And he had missed her so much the two years she had been gone. How could he withstand losing her again when she returned to Robert’s time?
“You can’t,” a voice said behind him, where seconds before no one had stood.
Marc stiffened. “Can’t what?” he asked, abandoning his faux American accent and letting his native English accent color his words.
“Do what you are thinking,” Seth informed him somberly.
For many long moments, Marc said nothing. He simply continued to stare at the play below.
Robert attempted another free throw and missed the backboard entirely. Sailing over the top of it, the ball hit the roof so hard it rebounded and flew clear across the street. Robert swore foully and began to stomp down the driveway after it. But he only made it a few steps before a smiling Beth leapt onto his back. Laughing, he stumbled forward, then tucked his arms beneath her knees and carried her with him, piggyback style, grinning at her over his shoulder when she pecked him on the cheek.
“Would it be so bad?” Marc whispered finally, loathing the despair and vulnerability the question revealed.
Seth sighed. An unhappy sound. “You know you cannot tell her who you are.”
“I would not have to,” Marc pointed out. He had thought it all through very carefully, how he could approach her. What he could say that would produce the desired results without exposing all. “I could—”
“Bethany is an exceptionally bright and perceptive woman, as you know. She may even yet figure out who you are. But you cannot tell her what you are or what made you what you are.”
“Then you go to her.” Desperation driving him, Marc glanced over his shoulder and located Seth lounging in the darkness just inside the doorway. “You were the one who took her back in time. She knows you possess knowledge the rest of us do not. She would listen to you. You go to her. Then she would not have to know who I am. She would not have to know what I have become. You could—”
“Marcus—”
“Let me finish!” Silence descended in the aftermath of his shout. Marcus closed his eyes and mentally swore.
One did not yell at Seth.
No one yelled at Seth.
The immortal’s power was incalculable. His true age, in what millennium he had been born, where he was born, remained a mystery. All anyone knew with any certainty was that he had lived long enough to have witnessed biblical events, and it was extremely unwise to cross him.
Yet Seth’s face, when Marcus dared to look again, remained impassive.
“Very well,” Seth stated softly. “Continue.”
Marcus strove to moderate his voice, present a calm argument. “As I said, you would not have to tell her who I am. She knows you are gifted, that you can do things and know things that others don’t. All you would have to do is go to her and tell her you have had a vision or a dream and that she should do all in her power to keep Marcus from journeying to London in September of the year 1213 or a terrible fate shall befall him.”
“If memory serves, she did attempt to prevent you from going to London—”
“Because she loved me like a brother and missed me whenever I was away,” Marcus gritted. “If she had thought some harm would befall me, she would have fought tooth and nail to keep me at Fosterly. She would have chained me to the damned walls of the dungeon if necessary. Lord Robert would have, too. If you tell her now, they will do so.”
“And then?”
Marcus returned his attention to the scene next door. “And then all of this will be wiped away,” he said tonelessly. “None of it will have happened. I would not be immortal and…” He shook his head. “All would be as it should be.”
“You cannot change your fate, Marcus.”
“Why can I not? You altered Beth’s fate. She would have died that day had you not plucked her from the present and delivered her to the past. And there is no telling what would have become of Lord Robert without her.”
A series of whoops and shouts erupted below as Robert scored his first basket.
Marcus had not anticipated what seeing Lord Robert again would do to him. The memories it would stir. The longing to recapture the deep, abiding friendship and camaraderie they had shared in his youth. Robert had been the only real family Marcus had had, though they bore no blood relation. When, upon her return to the present, Beth had innocently introduced the two of them, Marcus had damn near broken down and wept.
“You misunderstand,” Seth spoke. “Bethany was always meant to live out her life with Lord Robert in the past. Just as you were always meant to live out your life as you have. I did not in any way alter her fate. Nor can I alter yours.”
“Fate,” Marcus snarled. “How I detest the word. If everything that happens is fated, how can there be free will?”
Seth sighed as if the complaint were not a new one. “The day before I brought Bethany and Lord Robert forward to this time, I watched Lord Dillon engage his toddler son in a foot race.”