Bitter Oath (New Atlantis) Read online

  How could a man smell so good? Men of her own time, who bathed rarely, always smelled dank, like mouldy cloth left too long undried. And they would cover their odour with heavy fragrances that were cloying to the senses. Rene smelled nothing like that. His had a clean smell, like washing fresh off the line. It reminded her of sunshine and something distinctly male – exotic and mysterious, like spices from the orient.

  Liv turned her head to sniff at her own skin. It smelled a little dank. It was not as clean and sweet smelling as Rene’s. And her hair needed washing. Usually that task was an onerous one, and she put it off as long as possible.

  But what would it feel like to wash her body in the ‘shower’? To stand naked under the pouring water, allowing it to wash her clean. She felt the slow burn of embarrassment spread up her neck and into her cheeks. This was not home. This was a different place entirely. Here, there was freedom like she had never known. Here, she could be whoever she wanted to be, do whatever she wanted to do, with no repercussions.

  Who but she would know that she had stood naked in a box made of clear glass and let warm water soak her entirely? Who but she would know that she had rubbed the hyacinth smelling liquid over her hair and body and then rinsed it away? No one.

  She threw back the sheet, and stepped down from the huge, comfortable bed, feeling anew the silky give of the rug beneath her bare feet. Everything about this world was a sensual delight. It was a hedonist’s paradise.

  With a self-conscious giggle, she let the tunic drop from her body, removed the clinging ‘shorts’, and raced for the bathroom, naked as the day she was born. Feeling delightfully wicked; she caught a scandalous glimpse of her body as she traversed the tiles and entered the cubicle. Then, she pressed the button for the waterfall, and was instantly inundated with the heavy weight of gallons of falling water. Gasping, she moved back out of the flow so she could breathe. Too late, she realised she hadn’t closed the shower door, and there was now water pooling all over the tiles.

  She reached out to close the door, then pressed the ‘button’ for the sweet smelling liquid. She rubbed the cream over her skin, watching in delight as it bubbled up like an expensive bar of soap. More confident now, she trickled more of the liquid into her hair, and began to rub it into her long locks. It stung her eyes not at all.

  After her hair was clean and squeaky, she started to soap down every inch of her body, including the forbidden place between her legs. It felt so delightful she groaned. Feeling guilty for her decadent behaviour, she hastily rinsed and pressed the off button. The waterfall stopped instantly.

  Opening the shower door, Liv stepped out and felt her foot slide on the wet tiles. Scrambling for purchase, she toppled forward and then back, hitting her head on the door and then on the wet tiles on the floor. As the pain gave way to darkness, she wondered if this was the end of her dream. Would she wake, at the end of Rene’s bed at Foxmoor Manor, to find everything had been just an illusion?

  Rene had knocked on her bedroom door loudly for several minutes. Even the heaviest sleeper couldn’t stay unconscious with that din. Fear that was never far from the surface had him reaching for the door handle, forgetting decorum. If Jane had still been in the house, he would have sent her in. But his young friend had been up at the crack of dawn, and out for her morning run. He didn’t know when she’d be back.

  He opened the door slowly, ready to shut it if he caught her in a compromising position. But there was no virginal shriek, so he opened the door fully, and walked inside.

  She was not in the bed. But her old clothes were neatly folded on the covered side of the bed, and her sleep tunic and shorts were strewn across the unmade portion.

  Where would she have gone?

  The bathroom?

  He went to the door and listened. No water running. He knocked, but got no response. Again he opened the door slowly, expecting a cry at any moment. But again there was silence. He looked in, and at first saw nothing but mirror, white tiles, and the last of the steam from the shower. Then his gaze dropped to the floor, and he saw her, lying like a broken marionette puppet, in a puddle of water.

  Fear spiked. He was tearing the door the rest of the way open, and was down at her side in seconds. His arm snaked out, so his fingers could rest on her carotid artery, feeling for a pulse. It was there, strong and slow.

  Not dead. Not this time. But next time, a fall would kill her.

  A cry of anguish echoed off the tiled walls. He registered it, but took a moment to realise it was he who had made the sound.

  Scooping her slack body up in his arms gently, he returned her to her bed. Then he began to check her for breaks or contusions. There was no blood, he was grateful to discover, but there was a sizeable egg on the back of her head, and darkening bruises on her shoulder and base of her spine.

  Should he call the medics? She might have suffered head trauma. As he considered his options, Liv gave a little groan, and opened her fawn-like eyes. For a moment they saw nothing, and then they focused in on him.

  ‘Rene, am I home?’ she asked weakly.

  ‘You fell in the shower, Chere. You hit your head. Does it hurt? How many fingers am I holding up?’ He held up two fingers, remembering a little of the first-aid download he hadn’t accessed since his return from his last lifetime. Blurred or double vision after a fall could indicate a concussion.

  ‘Two. My head hurts and I feel poorly. Ouch!’ She whimpered as she shifted her shoulders on the bed.

  ‘Keep still. You’ve sustained some bruising. I do not think you have broken anything, though.’

  Ignoring his suggestion, Liv tried to sit up, holding her head. He knew the moment she realised she was naked. Her body went preternaturally still. Then she looked up, and met his gaze with her own.

  ‘My father would make you marry me if he caught us in such a compromising position,’ she whispered, but didn’t seem inclined to cover herself.

  ‘Your father wouldn’t need to make me, Chere. I would marry tomorrow, if I could.’ His voice had a breathless quality, and he felt the painful arousal return. It had been his constant companion all through the night, and though he had released the pressure several times, it took only another thought of her to make him hard again.

  Having her naked on this bed was almost too much to bear.

  ‘Why can’t you?’ she asked weakly, laying her head back on the bed again. ‘I would not say no.’

  ‘You remain unmarried.’ As soon as the words were out, he realised his mistake.

  ‘You… you know my future?’

  ‘Ah… yes. That is why I know you must go back. That you cannot stay with me here, though I want it more than life itself.’

  ‘Oh, that is a relief.’

  ‘Relief?’ He reached over, and drew a sheet up to cover her too tempting body. It was so perfect – slim in all the right places, and curved and lush in all the rest. Now that his fear for her safety had receded, thoughts of her delectable body were all he could entertain. What she said made no sense.

  ‘Last night I said I would like to play a part in your God-given mission. You said nothing, so I assumed you didn’t want me to stay here, and help you. I thought you must consider me just a stupid woman.’

  He groaned at the inadvertent hurt he had caused her. Leaning down he brushed his lips across her forehead, not confident in his own control to kiss her on the lips.

  ‘If I could have my way, I would marry you tomorrow, and keep you at my side for several lifetimes, at the very least. I would have you help me with my work, and you would make the kind of difference to the world here that you could not possibly make in your own time.

  ‘But the fates have decreed a different path for us both. And one thing we have learned, in our sojourn through time, is that history cannot be changed.’

  She reached up and stroked the side of his face. Her fingertips were cool and gentle.

  ‘Just because I do not marry in my own time does not mean I cannot marry here, does it?’
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  The thought was a revelation. Could he marry her here, in a way that was meaningful to her, and then return her to her own world, with no one the wiser? Of course he could. He even knew the man who could perform the marriage.

  Karl Brandenburg had been a minister of the Evangelical Church of Germany before the Last Great Plague. He had worked as a curator of theological materials until time travel meant that he could become a researcher of early Christianity in-situ. Although the Gaian Confederacy held no religious affiliations, it encouraged the acquisition of all knowledge from the past, for posterity.

  So, if anyone could marry them, Karl could. If he was still alive. He hadn’t seen him in an age, there paths never crossing since their Jump training some sixty five years ago, in this timeline. In his personal timeline, it would be more than six hundred years since he’d seen him.

  ‘If I could arrange it, would you marry me tomorrow?’ he asked slowly.

  Liv’s face, which had been as pale as a ghost’s only moments before, was suddenly bright red, and her eyes sparkled with unshed tears.

  ‘I would marry you today, if you could arrange it!’

  He laughed then, loudly, drawing her up into his arms for a hug so hard she winced in pain from her injuries. ‘Sorry, sorry… I forgot completely … I will call a medic to check you over. I think you are fine, but with head injuries you can never be too sure.’

  Before she could say anything to stop him, he was out the door and down the hall, racing to reach his Tablet and get a medic over to the villa. Then he would get a message to Karl. There was no call for marriage in New Atlantis, the informal Bonding which was similar to the ancient practice of Hand-fasting was the only form of marriage practised here. And except for those seeking to parent one of the children, few people Bonded. Without a biological necessity, sex was rare and could not result in offspring, so there was no societal purpose for such bonds.

  Why he felt the need for a true marriage so strongly was beyond him. But he had stopped second-guessing himself where Liv was concerned now. What he felt for her defied all his rational arguments. It did not match up to any experience from his exceptionally long past. Even the driving, sexual need was unlike his experiences in his Original body. Then it had been just another biological imperative, like eating and sleeping. He did it often; he enjoyed it often. And he thought nothing of it afterwards. Occasionally, a woman would please him as much as a good meal. But he wasn’t a hedonist. He didn’t live for pleasure. There were far more serious concerns for him.

  So the outrageous addiction he felt for this Regency Miss was beyond uncharacteristic. If he believed in magic, he would say she had spun a spell of entrancement around him. But she would never do a thing like that, even if it was possible. No, this was something natural, not supernatural. And all he could do was go with it.

  As he was connecting to the Medical Centre, Jane came in the front door, breathing heavily after her run. She must have overheard him as she passed, because she came back to stand silently in front of him, until he’d finished speaking to the medico on duty.

  ‘What’s happened?’ She then asked.

  ‘Liv fell over on the wet tiles in the bathroom. She hit her head and lost consciousness. A medico will be here momentarily.’

  Even before he had finished speaking, a curtain of showering lights appeared in the living room, and a medico stepped through it. He smiled a greeting as the portal closed.

  This was not a time portal, as the Jumpers traversed. This was the much simpler teleportation from one point in space to another. It was the principal method of travel over large distances in the new world. For shorter distances, such as around cities like New Atlantis, teleporting was largely the domain of medicos, for emergencies. No one else in the city needed to travel quickly, so they used the moving pathways instead.

  ‘She’s through here,’ he said to the Medico, and led the man down the hall to Liv’s room. While he watched the man take out his assessment equipment, he connected to his Tablet again, and asked for information on Karl Brandenburg. Immediately the man’s current address and access code appeared. He was working at the Knowledge Centre, collating the data he had collected on his last Jump.

  While Liv let the strange man poke and prod her, the sheet pulled up to her neck, Rene watched closely. The Medico’s Tablet burred quietly, as it recorded her stats. After a few minutes, the healer looked up and smiled at them all.

  ‘Nothing to worry about. No concussion. Just a pulled muscle in her calf and contusions. I will leave the salve for the contusions, and I’ll apply a pressure bandage for the calf. Both injuries should be fine in a day or two.’

  ‘Thanks, we appreciate it.’ Rene spoke from the heart. This diagnosis gave him peace of mind. This time she had escaped unscathed.

  This time.

  While Jane played nurse and applied the salve, Rene went back into the living room. He called up Karl and made the arrangements. Then he returned to the bedroom to check on his soon-to-be wife.

  ‘Jane, you are the first to know. Liv and I will be married tomorrow, in a Christian ceremony performed here on the patio at 8 am. The sun will be rising, and it will still be cool.’

  ‘Married! Oh, Frenchie you sure don’t do things by half measures do you? Oh my, I didn’t even know you could get married here. I am going to want one. I always wanted a white wedding. Can I be bridesmaid?’ She looked at Liv for the answer to this last question.

  ‘Of course, who else would I have? Is it truly happening?’ Liv asked him, with an excited smile.

  ‘It is truly happening. We will keep it small. Just a few of my colleagues, Cara and Jac, Chen…’

  ‘Maggie and Travis from next door. I was planning on taking Liv over there later to meet them, anyway.’ Jane was almost bouncing with excitement.

  ‘If we must… The patio is not large, you know.’

  ‘If everyone stands up, it will be fine. If we had to seat everyone, it might get a bit tight. Oh, this is juuuust the best thing to happen in ages!’

  ‘Liv does not need to be overwhelmed with strangers. She is still finding her feet here, remember.’

  ‘I am fine, Rene. Don’t fuss.’

  He was shocked to hear her address him as Jane would. If he wasn’t careful, Liv would become a women’s libber and then where would he be? The idea amused him. Women’s equality had never been an issue for him. He had never understood people who didn’t see women as equal, or even superior, to males. His Obejwe family had taught him that.

  He sat down on the bed, and drew Liv into his arms gently. With utmost tenderness he kissed her lips. ‘I wonder if marrying me will mean your name will be York like mine. How does that sound… Mrs Rene York?’

  ‘She could be Mrs Livianna North Yorkshire York,’ Jane suggested. Then she raised eyebrows in horror. ‘Maybe not.’

  Rene kissed his betrothed again, and laughed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Liv was given a crash course in Twenty Fourth Century living for the rest of the day. She watched as Rene used the little writing tablet to contact people, and to order in food. She watched as Jane selected suitable music and ‘visuals’ on the entertainment system.

  She limped down to the bottom of the hill with Rene, much against his advice, to collect the boxes of little packets of food that arrived on one of the moving pathways. In one of the boxes she discovered, not food, but a bridal veil, a floor length gown, and two bouquets of flowers. The larger of the two was a mix of white roses, yellow centred fuchsias, and angel’s breath. The bridesmaid’s bouquet was smaller, but more colourful, and made up of a selection of flowers Liv had never seen before.

  Jane was in a frenzy of activity, which Liv was happy to stay out of. The whole wedding seemed somewhat unreal – like a girlish dream come true. It would have been more real if her family had been present. But of course, that was impossible. The whole point of this was that her family would never know she had married. She would go to her grave as a spinster in their
eyes.

  The thought of returning to her world without Rene filled her with dread. How would she ever go on without him? Already he was becoming more essential to her than life itself. Everything about him filled her with wonder and awe. This ancient man, in a breath-takingly handsome body, who treated her as a beloved equal, and was dedicated to healing the ‘planet’, was hers. And if they didn’t have forever, as Jane and Julio had forever, they still had the moment, and they could pack a lifetime of memories into a few short months.

  No one said how long she would be staying. But it could not be more than a few years at the absolute limit. She could not go home looking much older than she left. Such an anomaly would be picked up by her very observant sisters. Especially Portia, who would have seen her only fifteen minutes earlier. How would she ever get her hair back as it had been?

  She ran her fingers through her clean, shining hair. It felt incredible, and smelled divine. Rene seemed to think so too, because he would stop whatever he was doing during the day, run his fingers through it, then lean down and breathe in the scent of it. How long would this devoted attention last? If they were anything like Jane and Julio, three years would not even tarnish the shine on their relationship.

  In the afternoon, Jane had taken her next door to meet Maggie and her ‘Bonded’, Travis. Maggie was an artist, and she had dreamed of the much younger Travis all her life. It wasn’t until the technicians had uncovered a replica of New Atlantis three hundred years in the past, and Maggie had been sent back to investigate, that she discovered that, while she had been dreaming of Travis, he had been dreaming of her. People said they had a ‘shared soul’, whatever that was.

  Her first sight of Travis was a shock. She had never seen a black man, except as a slave to some of the ton in London. And he was as black as polished ebony, and probably the most exquisitely handsome man she had ever seen. Every plane of his face and bald head was perfection. And his beautifully shaped lips were almost feminine. But his muscular body left no doubt that he was all male. It was quite a shock when he spoke. His deep, baritone voice was accented with a Scottish brogue.