Page 14 of A Touch for All Time (For All Time #3)

G ray sat up with a start. How long had he been asleep? He reached up and rubbed his head as if that would stop its pounding.

“My lord, you didn’t sleep very long.”

He didn’t have to look toward the chair to know it was Sarah Gable who spoke.

“Where’s Miss Darling?”

A stifled sigh escaped Sarah’s lips. “She will return shortly, my lord. She asked me to watch over you in her stead. Is my company so terrible that you ask for someone else the moment you hear my voice?”

What was this? Was Sarah brooding? She sounded jealous for the first time. Then again, she’d never had anyone to be jealous of. Gray didn’t share his affections with anyone. If Sarah were anyone else, he would have pointed out that she didn’t answer his question. He still didn’t know where Miss Darling was. He would have been brutally honest with her that he couldn’t help but ask for his guest because she was the first person on his mind when he woke and the last and only person with him when he laid his head on his pillow at night.

“Forgive me, Sarah. Thank you for seeing to me.”

A smile crept over her mouth. “Of course, my lord. Who else would I sit with?”

The youngest of George Gable’s children had been a chambermaid and then a maid at Dartmouth Castle since he was a boy. He was seven when he first met her, just before his mother left. She used to come with Mrs. Gable but would end up following Gray around the castle. At three, he thought she was quite adorable and laughed at her antics often. They practically grew up together except that, after the incident, Mrs. Gable left the castle, and Sarah was strictly forbidden to speak to or play with him. The Gables stayed away for four years before returning, offering maid service once again. As she grew older though, Sarah defied her mother and tried to speak to him on several occasions. By then, Gray didn’t want any friends, nor did he want to be friendly to anyone.

He ignored her for a long time but just before he left for the army, he found her weeping in one of the turrets. She had admitted that she was weeping because she would miss him. He asked her not to miss him for too long if he never came back. That made her cry more.

He left that day thinking that someone would miss him. Perhaps it was what made him fight back. When he returned, he made sure to speak to her. He promoted her position to a maid and made sure she would be getting 16 guineas a year as her wage.

He was glad she was here. She’d known him the longest with exception to Harper. His sleep had been plagued by dreams and images of foxes, wolves, ravens, and more, all slain and slung over the village men’s shoulders and hanging from long sticks. The eyes that had always watched him when they were close, stared lifelessly at nothing. It didn’t matter that they had never spoken to him directly. He always heard them when he listened. They were his friends. Kit and Maple, just two of his fox friends, Davith and Ash, his wolf friends, and Matilda and Toric, his raven friends. Dead. You killed us, Grayson. He could hear them even in their deaths. This was your fault.

His fault. He had to know the truth.

“Sarah.”

She leaped from her seat and appeared at the side of the bed. “Yes, my lord?”

He would work at finding her a good husband. “Sarah, you were my friend before anyone else.” he said, pushing himself up to sit. He tilted his head to look up at her. It wasn’t what he wanted to ask her, but he found himself asking it, nevertheless. “What exactly was it about me that you would miss so much it had made you cry that day when I was leaving for the army? We barely shared five words between us.”

She blinked her wide, mortified eyes at him. “You are curious about that now?”

He nodded. “It helped me,” he told her and waited.

“I worried that you had nothing to fight for. You were always so moody and morose. You were alone all the time without a person or animal to call friend. I—”

“Animals?” He swung his legs over the side of the bed and motioned for her to pull the chair over and sit. When she did, he leaned in toward her. “Why do you mention them? You’ve known me even longer than Harper has. Did you believe I communicated with animals?”

“Yes, my lord,” she said without hesitation, as if she’d been waiting a lifetime to confess it. “Do you not remember us playing while my mother worked? There were many times when Henrietta, your mother’s cat would visit us and meow, and you would laugh and answer things only you could hear. You forbade her and any of her friends from harming the mice in the barns or fields. Even the castle mice used to come and sit around you, me and Henrietta while we played.”

His mother’s cat? That was before his mother disappeared, when his days were filled with playing and laughter. “I don’t remember that.”

“I do,” she countered. “I know you allowed the animals to kill my father because he killed the wolf.”

Gray held up his hand. He didn’t want to remember.

“You allowed them to hurt Harry because he killed Abigail. I saw him do it. He laughed while he shot her. He tried to lie about it but I knew the truth. And I know Abigail loved you. I used to watch her follow you after your mother left. I remember seeing her asleep in your lap under the great oak outside. I know she was dear to you.

How was it possible that he had forgotten so much about Abigail when just the thought of her burned his eyes with tears?

“If this is possible then I’m responsible for your father’s death and for the deaths of all the animals that were hunted because of what happened.”

“You were a passionate child, my lord.”

“No. It’s impossible to speak to them,” he defended. “I only pretended to communicate with them because I was lonely.”

“But, my lord, you do not remember any of it?”

He reached for his bed robe and snatched it up. He left the bed and closed his eyes to the sounds of words and voices in his head. Slipping his arms through his robe, he began to pace back and forth. Was she correct? Had he truly spoken with them? Did he allow the animals to kill George Gable? Did he want them to disfigure Harry Gable? Did he…command them to do it? He clutched his head and shook it. None of this could be real. Did he have the power to forget everything?

There was one other person who would know. He stopped pacing and let go of his head. “Bring Harper to me. Find Miss Darling, and bring her as well,” he added.

“But she is not here, my lord. Not in the castle.”

“Not in the castle?” he repeated, hoping he heard wrong. He glanced at the window. It was dark outside. “Where is she?”

“She is at my house, probably with Will.”

It was hard to discern the rushing stream of emotions coursing through him. Most were so unfamiliar and confusing, he almost didn’t recognize himself. What did he care that she was with Will Gable? She’d gone out alone to get him. That’s what he was angry about. He didn’t care if she could fight off five men. One knife, sword, or pistol in the wrong hands and she could be killed. Perhaps she missed Will Gable. The stabbing hook in his chest warned that he was allowing his heart to become involved.

“Send someone to your house to bring her back.”

“Yes, my lord.”

He watched Sarah leave, thankful that she didn’t ask him what to do if Miss Darling refused to return. Wasn’t Will Gable the first person his guest thought about when Gray couldn’t check the rest of the doors with her. Hadn’t Gable taken her in first, and didn’t Will have a mother and a sister who were kind-spirited?

He heard the faint squeak of a mouse. It was an unfamiliar sound since every trace of an animal in the castle had been removed or exterminated when Gray was ten to keep them away from him and possibly overthrowing his father.

But vaguely he remembered listening to a mouse named Kitty defend his mother. Kitty. Why was he remembering her only now? He almost smiled at the irony of the head mouse’s name.

With a heedless clench of his jaw and his fists, he whispered. “Can you hear me?”

He listened but all he heard was his heart booming in his ears. If he could speak to them, should he? How could he finally face them after running away from them for so long? The thought of it pained him and almost doubled him over. How long could he keep running away? Find Miss Darling and come tell me where she is and if she’s safe.

Should he laugh at his own madness?

“Grayson,” Harper said his name from the bedroom door, then hurried inside. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“Was I able to communicate with animals before?” he asked her. “I’ve asked you before and you said you knew nothing of what I could and could not do. I’m asking you again. Please speak only the truth to me.”

“What happened at the coffee house, Grayson?”

“I was knocked out by a patron and as I’m told, the birds outside the windows began crashing into them, even dying to break the glass.”

Harper nodded, narrowing her eyes on him. “The men who escaped the coffee house were attacked by birds that dove at them as if spit from the charcoal clouds to attack and kill them.”

“And then the birds stopped and left them alone,” Gray said through clenched teeth. He would never let the animals take the blame for him again. Not ever.

“Were you responsible?”

He nodded. Did she still not know him? “For the latter, yes.”

“Then you have already answered your question,” she told him with one of her serene smiles.

He remembered coming to in the coffee house. The first thing he’d been aware of was Miss Darling laying on him, shielding his body against…Toric? Hadn’t the black raven that killed George Gable been shot down? What was it doing inside the coffee house, circling him and the woman covering him? He had sensed urgency and rage outside and instinctually relayed soothing thoughts to calm and quiet them. He didn’t think about doing it. He did it because birds in that condition smash into things and he didn’t want any of them to get hurt. When he went outside and found the bodies of the other birds, guilt overwhelmed him again. The least he could do was bury them. She had helped.

“How is it possible?”

“Many things are possible. Especially for you, Grayson.”

“Like what, Harper. I can speak to animals. What else?”

“It’s unknown. Men of your bloodline are rare. We know of the gifts of time-travel, animal communication, dream communing, which we believe you possess since you were able to speak to your mother in dreams. Seeing the future or the meaning of things, and the ability to see and communicate with spirits are other gifts. And before you get angry at me for not telling you this sooner, there are laws and rules by which the Blagdens must abide. You chose to forget. Forcing you to remember would only cause your mind pain. You had to remember on your own.”

He felt numb and then something she said stood out in his mind. “I can travel through time?”

“It’s very likely, but—”

“Can I help Miss Darling find her way back?”

“Do you want to?”

He hesitated, then, seeing that she noticed, hurried to answer. “Of course, it’s what she wants more than anything.”

Harper stared at him for another moment, then shook her head. “You can’t time travel without permission, so don’t think about it. That is, if you figure out how. You can’t time travel until you’ve been taught how to do it properly. Thoren Ashmore was lost to his twin daughters for over twenty years of their lives and ended up in a noose before he was rescued.”

“Who rescued him?” Gray asked.

She waved the question away. “That’s another story. Just remember not to fiddle with time. There’s punishment for it.”

Something in his chest thumped and rose to his throat. “Is that what happened to my mother?”

Harper closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, then with a sigh, “Yes,” she admitted. “Yes, Grayson—and before you ask, none of us knows where or when she is.”

“Was she running away? From me?”

Tears filled Harper’s loving eyes, and she began to shake her head when Gray was distracted by a tiny sound in his head.

Sir? Are you truly hearing me?

What? Whose was this cautious, curious, squeaky voice in his head? I think so. Who is this?

It’s Tabby. We were never introduced. Kitty, my grandmother, was once the head mouse here. She loved you very much.

Kitty. Gray remembered her and felt his belly sink to his feet. His friends were real, and he’d forgotten them. He’d left them.

I told the others you were back. No one believes me.

Gray slid his astonished gaze to Harper. “Do you hear this?”

She listened. “Hear what?”

“It’s Tabby,” he told her. “Her grandmother Kitty was a head mouse here. Harper, I can hear her speaking.

“The lady you search for is at the Gable home,” he repeated so Harper could follow along, “but she waited until the man left the room and then she said, ‘I can’t stay with him. I must go no matter how much of my heart is already lost.’”

Harper’s eyes opened wider when she cast him a stunned look. Gray wasn’t sure what surprised her so: that he was hearing a mouse speaking to him, or that Miss Darling’s heart was lost to Will Gable? It didn’t surprise him. Why wouldn’t she choose the victim over the killer? It sickened him that the one girl he opened to a bit, was thinking of Will Gable when she was with him.

“Grayson, what is it? Has she lost her heart to you already?”

He gave Harper a confused look. “To me?” No. She wasn’t speaking about him. Was she? But…she wasn’t staying. Whether she meant him or Gable, the point was she had to go. “What do I care who she meant?” he grumbled to Harper, then thanked Tabby for her news.

“Grayson, you’re pouting.”

“No, I’m not,” he said, rolling back into bed. “I want to dance.”

“You always want to dance when you’re feeling upset.” She came near and tucked his blanket under his neck when his teeth chattered. He pushed the blanket off and wiped the sweat off his brow. “The physician said to stay in bed, so no dancing tonight.”

How could she sound so calm when he felt as if he were losing his wits, his logic, his strength, someone else in his life?

“Grayson, dearest,” she said in a soft voice while she took the seat Sarah had pulled closer to the bed, “are you jealous of Miss Darling and Will Gable?”

He started to deny it, but what good would that do him? He needed to know what to do about it if he was jealous.

“Does thinking of them make you feel angry?” she pressed gently.

“If you must know, then yes, it makes me feel a bit angry. But that’s normal possessive behavior. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“She’s not something to be possessed, Grayson.”

“We’re not living in your twenty-first century,” he reminded her stoically.

“She’s not something to be possessed in any century.”

“Is jealousy more acceptable?”

“It’s different,” she told him. “It involves your heart.”

“I don’t know what I’m feeling, Harper,” he confessed and sat up again, feeling restless. “I feel like I don’t know myself anymore. I learned a new kind of dance, Harper. Did I tell you?”

She shook her head, smiling with him.

“She calls it contemporary,” he told her, feeling a little better while he spoke of it. “I danced it, and I never want to stop.”

Her smile warmed him. She took his hand. “It seems to have ignited a light in you and for that I’m deeply grateful. I hope you dance until you’re an old man.”

He smiled, letting his emotion toward her show. She was the motherly one who hadn’t left him.

A knock at the door summoned his attention. He waited while Harper rose to open the door. When he saw Miss Darling, he almost left the bed.

“Excuse me, my lord,” she said in her dulcet voice. “I just wanted to check on you.” She smiled at Harper and then back at him but didn’t enter. “I’m glad to see you awake and alert. How are you feeling?”

“Weary and feverish,” he answered dryly.

She hurried to his bedside with Harper close behind. When she reached him, she shot out her hand and pressed her palm against his forehead.

He could do nothing but stare at her while she felt him for fever. He felt himself falling as her warm, sweet breath fell over him. Why didn’t she wear her hair up in those hideous bundles of curls over her ears like the other women at court? Why was it always falling over her shoulders and down her back like a fragrant veil? Why couldn’t he get the images of her shapely legs, her radiant grace while she danced out of his head?

“Miss Darling,” he said, moving his head away from her hand, “did you return alone?”

Behind her, Harper shook her head at him.

“Harper, you can go for now.”

“Are you sure?” she scoffed at him. “If you feel feverish, you might not be yourself right now?”

He got her meaning. He was going down the wrong path with Miss Darling. Jealousy was never pretty.

He gave Harper a nod. He was sure.

When she left, he returned his attention to Miss Darling.

“Will returned with me,” she told him without haste. “I told you I didn’t want to check the doors alone in case I’m stopped by—”

“As you can see, I’m alright,” he interrupted softly. “You shouldn’t keep your door waiting, Miss Darling.”

Or Will Gable , he wanted to throw at her, but he wasn’t one to react or behave rashly. He’d done that once…

“If you find your way home,” he said, “I won’t see you again. I wanted to tell you that you were right. I can communicate with animals and now I know why I wanted to forget it.”

“Why?” she breathed out.

He didn’t want to tell her and have his responsibility for the death of all those animals and Mr. Gable be the last thing she remembered about him. “It’s not your concern, Miss Darling. Hopefully, you’ll find your door and return to your family. Is Will Gable prepared to see you go?”

She blinked and swallowed back something she wanted to say. “I haven’t asked him.”

“You haven’t asked me either.”

She cast him a mocking smile. “Why do I need to ask? It’s clear you can’t wait for me to go.”

“Ask me.”

She paused, her smile unchanging. “Are you prepared to see me go, my lord?”

“No.”

“No?” Her eyes grew so gloriously wide, he wanted to dive into their gray-blue fathoms and never come up for air.

He didn’t answer. What could he tell her that wouldn’t make him sound like a pathetic fool? Her life wasn’t here, and he’d known that since he first saw her. Why did she have to be the one who stirred his heart? How had he let her do it? All the vows he made to himself about never letting anyone touch his heart again, never trusting, never loving again flew off to the four winds and she could be gone at any moment? He’d known she’d be going back. He’d known. He had no right to blame her, and he didn’t.

“Miss Darling?”

“Hmm?”

Why was she looking at him with a longing gaze?

“Is your heart lost to Gable?”

No! That wasn’t what he meant to ask! But he was curious now because of the way she was staring at him, if she truly meant Gable when she said her heart was already lost to him. He admitted to himself that it shouldn’t matter, but he wanted to know.

“No, of course not,” she told him to his great relief. “I told you I must go back. Why would I lose my heart to him?”

He believed her. That meant… I can’t stay with him. I must go no matter how much of my heart is already lost… was the him she spoke of, him ?