Rendezvous With Yesterday (The Gifted Ones #2)(107)

Frowning, he shook his head.

Alyssa nodded suddenly. “Better. When you are ready, Beth.”

Beth replayed the day she had traveled back through time. She tried to leave the gory parts out, but didn’t succeed. Whenever she thought of that day, she remembered it all. Hearing gunshots. Racing forward. Finding Josh cornered. Watching three bullets slam into him. Getting shot twice herself. Lying there, choking on her own blood.

Then the man in black kneeling beside her.

“’Tis not Geoffrey,” Alyssa murmured just before Beth heard the stranger’s words.

I have come for you, Bethany.

She opened her eyes.

Alyssa released her and stared, unseeing, at the hearth. “’Tis not Geoffrey,” she repeated softly.

“Was the man a gifted one?” Robert asked.

Slowly, she nodded and met his gaze. “I could not glimpse his face clearly, but recognized his voice. ’Twas the giant. When the gifted ones came to Westcott to help me birth Ian, he spoke to me.”

Beth frowned. “The giant?”

Alyssa nodded. “There are two gifted ones we know not. Both are men. One is so tall he dwarfs Dillon.”

Beth glanced at Dillon, who stood a few inches above six feet.

“Though he calls himself Seth,” Alyssa resumed, “my husband refers to him as the giant.”

“I can see why,” Beth murmured.

“This Seth is the most powerful of us all,” Alyssa continued. “Far more powerful than I. And his voice was that of the man who came to you.”



“Can you call him to us?” Robert asked her.

“I will try.”

“On the morrow, after you have rested,” Dillon insisted.

Smiling, she touched his cheek. “As you will.”

Dillon met Robert’s gaze. “What of the wedding? Now that Bethany has a means of returning to her own time, will it still take place?”

The churning in Beth’s stomach graduated to an intense burning, as though someone had poured something highly acidic down her throat.

“Dillon,” Alyssa remonstrated, “’tis not our concern.”

“’Tis my concern,” he protested. “I do not wish to see my brother hurt.”

“We know not that Seth can return her to her time. We…”

Their voices faded away, drowned out by Beth’s heartbeat pounding in her ears. Her time with Robert could very well end soon, if Seth arrived and said he could take her back, said he would take her back.

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.