A Wife In Time

Are you there? Susannah felt the silent confirmation rather than heard it.

Did you bring us here?

Again the silent confirmation.

But why?

This time Susannah heard the whispery reply in her mind: To help me.

“Help you how?” Susannah asked aloud.

It was as if her spoken words temporarily cut off the silent bond between herself and Elsbeth, if that’s what it was, for there was no longer any reply. And Susannah’s own sixth sense told her that she was temporarily on her own here, aside from an irritated-looking Kane.

“I said I could use some help,” Kane told her.

Was that what she’d heard? Kane asking for her help? Had she just imagined the ghostly presence communicating with her?

“Would you stop going all mistily sentimental on me and help me out, here?” Seeing her hesitation, Kane quickly added, “Do you want to be stuck in the past forever? Women don’t even have the vote yet.”

Sighing, Susannah acknowledged that he did have a good point. Their first priority had to be finding a way home. The idea of helping out a ghost did sound a little farfetched. Not that the concept of jumping a century in the blink of an eye was an everyday occurrence, either. “What do you want me to do?”

Stepping back inside the room, Kane said, “Try pushing on the walls.”

She did so, while asking, “What are we looking for?”

“I don’t know. Anything unusual. A time portal, maybe.”

“Sounds like something out of a science-fiction novel,” she noted with a nervous laugh. This entire situation was too bizarre for words. So much of it felt dreamlike, yet there was a hard-edged reality to it that dispelled any hope she had that she was dreaming.

Between them, they pushed on every square inch of wall space in the relatively small room. Nothing happened. After nearly an hour had passed, Susannah became more and more discouraged. As a last resort, she closed her eyes, clicked her heels together three times and whispered, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”

Upon opening her eyes, the first thing she saw was the derisive expression on Kane’s face. “Stop looking at me that way! It worked for Dorothy,” she said defensively.

“Well, it didn’t work for us,” he noted.

His glance lowered to the low neckline of her dress, which Susannah was disconcerted to discover he appeared to be studying with more than casual interest. Suddenly the words he’d thrown at her in the convention center that afternoon came back to her. A Mata Hari who played bedroom games with younger, married men—wasn’t that what he’d said? Or something to that effect. With that in mind, Susannah didn’t like the way he was eyeing her one bit.

She was tempted to put a hand up to shield her exposed skin from his hot gaze. But that would be admitting that he bothered her, and she wasn’t about to give him that advantage over her. So she threw back her shoulders instead and narrowed her eyes, as if daring him to make a comment. When he did, it was far from what she expected.

“Where did you get that necklace you’re wearing?” he demanded curtly.

Now her hand did fly up, to cover her necklace rather than her skin. “Why do you want to know?” she countered distrustfully.

“Because the woman in the portrait along the stairs is wearing one identical to it.”

“Elsbeth?” Stepping into the hallway and down a few steps, Susannah studied the portrait of Elsbeth Whitaker. Kane had blocked her view when she’d hurried upstairs an hour before. Now she could see the black bunting draped around the portrait. That hadn’t been there when the tour guide had talked about the painting in their own century. Susannah was familiar enough with Victorian tradition to know that such bunting was only used on a portrait to indicate the subject’s death. Her heart fell.

“She’s died already. We’re too late to save her,” she murmured.

“Save her?” Kane repeated. “Listen, I may not know much about time travel, but even I know that you’re not supposed to mess with things like life and death. What if this woman later had children who went on to become mass murderers or something?”

“Then why did she bring us here?”

“Who said she did?”

“I do. I can feel it here.” She pressed her palm against her heart. She’d also gotten confirmation from Elsbeth, but she didn’t think this was the best time to confess she’d communicated with a ghost. For she now felt sure that that’s what she’d done—communicated with Elsbeth. She hadn’t imagined it.

“Is the woman some kind of relative of yours?” Kane demanded.

Susannah shook her head. “I don’t have any relatives in Savannah.”

“How can you be sure?” he argued.

“Because I recently did a family history—a family tree, if you will—for my parents’ anniversary and I traced our ancestry back to the 1700s. Elsbeth Whitaker’s name didn’t show up, I’m sure of it.”

“Then how do you explain the necklace? It’s exactly the same as yours. Were a lot of them made during that time?”

Again, Susannah shook her head. “This one was specially made to order for my great-grandmother.” Looking into the sad eyes of the woman in the portrait, she felt a strong sense of kinship. Her instincts told her that her necklace, the one that so exactly matched the one Elsbeth was wearing, was some kind of tie.

She scrambled to put the pieces together. Had her great-grandmother gotten the necklace from Elsbeth somehow? Perhaps the two women had known each other. Whatever the case might have been, Susannah only knew that she was here for a reason. All she had to do was figure out what that reason was. She didn’t realize she’d spoken her words aloud until Kane replied.

“And how do you plan on doing that?” he demanded.

“By getting more information about Elsbeth Whitaker.”

“How? By asking the people downstairs about her suicide?”

“Of course not. Nothing that crass. That’s more your style than mine.”

“Oh, right,” he retorted. “Like you’re the soul of discretion. I think not.”

“Think whatever you please,” she countered.

He groaned. “God, you’re even starting to sound like this time period.”

“I happen to have edited a book or two on this era, luckily for you.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m certainly counting my blessings about now,” Kane returned sarcastically.

“Just keep quiet and listen. You might learn a thing or two.”

“From you?”

“From the people at the party downstairs. The faster we can figure out what’s going on here, the faster we can get back to our own time period,” she reminded him.

* * *

Having attended more publishing cocktail parties than she cared to, Susannah had the moves down pat—just stand around the edge of the room, with eyes downcast, and tune in to the conversations going on all around. It was her way of surviving the stifling artificiality of the business functions she was required to attend. By nature she was more a romantic dreamer than a go-getting extrovert.