Chapter Sixteen
Ben didn’t sleep.
He walked as night and semi darkness fell over Manhattan.
He walked the perimeter of Central Park and wove through Fifth and Madison Avenues.
He tried to cover as much ground as he could, but how big was the city? He didn’t check inside the park.
Fable had told him she slept in alleyways and on the streets.
She hadn’t mentioned the park.
He guessed the park was more dangerous at night. He checked every alley, every alcove. He thought of what the server at the diner had told him. The man she described had to be the one who’d been chasing Fable and pulled her back to the future. The redhead had to be Fable. She’d been close. So close. Why was she still with the traveler? Was she his captive? He should have asked Bernadette if Fable seemed nervous, afraid. Was there anything else? Bernadette had said the man was asking something. Ben hadn’t stayed around to hear the rest.
He pulled at his hair as he hurried through the streets, looking, searching.
He wouldn’t give up.
She was here, somewhere.
He was grateful that he’d reached her in time and traveled through time with her–else she would have been lost to him forever, and terrified that her captor would harm her before he could find her.
As morning drew near without finding her, he called out her name, but to no avail.
He walked until he came to 84th and Madison.
Able’s Best Jewelry wasn’t open yet so he sat on the ground.
He’d sell his gold for twenty-first century money and get some breakfast at Tess’ Diner.
He wanted another chance to speak with Bernadette.
He was surprised and thankful when Able finally appeared and opened his store.
When he saw Ben’s mint, gold guineas he brought Ben upstairs to his private office and offered him fifteen hundred dollars in cash for both.
According to Able, he had enough for breakfast, dinner, and a bed for one night or more, depending on where he stayed.
Ben would eat breakfast and save dinner and the bed for Fable.
He intended on finding her before then.
He walked to 96th street and was glad to see the diner open for business.
He looked to the street light and was about to hurry over to the other side when a flash of burnt orange and glistening gold caught his eye.
His heart thumped hard in his chest and tears blurred his vision.
He swiped his hands across his eyes and took a better look. “Fable,”
he barely breathed out.
She was walking with the culprit, heading his way.
He took a step forward, and then ran to her, past people rushing to and fro.
He never took his eyes off her.
“Fable!”
She saw him and covered her mouth, then took off toward him.
When they reached each other, they didn’t slow, but crashed into each other’s arms.
Ben held her, afraid to ever let her go again.
“Fable.
Fable, my love, are you hurt?”
He held her at arm’s length to examine her better.
He ran his hands down her cheeks while his eyes roved over her.
“Ben.
Ben, how–”
He looked up at the man bold enough to step toward them.
The bastard who had chased her and dragged her back here. “You!”
Ben leaped for him and grabbed him by the collar.
Fable screamed out his name.
“Don’t hurt him!”
Ben wanted to kill him but—but he took a better look into the culprit’s eyes.
For a moment, all he could hear was his own breath.
His heart was still as the culprit’s face grew more familiar.
Was it the face of …his father?
Ben released him and stepped backwards.
“What is this? You–you–who are you?”
“You don’t recognize me?”
Ben shook his head, hoping to clear it.
“You cannot be the one I recognize.
He’s dead.”
“Benjamin–”
the man said gently.
Ben ignored him and turned to Fable.
He didn't know if he could trust his eyes or his ears.
But he could trust her.
“Is this real?”
“It’s real,”
she told him.
“The pocket watch transported them here–
“Them? My mother’s here?”
he asked on a stilled breath.
He returned his attention to the man.
He didn’t realize tears were streaming down his face.
When he did, he did nothing to stop them.
“Yes,”
the man he’d meant to kill let him know.
He spoke slowly, softly, as if he feared anything more would chase Ben away.
“She is here.
Somewhere.”
It couldn’t be true.
Could it? Ben didn’t know what he was thinking.
Was this a dream? His parents weren’t dead? What? He was afraid to doubt it, to move, to breathe.
“Benjamin,”
he said in a sorrowful voice.
He didn’t move to go to Ben, but remained in his spot, “it’s me, your father.
I’m real and I’m so very, very sorry, Son”
Son , the word echoed through Ben’s blood and shook his bones.
He thought he would never hear either of his parents call him son again.
Slowly, he took a tentative step toward him to have a closer look.
Was it possible that this was his father? Ben resembled him–his seventeen-year older father.
Then his father reached out and wiped Ben’s tears with his thumbs.
“My Benjamin.”
At the sound of his father saying his name, the floodgates opened.
Ben wept and the two of them threw their arms around each other.
Did he truly have his father back? Was it possible? “Father,”
he whispered, then repeated again and again as years of revenge and hatred faded into the four winds.
But Ben’s turmoil and shattered past weren’t healed so easily.
“What happened? Why did you never return to us?”
“I could not return on my own.
I must return with the one who traveled with me, and that is your mother, otherwise the pocket watch brings me where it wants.
I learned that the hard way.
I had meant to use Fable to keep the lawmen away that night, instead she brought me home.
I wanted to go to you and your sister…”
While he spoke, tears streamed down his face.
… “But I had to return here to get your mother.
I was home.
Just feet from Colchester House, but I couldn’t leave your mother.
I had to return here, but the only way to do that was to bring back the original one who had left.”
Ben looked at Fable.
She’d come into his life for a reason.
He knew it, but he thought it was only for him.
To bring happiness into his life.
She’d already done that, but to reunite him with his father and mother was something he couldn’t truly comprehend yet.
“Maybe we should go someplace more private to sit and talk,”
Fable suggested, looking around at the people slowing their place to watch the two men embracing and weeping.
They went to Tess’ Diner and as they stepped inside Ben took Fable’s hand and brought it to his lips for a kiss.
“I feared I lost you.”
“I feared the same.”
“She shed buckets of tears for you,”
his father added, listening.
When he saw her, Ben smiled at Bernadette and introduced her to his father.
“And this is Fable Ramsey, my beloved.”
“Your beloved?”
the waitress asked, staring with curiosity lifting her dark brows.
Fable gave him a nervous smile and then slipped it to his father.
Ben suspected what was troubling her.
But he was happy his father met Fable.
He seemed fond of her, smiling at Ben when he told him how she‘d wept for him.
Who wouldn’t be fond of her? She had even broken through Pru’s armor.
He sat with her opposite his father and held her hand.
She tried to separate her hand from his or pull their entwined fingers under the table.
But he wouldn’t let her.
He was beyond thankful that he had been given another chance to make his father proud of him because of the woman he chose to wed.
And she was not one of the ladies on his sister’s list.
They agreed with Bernadette when she remarked how close they had come to reuniting yesterday.
When they ordered breakfast Ben and his father’s order made them smile that they ordered the same thing.
“How is Prudence?”
“Haughty.”
There were a dozen more things Ben wanted to say.
Things like; obnoxious, selfish, overbearing and more, but why upset his father? “Somehow she has managed to sink her claws into my friend–do you remember young Sudbury?”
“Of course, his father was a close friend.”
Yes.
Well, he will bravely wed Prudence within the year.”
This news seemed to make his father happy.
“I hope to find your mother before then so that we may attend our daughter’s marriage day.”
“Tell me what happened to you and Mother,”
Ben asked, wanting to hear it all.
“I have spent these many years trying to find her.”
He told Ben everything he knew about the pocket watch and how he believed it worked.
He listened when his father told him about his dreams.
His father was correct, they had to find her.
Ben had to find her.
This time he would save her.
“I agree with Fable.
She could walk through those doors at any moment.
We should wait here for her.
But we should also do something.”
“I’ll try to panhandle for a few dollars so we can take out a small in search of ad,”
Fable told them.
“What is panhandle?”
Ben asked her.
“Asking for money from people on the streets.”
Ben felt himself stiffen up.
His gaze slipped to his father.
Had the proud 1st Duke of Colchester seen her begging on the streets?
“She made quite a bit, Ben,”
his father let him know.
“She made me presentable to meet your mother with a haircut and a nice shave, kept us fed, and more by doing this panhandle.”
“The key is not to lie to people.
If I’m hungry, I ask for something to eat.
If I need clothes, I ask them for help in getting me something to wear.
It’s about honesty.”
Ben quirked his mouth looking at her.
“It also helps that you’re beautiful.”
She blushed and pushed him away slightly with her shoulder.
“I have money, Fable,”
he let her know earnestly.
“You have no need to panhandle.”
He told them about selling his gold guineas and what he’d gotten for them and smiled when Fable clapped her hands.
“You did well, Ben– Your Grace,”
she corrected with a wary glance at his father.
“Ben,”
Ben corrected.
“Young woman,”
his father said, “why do you struggle to deny what’s between you.
You wept for days on end when I separated you from him.
You spoke so highly of him, you made me proud to be his father, and when I asked you what you were to him, you told me you were his beloved.
Now, oddly, you seem to want to convince me that you are nothing more than his friend? Should I wonder if you misled me?”
“Abso–”
she began toprotest.
But Ben was quicker.
“She did not mislead you,”
he assured his father.
“She is my beloved.”
When she squirmed in her seat, he looked across the table at his father.
“She knows how you feel about me marrying below my status.”
“Yes, she and I have discussed it.
Though not at length.”
Ben blinked at him and then back to her.
“What did you discuss?”
Bernadette delivered their food and Ben didn’t get an answer to his question.
Both men smiled at their vegetable omelet with homefries and toast.
“How do they expect a slight being like yourself to consume all of that?”
his father chuckled looking at Fable’s plate piled with pancakes and butter.
They watched her pour syrup on top and on her bacon.
“You laugh,”
Ben said, “but on her first day at the house she ate a braised duck, two roasted chickens, six hard-boiled eggs and three cooked fish.”
“I needed protein,”
she reminded him.
He still had no idea what protein was.
He wasn’t sure his father knew either when he mouthed the word.
“How did you meet each other?”
“I found her in my garden praying for protection from you, I assume.”
“Yes,”
his father agreed and cast her a repentant look Ben had never seen his father wear before, “I’m afraid I terrified her.”
“She ran from you for four days and ended up in my garden, where she fainted in my arms.”
A hint of a smile hovered around his father’s lips and he nodded, but he said nothing.
It appeared Fable and his father had become friends.
He spoke very casually to her, calling her Fable instead of Miss Ramsey.
Of course his father liked her, Ben thought watching her lift her fork to her open mouth.
She closed her eyes as if she missed pancakes slathered in butter and sweet syrup more than she missed anything else.
She opened her eyes and plucked a slice of bacon from her plate then shoved it into her already full mouth.
Cheeks bulging, she looked up to find him staring at her with warm amusement in his smile.
He laughed softly and took a bite of his omelet.
“You seem happy, Son.”
Ben looked across the table and set his fork down.
“I’m happier than I’ve been since you left.
I grew up without you.
Your death shaped me.
Before Fable came into my life–even after, all I wanted to do was fight.
Almost dying on the battlefield helped me live.
But my lust for Jacobite blood grew like a dark disease within me. Happiness was not something I sought.”
He set his gaze on her nibbling on more bacon.
“And then light burst through the darkness and I lived again.”
She looked up from her food.
His heart sounded in his ears.
“When I first awoke in Central Park, I thought I was still home and that I’d lost you forever.
Dying would be less painful.
I will not lose you again, Fable.”
He wanted her to know it and he wanted his father to know as well.
“Ben,”
she said his name softly, meaningfully.
“Try this.”
She held out her cup to him.
It was covered with a lid, and in the lid an X was cut to fit a thin tube from which to suck.
“What is it?”
“Cola.”
He would have drank no matter what was in the cup.
She had but to ask.
He didn’t care if he’d fallen for her without any hope of return.
He didn’t want to be anywhere without her.
He bent his head and put his lips to the tube and sucked.
At the same time, she inclined mouth to his ear.
“I love you.”
His head was reeling, either from the sweet, fizzy, refreshing drink, or from her warm breath against his temple, her words settling on his scarred heart.
He let go of the tube and smiled at her, then turned to his father.
“I’m happy now.”
“Son, I would have you know there was nothing I could have done.
I had to follow your mother.
Even if it meant leaving you and your sister.
I knew you would both be well cared for.”
A cold, dreary day in December drifted through Ben’s memory, when he and Prudence were thrown out of their home by Lord Addington.
“I understand,”
he told his father, and he did understand.
He’d followed Fable into her future, and he would do it over again.
Fortunately he was able to find her–and get his father back also.
He wasn’t about to waste more time being angry or resentful over something he, himself, had done.
“Let’s put all effort into finding her, Father.”
His father stopped eating and wiped a tear before it fell onto his plate.
“What is it?”
Ben asked him.
“There were days I wasn’t certain I would ever hear you or your sister call me that again.”
Ben nodded, understanding and wiped his own eyes.
His heart swelled with affection for Fable when he felt her hand along his back.
She sought to comfort him.
The gesture was so unfamiliar Ben didn’t know how to react besides to gaze at her as if she was the answer to his prayers dropped from the heavens at his feet.
He smiled yet again, and then returned his attention to his father.
“We will find Mum and then go home to Prudence.
I think she may never leave Colchester House once you’re home.”
His father agreed with a chuckle, then “I will remain here while you two do whatever else you feel would help us find her.”
“No, I’m not leaving you when I just found you after seventeen years.”
Fable agreed not to separate, and went back to eating.
When they were done, Bernadette suggested they have some coffee.
Ben remembered Stephen buying coffee beans and making Fable coffee at his request.
He remembered how she had invited the steward to sit and drink his coffee with her at the duke’s table.
He smiled now recalling how stunned and angry Prudence had been…and how easily Fable had won her over with a simple compliment.
Had she done the same to his father?
“Fable,”
Bernadette said, handing Fable two little yellow paper packets.
“Try these instead of having more sugar in your coffee.
I hope you don’t mind me saying, but try not to consume any more sweets today.
He’s a nice guy,”
she said, pointing to Ben, “and I’d hate to see him lose you again.”
“All right,”
Fable agreed, “but what’s wrong with sweets?”
Bernadette stared at her and then blinked.
“Diabetes? Didn’t your mother ever warn you against so much sugar?”
Fable shook her head.
“As you know we had no money for food, and when we did, we didn’t waste it on food that had no value.
This was a treat.”
Ben found that he couldn’t swallow with his heart in his throat.
Of course, he felt pity for Fable, but what he felt more now that he’d come to know her, was how little she pitied herself.
She spoke to Bernadette with a soft, satisfied smile.
She had lacked everything and yet, she lacked nothing.
Contentment shaped her mouth and gratefulness sparked her eyes with life.
She made him want to live and not die on the battlefield.
She was balm to his weary soul.
A few moments later, when Bernadette overheard them about their search for Dorothea West, she offered them her phone to search her name.
None of them knew what to do with the apparatus.
Fable was able to make a set of numbers appear on what she called the screen.
But then handed it back to Bernadette.
“I don’t know anyone to call.”
Bernadette sat with them and wrote his mother’s name with the alphabet scrambled on tiny buttons.
Ben and his father stared at the device in awe and surprise that such a thing existed.
It could call someone, tell you who someone was, where they were, and how much they owed.
It spoke, and even had a name.
But it had no information on his mother.
When Bernadette went on her break, she invited Fable to sit with her at the counter while she searched her phone .
Ben sat alone with his father and listened while the Lt.
Colonel told him about his life for the last seventeen years.
His search and persistence were admirable.
Ben told him bits about his life, mostly about his battles and the life-altering wound to his arm.
“The lady told me how you were willing to fight me for her, without knowing who I was.”
“Yes,”
Ben said, turning to look at her where she stood with Bernadette.
“I would fight anyone for her.”
His father didn’t answer but watched them both for a moment and then looked into his cup.
His silence did not go unnoticed by Ben. “Father,”
he began, then laughed softly and shook his head in disbelief.
“I look at you and I feel as if I’m dreaming.”
“I must admit,”
his father confessed, “On the day I brought her back here, I went to the house and saw you when you left on your horse with another tall man.
You had grown from a boy to a man, but I recognized you.
I would have recognized you at any age.
If she had never told me that you saved the king more than once,or how you fought eighteen men and found victory without help, or especially how endlessly patient you are with your sister, I would have been proud of you the instant I saw you and how you carried yourself in the saddle.”
Ben smiled and lowered his eyes.
“I feel as if my life has always been about making you proud.
I was robbed of that.
To hear you say it now…”
He wiped his eyes and laughed at his tears, but his father had many of his own.
They talked over coffee until Fable returned and slipped into the seat next to Ben’s.
Bernadette’s break was over and she had to return to work but she left Fable the phone.“We didn’t find anything.”
“You are clever,”
Ben’s father remarked.
“Have you figured out how to use the device?”
“A little.
I can ask Siri whatever I want and it’ll send me the information I want…if it’s on the web.
“I was wondering if there was a name she might have gone by back then, when your life was normal?”
Ben’s father thought about it for a moment.
“Thea! It’s short for Dorothea.
It was the name by which I called her when we were alone. Thea!”
Fable immediately spoke into the device asking it for information on Thea West.
When the screen changed, she handed the phone to Ben to read the results.
“There are three.
One is in her eighties, one is in her twenties, and one…hmm, she’s the correct age.”
“Hold that pointer over her name and tap it–”
“Tap it?”
She helped him, then waited with him.
When the screen changed he looked it over.
“There’s no image of her.
It says she’s a social worker and won the National Social Worker Award in twenty-fourteen.
“Ms.
Thea W.
Halstead received the–”
“That’s her!”
Fable and his father both blurted at the same time.
“She was born in Halstead, Essex,”
Ben’s father informed them.
“The W obviously stands for West.”
He turned to Fable and cast her a curious look to match Ben’s.
“How do you know her?”
“I don’t,”
she told them.
“I was supposed to meet her the day after you brought me into the past.
She’s my social worker.”