Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

He jumped on her words. “What does that mean, that we have only three weeks? What are you planning? Does it have to do with these two women you brought here with you? And where do they come from? They have no baggage, not so much as a hairpin, and they talk even more strangely than you do. And they know so little about our lives! The young one asked how we got water out of the ground. Who are they and what are you planning with them?”

“Their luggage was lost,” Amy said, thinking that she would have to talk to Zoë about keeping her mouth shut. If she were to tell someone they weren’t just from a different country but a different time, Amy didn’t know what would be done to them. These people still believed in witches. “They’re friends of mine, isn’t that enough? Faith is a widow and she spent years nursing her sick husband. I thought she could help with your uncle William. Wouldn’t you like to get rid of that sour-faced woman who hovers over him now? Faith is a master herbalist.”

She tucked the covers around him. “And Zoë is a painter and I think she’s going to apprentice to Russell.”

“A woman painter?” Tristan said.

“You say things like that around Zoë and she’ll take your ears off.”

“I am sure I will be shocked as I am not used to having a woman tell me what she thinks,” he said with great sarcasm.

She straightened up and looked at him. He was so very handsome and more than anything in the world she wanted to climb into bed with him. Maybe not for sex, but she’d like to feel a man’s arms around her, like to again feel protected and loved.

“Amy,” Tristan whispered.

She quickly stepped back from the bed. “I have to go. Listen, tomorrow, if you could…I mean, if we could…Uh, my friends.” She looked at him imploringly.

“Yes, I understand. Your friends know you are married and I am not to look at you with eyes that hunger for you. I can restrain myself, but can you?”

Amy smiled. “Easily,” she said, then slipped out the door and closed it behind her. No, it was never easy to hold herself back when she was with Tristan.

“Stayed in there long enough, didn’t you?”

Amy looked up to see Zoë standing in the hallway in her borrowed nightgown, her arms crossed over her chest against the cool night. Amy’s first thought was to defend herself, but she didn’t. “Didn’t I tell you that Tristan and I have mad, passionate sex every night? Some nights we’re so loud we scare the pigeons off the roof. So, did you just come back from Russell’s bed?”

“I wish,” Zoë said. “No, it’s just the newness of the place. I couldn’t sleep.”

“You’ll get used to it.” She started walking Zoë back to her room.

“Amy,” she said outside the door, “have you ever thought about what will happen to us if we don’t go back? What if the three weeks end and we stay here forever?”

Amy took a deep breath. “I think about it every day, and what I come up with is that I’ll worry about that when it’s the end of the twenty-second day.”

“You’ll marry him, won’t you?” Zoë nodded toward Tristan’s door.

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything except that I need to keep him from being killed.”

“What if you prevent it tomorrow? Will we be sent back then or will we get the whole three weeks?”

Amy looked at Zoë, trying to read what was in her eyes. “You like it here, don’t you?”

“It’s not bad,” Zoë said, as usual trying to tell as little about herself as possible.

“You’re more free here, aren’t you? There isn’t anyone in this world who hates you for whatever you did.”

“True,” Zoë said. “I don’t think I knew how much my lack of memory bothered me until I came here. I think that in my real life I lived in constant fear that someone from my past would show up and spit at me. One time some workmen dropped a big metal frame with a crash and I threw my arms over my head and ducked. It made everyone laugh, but later I realized that I’ve always thought that at any time someone could come at me with a gun.”

“That’s awful,” Amy said. “No one should live like that. I think that when we go back you really need to find out what happened to make all those people dislike you.”

“I’d rather know anything than whatever I did,” Zoë said. “You know what I’d do if I went back to when I crashed my car? I’d leave town. I don’t know what happened to make everyone hate me and I don’t need to know. I’d just throw things in a bag, get on a bus, and never look back.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Amy said. “You’d miss out on being in the wreck and that’s what really matters.”

“Yes, that’s what’s important. As long as I can still draw. If I go back and find I can’t draw…Anyway, on the day I was in the crash, I wouldn’t get in any moving vehicle.” Zoë yawned. “I think I can sleep now.” She put her hand on the bedroom door, then turned back to Amy. “What were you doing in his bedroom?”

“Sex and lots of it.” Amy tensed again.

“Okay, have it your way, but if you want to talk, I’d listen.”