Author: Ashley Townsend
Category: Nonfiction
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/ashley-townsend/page,38,105060-chasing_shadows.html
She reached behind her and jerked the door closed. Robert appeared nervous now and retreated a step when she advanced. “Why did you kill Edith?” she ground out.
His crystal-clear eyes widened. “Wha—Hey, now, you’ve got the wrong idea.”
She let the object dangle from the chain and held it up for his inspection, feeling brief satisfaction over his shocked expression. “Really? Because you left this behind after you shot her.” Her whole body was shaking, and she clenched her hands at her sides, feeling the disk bounce against her thigh. She pinned Robert with a glare. “Now what’s a humble blacksmith’s assistant doing with a nineteenth century pocket watch?”
~Chapter 34~
Some of the color had drained from Robert’s usually tan features. His eyes were riveted to the watch, and he looked torn between snatching it from her grasp and denying her accusation that it belonged to him. Finally, he said, “It isn’t what you think.”
Sarah scoffed, the sound coming out choked. She swallowed back her tears. “First answer me why you killed Edith.”
He took a step toward her. “I swear I didn’t touch that woman.”
“I saw you!” She shrugged out of his grasp when he reached for her, looking desperate to explain. Sarah shook her head, groaning at the sight of him and planting her fists against her tightly closed lids. “Will trusted you.” And now he might be dead, too.
She swallowed back her tears and faced Edith’s murderer. Robert’s face was a mask of pain and indecision. “How could you do it?” she whispered accusingly.
He shook his head. His eyes were wide with innocence. “I didn’t. You have to believe me.” He reached a hand out again, but she jerked back.
“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked, voice breaking.
He held up his hands in compliance, obviously surprised at her outburst. His clear eyes pleaded with her to understand. “Fine. But I’m not the one who shot her.”
“Don’t lie to me. You were there.”
“Yes, I was.” He reached slowly into his shirt, as if afraid of what she might do if he startled her again. He produced a letter, the seal having been slit open, and held it out to her.
Sarah eyed him suspiciously before snatching the missive from his grasp with her free hand. But she didn’t read it, only held it up in accusation. “What is this?”
He sucked in a breath. “This was hand-delivered to me three days ago with a pouch of silver coins. Well, it was placed on my front stoop, actually. It’s a request that I pose as the Shadow, find my way into one of the upstairs rooms, and run when the time was right.” He shrugged, his expression ashamed. “That was it. And, yes, you chased me into that passage, but I only ran because I heard someone coming. I didn’t know it was you, and I definitely didn’t find out about what happened to your friend until just this morning.”
Sarah tried to process this, to find the lie in his words. But there was genuine innocence and regret in his gaze. “Who gave it to you?” she asked.
Shaking his head, he answered, “Like I said, it was left outside my door. But I did see a man stumbling away.” Robert pursed his lips at her eager expression. “No, I didn’t see his face. I assumed he was nobody, but thinking back, he had the posture of a guard, I’m sure of it. Even though he was loaded from the tavern at the time,” he added.
“And you didn’t think that something about this deal might have been underhanded?” she asked, disbelieving. “A drunk guard delivering you money and a mysterious command to commit a felony?”
Robert scratched the back of his neck, his expression suddenly sheepish. “The thought crossed my mind. But this man—this legend—was my hero growing up. I get to shadow him every day as a friend and coworker, and then I was suddenly given the opportunity to know what it’s like to be him. So, yeah, I was blinded by a history buff’s fantasy.” His eyes searched her face, looking pained. “You’ll never know how sorry I am that I didn’t just throw that money and the letter into the river.”
Sarah was momentarily taken aback that he had discovered Will’s secret, but Will had said so himself that it was only a matter of time. She stared at the floor, feeling unshed tears burn the back of her nose over Robert’s regret and her own. Why hadn’t she realized that there had been two intruders before? They had come from different rooms and passages and gone in opposite directions, throwing her off. She had let it go before, assuming there were secret passageways she hadn’t known about.
Slipping a finger beneath the sticky, cracked seal, Sarah unfolded the letter. It was just a small, unsigned note written in elegant script, detailing the date and instructions that Robert had just revealed. She carefully refolded the letter—the evidence—and let her gaze rest on the seal a moment longer. It looked familiar. Edith had once told her that most noble families had their crest pressed into the seals they traveled with. Maybe if she searched the castle, she would be able to find the owner of that seal and get one step closer to finding Edith’s killer.
Looking up, she met Robert’s tortured gaze. “Do you know who the other man was?”
“I wish I did.”
Sarah released a small breath at his genuine remorse. “I believe you.” His shoulders drooped in relief, and she could tell it meant a lot to him. “So I guess that brings us to this.” She held the watch out to him, and he accepted it with a look of gratitude. He stared at it for a long moment.
“It was my great grandfather’s,” he said at last, his voice faraway. The heirloom clearly meant very much. “I thought I’d lost this.”
“I think the glass may have cracked in the fall,” she said regretfully. “Sorry.”
Robert hesitated, and then slipped the watch into his pocket, careful to hide the chain from view. “Thank you for bringing it back to me.”
She had expected him to pop it open then and there to assess the damage to something so precious. Then she remembered the picture inside and knew he didn’t want her to see it. From what she gathered so far, he was as caught up in this mess as she. “How do you know Karen?”
Robert’s eyes snapped to her face in surprise.
She scratched her ear. “Uh, yeah, I saw the picture. I didn’t mean to snoop, but I was trying to figure out what it was, and it sort of popped open.” She watched his expression carefully. “But you can understand my confusion at finding a color photograph of the two of you tucked inside a timepiece. . . . Is that how you got here? You came with Karen?”
A grin of comprehension spread over his lips, though it wasn’t as bright as usual. “I thought you didn’t blend in with the crowd too well.” Sarah’s shoulders slumped. Yet another reminder that she didn’t belong. “I wasn’t sure how to approach it, though. Once I tried to ‘tactfully’ ask a woman if she was different and believed in the unbelievable. Turned out she was just modern and from out of town.”
Sarah felt her lips twitch in amusement. “You realize that seems a little creepy.”
“I do now, and trust me, I’ve kept my distance from foreign women since then.” Robert rubbed a hand over his jaw, as though nursing an invisible wound. “Had a nasty right hook for such a pretty thing.”
Mirth fading, Sarah asked, “Have you spoken with Karen recently?” He winced and shook his head, surprising her. “But if there are other”—she sent a look over the empty room and lowered her voice—“time travelers running around in the same place, don’t you think you should keep in contact with them as much as possible?”
He sighed. “That photo you saw? It was taken on a Santa Barbara beach two years ago, just before I proposed.”
Sarah couldn’t wipe the slack-jawed expression from her face, completely forgetting her previous question. “You two were engaged?” she asked in disbelief.
His chuckle was without humor. “No. I asked, and she declined. We were just kids then,” he went on quietly. His eyes stared through her, distant with remembrance. “I grew up in Santa Barbara and worked myself to death one summer so that I could go to Cambridge to advance m
y knowledge of European history. That’s where I met Charles, and he and I hit it off. He would show me pictures of Karen, saying she was a fiery child with just as much heart for science as he had, but I never met her until she broke into the youth meeting I was attending.” He smiled at the memory, and Sarah openly gaped at him. He was the boy Karen had told her about?
“I was so curious that I asked Little Karen to stay.” Robert chuckled and slanted her a look. “She’d cock me if she heard me call her that, but she was such a fiery little sprite back then.”
Sarah felt her own lips curve and arched a brow. “Back then?” He grinned back. Shaking her head, she remarked, “So I guess you got pretty close after that.”
Looking suddenly far away, he answered, “We were inseparable after that night. I was given over to the foster care system when I was a baby, and maybe the fact that we were both orphans bonded us quickly. But, I don’t know; I’ve never had that kind of connection with anyone. I just always felt safe with her.”
Remembering her quick trust and friendship with Karen, Sarah smiled faintly. “She has that affect on people. So then what happened?”
“Charles had mentioned his failed experiments in the past, and I offered my assistance.” Robert grinned wryly. “I’m basically hopeless when it comes to science, but I’m a fast learner and helped in any way I could, offering my knowledge of history. Then I started working with the two of them and fell in love with Karen.” His smile faded along with his voice.
Sarah watched his face, seeing the regret etched into the lines by his eyes that she had failed to notice before. “And then she rejected you,” she filled in.
The grin returned, aimed at his own foolishness. “I ambushed a girl barely seventeen and asked her to consider spending forever with me—there was no ring, no plan. Just a blind, cocky boy and his feelings pleading with her to say yes. And this was before I asked her how she felt about me.” He chuckled. “All or nothing, I guess.”
He started fiddling with the watch in his pocket. “She said she had feelings for me but wasn’t ready to settle down before she experienced life for herself.” Robert’s face became a mask of shame. “I told her if that was the way she felt, then I couldn’t work with them any more; it would just be too hard. She stormed off the beach, and I didn’t go after her.”
“You let her leave?” Sarah asked, surprised that he had given up so easily.
Robert grinned at her perception. “A week later I realized that I should have gone after her and shown her that I was willing to wait and be at her side during her adventures. Because I was.” His Adam’s apple bobbed in a convulsive swallow. “But we had the working prototype for the watches up by this time, and when I found out that she escaped to this place, I followed her to tell her she was worth waiting for.”
“That’s romantic,” Sarah said with a smile, forgetting that there must have been more to the story.
Face drawn, it didn’t appear that Robert shared her opinion. “Well, when I arrived and discovered where she was staying, I went there and saw her outside alone. I was desperate to fix things, but I couldn’t go to her; she was almost too beautiful to touch, so I stayed in the trees.” His eyes were glazed in remembrance.
Sarah could almost picture his floppy, sun-bleached hair poking out from behind the trunk of an oak, tan face drawn in suffering. It was romantic when the hero in films watched his maiden secretly, and they always ended up together in the end. So what happened? she wondered to herself.
As if in answer to her unspoken question, Robert, still lost in his daydream, admitted quietly, “I hesitated and lost my chance: A man came to her, and they talked easily and seemed to care for each other. I knew by the way she looked at him that she was already in love with someone else.” He shot her a self-deprecating grin. “That’s when I found out first-hand about the inconsistency between our times.”
Grimacing at his painful tale, she offered, “I’m really sorry.” And she was. His story was heartbreaking, but he looked accepting of Karen’s decision, though it was obvious it still pained him to speak of it. “What did you say when you saw her again?”
Robert shrugged. “What could I say? She was in love with him and staying with a caring family.” He smiled wryly. “I decided to be a gentleman and to do the right thing. I walked away, refusing to interfere with their relationship or see her again. Then I performed a few odd jobs in Ridlan for a little over a year until I came here.”
Sarah waved a hand, wanting him to retrace his steps. “Wait, so you’ve been here ever since she broke your heart and she doesn’t even know it? It’s been years. Why did you stay?!”
He looked amused at her outburst. “Because this is my home now. I’ve always felt that I was born in the wrong time, and since I had nothing left to go back to—” He shrugged, at a loss for words. “Anyway, I misplaced my watch and—”
“You lost it? Where?”
“Back in Ridlan, shortly after I arrived.” Robert took a step toward her, holding his hands up in defense. “Don’t worry. Like I told you, it was an old prototype and had numerous issues, so there’s no way it’s lasted this long, even if someone in this century could find a way to get it to work. And there is no way they could.”
Sarah’s shoulders stooped a little in relief. “Oh, okay.”
Robert cringed. “You won’t tell the boss, will you? I’d hate to have my hero, well, hate me.” He rubbed the back of his neck, and Sarah wondered if he had picked up the uncomfortable habit from Will.
She swallowed. “You said earlier that Will isn’t here?” That familiar sensation of dread crept into her stomach.
“Yeah. He took off last night to meet someone”—he grinned knowingly—“which I assumed was you. I haven’t seen him since. I snuck back into his house this morning to return the items I’d . . . ‘borrowed,’ but the house was empty. Why?”
Sarah hesitated. Could she really burden him with something she wasn’t even sure of herself?
Edging closer, Robert said warily, “You know something.”
She bit her lip, then told him of the two bodies that had been found at the bottom of the falls and of her suspicions that one might have been Will.
Her eyes had filled with tears by the end of her story, and Sarah bit the inside of her cheek hard to keep them at bay. “I don’t know what else to think.”
Robert looked like he’d seen a ghost and backed up a few steps so he could lean against the wall. He shook his head in disbelief. “But he isn’t supposed to die like this. I thought it would be incredible to shadow him, to follow in the footsteps of a legend.” His eyes met hers, and she saw the same fear she felt reflected in his gaze. “You don’t think that this is our fault, do you? Because we’ve messed with the past?”
She had wondered the same thing, but couldn’t bring herself to believe it. “Karen said that they really can’t be sure this is the past,” she said dully, her argument sounding weak; she was only repeating what she’d been told, and she didn’t even believe it anymore. “We can’t jump to conclusions.”
Raking a hand up through her hair, Sarah huffed as she realized the hour was getting late. “I have to go. But, please,” she added, swallowing. “If you hear from him, please come find me.”
Robert tried to smile hopefully, but his eyes swam with doubt. “He’ll come back. I’m sure of it. He’s indestructible.”
She gave a half-hearted shake of her head, chest tightening. “Will doesn’t need to be indestructible—I just need him to be alive.”
****
Sarah hurried alongside the castle, chaffing her arms against the chill in her bones. The poorly veiled worry on Robert’s face let her know she wasn’t being overly sensitive or jumping to conclusions, which left her feeling weighed down with concern. She tried telling herself it wasn’t true, but then where was he?
A faint acrid scent reached her nose, and her mind registered the smell as her eyes scanned the tree line. Her feet became rooted to the spot at the si
ght of the doe, hind legs bound together, dangling upside down from a bare limb. Sarah’s stomach clenched at the sight of the blood—no longer pouring from its gaping throat—that had leeched out into the pristine snow, staining a large circle of earth beneath the dead animal’s nose.
“A shame, is it not?”
Sarah’s body stiffened. That was a voice she had hoped never again to hear. Stifling a shiver, she turned her head from the gruesome scene and met Cadius’ chilling gaze. In the gray daylight, his eyes appeared even more stormy and unearthly.
“I’m sorry?” She sounded breathless.
One leather-gloved finger flicked in the direction of the forest, towards the maimed deer. “It’s a pity having to end something so lovely.”
Sarah’s skin crawled at his unwavering stare. Her mind ran rampant, as did her pulse, reminding her that this man may have killed his own brother. And here she was, alone with a murderer with the stench of blood clinging to the air. She told herself to be calm and tried to remember that he wasn’t out to get her. Yet.
Not wanting to look into his eyes or at the dead creature, she focused her gaze on a distant tree just past the doe. “Dinner?” she managed to ask nonchalantly.
“It is now.” Cadius took a step forward, and his elbow nearly brushed hers. Chest clenching with the effort not to shrink away, she bit the inside of her cheek, knowing that revealing her fear would only give him reason to suspect. “You see,” he went on conversationally, “it was caught nibbling the garden, snooping where it shouldn’t be.”
Sarah felt a pang of anxiety shoot through her, though she told herself she was being jumpy. “It’s awfully small. Could it really do much damage?”
For some reason, his eyes sparked to life, and he seemed to take pleasure in her words. “On the contrary,” he drawled in his low, cultured voice, “if left unchecked, a creature so seemingly harmless can destroy many months of harvesting.”
Cadius smiled indulgently at her, and then his eyes focused on something over her head. She turned and saw Damien speaking with one of the livery boys, his back to them. Gray eyes were again fixed on the animal when she looked back at Cadius.