“I was told your life was quite difficult,” he said, biting back the heavy waves of emotion trying to escape him.
She moved a step closer, her brows lifted in curiosity. “Who told you?”
“The man who saved my life,“ he told her, “the Duke of Colchester.”
He listened closer. Was that her pounding heart he heard, or his own?
“He told me he cared for you,” he admitted, watching for her reaction.
“He did?”
He nodded, taking note of her breathless anticipation of hearing more about the duke. “He asked me to send you back to him, but I’m too selfish. I want to spend time with you, Fable. I want to learn who you have become and imagine that we haven’t lost so much.”
“If what I have now was the prize for enduring a difficult life,” she told him, her eyes like twin oceans, “then I have much to be thankful for.”
He let out a soft, charmed laugh and shook his head at them both. “You comfort me when I should be comforting you.”
Her smile widened like a breathtaking sunrise, reaching her eyes this time. “I’m glad I could comfort you. I’m comforted by the fact that my father isn't a monster tyrant, or a detached ogre. You tried to find us for twenty-four years. Is it true you never took a break from your search for us?”
“Even after I…” he stopped for a moment remembering the rope around his neck and the lever to release part of the platform was pulled. He wasn’t sure what killed him. He briefly remembered his neck breaking, and then he was free. “Even after I died, I continued searching. It was how I found your sister, but I could never find you. Now I have, and I–
“Ben agreed to not seeing me for two weeks.”
The duke agreed. Thoren felt a hook in his side. Who or what was Colchester to her?
“After that I wish to return to him.”
“You share his feelings then?” he asked.
“Yes, maybe even more so. And Father, I’m sorry but I don’t want to return to sixteen-eighty whatever. I don’t want to start over, or change my past. I won’t. It took twenty-six years to become who I am. I won’t do it over and risk becoming someone I don’t like.”
“I’ll speak to Miss Black about it,” he promised, sounding sorrowful even to his own ears. He cleared his throat and put on a smile. “How about we freshen up and have dinner together?”
He was infinitely thankful when she nodded her head. The more time they spent together, the more she would get used to having him as her father and he could work at changing her mind about leaving.
Chapter Twenty-one
Ben dismounted and looked at the door to his house. For the first time in seventeen years he was happy to be home. Fable was inside, beyond those walls. He’d been away from her all day, and every hour that had passed was like another hourin the dry wilderness. He should be cursing himself for allowing her to traipse across his defenses, smashing them to pieces with the light touch of her slippered feet, but all he could think about was if she ate supper yet?
He smiled recalling what she told him it meant. She was his beloved wife. He practically ran to the doors.
Not to be outdone by his friend, Sudbury used his long legs to reach the doors at the same time. They laughed as they pushed them open.
Ben saw his sister and scanned the halls for the woman he was most anxious to see.
Feeling her gaze on him, he shifted his eyes to his sister. She wore a glum expression. Edith stood behind her, wringing her skirts.
His thoughts brought him back to that day when the news had come that his mother and father had been killed by Jacobites.
“Word arrived that the Jacobites attacked…your mother…your father were slaughtered.” Slaughtered. Slaughtered.
“What is it?” he asked now. His heart pounded for a whole different reason.
”Benjamin,” his sister answered. “Your Miss Ramsey is gone. She is gone.”
Ben sat up in his bed in a cold sweat. He covered his face in his hands recalling his dream. “Please, no. Do not leave me, Fable. I beg you.”
He swung his bare legs over the side of the bed, forcing himself to rise up and see to the new day. Another day without Fable. Would she return today, the thirteenth day? Would she ever be allowed to leave the twenty-first century and return to him?
