Chapter Fourteen
Fable woke alone in her bed, where Ben had carried her last night when she was just too exhausted to walk another step.
She’d wanted him to stay with her but he told her their bodies needed rest, and if he stayed there wouldn’t be any rest to be had.
Did she dream that the austere duke, so still and stoic at court, was truly a pot of boiling passions spilled out for her? She shifted under her blanket and felt the sting of reality between her legs.
Her lips felt puffy from all his kisses.
Oh, but she didn’t mind.
She loved him.
She smiled.
He wanted to defy everything and marry her.
Captain Benjamin West, His Grace the Duke of Colchester was in love with her.
She let out a squeal of joy and disbelief.
She was still smiling in bed when Edith pushed open the door and stepped inside.
“Oh, my lady, it’s good to see you smiling again.”
Fable sat up and stretched.
“I was just thinking of His Grace.”
She leaned forward, closer to the servant and still wearing her gleeful smile, spoke in a low voice.
“Have you seen him this morning?”
The older woman nodded and took her hand.
“He rode to Harwich with the earl of Sudbury earlier for a meeting of high ranking noblemen or some such thing.
It’s been planned for a month and His Grace couldn’t get out of going.
He grumbled about it but he promised to return and eat with you.”
Fable smiled and sighed then dropped back upon her pillow and closed her eyes.
If he wasn’t here then she’d dream of him all day.
Edith left her alone after she drew the curtains back and filled the room with sunlight.
Fable didn’t get a chance to think about her beloved before there came a rapping on the door.
“Come in,”
she called out from the bed.
When no one entered, she slipped out of bed and padded to the door.
She opened it.
No one was there.
She was about to close the door when she spotted an envelope on the floor.
She bent to take it and looked up and down the hall.
Closing the door again, she went back to her bed and sat in it, then opened the envelope.
Was it a love letter from Ben? No, he knew she couldn’t read, and besides he didn’t seem the type to write love letters.
The handwriting was light and pretty and the paper even smelled nice.
But she had no idea what it said.
Someone knocked at the door again.
Before Fable could call out though, the door opened and Ben’s sister, the villainess of her adventure, entered the front room, and then the bedroom.
“Miss Ramsey,”
she said standing at the foot of the bed, “if you can rouse yourself, I would like a word with you.”
Fable didn’t know why Lady Prudence’s snappish retorts made her want to giggle.
She kept her chin to her chest to hide the smile threatening to appear and got out of bed.
“Um, since you’re here, did you write this?”
Fable held up the note.
“What is it?”
Lady Prudence took it from her.
“Someone left it by my door a few minutes ago.
If you didn’t write it, can you read it to me?”
Lady Prudence stared at her for a moment as it dawned on her why Fable couldn’t read it herself.
She looked a bit ill, then opened the envelope.
“Dear Miss Ramsey,
We are writing to request your presence at our afternoon tea.
We believe His Grace the duke will likely take you as his wife.
Being so influential, we would, of course, covet your friendship.
If you would accept our invitation, we will be completely open and honest with you, as we are now.
The tea will be held at the house of Lady Witham at two.
Just tell any one of the carriagemen outside Colchester House where you want to go.
He will take you.
You will no doubt notice that Lady Prudence will not be in attendance.”
At this, Ben’s sister paused and clenched her jaw before continuing.
“That is because we decided not to invite her.
We would like to get to know you without her hateful prejudice against you overshadowing our time together.
It is best not to tell her about this.
She hates you.
But, of course, you understand why.
Still, we hold nothing against you and would like to take you into our fold.
We do hope to see you,
The Ladies Tea Club.”
Lady Prudence crumpled the note into a ball and threw it toward the fire.
“Do you believe a word of that?”
she sneered.
“They want to take you into their fold? It’s more like they want to laugh at you.
I know them, and their fold is poison.
Don’t meet them.
They mean you nothing but harm.”
“And yet,”
Fable said softly as she went to retrieve a robe one of the servants had given her, “you would push for your brother to be bound until he dies to one of them.”
Lady Prudence didn’t answer with words, but her face grew deep red.
She turned and went to sit in the front room.
Fable followed her.
“My brother is quite taken with you.
In fact, he’s decided to take you as his wife.”
Fable didn’t really know what she should say.
She knew how to try to put people at ease.
It was an important trait to learn on the streets, where the same laws didn’t apply and fights broke out over nothing.
“I can see why he’s fond of you.
You’re an enchanting little being when more closely observed.”
Fable blinked.
Did the villainess say she understood why her brother was taken with her? Was she calling her enchanting?
“But Miss Ramsey, my father’s wish must be fulfilled.
Benjamin loved him as much as I did.
He has lived almost his entire life avenging him and our mother.
Don’t think for one moment that not granting his father’s one wish won’t eat away at Benjamin.”
“Are…are you telling me to stop seeing him?”
“It’s not even that you come from an average family.
You have nothing! Absolutely.
Nothing.
You are not the best for my brother.
I think when your enchantment wears off, he’ll resent you for taking him from fulfilling our father’s last wish.”
Fable’s eyes filled with tears at each word that felt like a hammer to her bones.
She stepped back, into a chair but she didn’t let herself fall back or sit.
Was his sister right? Would Ben grow to resent or even hate Fable because of his father? It was true, she had nothing, at least nothing his sister or apparently their father would see of value in her.
She swiped a tear from her eyes and straightened her spine.
“I love him, my lady.
I’ve never loved anyone before-not even my mother.
I won’t give him up. I can’t. Please, don’t ask it of me.”
Lady Prudence’s eyes glistened with tears, but her lips grew tight against her teeth.
“You’re selfish.”
Fable didn’t care if she was selfish.
“I’m sorry.”
Lady Prudence pivoted on her heel and left, slamming the door shut on her way out.
Fable didn’t return to bed but dressed herself and then left her rooms.
She didn’t believe the women who stuck their noses up at her really wanted to get to know her.
She imagined them laughing at her, as Lady Prudence said.She remembered other, “normal”
kids laughing at her from their schoolyards as she and her mother passed them with their shopping cart of possessions.
It had stopped bothering her years ago–and she'd never been to an English tea before.
It seemed like an afternoon of pretend fun.
So, why not?
She went directly to the ornate wooden front doors of Colchester House, pulled one open and stepped outside.
Thanks to the villainess, Fable needed something to help her forget the lady’s words.
She wasn’t best for Ben.
He was merely enchanted, and when that wore off he would resent her.
She closed her eyes to stop her tears.
That was another thing she hated since being here.
She never cried before.
Well, to be honest, she hadn’t cried since she was eight and her mother tried to sell her for a night of food and a bed. Fable had had no intention of paying her mother’s bill with her body so when the thug tried to put his hands on her, she stabbed him twice with a knife she’d swiped from her mother’s belongings. She’d run away, her hands covered in his blood. She hid in a dark alley and cried until her heart dried out and there was never another tear to shed until now. Ben stirred her heart and made her cry.
She walked out into the courtyard and looked toward a carriage waiting to drive anyone from the house anywhere they wanted to go.
She went to it and climbed inside.
“The house of Lady Witham, please,”
she called up to the driver.
She closed her eyes and was immediately soaked in memories of his face, a face that had become more expressive over the last few days.
Nowadays he smiled at her with tenderness she hadn’t seen him offer anyone else.
His gaze warmed on her like coals heated by an inner blaze.
Images of his puckered lips and dark, dipped brow swept through her.
Was this her punishment for possibly murdering that man when she was eight? To fall in love with a duke and take him from the power and safety of the arms of the king’s niece? Yes, The Ladies Club was right, she did understand why Ben’s sister hated her.
Lady Prudence called her selfish, and she was, she admitted to herself while the carriage took the path north.
It seemed more remote, Fable noted, unlatching the window and peering out. They rode over brush and bramble for about twenty minutes, in Fable’s estimation, and finally the carriage stopped. She heard the driver leave his perch and jump down, feet on the ground. What was going on?
The door opened and without haste, the driver grabbed her by the collar and pulled her out of the carriage.
She fought him with everything she knew and every ounce of strength she had, kicking, elbowing, stomping into his shin, head-butting him, splitting his flesh and sending her reeling.
Despite her best efforts, he dragged her away and pulled something out of his pocket.
Fable heard a man shouting her name.
Ben! But even as she opened her mouth to scream for him, whatever her captor had pulled from his pocket began to glow with blue light.
“No!”
she begged, but it was already too late.
The earth shook, the air waxed and waned.
“No no no no.
She struggled one last time against her captor’s tight hold and saw Ben thundering toward her on his horse– and then the glare of street lights almost blinded her.
“Nooooo! Oh, please Lord, no!”
She couldn’t believe it.
She couldn’t be back.
Please, don’t let her be back.
She imagined herself wailing her mournful disbelief until they found her dead on the street somewhere.
She turned her tearful gaze on the grimy scum hauling her along.
Her heart raced.
She hoped it would beat until the moment she killed this man.
After that, she didn’t want to live without Ben.
She didn’t have to open her eyes to know where she was.
When she was.
In a place in time where Ben no longer existed. Just like that. No! She wanted to scream, pull her hair from her head and fall to her knees. Nooooo! She couldn’t leave Ben. She opened her eyes and glared at the man holding her by her wrist, the time-traveler who took Ben away from her. “What did you do?”
she screamed at him.
“Why did you take me and bring me back here?”
“Calm yourself, woman,”
his throaty voice reverberated through her.
“If you say that again, after what you’ve done, I will calmly cut your throat with your own knife first chance I get.”
He stopped pulling her and turned to face her with a surprised look on his face.
“You are a curious little hellcat.”
She didn’t wait for him to take his next breath but kneed him in the groin.
He went down, but didn’t let her go.
She lifted her foot to kick him in the face but he grabbed it and yanked her the rest of the way down.
She landed on her backside.
Pain shot up her spine and momentarily blinded her, but the instant it ebbed, she scrambled to get back on her feet.
“I thought you would be grateful to me for bringing you back to your home,”
he huffed, shackling her ankle in his steel fingers.
She looked around quickly.
Were there no people on the street in New York City? It was night.
What time? The street looked familiar.
She didn’t want anything to look familiar.
“My home is back there,”
she cried out, pointing her thumb over her shoulder.
She tried to kick him in the teeth with her free foot, and missed.
He glared at her and sprang to his feet, as agile as any twenty year old.
He yanked her up with him and dragged her into the nearest alley.
The alley where she had been trying to sleep the night she first ran into this thorn in her side.
She couldn’t help the well of tears that overtook her.
This was what she’d feared– being taken from Ben in an instant and being brought back here to the loneliness, the darkness, the constant caution every second of her life. Never being safe. She looked around through her tears. They were on 46th and 9th. “Send me back!”
she begged the time-traveler.
“What do you even want with me? Wait.”
She wrinkled her brow.
“How did you get the pocket watch?”
He stared at her and chewed the inside of his cheek.
“Very well, I’ll answer your questions.
I cannot send you back until I find my wife.
I don’t want anything from you.
Just do as I say and help me.
Lastly, the watch will keep returning to me as long as Dorothea and I are separated.”
What? You mean she didn’t have to hide it and run all the way to Colchester to keep the watch safe from him? She glared at him, but then her expression darkened.
“What do you mean you can’t send me back until you find your wife? I have nothing to do with her.
Do you think I can find her because I come from here? You’re nuts! Nuts! Send me back this instant!”
“You are part of this now,”
he told her, ignoring her panicked screech and pulling her forward.
“Part of what? Where are you bringing me? Take me back, Mister. Please.”
“We traveled together across time to the past,”
he explained calmly while she struggled against his vise-like hold.
“Our DNA was imprinted as one.
I can no longer get to this time without you, and you can no longer return to that time without me.”
She stared at him while he tugged her along.
It couldn’t be true.
Oh, she was going to throw up. “Look,”
she managed, “like I said, you’re a nutjob.
I’m going to the cops first chance I get.
I’ll tell them you kidnapped me and–
He finally stopped and turned to look straight at her.
“Do you not understand? You will never get back without me.”
She stopped speaking and looked around.
She would never get back…please God no! She didn’t want to be here without Ben.
Tears welled up in her eyes and she dragged her feet.
Was what this man saying true? She didn’t care.
She felt as if she were dying, minute by minute fading into nothingness.
Just as she was before…before him.
She wanted to stop the traveler and beg him until her throat was raw and his ears burned to please, please send her back. She would die here.
“Mister, please,”
she sobbed but he said nothing and he didn’t slow his steps.
He pulled her along toward the east side, claiming that he had a dream telling him his Dorethea was there.
Fable didn’t question him.
Stranger things had happened.
She didn’t care how she looked in her eighteenth century dress.
New Yorkers weren’t concerned with such trivial things anyway.
New Yorkers.
She was back.
Her heart would never stopped breaking.
She should have known life with Ben was too good to be true.
She cried most of the day.
When her first night with the gruff time-traveler came, he followed her over a wall and into Central Park where some homeless people slept under a small bridge, and pointed to a clear spot on the ground.
“I think it’s better if we sleep apart from others,”
the gray haired traveler suggested.
“Why?”
she asked him, sniffling.
It was a wonder to her how she had a drop of moisture left in her body.
”Because then one of us will not have to take watch while the other sleeps.”
He meant him and her in that order.
She thought about it and rubbed her eyes dry.
She’d like to rob him of his sleep, but it would just slow them up.
“Look, Mister,”
she said, glaring at him.
“I don’t know you.
You could be trying to lure me away from humanity so you can what, rape me? I’ll tell you right now, I’ll fight you tooth and nail.
Do you understand?”
He smirked and then chuckled, and nodded.
“You are a hellcat indeed.
I’m surprised you found a place back there.
As for me,I don’t want to rape you.
I want to go home, just as you do.
I have searched and waited seventeen years and finally I have found the right century.
Nothing will stop me, Miss. Do you understand?”
She remembered the blood on his sword and swallowed hard and nodded.
But after an instant, she thought of life without Ben.
“I don’t care what you do.
I’m going to sleep.
Goodnight.”
She heard him grumbling while he sat and then she stopped thinking of her captor and thought about the best person in her life.
What if she never got back to him? What if she had to wait seventeen years to see Ben again? She couldn’t do it.
Finally, she opened her eyes to see the Georgian-looking traveler sitting with his back against the wall and his legs stretched out before him.
His eyes were opened.
“You can go to sleep, Mister.
It’s eluding me.
I’m wide awake.”
She sat up and pulled her blanket around her shoulders.
When he didn’t move or respond, Fable figured he must be asleep.
She’d heard that some people slept with their eyes open.
She should kick dirt in his face for snatching her and bringing her back here, but she felt sorry for him.
When he spoke suddenly, she startled almost out of her skin.
“I’m not the one who needs a bodyguard, Miss.”
He was kind of right.
She would get attacked before he would.
“We all need a bodyguard in this world.
Take a rest and tonight I’ll keep watch.”
He dipped his brow at her and was quiet for a moment or two.
“What can you do?”
“I can wake you up.”
She didn’t mean to make him laugh and she wanted him to know it, so she huffed at him.
“Were you a servant?”
“What?”
She set her wide eyes on him.
Who was he? How did he know where she’d been? Had he asked around about her? Was he in cahoots with the women of The Ladies Club? How else would he have known that she would be needing a carriage when she did?
“In Colchester House, were you a servant?”
Fable shook her head.
She felt a well rising to her throat making it difficult to speak.
“I was something else.”
“Oh? What?”
“I was his beloved.”
The traveler studied her for a moment then said in a low whisper.
“Who’s beloved?”
“Ben’s.
Benjamin West, His Grace the Duke of Colchester.”
Her unwanted companion was silent after that.
He said little more until morning while she rambled on tearfully about Ben’s attributes.
“He is nearly unbeatable at chess.
I say nearly because he lost to me a few times.”
Yes, she was proud of it.
It compelled her to stiffen her lower lip.
“It proved all my years of practice with Old Hank the Shark were not in vain.”
The traveler stared at her and seemed to be at a loss for words.
He did manage to repeat Old Hank’s name.
“He’s very fair and patient with his sister,”
Fable went on, forgetting again, everything but Ben.
“Old Hank?”
“No. Ben,”
she cleared up.
“Lady Prudence is Ben’s sister.
She apparently hates me because I’m a ‘street urchin.’ But you know what? I don’t care.
I’ve been hated before.
I can withstand it all with him by my side.”
“And he returns your sentiments?”
She nodded and then turned away when her eyes filled with tears again.
She wept silently–though the time traveler would argue that her whimpers and sniffles kept him up until morning.
When the sun rose, he pulled her away from the sleeping area and followed her to a coffee-shop that was close by.
She eyed him.
“I don’t suppose you have any money.”
When he shook his head, she shrugged, asked him to step back, and held up her finger.
It didn’t take her long to make enough money for breakfast.
“You’re a beggar,”
the traveler said with traces of judgment in his tone.
“Yes,”
she told him, though she had stopped being one for a little while.
“If it means not starving to death, I’ll beg.”
“You must learn how to hunt.”
“There are no hunting grounds in the city.
If you hunt in the parks, you go to jail.”
They entered the coffee shop and Fable sat at the counter while he washed up in the restroom.
She wasn’t hungry even though they hadn’t eaten dinner last night, but she knew he must be.
She was right.
He ordered a three egg vegetable omelet with bacon and homefries.
They were both served coffee.
“So, what’s the plan?”
she asked him while he ate.
“Where are we going? And tell me again why I had to be with you? Why did you take me away from…?”
His fork paused on the way to his mouth.
When he saw her tears hovering over the rims of her eyes, he sighed.
“Yes, well my tears are your fault,”
she huffed and wiped her eyes.
“All these tears are because I took you from him?”
She nodded and blew her nose into the thick paper napkin near his plate.
He remained silent while he studied her.
Then, “I don’t know yet where she is.
My dreams were busy in 1718 with where to find you. ”
“Your dreams?”
she asked, ready to abandon this nutjob.
But he had the pocket watch.
And she didn’t know how to use it.
What if she zapped herself to when she was a baby.
She’d have to live her life over again.Oh, no.
“Yes, my dreams give me direction,”
he informed her, interrupting her thoughts.
“That’s how you knew where to find me.”
“Correct.
Now, I just have to wait until I dream.”
She remembered the previous night.
“Mister, you need to sleep in order to dream.”
He nodded.
“It’s difficult to sleep in different places every night.”
“I rarely slept in the same place.”
“Where did you rest your young head?”
he asked, and continued eating.
“Anywhere I could.
I was trying to sleep in that alley the night you first came here.”
He looked at her and put down his fork.
“You have no home here?”
“No.”
“I see.”
Fable narrowed her eyes on him.
“It sounds as if you’re judging me by what I have, not who I am.
Just like Ben’s sister.”
He didn’t deny it but kept eating.
It angered her.
“What business is it of yours if I was homeless or not?”
He mouthed the word was, and stopped eating again.
“You plan on living at Colchester House.”
When she nodded he looked away.
“Snob,”
she murmured with distaste.
“Pardon me?”
She decided to no longer speak to him about her life.
“Why did you need me to come back?”
she asked instead.
“It’s the rule of the watch.”
“What rule of the watch?”
He removed the pocket watch from inside his coat and held it up to her.
When she shook her head, unable to read the inscription, he read it aloud.
“Go forward alone or go back together.”
“I traveled to this century with her the first time but I didn’t know she was here.It took me four days to find her, after I began to have my dreams.
But when I tried to return us home and wound the crown, the watch began to glow.
It took me, alone, to the fifteenth century, the eleventh, eighth, eighteenth, and so on, leaving my wife here.
It took me seventeen years to figure out how the watch works.”
She shivered inside at the thought.
A wave of pity washed over her.
Imagine trying to find Ben for seventeen years? Would she remain as steadfast and devoted to Ben? Yes.
She didn’t hesitate.
“Where did the watch come from?”
she asked.
“My wife found it in the garden.
We think it was dug up when we had the roses planted.
It shone from within without flaw, as if it had been cut from a single sapphire.
When she brought it to me, it wasn’t working.
We believed it was broken.
I tried to wind it and took hold of the crown.
I began to turn it clockwise. The air blurred. I heard Dorothea call out to me and rush forward, and as I looked upon my wife, she faded like an apparition before my eyes. An instant later I was here in 2024, alone. Dorothea had traveled back two days before me—which proves how dangerous the watch is if one tries to use it and doesn’t know what they’re doing. As I said, I found her and then lost her again. I ended up at the mercy of the watch for almost seventeen years, until I began having dreams that Dorothea was still in this time, and also how to return here.”
Fable still didn’t like him for taking her from Ben but she wanted to help him.
“That had to be very difficult for you.”
“It continues.”
“We’ll find her,”
she vowed.
He gave her the hint of a smile.
“I’d be in your debt.”
She finished her coffee and pushed the cup away.
“Tell me, have you killed people with your sword?”
“Of course.
I served in the Royal Army.
I’ve killed many.”
“Oh,”
Her eyes opened wider.
“Ben was…is a captain in the army.
He saved the king three times!”
“Yes, you mentioned that among his many attributes.
His father must be very proud–”
“His father was killed by Jacobites when he was a boy.”
“I see.”
He picked up his cup.
“How has he fared these many years?”
“Not well,”
she let him know.
“He has a lot of anger and not much happiness in him.”
His handsome face appeared in her mind.
He was smiling at her.
She remembered what her friend, Edith had told her.
But he’s changed since you arrived.
He seems less…angry.
We all notice it, Miss.
“Though I think,”
she said in a soft, quiet voice and tears sparkling in her eyes, “he has cheered up some.”
“Because of you?”
he asked just as quietly.
“That’s what I’m told.”
She wiped her eyes and slapped her hands on her thighs.
“Let’s go find your wife so I can go back to him and make him happy.”
He nodded, then waited while she paid, and followed her out.
“Where are we going anyway?”
“Is there such a place called 96th and Madison?”
he asked as innocently as a lamb.
“Yes.
There’s a great diner there.
How do you know it?”
“I dreamed of it.”
Fable wondered what kind of sixth sense he possessed that he could dream such things.
And was it a coincidence that he dreamed of the area where her angel, Bernadette worked?
She looked at him while they walked.
Something about his profile and strong, straight nose reminded her of Ben.
Is that why she was helping him? She had to believe he was telling the truth and the sooner he found his wife, the sooner Fable could return to Ben.
“Wait,”
she said, stopping.
“You can’t meet the woman you love and haven’t seen in seventeen years looking like that .”
He lifted a hesitant hand to his hair.
“Let’s just get you fixed up a little. Look,”
she pointed across the street, “there’s a barbershop.
I also need some new clothes.
There are cheap places close-by.
It won't take me long to find something.”
It took her ten minutes to make twenty-seven dollars.
He needed a shave as well as a haircut, so she panhandled for another quarter of an hour asking people politely if they could spare some change and made another thirty.
“Now, come on, let’s make you presentable.”
The barber had to stop four times when he tried to turn on the electric razor to shave the traveler’s nape, and the warrior nearly jumped out of his seat.
Fable almost couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw the traveler cleaned and pruned.
His hair was closely cropped in back and a bit longer in front.
Instead of giving him a clean shave, the barber trimmed his mustache and beard and made him look like a nobleman.
When she saw him, Fable couldn’t help but smile at his awkward discomfort at her appraisal.
“Wow! That’s a huge difference.”
“I hope she remembers me,”
he said quietly.
“Of course she will.”
She meant to encourage him–though she owed him nothing and if he tried to double-cross her and leave before he returned her, she’d kill him.
When he tilted his head to look at her from a certain angle, she stopped breathing for an instant.
Without all the fur, he looked very much like…Ben.
“Come,”
he said, pulling her along again, “Let’s get you new clothes and find my wife.”
She nodded and followed him out then hurried to a nearby thrift store.
Thankfully, there was a dressing room that was more of a curtained closet.
She tried on three pairs of jeans with shirts in different colors to go with them and had to step out from behind the curtains to look at herself in the mirror.
While she took a moment to think about it, the traveler cleared his throat.
She looked at him through the mirror.
He stood tall beside a rack of clothes appraising her.
“You look most appealing in the second showing–”
Showing? Fable had the urge to laugh and blush.
– “though I do not know why I should tell you.”
She wasn’t sure why he would withhold a compliment from her and shrugged as she disappeared behind the curtain again. “Mister?”
she called out, pricked by his cryptic response.
“Why shouldn’t you tell me?”
“You wish to appear appealing to the man you care for–even though you must know that a beggar does not belong with a man of his status.
Therefore I should not aid you in your quest.”
Fable’s blood fired through her, scalding her temper.
What? She was the one helping him! Why, that–
“However,”
he continued, “I would have you know that if we were in my time I would make certain you had something fine to wear.”
She popped her head through the slit in the curtain and stared at him.
Should she thank him? Smile? She thought she saw him smile as she closed the curtain again.
Hmm, maybe the wicked time traveler wasn’t so wicked.
“How do you know you can trust a dream?”
Fable asked him after she paid for the clothes.
She bought the first outfit.
It was the cheapest.
“Because I don’t know what these streets are called, but they are in my thoughts.
They are real.”
When they reached 96th and Madison, Fable almost felt sorry for the man getting ready to see the woman he’d been searching for for almost two decades.
His hands shook, he was breathing harder than if he’d just finished running up a hill.
They looked around at the four corners.
On the western side were apartment buildings.
On the north-east corner stood a parking lot and on the south-east, the diner where Bernadette waited tables.
“We should go to the diner,”
she told him.
She wasn’t sure why she suggested they check the diner first except that she didn’t believe in coincidences.
She wondered about Richard and Dorothea’s story.
How had he held onto the hope of finding his wife? Did his Dorethea feel the same way?
He looked toward the diner and started toward it without another word.
Entering behind him, Fable stayed close in case he thought to grab his wife and leave Fable and the twenty-first century behind.
They stepped inside.
There were six booths, five were occupied.
No one present was his long lost wife, nor were the two waitresses, one of whom was Bernadette.
When he made his way to her, Fable followed close behind.
“Welcome to Tess' Diner.
How many?”
She looked up from her notepad in her hand and when she saw Fable, she looked about to give her a happy greeting.
“We are not here to dine,”
the traveler interrupted.
“I’m looking for someone.”
Bernadette glanced down at the hilt of his sword sticking out of the long, steel scabbard hanging from his belt.
He was going to have to put that thing away somewhere.
Bernadette looked over her shoulder at the door to the restroom.
“Is one of those medievaly fairs going on in the park?”
“Yes,”
Fable answered before the traveler had a chance to.
“Near Belvedere Castle.”
“How are you, dear one?”
Bernadette said to Fable.
“I haven’t seen you at your normal places.”
“I know.
I’ve been…um..”
she had no idea what to give the waitress as an excuse as to where she’d been.
“Dorothea West.
Is she employed here?”
he rudely interrupted.
Fable fastened her wide gaze at him.
West? What did it mean? Nothing.
“I’m her husband,”
he went on, “Richard West, Lieutenant-colonel Richard West.”
Everything.
It meant everything.