Rendezvous With Yesterday (The Gifted Ones #2)(16)

Reaching for the zipper on her backpack, she started to close it and again found herself surrounded by four fascinated men. All wanted to know how she had done it and demanded she zip it and unzip it again. With very realistic exclamations and awed expressions, they crowded and buffeted her and reached for the bag.

Beth threw herself bodily across it to keep them from taking it from her. “I am not going to do this again!” she shouted, swatting at their grasping hands. “Come on! Cut the crap! We don’t have time for this! We need to find Josh!”

“Cease!” Robert bellowed, shoving the men back as if he weren’t just as guilty as the others.

Air whooshed out of her lungs as Beth cautiously sat up and clutched the heavy backpack to her chest. “Thank you.”

“Forgive us,” he entreated, his expression chagrined. “We did not mean to overset you, but we have never—”

“Seen a zipper before?” she finished for him.

“The marvelous fastening is called a zipper?”

“Aye,” she said, her patience beginning to fray.

“Aye. We have none of us seen a zipper.”



“Well, this whole medieval thing is all very entertaining. But right now I just want to look for Josh, okay? You can pretend to marvel over all of my twenty-first century gadgets later, after we’ve found him.”

The men exchanged a look.

Beth stood with the backpack in her arms, a new need making itself known. She hadn’t thought she had been unconscious for that long, but her full bladder suggested many hours had passed. And she had no idea how long it would be before she could find a restroom.

A quick survey told her there were plenty of thick bushes and trees behind which she could relieve herself, but having four men for an audience did not appeal to her in the least.

“So,” she broached tentatively. “If I go out there to, ah, you know,” she motioned to the surrounding forest, “you won’t follow me and peek or anything, will you?”

She must have phrased it funny or something because they again gazed at her as if she had three heads.

“Did you say twenty-first century?” Michael asked, his face clouded with doubt.

“Oh, for crap’s sake!” she exclaimed. “I am too tired and too worried to deal with this! Will you stay here or not?”

Robert held up a hand to silence Michael when he would have replied. “We will allow you your privacy.”

“Thank you!” Spinning around, she marched off into the woods, muttering under her breath about stubborn men who never knew when to quit.





As Mistress Bethany disappeared into the foliage, Michael asked in a hushed voice, “Did I mistake her?”

“Nay,” Stephen answered somberly. “She did say twenty-first century.”

“Poor girl,” Adam murmured. “Even with her peculiar speech I did not think her mad, but—”

“She is not mad,” Robert denied, a sick feeling nevertheless lodging itself in his gut.

“Robert,” Michael protested softly.

“She is overwrought, Michael. I know not what has befallen her, but it has left her covered in blood and consumed with worry for her husband or lover or whomever this Josh fellow is, and he is probably dead. Think you she does not realize that?” Hands on his hips, he took a few steps in the direction she had taken. “We bombard her with questions and try to pry the last of her belongings from her blood-encrusted fingers merely to satisfy our curiosity and you think her mad for offering a misplaced word or two?”

Adam pursed his lips. “’Tis true the lass has some difficulty with the language.”

“I understand not half the words that emerge from her lips,” Robert agreed. Lips that he suspected would be quite lovely if they and the rest of her face were clean.

“You are certain Lady Alyssa is not in the area?” Michael posed.

“Nay. She is at Westcott, struggling to keep Dillon from placing a wooden sword in their son’s eager hands. And if she were here, she would not have healed the girl, then left her to wander the forest alone in such an addled state.”

“No peeking!” Bethany shouted suddenly, startling them.

Stephen raised both bushy eyebrows. “Overwrought or nay, I think her mad as the miller’s mother.” Catching Robert’s frown, he grinned. “I did not say I dislike her, only that she is mad. I cannot recall another woman who has entertained me so.”

Robert’s scowl deepened as something resembling jealousy sifted through him.

“If not Lady Alyssa, then who?” Michael went on. “Her grandmother?”



Robert shook his head. “I think not. Her grandmother has not the strength. Healing such wounds would kill her.”

“What of the other gifted ones?”

“As far as I know, none of them possess the ability to heal and cannot do so without Alyssa or her grandmother present to channel their gifts.”

“What of the giant?”

“The one who calls himself Seth?” Dillon had often described the man as a giant because of his impressive height, which was a head or more taller than Robert’s six feet. “I know not his gifts. But Dillon said Seth did not heal Alyssa himself. He showed the others how to combine their strength and their gifts to heal her instead.”