Read Online Timeless Desire by Gwyn Cready - Free Book Online Page A

believe me?”
    “How can anyone believe something like that?” He was angry now, and she knew that meant he was beginning to embrace the possibility.
    “Do you at least believe I’m not a spy?”
    “You want to convince me?” He folded the paper he’d been hunched over and dripped the candle’s wax onto it. Then he pressed his thumb into the wax. “Take this to the home of my servant, Clare. The house is a mile past the inn, along the water, in the shadow of two large oaks.”
    She thought of the distance she’d be from the only portal back to her own world. She didn’t know how to get out of the castle with the army guarding it, and she had no confidence that she’d be able to return to the chapel once she was out. This wasn’t her life, her war, her country, her time. And Marie and Steve were waiting. “I can’t, Bridgewater. I can’t. I have to return to my own time. Isn’t there anything else I could do to prove it to you? Anything? You have to believe me. I’m not a spy.”
    He let out a long sigh, and the contentiousness seemed to drain out of him. “I can hardly accuse you of spying when you’ve turned down the perfect opportunity to read my note.” He returned the paper to his pocket.
    “Then you’ll let me go?”
    After a beat, he said, “I don’t know what you are, Mrs. Kennedy. But if you tell anyone about this place or what I’m doing, my life will be forfeit. And if mine is, there’s a good chance yours will be, too.”
    Had he meant the last as a threat or an entreaty to use caution? She couldn’t untangle the emotion behind those hooded eyes. “I won’t. I swear it.”
    He returned to the satchel, searching for something.
    “Can you deliver it yourself?” she asked softly. “The note, I mean.”
    He withdrew a pair of dark, loose-fitting trousers. “I have less than an hour before the guard returns. I have something else to take care of.”
    “The boy?”
    Bridgewater didn’t answer. He pulled the trousers over his boots and britches and buttoned them. What was he involved in? Were the army’s accusations true?
    “Tell me, Mrs. Kennedy, how does one return to the future? Is there a spell involved? Do you rise up like mists from a primeval lake and disappear into the sky?”
    Was he mocking her? The look on his face revealed only polite but seemingly genuine curiosity.
    “Get me back to the hallway,” she said. “I can take care of it from there.” It had struck her that revealing the location of the portal might not be wise for her or for Bridgewater.
    She waited for him to ask more questions, but he didn’t.
    “The things you talked about . . .” His forehead creased.
    “I could tell you more.”
    “Don’t.” He pointed to the stairs. “One flight down is the library, though there’s no door there. Two more flights after that is a door that leads out of the castle and across the ruins in the back. That’s the door I’ll be taking. But on the landing in-between is a door to a passage under the library that leads to another stairway. Take that stairway up a flight and you’ll be at a door that leads into the hallway outside the library. The bolt is on the inside. There’s a peephole. Make sure you don’t open the door until the hall is empty.”
    As she was about to descend, he caught her arm.
    “Not yet. There is a change of guard at a quarter past eight both outside and at the guard station at the end of the hallway beyond the library. While it should be a time of utmost attention, the soldiers use it as an opportunity to converse about the day’s events.” He turned the telescope toward the drawbridge and gazed through the eyepiece. “Privates Swenson, Baker, Thorpe, and Coyne will walk through the courtyard. Swenson has white-blond hair, visible even on the darkest night. They will split at the path there.” He pointed to a light stripe in the distance. “Swenson and Baker will dismiss the men at the gate. That’s when I will go down the stairs.