Toronto never felt like home the way this place does. Now I am back. Back for good, I hope. I had to return to Toronto to teach the fall term, but I’ve started my maternity leave, expecting a baby in March. After that . . . Well, if all goes well after that, this will be my home. I have a lead on a teaching position in York and a few other possibilities tucked in my back pocket.
I’ll miss Canada, but I am ready to make this move. I think I’ve been ready since the day I first visited my aunt and uncle at Thorne Manor, certainly since the day I stepped through time and met William. Now, seeing the village lit up for the holidays, I feel as if I’ve come home. My first Christmas at home.
The lights fade quickly as the hired car begins the long climb to Thorne Manor. I’m struggling not to press my nose against the cold glass, straining to see the manor house through the falling snow. I think I can make out a faint glow and then—
The driver curses and jams on the brakes just as the headlamps illuminate a coal-black horse, racing around a curve and coming straight for the car. Or so it seems, but when the car follows the turn in the winding road, it becomes obvious that the horse is actually off to the side, galloping down the hill.
“Bloody fool,” the driver grumbles.
“True,” I murmur.
The rider wheels the stallion around and begins running alongside us.
“Is he mad?” the driver says.
“Possibly. Just don’t let him beat us to the house, please, or I will never hear the end of it.”
Now I do press my nose to the icy window, breath fogging the glass as I squint out. William lifts gloved fingers in greeting, but I don’t think he can see me. He’s bent over the horse, and with his black jacket, he nearly melds into the beast. Only his red scarf makes him truly visible, flapping behind him, an obvious concession to my warnings that car drivers aren’t accustomed to sharing the road with horses.
The horse seems to have adapted well to his new master’s riding habits. After much consideration, William bought him late this past summer. The first horse for his new stable on this side of the stitch. A black stallion, the mirror image of his on the other side. Xanthus and Balois, named after Achilles’s immortal steeds.
We continue to the end of the drive, where William swings off Xanthus and lifts an imperious hand for the driver to stop.
Then, before the driver can do more than squawk an objection, William is throwing open the rear door and shoving his head and shoulders inside.
“Finally,” he says. “I have been waiting hours. You really should have let me meet you at the station.” He peers at me. “You aren’t dressed for the weather at all. It’s a wonder you didn’t freeze on the way.”
“Hello, William. So lovely to see you.”
He grumbles and shoves a thick car blanket into the rear seat, bundles me into it and then glances at the driver.
“That will be all.” He hands her a bill. A large one, given the way her eyes saucer. “I appreciate you conveying my wife safely from the station. Please deposit her bags at the end of the drive, and I will retrieve them later.”
“I can carry—” I begin.
“I’ve got it, miss,” the driver says. “You ought not be carrying anything in your condition anyway.”
I’m not even halfway out of the car before I’m scooped up, the blanket wrapped around me.
“I’m pregnant, William,” I say. “Not an invalid. I can walk—”
“Yes, you can. No, you will not. It’s cold and it’s slippery, and you’ve come halfway around the world in a single day, while six-months pregnant. You must be exhausted.”
Exhausted is one way of putting it. Bone-dead and beat-down is another. I’ve spent the last two weeks cranked up to double speed, frantically finishing my end-of-term work so I could catch the first possible plane to William.
I’d told myself I’d sleep on the flight. I did not, even though someone found a way to secretly upgrade me to first-class, and I had no excuse for not stretching out in my little pod and spending the seven-hour flight sound asleep. No excuse beyond the fact that I was on my way to see William for the first time in two months, and I was so excited I could barely stay in