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History is a deep and complicated puzzle –– especially when it involves more dimensions than time.
Illustration by George Krauter
I
Appalachia
The hiker vanished.
Janelle peered at the distant hill. She could have sworn a person had appeared there—and disappeared just as fast. Perhaps it was a trick of the wind. The rhododendron bushes on the hillside where she sat undulated in the breezes like a dark ocean frothed with purple flowers, and a hum of cicadas filled the air. The Great Smoky Mountains rose in the distance, green and gray against a late afternoon sky as blue as a cerulean glaze.
She shifted her weight uneasily, wondering if she should have come out here alone. Her hair blew across her face in a swirl that reminded her of yellow corn in the fields back home. The breeze whispered against her arms and rippled the summer dress she had worn instead of sensible hiking clothes. Right now she probably resembled some forest creature more than a new college graduate. She smiled at the image that conjured up: Janelle the wild-woman stalking into math class, strewing leaves and equations. Then her disquiet returned, like a hawk gliding in the sky, circling a rabbit, ready to plunge.
“Oh, stop,” she muttered, annoyed at herself. She pulled her hair out of her face. Birds wheeled above the figure on the next ridge—
Someone was there. She strained to see better. A man was standing on that hill with his back to her. As she rose to her feet, he turned in her direction.
Then he compressed into a line and vanished.
Whoa. Janelle squinted at the hill. She must have mistaken whatever she had seen. She had no wish to share her solitude, but curiosity tugged at her. She hiked up the hill, headed back to the trail, uncertain whether to investigate the vanished fellow or return to her car. Although it would take thirty minutes to reach the parking lot, she should probably go back; the afternoon had cooled as it aged, and her flimsy dress couldn’t stave off the chill. Seeking an escape from her hectic life, she had left her cell phone and purse in the car, taking nothing more than her keys.
The leafy canopy of an old growth forest arched above her. Wood chips crackled under her feet, and a red squirrel skittered up the trunk of a basswood. Stretching out her arms, she turned in a circle, her eyes closed. Sweet blazes, she loved these mountains. Laughing, she opened her eyes. Life was good. She had finished her math degree at MIT just a few days ago, and it felt great.
Like a shift in a sea current, her mood changed. She had no one to share her happiness. It had been two years since her father’s assassination in Spain. Her mother and brother had unexpectedly joined him for lunch that day, and the explosion that destroyed his car had taken them as well, her entire family. Even now, the pain felt raw.
Janelle inhaled deeply. She would survive this moment, as she had all the others, until the grief became bearable.
“Janelle?” a voice asked.
What the . . . ? She whirled around.
A man stood several paces away. He resembled the figure from the hill, though she hadn’t seen him well enough to be sure this was the same person. She stepped back. He had only said her name, but given that they had never met, that was plenty to make her nervous.
His presence did nothing to allay her unease. He was too tall, maybe six foot six, with a muscular physique that reminded her of her vulnerability. His clothing was strange. She had nothing against unconventional self-expression, but in some subtle way, this went beyond that. The blue of his shirt vibrated in the shadowed forest, as vivid as an ocean where sunlight slanted through the water. His black pants were tucked into black boots. Silver links set with abalone gleamed on his shirt cuffs and in the silver chain around his neck. Well-trimmed hair brushed his shoulders, glossy and black. It wasn’t the length that surprised her, but the gray at the temples. Although obviously hale and fit, he seemed rather old to adopt such styles. Then again, just because she knew no one his age who made such fashion statements, that didn’t mean it never happened.
What compelled her the most, though, was his face. His high cheekbones and strong nose, and the dark brows arching above his gray eyes, made her think of a senator in the Roman Empire. He projected a sense of contained force.
Then she saw what hung from his belt. Ah, hell. Dagger was too tame a word. The sheath for the knife stretched as long as her forearm.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.” His gravelly voice had an unfamiliar accent, harsh and throaty. “You are Janelle Aulair, aren’t you?”
She stood poised to run. “Why do you want to know?”
“I was sent to look for you.”
With relief, she realized what must have happened. Ben, the grocer in town, had sent him to check on her. Ben always worried when she came up here alone. The last time he had sent his sister and brother-in-law, and they had startled her the same way.
“Have we met?” she asked. “At Ben’s?” She thought she would remember someone so striking, but maybe not.
“Never,” he said. Then he added, “Destiny requires your presence,” as if that explained something.
Destiny indeed. She should get back to her car. He hadn’t threatened her, but if that changed, she could surely outrun someone his age. She stepped to the side—
“No, wait!” he said, lunging forward.
Startled, she jumped away—
Darkness enveloped Janelle, muffled and cold. Muted voices echoed, calling, fading. Then the light brightened. She stumbled on the sand and barely caught her balance.
Sand?
She looked up—and froze.
* * *
II
The Riemann Gate
A white beach stretched around her, dazzling in the bright day. Waves crashed a few yards away, and their swells glinted in the slanting rays from the Sun, which was low in the sky. The ocean stretched to the horizon, wide, blue, and endless.
“What the blazes?” Janelle spun around—in time to see the man appear out of thin air.
He came out of nothing, taking a long, slow step. His progress was slowed to a surreal speed, and his body flickered as if he were a projection of light. It couldn’t be real. He had to be doing this with mirrors. Either that, or she had overworked herself in school more than she realized, and her mind was lodging a protest by wigging out.
The man solidified. For a moment he just stood, focusing on her. He seemed as disoriented as she felt. The large tendons in his neck corded under the chain he wore, and the Sun caught gleams from the abalone. The metal looked like real silver. The contrast of his powerful build and the jewelry unsettled her; no one she knew wore such items, let alone a man this daunting. It wasn’t right or wrong, just eerily different.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
What a question. Her heart rate had ratcheted up and her head was swimming. “Is this a movie set?” If he had equipment to create this illusion, she should have seen it, but she grasped at the possibility like a swimmer clutching at driftwood in the ocean.
“A moving set? No.” He rested his hand on the hilt of his knife and scanned the area. “Did anyone see you?”
She glanced at the knife, then at his face. “I don’t want trouble.”
“Nor do I.” He stepped toward her. “We shouldn’t stay here.”
She stepped back. “Why? Where is this? What happened to the mountains?”
He spoke carefully, as if she were breakable and his words were hammers. “They are elsewhere.” He indicated a line of straggly trees up the beach, where the sand met a sparse forest. “We must go. We will be safer if we aren’t in plain view.”
“Safer from what?” She wasn’t going anywhere with him.
“Raiders.” He scanned the beach, poised as if he were ready to fight. Wind blew his hair back from his face, accenting his prominent nose and strong chin. His profile looked like it belonged on a coin. “We must leave before they come.”
“I’ll just go home,” she said.
He turned toward her and she was acutely aware of his height. Large men rattled her. They lived in another dimension, one where you could use the top of bookcases and see over the heads of a crowd. They loomed, and he was doing it much too well.
“I’m not sure you can,” he said. “This last time, I barely made it through before the gate closed.”
“What gate?” Sweat was gathering on her palms. “Who are you?”
“You may call me Dominick.”
“What do you want with me, Dominick?”
“You are part of a prophecy,” he said, as if that were a perfectly reasonable statement. “Before my brother or I was born, it was foretold that whichever of us married you would kill the other.”
Marriage and murder. Right. She should have listened to Ben and not gone hiking alone. “Don’t play with me.” Her voice cracked on the last word.
His strong features softened unexpectedly. “I am sorry. I didn’t really expect the gate to open.”
“My friends are waiting for me.” She was talking too fast. “If I don’t show up, they’ll phone the police.” In truth, no one expected her for days. But he didn’t know that. She hoped.
“I don’t know what is phone,” he said. “But we must go.” He strode forward.
As Janelle whirled to run, the sand shifted under her feet and she tripped. Dominick easily caught her. Twisting in his grip, she raked his arm with her fingernails, and the two of them nearly fell into the sand. He ended up swinging her in a circle with one arm around her waist. He wrapped the other arm around her torso, pinning her while he bent over to hold her in place. He felt as if he were built from iron. She struggled, and he tightened his hold.
“Janelle, listen.” He spoke urgently. “I won’t hurt you. But if we stay here, we could be killed. Outlaws have been raiding homesteads in this area. You’re a beautiful woman. If they find you with no defense except me, you would be in far worse trouble than you think I might cause you. And I would be dead.”
She didn’t want to listen. But she had to do something. What if he was telling the truth? What if he wasn’t? If she made the wrong choice, could one or both of them end up dead?
“Janelle?” he asked.
She took a deep breath. “All right.” For now.
He released her, then grasped her upper arm and set off for the trees. She had to run to keep up with his long-legged stride. So much for her assumption that age would slow him down; he could easily outrun her. His large hand engulfed her arm. His grip could have bruised, but he didn’t let it. The contrast between the contained violence of his personality and his careful touch confused her.
The fine-grained sand showed little trace of their progress. They soon reached the forest and strode under its sparse cover. He kept up the grueling pace as they plunged into the deepening woods, until a stitch burned in her side.
Dominick angled through a tangle of bushes into a denser knot of trees. As they pushed through the bushes, he used his knife to cut away branches. The thicker foliage screened them from view, but it wasn’t until they reached the center of the glade that he slowed down. He motioned her toward a boulder that jutted up to about waist height. Sitting on another, he planted his boots on the ground, braced his palms on his knees, and heaved in large breaths. Janelle stayed on her feet, too nervous to sit as she struggled to catch her wind.
“We can rest here,” he said as his breathing settled.
She rubbed her arms, feeling cold despite the heat. It was much warmer than in the Smoky Mountains, and she didn’t want to dwell on the implications of that fact. “I don’t understand how you know me.”
“Only through the prophecy.” He watched her as if she were the apparition rather than this entire place. “I didn’t really expect to find you.”
“How do you know I’m the right person?”
“You look like the vision in the Jade Pool. It’s near a mountain lodge where my father took his seeress.” Sarcasm edged his voice. “Apparently she made better predictions when she was alone with him in secluded retreats.”
From his tone, she suspected he had been painfully aware in his childhood of his father’s involvement with his “seeress.” Choosing tact, she said only, “What did she predict?”
“Just days before my mother gave birth for the first time, she showed my father a vision of you. She said Maximillian and I would be his oldest sons, that whichever of us married you would kill the other, and that if either of us tried to kill you, that brother would die.”
“That’s horrible.”
Dryly he said, “My parents weren’t delighted with it.” He studied her face. “The scribes copied your image from the pool. But you are much younger than the woman in those portraits.”
“I doubt they were pictures of me.”
“It’s more than appearance,” he said. “The gate was supposed to bring me to you. It took me three tries to get it right, but it did work. And the seeress knew your name. Janelle Aulair.”
“You could have looked me up on the Internet.”
“What is the Internet?”
Like he didn’t know. Maybe next he would try to sell her swampland in Florida. “It’s not important. Just tell me how to get back home.”
He dropped his hand to his belt and set his palm over a disk. It differed from the abalone circles; this one had a metallic sheen. He stared at the ground, his gaze unfocused.
“Dominick?” she asked.
He looked up at her. “The gate doesn’t open.”
She pushed back her growing fear. “That’s convenient.”
“It’s true.” He ran his fingers over the disk. “Do you feel anything?”
“Nothing.”
“I’m trying to create the gate where you’re standing.”
She didn’t know what to think. “How did you learn to use it?”
“One of the monks told me.”
Right. Monks, too. “How did he find out?”
“I don’t know.”
“A description has to be somewhere. Books, files, storage.”
He seemed oddly bewildered. “You mean a library?”
“Yes!” If they had web service there, she could email someone for help.
“I have one at my home,” he said.
The last place she wanted to go was his house. “A public library would be better.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
She couldn’t believe him. That he sounded sane made none of this more plausible. “And you have no idea how this gate works?” she challenged.
His gaze flashed. “Of course I do. It’s a branch. From here to your mountains.”
“A tree, you mean?”
“No. A branch cut to another page. Your universe is one sheet, mine is another.”
She gaped at him. “Do you mean a Riemann sheet? A branch cut from one Riemann sheet to another?”
“That’s right.” He hesitated. “You know these words?”
She laughed unsteadily. “It’s nonsense. Not the sheets, I mean, but they’re just mathematical constructs! They don’t actually exist. You can’t physically go through a branch cut any more than you could step into a square root sign.”
He was watching her with an expression that mirrored how she had felt when he told her about his prophecy. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Complex variable analysis.” She felt as if she were in a play where she only knew part of the script. “A branch cut is like a slit in a sheet of paper. It opens onto another sheet. I suppose you could say the sheets are alternate universes. But they aren’t real.”
“They seem quite real,” he said. “When you went through the gate, it threw off my calibration. I had set it to come out at my camp.” More to himself than to her, he added, “I hadn’t actually expected to leave the camp.”
“Tell you what,” Janelle said. “How about you and your brother find wives here? I’ll just drop out of the picture.” She thought of what he had said about his father. “Unless you’re already married. Because if you’re pulling this bit looking for some fun on the side, forget it.”
“Neither Maximillian nor I is wed. I have had concubines, though not in some years.”
“Concubines!”
He grinned. “You don’t like that?”
Just like a guy, to be pleased because he thought she was jealous. “Oh, cut the sexist crap.”
He had the audacity to look intrigued. “What does ‘sexist’ mean? Is it to do with love-making?”
“No. It means I should go back to Tennessee.”
His voice softened. “This world would be much poorer, to lose such beauty as yours.”
“Don’t.” For some reason, it angered her that he actually sounded sincere with that line. Or maybe the anger masked her fear. Right now, he could do whatever he wanted with her.
“Max wouldn’t give you a choice.” He was no longer smiling. “If not for the prophecy that we would die if we killed you, he would probably execute you on sight.”
An unwelcome memory jumped into her mind: she had learned about the deaths of her family from the media. Someone with too much ambition or too little compassion had leaked the story, sensationalizing it as an “execution.” Janelle had been visiting a girlfriend in Virginia during a school break, and the news had gone public even as government officials scrambled to find her.
Dominick spoke quietly. “Your face looks like a dark cloud passed over it.”
She shook her head, unable to answer.
“I do regret all this.” He stood up and lifted his hand, inviting her to leave the glade. “Are you rested enough to go on? Let me at least bring you to my home, as my honored guest.”
Janelle didn’t want to be his guest. But she was beginning to absorb that this might be real, and she doubted staying in the glade would help her escape.
The Sun was setting when they emerged from the screen of bushes. The world had darkened and blurred, as if they saw it through old glass on the seashore, brown and rounded by tumbling waves.
Dominick set off along a faint path scattered with leaves. They had only gone a few yards, though, when he turned to her and paused, listening. Then he spoke in an urgent whisper. “Run.”
She took one look at his face—and broke into a sprint.
III
The Transform Palace
Janelle raced through the woods, and Dominick’s boots thudded behind her. Then she tripped on a jutting rock, and he plowed into her. Holding onto her, he lurched past a tangle of wild berry bushes and fell behind a large boulder and the bushes. He twisted in mid-air and landed on his back, cushioning their fall so she came down on top of him. Her breath went out in a rush. It happened so fast, she had no time even to tense up.
For one second, he held her in a vise-like embrace. Then he sat up fast, rolling her off his body and onto her stomach. She pushed up on her hands, but when he laid his palm on her back, she stopped with her head raised. He crouched next to her, his knife drawn, his head tilted as if he were listening to the distant waves. Her surge of adrenalin sharpened her hearing, and she caught the shushing of hooves on sand. Dominick raised his dagger in a single sure motion, the blade glinting in the last rays of the Sun.
Hooves stamped nearby. Janelle stayed silent, though surely they could hear the thud of her heart. Voices spoke in a patois of heavily accented English sprinkled with unfamiliar words. Straining to understand, she recognized they were talking about the “two on the beach,” that they would finish off the man and take the girl. When she heard what they wanted to do with her, bile rose in her throat.
The voices moved away, until she heard only waves on the beach. Dominick spoke under his breath, no words she recognized, what sounded like an oath. She breathed out, aware of her rigid posture.
“I think we can go,” he said in a low voice.
A reaction was setting in as Janelle comprehended she might truly be stranded in this violent place with no anchor except this stranger. “I can’t,” she whispered.
“It will work out.” Despite his rough voice, he had a kind tone. “Come with me, Janelle. I will do well by you.”
Get a grip, she told herself, and climbed to her feet. “I’m all right.”
Standing with her, he inclined his head. He lifted his hand as if to touch her face, but when she tensed, he lowered his arm.
They set off again, and the ocean’s mumble receded as they went deeper among the trees. The woods thickened into a heavy forest, and tufts of wild grass stuck up in the soil. Dusk came like a great beast, one barely noticed until it spread its wings, darkening every copse and glade. Luminescent bottle flies hummed among the trees.
Dominick drew her to a stop. Holding his fingers to his mouth, he gave a whistle that rose and fell in an eerie tune. A bird answered his call.
“Hai,” a low voice said.
Janelle started. A man had appeared under a nearby tree. He wore leather armor and a dagger similar to Dominick’s, but without the silver or abalone. He also had an “extra” that made her mouth go dry, a monstrous broadsword strapped across his back with its hilt sticking above his shoulders.
Dominick spoke in the same dialect used by the men who wanted to kill him. It sounded like “Hava moon strake camp,” but she thought he meant, “Have the men strike camp.” Although she didn’t understand the other man’s response, she saw the deference in his bow. The man glanced at her with curiosity, then withdrew into the trees and vanished as silently as he had come.
She and Dominick continued on, and although she saw no one else, she didn’t think they were alone anymore. They soon entered a clearing of trampled grass. Several tents stood on the far side, and men moved in the trees beyond, soldiers it looked like, in leather armor. Most were tending animals. Their mounts resembled horses, but with tufts for tails. Each had two horns, one on either side of its head, with the tips pointing inward. Some of the men wore helmets with similar horns. The scene had a dreamlike quality, all in the dusk, with mist curling around the animals. But the cooling air on her arms and legs and the pungent smell of wet grass were all too real.
The men greeted Dominick with respect. Although Janelle had trouble deciphering their words, she understood their intent. They were preparing to leave.
And she was going with them.
Fog muffled the night. Janelle sat in front of Dominick on one of the two-horned animals, which he called a biaquine. Starlight, his mount, had a silver coat with stiff hair. He changed the animal’s saddle to a tasseled blanket woven in heavy red and white yarn so Janelle could more easily sit with him. A few scouts went on ahead, but the rest of the men stayed together, with extra biaquines to carry the tents and other supplies.
Fear and curiosity warred within Janelle. She had agreed to go with Dominick because she saw no other viable choices, at least not where she stayed alive and healthy. But she didn’t trust him.
They passed through veils of mist, climbing into the mountains. Her muscles ached from the unfamiliar ride. Moonlight lightened the fog, and she strove to keep track of landmarks that loomed out of the night: a gnarled tree with two trunks or a weathered statue of an elderly man in a niche of rock. Her ties to home were growing tenuous, unable to compete with the reality of this impossible place.
Dominick put his arms around her waist, so she didn’t fall off the biaquine. At first she sat ramrod straight. Gradually, though, Starlight’s rocking gait lulled her. Nor did Dominick act in any way to make her uncomfortable. She had forgotten how comforting it felt just to be held. Her mother had always been effusive with affection, and although her father had been less demonstrative, he had never let them doubt his love. She had grown up secure in those close-knit ties. One instant of violence had shattered everything. Drowning in grief, she had withdrawn from human contact; in the past two years she had barely touched another person.
Dominick had a strange request. He wanted a curl of her hair. When she agreed, he pulled out his dagger. She stiffened, her gaze riveted on the long blade as it glittered in the moonlight, but he only cut off a small tendril. He gave it to one of his riders, who carefully placed the strands in a packet of cloth. Then the man took off up the trail, galloping ahead of their party.
“What’ll he do with it?” Janelle asked.
“My monks will examine it,” Dominick said. “To see if you are who I think.”
“How can they know from a lock of hair?”
“They have . . . spells.”
“Spells?”
“Well,” he amended, “so they say.”
From his tone, she suspected he didn’t believe it any more than she did. She just hoped his monks didn’t decide her hair had demonic properties.
Exhaustion was catching up to her, but she feared to rest, dreading what she might find when she awoke. She had rarely slept enough during school, often studying late into the night. It paid off; she earned high marks, even the top grade in Mathematical Methods of Physics. Now her simple pleasure in a job well done seemed forlorn.
An owl hooted, its call muted by the fog. Janelle shuddered.
“Are you cold?” Dominick asked.
“I was thinking of home.”
Regret softened the hard edges of his voice. “I am sorry about this.” After a pause, he added, “But I would be lying if I denied I am glad you are here. I never really believed this would happen.”
“Prophecies aren’t real.” She watched the biaquines plodding ahead of them on the trail. “A rational explanation has to exist.”
“Truthfully?” he said. “I don’t think the seeress made that prediction. It was Gregor, a monk from the monastery. He is the one who can read the Jade Pool.” His voice tightened. “Father’s soothsayer had never even been there before. She stayed at the palace.”
“Palace?”
“Where my brother is.”
“Does he work there?”
He gave a bitter laugh. “You could say that.”
“What does he do?”
“He is the Emperor of Othman.”
Good Lord. What had she landed in? “You’re the brother of an emperor?”
“Yes.” He said it simply, just verifying a fact. “He was born first.”
If neither he nor his brother had married, that suggested neither had legitimate offspring. “Does that mean you’re his heir?”
“For now. Until he sires one.”
“Sweet blazes,” she murmured. “I’ve never heard of Othman.”
He swept out his hand as if to show her all of the land. “The provinces stretch from the snow fields in the far north to the great gulf in the south. Maximillian rules it, and I govern the Atlantic Province under him.”
“The entire continent?” It sounded like Canada and North America.
“Only the eastern half. Britain has the rest.” In a voice that sounded deceptively soft, he added, “For now.”
A chill went through her. “And later?”
“That depends on what happens with Max.”
From his tone, she suspected that if he ever became emperor, he would kick out the British and absorb their territories. What a strange history for the colonial revolution.
“Your brother is afraid you’re after his throne,” she said.
“Supposedly, whichever of us marries you will rule Othman.”
“This is crazy. I have nothing to do with either of you.”
“Not according to the seer.”
Or the politicians, more likely. “Dominick, surely you see this so-called prophecy is a trick, one guaranteed to set you and your brother against each other. It’s bunk.”
“Bunk?”
“Lies. Moonshine.”
“Moonshine.” Wryly he added, “An apt image.”
Janelle had used the word on instinct, and now she regretted it. It evoked sweetly faded memories of her southern childhood: grits, biscuits and gravy, and bluegrass music. Her family had later moved to Washington, D.C. and then Europe, but the girl who loved country ham and the unique twang of a steel guitar was still inside of her. Her memories glimmered of the golden hills she had wandered during late summer days, spinning the enchanted dreams of youth. She couldn’t let herself think she might never again see them.
“I would agree it is ‘moonshine,’” Dominick was saying, “except everything else in the prophecy has come true. It foretold the birth of eight children to my parents. Max and I have six siblings, and they fit every detail predicted.” His breath condensed in the air, spuming past her. “Gregor gave my father a sealed letter, to be opened after father’s death. Father died of pneumonia ten years ago, three days after his sixtieth birthday. After the funeral, Maximillian opened the letter.”
“What did it say?”
He answered quietly. “That my father would die of pneumonia three days after his sixtieth birthday.”
She shivered. “That’s eerie.”
“Indeed.”
“You and Maximillian can never trust each other.”
“True. Not that I would trust him anyway.”
“Why not?”
“He craves power.”
She suspected that applied to Dominick as well. “Why are you so certain it’s me in that prophecy? You’ve only seen drawings of an older woman.”
“We will verify your signature.”
“You’ve never seen me write, I’m sure.”
“Not writing. It’s hard to explain.”
“Try.”
He paused for a moment. “Your signature is inside your body. It has forty-six characters, half each from your father and mother. You can’t see it, I think because it is too small.” He nuzzled the top of her head. “It determines everything about you, from the color of your eyes to whether you are a man or a woman.”
The touch of his lips on her hair startled Janelle. It was a simple gesture, but that just made it more intimate, as if they took such affections for granted. Attractive he might be, but he was too threatening. She started to tell him to stop, then froze as she realized what else he had said. The “signature” sounded like DNA. Based on what she had seen, she wouldn’t have expected his people to know genetics at the molecular level needed to identify a person. Then she gave a frayed laugh. She didn’t believe they understood DNA, but she accepted gates to other universes?
He lifted his head and spoke stiffly. “What is funny?”
Belatedly, she realized how her reaction must have sounded. “Dominick, I wasn’t laughing at—” She foundered at the word “kiss,” which felt much too awkward, and wasn’t exactly what he had done, anyway. So she told another truth. “I’m tired. Nervous.” Softly, she added, “Don’t push.”
He let out a breath. “It is my fault you were ill prepared. I wasn’t ready, either. I had never before used the gate.”
“You must have studied it.” How else could he have found her?
He shook his head, or at least his hair rustled; seated in front of him, she couldn’t see his face.
“I just use the tools Gregor gave me,” he said.
“The disk on your belt.”
“Yes. Except it no longer does anything.”
“Maybe I can get it to work.”
She expected him to refuse. Instead, he took his arm away from her waist, and she heard a click. Then he pressed a metal plate into her hand. It had a diameter the size of her palm and felt cool on her skin. No marks embellished its polished surface.
“How does it operate?” she asked.
“I rub it. Supposedly my finger ridges activate the spells.”
Spells indeed. If his fingerprints operated the mechanism, it wouldn’t work for her. When she rubbed the disk, nothing happened. “Should I touch it in any pattern?”
“Not that I know of.”
“You said before that you calibrated it.”
“Actually, Gregor did. He’s secretive. He tells me nothing.” Wryly he added, “I don’t think he understands it, either.” He guided Starlight around an outcropping, and the biaquine snorted as if to protest the inconvenience.
“What you said about ‘sheets’ earlier,” Dominick said. “What did you mean?”
Janelle handed him back the disk. “It’s kind of abstruse.”
“Does that mean you don’t know?”
“No,” she growled. It was a fair question, though. “Imagine one Riemann sheet as my universe. It has a phase.”
“Like the Moon.”
“Not that.” She paused, thinking. “Do you have clocks here?”
“Well, yes. Certainly.”
“Twenty-four hours a day? Twelve and twelve again?”
“Of course.”
It relieved her to have that much in common with him. “Think of the phase as time. Say it goes from midnight to noon in my universe.” She almost said “like hands on an old-fashioned clock,” but then realized analog timepieces might be the norm here.
“And my world is the second clock?” Dominick asked. “Time goes from noon to midnight here?”
“Yes!” It gratified her that he understood so fast.
“The time here and where I found you was the same.”
“I know. I don’t mean my world and yours are literally related by a twelve-hour difference. Just that they’re in some way out of phase with each other, like three in the morning is different than three in the afternoon, even though they’re called the same thing.”
He was quiet for a while. Then he said, “So the branch cut to your universe is located at a certain phase. It’s like saying the gate opens only at a certain time.”
“That would be my guess.”
“To go around this metaphorical clock and return to the branch cut must take longer than twelve hours. The disk never worked before.”
“How long have you been trying?”
“About forty years. Since I was very small.”
Forty! That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “Every day?”
“Well, no.” He sounded embarrassed. “I should. Max does more than I do, and we’ve both tried more as we’ve grown older, with the pressure to settle this matter and produce heirs.” He hesitated. “It just all seems so fanciful.” Then he added, “Seemed.”
She agreed. At least if he didn’t always check, he could have missed the gate. She hoped that was why he hadn’t found her before this. Or she could be wrong about the whole thing. “I need to read about the theory.”
“Such studies are for monks.” He sounded surprised.
Janelle had no objection to being considered monkish if it would get her home. What she lacked in savvy about this world she could make up for in her ability to solve problems. “Do you have books about the gates?”
“In my library.”
“Maybe I can learn to make one.” Or find a more logical explanation for all this.
“If it pleases you to look, you may.”
She wondered if reading would be a problem. “But Dominick.”
He bent his head, bringing his lips next to her ear. His breath tickled the sensitive skin there. “Hmmm?”
“Oh.” She forgot what she had been about to say. His scent surrounded her, a combination of saffron, thyme, and sweat. She was suddenly conscious of how close they were sitting on the biaquine.
He spoke against her ear. “I like your hair. You look like a forest sprite.” He brushed his lips across her cheek.
“Stop.” She was almost stuttering.
He exhaled. But he lifted his head and straightened up. The night air cooled her cheek.
“What did you want to ask me?” he asked, more formally.
“Your speech.” She wasn’t certain what unsettled her more, his kiss or that she had liked it. But he was going too fast. “When you speak to your men, you don’t use English.”
“Yes, I do.”
“What do you call what we’re speaking?”
“Erst. No one uses it anymore.” His voice lightened. “As a youth I complained greatly about having to learn a dead language. I’m glad now I did.”
“It’s not dead to me.” She hoped.
“Then I’m gratified I know it.”
“Tell me something,” she said. “Why didn’t you expect to find me?”
“I guess I assumed that if you existed, it would lead naturally to your coming here. I didn’t think it would happen by mistake, only because I looked for you.”
She rubbed her eyes. “Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“Apparently so. We will have to marry as soon as possible.”
“What?” He had just taken “too fast” to “light speed.”
“My brother.” Dominick paused as Starlight picked his way across a gully that cut across the trail. “If he finds out what happened, he will come to get you.”
Janelle’s head ached. “Let me see if I have this straight. If you and I marry, you become emperor and he dies. If I marry him, he stays emperor and you die. If either of you kills me, he dies.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“If no one marries me, do things stay as they are now?”
“I think so.”
“The answer is simple, then. I go home.”
“And after that?” he asked. “My men know about you. So will the monks who check your hair. If you are who I believe, how long before Max finds out? If you go home, he might find you someday. I did.” Then he added, “That assumes you can go back.”
“I have to believe it’s possible.”
“I understand. But as long you are here, I will risk neither my life nor yours.”
Janelle wondered why she couldn’t have normal problems, like fixing the plumbing or finding a job. “If we marry, won’t your brother die?”
“I don’t want his death.”
“But you want his title.”
“I would be a better emperor.”
“Why?”
“Maximillian is brutal man.”
“What makes you any different?”
He gave a terse laugh. “I can think of no one else who would dare ask me such a thing.”
Well, tough. “It’s a fair question. You two are brothers.”
“Your questions are too personal.”
She let out an exasperated breath. “You say we have to marry so you stay alive and I don’t get brutalized. That’s pretty personal.”
Silence.
Janelle bit back her impatience. She knew too little about Dominick to judge when to push and when to bide her time. But push she would, if that was what it took to find her way home.
They rode for a while with only the thud of hooves on the trail to break the silence. But eventually he did answer. “My father raised my brother. He ignored me because I wasn’t his heir. I spent my childhood with my mother. I had her love. Maximillian had whippings.” Tension corded his muscles, and his hold tightened, though she didn’t think he realized it. “Father intended to ‘shape’ Max into a man like himself. He succeeded. Max is exactly like him.” Anger honed his voice. “My mother is dead. I couldn’t protect her. But I won’t let my brother do the same to you.”
His words had so many painful implications, she hardly knew what to say. She spoke softly. “I’m sorry.”
He clenched the reins so hard, his knuckles whitened. “Max and I were close as boys. He has hardened over the years. I mourn the loss of the brother I loved, but I hate what he has become.”
“It must be difficult for you both.”
“You are generous, to offer sympathy to those who put you in this situation.”
She had no answer for that.
“Janelle.” He spoke thoughtfully. “Make a bargain with me.”
“How do you mean?” she asked, wary.
“Marry me, and I will do what I can to help you return home. If you get back, who is to say the marriage exists in that universe? You can resume your life without me.”
Given her lack of options, he could have demanded she do what he wanted. It mattered that he asked her consent and offered his help. But she knew too little about him. So far he had acted with honor, and a kindness incongruous with his obvious capacity for violence, but she had no guarantee that would continue. Nor did she doubt his offer came with strings; he wasn’t talking about a marriage in name only. Her face heated. Yes, she found him attractive. But that wasn’t enough. She needed to know him better. To trust him.
“I’m not ready,” she said.
“We don’t have the luxury of time. This is the best way I know to protect us both.”
What to do? Given how little she knew about life here, going it alone didn’t seem particularly bright. After a moment, she said, “All right. I accept your bargain.”
It wasn’t until his rigid hold eased that she realized how much he had stiffened. He said only, “Good,” which relieved her. She wasn’t ready for any heart-to-heart talks with the fiancé she had just acquired.
They rode higher into the mountains, and the fog thinned until they were traveling under a sky brilliant with stars, far more than she saw in the city of Cambridge where she lived. The day’s warmth had fled. When Janelle shivered, Dominick reached to the bags he had slung over the flanks of his biaquine. He folded a sheepskin around her shoulders, with the fleecy side against her skin.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
As they rode, Janelle mulled over his words. She couldn’t fathom why she would figure in anyone’s “prophecy.” Her only talents were writing proofs and solving equations. She smiled wryly. Maybe she could subdue the nefarious Maximillian with Bessel functions.
Up ahead, peaks rose out of the fog, dark against the sky. Then she realized it was a cascade of onion-bulb towers, each topped by a spire. Dominick’s party approached a cliff that stood about ten feet high—no, not a cliff, a great wall that curved away in either direction, topped by crenellations.
Eerie whistles broke the night’s quiet as the biaquines gathered before the wall, stamping and snorting. A gate swung outward, huge and dark, groaning. Torchlight flickered beyond, where men were cranking giant wheels wound with rope as thick their burly arms. Past the gate lay courtyards, and past them, a huge building surrounded by smaller structures. The layout resembled a European castle, but the architecture evoked the palaces of Moorish Andalusia that Janelle had visited when her family lived in Spain. Icy moonlight edged it all, turning the spires, domes, and delicate arches into frozen lace.
As much as the scene enthralled Janelle, it also bewildered her. Who had settled this land? Dominick’s men spoke a dialect of English, but their names sounded Mediterranean, Arabic, or Near Eastern, with English more rarely in the mix. That described their appearance, too. Maybe the Ottoman Empire had spread farther across Europe in this universe. If East and West had blended more, the mix of colonists who settled the New World here could have been different than in her world.
They rode to a courtyard in front of the palace. An immense horseshoe arch framed the entrance of the building like the keyhole for a giant antique key. Its sides rose in pillars, and at the top, an onion-shaped arch curved out and back around to a point. Mosaics tiled the pillars and glistened like silver in the moonlight.
As their party dismounted, stable-hands swirled around them. The biaquines were taller than most horses, but Dominick swung off with little effort. He reached up, offering his arms to Janelle. She hesitated, staring at his harsh features, which were blurred by moonlight and the hint of mist in the air. Then she pulled her leg over and slid down. She ached everywhere. He eased her to the ground, his hold solid after the swaying gait of the biaquine.
The sheepskin had fallen off, and she shivered. Dominick pulled her close, under a jacket he had donned earlier. It was fur lined, not as warm as the skin, but soft and thick against her arms. For just a moment, she gave in to her fatigue and buried her face against his shirt as if that would hide her from his world.
When she looked up again, Dominick brushed her hair back from her face, and calluses on his palm scraped her cheek. She wondered how he had developed them—and then remembered the swords his men wore.
“Welcome to my home,” he murmured. Then he bent his head.
Janelle knew what he intended, but she froze, unable to believe he would go through with it. When he kissed her, his lips felt as full as they looked, a sensual contrast to his harsh power. She tensed, but before she could respond, someone behind them coughed.
Dominick raised his head, letting go of her, and she turned around, relieved by the interruption. A lanky man was coming down the steps of the palace, his attempt not to stare at her all the more obvious for its lack of success. He stopped next to them and spoke with Dominick. Although Janelle couldn’t catch all of their words, it sounded as if the man was reporting another raid. Dominick and his men had been out searching for the outlaws, intent on stopping the harassment of his people.
Dominick turned to Janelle. “I will see you later.” He took off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. His smile was crooked, almost boyish. “It looks much better on you than on me.”
“Thank you,” she said, uncertain how to act with him.
He climbed the steps with the other man, leaving her with two guards. She noted how easily Dominick assumed authority. He listened carefully and asked questions. When he gave orders, he did it with confidence and tact. She had seen those same qualities in the strongest leaders she had met while her father was the American Ambassador to Spain.
Bracketed by guards, she went up the steps, through a foyer, and into a hall gleaming in the light of torches carried by Dominick’s men. Janelle’s breath caught. Soaring arches filled the immense hall, row after row of them, a forest of pillars in perfect lines. Tessellated mosaics in gold, blue, and green curved around columns and patterned the vaulted ceiling. In each V-shape where the arches met, a stained-glass window glowed with gem colors, showing scenes similar to those of Catholic churches in Spain. It was like an exquisite blending of Moorish art with the styles of a European cathedral.
A group of men met Dominick just inside the entrance. Janelle’s guards drew her to a stop. She just waited, too tired to deal with her confusion over what had happened with him in the courtyard. It had to be past two in the morning.
People came and went. It wasn’t long before three women appeared, walking through the arches from deeper within the palace. Silk wrapped them from neck to ankle, glistening in the smoky torchlight, crimson and saffron, shot through with gold threads. Their shimmering dark hair fell to their waists.
The trio stopped in front of Janelle. The oldest woman, a matron with silver hair, spoke in melodic phrases that almost sounded like English, but that went by too fast to catch.
“I’m sorry.” Janelle’s voice rasped with fatigue. “I don’t understand.”
The woman tried more slowly. “Come with us.” She didn’t smile. “To someplace you can wash. And sleep.”
Relief washed over Janelle. “Thank you.”
The woman just barely inclined her head, stiff and cool.
As Janelle set off with them, accompanied by her guards, she glanced back at Dominick. He remained deep in conversation with his men, and she wasn’t certain he knew she had left.
The older woman spoke curtly. “His Highness has important matters to attend.”
Janelle nodded, not wanting to interrupt his conference. They went down a “corridor” of arches, one of many in the hall, walkways delineated by columns instead of walls. It was dizzying, all that geometrical beauty gleaming in the torchlight.
The older woman was watching her face. “This hall is why Prince Dominick-Michael’s home is called the Palaces of Arches.”
“It’s glorious,” Janelle said. “Is this the Hall of Arches?”
“No. The Fourier Hall.”
“Fourier?” She blinked. “Like the mathematician?”
The woman gave a sharp wave of her hand. “It has always been called this. That is all I know.”
Janelle didn’t push. Having lived as the child of a diplomat for so many years had taught her a great deal about dealing with cultures other than her own, and she could tell her interactions here were on shaky ground. She had discovered early on that if she wasn’t certain how her words would be received, it was often better to say nothing.
She couldn’t stop staring at the arches, though. What an exquisite challenge, to portray those graceful repeating patterns as a periodic function. Their Fourier transform would be a work of art. An unsteady urge to laugh hit her, followed by the desire to sit down and put her head in her hands. Such a strange thought, that she could capture in mathematics the essence of a dream palace that couldn’t exist.
The women’s slippered feet padded on the tiled floor, and Janelle’s tennis shoes squeaked. At the back of the hall, they passed under a huge arch built from gold-veined marble rather than the wood used in the Fourier Hall. A true corridor lay beyond, with stone walls tiled in star mosaics. Its size dwarfed their party, and other halls intersected it at oddly sharp angles. The pillars at corners where the halls met were carved to portray men with great broadswords or women in elegantly draped robes holding long-stemmed flowers. It spoke to the European influence here that the designs included human statues, which weren’t seen in Moorish architecture.
Janelle tried to keep track of their route through the maze of halls, but exhaustion dulled her mind. She was lost by the time they stopped at an oaken door. The guards stayed outside while the women took her into a small room. Plush rugs covered the floor, and mosaics with pink tulips and swirling green stems graced the lower half of the walls. Something odd about the stems tugged at her mind, but she was too tired to puzzle it out. In one corner, a white table supported a blue vase with real flowers. Blue velvet bedcovers lay in another corner, on a thicker pile of rugs, with pillows heaped there like a tumble of rose and jade clouds.
“It’s beautiful,” Janelle said. “Thank you.”
No one answered. They led her across the room and under an archway. In the chamber beyond, a small, sunken pool steamed, and a lamp glowed dimly in a seashell claw on the wall.
The older woman finally spoke. “We can help you bathe.”
Janelle’s face heated. “It’s kind of you to offer. But I can manage.”
“Then we will leave you to rest.” She was so aloof, she could have been a hundred miles away. The trio bowed and gracefully exited the chamber. A moment later, the outer door creaked on its hinges.
Janelle hoped she hadn’t just committed some social blunder. Unsure what she would find, she returned to the bedroom. An oil lamp hung on a scrolled hook by the entrance. It gave less light than the torches, which was probably why the women hadn’t carried it, but Janelle preferred the lamp, which neither smoked nor sputtered. To her relief, the door had a lock on this side and opened when she tried it. One of her guards stood a short distance down the hall, severe in his leather armor. Light from a wall sconce glinted on the hilt of the broadsword strapped across on his back.
“Hello,” Janelle said.
He turned with a start. Then he said what sounded like, “My greetings, Lady.”
“Isn’t that sword heavy?” she asked.
He seemed bemused by her attention. “Not for me.”
“Oh. Good.” She wasn’t sure why she asked, but she felt the need to connect to people, to make this less strange. “Goodnight.”
His craggy face softened. “Goodnight.”
Janelle closed the door and sagged against the wall. She could think of many reasons Dominick might post a guard: to keep her in, as a courtesy, or because she wasn’t safe even in his home. For all its extraordinary beauty, his world had a starkness that kept her off balance.
Ill at ease, she explored her suite. In the bathing room, an elegantly carved bench stood against one wall, with a jade-green towel, a silver brush inlaid with mother-of-pearl from abalone, two soaps carved like tulips, and a crimson silk robe. It was all gorgeous, everything handmade. The suite, however, had only the one exit. They had closed her in well.
No one said you couldn’t leave, she reminded herself. More than anything, she wanted to clean up. She carried the soaps to the pool, an oval filled with scented water, but then she hesitated. The idea of undressing made her feel vulnerable. The grimy scrapes on her arms and legs decided her; she quickly peeled off her clothes, shivering as the cold air chilled her bare skin. Then she slid into the heated pool.
Warmth seeped blissfully into her body as she lay back. Silence filled the room, a contrast to the muted city roar she had lived with these last years, at MIT. No sirens or engines interrupted the quiet, none of the constant hum that rumbled even in the deepest hours of an urban night. She was immersed in a great ocean of quietude.
Her thoughts drifted to Dominick’s gate. A branch cut? They came from complex numbers. She could write such a number as z = e(iF), where F was called the phase angle. Varying the phase from F = 0 to F = 2p was like going around an analog clock from 12 to 12. Just as 12 was the same at the start and finish, so 0 and 2p were the same. However, if she divided F by 2, then z = e(iF/2). Now the phase was F/2 As F went from 0 to 2p the phase only changed to p. The angle F had to go around a second time before F/2 returned to its starting value of 2p. But the same F couldn’t have two different values of z. To avoid that contradiction, z slipped through a branch cut to a second sheet for the second cycle F. Just as 3 am and 3 pm were different times, so F on each sheet was considered different. Her world was one “clock” and Dominick’s was another.
That suggested some sort of phase here had to go through a full cycle before Dominick’s gate reopened. Her twelve-hour model was an only analogy; she had no idea how long would she have to wait before the actual gate reopened. Days? Months? Years?
Nor was that her only problem. Suppose she divided F by 3. The phase would be F/3. It meant she would need three “clocks.” Three universes. Divide F by 4, and she needed four. Many sheets could exist. If she went through a gate, she could end up on yet some other “clock”—some other universe—instead of her own.
Janelle groaned. Her head hurt, and the water had cooled. Putting away her thoughts, she soaped her body and washed her hair. Then she climbed out and dried off with the luxuriant towel. She reached for her wrinkled sundress, but then paused. The robe was far nicer and scented with perfume, certainly more pleasant than her gritty clothes. She slipped on the robe, and the sensuous glide of silk against her bare skin stirred her thoughts of Dominick. She tried to smile at her reflection in the pool. “Hey, Aulair, you look hot.” But her voice shook like the ripples flowing over the water.
She padded barefoot into the other room. She was so tired she could barely stand, but she felt too exposed to sleep. The bed consisted of no more than layers of rugs covered by velvet. She sat on it in the corner, with the wall at her back, facing the door as she drew pillows around her. It wasn’t until they crumpled in her grip that she realized how tightly she had clenched them.
Her eyelids drooped, and she forced them up. She wouldn’t sleep. The lamp swung on its hook, moving shadows on the walls, back and forth, back and forth . . .
The scrape of wood against stone roused Janelle. She lifted her head, disoriented. She had slid down and was lying amid the pillows. The lamp had burned low, leaving the room swathed in velvety shadows.
The scrape came again. She thought she said, Who is it? but no words came out.
The door swung inward, moving slowly. Dominick stood in the archway, filling it with his height and his presence. The dim light turned his shirt a darker blue and glinted on the hilt of his sheathed dagger. The way he loomed, his face harsh and starkly intense, evoked the specter of conquerors who swept across continents, laying waste to their enemies.
“Hello.” Janelle barely managed the word. Such a quiet greeting for so dramatic a man.
“May I come in?” he asked.
She appreciated that he asked, given that he could have done whatever he wanted. “Yes,” she said.
He entered, and the room seemed to shrink. He closed the door, then came over and knelt on the other side of the bed. His shirt was open at the neck, revealing a tuft of chest hair, black and curly.
“Have you slept?” he asked.
“A little.” She wondered how the rest of his chest looked.
He watched her watching him, and his lips curved upward. The shadows eased the hard edges of his face. Sitting on the bed, he tugged off one of his boots.
Janelle froze. Now he was taking off the other boot. He set it next to the first and started to undo his shirt.
“Wait.” Her cheeks flamed. If she hadn’t been so groggy, she would have realized sooner what she might be agreeing to when she invited him into her room.
Dominick paused. “No?”
“I can’t. I mean—that is—”
He waited. Then he asked, “Do you want me to leave?”
“I don’t want to be alone. But I don’t—” She stuttered to a halt, feeling like an idiot.
“It’s all right.” He slid across the rugs and stretched out on his side facing her, with his head propped up on one hand. He took up the entire length of the bed. She could see why he might like sleeping on the floor; his legs were too long for a mattress.
“My monks checked your hair,” he said. “You are Janelle Aulair.”
She flushed, unsettled to have him so near. “Well, I knew that.”
He trailed his finger along her hip, sliding up the robe, which suddenly seemed too short. “This is pretty.”
She put his hand back on the bedspread. Maybe she should ask him to leave. But she dreaded being alone. He continued to watch her, his head tilted to the side as if she were a puzzle.
“You must have more names than Dominick,” she said, flustered.
“Indeed I do. Dominick-Michael Alexander Constantine.”
Now that was a moniker. “Those names are famous in my universe.” She was talking too fast again. “Like Alexander the Great.”
“The Great.” His gaze turned sleepy, as if he were a satisfied cat. “Tell me more.”
“He conquered Persia—” She stopped as he tugged the sash of her robe. His knuckles brushed her inner thigh.
“Don’t,” Janelle said.
He traced his finger along her cheek. “Do I offend you so much?”
“Sweet heaven, no.”
“Good.” His voice was like whiskey, dark and potent. “Otherwise, this would be a rather uneventful wedding night.”
Whoa. “You have the wedding night before the wedding?”
“If the bride and groom agree, yes.”
“What if they don’t agree?”
“I thought you did.”
There was that. “If you stay tonight, are we, uh, married?”
He watched her face. “If agreement is reached, and the bride receives rings from the groom, then yes. But public ceremonies are traditional and expected, especially for the royal family.”
“Oh.” She hesitated. “Does that happen tomorrow?”
“In the morning. Is that all right?”
After a moment, she said, “Yes. It’s just so strange.”
“For me, also.” He stroked his knuckles along her thigh. “But not unwelcome.”
“Dominick . . .”
He rubbed the hem of her robe between his thumb and finger. “This cloth is beautiful on you.” Putting his finger under her chin, he tilted up her face. He kissed her deeply, and she tensed, wanting him both to stop and to keep going. Her only experience with seduction was on the level of sending out for pizza and Cokes; she was so far out of her depth here, she was drowning.
When she didn’t protest, he pulled her closer and eased the robe off her shoulders. When he slid his palm over her breast, his calluses scraped her nipple, and she tingled in places he wasn’t touching her. Then he drew back, his face unexpectedly tender.
“Women are so small,” he said. “Look at this.” He put the heel of his hand at the bottom of her rib cage. His palm stretched up her torso and his fingers closed around her breast. “I can hold so much of you, but you couldn’t even cover my ribs.”
His ribs. Clever, sexy man. Of course she looked at his chest where he had unfastened his shirt. A mat of hair curled over his muscles. She laid her palm against his abdomen, feeling the springy hair, the hard muscles. Very nice. But very intimidating, too.
“You smell like flowers,” he said. Laying her on her back, he stretched out on top of her, easing his hips between her thighs. Then he reached for the waistband of his trousers.
“Wait!” Janelle said. He didn’t seem to have any speed between pause and fast forward.
He lifted his head, his eyes glossy with arousal. “Wait?”
“No more.” She felt like a fool, but she had just discovered she couldn’t go this far with someone she barely knew, even if he would be her husband tomorrow.
He brushed his lips across hers. “I won’t hurt you.”
“Dominick, I—no. No more.”
Frustration crept into his voice. “You tease me.”
“I don’t mean to. I just—I can’t.”
He lifted his head to look at her. “First your behavior says yes. Then no. Then yes. Then no. Which is it?”
“I’m not ready.”
He lay there, propped up on his hands, and she knew they both realized the truth. He could do whatever he wanted and she couldn’t stop him. She lay still, meeting his gaze.
Dominick groaned and rolled off her, onto his back. Then he threw his arm over his eyes and inhaled deeply. He stayed there, silent and still, except for the rise and fall of his chest.
Gradually his breathing slowed. Finally he lowered his arm and turned his head to her. “You are an unusual woman.”
That was tactful. Better than Make up your damn mind. She wanted to hold him, to feel safe, but she wasn’t safe with him. Although she didn’t think he meant to force her, he would get angry if he thought she was deliberately leading him on, and she could end up with more than she bargained for. She could also, she realized, end up pregnant.
Dominick studied her with that close focus of his. “I don’t mean to pressure you.” He smiled ruefully. “But you’re so lovely, Janelle. Difficult to resist.”
Her face heated. “You do sweet-talk a girl.” The southern drawl she had lost after her family moved to Washington often slipped back into her voice when she was nervous.
“It may be ‘sweet-talk.’ But I mean what I say.” He took off only his shirt, nothing more. Then he slid down the velvet cover and drew it over them both. Settling on his back, he pulled her into his arms. She closed her eyes, relieved, letting her head rest in the hollow where his arm met his shoulder.
“Dream well,” he murmured.
“You too.”
Dominick soon fell asleep, his eyes twitching under his lids. As she drifted into slumber, she wondered if he dreamed of the towns and countryside that would someday fall to his army. He could be gentle with her, but she had no doubt he was capable of conquering a continent.
Would he wrack his world with the ambition that led men to create empires—at immense human cost?
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