Chapter Eight

M aggie's heart bled as she opened her eyes and found herself sprawled over the battlement wall. She was almost certain she was in the twenty-first century.

She discovered she was right when a handsome apparition appeared kneeling beside her.

"You've returned," he pointed out with a deep sigh and a concerned smile.

"Oliver," she breathed, gazing at him. "You're here." If he was here as a ghost that meant Eleanor still killed him. "He was…you were beginning to listen. I told you about Eleanor and you listened and let me out of the dungeon."

His expression darkened. "I put you in the dungeon?"

"Yes, but you came to me right away and let me out. Oliver," she said, rising to her feet, "I have to go back and stop her. I can do it."

"Magnolia, will you stop for a moment and tell me where you were? I searched everywhere I could go. It seemed as if you vanished."

"I went back again."

"Back to what?

"The past, Oliver. When you were alive. You were arriving home on a black horse and with a muscular oaf whom you let push women around."

He stared at her surprised by her words. "Roland," he said, remembering. "We were coming home…that was the day of my death. Magnolia, you truly went back. How is this happening?"

"How is any of this happening? How am I seeing and conversing with your spirit? Why not traveling back in time?" She let out a shallow laugh. "It's all unreal."

"Magnolia, I should go back with you. Perhaps I'm stuck here because there is still another me wandering around somewhere."

She shook her head. "Don't go back, Oliver," she pleaded. "If you are taken back to that night…seeing yourself like that…"

"I already touched the gauntlet to go search for you. l I even put my hand in it, but nothing happened."

"Oliver, why did you do that? What if it took you to that night?"

He shrugged a shoulder. "What if it brought me to you?"

She wanted to run to him, be caught up in his arms.

"Oliver, we were…both solid."

He stared at her and she was so thankful for his needful gaze. She told herself she could remain with him this way until her dying day. She didn't need anything more than his attention.

"Bring me back with you, Magnolia."

She nodded, thinking of a hundred reasons they shouldn't play around in the past. But this wasn't a game. She had to save him.

After a quick breakfast with her eating and him watching, they went to the library and stood before the gauntlet.

"What if it sends us to different places?" she said with worry making her voice quaver.

"I'll find you," he reassured her with a slight wink.

"I don't know how this thing works, Oliver."

"Since it didn't bring me back when I tried," he said, "I suspect we have to be connected, or touching."

He held out his hand. She looked at it, translucent in the library. She lifted her fingers to it. As they touched, Maggie closed her eyes, imagining his flesh, his heat, the roughness of his hand. But it didn't change the fact that there was nothing there. If the gauntlet were somehow only meant for her, it wouldn't work.

"Oliver," she said softly, "you have to come through me. Ready?"

Before he opened his mouth to answer, she stepped forward, straight into him with one hand resting on the ancient glove.

Maggie wasn't aware of how much time passed as she was transported through it. She was only aware of the intruding spirit filling her as it had once before. But now, his presence was comforting. His scents of the briny sea, leather, and chainmail went straight to her head and made her smile. Every part of him mixed with her and made her cling to him, vowing to never let go. But too soon she landed on her rump on that battlement. Separating from him was the most difficult thing she'd ever had to do. It made her realize that she was wrong to think she would be satisfied without touch. No. She knew she wanted to be consumed in his arms.

When he left her, she wanted to cry out to have him back.

"Magnolia, did it work?"

She looked at him and was overwhelmed for a moment with the need to cry. "You're still a ghost."

"Is it still two thousand and twenty-four?"

"I don't know," she answered, rising from her rump.

It was evening. The sound of musical instruments drifted up and blended with the sound of the crashing waves below.

She caught Oliver moving out of the corner of her eye. He was going toward the archway and the doors that led to the inside of the fortress.

She called out to him.

"I know what night this is, Magnolia."

Her heart sank. "We have to stay together!"

She heard a sound from the exit in the southern wall. A woman's voice.

"Quickly, Henry. I am not certain how long the effects of the wine will last."

"He's not a small man, Eleanor. If the elixir wears off and he awakens I'll just put my blade to his neck and kill him quickly."

Eleanor! Maggie hurried and hid around the corner. Out of sight, she peeked around the bend to see a man hauling another, unconscious man over his shoulder.

"No!" Eleanor admonished him. "I told you I want him to begin to wake up and know he's about to die."

Maggie fought to keep from being sick. It was Oliver! They drugged him! Now it would be even easier to throw him over the side. Fighting Eleanor was one thing, but how would she get Henry away from Oliver?

She was about to look for Oliver the spirit when she saw him. Her heart sank at what he was seeing—his wife and her apparent lover fitting his heavy gauntlets over his limp hands.

But he didn't look crushed. He didn't appear angry. He wore no expression, which made his pale face even more chilling. And then he moved in a rush of speed at Eleanor and stopped just before he went through her. His wife continued to rifle through the sack at her side for his chainmail. Eleanor couldn't see him.

Yet.

With centuries of fiery hatred burning in him, he shot out his hand and struck her in the forehead with a curse on his lips.

Eleanor's gaze went to him and though he looked the same in Maggie's eyes, Eleanor was seeing something entirely different. She screamed in horror and fear and began to flail wildly. Though she was nowhere near the edge of the wall, she looked behind her as if she saw the sea below, waiting to devour her. The first time she screamed, Henry dropped Oliver and hurried to her. To his credit, he held on to her despite her fingernails tearing through him as she tried to hold on.

Finally, she fainted.

"That was better than anything I had imagined in my head all these years."

Maggie turned to see her ghost crouching beside her. She smiled. "Was it?"

"I always thought of killing her, never of letting her live with understanding of what she tried to do to me."

"She looked terrified."

"Good."

"Henry's scrambling," she noted. "Go scare him while I rescue you."

For a lingering instant before he left, he stared into her eyes. "Magnolia, you made me want to live again." He put his fingers up to her cheek, but then tightened his jaw and lowered them again when his fingertips went through her. "Even if I can never touch you, restore my home and stay there with me as long as you want."

She smiled at him through wide, glassy eyes and watched him disappear. She looked toward Henry and saw Oliver close to him. In a second, Henry wouldn't care about her. She ran forward, keeping her gaze on the live Oliver's body.

Reaching him, she grabbed his shoulders and shook him. "Oliver! Oliver! Wake up!"

"What's this?" Instead of being scared witless by Oliver's ghost, Henry took hold of her and flung her out of his way when he reached for the unconscious earl. "I know you frightened her," Henry growled out at Oliver. "Just like you're trying to do to me now. I'll quiet you!" He pulled Oliver up and bent him over the wall.

"No!" Maggie screamed and drawing strength from panic, she rammed him in the side.

Without wasting a single instant, she rushed to Oliver's body and began to pull him up. His eyes fluttered open and when they did, they settled immediately on her. When he became aware of where they were, he lifted his gauntleted hands to her arms. But Henry wasn't finished and he tried to haul them both over the side.

Maggie had a flashing thought that looking into Oliver's eyes seconds before she died wouldn't be so bad. But his eyes were closing again, still not completely recovered from whatever drug he'd been given.

She heard a man call out. It wasn't ghostly Oliver. He hurried to them and beat Henry over the head with something that sounded nauseating in Maggie's ears.

Henry fell away and left his victims dangling high above the sea. Maggie wouldn't let go until they were pulled back and her feet were set firmly on the ground.

"My lady, you saved him," Appleton, Oliver's guard, pointed out with a wide grin.

Maggie returned his smile, so thankful he remembered and protected his lord. "If not for you, sir, we would both be dead."

She looked at Oliver in her arms. "He needs a doctor." She helped Appleton get him to his room inside the fortress and didn't leave his side for three days.