To what?...set what things straight? She asked Lizzie what she meant.
“Child,” Lizzie said, flustered. “You and your sister had lives you weren’t supposed to live. We can send your father back to the time he desires, before he used the watch and separated the three of you. Your life will be different–”
The hairs on the back of Fable's neck stood on end. She knew what Lizzie meant. Fable would grow up with a father, a family. She would be the daughter of an earl, so she wouldn’t lack for anything. It would change her. But…she didn’t want tochange. She wasn’t a bad person. Her memory of Ben would probably be wiped clean–no! No, no, no!
She wanted to scream for Ben across time. If he saved her father, she would forget him, what he meant to her. What she meant to him. She would lose what she had never had before, what she didn’t know she needed–to be cherished.
She wanted to call him back…somehow. But to do so would be killing her father. She squeezed her eyes shut, as if doing so would chase away the terrible truth. When she opened them again, her tears fell as her gaze fastened on Lizzie’s. “Please…”
“Child–”
“If my father chooses to destroy the one beautiful thing I had in my life, and force me back in time so he can fix his mistake, he will prove to me that our only bond is by blood and nothing else. I don’t care about blood bonds, since I never had a single one. I will openly reject him, the Ashmores and the Blagdens! I’ll find my own way back to Ben.”
“Fable, listen to me.”
“How can I? You’re a liar. You told Ben you would give me the choice of returning to him or not. But I won’t be given a choice. If my father must set things right, that means I will never have lived this life that has led me to Ben–and I’m not giving that up.”
She turned away from the old seer and kept walking. Lizzie didn’t follow her. Fable wasn’t surprised. Her veins felt cold from the blood flowing slowly through them. It chilled her and she shivered while she walked. “Ben,” she murmured, as if he could somehow hear her, “Ben, tell my father about us. Tell him how happy you make me and tell him not to send me back to my original time. Tell him, Ben. He has to know so he can save us.
Chapter Twenty
Ben looked around at the ornately carved wood paneled walls, upon which hung colorful paintings of fox hunts, and landscapes, along with portraits, framed in rich walnut and mahogany. He recognized the royal study from his last visit here, after he’d saved the king’s life and almost lost his arm.
Lizzie was precise. He almost smiled, but caught his mother’s eye. She smiled and wiped her eyes. Ben took her hand and brought it to his chest. He never dreamed of seeing her again. Even dreaming of it was too painful, so he didn’t. Yet, here she was real and alive.
His head was still spinning from it all when his mother covered his hand in both of hers. “I thought of nothing but seeing my children and my husband again. Let us go home so I can see my daughter.”
Ben’s smile faded. “We will go home right after I get Ashmore’s neck out of the noose.”
“We don’t owe anyone anything, Benjamin,” she told him softly. “Let’s forget the past and start a new future together as a family.”
Ben stared at her. What was she saying? “Mother, the only way to be reunited with my wife is to save her father.”
She gazed up at him and smiled. “My darling son, I have no right to ask anything of you. But even though I haven’t been in your life for almost twenty years, I never for one instant stopped being your mother. So, please hear me. In all those years, rather than marry a twenty-first century man who I didn’t love, I took classes and worked hard to provide for myself and became a social worker. I help the homeless find a home. Fable Ramsey is one of my clients!”
Ben felt ill. His mother disapproving of Fable because of who she wasn’t and what she didn’t have was oddly like hissister. For some reason he never believed his mother would be so judgmental. It had been his father’s wish that he wed someone of importance, wasn’t it?
“Do you mean to keep her as your wife? What can she offer you?”
Ben closed his eyes rather than look into the ones he’d missed for so long and see what he was seeing.
“Thea,” Ben’s father interrupted. “The woman our son has married is the daughter of the Earl of Dorset, the man our son must save.”
“Richard,” his mother began.
But Ben stopped her. “Mother, you asked what she can offer me. I will tell you. She offers me peace and solace where there has only been unease and violence. She offers me a reason to smile and to hope that I am capable of being everything she needs to be happy. She’s the reason I still breathe, the reason I am still alive. I would be a fool to let her go.”
His mother held back whatever else she wanted to say and sighed with a nod instead then disappeared under her husband’s beefy arm.
Ben smiled at them then turned to the heavy wooden door as it creaked open. A man stepped into the study and bowed slightly. “His Majesty, the king will see Captain West alone.”
Ben followed the servant out of the study. This was happening quickly. Ben was about to see the king without knowing what to say. How was he going to defend a man against piracy when he knew nothing about Thoren Ashmore?
The servant led him through another set of double doors into a large airy chamber with six windows. In the center, surrounded by two high-backed chairs, and various chests, was a carved desk with an upholstered chair, in which sat a slender man with wig-free head of salt and pepper hair.
He looked up from a parchment he was reading. “Colchester!” He sat the parchment down and rose to come around his desk. “What brings you, Captain? Are you ready to return to duty?”
Words Ben had longed to hear for almost three years. He would have answered with a resounding yes! Before Fable. Now he shook his head. “Your Majesty, I’m here to ask you to allow me to speak to one of your prisoners.”
