“Sorry, did you mention my former mentor was on trial for sexual misconduct?” Adeline asked, shaking her head as if the thought had just dropped back into her skull.
“Dr. Platt,” Nancy confirmed. “Nasty piece of work. Got ten years. About a year after you went missing, he attacked a junior doctor in a supply closet. More women came forward. I don’t think ten years is long enough, personally, but at least he’ll be locked up for a decade and won’t be able to practice medicine when he gets out.”
Adeline puffed out a breath. “That’s good. That’sverygood. I hated that asshole.” She paused. “But I can’t believe people think I’m missing. Do you know about Emma? Do you think something might have happened to her? Is that why she didn’t spread the word?”
“I think she’s okay,” Nancy replied hesitantly. “There were notes in your apartment. Sorry, I may or may not have broken in. I suppose it’s no mean feat to telleveryonethat you’ve gone traveling. Maybe she just missed some people. I mean, therewasno trace of you vanishing, which was suspicious to me but probably wouldn’t be to those who know you’re ‘traveling.’”
Adeline nodded slowly, her posture relaxing a little. “That’s a fair point.”
“Honestly, I was worried you were dead,” Nancy said with a smile that quickly faded. “Which you are, I guess, in a way. Man, this time travel stuff doesn’t half make your head hurt.”
Adeline laughed softly, a warm sound that soothed Nancy’s spirits. Or maybe that was just the certainty that therewasa way home, not back to an Emma but an Emily. It might have been a foolish way to think, but nothing seemed quite as frightening anymore, now that her main concern had been struck off the list.
I might’ve enjoyed myself a little if Hunter hadn’t put a pin in that.
Her cheeks warmed at the memory, squirming a bit in her chair as her center pulsed in pleasant recollection. She might not have had too much experience with men, but she knew extraordinary proportions when they were pushed up against her, teasing her, leaving her in a particular kind of torment.
“It gets better,” Adeline promised. “I’d prescribe you something, but you won’t like the taste. I’ve had to relearn everything I knew about medicine here. Now, I’m as much a potion and lotion maker as I am a doctor.”
“Sounds nice,” Nancy said, meaning it.
Adeline nodded and turned her gaze toward the window, where a light rain pattered on the pane. “It can be. It can be desperately sad, too, knowing that if we were just three hundred years in the future, I could help someone that I can’t help here.” She seemed to shake off the thought and glanced back at Nancy. “I arrived by snowglobe, my sister got here through a tunnel. How did you get here?”
“Snowglobe?” Nancy cocked her head, suddenly feeling less silly about her own method of time travel. “I came by tapestry.”
“Tapestry?” Adeline frowned and shook her head, like that didn’t make sense.
With a breath and a blush, Nancy explained what had happened in the Scottish Heritage Museum, before circling back to the notes she’d found in Adeline’s apartment and the research that Emily had been doing.
“That makes more sense.” Adeline nodded. “There seems to be a proper method to this time travel thing. You need something from the past and a strong wish to be somewhere. My guess is, you had one of Jane’s sea cave notes on you, and when you called for help and grabbed the tapestry, it acted like a wish. You might not have meant to, but you wished to be where the tapestry was made.”
“But I didn’t wish for it,” Nancy replied defensively, drinking down the last of her water.
“You said, ‘Help! Help, someone!’ Wishes are tricky things. Sometimes, they misunderstand,” Adeline replied in a doctorly voice. “That note is probably charged with the sea cave energy.”
Nancy thought of her leather jacket, still upstairs in her bedchamber. The notes had been moved to the pocket. If they were her way back, then she needed to make sure they stayed safe.
“Maybe you came back here to save that baby,” Adeline added with a warm smile. “Maybe Freya is the person you were sent to help.”
Nancy squinted her eyes, her brain a millisecond from exploding. “But… that would mean I changed the future? If Freya was supposed to die from a bee sting, then… Then again, she wouldn’t have been stung if I weren’t here, so… I can’t do this. This is destroying my mind. It’s like my entire brain is unraveling and trying to melt out of my ears.”
“I promise, it gets better.” Adeline reached out and rested a hand on her shoulder. “You start to figure things out as time goes on. In the meantime, I’ll head back to Jane’s and get the information she has about traveling to the future. It’s her mother-in-law’s research, really. But I do have to ask one thing, Nancy.”
Nancy nodded earnestly, her excitement rising. Emily would lose her mind when she heard where her friend had been, and going home was almost close enough to taste now.
Better to leave before I have something to regret,Nancy told herself, as a vision of Hunter popped into her head, kissing her in a way she’d never been kissed before, stopping short of elaborating on what a woman was good for in the bedchamber.
And Freya, so sweet and innocent, who would lose her father in a month’s time. A horrible truth that none of them knew was coming, and that Nancy could do nothing to stop.
“You can’t write about me,” Adeline said, her voice edged with warning. “You can’t write about my sister or me or what has happened here. Tell this friend of yours, sure, but don’t make it public. Or it will ruin history.”
A prickle of disbelief made Nancy sit up straighter. “Butyouhave a secret message system?”
“With someone Jane trusts implicitly not to spread the secrets,” Adeline insisted. “That’s vastly different from an article that everyone can read.”
“But… but Ineedto write it,” Nancy insisted, growing restless. “If I become well-known for the article, then it might help me find other people, too.”
“What people?”
