...Romance Author...

Whispers in Time ...

Whispers in Time

Chapter One

(re-write)

Denver, Colorado USA
May 2, 2006

My Dearest Gabriella,

You may find it strange and unsettling to be the recipient of a letter from someone long deceased, but your existence has been known to us for the greater part of our lives. You are about to embark on a remarkable journey through time. A journey foretold to me, as well as my three greatest and dearest friends, in a shared vision.

You see, we found a most intriguing artifact called “The Stone of Ages” amongst some old ruins. Its mystical qualities enabled the four of us to see into the future, and be forewarned of your coming. In our vision, we saw you dressed in black, and crying. Your sorrow was deeply felt by us all.

We were told who you were, and that you would be coming to us. You are the great-great-great-granddaughter of our dear departed friend, Lillian, who tragically died in childbirth. The four of us have sworn an oath to give aid to any of our own. We are not certain of the reason for this most amazing occurrence, only that you would need our help.

Within the bundle you will find a cloak, some currency, a letter of introduction, and most importantly, the Stone. You must wrap yourself in the cloak so as to conceal your identity from curious onlookers. Since we have no idea where you might end up when you arrive, I’ve included monies with which to hire a hackney coach to transport you to my London residence. Present the letter of introduction at the door, and you will be received with no questions asked.

Do not be afraid my darling, Gabriella, for we are all here for you. If there is anything of our dear, sweet friend in you, you will possess a courageous and adventurous spirit.

Lady Claire St. Tremaine
Dowager Countess of Arrowood
April, 20 1826

Gabriella Delacruz gaped at the piece of heavy parchment she held in her trembling hand. “This has got to be some kind of joke!” she exclaimed out loud.

She examined the letter, absently flipping it over to look at the back. It was blank – not that she expected to find any answers there. Sinking to the plush, carpeted floor, onto her rump, she rubbed her thumb slowly across the paper. She contemplated the words written there, again feeling its texture. It was a thick, heavy paper, almost like cloth, and aged from the years that had passed since the era it had been written in. Who was this friend of her great-great-whatever grandmother – Lady Claire?

Time travel? “Get real!” she said, again out loud to no one in particular, her words echoing in the empty room. She was doing it again. She was talking to herself. But who cares? There was no one around to hear her anyway.

That nagging, logical part of her brain was telling her there was no way any of this could be true. However, her inner child’s voice yearned for something more than what she was left with, now that she had no one. She stood and paced back and forth in the room, her bare toes squishing into the soft carpet.

She was thinking.

She was actually considering trying this crazy idea.

What if it didn’t work?

What if it did?

The possibility of traveling into the past made her heart thump and her palms sweat. What was she so nervous about? This couldn’t possibly work!

After the funeral, Gabriella had come to stand in the middle of this room – her grandmother’s room. Everyone who’d gathered at the house had finally gone, leaving it vacant and eerily silent, the echoes of somberly spoken condolences still thrumming in her ears. Her beloved grandmother was dead, and yet her essence filled this space, leaving behind a permanent imprint on every inch of every room, and in the smallest nooks and crannies.

Gabriella had moved to stand before the trunk at the foot of the bed, removed her black high heels, and sank to the floor onto her knees. As she lovingly ran her hand across the smooth wood, more memories of her grandmother had filled her mind. They’d spent so many hours together going through the things in this trunk when she was a little girl.

When she’d lifted the lid, things were not as she remembered them.

Inside was an envelope with her name on it, lying atop a large, paper-wrapped bundle tied with a string. With trembling fingers, she’d reached for the envelope, which had been sealed with a blob of hardened red wax. She cracked open the seal. The envelope, as well as the letter within, was of a heavy parchment, yellowed with age. The words on the page were written in a beautiful, flowing script.

Gabriella tried to remember everything she’d ever heard about her relatives and ancestors. Had her mother or grandmother ever mentioned Lillian? She vaguely remembered Grandma Sophia saying something about her own father. She’d said that he had come to America from England as a young man. That would make him Gabriella’s great-grandfather. So…this Lillian would be her grandfather’s mother’s mother?

She could go crazy trying to figure all that out!

How did this package come into her grandmother’s possession? She supposed it had been passed down through the generations. Sophia Harper was Gabriella’s mother’s mother. Gabriella’s mother, Lorraine, had married Jimmy Delacruz, a tall, handsome Mexican-American from Texas. Gabriella had inherited her mother’s striking green eyes, but her honeyed complexion came from her Latina father, her skin tone a lighter blend of her mother’s English ancestry and her father’s Hispanic heritage.

Both her parents had died when Gabriella was thirteen. They’d been on their way to Las Vegas, passengers in a private plane owned by friends of theirs, when the plane crashed, killing everyone on board. Gabriella had then gone to live with her Grandma Sophia.

Gabriella felt a prickle of excitement at the prospect of going back in time. She would be able to see first hand what it was really like, not just what she’d read in books. Not that she was a history expert, or anything, but the subject had always interested her.

She looked at the bed, covered by her grandmother’s favorite hand-stitched quilt, her gaze shifting to the nightstand where a pair of reading glasses rested in the same spot as they always did. Underneath them lay a book, the place marked, as though her grandmother would return at any moment to finish it.

Tears welled in her eyes, spilling over to roll down her cheeks. How she missed her already! How could she go on without her? For so long, Grandma Sophia had been the constant in Gabriella’s life when everyone else had left her. She’d been the one person Gabriella had always been able to count on to be there. Grandma Sophia’s loving presence had helped her through the grief of losing both her parents, and then five years ago when her fiancé, Gregory, was killed in a car accident.

Catching a faint hint of her grandmother’s favorite perfume, Gabriella closed her eyes and breathed deep, wrapping her arms around herself. Fourteen years’ worth of memories floated in her mind in disjointed pieces, in no particular chronological order.

She’d sat on that bed hundreds of times, her fingers tracing the intricate design on the quilt while they talked. Her grandmother would always listen with quiet patience, wisely allowing Gabriella to work out her problems until she eventually found her own solution.

Gabriella sighed deeply and opened her eyes, blinking them into focus. Suddenly, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up, the distinct feeling that she was being watched impossible to ignore. She scanned the room, expecting to actually see someone standing there, but there was no one. She could have sworn there was a presence in the room with her. Then the strange sensation evaporated as quickly as it appeared. She shrugged and rolled her shoulders in an attempt to shake off the odd premonition.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out, I suppose,” Gabriella said to the empty room. She reached into the trunk, and pulled out the bundle. Tucking it under her arm, she went to the nightstand, retrieving a pair of scissors from the drawer. Laying the bundle on the bed, Gabriella cut the strings, and pulled the edges apart, smoothing the wrinkled paper flat against the soft quilt.

She stared at the neatly folded square of fabric that was revealed. It was dark blue in color, almost black. Probably wool, she thought. She touched it, expecting the texture to be rough and picky, but was surprised at how soft it actually felt. She picked it up by the edges, raising her arms to accommodate the length as it unfolded. It was obviously the cloak mentioned in the letter. The thing would conceal her from top to bottom, with a roomy hood to cover her head.

A red velvet sack containing a solid object thumped heavily to the floor. There was another envelope lying next to it. Both items must have been hidden in the folds of the cloak.

Gabriella picked up the envelope, cracked open the wax seal, and pulled out another sheet of thick parchment. It was the letter of introduction Lady Claire had written about. It contained a brief message to be shown immediately to the Dowager Countess of Arrowood, her address printed neatly at the bottom.

She then scooped up the velvet sack, feeling the weight of the object inside. Pulling apart the pinched opening, she dumped the object into her hand. It was about the size of her palm. It was a dark green stone with a flat bottom and a domed top. There were odd-looking symbols etched into its surface, and it felt cold in her hand, its color dull and lifeless. No light reflected off of it. In fact, it seemed as though it absorbed all light.

Gabriella felt strange all of a sudden. The cold stone lying in her palm seemed to warm itself, sending a faint prickling sensation running up her arm. She gasped, jerking her hand in surprise, dropping the stone to the floor. It came to rest, with an odd flip onto its flat side, as though it had done it on purpose…like a cat always landing on its feet.

Weird.

It must have been the heat from my hand that warmed it, that’s all, she thought, wiping her palm against her hip, expelling a nervous breath.

Wow! Now her imagination was really starting to run away with her! Even though she believed there were strange and unexplainable things that happened in the world, she didn’t really believe in time-travel-by-ancient-stone, for goodness sake…did she?

With a resigned sigh, and very much doubting her sanity, Gabriella wrapped herself in the cloak. She slipped the two letters into one of the large, hidden pockets, and sat back down, Indian-style. She faced the stone and waited, not exactly sure what she was waiting for. She imagined maybe lightening, or thunder, or something that would accompany her trip to nineteenth-century England.

Oh, God! What was she thinking?

It was then Gabriella suddenly remembered she had no shoes on. Damn it! She’d taken them off before looking in the trunk. What was she going to do when she arrived in the past with no shoes? How embarrassing would that be? Well, she didn’t need to worry about it anyway, since this wasn’t going to work…right?

But the Stone started to glow softly, turning almost translucent, its color changing to a shade of pale blue. The air in the room became charged with energy. She couldn’t breathe, as if something heavy pressed against her chest. A strange voice whispered in her mind, “Beware the dark stranger…he seeks that which you possess.”

Bright, flashing lights obscured her vision in a kaleidoscope pattern of colors. A rushing noise, like the sound of an airplane slowly approaching, grew in volume, becoming louder and louder, until it was deafening. When the roaring noise got to an almost unbearable level, an intense pulling sensation began inside her body, deep in her middle. It radiated outward to her arms and legs, her head. There was a crushing, vice-like pressure against her skull that brought tears to her eyes. When she tried to raise her hands to cradle her head, Gabriella found she couldn’t move, was frozen in place.

Then, as if someone had just flipped a switch, there was absolutely no sound at all. Oddly enough, it was almost as deafening as the roaring had been. She felt as if she…well, as if she’d just died.

At first, she was able to breathe normally again, and then slowly, her vision began to clear. Her hearing returned, her ears popping as though she were descending from a high altitude.

What the hell just happened?

Gabriella’s heart was pounding, all of her senses in total disarray. She strained to listen as the tranquility of her grandmother’s bedroom became increasingly disrupted by foreign, muffled sounds. Was there someone in the house? Everyone from the funeral had left; she was the only one here. Had she locked the doors?

The floor beneath her rump was hard, harder than she remembered – and cold – and it was dark. No longer did the late afternoon sun illuminate the room through the windows. She became aware of an unpleasant odor lingering in the air around her.

Gradually, it began to register that the strange, distant sounds belonged to people moving about. A lot of people. Her brain fought to catch up with her body, making her feel woozy and disoriented, her mind struggling to make sense of where she was, what had just happened.

And then, she realized what had happened.

 

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