“Michael makes me forget Preston,” Charlotte confessed to her. “Michael makes me forget everything but him. All my thoughts, day in and day out, are about him! I just met him, Rosie, and you know I don’t give my feelings away so easily.”
“I haven’t known you to show interest in anyone your whole life except for Preston, Child.”
“Exactly, but Michael has come into my life like a consuming fire. My father hired him to keep an eye on me and it has been infuriating. But I find Michael so appealing, so amusing…and he is passionate, Rosie.” She felt a rush of heat course through her and felt her face go red.
Rosie laughed. “Aw, then he has kissed you.”
“Aye, and ’twas wonderful,” Charlotte said with a sigh and flung her hands to her chest. “But…”
“What is it, my girl?” Rosie asked in a soothing voice.
“He—” Oh, she couldn’t tell Rosie that he came from the future. Without Mr. Simeon here to pop in and out, Rosie would never believe her. “His employer in York may call on him again. It would be his choice to stay here or go back to his old life. I asked him today if he would go back and he couldn’t answer.”
“I see.”
“I don’t know where he stands in his feelings for me. Why should he have any feelings at all? It’s been a few days! He’s very detached to begin with. He’s—”
“He who? Me?” Michael appeared at the doorway. It wasn’t fair how just the sight of him made her feel as if she couldn’t breathe her next breath unless she were looking at him. He bent below the lintel and entered the cottage. “Here’s where I stand in my feelings for you, Lady Charlotte.”
She couldn’t keep from smiling at him. She looked at Rosie and blushed again. The older woman smiled at her, and then at Michael.
“I haven’t given my heart to anyone in a very long time,” he told Charlotte. “I don’t know the first thing about dating anymore—in any era.” He flicked his sapphire gaze to Rosie and laughed at himself before returning his attention to Charlotte. He sighed and his smile faded a bit. “I’ve felt stale for a long time. Everything inside,” he pointed to his torso and his head, “had become old and musty. And then you banged into me on your way from pi—” his gaze darted to Rosie and he cast Charlotte an apologetic look.
“She knows,” Charlotte told him. She’d told Rosie everything. Rosie knew what having a family meant to Charlotte, but it was more than that. She wanted a loving husband. Someone who couldn’t live without her. She wasn’t sure if that man was Preston. Of course, he hadn’t come for her because he’d been shot in the leg. She was glad he hadn’t come.
“She was difficult to ignore,” Michael told Rosie.
“She always has been,” her foster mother replied with a warm smile aimed at Charlotte.
Aye. She had to make herself difficult to ignore or they would forget her altogether.
“I feel as if I’ve woken up,” Michael said, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips. “You’re doing it, Charlotte. You’re waking me up. I think about you all the time.” He shook his head and laughed at himself. “Even when I’m with you. It’s crazy.”
“I think about you all the time, too,” she confessed and then felt like weeping.
He wouldn’t forget her.
“You’re making me want things I haven’t considered before, like a wife and a family. I just need to absorb it all without the prospect of being pulled back at any moment eating up my thoughts.”
Charlotte couldn’t speak for a moment. She thought if she opened her mouth, it would open the floodgates and her tears would rush forth from her eyes.
“Well,” Rosie said, filling the silence and preparing the rest of their supper, “I think that answers your questions on where he stands, Charlotte.”
“Aye, it has,” Charlotte answered and took his hand. But how safe would his feelings keep her when he found out she was a Horseman? She would lose him and that would be worse than never loving him in the first place. Not that she loved him. Did she?
Chapter Twenty
Charlotte watched Michaellaugh with Rosie and Warren and their friends while they all sat around a fire in the yard and ate supper. Rosie used one of the hare carcasses Michael and Charlotte bought her and made her delicious rabbit stew with fresh, warm black bread slathered in honey from Bromley. Warren had some homemade ale in his shed, but Michael didn’t drink any.
When Charlotte questioned him about it, he told her that drinking was a problem for him in the past. He wanted a different life here.
He planned on staying. She wanted to rejoice, but his heart would change for her soon. She didn’t want it to but there was nothing to be done. He might actually be her true love. He could lock her away until they hung her. She couldn’t think of it. Not today.
She was glad Rosie and her friends liked Michael. She was glad he’d confessed his heart in front of Rosie and saved her the trouble of repeating it and not getting each perfect word correct. She liked the sound of his laughter. It was deep and authentic, as if it came from his belly. It made others want to laugh along with him. She noticed that his laughter came more easily in the last few days.
Since he came here.
Sadly, too late to stop it, she realized she was, indeed, falling in love with him while he laughed and ate with her friends. How could her heart betray Preston like this? She looked around at all the food. There was enough for the neighbors, Robbie and Alice Brinton and James and his wife Rebecca Houghton and more. Michael had done this. The thing she had always wanted Preston to do. Feed the less fortunate with her. She couldn’t imagine sharing such a desire with someone she loved. She couldn’t imagine how much they could get done together. She certainly could and would stop robbing if there was no reason to do it. She was older. It wasn’t the kind of attention she wanted from her father. She’d known it for a long time. She did what she did for attention from Preston now. Not her father.
