Книга - A Wife In Time

A Wife In Time
Cathie Linz


Make-Believe Marriage Getting stuck solving a century-old murder mystery before it happened wasn't Susannah Hall's idea of a good time - especially since she was posing as Kane Wilder's blushing bride! Somehow, she and the infuriating man had both been transported back in time, and now they were sharing more than a marriage bed… .Sharing tiny quarters with all six feet of exasperating-but-gorgeous Kane was getting on Susannah's nerves - and giving her sweaty palms and heart palpitations. Especially since Susannah had old-fashioned values, and Kane was obviously wrestling with old-fashioned lust… .












A Wife in Time

Cathie Linz





www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


This book is dedicated to Desire Senior Editor Lucia Macro, with much thanks for letting me play in the nineteenth century!

And thanks go to Judy Ann Newton for the early encouragement, talented historical romance author Linda Wiatr for checking my research, and to the staff at Downers Grove Public Library for all the historical nonfiction interlibrary loans.




Contents


One (#ua2beca63-709a-5a7e-8d0c-f40f155b0b96)

Two (#uf312f42b-2418-5521-be86-382bdc79c4d1)

Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)




One


“Hey, you! Hold it right there! I want to talk to you!”

Susannah Hall ignored the loudly spoken order, certain it couldn’t possibly be directed at her. In fact, Susannah felt a bit sorry for the poor soul to whom it was directed, for the man’s command was driven by enough anger to fuel a fleet of jets for a week. A second later she dismissed the man and his anger from her thoughts. She had enough things to worry about.

Although Susannah had been an editor for almost five years now, this was her first time attending the huge American Publishing Convention, taking place in Savannah this year. Her recent promotion to senior editor at McPhearson Publishing meant that she was now expected to attend this bigger-than-life trade show.

From the moment she’d first walked into the convention center earlier that morning, she’d felt like a kid at the circus, surrounded by hype and hoopla. But now, midafternoon hunger pangs had forced her to leave McPhearson’s display booth in search of the convention center’s cafeteria.

“I said I want to talk to you!” the furious male voice repeated, this time from directly behind her.

Years of living in New York City had Susannah pivoting in her tracks, her huge purse automatically held at the ready should she need to use it in self-defense. The man and his anger were just a little too close for comfort.

He was tall, had dark ruffled hair, and he radiated fury. She’d never seen him before in her life.

Looking around, Susannah was reassured by the presence of the crowd despite the fact that, like water in a stream, the people simply flowed on around them, paying them little heed. But then this was a crowd in single-minded pursuit of the almighty buck, as millions of dollars’ worth of transactions were in progress at this convention.

Keeping a cautious grip on her large bag just in case, Susannah addressed the angry stranger. “Are you talking to me?” she demanded.

“Damn right, I’m talking to you,” the man confirmed with a growl.

“Shouting was actually closer to the truth,” Susannah noted frostily. “What seems to be the problem, Mr.—” She paused to read the name tag that everyone attending this convention was required to wear. Kane Wilder. The name fit, Susannah decided. The man’s behavior was certainly wilder than normal or acceptable. “What’s the problem, Mr. Wilder?”

“You’re the problem,” Kane Wilder replied, openly glaring at her.

She frowned, unable to imagine what she could have done to have so irritated this man, a man she’d never even met before. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she told him bluntly.

“I’m talking about my brother, Chuck, and the fact that he’s threatened to leave his wife because of you.”

Stunned, Susannah blinked at Kane. “Excuse me?”

“No, I won’t excuse you. There’s no excuse for what you’ve done!”

“I think you’ve made a mistake of some kind, Mr. Wilder,” she began in a conciliatory tone of voice when he interrupted her.

“The only person who has made a mistake is you, Ms. Hall. You are Susannah Hall, right? Senior editor at McPhearson Publishing, right?”

“That’s right.”

“So now you’re pretending you don’t know my brother? Is that your game?”

“It’s no game, Mr. Wilder.”

“Playing bedroom games with a younger, married man is exactly the kind of cheap ploy a Mata Hari like you would play.”

Mata Hari? Her? Susannah didn’t know whether to be insulted or complimented. She couldn’t imagine anyone further from the image of a seductress. Her hair was too long and too curly, her figure too full. She knew her eyes and her thighs were both too big. Her taste in clothes was too romantic and soft, although the sky blue suit she wore now was pretty businesslike.

Everyone knew that Mata Hari types were slinky, confident and ruthless. Susannah was a passionate dreamer. The worst that could be said about her was she could be aloof. And when crossed she’d once been called a “tough cookie.”

But a Mata Hari? No way. The man was clearly off his rocker.

“My brother’s name is Chuck Wilder. Charles Wilder,” Kane continued as if speaking to a two-year-old. “Ring any bells or are you fooling around with so many men you’ve lost count?”

His last stinging comment didn’t really sink in as she focused on the first part of his statement. “Are you talking about Charles, the intern at my office?” Susannah had never paid attention to the young man’s surname before. He was just “Charles the Intern.” One of them, anyway. McPhearson had four at the present time.

“That’s right. And you’ve been teaching him plenty, haven’t you?” Kane noted caustically.

“Well, yes, that’s what he’s there for. To learn.”

“Would it have mattered to you if you had known he was married?” Kane demanded.

“Well, no, not really,” Susannah admitted. Although most of their interns were still single—and in their junior year of college—it wasn’t a requirement for entrance into the internship program.

“Listen, I’m only going to say this once,” he bit out. “Stay away from my brother.”

“A little hard to do since he works for me,” Susannah noted wryly.

“Then fire him.”

“I’ll do no such thing. Besides, he’s an intern. He can’t be fired. He’s not a paid employee. Look, I’m sorry to hear your brother is having marital difficulties, but I fail to see what that has to do with me.”

“Lady, you take the cake! You don’t think your having an affair with him might have something to do with his marital problems?”

“An affair?” Susannah repeated in astonishment. Now she knew Kane Wilder was off his rocker. “No way!” It was too ridiculous to even contemplate. Sure, she’d had lunch with Charles a few times, but that certainly didn’t qualify as an affair! There had never been a hint of any impropriety— Well, there was that one time in the copying room two weeks ago when he’d brushed up against her. At the time, she’d thought she’d been imagining things. Now she was quickly reassessing that conclusion.

It made Susannah very uneasy to think that Charles might have had a crush on her and she hadn’t even noticed. A crush so intense that he was threatening to leave his wife over it. Things like that didn’t happen to her, which was no doubt why she hadn’t recognized the signs earlier.

“Look, Mr. Wilder,” she began. “Your brother clearly has a problem—”

“Oh, sure, put the blame on him,” Kane retorted.

“He is the one who’s married,” she reminded him.

“And you’re the one who went after him—a much younger man.”

Stung, Susannah said, “He’s not that much younger!”

“You’re old enough to know better.”

“So is he. Not that anything happened, because it didn’t,” she quickly clarified before going on to bluntly say, “Your brother is lying if he told you that he’s having an affair with me.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“And I’m supposed to just take your word for it, is that it?”

Susannah nodded emphatically.

“The word of a woman I’ve just met over the word of a brother I’ve helped raise, the brother who has never told a lie in his life.”

“Well, when he decided to start, he sure started with a big one,” she countered. “Because the claim that the two of us are somehow romantically involved is ludicrous.”

“I see. So you’re merely sexually—not romantically— involved with him, is that it?”

“No, that’s not it! My relationship with your younger brother has been strictly professional.”

“Strictly professional?” he questioned. “Meaning you never met with him privately. You treated him as you did all your other co-workers?”

Susannah couldn’t stop the flash of guilt that shadowed her face.

“I knew it,” Kane said, looking at her as if she were something the cat had dragged in.

Susannah’s patience was rapidly running out. “No, you don’t know anything! Okay,” she acknowledged, “so I may have taken him more under my wing than I have with some of the other interns. But that doesn’t mean that I’m having an affair with him. Not by any stretch of the imagination!”

“And why do you suppose my brother would lie about something like this?” Kane asked coldly.

“I have no idea. You’d have to ask him that question. Maybe you misunderstood what he told his wife,” Susannah suggested.

“I didn’t misunderstand what he told me,” Kane retorted.

“I can’t believe he made up such a ridiculous story,” Susannah said with perplexed frown. “Surely he realized he’d be caught in a lie of this proportion?”

“My point exactly,” Kane agreed with a pleasant smile that conveyed mockery rather than humor. “It would be pretty foolish of him to lie about something like this.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s telling the truth, however,” Susannah quickly maintained. “When I get back to New York, I’ll clearly have to talk with him.”

“Another little talk at your place?”

“He’s never been to my place.” She paused, remembering the time she’d stayed home to read manuscripts and he’d brought over a contract she’d needed to authorize. “Okay, so maybe he was at my place. Once. For five minutes. Maybe fifteen. I offered him a cup of coffee.”

“I’m sure you did. Along with a little sympathy about his unsupportive wife.”

“I didn’t even know he had a wife!”

“Well, now that you do, you can break it off.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, there’s nothing to break off,” she said through gritted teeth.

“You can tell me until you’re blue in the face. That doesn’t mean I believe a word you say. But believe me when I tell you that I’m not about to stand by and watch my brother get hurt by a—”

“Mata Hari like me,” Susannah sarcastically completed. “I get the picture, Mr. Wilder. And I’ll be expecting an apology from you in writing when this misunderstanding is cleared up.”

He stared at her in astonishment. “You’ve got some nerve, lady.”

“Oh, so now you think I’m a lady,” she said mockingly. “Funny, you didn’t act like it a moment ago when you accused me of seducing your brother. If it weren’t so absurd, I’d be highly insulted. As it is, I’ll chalk your incredibly rude behavior up to male hysteria.”

“Those two words are mutually exclusive.”

“Not in your case,” Susannah noted sweetly before turning on her heel and marching into the sanctuary of the women’s bathroom.

“I’m not done talking to you!” Kane bellowed from outside the door.

“Do you know if there’s another way out of here?” Susannah asked a woman in the bathroom.

“That door over there leads to the hallway outside the exhibition area.”

“Great. Thanks.” She made a beeline for that exit. Her little run-in with Kane Wilder had just taken up fifteen of the thirty minutes she had for lunch. Standing in the long line at the convention center’s cafeteria ate up another ten. Meanwhile, Susannah still hadn’t eaten a thing.

She grabbed an apple and an anemic-looking green salad, all the while lecturing herself on how she should have handled Kane. She wasn’t happy with the way he’d put her on the defensive. She should have stopped him in his verbal tracks the second he started making his ridiculous accusations.

Stashing her purchases in her oversize purse, Susannah hurried back to her employer’s display booth. She never did get around to eating, as a rush of people stopped by the booth. As one of the representatives of McPhearson Publishing, it was her job to answer any questions booksellers might have about the line of books McPhearson published.

Smiling at conventioneers as they passed by the booth, Susannah couldn’t help wondering if Charles the Intern had told his ridiculous story to anyone else, aside from his wife and his brother. Specifically, had he told any of her co-workers? And if he did, surely they hadn’t believed him, had they? Not that she was about to come out and ask. But perhaps she could make a few discreet inquiries....

She started with Roy, the head of Marketing. “So what’s your impression of our batch of interns this year?” she asked him during a lull in the action.

“They seem okay,” Roy replied. “Is it just me or do they seem to get wetter behind the ears each year?”

Susannah was tempted to ask about Charles specifically but then reconsidered, realizing her inquiry might only raise further speculation. The best thing to do would be to confront Charles when she returned to the office Monday morning—to go directly to the source...and kill him!

She grinned, making a passing sales rep pause and look at her twice. Of course, Susannah had no intention of doing Kane’s precious baby brother any bodily harm, but she’d certainly make him wish he’d thought twice about dragging her reputation through the mud.

She pumped Roy from Marketing again. “Ever heard of Wilder Enterprises?”

“Aren’t they that hotshot company on the forefront of the new CD-ROM technology?”

“CD-what technology? Speak English here, Roy.”

“I forgot I was speaking to a technophobic editor afraid to turn on the computer on her own desk.”

“I’m not afraid to turn it on,” Susannah calmly denied. “We have an understanding. I don’t bother it, and it doesn’t bother me.”

“It could make your workload a lot easier.”

“I know I’ll have to learn how to use it eventually,” she admitted. “But I’m not in any rush since the rest of the office isn’t hooked up yet.”

“It will be by the end of the year,” he told her.

“Let’s get back to Wilder Enterprises and the CD-ROM stuff.”

“It involves storing information onto compact disks and then reading them on your computer. How about your own library with 450 of the world’s greatest books on one disk?”

“Who would want to stare at a screen instead of reading a book in the comfort of their own easy chair?” she asked, mystified by the very idea.

“They have computers small enough to hold in the palm of your hand,” Roy reminded her. “The twenty-first century is right around the corner, you know.”

“Don’t remind me,” she muttered.

“So why the interest in Wilder Enterprises?”

“I just ran into Kane Wilder....”

“No kidding? He’s considered to be a visionary in the computer technology of the future. A regular whiz kid.”

“He’s no kid,” Susannah retorted, “although he does have a kid brother. Our own Charles the Intern.”

“Which one is he?” Roy asked.

The lying, deceitful one, Susannah was tempted to reply. Instead she said, “The dark-haired one with the wire-rimmed glasses.”

“Sounds like nerdiness runs in the family,” Roy noted with a laugh.

Guess again, Susannah thought to herself. If there was a nerdy bone in Kane Wilder’s body, she hadn’t seen it. His dark business suit had a European cut that spoke of quiet elegance. Not a nerdy plastic penholder in sight. The only nonconforming element of his attire had been the tie he’d been wearing, as she only now recalled the tiny blue computer screens that had adorned the burgundy silk.

He might have been attractive, had it not been for the way he’d glared at her. Not the kind of man to make an apology easily. But apologize to her he would, because he’d made a mistake big-time when he’d crossed her. Talk about computer chips might make her tremble, but Kane Wilder she could handle!

* * *

Kane entered his hotel room and headed straight for the phone. His afternoon had been consumed with taking care of his company’s business. Now it was time for family business.

Automatically punching in the numbers for his calling card, Kane reflected back on his meeting with Susannah Hall. It hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped. He hated surprises, and she’d certainly been one.

He’d expected something different, someone different—not a sweet-faced, sharp-tongued woman with a temper to match his. And big brown eyes that seemed to secretly laugh at him, effectively telling him that she thought he was an idiot.

Kane wasn’t accustomed to being looked at that way. Most people considered him to be of above-average intelligence. Way above. He’d skipped ahead two years in grade school and another two in his college’s accelerated program.

The bottom line was that Kane had been called “gifted” by his teachers and “good-looking” by the women in his life. He prided himself on not conforming to the nerdy stereotype so many of his cohorts were tagged with. He’d been called “a maverick” and “a loner” accustomed to being on his own.

But he wasn’t entirely on his own. He never had been. He had Chuck. Their mother had died when Chuck was only four. Kane had been fourteen—ready, willing and able to take his brother under his wing to protect him from their abusive alcoholic father. The old man had finally drunk himself to death on the eve of Kane’s eighteenth birthday. Kane held no fond memories of his father.

With help from Philip Durant, his counselor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kane had petitioned the court for legal custody of his then eight-year-old brother. Philip and his wife had become surrogate grandparents to Chuck and firm believers in Kane’s determination to make a better life for himself and his brother.

Now Kane had that better life, but his brother didn’t seem to appreciate it one bit. Kane wished Philip or his wife were still alive to advise him, but they’d both passed away in a car accident two years ago. Kane still missed them, especially at moments like this.

The sound of his sister-in-law’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

“Hi, Ann,” he said with deliberate cheerfulness. Despite his initial misgivings about the advisability of his brother marrying at the young age of nineteen, he’d decided that Ann was good for Chuck. She kept his feet on the ground. At least she always had in the past. She was a sweet girl and she deserved better than this, Kane noted savagely. But his voice reflected none of his inner feelings as he asked to speak to his brother.

“He’s not here right now,” Ann replied in an unsteady voice that was husky with tears.

“What happened?” Kane demanded gently, not wanting to set his sister-in-law off again. “Did you two have another argument?”

“Chuck doesn’t really argue, you know that. He just quietly does whatever he wants.”

Kane swore softly. “I’ve been too easy on him.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Ann said. “We both know there’s only one person to blame. Her. Did you find her? Did you talk to her?”

Since this entire thing had begun, Ann had refused to use Susannah’s given name. Kane had told Ann about his intention of confronting Susannah once he’d discovered she was attending the conference. Working out of Boston as he did, this was his first chance to meet Susannah. “I found her and I talked to her,” he replied.

“What did she say?”

Kane was reluctant to tell Ann that Susannah Hall claimed she was innocent of any wrongdoing. Until Kane could talk to his brother himself, he decided not to be too specific about the details.

“Don’t you worry, Ann,” he reassured her. “I’ve got everything under control.”

* * *

Susannah was running late. So what else was new? she asked herself as she dumped her briefcase on the bed and kicked off her high heels. She sighed in relief, rubbing her toes as she sat on the bed for a second to catch her breath.

Two heartbeats later, her second was up. She headed for the closet. She only had half an hour to get ready for the big party tonight.

It was a must-attend function and promised to be a spectacular spread. The organizers had rented one of Savannah’s most impressive historical homes for the evening. Everything had been taken care of: from providing charter buses to take participants from their hotels to the historical district, right down to supplying rental costumes in the requested sizes.

Susannah’s period costume had arrived while she was still at the convention center, so it was with some trepidation that she pulled back the opaque garment bag to reveal a lovely dress in deep red velvet. She couldn’t believe the costume company had actually supplied her with the right color and size.

Finally, something was going right! Although she’d never admit it to a living soul, Kane’s appearance as an avenging angel this afternoon had thrown her. So had his accusations.

After stripping off her business suit, she carefully tugged the dress over her head. She was relieved to see that it did fit. She wasn’t relieved by the amount of cleavage it showed.

The dress, which zipped at the side so she was able to fasten it herself, had a long skirt, ending just above her ankles. After a long day on her feet, she wasn’t about to cramp her feet into another pair of high heels for what would no doubt be more standing tonight, so she instead chose a pair of velvet flats.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to do much with her hair. Savannah’s springtime humidity had turned her dark waves into an uncontrollable mop. The best she could do was pin it up so she wouldn’t get too hot.

The finishing touch to her outfit was an antique garnet necklace that was a favorite of hers. A matching pair of drop earrings and bracelet completed the set, which she’d inherited from her great-grandmother. Normally, Susannah didn’t bring the set on a business trip, but the promise of the costume party tonight had been too good an opportunity to resist.

Glancing at her watch, she swore softly. She only had five minutes to get downstairs and catch the charter bus going to the party. Susannah grabbed her purse and was out in the hallway before realizing that she should have switched to a smaller bag.

Such was her life in a nutshell, Susannah noted as she impatiently jabbed at the elevator button. She was almost organized. Almost together. But inevitably there would be one thing that threw a wrench in the plan. Tonight that one thing was her purse.

She was the last one to board the bus, where everyone was dressed to the nines. Once they reached the historical house, guests had to show their invitations at the door in order to be allowed inside. It took Susannah five minutes to find the gilt-edged invitation in her bag—which still held the apple she’d picked up for lunch, along with the personal cassette player she’d listened to on the flight that morning, among other things.

Slinging her purse back over her shoulder, and almost decking the man behind her, Susannah followed the crowd into the front parlor. The place was packed. Rather than head for the buffet table laden with food, she chose to join a tour that was gathering at the foot of the stairs.

On her way there she bumped into someone, or more accurately her purse did. “Sorry,” she said with a smile that evaporated as she recognized Kane Wilder. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“Looking for you,” Kane replied. “I told you I wasn’t done talking to you.”

“Well, I’m done talking to you.” With those words, she slipped past him and moved up the stairs with the rest of the tour group. To her dismay, Kane followed her.

“Only two people to a step, please,” the tour guide requested when Kane joined her on the stairs. “We’re trying to minimize the wear and tear on the structure.”

Wanting to minimize the wear and tear on her own composure, Susannah strove to keep her attention focused on holding up the long skirt of her dress as she climbed the steps. It was better than thinking about Kane—who was directly behind her.

He’d looked incredibly dashing in his black formal wear, white tie and tails complete with a starched collar true to the Victorian period. She could feel his eyes on her and she wished she were ten pounds lighter. Maybe fifteen. The dress did nothing to hide her full figure.

Kane was enjoying the view of Susannah Hall’s velvet-covered derriere. The stiff set of her bare shoulders radiated an ice-age chill. With her hair pinned up, he could see her pale nape as she leaned forward. For the first time since he’d arrived, he was glad he’d decided to attend this bash.

He’d been tempted to stay in his hotel room and wait for his brother’s call, but past experience told him that Chuck wouldn’t be back for some time yet. When his brother got in a snit, he tended to brood for hours. Kane would check in with him again when this party was over. Meanwhile, he planned on hounding Susannah until she relented and agreed to leave his brother alone.

At the moment, the tour guide was the only one talking. “The Whitaker house is a fine example of Federal architecture. In its heyday this house was at the center of Savannah society. At its low point, it was an apartment tenement in the 1930s and was almost torn down in the 1950s to build a parking lot when, thankfully, the Historical Preservation League saved it.”

Susannah shuddered to think of this lovely home being demolished and paved over. Sensing Kane coming closer, she edged around the person ahead of her. Throughout the tour of the second floor she managed to weave her way in and out of the crowd, always staying one step ahead of him.

“As you can see,” their guide continued, “the second floor houses the family’s bedrooms, which have been decorated with period furnishings. On the wall along the stairway you’ll see several family portraits, including that of Elsbeth Whitaker—who is said to have committed suicide on these very steps.”

Susannah rubbed her hands over her bare arms as a chill settled over her. She couldn’t see the painting due to the crowd of people still clustered in the hallway where she stood. Then the crowd parted and she saw a flash of the portrait—a white face and sad eyes. The image lingered even after she’d turned away.

“What’s up on the third floor?” someone asked.

“It’s a storage area that’s presently under construction and being renovated. It’s not open to the public,” the guide replied. “Now, on our way back down, remember that only two people are allowed on a step at a time, so please come down the stairs slowly and in groups of two.”

“We need to talk,” Kane growled in her ear. “I’m not letting you off the hook until you promise to stay away from my brother.”

“Go away!” she hissed, angrily pulling back from him. She needed to lose him and fast. She was feeling unsettled enough as it was, tonight. She wasn’t in the mood for any more confrontations. But there was no place to hide. Unless... Her gaze was drawn upstairs. Maybe she could ditch Kane by sneaking upstairs and waiting a few minutes until the coast was clear.

While the tour guide’s back was turned and she still had the protection of the crowd, Susannah did just that. She didn’t take time to think about her actions. She just did it. It was almost as if she were compelled to do so.

Kane was about to go down when he saw her out of the corner of his eye. Susannah was going up the stairs. Muttering under his breath, he went after her, slipping past the tour guide. He wasn’t going to let her get away from him that easily.

Instead of a storage room under construction as the tour guide had claimed, he saw a room that looked to be completely furnished although very dimly lit with a sort of flickering candlelight. He also saw Susannah, just over the threshold of that room.

Not wanting to get caught in a restricted area before he had a chance to talk to her, he whispered her name when he wanted to shout it.

Paying him no heed, Susannah moved forward, away from him and toward a bright blue light that was coming from a rocking chair in the far corner near the other entrance into the room.

Enchanted, Susannah forgot all about Kane. She was drawn forward, as if pulled by invisible forces. The nearer she got, the more the light shifted away from her toward the second doorway. Following it, for one instant she saw a face amid the ethereal blue light—it was the face of the woman in the portrait!

Kane was right behind Susannah as she reached out to touch the pool of light, but it disappeared as they stepped through the second doorway after it. Whatever it was they’d witnessed had vanished!

“Did you see that?” Susannah asked in a whisper. When he made no reply, she said, “You’re not going to tell me that you didn’t see it, are you?”

“I’m not telling you anything except to stay away from my brother,” Kane replied curtly.

“You sound like a broken record,” she informed him before hurrying back downstairs.

Kane let her go. She’d caused him enough aggravation for one day. He’d talk to her again tomorrow, get her promise to stay away from his brother then. God knew, he’d had an exhausting day with little to eat. As for that strange light they’d seen upstairs...it must have been a hologram, perhaps a future exhibit of some kind for the historical house.

The party was in full force now. The rooms were packed with people, all looking rather solemn. Glancing around, Kane didn’t see anyone he knew. With a crowd this large, he wasn’t surprised. After all, this was his first publishing convention. Normally he demonstrated his CD-ROM material at computer shows.

Heading straight for the food spread, he eyed the offerings with suspicion. Nothing looked good. And nothing looked substantial enough to stop the growling in his stomach. He remembered seeing a soda machine by the gift shop in the back of the house but when he headed that way, he couldn’t find it. Or the gift shop. But then, the house was a maze of rooms. Crowded rooms.

Kane tugged at his stiff collar again. “Damned monkey suit,” he muttered under his breath, sliding a finger beneath his collar and grimacing at the tightness of the fit. The place was getting unbearably hot. The air conditioner must not be working properly. That or the organizers were really sticking to historical accuracy for this party.

Either way, it was the last straw. Deciding that enough was enough, Kane opted to skip the rest of the party and go grab a cheeseburger and a huge cola with an extra order of fries. He was able to find the front door, although it took him a while to get there through the mad crush of people. He reached the front entrance the same time Susannah did.

“After you,” he said with a mocking bow that almost cut off his circulation at his Adam’s apple. The damn collar would be the death of him yet.

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of this fancy-dress stuff,” he announced as they stepped outside. “I’m heading for the closest fast-food joint and grabbing a thick cheeseburger with everything on it.” And after that, Kane planned on calling his brother.

Moving forward, he bumped into Susannah as she halted on the steps in front of him.

“Something’s not right,” Susannah murmured. Looking around, she searched for the cause of her uneasiness. She’d always been a great believer in trusting her instincts. Some people called it jumping to conclusions. Her grandmother claimed it was a touch of second sight. Whatever you called it, Susannah trusted the feeling.

The house faced a small park, one of many in this part of the city. The street had been lined with parked cars when they’d arrived. Now there were none. No cars anywhere—none parked, moving, nothing. “The cars are gone,” she noted aloud.

Kane looked around. “What cars? I came by bus.”

“There were cars parked all along the park across the street. Now they’re gone.”

“Probably only allowed to park there during the day,” he logically explained.

She shook her head. “Something just doesn’t feel right. There isn’t any traffic, either.”

“You’ve got an overactive imagination, do you know that?”

To which she replied, “I didn’t imagine that blue light upstairs. The one on the third floor. Surely you saw it, too?”

Kane didn’t answer as a couple walked by on the sidewalk. They were wearing costumes similar to those worn at the party and he was preparing to move aside to let them enter the house—when they walked past and entered a home a few doors down.

Susannah saw the couple, too, and the house they entered: a building she could have sworn was boarded up and empty when they’d arrived earlier that evening. “I’m telling you, I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she murmured.




Two


“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.”





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