip at the party.”

“Very funny. Don’t tell me you don’t feel it, too.”

“I don’t eat crab dip.”

“I’m serious. Didn’t you see that couple walk into that house?” she demanded.

“Sure, I did.” Kane shrugged. “So what?”

“They were dressed—”

“In the same kind of stupid clothes we are,” he interrupted her. “Which means that there must be several houses being used for costume parties tonight. The publishing convention is huge. There must be plenty of these fancy shindigs being put on.”

“Perhaps, but I could have sworn that that building was boarded up when we got here earlier this evening. And how do you explain that blue light, that specter thing we saw up on the third floor?”

“Holograms,” Kane instantly replied. “It’s being done all the time. Haven’t you ever been to Disney World?”

Susannah didn’t buy his explanation for one minute. “I sincerely doubt that a historical house like this would be able to invest the money required for that kind of special effects— Wait a second! Look at the lights—”

“I told you it was a hologram,” he interrupted her again.

“I mean the streetlights,” she continued in a shaken voice. “They’re not electric.”

“Of course, they’re not. This is a historic district.”

Looking around, Susannah murmured, “There are no telephone lines, either.”

“They’re mostly underground these days.”

“Not everywhere. I’m telling you, there were telephone lines here when we arrived tonight. I distinctly remember them ruining the view.”

Just then, a horse and buggy went by.

Anticipating what she was going to say, Kane explained, “For the tourists.”

Another buggy went by, and then several men on horseback. Still no sign of a car, or truck or bus. Seeing Susannah’s expression, he said, “Okay, I admit this is starting to look a little strange. They’re certainly taking this period thing to extremes. Reminds me of Williamsburg. They take this re-creation thing to extremes there, too.”

“But we’re not in a historic village here. We’re in the middle of downtown Savannah.”

“Which has a fast-food place right around the corner and a burger with my name on it,” Kane declared with a sense of anticipation.

“I’ll join you,” Susannah hurriedly said.

“I didn’t ask you to join me.”

“It’s still a free country,” she defensively countered, determined to keep him by her side—which only went to show how uneasy she was feeling. Normally, Kane Wilder would be the last man she’d want to spend any additional time with. But then, nothing about their surroundings felt normal. Even the street pavement seemed different.

No more words were spoken as they briskly walked the short distance, Susannah trying to keep up despite the hindrance of her long skirt. Concentrating on holding up her hem in order not to have it drag on the ground, she almost rammed into Kane, who was standing frozen in the middle of the sidewalk. The man was solidly built, she hazily noted, especially for someone who was said to be a computer whiz kid. But then, as she’d told Roy from Marketing, Kane Wilder was no kid. He was too good-looking for his own good and he was wearing an all-too-familiar frown on his face. “It was right here,” he muttered, “and now it’s gone.” Turning to glare at her, he demanded, “What is this?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, trying not to panic. “I told you I had a bad feeling about this.”

“I must have gotten my directions turned around,” Kane muttered. “Maybe the burger place was this way.” Pivoting on his heel, he turned right and headed down the street only to find that there was nothing but houses in what should have been a commercial business area.

Frowning, Kane gave Susannah a look that clearly stated he held her responsible for this situation. “What’s going on here? Did you slip something into my drink? Either that or the punch I drank was a hell of a lot stronger than I thought,” he noted in an undertone as yet another buggy passed them by. “I must be either drunk or hallucinating.”

“I had nothing to drink at the party at all. And it’s highly unlikely we’d both be having the same hallucination,” Susannah observed, trying to be logical about things. It was the only way she could cope with their present circumstances—to take the situation bit by bit. Not to look at the large picture. Not yet.

“Then I must be dreaming,” Kane muttered. “That or I’m dead.”

“How do you figure that?” she demanded, chilled by his comment.

But he wasn’t listening to her anymore. “There’s only one way to find out.”

To her amazement he marched off, straight toward—

“Watch out!” Susannah shouted.

Kane ignored her warning...and walked smack into one of the metal streetlamp posts.

Picking up her skirts, Susannah rushed to his side as he stood swaying slightly.

“That was a stupid thing to do!” she told him. “What were you thinking of?”

“Hypothesis.”

She looked at him as if he’d scrambled his brain.

“I figured if I was dreaming, walking into the lamppost would wake me up,” Kane said, his voice brusque. “And if I was dead—”

“We’re not dead and we’re not dreaming,” she interrupted him.

“Fine, Einstein, then what are we doing?”

“I’m not positive,” she noted in a soft voice, as if speaking too loudly might cause them even further trouble. “But I think Einstein had a theory about this—the relativity of time.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that something happened. We’re clearly not in the 1990s, anymore,” she stated, trying to sound as if this were a situation she’d run into before. The truth was that her instincts were on red alert. And, as her grandmother had always told her, Susannah had always had excellent instincts. She and Kane weren’t dead. They weren’t hallucinating. She felt sure of that. Which left precious few alternatives.

Susannah paused, only now noticing a paper pasted to the lamppost Kane had walked into. Peering closer, she gasped as she read the date on the handbill advertising a circus coming to town. Her instincts had been right. “Look at this handbill!”

“Unless it’s got directions to the nearest hamburger I’m not interested,” Kane muttered, rubbing the goose egg quickly rising on his forehead.

Someone was approaching them on the sidewalk. A man wearing a hat, and using a cane. A bushy muttonchop beard covered a great deal of his face. His clothing was like something from a movie set—one of those period pieces the film critics liked so much.

Was the man able to see them? Susannah wondered. Hear them? There was only one way to find out. “Excuse me, sir,” she hesitantly asked. “Could you tell me the time, please?”

The gentleman gave her a leery look, which meant he could see her and hear her, as well. Thank heavens! Relieved that at least she and Kane weren’t invisible, Susannah released the breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding.

Pulling his watch from his fob pocket, the man said, “The time is quarter past nine.”

“Thank you.” She could tell he was impatient to move on, so she went right to the heart of the matter. “And the year is...?”

At her question, the gentleman’s leery look now turned downright suspicious. “What kind of foolish prank is this? The year is 1884, of course.”

Susannah went cold all over. The year he’d just given her matched that on the circus handbill. She’d had her suspicions...but even so, hearing them confirmed—hearing the man say that it was 1884—left her feeling as if a rug had been yanked out from under her.

Eyeing Kane, who was still a bit unsteady on his legs, the bewhiskered gentleman muttered something about the downfall of civilization being caused by an overindulgence in alcohol before hurrying on his way.

It took her a moment before she could speak. “Did you hear that?” she whispered to Kane.

“Yeah, he thought I was drunk,” Kane replied irritably.

“The part before that. About the year being...1884.”

Kane nodded, grimacing as he did so. His head was hurting like hell. “I heard what he said. The old guy clearly isn’t playing with a full deck. Surely you’re not buying what he said, are you?”

“It would certainly explain a lot.”

“Oh yeah, right,” Kane noted mockingly.

“What if we have somehow traveled back in time?”

“It’s too ridiculous to even consider. Come on.” Grabbing her hand, Kane led her toward a larger thoroughfare with more foot traffic. “I’ll prove it to you.”

Everyone was dressed in period clothing suitable for the late 1800s. The crowd was mostly male. The gaslight from the streetlamps lacked the harshness of the piercing orange lights used in so many cities these days. All of Susannah’s senses were bombarded with proof of the time—the strong smell of horse manure mixed with human perspiration, the dull clip-clop sound of horses maneuvering buggies down the busy thoroughfare. The street itself wasn’t asphalt or blacktop but appeared to be softer, perhaps dirt or sand. Even the sidewalk beneath her feet was different—constructed of red bricks.

Everyone was wearing hats. Except Kane and her. While Susannah had been taking stock of the people, she realized Kane was approaching everyone walking by, asking them what year it was.

Recognizing the disapproving and suspicious looks being cast their way, Susannah tugged on her hand—the one Kane was holding in a cast-iron grip—bringing his attention back to her. “What are you going to do, keep asking until you hear an answer you like, or until they call the police?” she demanded in an undertone.

“Since when has asking a simple question been illegal?” Kane countered.

“Stop this,” she hissed, yanking her hand free of his grasp. “You’re embarrassing me.”

“We may have fallen through a time hole and you’re worried about being embarrassed?” he asked in disbelief.

Pulling him around the corner and out of the flow of foot traffic, she said, “I’m worried about being put in an asylum, the way you’re behaving! Trust me, they don’t treat people very nicely in Bellevue, or the local equivalent, in this day and age. So try not to make a spectacle of yourself, okay? We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.” Tucking her hand in his arm, she led him back the way they’d come, deliberately walking at a slow and leisurely pace. Besides, with the long skirt of her heavy velvet dress, she could only travel at two speeds—slow and slower.

“This is all your fault,” Kane muttered, his head still throbbing. As they passed the infamous lamppost, he glared at it, before turning to glare at her. “Something must have happened when we stepped in that damn blue light. I told you not to go into that room!”

“No one held a gun to your head and made you come after me,” she retorted. “Listen, it’s useless to toss around accusations at this point. We have to go back into that room.”

He headed for the brick front steps of the house where they’d seen the blue light upstairs. “Fine. The sooner the better.”

“Wait a second. How are we going to get back inside?”

“By opening the door.” He did so before she could protest.

A servant hurried across the hall to greet them. “May I help you, sir?”

“We left something here earlier,” Kane explained. “Nothing to worry about. We’ll only be a minute.”

Luckily, another servant carrying a full tray of food required the first servant’s assistance in the crowded front parlor, thereby momentarily giving Kane and Susannah the free access to the stairway they required.

As Susannah quietly passed the doorway leading to the crowded parlor, she only now realized that while the party was still going on, the mood was definitely more somber than festive. Then her attention was focused on catching up with Kane, who was already halfway up the staircase.

Once they were safely on the third floor, she turned to him and said in dismay, “There’s no blue light here anymore!”

“Don’t panic. Try and remember exactly what we did. Maybe if we reenact everything exactly, we’ll end up back where we started, in our own time.”

Susannah nodded. It sounded as logical a suggestion as any she could come up with. “I got to the top of the staircase here and saw the blue light coming from the room. Then I moved from the landing over to this doorway. It was almost as if I was being drawn forward. There was this same flickering candlelight, but the brightest light—that strange blue light that isn’t here anymore—was coming from the rocking chair over there by the second door. I reached out to touch it, but it disappeared as I stepped through this second doorway.” As she softly spoke the words, she went through the motions she was describing. Then she stepped over the threshold, with Kane right on her heels, almost tripping on the hem of her red velvet dress.

“Did it work?” he demanded. “Are we back in our own time now?”

Peering out the third-story window, Susannah said, “I don’t think so. Hey, did you know that there’s a mirror up here aimed at the front porch? From the angle it’s set at, you can see who’s at the door.”

“Would you stop gushing over the furnishings,” Kane exclaimed irritably, “and do something useful instead.”

“I never gush,” Susannah haughtily informed him before another thought struck her. “I remember something else. For one second, I’m sure I saw a face in that strange blue light. The face of that woman in the portrait. Elsbeth.”

“Look, I’m willing to acknowledge the possibility of time travel here, but I draw the line at ghosts,” Kane stated emphatically.

Help!

Susannah’s eyes widened. “Did you hear that?” she whispered.

“Hear what?”

Help me!

Susannah’s breath caught, at both the painful urgency of the woman’s voice and the realization that she was hearing it inside her head. Could it be...Elsbeth? Was she communicating with her?

Did you bring us here? It was more a thought on Susannah’s part rather than a deliberate attempt to talk to the now-invisible ghost. She could see no sign of Elsbeth’s presence, but she did feel something.... She shivered and ran her hands up her bare forearms.

Are you there? Susannah felt the silent confirmation rather than heard it.

Did you bring us here?

Again the silent confirmation.

But why?

This time Susannah heard the whispery reply in her mind: To help me.

“Help you how?” Susannah asked aloud.

It was as if her spoken words temporarily cut off the silent bond between herself and Elsbeth, if that’s what it was, for there was no longer any reply. And Susannah’s own sixth sense told her that she was temporarily on her own here, aside from an irritated-looking Kane.

“I said I could use some help,” Kane told her.

Was that what she’d heard? Kane asking for her help? Had she just imagined the ghostly presence communicating with her?

“Would you stop going all mistily sentimental on me and help me out, here?” Seeing her hesitation, Kane quickly added, “Do you want to be stuck in the past forever? Women don’t even have the vote yet.”

Sighing, Susannah acknowledged that he did have a good point. Their first priority had to be finding a way home. The idea of helping out a ghost did sound a little farfetched. Not that the concept of jumping a century in the blink of an eye was an everyday occurrence, either. “What do you want me to do?”

Stepping back inside the room, Kane said, “Try pushing on the walls.”

She did so, while asking, “What are we looking for?”

“I don’t know. Anything unusual. A time portal, maybe.”

“Sounds like something out of a science-fiction novel,” she noted with a nervous laugh. This entire situation was too bizarre for words. So much of it felt dreamlike, yet there was a hard-edged reality to it that dispelled any hope she had that she was dreaming.

Between them, they pushed on every square inch of wall space in the relatively small room. Nothing happened. After nearly an hour had passed, Susannah became more and more discouraged. As a last resort, she closed her eyes, clicked her heels together three times and whispered, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”

Upon opening her eyes, the first thing she saw was the derisive expression on Kane’s face. “Stop looking at me that way! It worked for Dorothy,” she said defensively.

“Well, it didn’t work for us,” he noted.

His glance lowered to the low neckline of her dress, which Susannah was disconcerted to discover he appeared to be studying with more than casual interest. Suddenly the words he’d thrown at her in the convention center that afternoon came back to her. A Mata Hari who played bedroom games with younger, married men—wasn’t that what he’d said? Or something to that effect. With that in mind, Susannah didn’t like the way he was eyeing her one bit.

She was tempted to put a hand up to shield her exposed skin from his hot gaze. But that would be admitting that he bothered her, and she wasn’t about to give him that advantage over her. So she threw back her shoulders instead and narrowed her eyes, as if daring him to make a comment. When he did, it was far from what she expected.

“Where did you get that necklace you’re wearing?” he demanded curtly.

Now her hand did fly up, to cover her necklace rather than her skin. “Why do you want to know?” she countered distrustfully.

“Because the woman in the portrait along the stairs is wearing one identical to it.”

“Elsbeth?” Stepping into the hallway and down a few steps, Susannah studied the portrait of Elsbeth Whitaker. Kane had blocked her view when she’d hurried upstairs an hour before. Now she could see the black bunting draped around the portrait. That hadn’t been there when the tour guide had talked about the painting in their own century. Susannah was familiar enough with Victorian tradition to know that such bunting was only used on a portrait to indicate the subject’s death. Her heart fell.

“She’s died already. We’re too late to save her,” she murmured.

“Save her?” Kane repeated. “Listen, I may not know much about time travel, but even I know that you’re not supposed to mess with things like life and death. What if this woman later had children who went on to become mass murderers or something?”

“Then why did she bring us here?”

“Who said she did?”

“I do. I can feel it here.” She pressed her palm against her heart. She’d also gotten confirmation from Elsbeth, but she didn’t think this was the best time to confess she’d communicated with a ghost. For she now felt sure that that’s what she’d done—communicated with Elsbeth. She hadn’t imagined it.

“Is the woman some kind of relative of yours?” Kane demanded.

Susannah shook her head. “I don’t have any relatives in Savannah.”

“How can you be sure?” he argued.

“Because I recently did a family history—a family tree, if you will—for my parents’ anniversary and I traced our ancestry back to the 1700s. Elsbeth Whitaker’s name didn’t show up, I’m sure of it.”

“Then how do you explain the necklace? It’s exactly the same as yours. Were a lot of them made during that time?”

Again, Susannah shook her head. “This one was specially made to order for my great-grandmother.” Looking into the sad eyes of the woman in the portrait, she felt a strong sense of kinship. Her instincts told her that her necklace, the one that so exactly matched the one Elsbeth was wearing, was some kind of tie.

She scrambled to put the pieces together. Had her great-grandmother gotten the necklace from Elsbeth somehow? Perhaps the two women had known each other. Whatever the case might have been, Susannah only knew that she was here for a reason. All she had to do was figure out what that reason was. She didn’t realize she’d spoken her words aloud until Kane replied.

“And how do you plan on doing that?” he demanded.

“By getting more information about Elsbeth Whitaker.”

“How? By asking the people downstairs about her suicide?”

“Of course not. Nothing that crass. That’s more your style than mine.”

“Oh, right,” he retorted. “Like you’re the soul of discretion. I think not.”

“Think whatever you please,” she countered.

He groaned. “God, you’re even starting to sound like this time period.”

“I happen to have edited a book or two on this era, luckily for you.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m certainly counting my blessings about now,” Kane returned sarcastically.

“Just keep quiet and listen. You might learn a thing or two.”

“From you?”

“From the people at the party downstairs. The faster we can figure out what’s going on here, the faster we can get back to our own time period,” she reminded him.

* * *

Having attended more publishing cocktail parties than she cared to, Susannah had the moves down pat—just stand around the edge of the room, with eyes downcast, and tune in to the conversations going on all around. It was her way of surviving the stifling artificiality of the business functions she was required to attend. By nature she was more a romantic dreamer than a go-getting extrovert.

To her right, two bearded men—one with a black beard, the other with a red one—were talking about some book they’d recently purchased. It took Susannah a moment to realize they were talking about none other than Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper.

To her left, two women were speaking about the joys of matrimony. “It has ever been my opinion that a woman must learn to relinquish self and live for another in order for her to have a truly happy marriage.”

“Verily so. Perhaps that’s why Elsbeth wasn’t happy in her marital situation. But to have things end so tragically....” The words were a mere whisper now, and Susannah had to strain to hear them. “The scandal is unimaginable. Such things simply don’t happen in our circles.”

The other woman nodded. “I wasn’t sure about attending tonight’s function, but we’d accepted months ago. My husband said that tonight was primarily a business gathering and therefore wouldn’t be inappropriate, considering the circumstances. My etiquette manual said nothing about an instance such as this, so I was left to depend upon my husband’s judgment in this matter.”

“As you should in all things.”

Susannah’s feminist blood was boiling, but there was no time for that now. She was getting curious looks from several of those attending the gathering. Looking at the other women present and comparing her dress to theirs, she realized that her outfit was off by a couple decades or more. And no one had a purse the size of hers. They all had dainty little reticules dangling from their wrists, while her shoulder bag felt like it was the size of New Jersey. The bottom line was that she was attracting attention, and she certainly didn’t want to do that.

Nodding at Kane, who was a short distance away, she shot her gaze toward the door in a hopefully discreet indication that it was time to make a fast exit. To her relief, Kane got her silent message and a minute later they were outside once again.

“So what did you find out?” Kane demanded.

“That the women of this era were downtrodden and brainwashed,” Susannah tartly replied.

“Wonderful. That’s extremely helpful.”

“Okay, so what did you find out?”

“That they’re still talking about the first baseball game held under electric lights in June of last year. In Fort Wayne, Indiana, of all places. Oh, and that a horse named Buchanan won the tenth annual Kentucky Derby a few days ago.”

“That’s it?”

“No. I also found out these people dislike Republicans and they don’t approve of the way the government is being run. I didn’t recognize any of the names they mentioned. Even though it’s been twenty years since the Civil War ended, apparently they still have a few lingering carpetbaggers from up north to contend with.”

“We’re lucky we didn’t land in the middle of the war,” Susannah noted.

They were walking as they talked. The night was still and the air thick with humidity. Susannah could feel her hair going berserk, corkscrew curls forming in rebellion against being unnaturally restricted. Sure enough, a hairpin slid down and dangled over her left ear while several strands of her hair spiraled in uncontrollable wildness. Muttering under her breath, she jabbed the hairpin back in place.

“Are you listening to me?” Kane demanded impatiently.

“Not really,” she readily admitted. “And you can stop glaring at me. You’ve done it so often in the past twelve hours that I’ve become immune to it.”

To her amazement, he actually smiled at her—a slow, riverboat gambler’s smile that made his blue eyes gleam in the gaslit evening. He looked dashing. She remembered thinking so when she’d first seen him at the party earlier.

Then she’d seen that fateful blue light, a lighter blue than his eyes, she absently noted. His smile really did have a devilish edge to it. She hadn’t expected that. Nor the breathless feeling it caused.

Of course, after zipping back 111 years in a single step, who wouldn’t be breathless? It had nothing to do with his smile, she silently defended herself. Or his incredibly blue eyes.

“Wha-at—” She had to pause to clear her voice. “What are you looking at?”

“At you. You’ve got a hairpin hanging over your eyebrow.”

“Where?” She automatically reached up.

“No. It’s over here.” He brushed her left temple with his index finger. The merest of touches and yet it branded her with unexpected intensity.

“Yes, well...” She cleared her throat again. “We need to decide what to do next.”

“That answer is obvious. The first thing we have to do is get some nineteenth-century money,” Kane stated.

“And how do you propose we do that?”

By this time they’d reached another area of fairly heavy foot traffic. As before, Susannah only saw one other woman in the area. She was standing in front of what appeared to be a tavern of some kind. While Susannah was no expert in nineteenth-century fashion, she sincerely doubted that the amount of bare leg and petticoat the blowsy blonde was showing was appropriate for anything other than a lady of the night.

Seeing Kane, the other woman’s eyes lit up. With dollar signs, no doubt, Susannah cynically reflected.

Kane noticed the woman, too, which aggravated Susannah for some reason. “What are you going to do?” Susannah addressed her mocking question to Kane. “Ask her what year it is?”

The woman apparently overheard them. “What year do you want it to be?” she asked Kane while moving closer to walk her fingers up his shirt buttons. “I can do whatever you want. Cost you only two bits.”

“Such a bargain,” Susannah noted caustically. “Cheap at half the price.”

“Watch who you’re callin’ cheap!” the woman loudly exclaimed.

A man with a white apron tied around his waist came outside to investigate. “Now, Polly, you know better than to accost the customers. You know how the boss feels about that. He’s trying to run a proper place now.”

“Aw, Jed...” The woman’s voice turned wheedling.

Jed ignored her. “Do come on in, sir. And please excuse Polly’s boldness. Polly, take your friend—” the man pointed at Susannah “—and move along.”

Susannah couldn’t believe her ears. In 1995 Kane called her a Mata Hari, and here in 1884 she was being mistaken for a streetwalker! Clearly she was suffering from an image problem. Was it her perfume? she wondered with wry amusement. Her walk?

Don’t go off the deep end on me now, she lectured herself, snapping out of her momentary reverie to curtly say, “I am no friend of Polly’s.”

“That’s right,” Kane confirmed. “She’s with me.”

“Begging your pardon, sir. I didn’t mean no disrespect. It’s just that we don’t get many decent women in here.”

“Well, you’re about to get one now,” Susannah haughtily informed him, striding through the doorway, only to stop in her tracks at the force of fifty lascivious eyes turned to focus on her.

“What happened to keeping a low profile?” Kane dryly inquired in her ear.

She told herself her shiver was caused by the fifty-or-so eyes still trained on her. But the truth was it was caused by the feel of Kane’s warm breath tickling her ear. Since she’d always been ticklish that way, it was no big deal. Or so she told herself.

Getting out of this bar was a big deal, though. And something she planned on doing immediately.

But Kane had other ideas. Sensing she was about to bolt, he circled her arm with his fingers. “You’re not going anywhere. I told you that we need money.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “Well, I’m not about to earn it the way Polly out there does!”

For one split second his gaze slid down her body as if he were mentally undressing her. It was what the twenty-five other men in the room had done when she’d first walked in. But where their looks had turned her stomach, Kane’s heated look curled her toes. And the feel of his fingers on the sensitive skin just above her elbow was creating more-than-justifiable havoc.

“Stop jumping to conclusions,” he reprimanded her, his cool voice decidedly at odds with the intimate look he’d just given her. “Stay here a minute.”

Without further ado he released her in order to stroll over to the bar where he began speaking to the bartender—Jed, the streetwalker had called him. Susannah stood nearby, close enough to Kane that the other men in the room wouldn’t get any ideas about approaching her themselves, but too far away for her to hear what Kane and Jed were quietly discussing. While waiting, she fanned herself with her right hand. It was incredibly warm in the tavern. Downright stifling, in fact.

Remembering she had a fold-up fan in her purse, a convention giveaway, she dug inside the large bag hanging from her shoulder until she found what she was looking for. As she did so, she was struck by culture shock. When she’d gotten the free fan that morning, the year had been 1995 and she’d been a woman confident of her agenda.

Now she wasn’t confident about much of anything; but one thing was sure—that old saying about you not missing something until it was gone was right on the money. Now that the conveniences of modern life were gone, Susannah missed them more than she could say. Air-conditioning topped the list. Air freshener and deodorant were right up there, too, she decided with a dainty sniff. The room could use the former and the men in it, the latter.

A few minutes later, Kane returned to her side. “Are we leaving now?” she asked hopefully.

“No. We’re going to play some poker. Or more precisely, I’m going to play poker. You’re going to stand nearby and keep quiet.”

“Surely you jest,” she retorted.

“Not at all.”

“And how do you plan on playing poker with no money?”

“I suppose I could try and use you as the stakes,” he responded teasingly.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Try and die.”

“Somehow I figured you’d say that. So we’ll use your jewelry instead.”

“What’s with this ‘we’ business? And you’re not getting your grubby hands on my jewels.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, which gave him a devilish look that went well with his dark tux and tails.

“You know what I mean,” she muttered.

“You have a brighter idea?”

“There must be another way. A more reliable way than gambling.”

“If there is, we don’t have time to find out,” Kane said. “Jed tells me there’s a game just beginning in the back room. You’re welcome to wait outside with Polly, if you’d rather.”

She gave him a look that would have withered a rattlesnake before coolly informing him, “I’d rather have an iced cappuccino in front of an air conditioner set on High, but that doesn’t appear to be an option at the moment.”

“You’ve got that right. You’ll just have to make do with me.”

The man was laughing at her, damn him! She was prepared to give him a tongue-lashing—to use the vernacular of the time—when he put his arm around her, as if to solicitously lead her through the crowd in the tavern to the back room and the poker game. As he did so, he whispered a warning in her ear. “Don’t cause a scene here. Remember Bellevue.”

Bellevue? He had that right! She belonged in a mental institution for agreeing to this harebrained plan of his. Unfortunately she couldn’t come up with an alternative moneymaking scheme of her own at the moment.

So she kept quiet as Kane used the two rings she always wore—one a wide gold antique filigreed band she wore on her left hand, the other a half-carat channel-set diamond ring her parents had given her for her twenty-first birthday—as an opening stake into the game. Wryly wondering if her insurance policy covered losing her jewelry in a poker game held in 1884, Susannah was all too aware of the interested looks she was getting from the men in the smoky back room. Again, she was the only woman present.

The blue haze of cigar smoke was enough to make her stomach turn. Her queasiness was increased by the speed with which Kane began losing. Next he demanded her bracelet.

She immediately protested. “This was my—”

“Favorite bracelet. I know,” Kane said in a curt voice. “I’ll buy you another one.”

Despite the fact that he was losing, something about his confidence had her handing over her garnet-and-gold bracelet. And then her matching earrings. But she’d refused to take off her great-grandmother’s necklace. She absolutely drew the line there!

She watched with concern as the stack of coins Kane had been given dwindled to one. Kane had warned her not to say anything, but he was crazy if he thought she was going to stand here and watch him go into hock.

As if sensing her thoughts, he sent her a warning look before drawling, “Gentlemen, I appear to have a problem with dwindling resources.”

“Too bad,” a cigar-smoking man named J. P. Bellows said after spewing a series of perfect smoke rings. He was the most talkative of the bunch. “Appears I’ve won, then.”

“Not so fast,” Kane replied. “There’s still my wife’s necklace.”

Wife? Susannah doubted her hearing. Her ears were starting to ring from exhaustion. She’d gotten up at four that morning to catch a flight from New York to Savannah and had arrived at the convention center a little before nine, spent the day on her feet with little to eat—not to mention time traveling 111 years. A person was bound to get a little jet-lagged under those circumstances.

Which no doubt explained why she thought she’d heard Kane describe her as his wife. Not that she was going to argue the point now. She’d seen the heated looks the Southern so-called gentlemen had been sending her way and she had a feeling their thoughts were as blue as the air. She had no intention of becoming the center of their unwanted attention. Kane was the lesser of two evils. For the moment, at least.

While she’d been momentarily distracted by her thoughts, Kane had finalized the arrangements for using her necklace as collateral for his latest bet. And, to her horror, he bet the entire amount on the cards he was holding.

“You’re going to need more than a garnet necklace to call my bet,” J.P. told Kane.

The room was suddenly still. Into the silence fell a sudden beep-beep.

“What was that?” J.P. demanded.

“My watch,” Kane replied.

“I never heard a watch make that sound before.”

“It’s a very unusual watch.”

“Let’s see it, then.”

Kane held out his wrist and showed them his watch, with its LCD digital display and numerous function buttons.

“That’s no watch,” J.P. scoffed. “Where’s the face?”

“Doesn’t need one. See, the time is displayed in numbers.”

“Toss in that strange watch of yours and you’ve got a deal,” J.P. declared.

“Done.”

Susannah wished she knew enough about poker to know if his hand was good or not. The expression on his face gave nothing away. The dismay on hers no doubt encouraged the other men around the table.

Susannah clung to her necklace, which Kane had been wise enough not to try to remove from around her neck. Closing her eyes, she sent up a prayer.

Moments later she heard the collective groans from the other men at the table. Was that good or bad?

Her eyes flew open to see Kane raking a large pile of coins and paper money in his direction. “Did we win?”

“We won,” he confirmed.

A wave of wild relief overtook her common sense. “Yes!” She let out a triumphant whoop worthy of a football fan while making an elated victorious gesture, fisting one hand and rocking back on one foot.

Seeing the openmouthed, wide-eyed stares of the men around the table, Kane knew he had to act fast. “My wife is prone to fits,” he quickly stated. “There’s only one cure.”

“Fits?” she exclaimed in protest. The next thing she knew, he’d taken her in his arms and was kissing her. Totally caught off guard, Susannah didn’t know what to do. She’d never expected such behavior from Kane. And who could have known he’d kiss like this—devilishly seductive, swooping down to capture her parted lips with utter confidence.

The heat, she told herself desperately. It was the heat. And he was generating plenty of it! Her lips quivered beneath his as he continued kissing her for another heart-stopping moment. She’d never been kissed this way in her entire life—as if she were Eve in the Garden of Eden. The passion was direct and all-consuming. Temptation. His kiss represented it. Promised it.

Desire shot through her system, rendering her speechless, even after he let her go. She blinked up at him, and saw in his eyes a flash of the same startled amazement she was feeling. That had been no ordinary kiss he’d just given her. It had been as sudden and intense as a bolt of lightning, coming out of nowhere and zapping her.

Okay, so traveling through time had rattled her. Shaken her to the soles of her feet, if the truth be known. That was understandable. Being rattled and shaken by his kiss wasn’t. And it wasn’t acceptable.

Unless it was just that the thrill of victory had momentarily left her senseless? Yes, that must have been it. She’d been that relieved that he’d won the poker game that she’d had a temporary bout of insanity. It was as good an explanation as any. It was less disturbing than the reality of being attracted to Kane Wilder.

She watched in silence as Kane gathered up his winnings. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he told his fellow poker players. “It’s been a very pleasurable experience.” He shot a fiery look at Susannah as he said that.

“Wait, sir,” J.P. protested. “You must give us the chance to recoup our losses.”

“Another time, perhaps,” Kane replied. “I must see to my wife’s health. Could one of you recommend a respectable boardinghouse nearby?”

“There’s one two blocks away,” J.P. said. “Turn right once you get outside. You can’t miss it.”

“Thank you.” With a nod, he returned Susannah’s jewelry to her before taking her arm and gallantly escorting her out of the tavern.

Once outside, she gratefully inhaled the fresh air. Turning to face him, she said, “Fits? I’m prone to fits?”

“I had to tell them something.”

“You didn’t have to kiss me!”

“Yes, I did. They were getting suspicious. I had to distract them.”

“Yes, well...” She floundered, the truth being he’d distracted her and how! “You’re just lucky things worked out as well as they did.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it,” he replied, stashing the remainder of the nineteenth-century money in his inside coat pocket before taking her arm and setting off at a brisk pace.

“Are you saying you cheated?” Susannah demanded, struggling to keep up.

“Of course not.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“That I’m an experienced poker player.”

“Sure, you are. And that was why you were losing?”

“Exactly. I was baiting the hook and they snapped.” Seeing her look of disbelief, he added, “Look, I’ve had a lot of experience testing software and one of the programs I designed a number of years back turned out to be the bestselling poker program on the market today. So trust me when I say that I knew what I was doing back there, okay?”

“No, it’s not okay!” Susannah couldn’t help herself. She socked him on the arm.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“For scaring me to death and not warning me what you were up to ahead of time!”

“And have you spill the beans by the look on your face? No way. Instead everything worked out just as I’d planned. You looked panic-stricken and that certainly helped our cause.”