Page 22 of A Touch for All Time (For All Time #3)

T he duke’s marriage ball for his son was in its second hour and Gray still hadn’t shown his face. That was because Aria didn’t want to stop kissing him. They had stolen away to his private dance hall so he could practice his dance. With his grandmother returned, Aria had convinced him that they had so much to be thankful to Mrs. B. for. His grandmother knew that out of the three women suitable to take him as a husband, only Aria would appreciate his love of dancing and his dedication to it. She understood how it made him feel.

Earlier, when he mentioned practicing, despite all the musicians being in the main ballroom, she leaped at the chance to watch him. She had watched him often. Tonight though, tonight his dancing made her desire him with a force that wouldn’t be tamed or stopped. One look at the flames in his eyes, the decadence of his smile, and she melted from the inside out.

Boldly, she had gone to him on the dance floor and moved like a cat in heat against him, around him until he pushed her up against the window, yanked up her skirts, and pulled at other garments to take her. Their love was passionate and swift, leaving them both pulling their breath and resting against each other.

Looking up at him, Aria knew she loved him enough to stay with him for the rest of her life. But as much as she loved looking at him, she loved touching him, holding him even more. She pulled him close. She was about to tell him how much she loved him, when he said her name.

“Take me as your husband. I promise my life to you. I want to stay by your side forever and share our journeys together. If you cry, I want to be there to hold you and comfort you. And if it was me who brought tears to your eyes, I’ll spend forever making it up to you. “Let’s…ehm…” He smiled at her from under his long, dark lashes… “have seven children together.”

“Yes,” she told him softly, “I’ll be your wife and have your children, however many there are.”

They kissed until someone banged on the locked door. Gray adjusted his periwinkle velvet breeches.

Aria considered him the sexiest man alive, who could fire up her insides just by tucking his shirt into his breeches.

Blushing uncontrollably, she adjusted her clothes—and there were so damn many layers.

The intruder happened to be Harper, looking for them. “Cavendish is bedridden—and very drunk I’m told. Now is the chance to speak to your father without his interruptions.”

Gray scowled at her. “How can you not know me by now?”

“Oh, please,” Harper chided. “Do you think I don’t know you would rather have your nose cut off than consider an opportunity to defend yourself to your father?”

“And why exactly should I defend myself to him?” Gray bit out and began buttoning his periwinkle coat with magenta embroidery along the edges and cuffs.

“Because he’s your family, Grayson. Remind him of that. You must not lose everything to Cavendish. While your father lives, he can still change his will. You must make certain that nothing changes. You must inherit everything. Grandmother will make herself your beneficiary should you disappear. It will all be in a bank, waiting for you in the future.”

Gray looked at Aria. She nodded and left the dance hall with him and Harper.

She was with him when he stepped through the ballroom double doors and strolled inside, smiling as if he hadn’t made them all wait for two hours before they could begin their gossiping. He smiled at no one in particular and Aria couldn’t help but notice that when his eyes reached her, his smile grew noticeably warmer.

The music stopped and every eye turned to him. Walking at his side, Aria tilted her chin and held her head up, proud to be walking beside him.

His grandmother was there, sitting at his table with Harper, waiting for them. When Gray saw her, he acknowledged her with a nod and a wink.

Mrs. B.’s gushing reaction to him didn’t escape Aria’s notice. Aria smiled, happy that they were reunited.

After he walked her to his table, Gray turned to the musicians, mainly the pianist, with whom he had pre-arranged a musical piece. They exchanged a nod and Gray walked to the center of the dance floor, cleared when the guests saw him enter.

“I’m here to dedicate this dance to my grandmother, who has returned to me.”

Aria had a hard time seeing Mrs. B. wiping her eyes because her own were blurry with tears.

The music began. He stood slightly bent forward and then threw his arms back with a snap of his head. He extended his arms to the left. His body followed and then he swung to the right. He flowed to the music as if he could feel every note and chord in his blood. Aria believed he could.

Around her she could hear the sighs of the women in the ballroom.

“He is like living art.”

…a feast for my poor eyes.”

“I like this way of dancing more than ballet. What is it called?”

The questions and comments buzzed around Aria’s ears. She smiled, not worried in the least about any one of the women there. Somehow, she had won the bitter heart of the marquess and then watched him shed his chains and step into the radiant light. He danced, free of the strings that had moved him this way and that. She would cry her happy tears later. It wouldn’t do to have her, Harper, and his grandmother all crying like fools at the table.

He sprang from one foot, spreading his legs and arms wide while in the air. He landed on the other foot in a perfect grand jeté. Aria felt goosebumps rise on her arms.

His body was long and lean in all the right places, creating beautiful lines whether in the air or on the ground. He was light on his toes, his feet moving as if in the air. Though he’d just begun practicing lyrical dance, every move was completely natural. His pushes and pulls were forceful, yet graceful. From his raised head to his pointed toes, he was glorious to behold.

But it was the way he closed his eyes and delighted in flying that made him most breathtaking.

Aria remembered to breathe and looked across the table at Mrs. B. Gray’s grandmother wore a smile that Aria was sure would never completely leave her face. She knew what his dancing meant to him and, as Aria told Gray, his grandmother sent Aria to him because she knew Aria would appreciate his marvelous talent. Maybe she also knew that Aria would never allow anyone to stop him from dancing again.

When Gray was finished his grandmother and Aria began the applause, but everyone joined in until the sound of clapping hands filled the ballroom.

Gray waited until the applause died down before he turned his attention to his father, who stared at him as if he’d never seen his son before.

Aria held her breath. Gray hadn’t told her what he was going to say to his father. With him, it could go either way. She had no idea what to expect.

“The other reason I’m here tonight, dancing at your ball is to announce to you and everyone here that I’ve found the woman I love with every ounce of my heart.” He looked to where Aria was sitting with her face aglow in the firelight. “Miss Aria Darling will be at my side as my wife for all time.”

With nothing but his warm smile, he eased her nerves.

But too soon, he returned his dark attention to his father. “Whether you approve or not.”

When the duke opened his mouth to speak, Gray held up his finger to stop him. “I am your only son. I am sound of mind, and I have fought for the king. I won’t let Miss Darling or Dartmouth be taken from me.”

He paused for a moment to let his words sink in. Aria wondered if the duke was thinking about his stepson, Mr. Cavendish, lying in his sickbed at the moment with a broken nose and three missing teeth and two broken ribs.

“Since I was a boy,” he continued, “you have never done a single thing for me. Now I ask you to do one thing. Declare that Timothy Cavendish is no longer your son, even by marriage because he tried to take Miss Darling’s life. No such man should ever rule.”

“He was doing what I ordered him to do,” his father said, shocking Gray and Aria alike. “She’s a thief! I should have had her thrown into prison instead of listening to that old woman, Tessa Blagden! Where is she?”

Aria stared at Mrs. B.’s empty chair. She was looking at her old friend while the duke ranted on. And then, before Aria finished blinking her eyes, Mrs. B. was gone.

Aria took a moment before the guards grabbed her to wonder why Mrs. B. was allowed to jump around in time, but Gray’s mother had been punished for it.

She looked at him in time to see him turn his stoic expression on the men around her. And then, in an instant, fire lit his eyes. He drew his sword and hurried toward them. Most ran, some waited until he was almost upon them before they ran too. When Gray reached her, unhindered, he grabbed her hand and closed his eyes.

Aria had no idea what he was doing. His father shouted behind her. Harper joined her and Gray.

“Aria, tell me something about your mother. Quickly!” Gray held his blade out while he waited for her to answer.

“Um…ah…she’s a hard worker. She…it’s hard to think when all this was going on!

Gray opened his eyes briefly and gave her a caustic look.

Aria narrowed her eyes on him but focused her thoughts. “She has blonde hair and her eyes are blue like mine. Um, she’s five feet, six inches tall. She has a burn scar from two years ago on the back of her left arm, from her shoulder to her elbow. She…”

Aria’s words caught in her throat at the sight before her.

The air blurred, as if she were looking over the heat of flames. The western wall of the ballroom tore away. On the other side was…was her mother’s living room.

With his hand covering hers, Gray ran for the tear.

Home! It was home! Aria’s heart was ready to explode.

A pair of hands stopped her dead in her tracks, ripping her hand from Gray’s, then dragged her in the opposite direction.

She turned to look up, horrified at Harry Gable. “Let me go!” She tried to fight her way free.

“Aria!” Gray screamed her name. He was close to the blurry tear. “I can’t keep it open if I run back. Come to me!”

Aria tried to pull herself together and concentrate, then she snapped out her leg, but her captor merely shook his head and held on. Aria panicked, but a pair of hands grabbed Harry from behind, one arm coiled around his neck.

Aria saw that it was Will and kicked out. Finally, she broke free. She looked toward the rent in time. Gray was there, waiting for her.

A shot rang out. Sarah screamed. It was Will! Will had been shot! There was no time to even look back. Barely an instant for a shadow to rush by Aria as she took a flying, fearless leap into Gray’s arms. And the rent closed.

*

Gray held out his arms when she leaped and caught her. He smiled as if it was the single most important thing he succeeded at in his life. It was.

Then he looked around. They were in a square room with odd candle stands giving off soft, golden light. There was a settee-type, thick-cushioned place for sitting, along with a chair, upholstered in the same cream-colored fabric.

He wanted to ask Aria if she saw the shadow shoot by them—seemingly going from this world to that one.

“Mom?”

Before he asked her, Aria’s voice broke through his thoughts.

Mom. They were in the future. It worked! He traveled through time!

A woman appeared from another room carrying a basket of clothing. “Aria? What are you doing home so early? Did you finish prac—”

The older woman’s words were swallowed up in a tight, tearful embrace. “Mom! Oh, Mom! I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

“Here for what?” Her mother gently pushed her out of her arms and gave her a careful looking over. “When did your hair get so long? And…what’s with the medieval clothes?”

“Regency,” Aria absently corrected. “Mom—”

“And who is this handsome young man?”

“How’s Dad?” Aria asked, hurrying out of the room and into another. “Where’s Dad?” She shouted, rushing back to them, pale of all color. “Did he…?”

Her mother gave her a concerned look. “Your father went off to the batting cages.”

“The batting cages?” Aria shouted, looking faint.

“Aria,” her mother said with a concerned look, “what’s the matter with—”

“What about the accident? Where’s Conn?”

Now her mother gave Gray the same worried look. “What is she talking about? What accident? Has there been an accident?” the older woman leaned her hand against the wall. “Aria, what accident? Is it Conn? He was just—”

“There hasn’t been an accident,” Gray reassured her. “Aria,” he said, turning to her next and lowering his voice. “I think I brought us back a few years early.”

She stopped moving. He wasn’t sure she was breathing. Then, “A few years early?”

He smiled. “Yes.”

“You mean the accident—”

“Hasn’t happened yet,” he supplied.

Tears immediately filled Aria’s eyes, and she threw her hands to her mouth. “Thank you, Gray. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“I’ll figure something out.”

They exchanged a smile and then Aria turned to her mother. “Mom, I know this is going to sound crazy, but what’s the date?”

Her mother scowled at her, and it reminded Gray of Aria when she was angry.

“You’re right, it does sound crazy. Do you have a fever?” She hurried closer and pressed her palm to Aria’s forehead. “You’re acting very strange. It’s April 7th.”

“And the year?” Aria pressed.

Her mother slapped her palms against her thighs. “2022.”

“2022?!” Aria began to cry. When her mother and Gray went to her, she reassured them that they were happy tears. “The happiest of my life.” She looked at Gray and smiled. “Thank you.”

“Young man, since my daughter hasn’t introduced us yet, I’m Rose Darling. You are?”

“Grayson Barrington, my lady.” He bowed and smiled at her on the way back up.

“Oh, my,” Mrs. Darling said, bringing her hand to her chest.

“He’s the Marquess of Dartmouth…in England,” Aria announced.

“Oh, my.” Her mother repeated and backed up a step to size him up from head to toe. “How do you know my Aria?”

“I’m a dancer.”

“Romeo?”

Aria took her mother’s hands and nodded. “Better than Romeo.”

“Better?” Gray and her mother asked together.

“So much better,” she answered them both with a slight blush that tempted Gray to go to her and take her in his arms. He wondered if a lifetime would be long enough to spend with her.

When Mrs. Darling offered him a seat on the couch, he gave it a curious look first. It seemed to be bursting at the seams with cushioning. Was there any wood used to keep it from sinking into the floor? He sat down cautiously and then smiled and snuggled into the deep cushion and closed his eyes. A man could sleep well on this fat couch.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Aria said and tugged on his arm. “I have a million things I want to show you.”

“Oh, sightseeing?” Mrs. Darling smiled at them. “You’ll need energy. Let me make you some lunch.”

Aria agreed and Gray knew she wanted to spend more time with her mother, whom she feared she had lost.

He was surprised to find Mrs. Darling so accommodating, without a trace of sourness in her tone when she spoke. He wondered if his mother would have been so pleasant had she lived. In his most recent dream of her, she seemed thoughtful and kind, stroking his tired head in her lap. Would he have learned her modern English and called her mom? Would he have had a couch?

“I made tuna salad for sandwiches with the boys, but—well, now, where is that boy? Connall, you’re going to be late!” She turned to tell them, “He’s leaving today for the week on his hiking trip with Charlie and Jack Bantor. I told him I’d pack a launch.”

“Hiking trip?” Aria echoed in a shaky voice. “He can walk,” she said in a quiet whisper and wiped her tears in a heedless attempt to stop her tears.

When no answer came from her son, her mother shrugged her shoulders softly. “I guess he left already. He was here a minute ago.”

Gray’s heart skipped in his chest when he looked over his shoulder at where the rift had been.

“But don’t worry, you two,” Mrs. Darling declared on her way into the kitchen. “I made plenty.”

Aria looped her arm through his and locked him in entwining her hands when he began walking. “Gray, you gave my brother back his legs and my father his life.”

“I’m glad, my love. Do you think your brother left already for his trip?”

She nodded and smiled. “He was always…is always very active.”

Gray smiled with her and looked over her shoulder one last time at where they had entered and swallowed his panic that the shadow might have been…

“You’re going to love my mother’s tuna salad sandwiches.”

And Gray did. He’d had fish before but never crumbled bits of tuna fish and chopped onions with delicious white sauce Aria called mayonnaise—and all of it spread out on rye toast .

It was the first of many wonders of the twenty-first century Gray experienced that day. After they changed clothes—her into her own garments, and him, into jeans and a button-down shirt that belonged to her brother, Gray discovered that there weren’t any candles beneath the cloth covered candle stands—which was a good thing because the cloth would have surely caught fire. Almost everything worked off electricity. He’d heard of it before, but it was a relatively new marvel in his century, and there was nothing like personal electricity to power a home’s lighting, among hundreds of other things that needed electricity to run.

It was almost nothing compared to what he saw when he stepped outdoors with Aria to go meet her father at the batting cages.

There were people…everywhere. And modern, metal behemoths rolling to and fro, called, according to Aria, cars. Modern vendors owned stores , where they sold everything from food to clothing, cigars, and footwear. Everything moved at a quickened pace.

When music began to play from somewhere around him, he stopped. “What’s that?”

Aria stopped with him and smiled. “It’s music coming from that electronics store. Pink Floyd. Great soundtrack.”

He closed his eyes and began to sway. Aria took his hand and pulled. “Not in the middle of the street. I’ll take you to the school later.”

Following her, he asked a dozen questions about the musicians from the electronics store, then stopped again in front of a hotdog cart. His eyes opened wide and then closed again to take a deep breath.

“Hot dogs,” she told him.

He made a look of disgust. “People eat dogs now?”

She explained, as best she could, what hot dogs were and brought him one from the odd green paper money she found in her pocket. He scarfed it down, then requested another. Twenty-first century food was truly a wonder!

While she paid the vendor, a male voice called out her name. When she heard it tears immediately filled her eyes. She turned to see her father coming toward them.

“My father is walking, Gray,” she said with such joy in her voice it almost brought tears to his eyes, as well. “It’s been almost two years since I saw him walk to me.” She turned to Gray and her gaze on him warmed. “I’ll never forget this. He was given a death sentence and now he’s alive and well.”

“It sounds a bit how life left me until I met you,” he told her softly. If her father hadn’t almost reached them, Gray would have kissed her.

“Sweetheart, what are you doing home early?” Her father stepped up to her and put his arm around her, then kissed her forehead.

Aria hugged him and never wanted to let go. “Daddy, you look so young and healthy.”

“What? What are all the tears, Aria?” he inquired gently, studying her.

“It’s just…I’m happy to see you up and around.”

“Hmm?” He gave her a confused look, then slipped it to Gray.

Gray gave him a little bow. “I’m Gray. Grayson Barrington.”

“The Marquess of Dartmouth in Devon, England,” Aria added as she had for her mother.

Mr. Darling grinned at him and held out his hand. Gray looked at the offering and then offered his hand, as well.

“What brings you to our fair city, my lord?” her father asked, still smiling.

“Your daughter, Sir.”

He and Aria explained how they met at an audition and danced together. Gray had returned home but he missed Aria too much to stay away.

“It sounds like you might want to marry my little girl.”

“Daddy!” Aria’s soft laughter drifted like a siren’s song across Gray’s ears.

“Yes.” Gray said, smiling at her like a fool before he grew serious again. “I intended on asking you for your blessing.”

“Let’s go home and talk about it with my wife,” her father suggested. They agreed and turned back for the apartment .

“Daddy?”

“Yes, love.”

“I’m so happy to see you well.” She looped her arm through his and walked with him.

Her father gave her a soft chuckle and then smiled at Gray. “If you ever have children, pray for a daughter.”

Gray nodded, having seen glimpses of a girl child with flaming red curls falling around her cherubic face. “I will, Sir.”

“That’s good. So, Marquess, you love my daughter?”

Smile intact, in fact, Gray thought he just might not ever stop smiling, he answered, “Yes, I love her.”