Page 48

Collecting the mirror is an easy errand, as I suspected. The butler at the McCann residence oversees its careful transfer by no less than four servants to the back seat of Quint’s car. Seeing this mirror packaged and handled with so much caution reminds me of how attached Ben was to the mirror at The Villa.

When we return to Gracewoods late that afternoon, Quint reluctantly abandons me for Allen Home Charity responsibilities with his mother, leaving me alone in the grand entryway with the mirror so he can join Mrs. Allen in the library.

“I’ll hurry her right through everything,” he promises with a wink, and he rushes away. Since yesterday, he seems to want to make sure he misses very little time with me.

I’m leaving. We both know I have to.

Unsure of what else to do, I call up Coles, the gardener and one of the only male staff on hand, to help me free the mirror from the wooden crate that kept it safe during the journey to Gracewoods, and within ten minutes, we have the mirror unpackaged. I thank the gardener and dismiss him, turning to study the gleaming portal that brought me to 1928 and Quint Allen.

I brush my fingers over the surface. A zip of energy connects with me, and I let one finger sink through. Going back to the twenty-first century with Ben means finding answers about my family, about the possibility that one or both of my parents also had the ability to travel on mirrors’ paths to the past. It makes sense. Ben makes sense.

But the warmth that he usually instills in me with his promises disappears. Quint tethers me to this time. At its most logical, my connection to him is a remnant of a friendship in the past that I have allowed to grow, but it feels like more. It feels like a lifetime.

He let me be me, even in the past…

I rub my forehead. Quint hasn’t tried to conform me to what a woman of the twenties should be. Not in the past few days, but not ever in our life. Even though that kind of thought doesn’t make sense.

I draw my fingers from the mirror and take a step back.

“That is quite a fascinating talent.” Quint’s voice echoes in the marble hall from behind me, and I turn to find him striding toward me from the library.

“Does it make you like me?” I tease.

“Not at all. It means you have the power to leave.” He stops too close to me, and my breath halts with a shudder.

“You know I have to.”

He takes my hand, drawing my gaze to him. His eyes hold so much kindness and openness. I can see right through him to the tenderness he feels for me. “You can stay,” he says.

“I don’t belong in 1928.”

He fingers the sleeves of the blouse that has made me fit right in with the ladies at the luncheon, and his gaze sweeps over my hair, smiling in satisfaction. “You certainly look like you do.”

And I do feel at home in these clothes, surprisingly. I’m as pretty and proper a socialite as I was in 1901, but the skirt and blouse combo is more natural—and boy, I could go on and on about the navy-blue Mary Jane pumps I wear to match the color of my dress.

“This is hardly more than a costume,” I excuse anyway.

He shakes his head, disagreeing. “What if I can prove you do belong here?” He laces his fingers through mine, and I grip them back, almost against my will. I need to have this connection with him, like a magnet draws us together. There’s been a thrill to stepping back in time, seeing the past firsthand—and from the moment he winked at me, Quint has added to that thrill. Combined with what might be memories of him, I don’t have much of a chance of withstanding the connection I long for with him. That he offers up and begs me to take.

“How will you do that?” I ask.

“Come with me.”

He leads me to the library and to a shelf on the opposite side of the room from the door. He sits on the floor in front of it, then looks up at me to follow. Smiling to myself at the endearingly boyish action, I sit down, tucking my legs to my side and arranging the knee-length skirt of my dress.

“These are family photo albums,” he explains, pointing to a row on the bottom shelf of leather-bound volumes, each of varying widths. “My family has some dating as far back as the 1850s, although my grandmother has those older ones in England.”

“Incredible…” I murmur, letting my fingers brush the albums. So much family history. I have a few scattered photographs that survived, and of course a digital collection, but most of the old family photos were destroyed in the fire. Digitizing them was a project my mom put off for “when she had the time.”

And then one day all her time was gone.

Quint takes out an album and flips through it before putting it back and picking up another one to its left. After grabbing two more albums in succession and doing no more than flipping through them, he picks one up, inspects the first few pictures, then turns it carefully from page to page.

“It’s been so long since I looked at these. I suppose that’s why I didn’t remember this one at first…” he says softly as he gazes at the photographs. The fondness in his expression makes my heart skitter. “I used to look at it all the time until I was ten or so. I suppose the memory of you had faded.”

“What a charming little boy you must have been to be so devoted at six,” I can’t help but tease.

“You were just as devoted, love.” Quint looks up from the photographs to pin me with a breathtaking grin. “You said you’d marry me, after all.”