How was she supposed to convince him when she couldn’t think straight? “What time?” Is that what he wanted to know after hearing about his death? “Two thousand and twenty-four.”
He was still on the other side of the gate, and then he laughed. “You’re quite clever—
“Oliver, please listen. No matter how mad it sounds, just listen. Eleanor is going to poison you. It could be tonight!” she cried out as panic filled her. “Please, let me out.”
“Why? Why would she kill me?”
“To get this fortress and your other holdings. You have no heirs and no family members so it was easy to get you to sign everything over to her.”
His lips tightened and his nostrils flared. In the dim light she thought she saw the glisten of tears. Did he believe her? Had he given her everything already?
“Please, don’t leave me in here,” she begged. Then swiped her knuckles over her nose. “I’m going to be so angry with you when I get back. I might not forgive you for this, Lord Harwich.”
“You confuse me, woman,” he confessed, angling his head to perhaps get her from a different view. “You’re obviously mad, and yet I feel your words being emblazoned in me. Instead of hurrying to see my wife, whom I haven’t greeted in eight months, I’m here with you, listening to your mad ramblings. Why is that? What are you doing to me?”
“How am I supposed to answer that?” she demanded in a low voice. “I don’t know why all this is happening, or why I can see your spirit six hundred years from now.”
“Six hundred—” he repeated until she cut him off.
“You’re so hurt in the future, my—Oliver. You’ve been betrayed by your wife and watched her while she pushed you over the wall, pulling your gloved hands off her when you tried to hold on to your life.”
He held up his hand, stopping her from saying anything more. He took a key from his pocket and opened the prison gate to let her out. Before she could leap into his arms, the world around her changed. The dungeon walls fell away. No! No! Not yet. She reached for him and this time, when he touched his fingers to hers, she felt him, warm and secure. “Oliver.”
And then it was over.
Chapter Eight
Maggie’s heart bledas she opened her eyes and found herself sprawled over the battlement wall. She was almost certain she was in the twenty-first century.
She discovered she was right when a handsome apparition appeared kneeling beside her.
“You’ve returned,” he pointed out with a deep sigh and a concerned smile.
“Oliver,” she breathed, gazing at him. “You’re here.” If he was here as a ghost that meant Eleanor still killed him. “He was…you were beginning to listen. I told you about Eleanor and you listened and let me out of the dungeon.”
His expression darkened. “I put you in the dungeon?”
“Yes, but you came to me right away and let me out. Oliver,” she said, rising to her feet, “I have to go back and stop her. I can do it.”
“Magnolia, will you stop for a moment and tell me where you were? I searched everywhere I could go. It seemed as if you vanished.”
“I went back again.”
“Back to what?
“The past, Oliver. When you were alive. You were arriving home on a black horse and with a muscular oaf whom you let push women around.”
He stared at her surprised by her words. “Roland,” he said, remembering. “We were coming home…that was the day of my death. Magnolia, you truly went back. How is this happening?”
“How is any of this happening? How am I seeing and conversing with your spirit? Why not traveling back in time?” She let out a shallow laugh. “It’s all unreal.”
“Magnolia, I should go back with you. Perhaps I’m stuck here because there is still another me wandering around somewhere.”
She shook her head. “Don’t go back, Oliver,” she pleaded. “If you are taken back to that night…seeing yourself like that…”
“I already touched the gauntlet to go search for you. l I even put my hand in it, but nothing happened.”
“Oliver, why did you do that? What if it took you to that night?”
