The doctor clucked as he leaned over Eliza, checking her pulse. “I don’t understand it. Her heart is strong, her breathing has returned to normal. I see no reason for her not to have awoken.” He held a hand to her forehead, his mouth turning down. “It’s possible her brain sustained hidden damage from either the branch or the fall and cannot recover.”
At the expletives Deveric uttered, the doctor cleared his throat and backed away from the bedside. He bent down for his bag.
“Shall I return in the morning?” he asked, the bobbing of his Adam’s apple indicating his nervousness.
Don’t bother, Deveric nearly snapped, but he checked himself and nodded. He turned to Eliza, ignoring the doctor.
“If I might, Your Grace,” the doctor said, hesitation lacing his voice. “You need rest, too. Either she will recover, or she won’t; it won’t do you any good to take ill in trying to keep her from the grave.”
Dev’s eyes swung back to the doctor, piercing him with a murderous glare. “She will not die,” he insisted, before commanding the doctor to leave.
As Deveric settled himself in by Eliza’s side, Amara knocked at the door.
“He’s right, you know,” she said as she entered, obviously having overheard the doctor’s words.
Deveric snarled. “She will not die. I let Mirabelle die. I let my daughter die. By God, Eliza Will. Not. Die.”
His sister was quiet. She walked to him, crouching down before him. She took both of his cheeks in her hands, forcing him to look at her. “You didn’t kill Mirabelle, Dev. It’s not your fault she died.”
Deveric’s whole body stiffened at his sister’s words. Emerlin and Arth had argued the same thing. “Yes, it is,” he bit out. “If I hadn’t touched her, hadn’t forced her.”
Amara’s eyes widened. “You actually believe that?” She shook her head. “You would never force yourself on a woman, brother. It’s not who you are.”
Deveric stared at the ground. “She didn’t enjoy it,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have.”
“That is different. Some women are like that. But I don’t think most. Mirabelle was fragile, but that was not your fault. She might have been better suited for a nunnery; she was not cut out for this world.” Amara smoothed the hair back from his forehead. “You have to let it go.”
His heart pounded. “I can’t let her go,” he admitted, his eyes flashing to Eliza.
“Not Eliza,” Amara said. “This guilt that has consumed you, trapped you. You couldn’t save Mirabelle. Nobody could. And you couldn’t save Louisa. None of it was your fault.”
His sister’s words washed over him. He wanted so badly to believe them. Truth be told, Amara had always been his favorite, though of course, he loved all of his sisters. But Amara shared his volatile temperament.
At times, he’d been jealous she could display her emotions more openly than he could. Or so he’d thought; after her disgrace, he’d realized how much greater the restrictions were on women than men. Women who followed their hearts often got burned. As his sister had.
How he wished Evers hadn’t fled, hadn’t denied Dev the satisfaction of avenging Amara. Not that it would have done any good; he might have been able to redeem the family’s honor, but his sister’s was gone forever.
He rubbed his eyes with his fingers. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t lose her, Am.”
Amara leaned in and folded her arms around him as they both looked at Eliza. “You won’t.”
Eliza’s head hurt. She was so tired of her head hurting.
“Make it stop,” she whimpered. “It’s like someone is beating a bass drum in there, Cat.”
A soothing voice coaxed her into drinking some tepid water. “Can’t I have ice?” she protested. “Or a Coke?” The scratchiness in her own voice irritated her. Why wouldn’t her eyes open? “What happened?”
“You fell,” the kind voice said. “But you’re going to be all right. You’re going to recover and be all right.”
The voice sounded familiar, but Eliza couldn’t quite place it. It wasn’t Cat. Or Jill. Shannon? No.
She blinked as her eyelids opened, her eyes straining to focus. “I’m hungry,” she said to the figure standing at her side. “Can I have some pizza?”
At first, Eliza didn’t recognize the woman standing near her. The woman’s odd costume made her want to giggle, but her face was gentle. Familiar. Amara, her mind whispered. Deveric’s sister.
At the thought of Deveric, Eliza’s eyes whipped wide open. All was suddenly clear again. “I’m still here?” she exclaimed, grabbing at Amara’s hand.
“Yes. Where else would you be?” Amara held the cup to Eliza’s lips again.
“I, um. I thought maybe I was home,” Eliza said before taking a sip.
“In Charlottesville? With your cat and your Facebook and your phone? Whatever those are.” Amara’s eyebrow rose, a smile tickling at the corners of her mouth. “I am glad you are awake. We have been quite worried. I need to go alert my brother. Rest now. Betsy will look after you.”
Eliza turned her head to the maid, acknowledging her with a weak smile before drifting off to sleep again.
“She’s awake?” Deveric exclaimed, leaping from his bed. He’d been resting for an hour, and that only at Amara’s insistence she would remain by Eliza’s side. “Why didn’t you get me?”
“I just did, brother.”
He made to run out the door, but Amara grabbed at his elbow. “She has likely fallen back asleep, but I promise you, she was awake. She spoke.”
“She did?”
“Yes.” Amara’s eyebrows popped up and her lips pursed. “I think you have some explaining to do.”
Dev’s head whipped back around.
“But first, let us have something to eat. You need nourishment.”
Reluctantly, he allowed his sister to lead him to the breakfast room, glad to see when they arrived that he and Amara were alone.
“No one else is up; it is only six in the morning.” She buttered a slice of toast. “Now, I want to know the truth. Who is this Eliza James?”
He froze. “What do you mean?”
“It’s clear she’s not who you’ve said she is. Oh, not about the cousin part.” Amara waved her hand dismissively. “I don’t care about that. But it’s something more than that, isn’t it?”
Deveric said nothing.
“She talks about things of which I’ve never heard. Pizza? Some fellow named McDonald, and of something she calls a computer. She claims she can send an instant post through it to someone across the world.”
“She said all of that to you?” His eyebrows rose.
“Not knowingly. At first, I dismissed it as delirious ravings. But she kept talking about you being there and knowing it was the year 2012, that you’d seen it with your own eyes. It made me think perhaps there was something deeper, something stranger, going on. Given your reaction, I’m right.” She leaned forward on her elbows. “Would you care to explain?”
Deveric looked around the room.
“There are no servants,” Amara assured him. “I sent them all to the kitchen.”
He pulled at his rumpled neckcloth. “Yes.”
“Yes? That’s it? What does that mean?”
“Yes,” he repeated. “There’s something more going on. Eliza ... Eliza claims to be from the year 2012.”
Amara stared at him with rounded eyes.
“She says her friend Cat has a magical manuscript which lets Cat write stories that come true. She insists Cat wrote a story that let Eliza travel through time to be here.”
At that, Amara burst into loud guffaws. “She said this all before she struck her head? Good Lord, the woman is mad! She needs to be committed to Bedlam.” She took another bite of her toast, her eyes twinkling with amusement. When Deveric remained silent, she swallowed, hard. “You’re not serious, Deveric? You’re teasing. You must be teasing.”
He shook his head. “No, she truly said those things. And I believe her.”
“What? That’s preposterous!”
“I believe her. Because I was there, Amara. In 2012. I saw a number of the things of which she spoke. And the phone she mentioned? She has it. Here. She showed it to me; could show it to you. There are pictures on it, photo-graphs, they’re called, of things the likes of which you could never imagine. I, too, fought long against it, but there’s no other explanation unless the both of us belong in a sanitarium.”
Amara sat in stunned silence. At length, Deveric told her of the New Year’s Eve ball, how he had been at Clarehaven and then suddenly not, of seeing the black box that played music, of the lights flashing through the window at blinding speed. He told her of the kiss, and how he had woken to find himself on the library settee, Eliza in his arms.
When he had finished, neither one of them said a word for quite some time.
When Amara did speak, her only words were, “But ... why you?”
Deveric tapped his fingers together. “I had suspicions but did not figure that piece out for a long time. Not until Eliza’s accident, until how I nearly died, seeing her there, lifeless, on the ground. Now I see, now I believe, the part Eliza left out was that Cat wrote a story in which Eliza came here to find me. That’s why I went forward to her, to bring her back here. It was so she could fall in love with me, and me with her. We needed each other for the story to work.”
“I don’t see how ...” Amara finally whispered.
“I don’t, either. But it is.”
The door swished open and Becca and her mother entered the room.
“Promise me,” Deveric whispered, his voice urgent, “that you won’t reveal this. To anyone.”
“Your secrets are safe with me. Always.”