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“Oh, you’re alive!” she gasped.
To her dismay, he appeared both surprised and puzzled. “Yes, yes, I am. I believe. It is cold, so I must assume this feeling means alive.” He offered her a rueful and very puzzled grimace. “Excuse me, but… who are you, and where are we?”
She frowned. She didn’t much mind the who are you part of the question, but the where are we was more than a bit disturbing.
“My name is Melody Tarleton. We’re in the middle of the road, heading toward Gloucester. You ran out in front of me. I struck you with my car.”
“Your car?” he said, truly puzzled.
She pointed. He tried to rise, staring at the car—gaping at the car, actually. Inwardly, she groaned. What? Was he taking this reenactor thing far too seriously?
“Yeah, yeah, my car. I hit you. I’m responsible, I’m so sorry, except you did run right out into the road. And that’s insane, you know. Totally insane. What, are you crazy? There’s black ice all over, with the temperature going up and down all the time.”
He stared at her, still frowning, blinking furiously. He looked her up and down, noting her sleek wool coat with its fur-lined hood—now completely soaked and covered in melting flurries. He looked at her face, and then around him. Of course, other than her car against the snowbank, there was nothing to see but snow-covered trees.
“Please,” he said with quiet dignity, “I don’t understand. I swear to you that I have never seen such a conveyance. Or anyone that looks quite like you.”
Anyone that looks like me? He had to be kidding. She studied him in return. His face was lean, well sculpted, and yet, in a way, he actually resembled Mark.
But he wasn’t Mark, and she knew Mark had no family. He was just a very strange stranger she had just hit on the road.
“Look, did I break any of your bones?” she demanded.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
So what the hell was she supposed to do now? He had to be bruised and in pain. She couldn’t leave him on the snow-laden, icy road.
Mark would have told her to get in the car as quickly as possible. He might have picked the guy up, but only to drop him at the nearest police station. If he’d been with her, he’d never let her try to help the man. He’d be instantly convinced the guy was a serial killer.
Mark wasn’t with her.
And she made her own choices. And that, to her, was important. She wasn’t against accepting advice, but as far as her life went, she had to make her own choices.
So here, she had a choice.
What to do?
He didn’t look like a serial killer. Then again, was there an actual look? Was there a stereotype, were they blond like Swedes, dark and romantic like Italians or Spaniards. Did they dress up in colonial costume?
“Let’s get out of the snow,” she said. She started walking. He followed her.
“You have no horses,” he said.
“It’s a car,” she said. “It has an engine, a battery… pistons. I don’t know, I’m not a mechanic, I have the oil checked and leave it with the Ford people.”
“The Ford people?” he asked.
She gritted her teeth. “Stop it! Enough. You look great. I don’t own or manage any of the historical museums around here. You don’t need to keep up the act.”
He stopped short, looking at her with indignation again. He stood very straight, and he was handsome and imposing, like a hero out of an adventure book. “My dear young woman, I assure you, I am not performing in any manner. I don’t know where I am, nor do I understand this fascinating mode of transportation you refer to as a car. I…” His voice trailed off. He staggered forward, his knees buckling. She caught him, and he regained some of his strength, coming back to a full stand, but still leaning upon her. “I’m so sorry,” he said.
If he was acting, his work was worthy of an Academy Award. Melody was afraid she had managed to give him a good clip to the head with the front bumper, and that he was suffering some kind of dementia because of it.
“Let’s get to the car, and hope that I can get us out of this snowbank. My cell phone isn’t working.”
“Your cell phone?“ he said.
“Oh, God!” she groaned. “Never mind. Let me just get you home.”
She managed to get him to the car, she climbed in across the passenger seat.
He jumped as she revved the engine.
“It’s all right, that’s the engine,” she said. “Please, just get in, and fasten your seat belt.” Before he could ask, she added, “The harness, right here. It saves lives, trust me.”
He got in and, with her assistance, put on the seat belt.
She forced herself to move slowly, patiently, and she managed to back out of the snowbank. Cautiously, she began to drive on the road again.
“Unbelievable!” he murmured.
She shook her head. “Okay, you don’t know where you are. But where were you before I hit you?”
He stared at her. His handsome features knit in thought, and then confusion.
“New York,” he told her. “I was standing on the gallows, a rope around my neck.”
Great! He was crazy. He was a homeless lunatic.
Either that, or he’d somehow hit his head really hard when she’d struck him.
She narrowed her eyes, staring very carefully at the road, wondering if she hadn’t completely lost her mind. She had picked up a madman.
“I don’t want to know what part you were playing,” she said, trying to keep her tone even. “I need to know who you really are, and what you really do.”
“Well, in actuality, I write,” he said.
“Great. Very good. Who do you write for? Were you involved in a publicity stunt?” she inquired. Talking to him was like pulling teeth.
“A publicity stunt?” he inquired, confused. He had been staring out the window, perplexed. He turned and stared at her instead, handsome features furrowed.
She shook her head. “A publicity stunt. Something to draw the attention of the media. Something to get your name in the papers.”
“My name is in the papers,” he said.
“Okay. Good start. What is your name?”
“Jake Mallory,” he said.
She shook her head. “I’ve never heard of you.”
“No?” He looked resigned and a little saddened. “I’ve written for the Boston papers and the New York City papers.”
“And I read the papers. I’ve never heard of you. So, what do you write?”
“Treason—according to the British. Well, actually, I haven’t written in quite some time. I wound up being a soldier. I went to war, but I was being hanged for treason.”
“What war?” she asked sharply.
“You should have read a few of my pieces. Some were considered brilliant. Rousing. I’m not a warmonger, not at all. But the colonies couldn’t be used like a Royal Exchequer forever. If we’re to pay taxes, then representation must be absolutely fair. I tried to explain what was happening to us, and why it’s so important that we part ways with Great Britain. I wrote about a central government, and about the rights of each colony. Even General George Washington read what I was writing.”
Lunatic.
“Okay,” she said calmly. “So—you were a soldier in the Revolutionary War. Right before I found you on the road?”
“Right before you struck me down,” he reminded her.
So that was it. In a sneaking and conniving way, he was going to bleed her for what she had done to him.
“Right before I struck you down, yes. You were a soldier. In the Revolutionary War? ”
His eyes hadn’t wavered from her face. She was making a point of keeping them on the road now, but her peripheral vision allowed her to be keenly aware of his steady assessment.
“Yes. Where am I?”
“Gloucester, Massachusetts,” she snapped. “Almost at my house. But I can take a detour to the police station or the mental hospital.”
“I’m very sorry. Truly. I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said.
“Fine. We’ll start over. What were you doing in the twenty-first century?” she demanded.
“The twenty-first?” he asked her.
She let out a long sigh. “Yes, the twenty-first.”
“Who won?” he asked.
She was startled by the sudden intensity in him; she didn’t just hear it in his voice, but felt it in the constriction of his body as he leaned closer to her.
“Who won?” he demanded again. He was even closer. Practically breathing down her neck.
Lunatic. Serial killer. A madman–serial killer. She needed to humor him.
“The United States of America. And the federal forces won the Civil War, too.”
He hunched back into the passenger’s seat. “Thank God. Civil War?”
“The American Civil War, or the War Between the States, or, as it was referred to in the South, the War of Northern Aggression. We are one country.”
He stared out the window at the white world beyond the car. “How sad, how excruciatingly sad. We won the Revolution, and fought a civil war.”
“All war is sad.”
“And there is a war now?” he asked sharply.
She hazarded a glance at him. “The War on Terror,” she said. “Oh, there have been lots of wars. Before the Civil War, the War of 1812—those pesky Brits again, though we’re just like this now.” She crossed her fingers for him with her right hand, keeping the left firmly on the wheel. “Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and all kinds of actions. Actually, I don’t think there has been a time when some part of the world hasn’t been involved in an action of some kind.”
“Amazing,” he said.
“Right. War is amazing.”
“Man’s inability to refrain from it is amazing,” he said softly.
She couldn’t hate him. Okay, so he was seriously more than just daft. There was a dignity to the tone of his voice, and a certain sincerity in too many of his words. Maybe she had hit him on the head, and he believed everything that he was saying to her.
“And it’s…Christmastide?” he asked.
“Nearly. At the end of the week.”
He nodded. “Rose petals.”
“What?”
He half smiled, glancing over at her. “Do you believe in magic? ”
“No.”
“Neither did I.”
“Look, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. But… I don’t want to have to take you to the police. You may be hurt. But my mom was a nurse. She retired recently but she can take a look at you. I mean, seriously, if I have injured you, I’d want to pay the bills. But…wow, I don’t know. You should really go to a hospital—”
“Please, no. I’m not injured.”
She should dump him by the side of the road then.
It occurred to her that while Mark would order her to do that kind of thing, her brother would never consider such an action.
Where did she stand herself?
“So, I’m going to take you home with me. I don’t know who you are, if you’re crazy, or whether you sustained a blow to the head. I’m going to have faith that you’re not a dangerous maniac.”
“I’m not a dangerous maniac, I swear.”
“God help me, I’m going to believe you. But there are a couple of things you’re going to have to get straight first,” she said firmly.
“Honestly, I’m just trying to get home,” he assured her.
“So where is home?”
