West

"Miss Josie!"

"Coming!" Turning away from door down the hallway, I hurried through my wing into the gentlemen's wing, where Philip and John stayed.

Nell was in front of one room and motioned for me to hurry.

I did so, breathless by the time I reached the room that was John's. I entered the antechamber and trailed Nell into the bedroom, where John lay in bed.

He was pale and wore a dressing gown beneath heavy blankets. The room was hot, the fireplace blazing.

He managed a faint smile. "My Josie," he said, holding out a knobby hand.

"What's wrong? Are you ill?" I asked. I went to his bedside and sank down in a chair, taking his warm hand.

"My body. It is weak," John said. "My heart is happier than ever."

"I sent for the doctor," Nell said. "Your father awoke very unwell, Miss Josie."

Shit. My initial thought, that I'd never leave the house and accomplish my mission, was replaced by deep guilt at the idea of begrudging the man smiling at me the way he was.

"Nell, you are to contact my friends and all my neighbors, including the savages," John called. His and Nell's memories were both of the day real-Josie's mother died in this very bed.

"Is it necessary?" I asked, confused. Not John. He was a good man, one I didn't want to see pass away.

Nell said nothing and nodded grimly.

Concerned, I stayed at John's side, listening to his wheezy breathing. The moral dilemma raised its head once more. I didn't really know what to do. It seemed like he deserved the truth about his daughter, but being so weak, I wasn't certain he could take it.

"I am glad I was able to see you again," he said, smiling.

"Don't talk like that, Father," I chided him. "You will be on your tomorrow and the next day … every day," I told him cheerfully.

"I hope so, my daughter. I wish to see you married."

Ugh! How did any self-respecting woman survive this kind of life? "Then you better stay strong and healthy, because it'll be a while."

He chuckled. "So stubborn. Like your mother."

"Nell says I'm stubborn like my father."

"Rightly so," he agreed.

I watched his memories. They shifted to happier times, of the woman he wed thirty years before. His love for her was as strong as his was for me. I wish I'd known her. I wish he'd been my father. They weren't the right thoughts for me to be thinking, not when I knew very well I was sent back in time for an important reason.