Rendezvous With Yesterday (The Gifted Ones #2)(68)

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.”

Robert stared. How powerful were they?

“In fact, the whole Women’s Liberation Movement would probably have been quashed before it even began. With all of the bitching and moaning that’s been going on in my time over women gaining power, running for president and getting elected in some countries… Yeah. That would’ve been nipped in the bud really fast. The Civil Rights Movement probably would have been stopped, too. And since greed seems to motivate everything, the richest men on the planet—the ones wealthy enough to fund the research and development needed to create time travel—would gain an even larger percentage of the planet’s wealth than they have now. I mean, they’d have years of Wall Street numbers they could capitalize on and use to get richer. Not to mention lotto numbers. And I’m sure they’d manipulate things so they could have more power. I hate to even think what would happen war-wise. Preemptive strikes to head off World War I and World War II? Preemptive invasions that would just make things worse? Biological weapons and atom bombs implemented sooner than they were?” She shook her head. “Yeah. Time travel has definitely not been invented in my time.” Her frown deepened. “And yet, here I am. I seem to have done the impossible, and I have absolutely no idea how I did it. I don’t even know how to explain it.”



Robert frowned. Could one travel through time without knowing it? Would not something momentous, if not frightening, take place during such an unnatural feat?

“I know it makes no sense,” she said, “but don’t give up on me yet. I may not be able to tell you how I came back in time, but I can prove to you that I did. I really can.”

A small, colorful, cylindrical object the size of his smallest finger rolled toward him, coming to rest against his shin. Robert picked it up and examined it. “What is this?” It appeared to be made of the plastic material she possessed so much of.

“That’s lip balm. You rub it on your lips to protect them from the sun and keep them from getting chapped. Keeps them nice and soft.”

He could attest to the softness of her lips, having explored them thoroughly with his own.

Robert set the small tube down and contented himself with staring at the many fascinating objects arrayed before him. Amazingly, each appeared more interesting than the last. “For what do you search?”

“Something with a date on it,” Beth murmured, wadding up the bloody tunic she refused to wash and dropping it over the side of the bed.

Robert leaned forward so he could better see the items she uncovered as she moved things around. “Are there, perchance, more small scraps of black material in there?”

Beth’s hands stilled. Her head came up. A teasing smile bloomed on her pretty face as her eyes met his. “Like my bra and panties, do you?”

Unaccountably, Robert found himself blushing.

She winked. “I’ll let you know if I find any.”

As soon as she resumed her search, Robert directed a quick look down at his lap to ensure the loose shirt he had donned earlier concealed his arousal.

“Aha! Here it is!”

His pulse leapt as he looked up, expecting to see scraps of midnight dangling between her fingers.

Alas, she held a folded pouch of some sort.