‘Don’t joke. You can’t do this.’
‘Why?’ Holding his place in the book with his thumb, he closed it and faced me with an air of intellectual debate. ‘What harm can there be in increasing my knowledge?’
‘A great deal, if that knowledge isn’t something anyone should have in this time,’ was my argument. ‘Anything you do that you weren’t meant to do could change the future, change the way that things turn out.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘Well, it’s common knowledge. Common sense.’ The first rule of time travel, really, I thought – so ingrained in society’s psyche through novels and films that it took on the weight of a fact.
‘But what proof do you have?’ Daniel asked. ‘Has a man ever done this?’
I said, ‘I don’t know, but—’
‘Have learned men studied the matter?’
‘They have theories …’
‘But how are they tested?’ he challenged me. ‘Theories are fine things, but I do confess that my own common sense tells me there is an order to life that cannot be so easily changed by the will of one man.’ He spread his hands to indicate the study. ‘All of this, this life that I have lived, it has already passed and faded from the memories of the people of your own time. It is rather like that poem you did speak of, with the moving finger writing words that cannot be erased. My page is written,’ he said, ‘and not even I can change a line of it.’
I wasn’t sure which one of us was right. I said, ‘But I’m not meant to be here. I might change things.’
Daniel looked at me a moment, then he set his book aside and stood and closed the space between us with his slow deliberate steps. ‘How do you know,’ he asked, ‘that here is not exactly where you’re meant to be?’
I didn’t have an answer for him, partly because my mind, as always, had lost all its power to form coherent thoughts with him so near. And partly because I wanted so badly for him to be right, even though we both knew that the thing was impossible. I shook my head and repeated those words: ‘It’s impossible.’
‘Why is it?’ His eyes gave no quarter. ‘Where is your proof?’
I had no hope of winning the argument, not with him standing there looking at me like that, but I still tried. ‘Where is yours?’
Daniel took my hand and held it to his heart so I could feel its beating. ‘Here,’ he told me quietly. His other hand came up to hold my face and tilt it up while his began a slow descent. ‘And here,’ he murmured, with his mouth against my own.
It was a thorough and persuasive kiss that made my senses spin until I couldn’t think of any reason not to be convinced.
When he drew back, the look he slanted down at me was so intense it stopped my breath. Intense, yet somehow questioning. He held my face still warm within his hand and asked me in a slightly roughened voice, ‘Would you desire more proof than that?’
I knew what he was asking, then. Knew, too, that I’d be complicating things beyond repair if I said yes. Because if I already found it difficult to leave him as things were, that would be nothing to the wrenching loss I’d feel when I was forced to leave him after this.
Looking up, I gave a nod and watched the question in his eyes give way to warmth. And then he lifted me, the trailing gown and all, and he was kissing me again and we were moving from the study down the corridor towards the corner bedchamber.
The door swung open with a crash and Daniel kicked it closed again behind us, and I heard the scraping of the key turned in the lock, and we were on the bed together and to tell the truth, I wasn’t much inclined to notice anything besides that for a while.
* * *
Time hung suspended. And for once, I had no question of my place in it. I was exactly where I was supposed to be, where I belonged, with Daniel Butler lying in the bed beside me. I could hear his even breathing, feel his warmth, the shifting of his weight against the mattress as he turned. His face in sleep was not so hardened as I’d seen it look. The lines were there, but smoother, and the slanting shadows of his lashes crossed his tanned skin peacefully.
Then as I watched his face, his eyes came slowly open and he saw me too, and smiled.
I closed my own eyes tight to hold the moment. Until I remembered how I had come into the past from the present this last time, and quickly I opened my eyes again.
He was still there.
Misreading my relief, he asked me, ‘Are you back to doubting whether I am real?’
His tone was dry, and so I kept my answer light. ‘After what just happened, yes, I might be.’
‘I shall choose to view that as a compliment.’ The smile deepened briefly. ‘Or did you intend the opposite?’
My gaze still held by his, I gave my head the slightest shake against the softness of the pillow and replied, ‘It was a compliment.’
I watched the green eyes darken in that now familiar way, as Daniel bridged the space between us with a kiss that somehow managed the impossible and left me with an even stronger sense of longing than I’d had before.
He drew back, his expression turning serious, and let his head fall to the pillow close beside my own, his one hand sliding from my face into my hair where he absently wound a long strand round his finger as though he were making a curl. ‘I have known many women, Eva, but for all that, I have only loved but twice. I cannot say that I am well accomplished in the way of it, nor that I was the very best of husbands. I do hold the things I love too closely, sometimes, and I can be contrary for nothing but the sake of it, and I know well that I am not the easiest of men to make a life with.’