Time to Heal

  Time To Heal

  A Kindred Tales Novel

  Evangeline Anderson

  www.evangelineanderson.com

  Time To Heal, 1st Edition,

  A Kindred Tales Novel

  Copyright © 2019 by Evangeline Anderson

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Art Design © 2019 by Reese Dante

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writers’ imagination or have been used factiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to a retailer of your choice or evangelineanderson.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Cover content is for illustrative purposes only.

  Any person depicted on the cover is a model.

  Contents

  Time to Heal

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Leave a Review

  Pairing with the Protector

  Chapter 1

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  Also by Evangeline Anderson

  About the Author

  Time to Heal

  A Single Mother, Desperately trying to get back her baby

  A Warrior who swears to help her or die trying

  Can Skahr and Emmeline steal back her baby before it's too late?

  And will they have...Time to Heal?

  Emmeline is a young, single mother all alone in the world. After being attacked, she was cast out by her family and is having a hard time making her way in the world, Desperate to assure her son's future, she gave him up to her mother to raise—only to have him stolen away from her completely. Now he is sick and she must find a way to heal him—but how?

  Enter Skahr, a Kindred warrior from another world who needs some healing of his own. A prophesy has foretold that Emmeline is the one he seeks but he must promise to help her find and heal her baby first. As the two go on a quest together, Emmeline finds herself drawn to the big, scarred warrior with his surprising strength and quiet ways. But will the two of them get back her baby before it's too late?

  And will they have...Time to Heal?

  Author's Warning: Though I have tried to handle it delicately, readers should know that my heroine, Emmeline, is the victim of sexual assault. If you have also been a victim, please read with care. I hope, as I always do when I write this kind of book, to provide a narrative which will bring hope and healing to the reader, not a re-occurrence of trauma.

  Foreword

  Dear Readers:

  1. Though Time to Heal can be read as a stand alone novel, you will probably enjoy it more if you read its predecessor, Trapped in Time first.

  2. Though I have tried to handle it delicately, readers should know that my heroine, Emmeline, is the victim of sexual assault. If you have also been a victim, please read with care. I hope, as I always do when I write this kind of book, to provide a narrative which will bring hope and healing to the reader, not a re-occurrence of trauma.

  3. After her assault, Emmeline chooses to keep her baby despite the fact that he is the product of a rape. This is not any kind of political commentary—it is simply the heroine my muse supplied when I was writing this book. Though I myself have very strong political views, I try to keep them out of my books.

  Hugs and Happy Reading to you all,

  Evangeline

  One

  “So how’s it going? See anything interesting lately?”

  Caroline Vii looked up from her work, startled by the voice in her ear. It was Sophie, one of her new friends aboard the Kindred Mother Ship. The other girl gave her an apologetic smile.

  “Oh sorry—didn’t mean to startle you. I was just curious about what other universes you’d been watching lately.”

  It might have seemed a strange question to anyone else, but Caroline was a scientist who had pioneered the study of the other layers of reality in what was known as the Multiverse. The idea that there might be more than one universe—that there might, in fact, be hundreds or thousands or even millions of universes and realities layered on top of each other like the rings of an onion—had long been bandied around the scientific community.

  But only Caroline had found a way to actually observe them.

  Using a machine she had invented called PORTAL—short for Positronic Orbital Rotating Time/Space Allocating Locator—Caroline was actually able to peel back the layers of reality and observe other universes. Some people were also able to travel between them, using the window that PORTAL created. Caroline had found that out the hard way, when she was sucked into another universe and forced to live the life of her own double in what was essentially Victorian England.

  That had been a wild adventure and Caroline had barely escaped with her life several times over. She’d been drugged, shot at, attacked, and made to wear hoop-skirts and a corset laced so tightly she could barely breathe. But since she had also gotten her mate and husband, Richard, out of the deal, she considered the whole thing a success—not that she ever wanted to repeat it.

  Now there was a clearly marked black line on the floor of her lab, exactly three feet from the large brass frame of PORTAL’s window generation unit. This was considered the minimum safe distance and whenever a different universe was showing in the large, rectangular frame, Caroline made certain that she and anyone else who came into her lab observed it carefully from behind the safety line.

  She didn’t want anyone else getting sucked into another world and forced to live the life of their Multiverse doppelganger as she had. It was too damn dangerous and crazy, trying to pass yourself off as a whole other person who might look exactly like you, but had a completely different personality and life. Having lived through that herself, Caroline wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Nor did she want to drag anyone from another universe through the PORTAL’s window into her own world…well, with one exception.

  She wished desperately that she could bring Richard’s cousin, Emmeline, through. In fact, that was who she was watching in PORTAL’s window right now.

  “Not really seeing anything new at the moment,” she told Sophie. “Mostly I’ve just been trying to keep an eye on Emmeline—though I don’t know what we could do if I saw something bad happening. Richard can’t go back to his old universe and I don’t think I can either.”

  “Poor thing!” Sophie looked at the large brass frame, which showed a gray,
overcast day in the other universe. The sky was an ominous shade of purple-blue and storm clouds were massing, clearly threatening to spit more snow to match the grayish mush that lined the cobbled streets of the Victorian-looking city.

  It had been summertime when Caroline made her trip through the PORTAL but time had passed and it was winter now—a dull and dreary time in the other world. Not that it seemed to bother the girl they were watching.

  Walking along the street, her chin lifted high, was Emmeline. She was a lovely girl with long, golden-brown hair, caught up in a fashionable chignon and held in place by a jaunty little emerald green hat pinned at the crown of her head. The hat set off her large, luminous eyes and the long, bustled green gown she wore accentuated her plus-sized curves, which were apparently all the rage in her universe.

  Caroline had to admit that was one thing she had liked about the strange world called Terra, which corresponded to Earth, though it appeared to be about two hundred to three hundred years behind Earth’s timeline. Plus-sized women were considered beautiful there, though they were still forced into corsets to accentuate their curves.

  “What’s she doing? Where is she going?” Sophie asked, breaking her train of thought.

  “I don’t know,” Caroline said. “But if I had to guess, I’d say she’s on her way to Hastings Hall to try and see her baby again.”

  “Oh, how is baby Jamie?” Sophie asked with interest. She and her sister, Liv and their friend, Kat, had been following Emmeline’s life with avid interest.

  Richard’s cousin had had a tumultuous existence ever since she’d been attacked by the only son of an Earl and had refused to marry him. Richard had called the man out and shot him dead in a duel, but Emmeline was still a ruined woman, according to her world’s standards. And when it became clear the rape had left her pregnant, her own mother, Lady Agatha Hastings, had turned her out of the house.

  Emmeline had disappeared for a while and eventually surfaced in a very peculiar type of brothel—a Flagellation Bordello called “Mother Griffith’s” on Graves Street. There she had given birth to a son she had named James—Jamie for short—but after only a short time, she had been forced to give the baby up to her judgmental parents.

  Lord and Lady Hastings had agreed to raise Jamie as their ward with the understanding that Emmeline would have only infrequent contact with the child and then only under approved circumstances. But it was clear the young mother longed to see her baby, who was weak and failing to thrive in the vast, stone mansion she herself had been raised in. Caroline had watched her go there over and over to see him, only to be turned away every time, sometimes with only a glimpse of her child through the open doorway.

  “Baby Jamie isn’t doing too well,” she was forced to report to Sophie. “He seems weaker every time Emmeline goes to see him, poor thing.” She sighed. “It breaks my heart to see her begging to hold him and being told no over and over again—although the last time she went, the old butler had mercy on her and let her cuddle him for just a minute.”

  “Did he? Oh, I wish I could have seen that!” Sophie exclaimed. “Did he finally stop crying?”

  Poor baby Jamie put up a constant, weak wailing that echoed through the grand marble archways of Hastings Hall and was never silenced—at least as far as the watching Caroline could tell.

  She nodded. “Yes—the minute they finally put him into her arms, he quieted for a little while. I swear, he knows she’s his mother and he doesn’t want anybody else. Especially that awful wet nurse they hired for him.”

  “Oh, you mean Nurse Higgins?” Sophie asked. “She has such a sour look on her face, her breast milk probably tastes like lemon juice! Poor baby—he just wants his mama.”

  “Well, maybe the butler will let her see him again this time,” Caroline said, as they watched Emmeline make her way down the street. There was a look of determination on her pretty face—a look that said she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  “I hope so,” Sophie said fervently. Though she had never met Emmeline, she and Liv and Kat all felt great sympathy for Richard’s younger cousin.

  They watched as Emmeline marched down a long, graveled driveway leading to the imposing mansion called Hastings Hall. She had grown up there and clearly she still felt at home—or at least she tried to project that image. She walked straight up the marble stairs and knocked on the great front double door which appeared to be made of mahogany.

  After a moment the door swung slowly open and Caroline felt her heart start to pound.

  “Here we go,” she said to Sophie. “If it’s the kind old butler, he might let her see baby Jamie again.”

  “Oh, I hope she gets to hold him!” Sophie clasped her hands to her chest in anticipation.

  But the person who appeared in the doorway wasn’t the kindly old butler who had probably helped to raise Emmeline. In fact, it wasn’t really a person at all. When the door swung all the way open it wasn’t the seamed and wrinkled face of Fritz that was revealed—instead, a shiny bronze face, molded in the shape of a stern and unyielding scowl—greeted Emmeline.

  “Oh no!” Caroline exclaimed. “It’s one of those creepy Tick-Tock servants! I hate those things.”

  As she had observed herself during her trip to Richard and Emmeline’s world, the Terran version of the Victorian Era was considerably more “steam-punk” than Earth’s had been. There were wind-up carriages that ran on clock-work and steam as well as other inventions which were uniquely Terran. One of those was the creepy Tick-Tocks.

  Molded entirely of brass, the mechanical servants had glowing yellow eyes and a large key embedded in their backs, which enabled them to be wound up and set in motion for service. One of the weirdest things about them was that they all had the same, high, tinny voice which issued from a speaker-plate in their chests. They were completely loyal to their masters—and completely lacking in any kind of reason or compassion.

  “Yes? How may I help you?” the Tick-Tock butler asked Emmeline, who was staring at him with a dismayed expression on her pretty face.

  “I…I…” She licked her lips nervously and then lifted her chin higher. Clearly she wasn’t giving up on her quest to see her baby. “I am Emmeline Hastings—daughter of Lord and Lady Hastings,” she told the mechanical butler. “I am here to visit my son, James Henry Terrence Hastings. Let me in.”

  The butler seemed to consider this for a moment, it’s yellow, lamp-like eyes flashing as it thought. After a moment, it answered.

  “Negative. I have specific instructions not to allow Emmeline Hastings into the house.”

  “What? Who told you that?” Emmeline demanded.

  The butler paused again. “Instructions given by Lady Hastings herself. Such instructions can only be overridden by Lord Hastings, who has not addressed the matter. So the order stands. Emmeline Hastings is not to enter the house.”

  An angry, stubborn look came over Emmeline’s delicate features.

  “I used to live here and you have my son in there—let me in!” she exclaimed and attempted to push past the butler, who was blocking the doorway.

  But she might as well have tried to push past a stone wall. The Tick-Tock butler was completely unmoving and its broad brass shoulders left no room for her to squeeze past.

  “Please!” Emmeline begged, giving up her attempt to force her way in. “Please, if I could just see him for a moment.”

  As though to punctuate her plea, a thin, wailing suddenly came drifting out the open doorway. It sounded as though someone had opened the nursery door and now baby Jamie could be heard, crying inconsolably.

  “That’s him! I can hear him and he sounds sick!” Emmeline exclaimed. “Please—please just let me see him for a moment!”

  But her passionate pleas fell on deaf ears.

  “Negative,” the Tick-Tock butler said. “Emmeline Hastings is not to enter the house under any circumstances. Good day.”

  Then it shut the door in Emmeline’s face, cutting off the thin wailing of her bab
y abruptly.

  For a moment, Emmeline just stood there looking at the door as though she couldn’t believe what had happened. Then she turned abruptly away, but not before Caroline saw the brightness of unshed tears in her eyes.

  “Oh, poor thing! How dare they turn her away like that? It’s her baby!” Sophie exclaimed indignantly.

  “I know, but she gave up the rights to him in order that he could be raised in Hastings Hall as the ward of a Viscount instead of in a brothel as the son of a prostitute,” Caroline said sadly. “I think she felt it was a trade that would benefit her baby in the long run, but right now it looks like she’s regretting her choice.”

  “Poor thing,” Sophie said again. “She looks like her heart is breaking!”

  Indeed, Emmeline’s shoulders were shaking as she covered her face with her daintily gloved hands. For a moment Caroline was afraid she was going to have a break-down right there at the door of her former house.

  And who could blame her if she did? She was a young mother who was being refused access to her own child. A child she could hear crying in the background and who might be ill. It was a terrible situation.

  “Where is the protector the Goddess promised her?” Caroline demanded, impotent rage over poor Emmeline’s plight filling her. “Richard said that was why he wasn’t allowed to go back to his own world and take care of Emmeline himself because the Goddess was sending someone else. So where is he?”