Chapter 7 #3
surrounded by three people who also wore costumes.
Arnie was flat on his back with his face contorted in pain. Stella grabbed her phone and dialed 911, then dropped to her knees
between two people she’d never seen before—a man and a woman, both dressed in period costumes. Stella grabbed Arnie’s hand,
which was sweaty and trembling. The two people beside her stood and backed away, moving near the study table.
The 911 operator answered and immediately asked questions. Stella answered the first few quickly, but the question “What is
happening?” wasn’t easy to answer. Sweat soaked through Arnie’s dress shirt, and his breaths came in short bursts.
“Arnie, what’s wrong? Talk to me,” Stella begged.
The operator continued to engage Stella in conversation, and when Arnie opened his eyes, Stella said, “He’s conscious!”
He squeezed her hand. “Kiddo? Where did you come from?” His left arm jerked, and the man dressed as a soldier and kneeling
across from Stella grabbed it and pressed it back to the floor. Arnie’s eyes rolled back in his head.
“Could be a heart attack,” the soldier said. “We sent Darcy up to call for help.”
“Ma’am, is Arnie having a heart attack?” the operator asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Please just send someone to the library! I’ll be here.” Intense fear gripped her like talons. “Arnie,
what is going on? Arnie, look at me. Please.”
He shuddered, but his eyes opened. “Kiddo,” he breathed out. Then his eyes closed, and his head lolled to the side.
“Arnie!” Stella shouted. “Don’t you dare die on me!”
The soldier touched his fingers to Arnie’s neck. “There’s a pulse.”
Stella’s entire body trembled. She held Arnie’s hand and told him over and over again that he was going to be okay, that everything
was going to be fine. Gray, cloudlike words drifted around Arnie’s head—Final. Stop. Let go.—and Stella continuously waved them away because they terrified her.
When the paramedics arrived, Stella experienced a modicum of relief, although seeing Arnie on a stretcher challenged her strength
to hold it together. She stood off to the side and chewed on her thumbnail. They’d given him an aspirin and put a small tablet
beneath his tongue. One of the paramedics—whom Stella recognized as Niall Wiley—strapped a blood pressure cuff onto Arnie’s
arm and listened to his heartbeat with a stethoscope, while his partner started an IV line in Arnie’s other arm. Niall put
an oxygen mask over Arnie’s nose and mouth.
“Stella?” Niall called and motioned for her.
She hurried toward the stretcher, pressing her hands against the starched, disposable sheet pulled tight across the thin cushion.
Arnie’s gaze focused on her, and he opened one of his hands. Stella slipped her hand into his.
“Arnie,” she said, feeling the sting of tears.
“Take care of them,” he said.
Stella wrinkled her brow. “What?”
“My friends . . . They’re not from around here . . . Keep them in here, okay? In the library. Take care of them. Come see
me tomorrow. I’ll tell you everything. It’s temporary. Jack—I wanted to tell you about him.”
Stella shook her head, not understanding in the least. “Who’s Jack? What do you mean?”
Arnie’s eyes closed again, and he didn’t respond.
Stella looked up at Niall. “Is he drugged?”
Niall shook his head. “No, but it’s common for disorientation to occur. Terrible this happened during your party.”
“Party?” Stella asked.
Niall nodded toward the small gathering of costumed people. This wasn’t a party Stella had been invited to.
“We need to go,” Niall said.
Arnie squeezed Stella’s fingers, and his eyes opened. “Remember what I said.”
“Wait, should I go with you?” Stella asked.
Niall rested his hand on Stella’s shoulder, and she felt ripples of comfort radiating down her arm. “We’ll get him stabilized.
Grab some things for him, if you want, and bring them to the hospital. I’ll make sure you can get in to see him.”
Stella nodded her thanks and let go of Arnie’s hand as they wheeled him away. She clenched her hands together in front of
her lips, holding her breath. As they disappeared up the stairs, someone stepped up beside her.
“Are you okay?” the soldier asked.
Stella looked at him. “No. He’s like a second father to me.” She swiped at the tears on her cheeks and looked around at the
four strangers gathered in the archives with her.
The tall, handsome Englishman from upstairs stood with his arms crossed over his chest. Was he the one the soldier called
Darcy? A tickle started in the back of Stella’s brain until it became a full-blown irrational wave of thought. Fitzwilliam
Darcy? As in Jane Austen’s Fitzwilliam Darcy? Had Arnie been hosting some kind of Regency-era party?
But that couldn’t be, because the others didn’t fit in.
The woman was dressed in an elaborate blue dress embellished with embroidered white flowers, and her chocolate-brown hair was braided.
She gripped a book in her arms and watched them with an anxious expression.
She spoke French to the man beside her, who was dressed like medieval royalty.
He nodded and slipped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her against him.
The soldier shifted his steady gaze toward Stella. His face—the familiar angles of it, the fullness of his lips, the way the
lamplight reflected in his pale eyes—she felt as though she knew him.
“I’m Jack,” he said. “If there’s anything I can do . . .”
The sluggish cogs in Stella’s brain clicked into place one by one, until the hairs on top of her head stood on end. The man
beside her—she had stared at his face for years. He’d often been the hero in her daydreams, the man whose eyes saw straight
into her soul. She looked at him. “Jack . . . Mathis?”
He nodded once. “Yes, ma’am.”
Her knees wobbled. “As in Jack Mathis from Beyond the Southern Horizon?”
Jack nodded.
“Is this a joke?” Stella asked.
“Is that rhetorical?” Jack asked.
“This can’t be happening.”
Jack stepped closer to her. “I assure you, it is.”