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Two weeks after she returned to her home in the Cotswolds, Quinn received her first email from her boss, the man whose identity had always been kept secret, Gabriel McCabe.
Dear Miss Shaughnessy,
I was very sorry to hear of your accident and I do hope you are feeling better. I'm not writing to try to convince you to come back to work, take all the time you need. If there is anything you require, please do not hesitate to ask. Your job will be waiting for you when you are ready to return.
I don't wish to overstep but sometimes it helps to talk about it when one suffers a trauma like you have. If you need someone to talk to, I've been told I am a very good listener.
Gabriel McCabe
Dear Mr. McCabe,
I was both surprised and delighted by your letter. It's nice to finally have a name to go with the man behind the curtain! Thank you for your understanding. It has been hard trying to get back into the flow of things but I do hope to return to work soon.
I have not gotten my head around what happened. For me, the time I was in the coma felt more like a magical dream. To wake and find it was all just in my head, that none of it was real, is a bit overwhelming. Perhaps you were just being nice but I think you are right, talking about it may just help me move past it. Would you like to hear my story?
Quinn
The correspondence between them lasted for months, several emails a day. In that time, Quinn began to really know the man who was her boss. He was reserved but he had a wicked sense of humor which came out more and more as they grew to know each other. He studied anthropology and loved all things old. He loved classic rock and had an affinity for mysteries. What really touched her, though he had never mentioned it in any of his emails but Cole, her boss, had let it slip, was that Gabriel had come to the hospital every day when she was in the coma.
Three months after she was released from the hospital she was ready to go back to work. She had come to accept, reluctantly, that her time in the past had just been a lovely dream. Archer wasn't real. He was just a wonderful figment of her imagination. She needed to come back to reality and so it was time to go back to Whispering Winds.
Cole was quiet as he drove along the country road and then quite suddenly he turned his head to Quinn and said, "I'm glad you're back. We've missed you."
"I'm glad to be back." She shifted in her seat before she asked, "Derek's been at Whispering Winds this whole time?"
Quinn noticed the clenching of Cole's jaw at the mentioning of Derek. "As soon as he was given the all clear from the doctors he was out the door. The ink on his hospital release papers hadn't yet dried. He never called to check-in and see how you were doing and then he left us even more short-handed when he insisted on taking his accumulated months of vacation to pursue a self-funded dig at Whispering Winds."
Quinn's head snapped in Cole's direction in response to that tidbit. Derek was searching for something at Whispering Winds, just like in her dream, was that a coincidence? "Has he found anything?" Quinn asked.
"He has yet to drum up the media circus, so I'm guessing no," Cole said sarcastically.
"Are you surprised by Derek's greed, Cole?"
"No."
"Why do you put him on so many digs when clearly you don't like him?"
"It isn't my call. The boss wants him there..." Cole glanced over at her and grinned, "And he is as much a fan of Derek's as I am."
"We've been writing to each other."
Cole continued to watch the road as he answered her. "I know."
"I like him."
"He likes you, too. He's meeting us at Whispering Winds."
Quinn turned in her seat and looked out the window but her anticipation at finally meeting Gabriel in person made the drive the longest in her life.
When they approached Whispering Winds, her heart hammered hard in her chest. This was not the same place she found all those years ago. Tour buses lined the paved area about a kilometer from the castle as hordes of people milled around the lush landscape with cameras in hand snapping photos. Quinn's voice sounded strained even to her own ears when she asked, "Has this placed always been like this?"
"What? A major tourist attraction? Yeah."
She was fairly certain that she was experiencing shock. It took her months to convince herself that her time in the past had been a dream but now she was seeing evidence that suggested otherwise. Had she really traveled back in time and somehow managed to change the future? She couldn't deny what her eyes were seeing and her heart leapt because maybe, just maybe, Archer had been real.
"This is still the Scarcliff family's main residence but they spend three months a year at their estate in the Cotswolds so the Duke agreed to allow visitors to Whispering Winds when the family was not in residence."
Quinn's head snapped around to face Cole. "Scarcliff?"
