How could she leave? She loved Robert more than she had even known it was possible to love someone. How could she walk away from that? From him? How could she walk away from what they shared and return to her own time, knowing she would never see him again? Never know what had happened to him?
Unless you look him up in a history book and find out who he married after you left, a hysterical voice whispered in her head.
Robert cupped her face in his hand and tilted her chin up.
“I don’t want to lose you,” she whispered, panic rising.
“Nor I you.”
She focused on his eyes, afraid to blink, hoping he could somehow quiet the maelstrom of thoughts crashing through her mind. “Do you still want to marry me?” she asked.
Dipping his head, he brushed a kiss across her lips that—though light as air—carried the full weight of his love for her. “I would have you as my wife, Beth, for whatever time we will have together, be it a sennight, a season, or a century.”
She blinked back tears. “And I would have you for my husband. I love you, Robert. More than I ever dreamed I could love another.”
He took her mouth again, this time with a passion that fired an immediate response within her. Wrapping her arms around his neck, Beth let him lift her over onto his lap. His tongue plunged inside to stroke her own as he combed the fingers of one hand through her hair, sending tingles down her spine, then clasped the back of her head to hold her still while he devoured her. He settled his other hand on her waist, then slid it down to her hip. His grip tightened as hunger rose and claimed them both.
A throat cleared.
Robert lifted his head but never looked away from Beth. “Did you bring Father Markham with you?” he asked.
“Aye,” Dillon responded.
“Then we shall be wed three days hence.”
If anyone said anything after that, Beth neither knew nor cared. Robert’s lips once more claimed hers, his tongue doing things that made her want to devour every inch of him, which—come to think of it—was an excellent idea.
Bethany married Robert three days later with Dillon, Alyssa, and what appeared to be every inhabitant of Fosterly as their witnesses.
Father Markham, who had accompanied Dillon and Alyssa on their journey, performed the ceremony. Beth wasn’t certain how old he was. She had difficulty estimating age here.
In her time, people in their fifties could easily look, act, and feel as if they were in their thirties. But here fifty was old. Like nearing the end of your life old. Beth had met precious few men over the age of sixty-five, and even fewer women. The legal age for marriage was twelve in this era. And birthing one child after another was tantamount to playing Russian roulette. Robert had told her that he would have wed at age twelve himself if the girl to whom his father had betrothed him had not died before the ceremony could be conducted.
Beth attributed Robert’s looking so young at age twenty-nine—not to mention attaining a height of six feet—to Alyssa, her healing gift, and the intriguingly advanced knowledge the woman’s family possessed and had shared with the Westcott lords. Knowledge passed down through the gifted ones’ mysterious lineage.
Apparently Westcott was something of a utopia in medieval England, with most of its inhabitants living far longer than their counterparts.
Since Father Markham was Westcott’s resident priest, Beth couldn’t tell if he was thirty and looked his age or was perhaps younger. He was handsome in a clean-cut, boy-next-door kind of way, and uniquely open-minded, considering both his profession and the time period. Beth liked him instantly. He was very friendly, and not at all put off by her odd speech and mannerisms.
Of course, if rumors held any truth, Father Markham had witnessed a wealth of unusual occurrences since making Alyssa’s acquaintance. The residents of Fosterly had, too, during Alyssa and Dillon’s frequent visits.
So Beth suspected weird had become a kind of norm for them, something that had really worked in her favor. With her modern speech, ideas, and behavior, Beth doubted she would have been so well received anywhere else.
Alyssa produced a beautiful cream-colored kirtle for Beth and helped her don it.
Robert waited for Beth outside the church doors, unbearably handsome in his finest tunic. So handsome that Beth almost tripped walking up the steps, because she couldn’t take her eyes off of him.
Fortunately, Dillon escorted her and kept her from falling on her face, his taciturn expression lightening at her no doubt besotted expression.
The ceremony took place outside the church, according to custom.
Wind whipped all present and wrought havoc with Beth’s hair. With no extra super hold hairspray on hand, she spent most of the ceremony dragging loose curls out of her eyes and wishing she would’ve donned one of those wimple head scarf things so many of the married women here wore.
Evidently, the fact that Alyssa didn’t wear one was fairly scandalous.