PROLOGUE
Maggie Blake stood in the middle of her antique shop on Newbury Street in Boston and stared down at the old journal in her hand. She had found it in an escritoire, a small writing desk with a cabinet above for books. The piece had arrived two days ago in a shipment of several other pieces from England, all dating from the time of Prince George, Regent to his father, King George III. The escritoire was exquisite and valuable, but the journal was a historical document, written, it appeared, in 1814 by a woman named Emma, coincidentally the same name as her older sister. Who had disappeared days ago.
Maggie had become worried about her sister as the days passed, and she hadn’t been able to contact her. She’d texted her, called, left voicemails, and even emailed. But her sister hadn’t answered any of them. Emma had gone silent before, when she’d been researching some obscure bit of history for the historical romance she was working on, but she’d always texted after a day or so to check in and say she was okay. Not this time.
Maggie had contacted everyone she could think of who might have heard from her sister since she’d finished her manuscript and sent it off to her editor. No one had. Not Darcy, their youngest sister, who was doing an internship in Milan with a high-end fashion designer, not Emma’s author assistant, not her agent, not her editor. None of her friends.
Maggie had contacted the authorities — the police, Scotland Yard, the American Embassy. They had all been sympathetic and began a search for Emma, but a week had gone by and they hadn’t found her. Maggie felt that she needed to go to London herself. With a glance around the antique shop, she sighed out the anxiety.
She would have to leave her business in Boston, the shop that had been their father’s before his untimely death in a plane crash six months ago, and fly to London to find Emma. Would she still have the business when she came back? She’d hired a new assistant only a few weeks ago. Would the young woman be able to run the shop on her own while Maggie was away? Pushing that worry aside for the moment, she focused instead on travel details — plane ticket, packing, transportation to the airport.
She ran her fingers over the lovely, embossed, leather cover of the journal. For some illogical reason, she suspected the diary had something to do with Emma’s disappearance. Because the woman who wrote it sounded like Emma. But that was crazy. This woman had lived over two hundred years ago. It had to be a coincidence.
The entries in the journal began with a narration of her husband’s quest for his rightful title, discovering secret notes, unraveling a secret code, and revealing the treachery of her husband’s half-brother. The other entries were mostly descriptions of life in London and on a grand estate, the day-to-day experiences of a genteel woman of the time, but also about the lady’s frustrations over the restrictions of society. The author included her deep feelings for her husband, whom she referred to as her hero, as well as several comments about how much and how often he pleased her. And on the first page was a date and a dedication: 30 June 1814. To my sisters, whom I miss greatly. Even though we are separated, know that I hold you in my heart.
Those two sentences brought tears to Maggie’s eyes every time she read them. They sounded like something Emma might write in one of her historical romances. But Maggie decided that was just happenstance. The woman who had authored the journal couldn’t possibly be her sister, because that would mean she had traveled back in time. Which was preposterous. Impossible. An absurd idea.
Chapter 1
After an overnight flight to London, Maggie relished the freedom of a jog through Hyde Park. Directly from Heathrow Airport, she had gone to her dad’s flat, the one he had owned so he would have a place to stay on his extended buying trips to England. It was where Emma had been staying, and when Maggie walked in, she half-expected to see Emma sitting at the desk and staring at her computer. But her sister wasn’t there.
After a quick search through the rooms, she discovered Emma’s clothes and her purse, with her passport and money still inside. The flat looked like her sister might show up any minute and apologize for not being there to welcome Maggie. As she contacted the police and Scotland Yard and the American Embassy to let them know she was in London, she waited for her sister to come sailing in the door. But Emma never appeared. Where was she?
That question ran through Maggie’s head in a loop as she jogged, but she had no answer. Distracted by trying to figure out where her sister might be, she slowly became aware that the tiny, delicate gold key hanging on a thin chain around her neck had turned warm, then suddenly scorching hot. Burning where it touched her skin. She stopped short as a hiss of pain whistled through her teeth. Pulling the key from beneath her tee shirt, she let it dangle in the breeze to cool it down and wondered what had caused it to turn so hot.
Hanging next to the key on the chain was the sapphire and diamond pendant, shaped like a flower bud, that had come from a necklace belonging to her mother. She had died when Maggie was barely a toddler. Her other two sisters each had a pendant exactly like it. As it dangled, a ray of sun pierced the deep shade thrown by the huge oak tree next to her and lit up the jeweled pendant, as if some magical element had been triggered. The effect was mesmerizing. Other-worldly. Then it faded. Weird.
Maggie glanced around to see if anyone had noticed, if anyone else seemed as shocked as she was by the phenomenon. But the few people nearby appeared unaffected. Located in the middle of London, Hyde Park looked as it always did in mid-morning in early summer. People ambled along the paths, a few nannies pushed their young charges in strollers, several diplomatic types hurried across the freshly mowed lawn. No one seemed to have noticed anything out of the ordinary. She stepped off the path and flopped onto the grass beneath the enormous old oak tree that looked like it might house a whole colony of elves. Pulling the chain over her head, she checked beneath her tee shirt for signs of a burn on her skin. Nothing was there, not even a red mark. Weird again.
Holding up the chain, she watched the key swing slowly next to the pendant, as if the two were dancing together. The little key was a lovely thing, its head an intricate filigree of gold. She imagined that it fit into the lock on a beautiful, antique, carved wooden box that held a lady’s jewels.
For her last birthday, just months before her father’s untimely death, he had told her to choose anything she wanted from his antique shop, the one she had inherited and now owned, stocked with only the best antiques, high-end items that sold in the thousands, occasionally in the tens of thousands. The key had lain in a dusty corner of the single display case in the shop for as long as she could remember, an anomaly that contrasted sharply with the other exquisite items for sale. She had always wanted the tiny trinket from the time she had first spied it when she was a little girl.
When he’d given it to her, he told her it was the key to her heart, to be given away to the man of her dreams. She’d laughed because she didn’t see any “hero” in her future, despite the fact that her older sister, who made her living writing about romance heroes, kept telling her that everyone should have a happily-ever-after. Maggie’s relationships with men had been minimal and brief, either ending in disappointment or fading into nothing, for which she was glad because she couldn’t see herself spending the rest of her life with any of the men she’d dated. She hadn’t been with a man for over a year.
The key was a cherished reminder of her dad. The sapphire pendant hanging on the chain beside it was a keepsake from the mother she didn’t remember, because she had been too young when her mom died. But her dad had always spoken of her as if a part of his heart was missing. For some reason, Maggie felt that the two items, the pendant and the key, needed to be together.
With a sigh, she closed her fingers around the trinkets and leaned back on her elbows. She blinked back tears as that tug of loss assailed her again.
The loss of her mother, whom she never knew, was a void that her dad did his best to try to fill. Then she’d lost him a year ago when the small, two-seater plane he’d been piloting crashed into Cape Cod Bay. Now Emma, who had come to London to finish her historical romance, had gone missing. The last time Maggie had talked with her, Emma had said that she was working furiously on her manuscript because her editor wanted it earlier than the original due date. And then she had mysteriously disappeared.
When Maggie saw that all of Emma’s belongings were still at the flat, as if she had just stepped out for a moment, a chill went through her. Emma had been gone for days. Was she injured and lying in a ditch somewhere? Had she been kidnapped? Maggie didn’t want to think about the worst possibility—that she was gone. The police hadn’t been able to pick up any clues to her whereabouts, and she’d heard nothing from Scotland Yard or the American Embassy. Maggie missed her sister and worried about her. Something terrible might have happened to her. But wouldn’t she know in her heart if Emma was dead?
The key warmed in her palm, then turned very hot again.
Sitting up, she opened her fingers and let the chain swing in the air.
“What the devil…?”
The man’s voice came from somewhere nearby. Maggie glanced over her shoulder, but the expanse of grass behind her was empty.
“What the devil…!”
The agitated exclamation came again, this time from above. The branches of the oak tree over her head thrashed wildly, as if they were in the middle of a mini storm, but she felt no wind. The sun still shone brightly, and the sky was blue. Something whizzed past her. Ducking, she threw her arms over her head for protection. She heard a thud on the ground and a grunt of pain.
“WHAT THE DEVIL…?!”
She peeked between her fingers. A man lay sprawled on the grass in front of her. Where had he come from? Maybe he had fallen out of the tree. That would explain the thrashing branches. But what had he been doing up there? Spying? He rolled to his hands and knees and shook his head as if to clear it, then climbed to his feet and brushed himself off as he surveyed his surroundings.
Maggie slipped her chain back over her head, scrambled up and backed away a step, just in case she needed to run. Strangers falling out of trees didn’t happen every day. He might have been up there for a perfectly innocent reason. Or not.
He was quite tall, probably about six feet, maybe a little more, and he was dressed — Wait. How was he dressed? She blinked, then squinted, trying to decide if her eyes were playing tricks. No, she wasn’t seeing things. He was dressed in tight, buckskin breeches tucked into high boots and a soft, white, full-sleeved linen shirt, open at the neck. He looked all decked out for a historical costume drama. Maybe he was an actor and had been hiding from the film crew working on that historical costume drama.
“Hi,” she said. “Are you all right?”
He swung around, took one look at her, and immediately turned his back. “I beg your pardon. I did not mean to intrude upon your — your —” He gave a helpless wave of his hand.
“It’s okay. You didn’t interrupt anything.”
“No?” Peeking over his shoulder, he quickly turned away again. “Then why are you…?” He took a deep breath. “Where are the rest of your clothes?”
Glancing down at her tee shirt and running shorts, she saw nothing was missing. “These are all my clothes.”
He swiveled to face her. “Good God, woman, you cannot wander about London like that.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
“Why not? Why not? Because…Because…,” he sputtered, then stopped, scowled, and took two steps closer. Then two more. To within arm’s reach.
She fell back, but before she could turn and run, his hand whipped out and captured both the pendant and the key. The chain bit into the back of her neck. She was caught.
“Hey! Let go of that!” She took hold of the length of chain that wasn’t in his large fist and tugged. Of course, he didn’t release it.
“Where did you get this?” he growled.
Alarmed and angry, she tugged on the chain again. “None of your business.”
He inched closer, towering over her. “It is very much my business.”
She tilted her head back to look up at him. If he didn’t look so threatening, he would have been quite handsome, with dark green eyes, straight nose, square chin, and strong jaw that was covered in a thick scruff. Hair, a bit unkempt and too long, the color of mahogany with light streaks, brushed his neck and fell across his brow. His shirt showed signs of hard wear, and dirt smudged one shoulder. He smelled sweaty, as if he’d been working out, with a trace of salty caramel, but, damn, that smelled good. Then she scolded herself for thinking such a thing because he could be a dangerous criminal. If he was involved in making a movie, he must have been playing a fugitive. But that was a fleeting thought amidst all the other thoughts that were flashing through her head, the loudest and most insistent being to get away as fast as possible.
“Why is it your business where I got the key and pendant?” she asked. Maybe if she kept him talking, he would be distracted enough to release his hold on the chain so she could escape.
At that moment, a skateboarder followed by a friend on roller blades sped past. They caught the stranger’s attention. As they disappeared down the lane, he stepped off the grass to watch them zoom away and dragged Maggie at the end of her chain along with him.
He turned to her with a suspicious squint. “What manner of conveyance was that?”
Hadn’t he ever seen a skateboard or roller blades? Where was he from?
Maggie opened her mouth to answer, but before she had the chance, the sound of a distant police siren pierced the air. He startled and froze, then as the noise faded into the distance, he glared at her.
“What was that confounded noise? A banshee? Are you a witch?” he growled. “Have you conjured me into a nightmare?”
She stared in disbelief. “What? No! I haven’t conjured you into anything!” Although the fact that he seemed to have fallen from the sky might be considered conjuring. But that was just crazy.
“Never mind.” He tugged twice on the trinkets in his fist. “Where did you get this?”
“None of your business,” she repeated, this time allowing annoyance to color her words, as she tried to pry open his fingers. “Let go of my necklace.”
“Your necklace,” he scoffed. “You have no right to it.”
Was he deranged? On drugs? A thief? “I have every right.”
“You do not.” Anger darkened those green eyes.
“Why not?” Maggie was angry now, too, and her shock began to morph into fear. “Because the key is mine.” With another tug, he brought her up against his body.
Maggie was aware of two very distinct things. The stranger’s body was hard and muscular. And she was suddenly and quite dizzyingly falling…spiraling down, as if she had stepped into a very, very deep, dark hole.
***
Smack!
Simon Herrington, Marquis of Wildford, sucked air into his lungs and blinked. How in hell had he wound up on his back in the middle of a lane in Hyde Park with a very lovely woman sprawled on top of him? A woman who was wearing little more than his key on a chain around her neck. One minute, he was upright and confronting the young woman, whose curves, he noticed, fit very nicely against him. The next minute, he was falling through space and slamming into the earth on his back. How the devil had that happened?
That was the second time something very, very strange had occurred. The first had happened just moments before, as he had been silently raging against the fates that had put him in a prison cell. Between one blink and the next, he was falling through the air, bouncing through tree limbs, and landing on his face in Hyde Park. His brain was having trouble keeping up.
The woman squirmed and wriggled her way off him, jamming her knee against his privates in the process. He grunted in pain, but she gave no indication she realized what she had done. Instead, she hissed with annoyance.
“Let go,” she demanded, as she tried to pry his fingers from his key.
Her face was only inches above his, caught as she was by the length of chain around her neck. He looked into her eyes, the same blue as the sapphire pendant hanging next to his key. Lovely eyes, surrounded by thick lashes, but at this moment, stormy eyes, because she was angry. A tiny beauty mark sat just at the corner of her left eye, as if the artist who created her had left his mark. Her dark hair was scraped back from her face and tied in a manner resembling a horse’s tail and just as luxurious. The rest of her was quite delightful as well, for he had seen much, much more than was proper for the middle of Hyde Park. And he had felt her delicious curves when she landed on top of him. But he knew very well that an attractive exterior could hide an ugly, treacherous heart.
“I will not let go,” he said quite equitably, considering she was most likely a thief. Or a witch. “You are in possession of a key that belongs to me.”
Her eyes widened, then narrowed. “That’s impossible. The key is hundreds of years old. It’s an antique. My father had it in his shop for years before he gave it to me, just before —” Her words halted on a catch in her throat.
Something about her father upset her, but he put away that tidbit of information for later. Instead, he focused on the rest of her words.
“Hundreds of years old?” he scoffed. “Your father must have been mistaken. How did he gain possession of it? Was he a thief as well?”
Insult made her rear back to the length of the chain. “How dare you! My father was no thief!” She began to pummel his chest. “Let go of me, you weirdo!” Raising her head, she yelled, “Help! Help!”
Simon clapped his hand over her mouth. “Shush. I will not harm you.”
Her cries didn’t stop, but at least they were muffled. He ignored the blows she rained on his chest and ribs. The last thing he needed was to attract attention, especially from the authorities. He caught sight of a horse and rider far down the path, trotting in their direction. He didn’t want to be seen, especially with a woman dressed in odd undergarments, and in their compromising position.
“If I release the chain, will you remain quiet?” he asked.
She stopped hitting him, studied him a moment, then nodded.
“Will you promise not to run away?” he pressed.
Her nod of agreement was much too quick, indicating she had no intention of remaining where she was.
He held back a sigh of exasperation. “I will not harm you. I just wish to straighten out this misunderstanding. Please, don’t run away.”
Her nod came more slowly.
Carefully, he unclenched his fist from around the key and pendant. She held very still, her eyes — those magnificent eyes — never leaving his face. Still not trusting that she wouldn’t run, in a single, fluid motion, he rolled to his feet, wrapped his hand around her arm and pulled her up with him.
She tried to jerk away. “I said I wouldn’t run.”
“Sh,” he warned, glanced down the path at the horse and rider, then dragged her behind the huge oak. For some reason, he had the impression the tree was much larger and older when he had fallen through its branches and first encountered the woman. But he had just been pulled from his prison cell and tumbled through the air, so maybe he was mistaken.
The rider came abreast of the tree. “Wildford, is that you?”
Simon winced. He knew that voice. Brandon Connaught, a schoolmate, a friend, whom he hadn’t seen in several years. If he remained behind the tree and didn’t speak to him, the man would think he was giving him the cut. With a warning glance to the woman to remain hidden, he mouthed, Stay here. Then he stepped out from behind the tree while keeping a firm grip on the woman’s wrist.
“Hello, Connaught,” he said.
Connaught’s eyes widened a bit at Simon’s disheveled appearance, but instead of commenting on that, he said, “It’s been years since I’ve seen you. Where have you been?”
Simon gave a casual shrug. “Doing a bit of the King’s business. And you? Still fighting for your birthright?”
His friend’s mouth ticked up at the corner. “All settled. A bit of bad business with my half-brother. The old man is dead. The title is mine.”
“Congratulations. And condolences on your father’s death.” Simon suspected that his friend’s brief sentences hid a great deal of drama.
“I have also taken a wife.” A happy, smug smile creased Connaught’s face.
Simon grinned. “I thought you had sworn off marriage.”
“When the right woman appears, a man must submit to the inevitable,” Connaught — now the Earl of Cranleigh — said with good humor.
At that moment, a large group of riders, both men and women, approached and surrounded the earl. Simon stepped back behind the tree. He had recognized several of the newcomers, but he didn’t want to interact with them. One of them, he was sure, perhaps more, had been instrumental in his arrest. He needed to make a plan before he accused anyone of treason.
The woman peeked around the trunk of the tree, then glanced back at him. “Look at all those gorgeous costumes. Are you shooting a movie?” she asked, her eyes lit with excitement. “What’s the title?”
“I’m not shooting at anything.” He frowned at her very odd words and questions. “What is a moo-vey?”
She frowned back. “You’re kidding, right? You don’t know what a movie is?”
Simon heard the words, but most of them made no sense. Perhaps the woman was deranged and speaking gibberish. Or perhaps some spell was wound up in her odd way of speaking. Even so, he was not about to let her out of his sight until she turned over his key. Cranleigh and the other riders moved off, so he felt safe to emerge from hiding. Without answering, he pulled the woman in the direction of one of the exits from the park.
“Wait,” she said, hanging back. “Where are you taking me?”
“Some place where we can come to an understanding about the ownership of my key,” he said and dragged her along.
“It’s my key,” she argued, as she tried to pull from his grip. “And I’m not going anywhere with you. I have no idea who you are. You could be a rapist or a murderer.”
Simon halted so quickly that she ran into him, then she immediately backed away as far as she could with his hand still wrapped around her wrist.
“I am neither a rapist, nor a murderer,” he said tightly, deciding that the men he’d killed in the name of his king and country didn’t count as murder. “My apologies for not introducing myself earlier. I am Simon Herrington, Marquis of Wildford.” He executed an abbreviated bow, since he still had hold of the woman.
“Oh,” she said, appearing a bit shocked. Then her eyes narrowed. “Of course you’re a marquis. You play your role very well. You must have the lead in the movie.”
There was that word again: movie. And she said he had the lead. Well, of course he did. He was leading her and they were moving — movie was how she pronounced it. Annoyingly, she did not introduce herself in return, nor nod acknowledgment of his introduction, or even extend a hand for him to bow over. Well, he did have hold of her wrist, so maybe extending a hand wasn’t possible. But obviously, she was not a woman of quality. He didn’t care. All he wanted was his key. If he had to, he would pay her an exorbitant amount for it, then send her on her way.
They came in sight of the road with its carriages and coaches and drays and riders on horses, and ladies shopping with their maids, and gentlemen making their way to their clubs, and delivery boys and messengers — all the usual traffic. The woman’s reluctant steps halted abruptly. When he turned to see what the problem was, she was staring at the road.
“That’s quite a movie set,” she said.
He gazed at the scene before them as he tried to figure out what she was talking about. “Moo-vey set?”
“Yeah, you know, a fake background so the actors look like they’re in a real place.” She continued to stare at the road and its traffic as if fascinated.
“I assure you, there is nothing fake about the congestion of London,” he said.
At that moment, a nightsoil man, out much too late in the morning with his odoriferous wagon, rolled by. The woman gasped and covered her nose and mouth. After watching the wagon a moment, she turned to him. Her cheeks had turned quite pale, her eyes wide with shock.
“Wha…Wha…What year is this?” she asked, her words barely above a whisper.
“1814,” he said, curious why she wouldn’t know that.
And then she collapsed in a dead faint.
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