“So we lose the war,” he said.

  “Horribly so. The south is devastated. For years. Centuries maybe. They never really catch up to the north.”

  He was looking at me with such obvious horror, I knew I’d probably told him too much.

  “Alright then,” he said, his expression blank now. Perhaps I was merely imagining the horror. Maybe I had projected it onto him.

  “It’s good to know that the south didn’t give up too easily,” he said. “Already, the north has more resources.”

  “I don’t think I should tell you anything else about the future,” I said, changing my mind. “Please forget I said anything.”

  He looked at me sideways.

  “I can’t decide whether you’re crazy or not.”

  Alarm bells went off in my head. It had to be the professor in me wanting to share knowledge. To educate. But my need to share knowledge may have just backfired on me in the worst possible way.

  “Please don’t tell anyone what I’ve told you.” I said. “I don’t want to be burned at the stake.”

  “We don’t do that anymore,” he said, turning back toward the house and taking me with him.

  I clamped my mouth shut. I needed to go into counseling mode and get out of professor mode.

  Either way, it was time to keep my mouth shut.

  And do what I did best.

  Just listen.

  CHAPTER 10

  ERIC

  Ivy Lafleur was crazy.

  But that didn’t take away from her beauty. If anything, it made her more beautiful simply because she was like no one I’d ever met.

  I kept a firm grip on her hand tucked in the crook of my arm as we neared the house. Lightning flashed off to our left, a harbinger of more stormy weather to come.

  Thunder crashed, and, I swear, it sounded like it was coming from the other direction. But sometimes that happened. It was like a trick of the light, except with sound.

  The light had returned, but only for a few minutes and now darkness was settling in again. This time the darkness of the storm would be mixing with the dark of night.

  We were several yards from the front of the house when Cooper, riding his horse like a bandit, and leading Midnight behind, rode from the narrow grove of trees we’d been camping in.

  I stopped, keeping my hand firmly on Ivy’s and shifted so that she stood behind me, out of Cooper’s direct sight.

  “What are you doing, Private?” I asked, as he slid to a stop a few feet from me.

  “We have to go,” Cooper said.

  Just then, I caught sight of a regiment of Confederate soldiers riding toward the front of the house. Unlike me and Cooper, they made no effort to hide their presence. They rode boldly toward the front of the house, beneath the canopy of oak trees that lined the drive.

  Cooper saw them, too.

  “Damn,” Cooper said.

  “What are they doing here?” I asked.

  We’d been ordered to investigate the Becquerels quietly and surreptitiously. Granted, I hadn’t done the best job at that, but still… I hadn’t been careless.

  The thunder rumbled off behind us again.

  “The storm’s coming back at us,” I said, before he could answer.

  Cooper spat a stream of tobacco.

  “That’s not thunder,” he said. “The Yankees are coming.”

  “What the devil?” I took a step forward and put a hand over my eyes in an attempt to see the soldiers better. “What are they doing here?”

  “They’re warning everybody,” he said. “Telling them to get out.”

  The thunder crashed again and I knew Cooper was right. It wasn’t thunder. It was cannon fire.

  The Yankees were indeed coming and they were destroying everything in their path.

  “Where are they headed?” I asked.

  “According to them,” Cooper nodded toward the soldiers who were now stopped at the front of the house. “they’re headed toward Vicksburg.”

  “Vicksburg.” So they were really gonna do it. The Yankees had been aiming for Vicksburg to cut off the south’s supplies.

  Ivy pressed her hand against my arm.

  “He’s right,” she said. “The Yankees capture Vicksburg.”

  Cooper looked past me, seeming to notice Ivy for the first time.

  “This the girl from the boat?” he asked.

  I didn’t even have time to worry about how he knew this.

  “Yes,” I said, pulling Ivy toward Midnight.

  She didn’t resist until she realized what I was doing.

  “We have to get out of here,” I said, turning back to her.

  “But I can’t,” she said. “I have to get back to—.” She stopped with a glance toward Cooper. “home.”

  I grabbed her other hand and held both of them as I looked into her eyes.

  “You can’t get home if you’re dead,” I said, firmly. “When they’re gone, I can bring you back here. But now is not the time to worry about anything except staying alive.”

  The last of the sunlight reflected off her green eyes. She didn’t say anything. She just looked at me as a handful of seconds passed.

  There was no way I was leaving her here.

  Not with the enemy coming this way.

  I was pretty sure she had no idea how to survive on her own no matter what time she was from.

  But then she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “You’re right.”

  To his credit, Cooper didn’t say a word as I helped her onto the horse and then climbed on behind her.

  “Let’s go,” I said, kicking the side of my horse.

  With Cooper leading the way, we took off in the opposite direction from the cannon fire.

  North. We traveled north.

  The Yankees were behind us, but Vicksburg was ahead of us.

  We were riding straight toward the Yankee’s destination.

  CHAPTER 11

  IVY

  We rode away from the house. Away from the river. Away from everything I knew.

  The sun set on the river, just like it always did. If the sky looked clearer than I’d ever seen it, I blamed my imagination.

  Or maybe it really was clearer. I was now in the days before pollution, after all.

  What sounded like an explosion of fireworks exploded behind us.

  I turned, trying to look back.

  “Don’t look,” Eric said.

  I wasn’t afraid. Not like I thought I should have been.

  I should have been deathly afraid.

  We were riding straight toward Vicksburg. And if I remembered my history correctly, Vicksburg was about to be under siege.

  I wanted nothing to do with that. It had been utter hell for those who lived through it.

  But the soldier riding behind me, one gloved hand firmly on the horse’s reins and the other firmly around my waist, had me feeling about as secure as a girl could feel in this situation.

  Lieutenant Eric Dumon.

  Somehow I’d landed right in the arms of a Confederate officer. If Andrea knew this, she’d have a blast with it. My sister would see this as a grand adventure.

  I closed my eyes and tried to put myself in her shoes. Tried to see it as she would. She’d probably be thinking about the article she was going to write about it.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  Then did it again.

  According to everything I taught my graduate students, this deep breathing stuff was supposed to work. I truly was beginning to think it was a whole lot of propaganda.

  Actually, it probably did help a whole lot of people.

  Maybe just not people who suddenly found themselves in the past with enemy soldiers firing cannons bearing down on them.

  As much as I didn’t want to leave the Becquerel Bed and Breakfast and the Mississippi River where I’d stepped off a boat into another time, I knew I couldn’t stay there.

  Not now.

  Not even if there was some kind of time portal there.

  In all the stories I’d heard about the girls who’d gone missing, I’d never heard anything about any of them coming home.

  As far as I knew, they all stayed missing.

  If I was going to stay missing, I had to stay alive.

  That was the main priority no matter what time I was in.

  It was possible that I was already dead, but I had to believe that I wasn’t.

  So since I wasn’t dead, I had to stay that way.

  And right now that seemed to require me doing as Lieutenant Eric Dumon said.

  It wasn’t like it was a hardship, riding along on a fast horse wrapped in the arms of a strong handsome man.

  I could most definitely think of worse ways to go missing.

  CHAPTER 12

  ERIC

  While the thunderstorm exploded in front of us, artillery fire exploded behind us.

  It was one thing for me and Private Cooper to be caught between a weather storm and an enemy fast approaching. It was another thing entirely to be caught with a young lady who was obviously in distress.

  Notwithstanding that I had seen the boat and the girl appear and then disappear, anyone who talked about traveling through time was obviously going through some type of distress.

  I tightened my hold on her waist.

  Whatever time she was from ultimately didn’t change my responsibility to her.

  She was a damsel in distress and as not only a gentleman, but also a soldier whose most important task was to protect women and children from the enemy, I would protect her with my life.

  As a man, I could admit that she made my job easy. The girl, Ivy, smelled like an intoxicating blend of fresh cucumbers and daffodils.

  Even having two sisters of my own who primped and pampered themselves with everything from French soaps to exotic perfumes, I had never smelled anything quite so tantalizing.

  I shifted my body on the horse so as not to reveal the effect she was having on me, but the movement did nothing to help my predicament.

  I’d had a thunderbolt of an attraction since the moment I’d seen her step off the boat. And I had seen her step off the boat, even if Cooper hadn’t.

  She’d stepped off a boat that didn’t appear to actually exist.

  A phantom boat that had dropped her off and went on its way.

  Although such mysteries were not unheard of, I had never personally been touched by anything like this. As such, I’d been able to keep a level of skepticism about the legends and stories I heard over the years.

  It was quite possible that I now had my own story to tell.

  And it was quite possible that for the first time in my life, I had now experienced that gut-wrenching attraction that could make a man do things he normally wouldn’t do.

  That love-at-first sight that brought men to their knees. That men fought wars over.

  Cooper rode up next to me.

  “We need to take shelter from the storm,” he said. “We’re riding right into it.”

  “I know.” I glanced around. These rolling hills covered in dense underbrush and limitless trees was so unfamiliar to me I may as well have been on the moon.

  Fortunately, Cooper had grown up somewhere around here. I wasn’t quite sure where, but he knew enough to make his way around and keep us on track.

  “If we go east a mile or so, we should find a cave to hide in.”

  Ivy shuddered beneath me. I felt the same way about burrowing into a cave.

  “Lead the way,” I said.

  We traveled about ten more yards before Cooper turned right into the trees going down a path only he could see. Or maybe there was no path. Just a general direction through the woods.

  A few drops of rain splashed on my sleeves. We weren’t going to make it to the cave before the rain hit. I pulled Ivy closer and bent forward to protect her from getting wet.

  With a shiver, she leaned back, tucking her head beneath my chin.

  So much for my feeble attempt to avoid getting too close to her.

  CHAPTER 13

  IVY

  A light rain misted over us as we left the road and rode off through the woods.

  The air was cooler and I shivered from the dampness as I leaned closer to Eric. Perhaps his hat could shield us both from the worst of the rain.

  I ducked as we rode beneath low hanging pine tree branches and blackberry brambles scratched against my bare calves, snagging at my cotton skirt.

  Eric followed the other soldier named Private Cooper. Cooper seemed to know the area better than Eric. I certainly hoped he knew where he was leading us because it looked like we were just headed out randomly through the woods.

  My thoughts shifted from worrying about things I couldn’t control to things here in the moment.

  Not that I could control them either, but it seemed more prudent to focus on the here and now.

  We were going to get wet from the rain, but that problem paled with enemy artillery fire steadily approaching behind us.

  Cooper was leading us toward a cave to take shelter in.

  Growing up in north Louisiana, I’d heard the stories. I knew that a lot of people had left Vicksburg during the Civil War and took shelter in caves from the falling mortars that were fired at them. So I knew that what Cooper was planning was in line with this time and place.

  I had to trust these men to do what was best.

  As the rain settled into a slow, steady fall, the artillery firing came to a halt.

  As uncomfortable as the rain was, it might be saving us from a worse fate.

  “Are you okay?” Eric asked as the horse picked its way along the uneven ground.

  “I don’t know,” I said, his words jarring me out of my scattered thoughts.

  “I’ll keep you safe.” His breath was warm against my forehead, his voice gentle.

  “I know,” I said, taking a deep breath.

  I knew that he meant that. That he believed it.

  That was one thing about being a psychologist. I was a good listener and I liked to think I had a good sense of the core of a person.

  And I was rarely wrong.

  My sense of Eric was that he was a good man. An honest man. And he was trustworthy.

  I wasn’t sure about Cooper yet. I hadn’t interacted with him enough.

  But Eric seemed to trust him, so Cooper gained some points that way.

  “Up ahead,” Cooper said. “There’s a cave.”

  One part of me was relieved that we would have shelter from the rain. Another part would prefer the rain to a cave. And another part of me didn’t want to leave Eric’s closeness.

  That part worried me a bit.

  Crushing on a guy from the 1860s was not a good idea.

  I hadn’t dated anyone since graduate school. Two years.

  Two years of not dating was an eternity. My sister, Andrea, never ceased to give me a hard time about it.

  She’d say it served me right to be here crushing on a man from the 1860s. Would say I should have used those dating apps she kept pushing at me.

  Thoughts of my sister brought tears to my eyes.

  I kept picturing her shocked expression as I stood in front of the Becquerel Plantation. She must have seen me disappear.

  Surely she’d heard the stories, too, of women disappearing around this area. We’d never talked about it.

  But she’d be distraught. She wouldn’t show it, but she would be.

  She’d look for me.

  She wouldn’t give up.

  Teardrops slipped from my eyes and mixed with the falling rain.

  Andrea would look for me, but she wouldn’t find me.

  CHAPTER 14

  ERIC

  The artillery fire behind us had stopped.

  I thanked the rain for that.

  But it was the same rain that was going to bring us to a halt.

  It was raining so hard now that I could barely see anything. My hat wasn’t doing good. Maybe just providing a different path for the rainwater to follow.

  Ivy shivered beneath my arms.

  She had to be cold. She’d already been soaked before we set off on this trek. It would be helpful if I could have at least gotten her something dry to wear.

  Of course, even if I had, she’d be soaked all over again.

  “The cave is right up ahead,” Cooper called over his shoulder.

  Midnight twitched his ears, maybe to shake off the rain. Or maybe in silent protest of the idea us of getting into a cave.

  It was dark now with just the faint remnants of the day lighting our way. I was not inclined to get into a cave, much less walk into one in the dark and sleep in it.

  A man had to have his limits.

  And curling up with snakes and bears was most definitely beyond my limit.

  And I wasn’t about to take Ivy in there.

  Cooper could go in and sleep there if he wanted to.

  The branches tore at my coat and pants. I tried to shield Ivy from as much of the brambles as I could, but I wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

  “Maybe we should just stop here,” I said.

  Cooper turned back in his saddle.

  “Too wet to build a fire,” he said.

  “Maybe you could have taken a minute to bring the tent,” I grumbled.

  If I’d stayed put, instead of going to the Becquerel house, we’d have our tent.

  But then I wouldn’t have Ivy.

  So I’d come out ahead, no matter how bad it seemed.

  One thing about it. We’d get out of this.

  I’d make sure of it.

  Cooper stopped and Midnight followed suit.

  “I think it’s up right here,” he said, dismounting and tossing me his reins.

  We waited while Cooper disappeared into the darkness.

  Ivy was shaking. I tightened my hold around her. We needed shelter and a fire.

  It was silent other than the patter of rain drops on tree limbs around us.

  Silent and dark.

  If I hadn’t felt Ivy’s breathing, I wouldn’t have known she was there.

 

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