Page 66 of Never Leave Me
“Very well, my lord. You can count on me, that you can.”
After Mr. Smythe took his leave a short while later, Harrison stood from the wheelchair, carefully placing the ampulla into his waistcoat pocket. He needed to test the contents. And he knew exactly how he was going to do so.
17
ELLENSCANNEDTHEFIELDSand moor, her heart pounding an anxious rhythm. She didn’t want to miss finding their dad today.
Before she’d left Marian’s bedchamber, Marian had gripped Ellen’s hands, her eyes begging for the chance to see their dad again. “Please find him.”
Ellen had read into Marian’s request what she wouldn’t say—that she needed the opportunity to make things right with Dad after their mother’s death had created a rift between them.
Plus, Marian wanted to save him. In fact, her desire to protect Dad had been one of the reasons why she’d crossed to the year before his arrival—to warn him to be careful. Though they didn’t know exactly what danger he’d faced, they believed his death in 1382 had caused his comatose body in the present to cease functioning.
Ellen directed her horse toward Will, his squires not far behind, keeping an ever-vigilant watch for any danger from Lord Worth while they hunted for Dad. They’d combed the Dover Road forthe past hour, passing carts and packhorses along with groups on foot. But none of the travelers had resembled her dad.
“Do you see anyone new?” Ellen asked.
Will shook his head curtly, his gaze sweeping over the road ahead and trailing a merchant leaving Canterbury with a rumbling and creaking cart. While Will was a good-looking man, he took himself much too seriously. But he loved Marian—and that was all that really mattered.
Marian adored Will too, and the more time Ellen spent with her sister, the more she understood Marian’s wish to remain in the past with her husband. Will’s love had made the sacrifice worthwhile.
Was that what the love of a good man would do? Take a skeptic and transform her into a woman willing to take a chance?
Ellen pushed aside the thought and the low ache it brought. She was different than Marian. She’d never had many chances. Her future had always held an early expiration date.
A light rain had begun to fall, and Ellen pulled up her hood to shield herself. The drops soaked into her cloak and filled her nostrils with the scent of musty wool. Not only was she cold and damp, but she was sore from the unfamiliar jostling—similar to the way her backside felt after riding a bike for too long.
She wouldn’t last much longer. She had to search harder.
Biting back mounting frustration, she scanned the area east of Dover Road. Fields spread out with what appeared to be individual strips, most plowed and planted but some lying fallow. A few cattle, pigs, and goats grazed on grass growing on the unplanted parcels while laborers toiled with rudimentary tools among what she guessed to be wheat, oats, and barley.
The stretch of land to the west of the road contained jagged boulders along with blooming hawthorn bushes, their white flowers bright against the grayish-green landscape. Wild buttercupsclustered in the long grass that was bending under the growing wind. Sheep grazed in the commons of the grassland, the rolling hills stretching onward for miles, strangely quiet except for birdsong.
Ellen prayed for a glimpse of Dad’s thick gray hair, but he was nowhere in sight. “He should be here by now. What if we missed him, and he’s already made his way into town?”
Will halted his horse, and his squires did likewise. “Mayhap he is arriving later than you expected.”
Ellen went over the timing of their dad’s crossing that she and Marian had worked out. According to their calculations, he would have arrived in the afternoon. Although she didn’t have a watch or phone to check the time, the growling of her stomach indicated the nearing of the supper hour.
She thought back to her arrival into the past, to the elapse of time. From when she’d swallowed the holy water until she’d awoken, an entire night had passed. Was it possible they were ahead of themselves, that Dad wouldn’t be traveling the Dover Road on his way to Canterbury until tomorrow? That he was currently lying somewhere still unconscious?
“I think we need to begin searching the fields and glens to the west.” She nudged her horse off the road.
Will issued orders to his squires and followed reluctantly, clearly ready to head home and check on the preparations his men were making to defend Chesterfield Park. Ellen sensed under any other circumstance, he wouldn’t have agreed to leave his home, not with the tension with Lord Worth. But Ellen was quickly learning Will would do anything for Marian, including this dangerous—perhaps even futile—attempt to find their dad.
She tried to picture the area as it was in modern times. Where exactly would the hospital stand? The grassy hills revealed nothing of what would come hundreds of years later. Without anylandmarks to guide the way, she felt more helpless with each deserted rise they crested and each empty copse they searched.
Will finally reined in his horse at the edge of an area of shrubs they’d just searched. He glanced overhead, his expression grim. “Night will fall erelong. I regret we must be on our way.”
Ellen nodded and suppressed a shudder. Although twilight was settling around them, she didn’t want to return to Marian without their dad. A glance at Will’s frustrated expression told her he didn’t want to disappoint Marian either.
With stiff fingers and chattering teeth, Ellen started to turn her horse. As she spun, a spot of white among a tangle of brush caught her eye. It wasn’t the soft white of clover or hemlock. Rather it was thicker, almost gray. Was it the fur of a hare tangled in a bramble?
She urged her horse closer and then gasped. The grayish-white was attached to a head, a human head.
“Will!” she called over her shoulder. “I think I found him.”
Will trailed after her. Within seconds he was dismounting and prying apart branches, one of his squires assisting him. Ellen couldn’t move. She was too cold and sore. But she held her breath in anticipation.
