Page 29 of Echoes of the Sea (Storm Tide #2)

Amelia had made her way to the outbuilding where Kipling kept his tools so she could ask if Smudge would look after the horses tonight. She’d arrived just in time to hear the most befuddling discussion between the two men.

Kipling thought himself to have journeyed across time.

“There is nothing in the legend that says a person can return to his own time?” Kipling asked Smudge. “If the tides shoved me over two hundred years backward, why couldn’t they toss me those two hundred years forward again?”

“Them could, but only by coincidence. It can’t be forced or arranged.”

“You cannot honestly believe any of this,” Amelia said, stepping fully into the outbuilding.

It was testament to how deep in conversation the two men were that they both jumped at the sound of her voice. She might have found it amusing if what they’d been discussing weren’t so delusional.

“What did you overhear?” Kipling asked.

“That you believe you have arrived here from two hundred years in the future.”

He held his hands up as he shrugged. “Very few things have made sense from the moment Ivers pulled me from the water. Believe me, this was not the explanation I was expecting, and I am well aware that it feels improbable.”

“Im possible ,” she corrected. “People do not jump across multiple centuries.”

“I agree,” Kipling said, “and yet I seem to have done precisely that.”

She shook her head. “This is absurd.”

“It isn’t though,” Smudge said. “Us’ve known about the Tides of Time for generations.”

The pull of a local legend could be strong for those who had grown up hearing it.

But Kipling was not from this area of the world.

He would not have a lifetime of tales clouding his judgment.

Why, then, was he trying to convince her that he believed all this?

Not merely believed it but had experienced it.

“Is this a jest?” she asked him.

“No. I am, to my own shock, in earnest. I am stuck here.” And he smiled. A laughing sort of smile.

Laughing.

“‘Stuck here,’ just as I told you I am.” She swallowed down a surge of emotion. “You are mocking me.”

“Not at all.” He stepped closer.

She stepped back. “Why are you doing this?”

“Amelia—”

“I have not ever treated you unkindly. Why are you returning that with cruelty?”

“Miss.” Smudge bent into her line of sight. “I’m overstepping myself, but I think it needs doing. You should listen to he. What him’s been through’ll make you at least wonder.”

She leaned more heavily on her cane, eying Kipling. “Why should I entertain any of this?”

“Because I didn’t let you fall off a ladder to your possible death?”

“Broken arm, at the worst,” she countered.

“An un broken arm in exchange for hearing me out?”

She glanced at Smudge.

He nodded earnestly.

Kipling watched her with pleading eyes.

“I can hardly believe I am allowing this.” She motioned for him to make his explanation.

“You say I speak oddly. You mentioned how strange the clothes I arrived in were. I have a tattoo, which is unheard of. I asked Smudge about plumbing, electricity, internet, phones. He hadn’t heard of any of those things, and I suspect neither have you.”

“I haven’t.”

“But I have.” He looked and sounded entirely sincere, which only added to her confusion. “You told me about the will you are subject to and how your uncle can force you to marry someone of his choosing.”

“And you were absolutely certain that the law didn’t permit that.” She had found that odd.

“The tune I played for you,” he said. “I was so confused that you didn’t recognize it.”

“You were absolutely incredulous.” She shook her head. “But you are American, and that—Are you actually American?” She ought to know which parts of his story were true.

“I am,” he said.

“Your odd way of speaking. Is that how Americans sound two hundred years from now?”

“No.”

“Is it how the English speak?”

The answer to the question seemed to elude him for a moment.

“I’m not entirely certain how to answer that.

I’ve been told that when I speak with an English accent, it sounds authentic.

But I suspect no American can affect an English manner of speaking without some errors in the doing of it.

And just as is true now, there isn’t just one English accent or dialect. ”

“And is your name actually Kipling Summerfield? Because, forgive me for saying so, it sounds very much like the sort of name a person would give himself in order to sound as if he were born to a higher station than he was.”

His smile tiptoed back. “Forgive me for saying so, but I could say the same about Amelia Archibald.”

She had never thought her name particularly elegant or impressive. Perhaps its alliterative nature gave him that impression. “You still didn’t answer my question.”

“It is my actual name.”

She refused to ponder too deeply why that was a relief. “Why were you in this part of the world if you are from America?”

“I have lived in England for more than a decade,” he said.

“An England that won’t exist for two hundred years?”

He held his hands out, palms up. “I know it sounds absurd, and I can’t explain it. But to me, 1803 was over two hundred years ago. And this being the year everyone keeps telling me it is actually explains so much of what I’ve seen since coming here.”

It actually did make a strange and mind-boggling sort of sense. That didn’t mean she was ready to believe the theory. “It is absolutely absurd.”

“And?” Smudge pressed.

“And still somehow strangely rational.”

“Then him’s convinced you?” Smudge asked.

“No,” she was quick to say. “But I am willing to accept that he isn’t trying to make me look like a fool and isn’t one himself.”

Kipling nodded. “I’ll accept that.”

“You were pulled out of the water by Mr. Ivers? That part wasn’t fabricated?”

“I was swept off a small pier in a sudden storm. Green lightning struck the water. Next thing I knew, Mr. Ivers was pulling me out of the water, and I was here ... I was now. ”

“A person has to be in the water for the tides to pull he,” Smudge said.

Traveling through time. Was she actually considering the possibility? She was but couldn’t truly explain why.

“What do you intend to do now?” Kipling asked.

“Stay out of the water,” Amelia said dryly.

His eyes sparkled as his smile broadened. “I have adopted the same philosophy.”

“Mind you,” she said by way of warning, “I have not adopted your same ready acceptance of this ... fable. But I’m willing to accept that you accept it without believing you are entirely touched in the head.”

“But maybe a smidge mad?” He didn’t look offended, which was reassuring.

“My uncle is, I am certain, looking for any reason to declare me inept, to say that I ought not be trusted with the inheritance that awaits me. Should he discover that I have given house room to a man who thinks he has come from two hundred years in the future, he would most certainly point to that as proof of how unreliable my judgment is.”

Smudge leaned back against the worktable once more. “The village would believe him had come from the future, but it’d still make he an oddity and a thing to be gabbed about. It might get whispered to your uncle.”

They were in a bind, to be sure. She didn’t particularly want Kipling to have to endure the indignity of being stared at like an animal in a menagerie, no matter that she wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t at least marginally dotty.

But equally, as she’d surmised days ago, she couldn’t simply toss him out when he had nowhere to go.

He’d likely be locked up in an asylum if he wandered about telling people he was from the future.

“You’d best continue on as you have been, pretending you’re simply from America and that is why you don’t understand anything or make any sense.”

He looked to be fighting a laugh. She liked that about him, that he found humor even in difficult moments.

“I need you to keep helping me here,” she said. “Without you and without the help you brought in from the village”—she motioned to Smudge—“I have no hope of securing my future.”

“I will help in any way I’m able,” he promised.

“Does that include teaching me that tune on the pianoforte? You did say you would.”

His expression softened. Genuine fondness entered his eyes. “I would love to, Amelia.”

“Where would you like me to drop myself?” Smudge asked, reminding her that he was there.

“Where would you be most comfortable?” It likely would not be in the house, but she didn’t know what else she had to offer.

“I like being around horses. Most stables have a room for the hands.”

“I actually intend to ask if you would look after the animals stabled at the moment.”

Smudge offered a bow, then sauntered out of the building, whistling to himself and, generally, not seeming the least overset by all they had discussed.

“Do you need me to find a place to stay other than the blue bedchamber?” Kipling asked. “Mick said there are servants’ rooms up on the attic level. Or Smudge might let me bunk with him.”

She likely would be wisest to have him stay somewhere else, but thoughts of that distance made her nervous.

More than nervous, it made her feel lonely.

How was it that in such a short time, this man she was discovering she knew so little about had managed to become essential to her?

“Mr. Winthrop makes me uneasy.” She switched her cane to her other hand, better situated for pacing.

“I don’t think he would do anything underhanded or untoward, but”—she turned and faced Kipling directly once more, finding herself standing closer to him than she’d expected—“I would feel safer if I knew you were in the house.”

He didn’t mock or belittle her concerns, neither did he puff up like a peacock. He took her hand and held it in a gentle and reassuring grip. “I’ll do what I can to keep an eye on everything, though I assume I need to do so while continuing to keep myself hidden.”

“Yes. A tradesman wouldn’t be living in the house, so your presence there, if we introduced you as the carpenter, would be considered ineptitude on my part. But a gentleman staying in the home of an unmarried lady—that would be a scandal, which would be worse.”

“And a man who thinks he’s a time traveler would be worse still?”

She nodded. “Infinitely worse.”

“I can pretend I was simply out for a leisurely swim when Mr. Ivers plucked me from the water and leave out just how far I actually ... swam.”

She smiled and held more tightly to his hand. “I’m grateful he found you. Too many people are lost in this stretch of the sea.”

“I am mildly lost, I confess. And I suspect once I’m better able to wrap my mind around my situation, I’m going to be horrified.”

“Because you have come here from a different time?”

He raised her hand almost to his lips. “You don’t believe it yet.”

“Can you blame me?”

“No.” He lightly kissed her fingers.

Feeling simultaneously bold and bashful, she asked, “May I, when there aren’t others around to object to it, call you Kipling?”

“That would please me immensely. And with the same caveat, may I call you Amelia?”

She hazarded a glance at him, and the warmth in his gaze brought a blush to her cheeks. “I would like that.”

As she made her way slowly and carefully to the house, she had to admit to herself an unexpected truth: She was beginning to fall in love with a man who just might be partially mad.