“Where are you in truth, my own sweet Matt?” The man held a page up to the light. Shock passed over Matthew’s face before his lips curved into an affectionate smile. The tune he hummed was unfamiliar, punctuated now and again with words too low for me to hear. He was of average height, with a neat build and expensive, tailored clothes and tousled brown hair. In the next room, a man stood at a table littered with correspondence. Matthew lifted the book and me in one clean move. The tension left him when he recognized who was in the next room, where I could hear a faint rustling. His head turned slightly, and his nostrils flared.
I bent my head for a celebratory kiss, but the sound of an opening door stopped me. We had come to 1590 to school me in the lost arts of magic, yet there was so much more that I could learn here. Because I was a witch, I could actually visit it. Welcome to Elizabeth’s England.”įor the first time in my life, I was absolutely delighted to be a witch. “No,” he said with an answering smile, “you did beautifully. I didn’t mess it up or take us somewhere else, like Monticello or-” The gold-and-blue flames in a stand of candles flared in a sudden draft, illuminating the corner of a richly colored tapestry and the dark, glossy stitches that outlined a pattern of leaves and fruit on the pale counterpane. We’ll paint them all white at the first opportunity.” “The roses were obligatory when the house was built,” Matthew commented drily. Tipping my head back, I saw the ceiling-thickly plastered, coffered into squares, with a splashy red-andwhite Tudor rose picked out in gilt in each recess. The room’s walls had the same fine, linenfold paneling that I remembered from the few times I’d visited Matthew’s home in present-day Woodstock. Light spilled from it onto the coverlet and floor, forming a misshapen golden rectangle. Through the carved uprights supporting the bed’s canopy, I spied a doorway that connected this chamber to another room. A substantial bed, a small table, narrow benches, and a single chair came into focus. Even in 1590 the Old Lodge was familiar to him. “Relieved to be home.” Matthew’s head fell back on the wooden floorboards with a gentle thunk, releasing more of the summery aroma from the rushes and lavender scattered there. What about you?” I kept my attention fixed on Matthew rather than daring a look around. I hadn’t felt anything like it after our brief timewalking sessions at my aunts’ house. “Are you all right?”Īfter journeying so far into Matthew’s past, my body felt as though it might come apart with a puff of wind. Matthew’s hands traveled from neck to shoulders. Eyes the color of a stormy sea looked into mine from a face so pale it could only belong to a vampire. “Open your eyes, Diana, and see for yourself.” A feather-light touch of cool lips brushed my cheek, followed by a soft chuckle. There was a tang of wood smoke, too, and I heard the crackle of a fire.
Among them was something grassy and sweet, along with a waxen smell that reminded me of summer. Even so, the unfamiliar scents told me I was not in my own time or place.
“Are we in the right place?” My eyes were screwed shut in case we were still in Sarah’s hop barn in twenty-first-century New York, and not in sixteenth-century Oxfordshire. A large book was squashed between us, and the force of our landing sent the small silver figurine clutched in my hand sailing across the floor. Matthew was underneath me, his long limbs bent into an uncharacteristically awkward position. We arrived in an undignified heap of witch and vampire.
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