That Other Katherine

Linda Lael Miller

Contents

Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten

For yet another Kathy, Kathy Miller. Thanks for planting rose bushes,

cooking turkey dinners, and being a first-class stepmother to Wendy.

Chapter 1

Seattle, Washington

1991

Katherine Hollis. Her name was Katherine Hollis. She thought.

Katherine listened to the steady beeping of the hospital machines, the low murmur of the nurses' voices as they attended her. Poor creature… terrible accident… coma…

She became aware of the pain suddenly, the crushing, ceaseless pain, and at the same time, she realized it had been there all along. She seemed to be climbing some kind of inner stairway, with each step bringing her closer to full consciousness.

Katherine tried to remember the accident, but not even a flicker of memory lighted her way. She had no idea who would be standing there if she peeked behind the name she'd recalled.

The pain was agonizing, and Katherine wanted to cry out, but she couldn't. For all its suffering, her body felt lifeless and cold, as rigid as a statue, while her spirit seemed to be gaining strength with every passing moment, a flame burning brighter and brighter. An explosive sensation of joy flared within her, completely separate from the misery of traumatized bone and muscle.

She felt a tear pool along the lashes of her right eye.

The voice Katherine heard then was masculine and hoarse with emotion. "Look—she's crying. She could be waking up, couldn't she?"

Katherine felt a strong hand close around one of her own while the voice caressed her soul. Jeremy. A few ragtag memories trickled back. That was her brother up there in that other dimension, that place of wakefulness and reason, trying to hold on to her.

Her heart constricted. She would have given practically anything for the chance to say goodbye, but her lips might as well have been made of marble. She couldn't even manage a flutter of her eyelids.

I want to live, Katherine thought desperately, with the last strength left to her. There are so many things I didn't get a chance to do!

The machines began to make strange noises, and then there was a burst of activity all around her.

"I'll get the doctor…"

"…crash cart…"

"Please, Mr. Hollis… no time… waiting room…"

"No! Kathy…" That was Jeremy's voice, frantic and young. Jeremy, whom she'd pulled behind her in a red wagon when they were both children, over a bumpy sidewalk with weeds growing between the cracks…

In the next instant Katherine was enveloped in light more brilliant than the dazzle of a thousand spring suns. It was a moment more before she realized that a subtle change had taken place in the form and substance of her body.

She was the same and yet different, standing on an arched bridge that seemed to be fashioned of multifaceted crystal.

"I don't want to die," she said firmly, knowing there was someone in the light to hear her argument and weigh it. "I never fell in love, or made a wreath of spring flowers for my hair, or wore a long dancing dress, or had a baby…" She paused, then finished plaintively, "Oh, please."

That was when Katherine heard the other voice calling, pleading, storming the very gates of heaven. It was a lusty feminine shriek.

"No more… please… oh, God, help me… let me die…"

There was an interval then of fathomless peace, followed by a wordless answer from the glorious, unutterably beautiful light. I have heard.

Immediately after that, Katherine was caught up in a spinning storm of iridescent fire. She tumbled end over end through a crystal tunnel and then landed with a sudden, solid thump.

Joy filled her. She was back inside her body; she could feel her heartbeat, the moist tension of her skin, the movement of her fingers. Even better, she was fully conscious, and she could see.

A frown creased her sweat-dampened forehead. She wasn't in the hospital; this room had high ceilings with plaster molding and pale pink wallpaper striped in silver, and instead of the standard railings on the sides and foot of the bed, there were huge bedposts with carved pineapples on top.

Her stomach was bare, and it resembled an overripe watermelon with skin stretched over it. Her bare knees were drawn up, her legs apart, and there was an old man standing in the V, looking ponderous.

She decided she was having some kind of crazy dream, fraught with Freudian meanings.

She didn't recognize the body or the room. None of what she was seeing could possibly be real…

She screamed. Except the pain. That was totally authentic.

"What the hell is going on here?" she cried when she got her breath back.

The white-haired man looked up from whatever medical intimacy he'd been performing, his florid face a study in Puritan disapproval. "Now, Katherine, there is no need to use profanity. I should think you would be trying to redeem yourself, rather than make things worse."

"This hurts," she babbled, panting. "This whole situation was sprung on me with no warning… no preparation… I never got to go through Lamaze training… I want morphine!"

"Mrs. Winslow," the doctor replied with testy patience, "during the war, I treated men who'd had their legs and arms shot off. Not one of them carried on the way you have today."

"They weren't having babies!" Katherine blurted, and then she screamed again. It seemed that the whole lower half of her body had become one giant muscle, about as much under her control as a runaway train would have been. "Oh, God… nobody told me it would feel like this!"

"Kindly stop bothering the Almighty," said the man. "It would have behooved you to consult Him a little earlier, it seems to me."

Katherine recalled the voice she'd heard from the crystal bridge, calling out to heaven for mercy.

Her body… this body she didn't recognize… tensed again, violently. Her cotton nightgown clung to her skin, transparent with perspiration.

"Push," the doctor instructed crisply, his face taut with concentration. "Mary!" He barked the name over one shoulder, and the door popped open, revealing a pale young woman in long skirts.

"Yes, Dr. Franz?" The girl's eyes were the size of soccer balls, and she was wringing her hands nervously.

"Fetch Gavin," ordered the physician. "Immediately. Tell him his child is about to be born, just in case he's interested!"

The fitful maid rushed off to obey.

Katherine was braced on her elbows, tears streaming down her face. "Why are you people in costume?" she managed to gasp out, after her next contraction. "Who's Gavin?"

Dr. Franz arched one bushy eyebrow. "There is no need to add insult to injury, Mrs. Winslow, by pretending you don't know your own husband."

"I don't have a husband." Katherine panted, clutching the bedclothes as another pain began to gain steam on the inside of her pelvis. "And my name isn't Winslow. It's Hollis. Katherine Hollis."

"Nonsense," said the doctor briskly. "You're Katherine Simmons Winslow. I've known you since you came to Seattle—heaven help the hapless place."

The thrusting sensation in Katherine's abdomen was building to another crescendo, and yet the tears on her face were ones of happiness. She was alive! She didn't know where she was, or how she'd gotten there, but she was alive!

An impatient knock sounded at the door, but Katherine was too busy with the current contraction to pay much attention. When a dark-haired man appeared beside the bed, however, she was thunderstruck by his good looks and by her own sense of shattering recognition. She'd seen his face in her dreams a thousand times—she recalled that if little else.

"Nice of you to make an appearance, Gavin," grumbled Dr. Franz. "There now, Katherine, one more good push."

Reluctantly, it seemed, Gavin reached down and took her hand between both his own. Even in that state of great confusion and greater pain, she felt a jolt at his touch.

Her torso arched high off the mattress, taking no command from her mind. She clung to Gavin's hands, and her primitive cry, half groan and half scream, echoed against the walls of the strange, old-fashioned room. The anguish of childbirth peaked, and then there was relief, a sensation of something slipping from her. Soon after that she heard the angry squall of an infant.

She saw Gavin's steel-gray eyes dart toward the newborn, then shift away. He looked down at her with what seemed to be a mingling of contempt and furious hurt.

"You have a son, Gavin," Dr. Franz announced, as though Katherine had had nothing to do with the process.

Gavin's strong jawline flexed, relaxed again. His gaze scored her face. "Kathy has a son," he corrected, and then he let her hand fall to the mattress, turned abruptly, and left the room.

"Let me see the baby," she pleaded hoarsely. Later, she would try to reason things out. For now, she just wanted to see this child she'd given birth to but never conceived.

He was tiny and red and messy, and she couldn't imagine even a Christmas angel being more beautiful.

"Hello, handsome," she said, feeling joyous exhaustion as an infinitesimal hand closed around her finger. The far side of the crystal bridge already seemed more dream than reality now, something imagined. "I hope we can be friends. In case you haven't noticed, I'm not very popular around here."

Dr. Franz was doing painful things, things it seemed better not to think about. An Indian girl in a drab calico dress, long like the maid's, took the baby and left the room. Katharine was suddenly too drowsy to protest.

Several women came in, all looking like fugitives from an episode of "Little House on the Prairie," with their hair upswept and the hems of their dresses brushing the floor, and helped Katherine from the bed. Brisk hands washed her and pulled a clean nightgown over her head, and the sheets were crisp and fresh when she lay back down on them.

"You're to take this," one of the women said, pouring liquid from a brown bottle into a spoon. "Dr. Franz left it for you."

Katherine obediently opened her mouth and accepted the medicine, which tasted like lawnmower fuel smelled. Then she settled back against the fluffy pillows, barely able to keep her eyes open. "Gavin hates me," she said, sighing and yawning at the same time.

There was only one woman in the room then; she had gray-streaked brown hair and pale green eyes, and although her expression was stern, there was a softness about her mouth. "It isn't as though you haven't given him cause," was the answer. "But you've also given him a son. A man will forgive a great deal for such a gift."

Katherine closed her eyes, too weary to go on, and was soon dreaming. Although she caught glimpses of the light and the crystal bridge, she didn't wander close, and when she awakened it was to see her son sleeping in an ornate antique cradle next to her bed. Her heart caught when she noticed Gavin crouching on the hearth, lighting an early evening fire.

"Gavin?"

His broad shoulders tensed beneath the fine white fabric of his shirt, and he did not turn to look at her. He rose to his full height, well over six feet, and gripped the mantelpiece with strong, sun-browned hands. The light from the gas-fed fixtures on the walls flickered in his dark hair and on the shining black leather of his riding boots.

Katherine phrased her question carefully. "What will you name the child?"

Slowly he turned to meet her gaze, his pewter eyes cold and wary. He couldn't entirely hide his surprise at the inquiry, though Katherine could see he was trying. "Name him?"

"He is your son, after all." How she wished that she too could lay just claim to that beautiful infant boy. She remembered little of her old life… if indeed it really had been a Me and not just an illusion… but she knew she'd longed for a baby from the day she was given her first doll.

Gavin's answer was a quietly brutal chuckle. "Is he?" he countered, turning back to the fire.

Katherine felt tears well up behind her eyes, but she refused to shed them. Somehow, through an instinct that seemed oddly like memory, she knew this man would not respond well if she wept. "Your wife was unfaithful to you," she said.

Another chuckle, sardonic and wicked. "Yes," he replied, turning to face her, his arms folded. "You were. Are."

"Then why haven't you divorced me?"

Gavin smiled cordially. "Believe me, darling, I would love to, but even in the grand and gloriously modern year of 1895, such things simply aren't done."

Katherine sat bolt upright as a series of mental puzzle pieces dropped into place. The primitive birth, the gas lamps on the walls, Gavin's oddly formal clothes, the long dresses the women had worn. "In 1895?" she echoed, awed.

"Please," Gavin said skeptically. "None of your little dramas. You know exactly who you are, where you are, and what you did. And if I have anything to say about it, you're never going to forget."

Chapter 2

Katherine was unaccountably wounded by Gavin's dislike and troubled by memories that could not have been memories. Her emotional reactions to him during their first encounter had been ones of recognition, not discovery.

She averted her gaze for a moment, fingers plucking at the elaborate lace trim of the top sheet. "Suppose I told you I'm not the Katherine you knew," she ventured hoarsely. "Suppose I said I'm really another woman, from another time?"

Gavin clasped his hands together behind his back and rocked slightly on his heels. "I would respond that pretending to have lost your grip on sanity won't save you from my revenge," he said, and the tone of his voice made the otherwise cozy room turn chilly. "Instead it might just land you in an asylum."

"Revenge?" Katherine swallowed. Just the suggestion of a nineteenth-century mental hospital brought on instant wariness.

His smile was callous. "I loved you on our wedding day, Kathy," he said. "Perhaps if I still cherished tender feelings toward you, I would simply send you away somewhere, with an allowance and a maid, and get on with my life. Alas, my fatal flaw is that I want you to know the same humiliation, the same sense of betrayal, that I did." He came to stand at Katherine's feet, his knuckles white when he gripped the bedpost. His gray eyes glinted like frost over steel as he looked at her. "This time, Kathy, you'll be the one people pity and hold in contempt."

Katherine's throat constricted. She didn't love this man, didn't even know this man, and yet his words were like hard-flung stones, bruising her soul. "Gavin…"

He gave a low, mocking laugh. "How tenderly you speak my name," he said, going to stand beside the cradle. His expression grew softer as he looked down at the sleeping baby. "Were you as sweet to your lover as you are to me?"

Katherine fell back against her pillows and put both hands to her face for a moment, struggling to gain some composure. "I don't know," she said, in all honesty.

When she looked again, she caught Gavin watching her with naked sorrow in his stormy eyes. The expression was so quickly sublimated, however, that she wondered if she'd imagined it.

"Good night," Gavin said without emotion, and then he turned and strode from the room, closing the door briskly behind him.

Katherine lay shaking in that other woman's childbed for a very long time, watching the shadows gather in the corners of the room and the fire die to embers on the hearth. Finally, when she felt strong enough, she rose and went to kneel carefully by the baby's cradle.

Her son slept, his thick dark hair like ebony against the white blankets, and she touched him ever so gently, marveling that so beautiful a creature could exist in such an uncertain world. He was a miniature Gavin Winslow, this tiny soul, and Katherine already loved him, already thought of him as her own.

"You look just like your dad," she said in a whisper. "One of these days, he'll notice that. Might take a while, though, because as you can see, he's a very hardheaded man. We'll have to be patient, you and I."

For a long time she lingered beside the cradle, admiring the child, marveling. Then, when she began to feel the strain in her weary body, she stood awkwardly and made her way to the bureau.

There was a mirror above the dresser, framed in dark, heavy wood, and Katherine's first glimpse of herself had all the shocking impact of a body slam by a major league quarterback.

Her knees weakened, and she raised one hand to her chest in an unconscious effort to modify the pounding of her heart. She did not remember who she had been before the accident, before crossing the crystal bridge and finding herself in 1895, but she knew she hadn't looked at all like the woman reflected in the glass.

In fact, she could almost see her previous self, standing beside this stranger she had become.

In that other life, she'd been small and slight. The woman looking back at her was tall, with a lush hourglass figure.

Before, Katherine had had short brown hair, worn in a smooth, bouncy cut. Now, dark auburn tresses tumbled, thick and wavy, around the bodice of her nightgown. Her eyes were green, her cheekbones high and well defined, her lips full, her skin flawless and very creamy, like fine ivory.

Katherine stared at herself for a long time. Then, when the weakness grew too great, she turned and made her way back to the bed.

She had barely settled beneath the covers when a woman entered the room carrying a tray. It was the same girl Dr. Franz had sent to bring Gavin when it was clear that the baby's birth was imminent.

"Supper, missus," she said without meeting Katherine's gaze.

Given that this was 1895 and that the mistress of the house had obviously had an affair, Katherine supposed the maid saw her as a scarlet woman and preferred not to associate. The thought only made Katherine feel more isolated, confused, and afraid.

"It certainly smells good," she said in an attempt to make conversation.

"Yes, ma'am," the maid answered. "Cook does have a way with biscuits and gravy. The doctor likes that dish more than anything."

"Dr. Franz?" Katherine asked. She was so grateful for the sound of a civil human voice that she tried to keep the chat going.

"Dr. Winslow," the maid corrected, turning startled blue eyes to Katherine's face. "Your husband, ma'am."

So Gavin was a doctor, too. "Oh," Katherine said quickly, brightly. "Yes, of course. He's had a lengthy practice here in…"

"Seattle," the maid said, frowning.

Katherine was ravenously hungry, and the food on her tray was fragrant and appealing. "Seattle," she confirmed. That was a relief. Maybe she'd changed centuries, but at least she was still in the same city. "Your name would be?"

The young girl took another step toward the door, as though she expected Katherine to lunge at her, wild-eyed and foaming at the mouth.

"Jemima," she whispered. With that, Jemima turned and bolted from the room.

Katherine ate, trying to figure out what was happening to her.

Maybe it was the food that restored her. She seemed to recall that her blood sugar tended to fall when she got too hungry…

She remembered lying in a faraway hospital bed, remembered the nurses talking and the grasp of her brother's hand and the earnest way she'd begged the light surrounding the crystal bridge to let her live. Evidently, she concluded as the pleas of another woman echoed in her mind—oh, God, help me… let me die—she and Gavin's real wife had somehow exchanged places.

That was too much to credit, Katherine thought, setting her tray on the bedside table and leaning back against her pillows, and yet here she was, in another woman's body. A body she liked far better than her old one, for all the problems inherent in the situation.

Presently the Indian girl came in to take away her tray, and that made Katherine smile. Jemima must have been afraid to venture near her again after that little encounter earlier.

"What's your name?" she asked pleasantly when the young woman had set the tray in the hall and returned. The baby awakened and gave a small, fitful cry.

"Maria," the visitor replied, unruffled, bending to lift the infant from his cradle before Katherine had managed to swing her legs over the side of the bed. Maria sat down in the rocking chair near the dying fire and opened the bodice of her plain dress to nurse the baby.

Again, Katherine felt envy. She didn't like the idea of sharing this child, or his father, with any other woman.

Maria was conscious only of the baby, humming a soft, rhythmic tune as she held him to her breast and stroked his downy head with a light finger. The firelight flickered over the pair, gilding them in crimson and shadow.

A deep loneliness overtook Katherine; she felt as though she'd been abandoned in some unknown galaxy. She remembered only the merest details about her other life, and in this one everyone seemed to dislike her.

Presently Maria finished feeding the child and brought him to the bed for changing. She handed him to Katherine, who gently raised him to her shoulder to be burped.

"Thank you," Katherine said, mesmerized by the bundled miracle in her arms.

"What will you call the little one?" Maria asked, regarding Katherine with placid dark eyes that revealed nothing of her inner thoughts.

Katherine ached with love as the child squirmed against her shoulder, and she longed to be able to feed him herself. "I don't know," she answered. "Perhaps we'll name him for his father."

The silence that followed felt awkward to Katherine. Remembering the accusation her husband had thrown in her face, she blushed and blurted out, "Gavin. He'll be called Gavin, of course."

Maria did not react, and her manner was neither friendly nor unfriendly. "Is there anything you'd like, Mrs. Winslow?" She went to the hearth without waiting for Katherine to reply and added a log to the fire. "The kitchen kettle is still on. I could brew you some tea."

Katherine shook her head. "No. No, thank you. But if you'd please put the baby to bed…"

The Indian girl assessed Katherine with narrowed eyes for a moment, then collected the infant and carefully put him into the cradle to sleep. "Good night, Mrs. Winslow," she said after turning off the gas that fed the lights.

Only the glow of the fire and the strained silver shimmer of the moon lit the room after Maria closed the door behind her.

Cautiously, Katherine lay down flat on the feather mattress. This body she had borrowed was very sore, and she felt like weeping with exhaustion and confusion, but beneath all these things ran an undercurrent of sheer exultation. She had been given another chance at life, and she meant to make the most of it.

Watching the firelight waver against the dark ceiling, she wondered if Gavin had ever laughed in this room or made love to his wife here. Surely he hadn't always been so grim and solemn!

It seemed to her that as she as just dropping off to sleep, the first solid memory of the other life came to her. She was driving along the Seattle freeway in her red convertible, her dark hair tossing in the wind, on the way to her brother Jeremy's downtown office. They were planning to have lunch together.

In the space of a moment, everything changed. A truck jackknifed just ahead of her, and before she could slow down, her car struck the trailer with a deafening impact. Metal shrieked, pain racked her body, and then darkness exploded around her like a bomb.

"Kathy!" Strong hands gripped Katherine's shoulders, and a firm masculine voice came to her through the smothering fog of fear that surrounded her. "Katherine, wake up!"

Gavin was sitting on the side of the bed, and her longing to have him take her into his arms and hold her was a bleak and fathomless thing. The baby, frightened by the noise, was fretting in his cradle.

Katherine started to get out of bed, but Gavin wouldn't allow her to rise.

"Never mind," he said abruptly. "I'll get him."

At once a stranger and a husband, Gavin lifted the child deftly from the cradle and handed him to Katherine.

"I'm sorry," she crooned, her lips against the infant's cheek. "I'm so sorry I woke you up, sweetheart…"

Something made her lift her eyes to Gavin then, and she saw that he was looking at her strangely again, as though he didn't quite recognize her.

She drew a deep breath and made herself smile at the man who so clearly despised her. "Our son will need a name, you know," she said with a little sniffle. "We can't go on referring to this child as 'he' and 'him' for the rest of his life."

Even in the firelight, she saw Gavin's powerful body go rigid. The brief, tenuous peace that had existed between them was obviously over.

"Why not name him Jeffrey?" Gavin asked in a tone that was no less brutal for its softness. "For his father."

Chapter 3

"Get out," Katherine breathed, glaring at Gavin. She was trembling inside, but she was as strong and agile as a lioness when she sprang from the bed to return the baby to his cradle.

Gavin stood his ground, arms folded. "May I remind you that this is my house?"

"I don't care," she spat. "You're nothing but an arrogant bully, and if you're any example of nineteenth-century manhood, it's no wonder there was a women's movement!"

"If we're going to call each other names—"

"Don't you dare!" Katherine clasped her hands over her ears and at the same time maneuvered herself back into bed. "I know perfectly well what you think of me, Gavin Winslow, but I've been through a lot today, and I would appreciate it if you would leave me alone."

To her surprise, Gavin's countenance grew a little less stern. He approached the bed and tucked the covers in around her with a certain brisk tenderness.

"You're right," he said, in a husky voice. "I'm sorry." With that, unbelievably, he bent and kissed her lightly on the forehead, and at mat simple contact something deep inside Katherine was changed forever.

Gavin didn't come to her room the next day, or the day after that. Katherine spent her time caring for the baby, whom she could nurse now that her milk had come in, reading the books and magazines Maria brought her, and remembering.

It was that other life that kept unfolding in her mind; she still knew very little about the woman she had become.

As Katherine Hollis, she'd lived in a world of convenience and noise, working for a market research firm in Seattle and slowly paying off a one-bedroom condo overlooking Lake Washington. She'd been on the verge of getting married once, but in the end she'd realized Phillip Hughes was all wrong for her, and she was all wrong for him, and she'd given back his ring.

She recalled that she'd grown up in a modest home on Seattle's Queen Anne Hill, and that her divorced mother, Julia, had taught piano lessons in the dining room to supplement meager child-support payments. Julia had died of ovarian cancer when her daughter was twenty, and after that, there had been only Jeremy…

Now, Katherine marveled, she found herself in another world. Here there were no speeding convertibles, no market research companies, no semi-trucks to jackknife in the middle of the freeway. Beyond the walls of this house, which she'd had no chance at all to explore, carriages, buggies, and wagons rattled over dirt streets and cobblestones.

The sunlight was bright, the sky so blue the sight of it twisted Katherine's heart.

She was standing at the window, looking out over the garden with its gazebo and its tangle of colorful flowers, when there was a light knock at the door. Just as she would have turned to call out an eager "Come in"—she was so lonely that even Gavin would have been a welcome caller— she saw her husband walk through a gate in the side fence.

He looked so handsome in his riding breeches, linen shirt, tailored charcoal coat, and boots that Katherine's breath caught. Just when she was about to tap impulsively on the glass and wave to him, forgetting all his insufferable qualities in the face of the breathtaking attraction she felt, a woman joined him. Her dress was yellow, like the roses mat climbed the walls of the gazebo and tangled on its roof, and her hair was the color of honey.

As Katherine watched, stricken, the woman held out both hands to Gavin, and he clasped them in his own. His strong white teeth flashed in a cavalier's smile as he bent his head to kiss his companion's gloved knuckles.

"There's Caroline Raynes again," a voice beside Katherine announced, and she jumped, startled. "You'd better look out for her, because she's sweet on Gavin."

Katherine turned her head and saw a petite girl standing next to her. Her hair was dark, and her eyes were the same steely-gray as Gavin's, and from that Katherine deduced that this woman was her sister-in-law. The little golden pin affixed to the bodice of her plain but expensive dress shaped the letters of her name.

"Hello, Marianne."

Marianne's attention was fixed on the scene below; she didn't see Katherine study her, or glance at the bare ring finger of her left hand to determine her marital status.

"Look at her," she said, her breath making fog against the windowpane. "What a hussy."

Katherine looked, against her better judgment. Caroline was standing on her toes, her hands resting on Gavin's lapels while she whispered something in his ear. A feeling of such intense, primitive jealousy went through Katherine that she grasped the windowsill to keep from pounding on it with her fists.

"Not that you didn't bring a lot of this upon yourself by stirring up that scandal with Jeffrey Beecham," Marianne added matter-of-factly, taking Katherine's elbow and steering her away from the window. "Come now, it's time to dress for the christening party. You can't very well attend in your slippers and wrapper, you know."

The prospect of leaving that infernal room, even for a short interval, raised Katherine's spirits considerably. Every time she got up to walk around, it seemed, Dr. Franz or one of the maids came to chase her back to bed.

"What will I wear?" she asked, confused.

"What indeed?" Marianne answered, rolling her eyes. She opened a door to the left of the fireplace, which had always been locked when Katherine tried it, and swept through. "As if you didn't own more dresses than any woman in Seattle!"

Katherine hurried along behind her sister-in-law, casting her gaze this way and that, taking in as much of the massive room as she could. "Maybe nothing will fit," she fretted.

An enormous chandelier graced the high ceiling, and the fireplace was fronted in pale marble. The rugs were Persian, the walls were paneled in rosewood, and the bed was bigger than the living room of her apartment in that other Seattle.

She stood in the middle of the chamber, looking around her in awe, while Marianne went straight to a set of double doors, opened them, and disappeared inside.

Her voice echoed. "Nonsense. You were incredibly careful about what you ate, remember?" she called. "I think the dark blue taffeta would be exactly right, don't you? Given the state of your reputation, my dear, there's no point in even attempting propriety. No, the occasion calls for something that shows you won't be discounted and forgotten."

Katherine flinched when the main door of the room swung open and Gavin, entered, carrying a black medical bag and a riding crop in one hand.

His eyes swept over her rumpled wrapper and tangled hair with a sort of charitable contempt, and Katherine was instantly furious.

"Where's Caroline?" she asked sweetly.

Gavin set his things down on a table that Katherine thought would probably bring a small fortune at a modern-day antique show. "Caroline," he responded, his tone even and cutting, "is too much of a lady to engage in the sort of illicit rendezvous you specialize in, my dear."

Color surged into Katherine's face, and she pulled her wrapper more tightly around her, as if to shield herself.

"Too much of a lady, pooh," Marianne interceded, before Katherine could mink of a response. She thrust the aforementioned blue taffeta dress into her sister-in-law's arms and turned to face Gavin, her hands on her hips. "For someone who's supposed to be such a man of the world, Gavin Winslow," she said bluntly, "you are certainly naive."

Gavin looked at Katherine, even though he was speaking to Marianne, and his expression was scathing. "I can't deny that," he answered, "since I once trusted my heart to a woman who probably doesn't have one beating in her bosom."

Tears stung Katherine's eyes, and she swallowed hard to keep from giving full rein to her feelings. There was nothing she could say… the other Katherine probably had been guilty of flagrant adultery. Yet on every occasion when she encountered Gavin, no matter how rare and volatile those times were, she felt an elemental pull toward him, as though her soul had somehow been magnetized to his.

Marianne popped him in the upper arm, and the gesture was so sisterly that it almost made Katherine smile, despite everything. "Stop being so mean, Gavin, and get dressed for your son's christening. That is, unless you plan on going in your riding clothes."

The look that passed from Gavin to Katherine was a private one, since Marianne was by that time bustling toward the door of the other room. His gaze was as mocking as a slap, and Katherine hurried after her sister-in-law, wondering if Gavin meant to attend the christening at all.

He did, as it happened.

Gavin announced to the assembly, without ever informing Katherine, let alone consulting her, that the baby's name would be Christopher Jennings Winslow, and he looked for all the world like a proud father.

He even took his place beside Katherine after the intimate ceremony held in the house's private chapel, and shook hands with the endless stream of strangers, well-wishers all, who passed by.

The guests clearly admired and respected Gavin, but the looks they gave Katherine were plainly speculative. A wonderful meal was served in the garden, and inside the house, tables were heaped with gifts.

Despite his attempts at keeping up appearances earlier, by the time Maria had taken the properly christened Christopher back inside the house, Gavin was totally absorbed in a conversation with the bouncy Caroline Raynes.

"I hate perky women," Katherine muttered, turning away only to collide with a tall, handsome man in an expensive tweed suit. He had green eyes and chestnut-brown hair, and his sensual mouth quirked into a sad little smile.

"So do I," he said, taking both of Katherine's hands in his, just as Gavin had done with Caroline earlier in the day, when Katherine had been watching from the upstairs window. "How are you?"

His words and tone were so solicitous that Katherine was caught off guard. She was still weak from giving birth to Christopher and bruised from various sparring matches with Gavin, so this man's attentions were like warm sunshine after a dip in a frigid stream.

"F-fine," she said.

"You shouldn't be on your feet." He led her to the edge of the fountain that graced the middle of the garden and gently sat her down. Then he brought her a glass of punch from the refreshment table, along with some small sweet cakes coated in sesame seeds.

Katherine wished she had an inkling of the man's identity. She sipped her punch, thinking it was unfortunate that everybody didn't own a broach made up of the letters of their name, like Marianne.

"Feel that sunshine," she said, lifting her face to the blue sky, closing her eyes, and smiling. "Isn't it wonderful?"

"Wonderful," her companion said distractedly. "Katherine, about our plans… Don't you think we should delay a few more weeks, until you're stronger?"

"Ummm," she answered, not really listening. A violin was playing nearby, and she began to sway happily back and forth with the tune. "I wish we could dance," she said, opening her eyes again, searching the stranger's handsome face. "Will you dance with me?"

A third voice answered, and it was only too familiar. So was the proprietary grip on her forearm.

"It's time you rested," Gavin informed his wife in a taut voice. "Come along, I'll see you to your room."

Katherine didn't try to pull away, though she heartily resented Gavin's tone and manner. She was tired, tired enough to faint. Dancing, of course, was out of the question, though it had seemed like a marvelous idea only moments before.

"It was nice meeting you," she said to the other man, without thinking, and then Gavin was propelling her toward the French doors leading to the main parlor.

Just over the threshold, he wrenched her angrily up into his arms. "'It was nice meeting you,'" he mimicked. "What kind of asinine remark was that?"

Katherine rested her head against a hard shoulder and yawned. "Oh," she said, in a tone of weary revelation. "I take it that was the infamous Jeffrey Beecham, with whom I was allegedly indiscreet."

Gavin took the stairs easily, as though Katherine's voluptuous weight was no strain at all to carry. "Allegedly," he scoffed under his breath. "I found the two of you in bed together, my darling. Remember?"

Chapter 4

Gavin's footsteps slowed as he passed the double doors, of the master suite—he had carried Kathy through them many times during happier days—but now he proceeded down the hall without hesitation.

Reaching the entrance of Katherine's chamber, originally meant to be a dressing room, he opened the door and crossed the threshold.

Maria, who had been minding the sleeping baby, rose from her chair and left.

Katherine yawned and stretched, lush and kittenlike, when he laid her gently on the bed. Gavin's loins tightened in response. He couldn't have made love to her, of course; only a brute would have expected such accommodation so soon after childbirth. But the knowledge didn't stop him from wanting her, God help him, and neither did the mental image of her lying naked in Jeffrey Beecham's arms that day months before.

Gavin closed his eyes, remembering. Regretting.

He'd gotten drunk, for the first and last time in his life, after finding his wife and her lover in the guest house. And while he hadn't actually raped Kathy in their bedroom that night, he'd used her roughly. The fact that his wife had mistaken his rage for passion and responded wholeheartedly did not absolve him.

Now, stretched out on the bed to which he'd banished her, Katherine looked too angelic, too innocent to betray a husband's love. She favored him with a distracted little smile, her eyelids fluttered closed, and then she was asleep.

Gavin was unable to maintain his stern expression, now that she wasn't looking. He smiled as he gently removed her satin slippers and covered her tenderly with the lightweight wool blanket he found draped over the back of a chair.

She stirred beneath the coverlet, and Gavin felt his heart twist painfully. Some ancient instinct whispered that she was not the same woman he'd known, but somehow drastically changed. He was a physician, however, a man of science, and he couldn't give credence to anything quite so mystical.

He trusted facts, not feelings. It was a lesson he'd learned the hard way.

He resisted an urge to brush a tendril of auburn hair back from Katherine's forehead and turned to leave the room. Then, unable to help himself, he paused beside the baby's cradle, gazing down at the little boy he'd named Christopher that very day.

Gavin could no longer deny, even to himself, that this child was his own; the resemblance was too marked to be discounted.

After glancing in Katherine's direction to make certain she was truly sleeping, he crouched beside the cradle and gently touched Christopher's tiny ear.

"My son," he said, his voice hardly more than a hoarse whisper. Then he rose and walked from the room, closing the door behind him.

In the face of emotional confusion, Gavin generally took refuge in routine. He would change clothes, he decided, then get his medical bag, call for the carriage, and make his rounds.

His work at the hospital would take care of the rest of the night, and tomorrow could look after itself.

The next morning Katherine awakened to a room flooded with sunlight. By the time Maria arrived with a pitcher of hot water, she had already changed Christopher and fed him, and mother and child were sitting in a rocker by the windows, admiring the view of the garden.

"You shouldn't be out of bed, Mrs. Winslow," Maria said, with her usual lack of inflection.

"Nonsense," Katherine responded. "It's not as though I've had major surgery, after all." She raised Christopher and kissed his forehead. "Giving birth is a natural thing, and the sooner I'm up and around, the better."

Maria set the pitcher on the washstand and laid out a damask washcloth, a fluffy towel, and a bar of soap so fragrant that Katherine could smell its perfume from where she sat. "Whatever you say, Mrs. Winslow," she parroted. "I'll bring up your tea while you're washing, and Miss Marianne really thinks you should have breakfast. Shall I take the baby?"

Katherine surrendered her son, but reluctantly, and Maria put him in the cradle. "Tea would be wonderful, but I'll have my breakfast in the kitchen or the dining room or wherever everyone else eats. I'm sick to death of being locked away in this room." She poured some of the water Maria had brought into the waiting crockery basin and reached for the soap and cloth. "Tell me, Maria, how is it that you speak the way you do?"

Maria paused at the door. "You mean, why don't I sound like an Indian?"

Katherine blushed. She hadn't meant her question to sound condescending, but evidently it had. "Yes," she admitted. "That's what I was wondering."

For the first time in their acquaintance, Maria smiled. "My stepmother was white, and she was a schoolteacher until she married my father. She taught me 'Boston English,' but I have not forgotten the tongue of my people. It is very precious to me."

"Unfortunately," Katherine said with a thoughtlessness she had not intended, "the Indian way of life will all but disappear in the coming years." When she glanced in the wall mirror and saw Maria's stricken expression, she knew she had erred.

Maria lowered her head for a moment, but when she looked at Katherine again there was a proud, defiant light in her eyes. "Indian ways will live forever, in the safety of our hearts."

Katherine rinsed away the soap and dried her face and hands thoroughly on the towel provided, giving herself time to think. Finally she turned and faced the hired girl. "Yes," she said. "Maybe that's the only hope any of us have for our traditions—the memories of our children."

Maria swallowed visibly, and she glanced toward Christopher and nodded. "The old ways and stories are too valuable to be forgotten. They are a part of who we are."

"Yes," Katherine answered without hesitation. "I'm going to write down every single thing I can remember." Except for giving birth to Christopher, she hadn't done anything worthwhile since she'd crash-landed in the nineteenth century. Now, at least, she could make some kind of record of her experience. Maybe someone, someday, would believe her.

There was a long silence while Maria hovered in the doorway, silent, not quite able to meet Katherine's gaze. Finally she said, "My stepmother was going to help me write out the old legends, but we always thought we had plenty of time. Two years ago she caught the cholera and died."

"I'm sorry," Katherine said. She knew what it was to lose a mother. Memories filled her mind: waxed floors of chipped linoleum, fresh-baked cookies filling the house with the wonderful aromas of chocolate and sugar and butter, a Christmas tree bedecked with homemade ornaments and shining colored lights, the sound of scales being plunked out on the piano by some earnest student.

Katherine had lost all those things, and much more, when Julia Hollis succumbed to cancer, and the grief had followed her even into another woman's life.

"I will bring your tea," Maria replied, closing the door.

Katherine began to pace the length of the hearth, feeling wildly restless. She still remembered only a few details of her other existence, but she knew she'd been an active, energetic person, committed to regular exercise.

"This Victorian bird-in-a-gilded-cage number is not me," she confided to the baby, who gave a tiny little sigh in response.

She stopped and looked at her image in the elegant mirror above the small brick fireplace. Although she'd had some time to accept her situation, if not understand it, it still astonished her to see a stranger's face reflected back from the glass.

Deciding she needed to take some action, however small or even ill-advised, Katherine eyed the inner door that led to Gavin's room. If she was going to go out and explore her surroundings, she would certainly need clothes, and they were evidently stored in that closet Marianne had entered the day before.

Katherine tried the knob cautiously, all the while expecting a shout of angry warning from Gavin. The door was locked, as before.

A glance at the clock on the mantelpiece revealed that it was well after nine a.m. Surely a dedicated doctor like Gavin had long since left for the hospital or for an office somewhere.

Securing the belt of her robe, Katherine squared her shoulders, marched out into the hall, and boldly turned the brass handle on one of the towering oak doors leading into the master suite.

She wasn't doing anything wrong, she insisted to herself, zeroing in on the closet without so much as a glance toward the massive four-poster. Ever since she'd seen the bed the day before, she'd been entertaining some very disturbing thoughts and images. In short, she'd pictured herself lying naked on it, surrendering to Gavin, taking him inside her.

Entering the huge closet, she found an array of dresses she could not even have imagined. There were silks and organdies, chiffons and cottons, velvets and laces. The sumptuous beauty of the gowns made her breath catch, and she caught an inner glimpse, in her mind's eye, of a little girl playing dress-up, far off in another century, another universe.

Carefully, she took down a hunter-green dress with a short jacket. The fabric was a very lightweight wool, and both garments were trimmed in black silk ribbon.

She was so caught up in the spectacular magic of that closet that all the breath fled her lungs when she turned to leave and collided with a rock-hard chest.

Gavin was standing in the doorway in riding breeches and no shirt, his arms folded. Even with his dark hair rumpled and his beard growing in, he looked entirely too good to be true.

"Good morning," he drawled, and Katherine could see that her disconcertion pleased him.

Color surged into her face. Deciding that the best defense was an offense, she challenged, "What kind of doctor is still lying around in bed at this hour?"

He chuckled, and while the sound wasn't exactly mean, it grated against Katherine's already jumbled nerves. "The kind who didn't get home from the hospital until five-thirty this morning."

Katherine swallowed, wishing he would let her pass. "If you'll excuse me…"

Gavin caught her chin in one hand and lifted, and his eyes were somber all of a sudden as he studied her face. "Where are you planning to go?"

"Out," she responded. "If I don't get some fresh air and sunshine, I'll lose my mind."

His dark brows drew together for a moment. "Since when do you enjoy the outdoors, Kathy?" he asked. Skepticism stole into his features. "Ah. Yes. You're meeting Beecham somewhere."

The insult quivered in Katherine's spirit like a spear. "No."

His thumb caressed her cheek, and the light in his gray eyes was a dangerous one, like a night fire flickering in an enemy camp. He touched her mouth then, as if to prepare it for conquering.

A moment later, with a raw sound low in his throat, Gavin kissed her. The action sent a sensation of delicious violence tumbling through her, and when he pulled her closer it was as though she'd struck a brick wall at high speed.

She could not have imagined more powerful feelings than those, but when Gavin thrust his tongue into her mouth, she was confronted with a whole new level of excitement. Her knees went weak, her heart began to beat so rapidly that she feared it would explode, and there was an achy, melting stir in the center of her womanhood. When Gavin lifted a hand to her breast and caressed her, still consuming her mouth, she was struck with a sweet and cataclysmic seizure of a kind she'd never experienced before.

She whimpered, her body convulsing softly against his, and when Gavin suddenly ended the kiss, she stared up at him in bewilderment.

"Never again, Kathy," he said tersely. "Never again."

Katherine bent to pick up the dress which had dropped to the floor between them, not wanting him to see the hurt and embarrassment on her face. She might not have understood exactly what he was talking about, but she knew rejection when she encountered it.

Shakily, she left the room, her head held high. Gavin didn't need to know that it took all her pride to keep from defending herself to him, and all her courage to take the dress with her when she left.

One thing was clear. She could do nothing to change what had happened to her; she had a feeling there was no going back to that time and place beyond the crystal bridge.

That left the here and now to work with, and she meant to push up her sleeves and shape a life for herself.

With or without Dr. Gavin Winslow.

Chapter 5

Katherine walked around the beautifully maintained yard and gardens, exhilarated by the fresh spring air and bright sunshine. When she grew tired, she sat on the edge of the marble fountain, drew a deep, delicious breath, and closed her eyes.

The light, unexpected kiss made her open them again, wide.

Jeffrey smiled down at her. "Hello, Kathy," he said in a throaty voice.

If Katherine could have wished the man into a parallel universe, she would have done it. She wasn't at all surprised to look up at the second-floor windows of the mansion and catch a glimpse of Gavin as he turned away.

Jeffrey sat down beside her and took her hand; she wrenched free, feeling miserable.

"Your timing could not have been worse!" she hissed, bolting to her feet and smoothing her skirts.

Jeffrey's gaze had followed hers to the row of windows in the master bedroom. "I suppose the good doctor is on his way down to bloody my nose even as we speak."

"I wouldn't blame him if he did," she replied, tightening the black grosgrain ribbons that held her hunter-green bonnet in place. She drew in another deep breath, this time for courage, and then launched into her announcement. "I don't know what happened between the two of us," she said, and blushed as Jeffrey arched one eyebrow and smiled slightly. "All right, I do know. But I want to forget it all. I—I love my husband."

Jeffrey's amused expression turned stormy. He straightened his silk cravat and rose to look down at Katherine's face. "You made a promise to me. You vowed that we would leave for San Francisco, just the two of us, as soon as you'd regained your strength."

Katherine frowned. "Just the two of us? Surely I never meant to leave the baby…"

A crimson flush moved up Jeffrey's neck. "We agreed that the child would be better off here, with Dr. Winslow and his sister. Katherine, what's come over you? You're not the same woman I knew!"

She sank back onto the marble seat, dazed. She liked having this ripe and womanly body, and she loved Christopher and… yes, heaven help her, Gavin… but the more she found out about the original Mrs. Winslow, the more quiet contempt she felt. Not only had the other Katherine betrayed her husband, she had actually planned to abandon her own baby.

Katherine's high spirits were deflated. Earlier she'd actually dared to believe it was possible to win Gavin's forgiveness, if not his love. Now the whole situation seemed more hopeless than ever.

"I don't want to see you again, Jeffrey," she said softly but firmly. "Not ever."

Jeffrey glared at her for a long moment, then turned and stormed away. The metal gate made a loud clatter behind him.

The next sound Katherine heard was slow, derisive applause.

She turned to see Gavin standing on the pathway leading to the French doors. He looked as handsome as ever in his tan breeches, linen shirt, and tailored tweed jacket, and every bit as stubborn.

"Stop it," she snapped. "I'm tired of your damnable mockery, Gavin Winslow."

"An excellent performance—the young matron bidding farewell to her lover. You belong in the theater."

Katherine stamped one foot. "Stop being such a jerk and give me a little credit, will you? I meant what I said to Jeffrey—Mr. Beecham. I never want to see him again!"

"What's a jerk?" Gavin asked, with wary curiosity.

Katherine laughed, but the sound was bitter and filled with despair. "Stupid and stubborn would pretty much cover it," she said.

For a long, long moment, Gavin just looked at her, his expression unreadable. There might have been tenderness in his pewter eyes, but there were anger and distrust, too. "I think you'd better go inside," he finally decreed.

She didn't bother to argue; she was suddenly too tired, and the events of the morning had left her feeling a little loosely wrapped. She started toward the house, her eyes averted, and when she passed Gavin he stopped her, catching hold of her arm.

"I won't forgive a second mistake, Katherine," he said.

She did not look at him. "You haven't forgiven the first one," she pointed out.

In her room, a fresh nightgown and wrapper awaited, and a maid had put clean sheets on the bed.

Katherine changed clothes, then sat in the rocking chair to nurse Christopher, who seemed to have a keener appetite with every passing day. When he'd gone back to sleep some minutes later, with that guileless propensity of newborns, Katherine crawled into bed, stretched out on the crisp bed linens, and dozed off herself.

When she awakened several hours later, the floors and corners of the room were shadowed with twilight, and there was a covered tray of food waiting on the bedside table. Maria was sitting in the rocking chair, nursing Christopher.

Katherine sat up with a sigh and moved the tray onto her lap. Like Christopher, she was ravenous. "Is your baby a boy or a girl?" she asked.

Maria's expression was remote. "A boy."

The dinner tray held a delectable assortment of fare, including a chicken pie and a dish of stewed pears. "I'd like to see him. What's his name?"

Maria gazed down at Christopher as she spoke. "The tribal elders will give my son a name, when the time comes." She lifted deep brown eyes to Katherine's face.

"I, too, would like to see him, but he lives with my people now."

Katherine, who had been eager to eat, lowered her fork back to the tray, her food forgotten. "You mean they took your baby away from you?"

"I gave him to them; his father is the chief's son. It is best."

Katherine forced herself to take a bite of her meal. "I couldn't bear to be away from Christopher," she said.

A glance in Maria's direction revealed that the woman was looking at her in confusion now. Perhaps she'd known that the mistress of the house planned to run away with a lover and leave her child behind for others to raise. Perhaps Maria had even hoped to fill the void in her heart by caring for the Winslow baby once Katherine was gone.

"I'll share him with you," Katherine said gently.

Maria blinked, looked away, then met Katherine's gaze again. "You've changed," she said. "And it seems there is much you don't remember."

Katherine nodded. "I have changed," she agreed. "I've changed more than anyone in the world would ever believe. And you're right—there's a lot I don't remember. Did Mrs.—did I keep diaries, Maria? Did I save the letters I received?"

Christopher had fallen asleep at Maria's breast. She laid him ever so gently in her lap, rebuttoned the front of her dress, and then raised the contented infant to her shoulder to be burped.

"There are papers," Maria said. "I will bring them after Dr. Winslow goes to the hospital for rounds."

"Thank you," Katherine replied.

As it happened, Gavin visited Katherine's room before he left the house. She would almost have preferred his scathing temper to the cool distance of his manner.

"I'm sending you to the island house for the rest of the summer," he announced.

Katherine was dismayed. She didn't know what island house Gavin was talking about, for one thing. For another, she hated leaving him in Seattle with the likes of Caroline Raynes. "Do I have a choice?" she asked.

The concept obviously caught Gavin by surprise. "A choice?"

Katherine nodded. These nineteenth-century men were something else. "Suppose I said I didn't want to go anywhere, that I preferred to stay in Seattle with you?"

Gavin gave a long-suffering sigh. "I would reply that your preferences don't carry a great deal of weight," he responded evenly.

Once again he'd used words to slap Katherine, and the blow hurt as much as the back of his hand would have.

"Bastard," she said, angry not only because of the pain he'd inflicted but because tears had sprung to her eyes, and she hadn't wanted him to see her cry over something he'd said or done.

He came to her bedside and bent to kiss her forehead. "I love you, too, my cherished darling," he responded with theatrical politeness. "Good night."

Finally Katherine noticed his formal clothing. "You're going out!" she accused, picturing him dancing with one beautiful woman after another in some elegant ballroom. The next picture she had was of Gavin and the oh-so-proper Miss Raynes, chatting while they ate an elegant dinner, then clinking their wineglasses together in a toast that excluded the rest of the world.

"Yes," he responded.

Katherine started to protest, then stopped herself. She couldn't ask him not to socialize, especially with the track record the other Katherine had chalked up. "Gavin…" She ran her tongue over dry lips. "I don't suppose… well… would it help if I told you I was sorry for all the things that happened before?"

She sensed his withdrawal long moments before he actually drew back from her bedside. "No," he answered flatly. "It's too late for that."

He turned to the cradle then, and Katherine wished she could read the expression on his face as he looked down at the baby, but the gas lamps and the fire had not been lit, and the room was dim.

"I suppose you've noticed that he looks exactly like you," she dared to say.

Gavin raised his eyes to her face then, and the coldness in them pinned Katherine to the headboard as surely as an Indian's arrow would have done. "Christopher is my son," he conceded, "but that is a happy accident. He could just as well have been sired by Beecham or the man who delivers coal. As far as you and I are concerned, the fact that I'm acknowledging this child changes nothing."

The lump aching in Katherine's throat made speech impossible for the moment, and her mind was reeling anyway. She would not have been able to think of a response scathing enough to match Gavin's words.

That night the house seemed to buzz with activity, but Katherine was still too stricken by her encounter with Gavin to wonder what was going on.

In the morning she found out.

"We're going to the island," Marianne announced, her face aglow. "I can hardly wait to walk on the beach again."

Katherine loved the beach, and the prospect of spending time in a waterfront house would have thrilled her in her other life, but now she only felt forlorn. Obviously, Gavin wanted his wife and sister out of the house so he could bring his mistress around with impunity.

Katherine and Marianne left for the wharf area at the head of a virtual caravan of carriages. They were followed by Maria and Christopher in another coach, and beyond that was a wagon loaded down with trunks.

Reaching Elliott Bay, where a small boat, part of the mosquito fleet, would take them to Vashon Island, Katherine forgot some of her heartache. There were creaking wharves and shouting sailors and clanging bells everywhere, and the scene was so different from its counterpart in modern-day Seattle that she was amazed. She wanted to remember every sight and sound.

After the passengers and their baggage had been loaded onto the boat, the captain tooted his whistle and the craft slipped bravely out into the harbor. Katherine stood at the railing, watching the land retreat.

The city was so like the one she knew, and so different.

Gavin didn't trouble himself to see them off, and Katherine wondered if he'd ever returned from his dinner party the night before. She hadn't seen him since his visit to her room, or caught the sound of his voice in the hallway.

"I brought the letters and the diaries," Maria said, standing beside heron the deck. At Katherine's immediate frown, the Indian girl smiled and added, "Don't worry. Christopher is with his aunt, being badly spoiled."

Katherine sighed. "Thank you for helping me, Maria— and for not automatically deciding that I'm crazy."

The girl's ageless brown eyes studied Katherine's face placidly. "You are not mad," she avowed. "And you are not Katherine Winslow."

Chapter 6

Katherine looked into Maria's pensive brown eyes and recognized a friend. She was not ready to explain her helter-skelter arrival in this time and place; indeed, she didn't understand the situation herself. Still, it was a comfort to know there was one person who might be receptive to such a strange confidence.

After that both women watched the shore as the steam-powered boat chugged out into the bay, headed toward Vashon Island. White gulls as well as gray swooped and chattered alongside, and the waters looked like india ink under the relentless blue of the summer sky.

Katherine was entranced by the sight of the receding city. There was no evidence of the towering steel-and-glass skyline of her day, and wagons and carriages moved in the streets instead of automobiles.

She smiled. "It's like a movie," she said.

Maria frowned. "What?"

Katherine patted Maria's hand. "I'll explain some other time," she promised.

After an hour's journey, the boat docked at Vashon Island. There, another carriage awaited the Winslow party, along with a buckboard for hauling trunks and valises.

Katherine was just as fascinated by the island as she had been by the city. As they drove through a small cluster of buildings she spotted a mercantile, a blacksmith's shop, and a lovely lighthouse formed of natural stone. For her, the world had become one big hands-on museum.

The Winslows' summer house, which overlooked the water, turned out to be almost as impressive as the mansion in the city.

It was an enormous white frame house with lots of balconies and porches, and a few feet below the point of the highest gable, an octagon-shaped stained-glass window glowed with captured sunlight. There were rose bushes everywhere, along with arbors and benches and fountains, and two rows of graceful weeping willows towered like an honor guard on either side of the gravel driveway.

Although Katherine was not happy to be exiled to the island, she could not help being charmed by the magnificent house. Just looking at the place gave her a feeling of homecoming so profound that tears came to her eyes.

She sniffled. "It's lovely," she said.

Marianne hadn't even glanced out the carriage window. "You've been behaving so oddly of late, Katherine. You speak as though you've never seen the Haven, and you were married here!"

Katherine glanced helplessly at her sister-in-law, then bit her lip and ignored Marianne's remark. There was simply nothing she could say that wouldn't eventually land her in some grim nineteenth-century asylum.

If Marianne only knew how many things she didn't "remember," Katherine thought. What had happened to Gavin and Marianne's parents? For that matter, what had happened to her own? Had the other Katherine been raised in a happy home, with brothers and sisters, or as an only child? Why wasn't a pretty young woman like Marianne married?

The questions were practically never-ending, and Katherine hoped the letters and diaries Maria had brought along would answer at least a few of them.

As the carriage wheels rattled on the brick cobblestone driveway, Christopher stirred in Maria's arms and began to fuss. Katherine reached for him, astonished at the depth of love she felt. He was another woman's child, conceived and nurtured by the light of a stranger's soul, and yet she could not have been more devoted to him if he'd been her own.

"There now," she said softly, holding the infant against her shoulder and patting his tiny, flannel-swaddled back. "We're home."

The inside of the house was as splendid as the outside, and of the same gracious design. The rooms were all large and bright, filled with solid beautifully constructed furniture, but the pieces didn't loom oppressively over Katherine's head the way some of their counterparts at the mansion did.

There was a screened sunporch overlooking the orchard and, beyond that, the indigo water. Katherine intended to spend a great deal of her time in that quiet, sheltered place, working things through in her mind.

Her trunks were carried to the master suite, which turned out to be the chamber boasting the eight-sided stained-glass window. The suite offered both sitting and dressing rooms, and the floor was of bare wood, polished to a high shine. There was a small fireplace, fronted in gray and white marble, and the mantelpiece was fashioned of a wood so shiny and dark that it resembled ebony.

"There's been a mistake," Katherine confided anxiously to Marianne. Christopher had been fed, and Maria had taken him to the nursery across the hall, and Marianne was supervising the placement of Katherine's trunks.

"What kind of mistake?" Marianne asked as George, the caretaker, and Walter, his helper from the stables, left the room.

Katherine went to close the door, and the color was high in her cheeks when she replied, "This is surely Gavin's room. You know he and I don't share quarters…"

"More's the pity," Marianne reflected. "It would be better for both of you."

Katherine was impatient. "I think I should move to another room at once."

"Poppycock," Marianne returned airily. "Gavin is not God, however he may protest to the contrary; he has no right to hand down decrees. Besides, we probably won't see him until we return to Seattle in September anyway."

"September?" Katherine loved the island, as little as she'd seen of it, but the idea of not having so much as a glimpse of Gavin for three long months was practically unbearable.

Marianne sighed, spread her hands for a moment, then let them fall back to her sides. "You've finally fallen in love with your husband, haven't you?" she demanded with kindly frankness. "Forgive me for asking, Katherine, but what took you so long? Couldn't you have recognized your tender feelings before you humiliated the man in front of half the city of Seattle?"

Katherine detected no hostility in Marianne's words, only honest puzzlement. "I can't explain," she said, stepping through the French doors that opened onto a balcony. "At least, not yet. But yes, heaven help me, I think I have fallen in love with Gavin. I would do practically anything to win him back."

Marianne stood beside her at the railing of the balcony, and the two of them watched the sunlight dancing on the sound and the pale gulls soaring over the tops of the apple trees in the orchard. "I would like to see that happen," she said with gentle foreboding, "for your sake, and Christopher's, and especially for Gavin's. But the way you flaunted your—flirtation—with Jeffrey Beecham, well, that kind of disgrace isn't easy for a man to live down."

Katherine swallowed, and she didn't look at Marianne when she went on. She didn't dare. "Suppose I told you I didn't remember anything that happened to me before Christopher was born? No wedding, no adultery, no anything. Would you believe me?"

"I would be very concerned," Marianne replied gently.

Katherine met Marianne's gaze and knew she could not tell her more, not then. "You're so lovely, Marianne. Why haven't you married and started a family of your own?"

Marianne's flawless skin paled slightly, and her mouth tightened almost imperceptibly—not with anger, Katherine thought, but with pain. "You really don't remember," she said. "Katherine, I was engaged to Timothy Waynewright, the vice president of the Merchants' Bank. He was shot and killed in a robbery two days before our wedding."

"Dear God," Katherine whispered, sagging against the railing for a moment. "Marianne, I'm so sorry."

Marianne looked more concerned with Katherine's state of health than her own tragedy. She took her sister-in-law's arm and escorted her firmly back inside the house.

"Gavin should be told about this—this memory lapse of yours. It might make a lot of difference." As she spoke, Marianne was maneuvering Katherine onto the big bed and covering her with a creamy cashmere throw.

Katherine shook her head. "None at all," she said. "He would think I was only pretending, in an effort to escape the consequences of Kath—of my mistakes."

Marianne left then, and Katherine slept for several hours. When she awakened, a lavender hatbox had materialized on her nightstand, like something left by Santa or the Easter Bunny. Katherine sat up, smoothed her hair, and set the box on her lap.

It was filled with scented vellum letters, and there were sepia photographs and two thick leather-bound journals as well.

Katherine started with the letters, which were mostly from school friends and family members back East. From the collection of mail, she learned that the other Katherine had been raised by a wealthy maiden aunt in Maine. She'd gone to boarding school in Connecticut from the first grade through the twelfth, then attended a Boston finishing school.

The photographs showed Katherine standing with Gavin, smiling brightly, and the two of them looked so happy. How could things have gone so terribly wrong?

Katherine leaned back against the carved mahogany headboard for a long time, staring at the empty fireplace and assimilating what she'd garnered from the first dozen letters. Only after Mrs. Hawkins, the housekeeper, had brought her tea and fresh strawberries did she tackle the rest.

It was strange, examining the images of another person's life, seeing her hopes and dreams reflected back in the handwriting of an elderly aunt, an understanding friend, a cousin. Even though Katherine learned a lot about the other Katherine in those leisurely hours of reading, the questions multiplied even faster than the answers.

The journals awaited her, promising the most intimate insights of all, but Katherine's mind was already spinning with details. She would save the diaries for another day.

At dinner that night Katherine was preoccupied, pretty much letting Marianne carry the conversation. Her predecessor had been a flighty and somewhat selfish creature, and very spoiled despite her isolation from her family. She must have been a lonely child, though privileged, starved for love and attention.

The next morning Katherine rose very early. She saw to Christopher's needs, then left him with Maria and went out for a walk, carrying one of the journals with her. Following a winding path down through the orchard, she heard the low, summery murmur of the tide, and the sound stirred some long-dormant hope within her.

Katherine walked along the shoreline for a time, delighting in the sights and sounds and smells, the wet, rocky sand, the water-beaten pilings and swaying boat docks. She came upon a bed of oysters, stopping to speculate, one hand shading her eyes from the morning sun, as to whether any of the hoary shells contained a pearl.

When she began to feel tired she returned to the orchard, found a tree with a low, sturdy branch and a clear view of the water, and climbed up. Once settled, her cumbersome skirts tucked in around her, she pulled the first journal from her pocket and started to read.

The diary's author, whom Katherine now thought of as Katherine the First, had visited Seattle after sailing from San Francisco to Hong Kong and back again. She'd met Dr. Gavin Winslow at a party and deemed him "handsome, if dreadfully serious." She'd also recorded that he'd inherited a fortune from his father, who'd been among the first timber barons in the area, a fact that apparently redeemed him a little for practicing the humble profession of medicine.

As Katherine read, her legs dangling from the tree branch, one shoulder resting against its trunk, she confirmed her earlier suspicions. Gavin's young bride had not been a wicked vamp, bent on shaming her husband in the eyes of the world, but a confused, lonely child. She'd needed everyone's love and attention, not just her husband's. When people failed to notice her, she'd written, she felt as though she were invisible and sometimes even began to doubt her existence. Often, she'd sunk into "black melancholia" and sincerely wished she'd never been born.

Her name came tumbling toward her on the warm, salty breeze.

"Katherine! Kaaathy!"

It was Marianne.

Katherine closed the journal, tucked it back into her skirt pocket, and clambered down from the tree. Her skill at this endeavor was a holdover from the life she'd lived on the other side of the crystal bridge. There, as a child, she'd been an inveterate tomboy.

When Katherine reached the ground and turned to start toward her sister-in-law, she found the young woman staring at her, openmouthed.

"Katherine, were you up in the boughs of that tree?" she asked incredulously.

"You know I was," Katherine answered pleasantly. "You must have seen me."

"But you never do things like that."

Katherine smiled. "I do now."

Chapter 7

Katherine and Marianne had lunch on the screened porch, with Maria to keep them company. Katherine was preoccupied, as she had been the night before at dinner, and the journal, hidden away in her pocket, consumed her thoughts.

When the new idea bobbed to the top of Katherine's mind, it startled her so much that she dropped her soup spoon with a clatter and even gave a little cry.

"Excuse me, please," she blurted out, shoving back her chair and bolting to her feet.

The other two women looked surprised at her behavior.

"Katherine, are you all right?" Marianne inquired.

She merely nodded hastily and dashed into the main part of the house. In a massive and very masculine study off the main entry way, she found what she was looking for: a desk, paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen.

Sinking into a cushioned chair of the finest Moroccan leather, Katherine pulled several sheets of expensively made vellum stationery from the desk drawer. After arranging the paper on the mirror-bright surface, she opened the ink bottle, dipped her pen, and began to write.

Excitement mounted within her as she penned one nonsensical sentence after another. Only when her hand became too tired to write did Katherine finally wipe the pen's nib clean and put the lid back on the ink.

Without waiting for the pages to dry, she compared them to the flamboyant script in the journals. The letters on the loose papers were narrower, neater, and much smaller.

She had retained something more of that other life than a tangle of memories, then. She had kept her own handwriting.

Within a moment Katherine was so breathless that she dared not rise from the chair, lest her trembling knees refuse to hold her.

She laid her head down on the desk and tried to gather her composure. The other Katherine was almost surely lying in that hospital bed in the Seattle of a hundred years hence, or perhaps she'd even died.

Katherine had sympathy for Gavin's bride, but she also wanted this body, this man, and this life, even though the last tenant had botched things up royally.

She began to shiver, feeling chilled even though the room was warm. Maybe the whole process would reverse itself. Maybe she would be wrenched away from Christopher and Gavin and the elegantly antique world she had come to love…

Finally Katherine drew a deep breath and made herself sit up. She would take things one day at a time and deal with trouble when she came across it. In the meanwhile she planned to somehow, some way win Gavin back.

During her first week at the Haven, Katherine read and reread all the diaries and letters, and she must have studied the tintypes and sepia photographs a million times. She tried on all the summer dresses that had arrived with her in the trunks and studied herself in the mirror.

The second week brought a letter from Gavin. Katherine was disappointed if not surprised that it was addressed to Marianne. While the message carried warm wishes for his sister and inquiries about Christopher's progress, Katherine might not have existed at all.

By the time twenty-one days had gone by, Katherine was riding all over the island on horseback. While she enjoyed her adventures, she also knew she was trying to outdistance her own doubts and injured feelings.

After a month, Marianne announced plans for a garden party. Everyone in the Winslow social circle, both on the island and in Seattle, would be invited.

Katherine went through her wardrobe, garment by garment, and prayed that Gavin would attend.

In early August, five weeks after Marianne, Maria, Katherine, and Christopher had moved to the island for the summer, the party was held.

Gavin sent word from Seattle that he was too busy to join in the festivities.

Katherine attended the social event, smiling the whole time, barely able to breathe because her heart was in her throat. She spoke with warmth and graciousness to all the guests but was careful not to behave inappropriately, for she hoped to undo some of the damage the other Katherine had done.

After the last guest had retired, Katherine locked herself in her room and wept because Gavin had stayed away.

On a hot day at the end of August, when Maria went to visit friends on the far side of the island, taking Christopher along, Marianne journeyed to Seattle to attend a wedding. Katherine looked at the roiling charcoal clouds on the horizon and felt a sweet, dangerous anticipation.

There was a storm coming, and Katherine loved storms.

As night fell, the very earth seemed to rock with the force of the thunder. The wind howled around the house, and Katherine knew the water in the sound would be churning, the waves white-capped. Lightning outlined the old lighthouse Katherine had sketched so many times, and the housekeeper and caretaker hurried from room to room, securing the windows.

Katherine's fascination with the natural panorama seemed to confound them, but they offered no comment. Despite her earlier efforts to let the old couple know that she regarded them as equals, they still saw themselves as servants.

"Would you like me to bring you a brandy, Mrs. Winslow?" the housekeeper asked anxiously. She was a sturdy but compact woman with large blue eyes and white hair wound into a coronet on top of her head. "I know you always get a little nervous when the weather gets like this."

"Nervous?" Katherine laughed. "Heavens, no—I'm not afraid of a little thunder and lightning."

But she had been, Katherine realized. That was why Mrs. Hawkins was looking at her as though she was turning into a werewolf before her very eyes.

Before the housekeeper could reply, the front door slammed and a voice as domineering as the thunder echoed through the house.

"Marianne! Maria!"

Gavin.

It wounded Katherine that he hadn't called her name as well, but of course she shouldn't have been surprised. From the first, Gavin had allowed her not even the skimpiest illusion that he cared for her.

At least he was consistent.

Mr. Hawkins was busy building a blaze in the parlor fireplace, so his wife went to greet her grumpy master. When Gavin entered the room, he looked through Katherine as if she were invisible and went to stand on the hearth, warming his hands.

The housekeeper and caretaker left immediately, and Katherine herself was edging toward the towering double doors when Gavin stopped her with a brusque, "Where is my son?"

The very roof of the house shook with the force of two fronts colliding high in the sky, no more elemental than Gavin's formidable will meeting her own.

"Our son is with Maria," Katherine answered evenly, wondering how she could love Dr. Winslow so much when he invariably made her yearn to strangle him. "They went visiting this afternoon, and I'm sure they're perfectly safe."

Gavin assessed his wife with eyes as cold as a frozen steel blade. "You've been well?"

Katherine was secretly thinking how fitting it would have been if he'd snarled and shown vampire teeth, but Gavin was as stunningly attractive as ever. The reflexive pitch and roll in her stomach was proof of that. "Very well."

A blast of thunder rattled the windows, and his gaze narrowed as he stared at her. "I rather expected to find you cowering under the bed in fear, my dear," he said. "You were always terrified of storms."

"You don't know me as well as you think you do," she responded crisply. For all her light words, she had a dizzying fancy that some dangerous enchantment had settled over the big house with Gavin's arrival.

"I know you all too well," Gavin corrected her, shedding his long coat and tossing it aside, then crossing to a teak-wood cabinet near the doors and pouring himself a brandy.

Katherine decided to ignore the statement. "What brings you here, Dr. Winslow?" she asked, moving close to the fire because he had abandoned the space. "Did someone tell you I was happy? That would surely account for your hasty appearance and intractable mood." I'm getting the Victorian vernacular down pretty well, she congratulated herself.

Gavin was frowning as he regarded her in the flickering glow of the lamps, his brandy like glowing amber in the firelight. "Since when do you use words like 'intractable'?"

"You wouldn't believe it if I told you," Katherine replied. Invisible St. Elmo's fire danced and crackled in the room, and she sensed that Gavin was as aware of the dynamic charisma between them as she was.

He took another sip of his brandy. "You'll be sorry to hear that your Jeffrey Beecham has lit out for greener pastures." The challenge was a quiet one, but nonetheless deadly.

"Good," she said, with light assurance. "I won't miss him." She swallowed, summoning up all her courage. "But I have missed you, Gavin. Very much."

His frigid gaze moved over her—she was wearing a cotton gown, a white background with small lavender flowers scattered over it—and her rich auburn hair was gathered up in a soft Gibson-girl style. When his Adam's apple moved, Katherine felt a certain tenderness toward him, as well as a captivation so powerful that she feared to think to what lengths it might drive her.

"Do not insult me with the inference that you cherish any wifely sentiments toward me," he warned. For all his words, for all that she was standing half a room away, Katherine was woefully conscious of the hardness and heat of his body.

She sighed. She'd never seduced a man before, or been seduced by one, for that matter, and she had no idea how to proceed. She only knew that she had been thrust into this century, and the company of this particular man, because his soul was mate to hers.

"You want me, Gavin," she said simply. Quietly.

He turned away and tossed his brandy, glass and all, onto the fire. The glass shattered and the blaze roared up the chimney, but Gavin paid it no apparent mind. He stood with his back to her, his hands braced against the mantelpiece.

He hadn't given an inch of ground, and yet somehow Katherine knew she had the upper hand. "I'll bring you some dinner, if you'd like," she said in as normal a tone as she could manage. She'd been hoping and praying Gavin would come to the island all these weeks, and now he was here and she was more certain of her love for him than ever.

He was silent for a long, long time, but Katherine was just as stubborn as he was, and she waited.

"Bring the tray to my room," he said.

Her heart rushed into her throat. She was both terrified and joyous as she hurried to the kitchen. By the time she climbed the back stairway and entered the master suite half an hour later, after she'd laboriously reheated the leftovers from supper, she was trembling.

It wasn't fear of sharing her body with Gavin that scared her, although she had never been with a man in her life, despite having gone through the experience of childbirth. No, it was the possibility that he meant to reject her, to humiliate her, that frightened her so much.

Balancing the tray on one hand, she opened the door and stepped into the bedroom that had been hers alone these past weeks.

Gavin had built up the fire and was sitting in a wing-back chair, gazing solemnly at the flames. He'd taken off his coat and his collar, and his shirt gaped open to the middle of his chest.

Katherine wished she could believe he was looking so rakishly handsome for her benefit, but it was more likely that he was completely unaware of the image he presented.

She set the tray on the small round table beside his chair, and he didn't raise his eyes to her or acknowledge her in any way.

She decided she'd read him wrong earlier and moved to the bureau, feeling both dejection and relief. "I'll sleep in one of the guest rooms," she said in a voice barely loud enough to compete with the storm outside and the crackling babble of the fire.

"You're my wife," Gavin said gruffly, still without looking in her direction. "You will sleep in my bed."

Chapter 8

The light of the bedroom fire flickered over Gavin's rain-damp clothes, glimmered on the polished leather of his riding boots, lent a crimson halo to his ebony hair. Katherine was stricken by the joyous love she felt for this husband she'd won by accident; it was as though some ancient wrong had been finally righted, after a long and difficult struggle.

Every tiny fiber in her body seemed to resonate, like the strings of some mellow old instrument that had been lifted from a musty trunk, tuned, and finally strummed with cherishing fingers.

Gavin set his strong hands on the arms of the chair and thrust himself wearily to his feet. When he turned to face Katherine, he took on an aura made up of firelight and the violent, golden lightning that flashed beyond the terrace doors.

Katherine could not read the expression on his face for the shadows that cloaked him, but she felt the barely leashed power in his body, sensed the distant tumult of the battle going on within his spirit. The conflict, she knew, was between the mightiest of human emotions, love, and its twin, hatred.

For the first time since she'd landed in this place, she had hope of finding her way into Gavin's heart and making a lasting place for herself there.

Fearful that anything she said might tilt the delicate balance the wrong way, she kept her silence. She lifted her chin and stared straight at his face to show him she wouldn't be intimidated. For all that, the separate impacts of his physical presence, the warriorlike strength of his spirit, the laser-powered reach of his mind, practically overwhelmed her.

He took a step toward her, then another, reluctantly, as though resisting some elemental force every inch of the way.

His hand came to rest on her shoulder, and she turned and lightly brushed his knuckles with her lips.

"God help me," he whispered in the tone of one who expects no aid from any quarter, including heaven. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, and Katherine watched the play of muscles in his magnificent neck for a long moment, then softly kissed the hollow of his throat.

She felt a shudder go through him, knew a sensation of homecoming that went far beyond the physical when he wrenched her against him. Her hair spilled down her back as he plunged splayed fingers beneath the little knot she'd pinned so carefully into place.

He spread his free hand over the small of her back, pressing her curvy softness against an opposing hardness. When he assailed her with his demanding, masterful kiss, it seemed to Katherine that the elegant room had suddenly turned to a vacuum, like outer space. Only her connection with Gavin allowed her to breathe; when he withdrew, her last contact with the life force would be broken. She would shrivel to a cinder and then disappear entirely.

Just when Katherine thought she couldn't accommodate another sensation, another dizzying emotion, without going into overload, Gavin thrust his tongue past her lips. It was symbolic of the conquering that would come later, she knew, and the sweet warning caused her knees to go weak.

She uttered a desolate little cry when Gavin lifted her into his arms, never troubling to withdraw his mouth from hers, and carried her to the bed. Only when he'd laid her on the coverlet did he draw back so that he could look at her as he stripped her of her clothes.

He made a slow ritual of that process, starting with her shoes. After rolling down each of her stockings, he kissed the tops of her insteps with light, fevered touches of his lips.

He pushed up her skirts and petticoats to bare her knees, and Katherine bit down hard on her lower lip to keep from pleading with him to go ahead and take her.

By the time she was completely naked, her skin glowed with perspiration and her hips twisted on the mattress, betraying her, seeking some contact with him.

He caressed one of her plump breasts as he began taking off his own clothes, and when he was finally bare, as she was, he stretched out over her, letting her feel his daunting manhood against her upper thigh.

Now, she thought, as hot shivers of desire streaked through her. Now, finally, he'll take me. I'll be his.

Instead, though, he slipped downward, his coarse chest hair chafing her breasts and stomach in an elementally pleasant way. When he took her nipple into his mouth, she cried out in helpless pleasure and arched against the steely strength of the body that spanned the length of her like a bridge over a flood-swollen stream.

At the same time, thunder and rain slammed against the house, and Katherine had a vague sense that no matter how loudly she called out in response to his attentions, no one else on the planet would hear.

She surrendered, completely and absolutely, reaching back to grip the underside of the headboard in desperate hands. Had she still possessed the faculties to speak, she would have begged, but she was far beyond that now. A storm had broken in her body and spirit, and she was at its mercy.

Finally, finally, when she wanted to weep with the force of her need, Gavin entered her in a long, slow stroke. He was looking into her suddenly wide-open eyes as he took her, watching her responses in the faulty light of the fire.

Katherine had never been so intimate with a man, not in her previous life, and in that other body she would probably have suffered pain. As it was, she felt only a tightness, then electricity as the tempest in her heart and soul gained momentum.

She clutched wildly at Gavin's shoulders, unable to ask for what she needed because she didn't know its name.

Fortunately, he seemed to know very well. He began to move within her, slowly, steadily, strongly, and while he moved, he nibbled at her lower lip, her neck, her earlobes, her jawline.

Each stroke made Katherine more desperate for the next one. Her breath quickened, and her nipples were hard buttons against Gavin's chest, her legs like a fierce vise around his hips.

Finally the pleasure reached an explosive pitch, and Katherine marveled even as her new body did its dance beneath Gavin, curving high to meet his hips. Her husky cries of triumph breached that last barrier of reserve he'd erected, and he uttered a raw shout and then convulsed against her, driving deep, spilling himself.

Gavin collapsed, his head resting against her breast, when it was finally over. His breathing was ragged, like Katherine's own, and neither of them was capable of speech.

Now that the harsh demands of his body had been met, at least for the moment, Gavin could think with some coherence again. And what he was thinking troubled him deeply.

People rarely changed in any lasting fashion. He knew that because of his Harvard education and his personal experience as a man and a doctor. Seeming alterations of personality were usually temporary, except in some cases of religious conversion.

He listened to the heartbeat of the woman whose luscious breasts cushioned his head, not as a physician, but as a man who drew a spiritual sustenance from the sound. This was Kathy, the woman he'd loved to the point of desperation, the mother of his child, the only bedmate he'd taken since his marriage. Yes, even after his wife had betrayed him, he had been faithful to her.

It did seem that Kathy had changed drastically since the day of Christopher's birth, though he feared to believe it. Her much gossiped about indiscretions had wounded him to the very wellsprings of his soul; he knew he could not endure such terrible pain again.

He closed his eyes, already feeling the temptation to turn his head and feast gently at her nipple, and a series of images flashed through his mind for the thousandth time.

Months before, Kathy had been defiant about her affair with Jeffrey Beecham. She'd said he was more attentive and affectionate than Gavin, more fun. She'd made no secret of the fact that she'd rather be Beecham's wife than his.

Since Christopher's arrival, however, she'd brushed the other man off like a speck of dust, and tonight she'd responded to Gavin's lovemaking as she never had.

There was a change in the way she spoke, too. Although her vocabulary had not been limited before, she had a much greater grasp of the language now.

Then there was the way she acted. Katherine was a devoted mother to Christopher, he knew that from what he'd seen and from Marianne's regular letters. And there were still other things.

According to reports from Maria, Kathy had taken to sitting in trees, reading. It was amazing enough that she would open a book other than her journal; it was incomprehensible that she was reportedly working her way through the Haven's well-stocked library. Furthermore, she'd never treated the help with such courtesy.

Gavin's long-starved body was not concerned with the speculations of his mind. He could feel himself going hard against the delicious cushion of Katherine's thigh, and the muscles in his hips and buttocks were flexing involuntarily, preparing themselves to thrust.

He wondered how she would receive him now, she who had never really cared for the strain and messiness of lovemaking—at least with him.

With a long sigh, Gavin turned his head and brushed a waiting nipple with his lips. The morsel immediately pouted, ready for capture.

He laid a hand on Katherine's belly, made slow, firm circles on the satiny expanse.

Kathy's fingers plunged into his hair, and she startled him by pulling him close for her kiss. Just before she raised her lips to his, she whispered breathlessly, "No preliminaries this time, Gavin. Just take me, hard and fast."

Her words intoxicated him as surely as a pint of good Kentucky whiskey would have done, and again he marveled as he positioned himself to give her what she wanted. What they both wanted.

The storm had passed when Katherine awakened the next morning, and Gavin had already left her bed. Indeed, Christopher was back, regarding his mother wonderingly over Maria's shoulder as she held him in the rocking chair.

The immediate sense of desolation that had gripped Katherine at the realization that Gavin was gone was instantly displaced by the joy of seeing her son again.

"You're home from your travels," she chimed, sitting up and tucking the sheets underneath her armpits because Gavin had stripped her of every stitch the night before and never given her time to put on a nightgown.

Maria turned to smile. "Yes. I hope you weren't worried—we were safe with Aunt Nisa and Uncle Tie throughout the storm. Uncle brought us home this morning."

Although Katherine had definitely missed Christopher, she had had confidence in Maria's ability to take care of him, and she had not been overly concerned. "I trusted you completely. Now let me hold my handsome boy before I perish for the longing."

Gently, Maria handed the infant to Katherine, who cradled him against her breast and bent her head to kiss his fuzzy little crown.

"Have you seen Dr. Winslow around this morning?" she asked presently, hoping the question didn't betray too much.

A glance at Maria's face showed that the other woman had already divined the situation, probably from Katherine's lack of a nightgown and the pair of shiny riding boots sitting neatly beside the wardrobe.

"He's gone to the shore, I think," Maria said with a certain friendly smugness. "When something's troubling the doctor, he likes to come out here and walk along the beach while he works it through."

Katherine cuddled Christopher a little closer and stroked his back with her hand. Gavin had made thorough love to her the night before, unknowingly changing her forever, but he hadn't mentioned the word "love." She could only conclude that he was having doubts this morning, and maybe regrets, too.

"You look so sad," Maria said, coming to sit on the edge of the bed and squeezing Katherine's free hand.

A tear welled up in Katherine's eye. "I am," she answered. And then, because she knew this woman was a friend, because she couldn't keep the secret anymore, she poured out her story. Katherine told Maria about that other life, painted the freeway and the speeding sports car and the jackknifed truck into as understandable a picture as she could. She explained about the crystal bridge, the shock of waking up inside someone else's body—someone who was in the middle of childbirth—and the even weirder sensation that she'd known Gavin Winslow for all eternity, that her love for him was as primitive as the stars, and that she belonged with him.

When all the breathless, disjointed words had tumbled out of her mouth, Katherine sat tensing, holding Christopher and waiting to know if there was one person on earth who would believe her.

Chapter 9

Maria carefully took the baby, who had fallen asleep against Katherine's chest, and laid him in the cradle.

Pressing the covers to her collarbone, Katherine scrambled to the foot of the bed for her paisley silk wrapper, which she hastily donned. She hoped Maria was remembering the day they'd come to the island, when they'd stood talking at the rail of the ferry and the other woman had said, You are not mad. And you are not Katherine Wins low.

When Katherine's friend turned to face her, there was a reassuring smile on her face. "We have many strange legends among our people," she said with a little shrug. "Besides, who is to say what is truth and what is not?"

Katherine was so relieved that she sagged to the edge of the bed. "Do you know what Gavin would probably say if I told him that same story? That I'd broken a blood vessel in my brain or suffered a psychotic episode."

Maria's pretty face crumpled with puzzlement. "What?"

"He'd think I was crazy," Katherine simplified.

"Tell me more about that other world. Is it better than this one?"

"In some ways," Katherine answered with a sigh. "There are lots of medical advances." She glanced toward Christopher, sleeping comfortably in his cradle, and felt fiercely protective. "Many of the old-time diseases like whooping cough and measles and smallpox have been almost entirely eliminated. People don't have to work as hard, and everything is much faster. For instance, here a letter takes weeks to cross the country, but where I come from, there's a machine called a fax that will transmit—send— words or pictures anywhere in the world, in just a matter of moments."

Maria's mouth was open.

If there was one thing Katherine enjoyed, it was a receptive audience. "There are many other wonderful machines, too—airplanes, for instance," she went on, encouraged. "They're like a big metal ship, except that they have wings and fly through the sky instead of sailing on the water."

"I want to see this place!"

Katherine was filled with sadness. "That doesn't seem very likely to happen," she said gently, laying one hand on her friend's shoulder, "but don't worry. I have enough stories to last until we're both very old women. In fact, some of these things will be starting to happen by then."

"They must be written down, those things you remember."

Katherine agreed, and she couldn't help grinning. What a shock some historian would get when he or she opened a dusty old journal dated 1895, and found detailed descriptions of fax machines, computers, airplanes, and video cameras.

"In what ways is this time better than your own?" Maria wanted to know.

"I don't know that 'better' is the proper word,"' Katherine mused. "Things are generally simpler here. There isn't so much stress." She looked around at the sumptuous room. "It's very romantic, this life, riding in carriages, living in mansions, wearing long dresses that rustle when I walk. But I'm well aware that the vast majority of people don't enjoy this kind of luxury."

Maria's brow was furrowed with a frown. "Don't women wear long dresses in your world?"

Katherine smiled. "Only for very elegant parties and things like that. I spent most of my waking hours in jean— trousers."

"Women wear trousers there?" Maria's voice was soft with disbelief and wonder.

"Yes," Katherine said. "And they vote and own their own businesses and hold political office."

Raising the fingertips of both hands to her temples, Maria shook her head. "This is a lot to take in."

Katherine felt an even greater affection for her quiet, practical, steady friend. "Yes," she agreed gently. "But don't get the idea that I came from some kind of paradise. The human race still has a very long way to go."

Still looking a little dazed, Maria left her, and Katherine washed, dressed, and groomed her hair. Then, placing the baby in Marianne's capable care, she set out for the beach.

Katherine told herself she wasn't looking for Gavin, but when she spotted him sitting on a boulder in the distance, the salt-misted breeze ruffling his hair, she was overjoyed. She stopped to smooth the skirts of her bright cotton peasant dress with its lace-up front and to pat her hair.

"Good morning," she called when she knew she was close enough to be heard. With one hand, she shaded her eyes from the fierce sunshine, and behind her calm exterior trembled a woman who knew she was betting her soul on a longshot.

Gavin's gray eyes swept from her face to her hem then back again. He climbed agilely down from the rock, slung his lightweight tweed jacket over one shoulder. There was a remoteness in his manner that was even more disturbing than the hostility he usually displayed.

"Was I wrong in thinking last night made a difference?" Katherine asked boldly, facing him on the hard, rocky sand. The tide licked at the hem of her skirt, and the wind made coppery tendrils of hair dance around her face.

His expression was haunted, and Katherine felt an anger as deep as Puget Sound as she realized just how badly his voluptuous bride had wounded him. It was a bitter irony, having to pay the price for the other woman's sins.

"There are times," Gavin conceded after a long interval of pensive silence, "when, if I didn't know better, I would think you are another person entirely."

Hesitantly, Katherine touched his arm, and just that simple contact started a sweet riot of sensation within her. She clung tenaciously to reason, to the sad truth that Gavin would merely think she was insane if she tried to explain how she had come to him. "Isn't it enough that I've changed, Gavin, that I'm genuinely sorry for whatever might have taken place in the past? Can't we go on from here?"

He raised his hand as if to touch her cheek, then let it fall back to his side. His grin was so brief and so sad that the sight of it wrenched Katherine's tender heart. "Yes and no," he finally answered, his tone ragged. "I want you in my bed again, and I want more children by you, but there will always be a part of my soul that I can't share with you."

Katherine longed to be welcome in Gavin's bed, and she wanted even more to bear him other babies, yet the pain his words caused her was so intense that it struck her dumb.

Gavin wanted to use her, like a stallion would a brood mare, and with no appreciable difference in concern for her feelings. He wasn't asking her to be a real wife, and he certainly wasn't offering her anything that remotely resembled love.

Her entire body trembled with the effort not to slap him across the face.

"I am not a bitch dog," she pointed out evenly, after a very long time.

Gavin hooked a finger under one of the laces at her bodice and brazenly traced the outline of a nipple, causing it to press toward him. "The response to that, my dear," he said, "is so obvious that I won't even stoop to it." He grew bolder then, flattening his palm against her breast, smiling as it swelled in his fingers, as ripe and succulent as a late-summer melon.

Katherine moved to twist away, her face crimson with rage and humiliation, but he curved one iron arm around her waist and stopped her.

"At last," he said, "I've figured out how to deal with you, Katherine. You need a man who can play your body as deftly as an angel plays a harp, and we both know that, for some reason comprehended only by the gods, I have become that man. I will bed you often and well, and you will behave yourself in the interim or suffer the consequences."

Katherine's defiance drained out of her; she knew all the blood had left her face. "What consequences, Gavin?" The question was barely more than a whisper, for it took phenomenal effort to push the words past her constricted throat.

With an index finger, he lightly traced the line of her jaw, and she hated him for arousing such wanting in her with so innocent a caress. "Very simply," he said, with a regretful sigh, "I will divorce you and ship you off to live in a cottage somewhere, with a maid."

"And Christopher?"

"He would remain with me," Gavin said flatly.

Although she did not want to be sent away from Gavin and, admittedly, from the rich lifestyle he provided, she could have borne both those things. The thought of losing her son, however, filled her with desolation and terror. Where in her own century she would have been able to fight Gavin for custody, in the late 1800s, she had no more legal rights than her husband's favorite horse. She was his property.

"I couldn't bear that," she said, softly but proudly.

Gavin curved a finger under her chin and raised her face so that their gazes met. While his touch was certainly not painful, there was no tenderness in it, either. "Perhaps motherhood has redeemed your black little soul," he said. "We shall see." With that he walked away, in the direction of the house.

Katherine stood on the shore for a long time, feeling an explosive anger build inside her, fueled by frustration and, worst of all, desire.

It was probably despair that sent her rushing after Gavin to angrily grip his jacket, which was still slung casually over his shoulder.

"Damn you, Gavin," Katherine cried, "don't you dare drop a bomb like that and then walk away!"

His expression was one of bafflement, rather than anger, when he turned to look at her. " 'Drop a bomb'?"

She sighed and shook her head. She had no patience for explaining about World War I and all the succeeding developments that would influence the language. "If you'll just open up to me, Gavin," she pleaded, holding his arm. "If you'll only give me a chance to prove I'm really different…"

"I'll visit you here when I feel the need," he said dismissively. "When I return to Seattle, I will live as I should have before."

Katherine's heart plummeted. "You're talking about taking a mistress, aren't you?" she breathed. "Maybe you've already done that, set up some bird in a gilded cage—"

He shook his head, not in denial but again in bewilderment. There wasn't a hint of confusion in his words, however; they were cutting and concise. "Don't tell me you have the gall to object?" he drawled.

She closed her eyes tightly and clenched her hands at her sides, struggling not to outscream the gulls whirling and diving against the blue sky. Finally she trusted herself to speak. "I do object," she said reasonably. "You are my husband, and I won't share you."

He touched her hair and offered her an indulgent little smile. "How refreshing," he said. "And how utterly unlike you." He bent his head to nibble lightly at her lips, but she knew the kiss was not a display of tenderness. It was a challenge.

Again he caught his finger under the laces of her bodice, nestled it in the velvety softness and warmth of her cleavage. "I'm going into the city today to attend to some of my patients, but I will return in time for dinner and your wifely comforts, my dear. Be ready for me."

Even as Katherine's mind shrieked rebellion, her body ached for the pleasures of Gavin's possession. Her nipples yearned to nourish him, her hips and thighs to cushion his weight. In her own time, the talk shows covered problems like hers, but since Sally and Phil and Oprah and Geraldo had yet to be born, she would just have to deal with it on her own.

They separated then, and Katherine went to one of her favorite refuges, a tiny chapel set back in the woods. It was complete with pews, stained-glass windows, and candles to light, and the place seemed somehow eternal, neither of this century nor of her own.

Before her accident and subsequent mystical experience, Katherine had not been particularly religious. She still wasn't too clear on her theology, but she had encountered Someone near that shimmering glass bridge, and she knew now that the universe was not the random place it had once seemed to be. There was a distinct order and logic to events, though for the life of her she couldn't see how her own situation fit into the scheme of things.

As she sat in the soothing silence of that place, a tear slipped down her cheek. Every day her old existence in modern-day Seattle seemed farther and farther away, more and more like a fantastic story she'd read somewhere. This life, here and now, was real and vital, the one she truly wanted to live, and yet the emotional distance between her and Gavin seemed too vast to bridge. They were in accord only when they were making love, and that simply wasn't enough.

Chapter 10

Gavin did return to the island house for dinner that night. He made love to Katherine later, in the privacy of their room, just as he'd promised to do, and even though her ego demanded it, she hadn't the strength to resist.

Gavin transported her, taking her to new levels of pleasure with every conquering, swallowing her cries of stunned ecstasy so that the whole household wouldn't know what was going on. Between bouts of passion, he kissed and caressed Katherine back to a state of such fevered wanting that she murmured in frantic distraction until he satisfied her.

When Christopher cried, Gavin got up, lit a lamp, and changed the infant, then brought him to bed and watched, propped up on one elbow, while Katherine nursed their son. Never, in this life or the other, had she ever treasured the miraculous secrets of her womanhood as she did then.

She put Christopher back into his cradle when he was full and sleepy again, and stood watching him in quiet awe for a long time. Her body was naked, her wild auburn hair tumbling down her back.

"Katherine."

She turned and watched as Gavin tossed back the tangled sheets on her side of the bed. Incredibly, he wanted her again.

She went to her husband without hesitation.

She was different. The stubborn thought nagged at Gavin as he stood at the railing of the boat as it chugged across the water toward Seattle. Before the great change, which seemed to have come with Christopher's birth, Kathy had avoided his lovemaking. She'd said he was too big, too fierce, too insatiable.

Yet the night before, she'd bucked beneath him like a mare in springtime, flinging back her head so that the muscles in her neck corded when she climaxed. He'd kissed her to stifle the cries that vibrated from the depths of her moist little belly and burst from her throat to batter against his. Once, while taking her in the way that went back to earliest man, he'd muzzled her with his hand. She'd taken one of his fingers into her mouth, and Gavin had closed his eyes and delved deep, and there had been no one to muffle his moan of triumphant surrender.

Gavin sighed. According to Mrs. Hawkins, Katherine regularly visited the chapel in the woods behind the house, and that was another mystery. The Kathy he knew had recognized no deity other than her own self.

The way Marianne told it, Katherine would spend hours on the sunporch with Maria, laboriously recording "stories." That was another thing that baffled Gavin; the woman he'd married wouldn't have drawn up a laundry list, let alone penned reams of prose.

He shoved a hand through his hair. Katherine wanted him to believe she'd changed, he concluded. It was all just an elaborate scheme to regain his trust, to keep her hold on the sumptuous lifestyle she admittedly loved.

How ironic it all was, he reflected. Just when he'd stopped caring, Katherine had become everything he'd convinced himself she was, back in the days before their marriage. Gavin now thought of that era as a time of foolish bliss; he'd been ensnared by his own illusions, and he had no intention whatsoever of repeating the error.

The passenger ferry came into port, and crew members shouted to one another as they tied the vessel to the pilings and put down the plank. It was a bright, noisy, blue-skied day, and instead of going ahead of him, to the hospital and the patients who awaited him there, Gavin's mind strayed back to the island, and the woman. She had watched him go with red-rimmed eyes, her chin at a proud, obstinate angle, and he knew the image would haunt him until he saw her again.

The door of an especially fine carriage popped open as he passed, intent on finding a cab, and Caroline Raynes peeked out, beaming, "Gavin!"

He wasn't wearing a hat—he hated them because they made his scalp sweat—but he touched a nonexistent brim anyway. Caroline, the niece of the very forward-thinking Dr. Elliott Raynes, a colleague of Gavin's, was a beauty with blond hair and flirtatious brown eyes. She'd offered herself to Gavin on more than one occasion, as though her favors were of no more consequence than a platter of sweetmeats and exotic fruits.

He'd always meant to help himself—some other time. Now, just returned from a fresh baptism in the fires of physical pleasure, Gavin was only too aware of his vulnerability to Katherine, and he knew he'd better do something about it.

Fast.

Dr. Gavin Winslow had finally decided to take a mistress—not because he really wanted or needed anything more than the cataclysmic pleasure Katherine gave him in his own bed. No, what he needed was a defense against the wiles of his lovely wife.

"Hello, Caroline," he said, and returned his smile.

"On your way to the hospital?" Caroline's voice was like chiming cowbells, and Gavin wondered why he'd never taken notice of that singularly annoying fact before.

He nodded, and she offered him a ride, just as he'd known she would. Seated across from her in the elegant, tufted-leather interior of the carriage, he studied the slender lines of her figure.

Katherine was plumper, especially since she'd had the baby, he thought, but he liked feeling her softness beneath him, like a scented featherbed.

"Gavin?" Caroline sounded petulant, and Gavin steered his wandering attention back to the matter at hand.

"I don't think I've ever seen you looking lovelier," he said.

"I'm going back to the city," Katherine announced, two weeks after Gavin had left the island. In that time, she hadn't had so much as a terse note from him, let alone a visit, and her mind was filled with all sorts of dreadful visions.

"Gavin hasn't sent for us," Marianne pointed out, as though that settled the whole issue. It was a rainy afternoon, and the two women were seated on the sunporch, Marianne stitching a sampler, Katherine writing. She'd been recording memories of her other life as fast as she could, and it was a good thing, too, because with every passing day she could recall less of the place beyond the crystal bridge. Before long, she guessed, she would probably forget it entirely.

"Of course he hasn't," Katherine muttered furiously. "He's too busy entertaining his mistress!" The social column in that day's issue of the Seattle Times had linked Gavin with Caroline Raynes, and Katherine had been in torment ever since she'd read it.

Marianne didn't even look up from her sewing. "All men have mistresses, Katherine," she said. "It's a fact of life."

"It isn't going to be a fact of my life," Katherine countered. Then she marched upstairs, prepared Christopher to travel, packed her own things, and sent the caretaker around for the carriage.

When the ferry left that afternoon, Katherine was aboard it, along with Maria and Christopher. It was time for action; Katherine loved her man, and she meant to fight for him.

She arrived at the mansion overlooking the harbor only to find that preparations were being made for an elaborate yard party. Colored Chinese lanterns hung from wires, and ribbon streamers decorated the rose arbors and the garden benches. Tables had been set up, and extra servants bustled back and forth, carrying chairs and food and more decorations.

At first Katherine was delighted. Then she realized she not only hadn't been invited to this party, she wasn't supposed to know about it. Her temper bubbled up like mercury in a desert thermometer.

"Take Christopher upstairs, please," she said to a wide-eyed Maria, who obeyed without question. After tossing her gloves onto the marble-topped table in the entry way, Katherine started for the kitchen.

Katherine was not surprised to find Caroline Raynes there, consulting with the cook, and yet her emotions were as volatile as dry gunpowder in hell. "What are you doing here?" she demanded.

The cook backed away and then fled through the dining room doorway, rightly sensing the approach of disaster.

"I might ask the same thing of you," Caroline responded coolly. "It was my understanding that Gavin had consigned you to the island, where you couldn't get into any trouble." She smiled with acid sweetness. "You know. Like you did before."

"Get out," Katherine said with quiet menace.

Caroline evidently sensed Katherine's determination, for some of the color drained from her cheeks, leaving her rouge to stand unaided. "But the party—"

"There isn't going to be any party, Miss Raynes," Katherine broke in. "And you may interpret that statement as you see fit."

"Gavin will have something to say about this!" Caroline snapped, but, nonetheless, she snatched up her little beaded handbag and headed for the door.

"He certainly will," Katherine replied. She was thinking of the eighteenth-century dueling pistols that hung on the wall of his study over the fireplace, and wondering where a person went to buy musket balls. Or whatever they fired.

When Katherine got her wits about her again, she noticed the big cake on the counter, and everything fell into place. Of course. It was Gavin's birthday, and as his wife, she should have known that. She should have been the one to plan a celebration.

When Gavin entered his study half an hour later, he looked more than a little surprised to find Katherine seated at his desk, solemnly pondering, the dueling pistol she'd taken down from the wall.

"Happy birthday," she said pleasantly, still simmering. Then she frowned at the gun in her hand. "Tell me, does this thing still work? If so, I'd like to change your gender right about now."

Gavin didn't comment. He simply approached the desk and lifted one of the pages from her journal that she had laid there, the one describing the Space Needle. "What's this?"

"Proof that I'm not the same person you knew," Katherine answered, hoping her voice wasn't shaking. "Look at the handwriting, Gavin. Did she form her letters like that?"

He lowered the page to look at her, and she realized she'd gotten through by the stunned expression in his gray eyes. "No," he said, and the word came out hoarse and broken. Here was something Gavin couldn't explain away with scientific babble, and Katherine could see that he was troubled. "Katherine…"

She laid the pistol on the desktop and stood to face her husband with tremulous dignity. "Did you sleep with Caroline, Gavin? Is she your mistress?"

He was still staring at her, as though she were some kind of freak. He seemed to be stricken speechless, and Katherine marveled that she hadn't thought to show him samples of her handwriting before. Maybe, she reasoned, she hadn't wanted to, subconsciously, until she was ready to make a full commitment to this time, this place, this man.

"Gavin?" she prompted.

"No," he said. "I planned to, but it just never happened."

Katherine laid her hands on his lapels. "Good, because I love you with my whole heart and soul, Gavin Winslow, and I plan to keep you so well satisfied that you won't need another woman. Ever. And you can trust me, because I'm not the Katherine you knew, and I'll never hurt you."

She felt his powerful shoulders move under her hands in an involuntary shudder. His jawline clenched as he struggled visibly to control his emotions, and once again Katherine was filled with tenderness, thinking how he'd suffered.

"Tell me who you are… where you came from… how such a thing could happen…"

She touched an index finger to his lips. "Not now, Dr. Winslow. At the moment, you have a birthday present to unwrap."

A smile lit his eyes, and he took her hand. "That's scandalous Mrs. Winslow. After all, the servants are around and there's about to be a party."

"The servants are all deaf," Katherine responded teasingly, "and if there's a party, why, that's all the more reason to celebrate."

They climbed the stairway hand in hand, aware only of each other. Gavin lifted her into his arms and carried her over the threshold of the master suite, his lips already tasting hers.

This encounter was unlike their earlier couplings, however, for there was no leisurely pleasuring, no tempting and teasing. The hunger was simply too great, because of their long separation and their newfound accord, and there could be no waiting.

Somehow, fumbling, now laughing under their breaths, now kissing playfully, they managed to undress each other. Then Gavin laid Katherine gently on the side of the bed, positioned himself between her thighs, and glided into her.

For Katherine, the sensations were far more profound than mere pleasure; this experience was spiritual as well, something that had been preordained at the conception of the universe. She gave a primitive, guttural cry as Gavin lunged, withdrew, and lunged again, and when her body began its dance of release, it seemed that her mind soared free.

She found herself standing on the crystal bridge again, felt a deep and abiding fear because she knew she could be called away from Gavin forever. Behind her was 1895, Gavin, Christopher, Marianne, Maria. Ahead was darkness, and that was when Katherine realized her old body had died.

"The other Katherine," she asked of the shimmering light. "What happened to her?"

She is at peace, the light answered, without words.

Katherine was relieved. "Let me go back to 1895," she pleaded. "Please. That's where I belong, where I've always belonged."

You have made your choice, the light replied.

Katherine found herself in Gavin's bed again, her face wet with tears, her body still trembling with the aftershocks of her release. Gavin was breathing hard, his muscular back moist under her palms, and she rejoiced because she had a lifetime to make love with him, plenty of time to tell him about the crystal bridge and the world on the other side.

"I love you," he said.

Katherine kissed the top of her husband's forehead. It might have been his birthday, but she'd been the one to get the gift.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten