“No. Why?”
“She comes from your future.”
On the other side of her Gable coughed into his cup. So, she had already told Gable.
“What do you know about my future?” she asked him.
What did he know? Not much. He knew more about the past, at this point. About the Ashmores and the Blagdens…and only about their lines and male heirs. Miss Darling would think him mad if he told her such things. But what if she already knew? He didn’t trust anyone, not even Harper, anymore. Not even Harper…his eyes found her picking up her strings and sitting with the other musicians.
Her betrayal cut like the deepest knife. She’d had fifteen years to tell him things weren’t as they seemed, that he wasn’t mad in the head, and that for some reason his grandmother could travel through time.
Feeling his gaze on her, Harper looked at him. He turned away and looked into Miss Darling’s watchful gaze.
“She seems a bit old for you,” his guest pointed out.
“She raised me,” he corrected without anger. Indeed, he was beginning to feel nothing again. It was how he wanted it. It was his shield against Harper and everyone else.
“She raised you? Did your mother…”
“She disappeared,” Gray told her, then tossed her a careless smile. “Maybe she ran away from me to your 2024? Emma Ashley. Ever hear of her?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” Miss Darling told him, her voice softer than it was a moment ago. “But where I come from is much more crowded than it is now.”
“I see.”
“So, you believe her?” Will Gable asked in a hushed voice.
He’d seen her appear out of thin air. If nothing else, there was that. It was no trick of the light. There was no excuse to be made. She wasn’t there and then she was, looking as confused and terrified as anyone who had just traveled through time would.
Gray stared at her long enough to make anyone else twitch. She merely smiled and clearly won the battle when he felt as if he needed to scoop his heart up off the floor and bury it deeper into his chest.
“Do you?” she asked, giving his ruffled sleeve a tug. “Do you believe me?”
“Yes. I do,” he said, ignoring the way her smile deepened. “But don’t tell another soul or they’ll make your life hell. Do you understand?”
She nodded at him.
“Good.” He set his hard gaze on Gable. “Then, if I hear a rumor of this, I’ll know it was you who spread it.”
“You will not hear a word of it from me,” Will let him know with a bit of a bite in his tone.
Did Gable care for her? Gray clenched his cheek. Why did it have to be a Gable who’d come upon her first? A Gable who was likely stealing her heart? Will was handsome, with eyes the color of strong cedars and a deep dimple in his left cheek. He didn’t seem as insufferable as his brother, Harry. Miss Darling likely already cared for him.
“You dance really…um…well.”
He slid his gaze to Miss Darling. Was she mocking him? Really well? Or something else she decided not to say?
“Where did you go to school?”
“I didn’t go to school. I learned here at Dartmouth as a child. I had the best ballet teachers for a while, and then afterward…I taught myself.”
“Really?” she asked, doubting what he told her. “After what?”
He sat back in his chair and looked her over. What were these questions she was asking him? No one had ever asked him before.
“After my father forbade me to dance.”
She blinked and her eyes turned red and bright blue. “You weren’t allowed to dance?”