Page 6 of A Touch for All Time (For All Time #3)

2 024?

Gray would have laughed but something in his belly twisted and knotted. It wasn’t just a random number, but summer 2024. It was a date. A year. She claimed she came from the twenty-first century.

He would have thought her mad, but didn’t he used to believe that his mother had disappeared into the future?

He’d seen Miss Darling appear out of nothing, just as he’d seen his mother do a number of times. If Miss Darling came from the future, then his mother might be there. Yes, he would have laughed at such a preposterous notion as time-travel, adding it to what was so unusual about Miss Darling, but her tears were convincing. Tears she shed for a bird.

She was convincing for certain. She wept over a family she believed she’d left in the future. A brother whose birthday she’d missed. Her students—she was a teacher. She’d mentioned an audition. Did she teach the deaf?

He didn’t care. He’d refused to care. It hadn’t been easy. He’d felt unfamiliar stirrings of pity, perhaps even traces of compassion and threw water on that fire quickly. He wouldn’t allow such damaging emotions to infect him.

Chasing Will Gable’s guest from his thoughts, Gray glanced up at the raven again. The creature was difficult to ignore.

A raven had followed him for two years after the Gable incident and then disappeared, until today. Gray wasn’t certain it was the same raven that had pecked George Gable in the temple until he died. They all looked the same, though the one that killed Mr. Gable was bigger than the others. The one flying above him now was large and loud, swooping low and cawing almost in Gray’s ear. Gray reached out at one point and practically pushed the creature out of his way. He wouldn’t take a swing at it. He didn’t hurt animals.

Why was it following him though? What did it want? If it was the one that killed Mr. Gable, he’d rather it didn’t follow him.

He ignored it as best he could and finally reached the castle. He wanted to find Harper and ask her if she knew anything about people traveling back in time, back from, say, the year 2024? Harper had denied any knowledge of a place called New York City. But the more he’d brought it up, the less he believed her. What did it all mean? Why would Harper lie to him? He hoped she wasn’t lying to him about this.

He nodded to the stable hand, then gave Ghost a pet between the eyes. Thank you for carrying me around all day. He didn’t express his gratitude out loud. No reason to set tongues flapping about him speaking to the animals again. He wasn’t expecting an answer from the horse, and he didn’t get one. He wasn’t a child anymore with childhood fancies. He looked up as he strode for the doors. The raven was gone. He wondered if Miss Darling had seen the huge bird following him.

He felt a flush of warmth flow through him at the thought of her name. Would just thinking her name forever bring color to his face? Was he a cat beguiled by a shiny object? He scoffed at himself and pulled the castle door open. Inside, he shrugged out of his coat, then took it by the shoulders and snapped it. Scattered snowflakes and cold air hit Timothy Cavendish in the face. Gray’s older stepbrother glared at him.

“Thankfully, it’s nothing that can kill you,” Gray remarked as he passed him.

“Grayson!” his stepbrother screeched. Gray stopped and turned to him with impatience slouching his shoulders. “What?”

“Father is looking for you.”

Gray really hated this ant calling the duke his father. He tried to tell himself that he didn’t hate Timothy Cavendish, but he couldn’t deny the rage he always had to fight back when Cavendish was around.

“You’re always the bearer of bad news, aren’t you?” Gray asked in a knowing drawl and gave him a stiff half-smile. “Where is the old boy?”

Cavendish gaped at the way Gray addressed his father. “I’m going to tell him exactly what a miscreant his son is until I’ve convinced him enough for him to strip you of everything—and then I’m going to sit in your chair.”

Gray looked heavenward and stopped listening. “I’ll find him myself.”

He left the babbling dullard and headed for the stairs. He knew if his father was in Dartmouth, he could be found in his private study. When Gray reached the study door, he took a breath to steady his heart and knocked.

“Come,” his father called out from inside.

Gray knew exactly where he’d find the Duke of Devonshire—at his desk behind the window, his gaze fastened on one of the many papers on his desk.

“You wanted to see me.” Gray stepped inside and sat in one of the two chairs on the other side of the duke’s desk. The other chair was Cavendish’s. It was the first thing Gray was going to burn when his father left this earth and the castle became completely his. Just seeing the chair, a place for someone who should not be there, darkened Gray’s mood.

“What is the meaning of placing thirty men around the Gable’s holding?” the duke asked without looking up.

What is the meaning of seating your second wife’s son in the chair beside the son of your loins? Gray wanted to ask him in return.

“The Gable holding is in the direct line of the band of thieves who have been raiding the three villages,” Gray said instead. “The three men I caught confessed to there being a group of at least twenty—the highest they could count—men in the band of thieves. Our villages are ripe for picking without any shield from us, the ones they pay for protection.”

There, Gray mused as the duke set his fiery gaze on him. That got his father’s attention.

“The ones who give them land on which to live,” the duke snarled.

“Land they must farm by the sweat of their brow. One bad season and they go hungry.” Very few knew about Gray’s stash of grain deep in the cellars of Dartmouth Castle. There were about eleven tons of it, collected over the years and brought in secretly with only himself and Harper accepting the sacks and having them transported to the cellars.

“Son.”

Gray grinned, but it was something more macabre than warm. He’d never been a son to this man. Not a true son who could go to his father when the world, and his own young mind, beat him up. He’d never been a son who was chastised out of love. The duke never cared enough to get involved in Gray’s life.

“Anyway,” he said before the duke spoke further, “they’re my men, and that’s where I want them.”

He didn’t move from the chair but waited a moment, then two.

“Very well, do as you like,” the duke acquiesced. “But Grayson,” he said as his son stood from his chair, “if you would continue to have your way while I live, I want you to try to get along with your brother.”

The fire felt as if it were blazing in his belly, searing and scorching as it rose to his chest. “No.”

“Son—”

“He’s not my brother. He’s a worm and you know it. How could you ask me to get along with one of the boys who used to kick me while I lay curled up in a corner? Who made my life hell with Harry Gable and the others?” He paused and let the smoke leave him with a deep exhalation.

“All those things happened long ago, Son. You must forget them. You were boys. Boys fight.”

Gray let out a short laugh and then left the study. He shut the door behind him and ground his jaw. He stopped the first servant who passed him in the hall and bid her to find Harper and send her and her violin to his dance hall. No one stopped him while he made his way to the private hall he’d built above the cliffs on the side of the castle.

Boys fight.

He hadn’t fought. He’d lost. But what did his father know? The duke spewed his orders from afar, and Gray had been expected to follow them. One of his orders was that Gray leave ballet. It would stop the boys from mocking him, his father had said without an ounce of empathy in his voice. “And besides,” the duke had continued while his new wife sat watching him, smiling, “a boy should be learning academics and weaponry. Not art.”

Gray hadn’t agreed but had no choice. None of his dance instructors would teach him a single step. They were the worst years of Gray’s life. He’d vowed he’d never follow another order in his life. Even when he joined the Royal Army, he’d gone in to die. Following orders was last on his list. He still wasn’t sure how he’d survived. But he had, and not only that, he survived with a hero’s honor among his men. As for the duke, Gray would never obey him again.

Stepping into the hall, he removed his waistcoat and unraveled the lace and loosened it around his neck. He paced while he waited for Harper. He felt taut, all wound up. He rubbed the back of his neck and ran his hand through his hair. He listened to the click of his boots against the floor and walked faster, picking up the tempo he was hearing in his head. He walked to the center of the floor, swaying and bending his legs outward while he went.

By the time Harper arrived, he was engrossed in his dance, dancing to music only he could hear.

Without disturbing him, Harper took her seat in a small chair in the corner. She watched him for a moment, taking in the speed of his movements. She placed her violin under her chin and, still watching him, began to play.

Gray heard the music of her violin and smiled as the sound filled his bones. He spun and twirled in two pirouettes and a grand-jeté and landed running and leaping, arching his back and letting his arms fall at his sides. He looked to be running out of stamina, but Harper kept playing, knowing better that it took much more strenuous, longer routines to tire him to the point where he couldn’t continue.

All the years of him being forced to study the sciences and almost everything under God’s blue skies when all he thought about was dancing. Now, no one would stop him. Here. This was what he wanted, dreamed about since he was six, moving with rhythm to music, soaring in leaps and spins, being free and unhindered by the tethers of life.

He danced and practiced a new dance for the ball. He knew most of the stately, stuffy nobles attended to get a look at him so they would have something to talk about at their dull tables. He didn’t care. Let them talk. He’d wasted enough years trying to please others.

He wished he hadn’t uninvited Miss Darling. Damnation, hers was a sweet name. But he knew his family and he knew he’d done the right thing. The Cavendishes would ask her endless questions about her family line until they discovered if she was rich or poor. If she was poor, she’d be promptly abandoned and never addressed again. How was he supposed to dance and take pleasure in his family’s disgrace of him if he was worrying about her?

He wondered which, if any, dances Miss Darling knew? She believed she came from the future. What would dancing be like in the twenty-first century?

The things she had told him chipped at the thick shell he’d created around himself. His heart wasn’t the only thing repeatedly broken as a child. His body had been broken on so many occasions he’d stopped counting. Though he’d remained outwardly aloof and detached toward Harper, he was grateful for the times she stitched him up and put him back together. The bullying eased up a bit after the Gable incident. Gray guessed the boys were afraid he’d get the animals after them. Gray laughed. Yes, he was a ‘special child’ who could speak to animals and his dead mother. The whispers made him feel removed from society. When he first danced his marionette piece he’d simply called ‘Broken’, Harper wept and sobbed watching.

It was because of her that the boys left him alone once and for all. He wasn’t sure what she’d said or done to them, but they were afraid of her, and they left Gray alone. He never planned revenge on them for all they’d done. He thought Harry Gable almost losing his face and losing his father was enough. He tried to bury his hatred toward Cavendish.

Most of the hatred.

Dancing gave him relief about it all. Nothing was bad enough that it stayed on his mind while he danced. It was his shield, able to deflect the worst arrows shot at him.

He liked to dance with stiff white hair. What Harper liked to call his mad scientist look. He’d even used lavender or red powder on a few occasions, and fragranced it with rosewood oil and nutmeg or orange. The powder, made with dried white clay and a bit of lard worked perfectly to give his hair a spiny, jagged look. He’d refused to wear a wig, powered or not. He had his own hair, black as it was. If he was feeling particularly gloomy, he lightly powdered it, stopping when it was gray. If the ball was tonight, he would attend with ice blue powdered hair. Thanks to his father earlier, he felt particularly detached and merciless.

When he finished practicing, he barely spoke to Harper, except to thank her for playing her violin for him.

“What has set your expression to stone, little brother?” she asked, following him out of the dancing hall.

“My father requested that I try to get along with Cavendish, who only moments before I spoke with the duke, threatened my seat and title.” He wasn’t finished. What he just told her was only a small bit of what he was feeling. But he was ready to admit that the roiling turmoil within him was because of Miss Aria Darling, and he didn’t know how to stop it. He hated it. He hated feeling anything. It was too dangerous. Oh, too dangerous.

He could never express his gratitude to Harper for her silence. She didn’t make little of what his father had said, nor did she give it more worth than it deserved. He offered her a side glance and a smile.

“You can stop following me,” he muttered, striding to his rooms.

“It’s my duty to be at your side,” she reminded him, striving to keep up.

He turned to look at her and stopped as a question popped into his mind that he’d foolishly never considered. “Who gave you this duty? Surely not my father. If it was my grandmother, why didn’t she ever introduce me to you? And who is she that you’ve kept your word and did your duty for fifteen years?”

“Why are you suddenly asking these cryptic questions?”

“Harper.”

She nodded, swallowing.

“Why am I so important to you that you gave up the best part of your life?”

Her gray eyes misted with tears, and she reached out her hand to his cheek. Her touch was as light as a feather and as brief as a summer breeze. He moved his head back enough for her to understand. That was enough touching.

“You are the best part of my life, Grayson,” she told him, unaffected by his cool demeanor.

He remembered the way Miss Darling questioned him. She was relentless. He tried it on Harper. “Why? What makes me the best part of your life? When you barely knew me and I did nothing to help that, was I worth missing events with your friends, dates with your suitors?”

“Yes.”

“Why, Harper?”

“Grayson, now look—”

“What am I to you?”

She said nothing for a moment and then gritted her teeth. “Alright, let’s go to your rooms. I can’t speak of these things in the open.”

Ah, finally some answers—and was he really surprised Harper had them? No. What else had his only friend, whom he trusted, kept from him? He brought her to his rooms and sat with her in his parlor, though he was aching to stand and keep moving.

“Your mother was an Ashmore,” she began, taking him by surprise. What did this have to do with his mother?

“Ashley,” he corrected with pout plumping his lips. “Her name was Emma Ashley.”

“Yes, daughter of Adam Ashley and Claire Hawke. Claire was the daughter of Sarah, granddaughter of Thoren Ashmore, first and only son born of Josiah Ashmore and Mercy Blagden—”

“Grandmother Blagden,” he said softly. He almost didn’t hear himself over his thrashing heartbeat.

Harper nodded. “Mercy was her great granddaughter give or take a few generations.”

Gray quickly did the math in his head. One good thing that had come from his academic studies. He was very good at mathematics. “That’s impossible. Your dates are incorrect.”

She shook her head giving him a pitying look.

Then it dawned on him. He scoffed at first, but he remembered what Miss Darling had told him. Summer, New York City 2024. “Is it possible?” he whispered more to his own unbelieving mind. “Harper,” he said, giving her a serious look, “what is this about?”

“Grayson—”

He looked up at the ceiling with frustration.

“This is quite a lot to take in,” she explained in a calming tone.

He knew she was protecting him from whatever it was. But he wanted answers. What did this have to do with his mother? Who was Thoren Ashmore and why was it notable that he was the only son of Josiah Ashmore and Mercy Blagden? “What does my mother have to do with Miss Darling?”

He could pirouette a total of nine times, sometimes ten, and he’d never felt as dizzy as he did now.

“Your mother and Miss Darling are not related in any way,” Harper told him. “All of this is about you, Grayson. You’re the last Ashmore. Miss Darling has the potential to give you sons. Seven to be exact. Seven Ashmore/Blagden males to break some curse. I’m not sure of its origin. Of course, Lady Rose Planc de’Vere also has the same potential. There’s a possibility of having them with Sarah Gable—”

“Harper,” he snarled through clenched lips. “Don’t say another word. Sons with Sarah Gable? Have you gone mad? And how in damnation would you know about how many sons I could have with these women? Is this real, Harper? Are you from the future? Have you seen my entire life played out?” He didn’t realize it but tears were glistening at the rims of his eyes. “Have you been lying to me since I was ten years old? Because keeping a truth like you come from the future is a series betrayal! Is my mother in the future?”

She opened her mouth to speak but he cut her off.

“Are you going to tell me that my grandmother made you keep this from me and in the fifteen years that you’ve known me, you never cared for me enough to go against her and tell me the truth?”

“I’m telling you now,” she tried.

“And since you’re so gifted a liar, I’ll consider it another lie that Miss Darling has nothing to do with this since she obviously comes from your future.”

“Grayson, listen—”

He shook his head. “I’m finished listening. I don’t know what is going on, or who to trust. I don’t even know if I can trust my own eyes. I thought I could trust you. Whatever the reason for all this is… Whatever you and my grandmother—and possibly the woman who gave birth to me had planned, won’t work. I may dance like a puppet, but I don’t do anyone else’s bidding. My purpose here is not to father seven sons to break a curse. Tell my grandmother I’ll choose my own wife and my own path.”

He left the parlor and the main door to his rooms. He strode back to his dance hall and didn’t come out for the next two days.