Ten
Susan already knew what she faced on the second day of her life in the first half of the century. It was the day before the wedding, and the Abbotts didn’t do things halfway. In about three hours everything would start, and she probably wouldn’t have a moment to herself until?—
Until when? Until she died? Is that what it would take to send her back to her own time? To stop this dream which was rapidly turning into a nightmare?
The rehearsal was set for noon at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, followed by a huge supper for wedding party members, relatives and anyone else they could drag in. And then tomorrow, at eleven o’clock in the morning, Tallulah Abbott would marry Edward Marsden. And she’d be dead before midnight.
How had Lou died? Was it in a train wreck? What had once been an unimportant detail now loomed very large indeed. If Lou Abbott died in a train, then Susan Abbott had every intention of driving a car wherever she went.
Hattie was watching her closely, her brown eyes suspicious. “What can I get you for breakfast, Miss Lou?”
“I’m not really hungry.”
“Gotta keep your strength up. You got a busy day today. Let me make you some scrambled eggs and toast.”
Susan shuddered. “Thanks, Hattie, but I don’t think I could manage to choke it down. Maybe just some strawberry yogurt if we have some?”
“Yogurt? What’s that?”
Good God, they didn’t even have yogurt in 1949! There was no reasonable answer she could come up with. “How about cornflakes?” she guessed. Surely they had cornflakes back then.
“Miss Tallulah, you’ve always hated cereal. You know milk gives you gas. What is going on with you, child?”
“I don’t know,” Susan said truthfully. “I really don’t know.” Hattie was watching her with both doubt and wisdom in her eyes, and for a brief moment Susan was tempted to tell her the truth. Maybe Hattie would tell Lou’s parents, and they’d lock her up in an insane asylum, but at least she wouldn’t marry the wrong man. And at least she wouldn’t die in a train wreck.
However, she might spend her days in a straitjacket, assuming they had such things, which wasn’t much of an alternative. But then, Hattie didn’t look like the type to rat on her.
“I need...” she began, when the doorbell rang.
“You just wait right here. Miss Lou. I’ll get rid of whoever it is, and you can tell me all about it.”
But Susan had already chickened out. “That’s all right,” she said brightly. “You’re in the midst of something. I’ll get the door.” And she slipped out of the kitchen before she could change her mind.
The Abbott house was large and rambling, and she hadn’t yet discovered where the hunt door was, so by the time she found it, whoever was waiting had stopped ringing the bell and had begun pounding on the door.
She yanked the door open, not surprised to be confronted by Neddie Marsden in a towering rage. “Stop making such a racket,” she said calmly. “You’ll wake the entire family.”
He didn’t move. He stood in the doorway, staring at her, his handsome face slack-jawed with shock, though she couldn’t figure out why.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
Susan had never responded particularly well to men having temper tantrums, and she wasn’t going to let a petty tyrant like Neddie Marsden browbeat her. “Go away, Neddie,” she said wearily. “I’m not in the mood for this so early in the morning....”
He caught her aim in a painful grip, pushing her into the house, and kicked the door shut behind him. He slammed her against the wall, pressing his bulk against her, and his fingers dug into the soft flesh of her upper arm. His nostrils were flaring and veins stood out in his temples.
“What’s going on with you?” he demanded in a furious whisper. “What the hell do you think you’re wearing? You look like a damned tomboy! You get your fanny upstairs and put on a dress, fix your hair and your makeup, and then you come back down and behave yourself.”
She glared up at him, uncowed. “I’ll dress any way I please. No one’s coming over for hours, you weren’t supposed to be here, and I have every right?—”
He caught her other arm, as well, and shook her, hard enough that her head slammed against the wall behind her. “You have no rights. You’re going to be my wife, and I expect you to behave like a lady at all times. I won’t have you shaming me, Tallulah. I thought you were past all that wildness. I thought you’d grown up.”
“What if I don’t want to grow up?” She was proud of how even her tone of voice was. She didn’t want to admit it, but pompous old Neddie Marsden was scaring her. Maybe because right now he wasn’t old at all, he was young and strong and mean.
“You don’t have the choice.”
“What if I don’t want to marry you?”
The expression on his face was absolutely terrifying. Her arms were numb beneath his punishing grip, and she couldn’t move, she could only stand there, frozen.
