Timeless (A Time Travel Romance) Read online

  She could hear the doctor and the paramedics murmuring to each other but the individual words were hard to distinguish and she gave up straining to understand the broad English accents. Their voices floated over her, wisps of sound that she felt too exhausted to unravel. She was jolted back into awareness when her entire body convulsed with a sudden excruciating pain.

  “Have a care! Do not allow her to fall.” William spoke sharply. Robyn found his accent easier to understand than any of the others, although what he said often seemed to make little sense. Like now. “Dr. Perrick, what say you? Do you think my wife’s birth pangs have begun?”

  “I fear so, my lord, I fear so. And I regret it is my solemn duty to warn you that her ladyship is in such a weakened state that I cannot predict a favorable outcome to the labor, either for her or for the babe.”

  “Perhaps you are unduly pessimistic. Her other children have been delivered without mishap.”

  “That is so, my lord. But on previous occasions, her ladyship entered her travails in a state of robust health and strength. Childbirth is a dangerous enterprise even under the most favorable of circumstances, and her ladyship’s head injury is severe.”

  “Bloody, certainly, but the wound seems to me to be relatively superficial.”

  “Infection and fever are almost inevitable, my lord.” Dr. Perrick cleared his throat. “If I may make so bold, my lord, I would suggest that you send for the vicar. We may have double need of his services before the night is out.”

  “Let the vicar eat his dinner in peace. There will be time enough to fetch him to the Manor later this evening if his presence seems necessary. First we need to get my wife home and safely into her bed. Our most necessary task must be to see that she is made warm and dry and that her wounds are cleaned—and stitched if need be.”

  The individual words William spoke were definitely some sort of English, but his conversation made no sense, Robyn decided. Was she being taken to this arrogant William person’s home? Why was he ordering everyone about like some feudal lord of the manor, and why were the doctor and paramedics listening? Robyn felt a spurt of rage. What was wrong with the doctor that he wasn’t insisting she should be driven to a hospital? Good grief, she was in agony, she’d probably lost a ton of blood, and so far nobody had done anything except load her onto a stretcher and jounce her over miles of wet countryside.

  “Hospital,” she rasped. “Where’s the hospital?”

  William spoke again, his voice soothing, as if addressing an idiot. “The hospital is in the village, my dear. Do you remember that your own father endowed the funds for the building?”

  She blinked, trying to focus her eyes, trying to understand. “My father? But he’s never been to England!”

  “My lord, her ladyship must be kept quiet—”

  William’s hand rested for a moment on her forehead. “Do not trouble yourself with these matters, my dear, we shall soon have you home and in your own bed. Then you will feel quite yourself again.”

  “I want to go to the hospital!”

  “And you shall, my dear, as soon as you are well enough.”

  When she was well enough! The man was totally crazy, Robyn realized with a shudder of fear. Crazy—or deliberately cruel. She remembered in a sudden flash of coherence that she had left New York late at night and flown to England, arriving early in the morning. She had driven to Starke Manor Hotel, where she had been shot by a woman in the parking lot. Perhaps this William person was one of the woman’s fellow conspirators. Perhaps his failure to seek medical care was a deliberate ploy, intended to cause her harm.

  “Take me to the hospital,” she pleaded, striving with all her might to speak clearly, despite her dry, swollen throat and painfully cracked lips. “Oh, God, why won’t you take me to the hospital?”

  William’s hand tightened around hers in a comforting squeeze. “Of course you shall go there if you wish, my dear, you have my word on it. Now lie still, and do not trouble yourself further.”

  His voice was so calm and reassuring that Robyn felt herself relax, despite her realization that he was almost certainly lying. She tried to remember why she had come to England, and why she had arranged to meet Zach at Starke Manor. She wished Zach would come. Where was he? The gloomy November afternoon had already given way to dusk, so several hours must have elapsed since her accident. Why hadn’t he come to take care of her? To protect her from these half-crazed locals.

  She didn’t understand why the usual sort of emergency medical procedures hadn’t swung into immediate action after her accident. England, after all, was an advanced, civilized country. Was it possible that in this sleepy, rural part of the country people were so unused to guns and violence that they didn’t know how to react medically to a drive-by shooting?

  “Drip,” she muttered. “I need an IV drip. A blood transfusion. Saline solution. Something. Take me to the hospital, dammit, and stop screwing around.”

  “What be ‘er saying, my lord? ‘Er ladyship be saying ‘er words all jumbled up like. Why does ‘er keep on and on about th’ospital? And did ‘er say blood?”

  “I’m not certain, Jake, but I am sure this strange talk is but a temporary condition. Her ladyship will be better once the babe has arrived and when she is recovered, we shall all be able to understand her once again.”

  What babe? That was the second or third time these weird people had mentioned the imminent arrival of a baby. Robyn didn’t even want to consider what that extraordinary comment might mean. She tried to turn her head toward the William person, whose arrogant commands seemed to be at the root of all her troubles, but the wave of pain made her feel so sick she quickly abandoned the attempt.

  “We’re here!” William’s voice contained unmistakable relief. “Be careful, lads, as you carry her up the stairs.”

  A murmuring swell of female voices was added to the male chorus surrounding Robyn. She forced her eyes open, and found herself staring into the worried features of a youngish woman, hair tucked into the strangest nurse’s cap Robyn had ever seen.

  “Am I in the hospital?” she asked.

  “No, my lady—”

  “Yes, indeed, my dear. You have been carried to the hospital.”

  William’s voice. She didn’t believe him, but she was too weak to protest. Tears of helpless anger and frustration welled up and poured over her cheeks.

  “There, there, my lady, ‘twill all come right in the end,” the woman murmured. “Don’t you fret, we’ll see that your babe is birthed safely.”

  “I—am—not—pregnant,” Robyn said between sobs. Her tears vanished in a sudden hysterical urge to giggle. Good Lord, couldn’t these yokels tell the difference between a woman with a gunshot wound and a woman in the early stages of labor? She would have laughed out loud, but her breath was swallowed up in a wave of pain so intense that it seemed to start at her toes and grind excruciatingly through her abdomen, culminating in an explosion of darkness inside her head. The pain left her body limp, her mind blank.

  Their awkward, bumpy procession had barely reached the head of the stairs—there seemed to be no elevators in this place, although the building was huge—when the pain came again, grinding through the pit of Robyn’s stomach, peaking in an excruciating knot right below her navel.

  “Her pangs are but minutes apart, my lord. I fear she has been thrown straight into hard labor.” Robyn heard the doctor’s voice through a red mist of agony.

  “Perhaps that is not an ill thing. It may be better if her strength is not drained by hours and hours of preliminary effort that achieves little save to exhaust her.”

  “Let us pray that your optimism is justified, my lord.”

  The darkness was washing over her in longer and longer waves. Robyn was distantly aware that she had been carried into a high-ceilinged room, dimly lit, and oppressively airless after the freshness of the rain-swept night. The close, cloying atmosphere left her gasping for oxygen, and when the pain swept over her at the same moment as she
tried to draw breath, her gasp emerged as a frightened scream.

  “Try to stay calm, Arabella. We shall soon have you out of these wet clothes and then you may rest a little in the comfort of your own bed.”

  “How can I rest?” Robyn asked, succumbing to panic. Tears clogged her throat, choking her, washing out to cascade down her cheeks. “I want Zach to be here,” she sobbed. “Why won’t you take me to him? He’d drive me to the hospital in a minute.”

  “My brother Zachary has not been seen since the Battle of Culloden,” William said, removing his hand from hers.

  Robyn hadn’t noticed how tightly she’d been holding his hand until that moment, and she felt a renewed surge of panic when she realized he was walking away.

  “Don’t go!” she called out. “You promised you wouldn’t leave me.”

  William stopped and turned around. There was weariness in his voice when he spoke again. “You cannot wish me to stay, my lady. Not for the birth of a child. You know how much you dislike me to see you when you are not properly dressed and painted.”

  “I’m not having a baby,” she said, unwilling to let the absurd myth that she was in labor continue. “Don’t be ridiculous. How can I have a baby when I’m not even pregnant!”

  The room was shadowy, almost dark, but she thought she saw him smile, just for an instant. “It seems, my lady, that one or the other of us is going to be very surprised a few hours from now.”

  “It won’t be me,” Robyn said, furious with him, and yet oddly reassured by the glimpse of his smile. “Don’t go,” she repeated, although she had no idea why she wanted his presence. Nothing William had done or said suggested that he was a useful person to have around in a sick room. On the contrary, he seemed unaware of even the fundamentals of first aid.

  Before she could say anything more, another pain convulsed her body and Robyn felt herself float away into a twilight half world where she dreamed she was trapped on a football field, and all the players were running over her, pulling her brutally from side to side as they searched for the ball that was hidden under her hips. After a while, she hurt so much that she stopped feeling the individual blows of huge, heavy feet stomping on her stomach in careless search for the football. Her body was so tormented and weakened by the buffets inflicted on it that she knew she was going to die, and she sank deeper into the darkness, mentally digging a little pit in the ground where she was safe from the rush of the footballers’ heavy feet and their mad scramble for possession of the ball.

  She would have stayed safely hidden in her cozy little hole except for William’s nagging. She might have guessed that the annoying man wouldn’t leave her alone to die peacefully. She felt a cool, lemon-scented dampness stroke over her forehead and across her cheeks, and the waves of her nightmare receded—receded enough to hear William’s voice speaking softly and urgently in her ear.

  “Come, Arabella, gather your courage one last time. Dr. Perrick assures me the babe is nearly here.”

  “I’m playing football,” she said crossly. “Leave me alone. I’ve dug a pit and it’s stopped hurting.”

  William drew in a short, sharp breath. “Thank God, you have heard me, have you not? Arabella, do not slip away again, I beg. I have so much admired your courage this night.”

  Robyn frowned. “I like it better in the pit.” She screamed as her body ripped itself open and she pushed downward in an instinctive effort to force the pain out of her.

  “‘Tis another miracle, my lord. God Himself is blessing this labor! Your lady wife has recovered her strength sufficiently to assist in the birth of her own babe.”

  “How long?” William asked tersely. “Miracle or no, she cannot endure much more of this agony. Dear God, I had never imagined that the birth of a child could cause such incredible torment.”

  “ ‘Tis the curse of Eve, my lord, and women do not feel the pain in the same way as you or I would feel it. Women are resigned to the fate God has assigned them, and accept the pain which is their just punishment for Eve’s sin.”

  “Just tell me how much longer my wife must endure her punishment.”

  “I can see the babe’s head, my lord. A few minutes more, two or three strong birth pangs, and we shall know if God has blessed you with another son.”

  Robyn wanted to interrupt this farrago of nonsense, but the breath was squeezed out of her lungs as she succumbed again to the overwhelming urge to push and bear downward. She only realized that she had drifted into unconsciousness again when William jolted her back into semi-awareness of her surroundings.

  “Once more,” he commanded urgently. “One more push, my dear, and your travails will be over.”

  She realized then that she must be dreaming. In the bizarre world of dreamland it was probably no more strange to imagine herself giving birth than to imagine herself immobilized on the center of a football field with two opposing teams scrimmaging over her inert body.

  She was so tired she wished both nightmares would go away, but William was holding her hand, bathing her forehead with the cool scented towels, and somehow she couldn’t manage to slip away from him into the peaceful blackness of oblivion. Another pain, followed by a sharp, high-pitched cry, and then a grunt of satisfaction from Dr. Perrick.

  “A son, my lord, small but astonishingly healthy. The Lady Arabella has presented you with another son.”

  Robyn felt her body relax into a state of utter peacefulness. She was almost glad that the nightmare had carried through to the bitter end and given her the illusion of delivering a baby. For a dream, it had been quite an experience.

  A son. She wondered why her subconscious had chosen to reward the arrogant William with a son. In dreams, presumably she could chose whatever sex of offspring she desired. She ought to have given birth to a daughter, just to annoy him. She visualized the son she had supposedly produced: he would have a fuzz of light golden hair, and blue eyes like William’s. Like Zach’s. And he would have cute chubby fists like the baby in the portrait in Zach’s living room.

  What portrait in Zach’s living room? The moment she tried to bring her memory of the picture into sharper focus, the whole image faded. Robyn yawned and realized that her head ached abominably. Now that the pains of her imagined labor had stopped, she had energy to spare for feeling the throbbing behind her eyes and the soreness on the ridge of her scalp where the bullet must have grazed her scalp.

  “I need some aspirin,” she said. The curtains had been drawn around her bed, presumably to give her some privacy from other patients, and now that she had enough strength to look around, there was nothing to see. Was she in a hospital? Perhaps she had been transferred to one while she was unconscious. The bed curtains certainly suggested a hospital room.

  “Where’s the nurse?” she asked sleepily. She felt euphoric and sleepy all at once, an odd but rather pleasant combination.

  “The child has been taken to her,” William said, his voice gentle. “You may rest easily, Arabella, for the babe is strong, I promise you, and the nurse has plenty of milk. Her own child died but a week ago.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said crossly. She didn’t want to think about the nonsense William and the other people kept mouthing. If she thought about what they were saying, she knew she would be terrified.

  “Some tincture of opium will help her to sleep,” Dr. Perrick said. “And sleep at this moment is undoubtedly the best medicine for her ladyship.”

  “I will give the opium to her,” William said. “Here, let me have the cup.”

  Robyn was thirsty and she drank greedily even though the mixture tasted unpleasant, both sweet and pungent at the same time. Almost at once, torpor swept over her, and she listened to the voices around her without making much effort to disentangle the strange accents.

  “You should rest, my lord. Your lady wife is in no danger at this moment, you have my word on it.”

  “Unless she contracts a fever.”

  “As always, my lord, that is in
God’s hands. You may be assured, my lord, that you will be summoned if her ladyship succumbs to any sort of infection.”

  What a pompous ass the doctor was, Robyn thought drowsily. But everyone in this part of England sounded as if they’d lifted their dialogue from a musical comedy set hundreds of years in the past. Right now, she didn’t even care. The ache in her head was easing blissfully...

  She was asleep before she heard William’s reply.

  * * *

  Her throat hurt. Her muscles ached. Her skin burned. She was so thirsty that her entire body had curled into a desiccated husk, waiting to die.

  “Water!” Robyn gasped the word even before she opened her eyes. He was at her side in an instant. William. She remembered his name. Recognized the feel of him, even though she couldn’t have said how he looked, whether he was short or tall, blond or dark.

  “Here, drink this. It is barley water, and will help to give you strength.” There was almost no light in the room, so she could barely see him, but his arm felt reassuringly strong as he lifted her up and held the glass to her mouth, helping her drink. Except it wasn’t a glass, it was a metal container, and it tasted tinny. Tasted gross, in fact. The contents weren’t much better—tepid, gritty, and borderline bitter. She drank anyway. Deep, satisfying gulps that eased her parched throat and cooled the fierce heat of her skin. Sweat broke out of her pores in drenching rivulets and her teeth started to chatter. She recognized the symptoms. She was vaguely aware that the same cycle of delirium, thirst, sweat, fading consciousness, and renewed delirium had been repeated over and over again. Her periods of lucidity had been brief—islands of awareness in a misty landscape of bizarre dreams.

  Robyn licked her dry, cracked lips and managed to speak. “I have a raging infection,” she said, recognizing the truth and hanging on to it with grim determination. “For God’s sake, why doesn’t somebody give me a shot? I’d be cured in a few hours with the right shot! There must be some antibiotic that would work.”