Bitter Oath (New Atlantis)(21)

After her hair was clean and squeaky, she started to soap down every inch of her body, including the forbidden place between her legs. It felt so delightful she groaned. Feeling guilty for her decadent behaviour, she hastily rinsed and pressed the off button. The waterfall stopped instantly.

Opening the shower door, Liv stepped out and felt her foot slide on the wet tiles. Scrambling for purchase, she toppled forward and then back, hitting her head on the door and then on the wet tiles on the floor. As the pain gave way to darkness, she wondered if this was the end of her dream. Would she wake, at the end of Rene’s bed at Foxmoor Manor, to find everything had been just an illusion?



Rene had knocked on her bedroom door loudly for several minutes. Even the heaviest sleeper couldn’t stay unconscious with that din. Fear that was never far from the surface had him reaching for the door handle, forgetting decorum. If Jane had still been in the house, he would have sent her in. But his young friend had been up at the crack of dawn, and out for her morning run. He didn’t know when she’d be back.

He opened the door slowly, ready to shut it if he caught her in a compromising position. But there was no virginal shriek, so he opened the door fully, and walked inside.

She was not in the bed. But her old clothes were neatly folded on the covered side of the bed, and her sleep tunic and shorts were strewn across the unmade portion.

Where would she have gone?

The bathroom?

He went to the door and listened. No water running. He knocked, but got no response. Again he opened the door slowly, expecting a cry at any moment. But again there was silence. He looked in, and at first saw nothing but mirror, white tiles, and the last of the steam from the shower. Then his gaze dropped to the floor, and he saw her, lying like a broken marionette puppet, in a puddle of water.

Fear spiked. He was tearing the door the rest of the way open, and was down at her side in seconds. His arm snaked out, so his fingers could rest on her carotid artery, feeling for a pulse. It was there, strong and slow.

Not dead. Not this time. But next time, a fall would kill her.

A cry of anguish echoed off the tiled walls. He registered it, but took a moment to realise it was he who had made the sound.

Scooping her slack body up in his arms gently, he returned her to her bed. Then he began to check her for breaks or contusions. There was no blood, he was grateful to discover, but there was a sizeable egg on the back of her head, and darkening bruises on her shoulder and base of her spine.

Should he call the medics? She might have suffered head trauma. As he considered his options, Liv gave a little groan, and opened her fawn-like eyes. For a moment they saw nothing, and then they focused in on him.

‘Rene, am I home?’ she asked weakly.

‘You fell in the shower, Chere. You hit your head. Does it hurt? How many fingers am I holding up?’ He held up two fingers, remembering a little of the first-aid download he hadn’t accessed since his return from his last lifetime. Blurred or double vision after a fall could indicate a concussion.

‘Two. My head hurts and I feel poorly. Ouch!’ She whimpered as she shifted her shoulders on the bed.

‘Keep still. You’ve sustained some bruising. I do not think you have broken anything, though.’

Ignoring his suggestion, Liv tried to sit up, holding her head. He knew the moment she realised she was naked. Her body went preternaturally still. Then she looked up, and met his gaze with her own.

‘My father would make you marry me if he caught us in such a compromising position,’ she whispered, but didn’t seem inclined to cover herself.

‘Your father wouldn’t need to make me, Chere. I would marry tomorrow, if I could.’ His voice had a breathless quality, and he felt the painful arousal return. It had been his constant companion all through the night, and though he had released the pressure several times, it took only another thought of her to make him hard again.

Having her naked on this bed was almost too much to bear.

‘Why can’t you?’ she asked weakly, laying her head back on the bed again. ‘I would not say no.’

‘You remain unmarried.’ As soon as the words were out, he realised his mistake.

‘You… you know my future?’

‘Ah… yes. That is why I know you must go back. That you cannot stay with me here, though I want it more than life itself.’

‘Oh, that is a relief.’

‘Relief?’ He reached over, and drew a sheet up to cover her too tempting body. It was so perfect – slim in all the right places, and curved and lush in all the rest. Now that his fear for her safety had receded, thoughts of her delectable body were all he could entertain. What she said made no sense.

‘Last night I said I would like to play a part in your God-given mission. You said nothing, so I assumed you didn’t want me to stay here, and help you. I thought you must consider me just a stupid woman.’

He groaned at the inadvertent hurt he had caused her. Leaning down he brushed his lips across her forehead, not confident in his own control to kiss her on the lips.

‘If I could have my way, I would marry you tomorrow, and keep you at my side for several lifetimes, at the very least. I would have you help me with my work, and you would make the kind of difference to the world here that you could not possibly make in your own time.

‘But the fates have decreed a different path for us both. And one thing we have learned, in our sojourn through time, is that history cannot be changed.’

She reached up and stroked the side of his face. Her fingertips were cool and gentle.

‘Just because I do not marry in my own time does not mean I cannot marry here, does it?’

The thought was a revelation. Could he marry her here, in a way that was meaningful to her, and then return her to her own world, with no one the wiser? Of course he could. He even knew the man who could perform the marriage.

Karl Brandenburg had been a minister of the Evangelical Church of Germany before the Last Great Plague. He had worked as a curator of theological materials until time travel meant that he could become a researcher of early Christianity in-situ. Although the Gaian Confederacy held no religious affiliations, it encouraged the acquisition of all knowledge from the past, for posterity.

So, if anyone could marry them, Karl could. If he was still alive. He hadn’t seen him in an age, there paths never crossing since their Jump training some sixty five years ago, in this timeline. In his personal timeline, it would be more than six hundred years since he’d seen him.

‘If I could arrange it, would you marry me tomorrow?’ he asked slowly.

Liv’s face, which had been as pale as a ghost’s only moments before, was suddenly bright red, and her eyes sparkled with unshed tears.

‘I would marry you today, if you could arrange it!’

He laughed then, loudly, drawing her up into his arms for a hug so hard she winced in pain from her injuries. ‘Sorry, sorry… I forgot completely … I will call a medic to check you over. I think you are fine, but with head injuries you can never be too sure.’

Before she could say anything to stop him, he was out the door and down the hall, racing to reach his Tablet and get a medic over to the villa. Then he would get a message to Karl. There was no call for marriage in New Atlantis, the informal Bonding which was similar to the ancient practice of Hand-fasting was the only form of marriage practised here. And except for those seeking to parent one of the children, few people Bonded. Without a biological necessity, sex was rare and could not result in offspring, so there was no societal purpose for such bonds.

Why he felt the need for a true marriage so strongly was beyond him. But he had stopped second-guessing himself where Liv was concerned now. What he felt for her defied all his rational arguments. It did not match up to any experience from his exceptionally long past. Even the driving, sexual need was unlike his experiences in his Original body. Then it had been just another biological imperative, like eating and sleeping. He did it often; he enjoyed it often. And he thought nothing of it afterwards. Occasionally, a woman would please him as much as a good meal. But he wasn’t a hedonist. He didn’t live for pleasure. There were far more serious concerns for him.

So the outrageous addiction he felt for this Regency Miss was beyond uncharacteristic. If he believed in magic, he would say she had spun a spell of entrancement around him. But she would never do a thing like that, even if it was possible. No, this was something natural, not supernatural. And all he could do was go with it.

As he was connecting to the Medical Centre, Jane came in the front door, breathing heavily after her run. She must have overheard him as she passed, because she came back to stand silently in front of him, until he’d finished speaking to the medico on duty.

‘What’s happened?’ She then asked.

‘Liv fell over on the wet tiles in the bathroom. She hit her head and lost consciousness. A medico will be here momentarily.’

Even before he had finished speaking, a curtain of showering lights appeared in the living room, and a medico stepped through it. He smiled a greeting as the portal closed.