Love Beyond Time by Flora Speer Page A

do what he wanted. The shadow
in her eyes stopped him. He let his hand stray to her braid
instead. He felt its silken smoothness sliding through his fingers
and heard her catch her breath, a quiet sound, quickly smothered.
Her glance did not forsake his, but the haunted expression
deepened.
    “Why are you so sad?” At once he wished he
had not asked. By the immediate withdrawal in her lovely face he
knew he had trespassed into a personal domain where he had no right
to go.
    “You are too perceptive.” With an irritated
gesture she tossed the coin she was holding onto the little
collection of silver and copper spread upon the quilt. “I cannot
answer you. It is not your affair.”
    “I am not deaf, Danise, and I have begun to
understand your language rather well. I hear what the people around
me are saying. Are you unhappy because your father hopes you will
soon agree to marry?” He stopped there, not telling her what it was
on the tip of his tongue to say, that the thought of her marriage
to anyone, even to a man as good-hearted and decent as Redmond, was
as unpleasant to him as it apparently was to her.
    “You do not understand.” Danise rose, turning
her back on him. She did not look at him when she spoke again.
    “Since you feel well enough to leave your
bed,” she told him in tones reminiscent of Sister Gertrude, “you
plainly do not need my nursing care any longer. I leave you to the
men, Michel. I wish you the best of luck at weapons practice.” With
that, she was out of the tent, the entrance flap swinging shut
behind her.
    Michel shook his head in wonder at his own
ineptness. No need to ask what had annoyed her. He had blundered
into her private life and she did not want him there. He thought
about the way her expression closed so quickly against him,
recalled the rigidly straight line of her back as she left the
tent. He groaned in frustration.
    From the first moment when he had glimpsed
Danise’s face through pain-blurred, unfocused eyes, he had been
aware of a peculiar connection to her. For days after that initial
sight of her, Danise had been a near-angelic presence, drawing him
back to consciousness when it would have been easier to slip away
into painless darkness. Now that he was almost well again common
sense told him this mysterious bond was an illusion created by his
helplessness and nurtured by his continuing lack of memory. Common
sense told him so but his heart, or some other buried part of
himself that believed in miracles, insisted that there was more to
his presence at Duren than mere chance. And though he thought she
would have denied it if he asked her, he believed Danise also felt
the connection between them.
    But what did he want from her? Did he have
the right to ask anything at all of her? Or, as Savarec had once
suggested to him, did he have a family and friends somewhere else
who were even now wondering where he was and if he yet lived? There
was no way to answer any of those questions until his memory
returned.
    He went back to the coins still spread out
upon his bed, seeking in them some information about himself. He
picked up one of the larger coins to examine it, turning it over,
frowning while a chill slid down his spine. He picked up another
coin, and then another, until he had looked closely at all of them.
Certain numbers on the coins were dates and all of them fell within
a twenty-year period. The dates represented an impossibility. But
they were accurate. He knew it in his heart as well as in his mind.
Furthermore, these were not ancient coins of the kind he was
accustomed to finding in his work. This was recently minted
money.
    His work ? How in heaven’s name did
he know about ancient coins ?
     
    * * *
     
    “Hold your arm so,” Redmond instructed.
“Slash like this. Auggh! Do you want to kill me? Gently, my friend,
gently, please.” He drew back, grinning at Michel. “You are not new
at this. You have used a sword before.”
    “So it would seem. I regret that