Charon's Crossing

"You could have sent one of the servants after him, Catherine."

Catherine sighed and laid her head against her father's shoulder.

"Of course. How I wish I'd been clever enough to have thought of that."

Russell's expression softened. "Go on inside, my dear, and tend to our other guests."

She smiled and kissed his cheek. "Yes, Father. Good night, Captain McDowell. I trust you'll remember what I told you? Some tea brewed from cinchona bark will have you feeling better in no time. Why, twelve hours from now, you'll be fit as a fiddle."

Twelve hours from now? Matthew's eyes shot to Catherine's and she gave him an almost imperceptible nod. That was when she would meet him, then, on the morrow.

The speed with which she'd woven a tale to deceive her father, coupled with the ease with which she'd given him the hour of tomorrow's assignation, was dazzling. Matthew revised his earlier estimate of Catherine. She was not only the most beautiful woman he'd ever met, she was also the brightest.

He smiled politely, took the hand she offered him, and bowed over it as he raised it to his lips.

"Thank you, Lady Catherine. You have been most kind and I am indebted to you."

She smiled brightly. "It was nothing, Captain. But if you truly wish, you may repay that debt by being our guest at Charon's Crossing again soon. You can tell me all the latest gossip from the colonies."

Matthew knew nothing of social gossip. And he had flattened more than one fool who still insisted on referring to the American states as "colonies." But, at that moment, if Catherine Russell had told him the moon was made of green cheese, he would not have argued...

* * *

A gust of wind, blowing in from across the sea, slammed one of the attic shutters against the wall of the house.

The book fell from Kathryn's hands. She jumped to her feet, almost totally disoriented. The shutter banged again, and she let out her breath.

Slowly, she bent down and picked up Matthew McDowell's journal. Landing face-down on the floor didn't seem to have harmed it any. She brushed it off carefully, shut it, and laid it on the rocker.

How long had she been reading, anyway? Long enough for the sun to have changed its angle in the sky. She had to lift her hand and tilt it towards the window in order to read her watch.

"Wow," she whispered.

What else could you say, when you found out four hours had passed in what felt like a minute?

The man wrote a heck of an interesting diary, she had to give him that much. Descriptive, too, she thought, and smiled.

Her smile faded. She remembered what he had written, that he had stroked his finger across Catherine Russell's mouth and she had parted her lips so she could taste his skin.

Kathryn felt the quickening beat of her heart. That was what had happened to her, last night. In her dream, Matthew had touched her mouth that same way. She could close her eyes now and still recall the eroticism of that moment, the heat of his fingertip moving across her lips, how she'd longed to do what the other Catherine had done, to draw his finger into her mouth and skim the tip of her tongue over it...

"Oh, for goodness' sakes!"

Enough already! The old book was fascinating. It was an interesting artifact and if she found the time, she'd probably pick it up again some afternoon. But that was all there was to it. The journal didn't have a damned thing to do with her or with her crazy dreams.

As for Matthew's grandiose description of himself as a lady-killer...

She laughed as she drew the shutters closed and locked them. Nothing much had changed, in two hundred years. Men still had mighty high opinions of themselves.

"You were probably a prissy old prude, Captain," she said.

She snatched up the flashlight and, without a backward glance, marched out the door and slammed it firmly behind her.

Silence filled the attic. Then a quicksilver light began to glimmer beside the rocker where the journal lay. The light moved swiftly towards the window and the shutters burst open, admitting fresh air and the natural light of the sun.

The light began to spin, slowly at first, then gathering speed until it became a whirlpool and the figure of a man appeared within its brilliant heart.

"A prude, was I, Catherine?" Matthew said.