Robert stared down at the top of Beth’s head with disbelief. “You will issue no protests nor insist that I show you?”
She smiled up at him over her shoulder. “No. I trust you.” Pushing the next tapestry aside, she entered her chamber.
The tapestry almost hit Robert in the face, so stunned was he. Catching it at the last moment, he stepped through, closed the door and let the heavy material settle back into place.
His heart began to thud heavily in his chest as he watched Beth hurry over to the trunk that contained Alyssa’s clothing and various belongings. Her simple declaration of trust awoke feelings within him that had long lain dormant. He did not think he had experienced such an intense rush of affection since before he had lost Eleanor and Gabriel.
Emptiness had plagued him since their deaths. For years, he had done what was expected of him, performed his duties, and feigned good cheer around his brother, all with a heavy heart.
Until Beth had stumbled in front of his horse and aimed her peculiar weapon at him.
Her rare smiles and laughter had warmed him, forcing out the cold. Her boldness and lack of concern regarding propriety amused and entertained him. Her touch and her kisses enflamed him. Bringing her happiness made him happy. Her worry and anxiety became his own.
He was falling in love with her.
What a hell of a time to realize it.
Beth dropped to her knees and began pawing through Alyssa’s clothing.
Eight hundred years. Beth thought she was from a time eight hundred years in the future.
’Twas mad. ’Twas unthinkable.
But she was Bethany. His Bethany. His Beth.
And she had known the Earth traveled around the sun.
Aside from himself, Dillon, Alyssa and the other gifted ones, he did not think anyone else in all of England knew that. Nor would they believe him if he told them.
He had been reluctant to believe it himself at first. Had anyone other than Alyssa suggested the sun did not travel around the Earth like the moon, he would have dismissed it outright. As would Dillon have. But Alyssa possessed extraordinary wisdom and abilities. How could one argue with her, having witnessed both firsthand?
Robert had not thought he would ever have reason or opportunity to discuss such with someone outside the family. Then Beth had blurted out the information as confidently as if she were stating that grass was green and the sky blue.
As if such were common knowledge.
Beth rose, lifting her strange pack out of the trunk. “I hid it here so the servants wouldn’t see any stuff from my time and freak out.” Her gaze made a quick foray about the room, then settled on the bed. “Over here.”
Robert followed her to the bed, still shaken by both her revelation and his realization that he was falling in love with her.
Clambering up onto the mattress, she knelt, then sat on her feet and patted the covers in front of her. “Come on. Sit with me.”
He settled himself cross-legged, facing her, as she upended her sack full of wonders between them and began to sort through it all. “Beth, there is something that puzzles me,” he broached.
She glanced up. “Just one thing?”
He smiled. “One thing to begin with,” he clarified.
Grinning, she went back to rummaging through the pile. “What’s on your mind?”
“’Tis something you said earlier. You told me that traveling through time is no more possible in the twenty-first century than it is here in the thirteenth. Yet you seem to be trying very hard to convince me that you have indeed accomplished this feat.”
She paused. Her forehead crinkled as her eyes met his. “That’s right. I did say that. It doesn’t really make sense, does it?” Releasing a frustrated sigh, she shook her head. “I don’t know what to tell you, Robert. I’m as puzzled as you are. I honestly don’t think a working method of time travel has been invented in my time. Scientists don’t either. And, if mankind had accomplished time travel and the scholars just didn’t know about it, everything would be totally screwed up.”
Screwed up was one of the first of her odd terms that he had learned to translate. “How so?”
She pondered it for a moment. “Well, I’m guessing women wouldn’t be as powerful as they are now, both in politics and society.”