Adventures of Grace Quinlan and Lord William Hayden Outside of Time (Volume 2) Read online

  The Adventures of Grace Quinlan and Lord William Hayden

  Outside of Time

  Volume 2

  Copyright 2005 - 2011

  by Dorothy Paula Freda

  (Pseudonym - Paula Freda)

  Cover photo and inserts licensed by Paula Freda from iStockphoto.com

  Smashwords Edition

  Author retains all rights. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof.

  This story appeared in my novel "In Another Life (from the Journals of Grace Quinlan and Lord William Hayden)" under my pseudonym, Paula Freda. It is a work of fiction. Except for documented historical data and geographical locations, all names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  With thanks to my Lord Jesus and his Blessed Mother Mary whose strength, guidance, and her Holy Rosary, are my anchor in this troubled world, I dedicate this novella to my husband, whose love, patience and kindness over the past 40 years have kept my dreams and my view of the romantic, alive and vibrant." Paula Freda

  The Adventures

  of Grace Quinlan and Lord William Hayden

  Outside of Time

  CHAPTER ONE

  Lord Hayden raised his coffee cup, but the rim never made it to his lips. He focused on a picture in the newspaper he had been reading in his study. "That’s it!" he exclaimed. The picture clearly showed the Totem that he and Grace Quinlan had seen that summer on the alien landscape where Psyche’s Tomb had transported them. He grabbed a magnifying glass from his desk drawer and studied the photo closely. "That’s it!" he repeated. He quickly read the article beneath it.

  The Totem, presently housed in a private collection in Los Cantos, a small town in New Mexico, had first surfaced in an Indian village, and later, in a curio shop in England, where a Professor of Archeology had purchased it for the price of a conversation piece. He eventually sold it to a British museum for a fortune. A Fire at the Museum a few years ago supposedly destroyed the Totem. There was talk of arson and robbery. A few weeks ago, it had turned up at an auction abroad attended by a certain Mr. Harry Stanton, a collector of antiquities. He paid a fortune for the piece and another fortune to add a room tall enough to accommodate the relic.

  By the time Lord Hayden finished reading the article, he had already decided to visit Mr. Harry Stanton. He shed his lounge jacket, a wine red velvet collared affair, for his navy blue pinstripe, and left his house, crossing the road to Professor Eldridge’s house. Besides wanting Elizabeth’s views on this matter, he wanted to hear if her cousin had contacted her. Grace might be interested in a follow-up article on Psyche’s Tomb and the Totem.

  Elizabeth had mentioned receiving a couple of phone calls from her cousin, the last one during the Easter Holidays. He missed Grace. These past few months had been the longest in his life, despite the two other expeditions in which he had participated. During one, he had met another girl. They had shared a few precarious moments. He had saved her life once or twice, brought back other valuable artifacts for the museum and his own private collection. But nothing lasting had resulted of his relationship with the girl. They had drifted apart, each eventually returning to their own separate lives. He had forgotten the exact color of her hair. All he recalled was that it did not shine red-gold like Grace’s hair, nor did the girl’s lips purse in just that certain way that Grace’s did. Her mind did not challenge like Grace’s, or her heart love the past like his did.

  He knocked at Professor Eldridge’s door. No one answered. He noticed her car was gone. Today was Saturday. Of course, he chided himself. Errand Day.

  He did not see Professor Eldridge until Monday afternoon, during lunch, in the faculty lounge, when she approached him. He was seated on the drab red camelback sofa.

  "Excuse me, Lord Hayden. I have a letter here for you. If I’m interrupting your lunch, I can give it to you later."

  "No, it’s all right," Lord Hayden said, putting his ham and cheese sandwich down on its wax paper wrapping before him on the coffee table. He accepted the envelope, pink and fragrant, with no return address, and posted in a town he had never heard of, somewhere in China. Grace! He mangled it as he tore it open impatiently, so unlike his usual paced reserve. It contained a pink note with a rosebud imprinted in the corner.

  My dear Lord Hayden, I hear from my cousin about the whereabouts of a certain totem. I would like very much to do an article on said totem. Might we cooperate as before? In any event, I intend visiting Mr. Stanton on the fifth. I hope to see you there. Grace Quinlan

  Lord Hayden folded the letter and the envelope and slipped it into his pocket. Succinct, businesslike, dry. My most gracious thanks, he thought scowling. "I assume she’s referring to the recent article in the paper about the Totem," he said to Elizabeth, dryly.

  Elizabeth nodded, remarking, "You don’t seemed pleased to hear from my cousin?"

  "On the contrary…" He let the statement hang as he lifted a hand and ran a finger across her pale cheek. "Thank you, Professor Eldridge." His dark eyes glinted wickedly. The prim archaeologist appeared shocked at the familiarity. Lord Hayden said, "If your cousin should contact you in the next few days, tell her I’ll be happy to cooperate, as before."

  "I’ll do that, Lord Hayden." Elizabeth replied markedly.

  Hayden brought his finger to the tip of her drab chin. Making a fist, he gently brushed his knuckles under it. "Good girl," he praised.

  Professor Eldridge excused herself through gritted teeth. Lord Hayden chuckled as she left the room. What was it about the spinsterish professor that brought out the scoundrel in him? The chuckle died on his lips as for a split second he entertained the preposterous idea of a sexual attraction. He shook his head. "Ridiculous," he muttered, and resumed his simple lunch.

  * * *

  Lord William Hayden pushed back his wide brimmed hat, mottled and smudged with the windblown dust of his arid surroundings, and with the back of his hand rubbed the sweat from his forehead. He rested against the passenger side of the black Buick he had rented at the airport and pondered the sign in the dirt road that read, "Los Cantos, 1 kilometer, Population 500." He grimaced. A dinky hole in the New Mexico desert, unlike some of the grassy, more scenic parts further north, but the Totem was here. The sun burned his eyes and he shut them hard against its glare.

  "Lord Hayden, how nice to see you again."

  His eyes flew open. Grace Quinlan stood before him. A few seconds elapsed before he composed himself enough to greet her. "Where did you come from?" he asked.

  "From over there." She pointed to a burro tied to a cactus bush.

  She wore a straw sun hat. Curly red-gold strands caressed both sides of her face.

  "New hairdo?" he inquired.

  "Styles change, Lord Hayden."

  "Where did you get the burro?"

  "In Los Cantos. I arrived there yesterday. He’s much cheaper to rent than a car, or a taxi fare."

  "Want to ride him, or the Buick back to town?"

  "We’ll have to tie Jose to the bumper, if you promise to drive slowly and not weary the poor animal."

  Lord Hayden laughed, shaking his head, not in refusal, but in pleasant exasperation.

  He drove slowly and they conversed in a casual manner. He wondered whether he and Grace were friends or foes, and whether she was having the time of her life playing hard-to-get. That she found him appealing, he was certain from her response when, in Sicily months ag
o, he had kissed her inside his hotel room. The very game she played—statements with double meanings, emerald eyes smiling and often saying much more than her sensuous mouth, were further evidence that she was attracted to him. Perhaps he was guessing, reading more into her behavior, and gleaning more from the situation than the truth. Yet he felt that her reasons for joining him in Los Cantos went beyond simple research for her article on the Totem.

  When they had arrived at the only hotel in Los Cantos—a two-story shack—he cautiously brought the Buick to a stop to prevent Jose from caroming into the rear bumper.

  "Thank you," she said. "I’ll return Jose and meet you later in the lobby. I’m anxious to meet Harry Stanton."

  * * *

  Mansion was a better description for Stanton’s house, located approximately a mile and a half from the town proper, and as Lord Hayden left the gravelly, dusty road and steered into Stanton’s driveway, he remarked that Stanton’s choice of locale left much to be desired. He stopped the car in front of the columned entrance. No shrubs or trees landscaped the sandy terrain. The mansion might have been a mirage in the middle of the desert.

  He would probably regret it, but he could no longer contain the question. "Let’s quit the cat and mouse game. Why the hell did you leave me in Luxor?"

  With equal unrestraint, Elizabeth Eldridge, under the guise of Grace Quinlan, responded, "I had to leave you, before things got out of hand. I have a deep respect for you, Lord Hayden. I may even love you. But I want nothing to do with you outside of archaeological pursuits."

  Lord Hayden’s mouth fell open. She wanted nothing more to do with him outside of archaeological pursuits. He stared at her a moment longer, his fingers gripping the steering wheel, his ego crumbling under that lofty emerald gaze. Then slowly recovering his composure, his grip on the wheel loosening, he muttered, "Adequately said. Very well then, let’s get on with the business at hand."

  No one answered the doorbell. Lord Hayden knocked and there was still no answer. He grumbled, "With a palatial home full of priceless collectibles, you would expect at least a butler."

  "Something is not right here," Elizabeth remarked as Lord Hayden tried the doorknob. The door opened into a vestibule. He called out, but no one replied. A lamp lay broken on the tiles.

  "I share your sentiment," Lord Hayden agreed, entering, again calling aloud if anyone was home. Four doors flanked the vestibule. One gaped open. He stepped into what appeared to be a study and halted suddenly. Elizabeth moved to his side and gasped. On the floor, beside a desk, Stanton lay motionless, blood trickling down his face from a cut on his right temple. Lord Hayden hurried to the collector’s side, knelt, and raised the wounded man by the shoulders. The man’s jacket slid open to reveal a dark red splotch soaking through his white shirt. Blood seeped from between his lips as he moaned.

  Elizabeth knelt at Stanton’s other side. "He’s been shot as well. Who did this to you?"

  Stanton’s eyes fluttered open. A brief spark lit his clouded gaze as he recognized Lord Hayden. He was an admirer of the archaeologist. Had read several of his journals. "My collection. They took my pieces. The Totem. Creighton, Oscar Cr-Creighton—" He choked as more blood filled his mouth. "S-So-South Ame—" he sputtered. His eyes stared blankly.

  Lord Hayden laid the man back gently as if the collector of antiquities still felt sensation. He stood up and surveyed the room. All the shelves on the wall were bare, swept clean of the precious items Harry Stanton had spent his life collecting. Not fair, he thought regretfully both from a humanitarian and antiquarian perspective. But not wishing to be implicated in a murder, he suggested, "We had better leave."

  Once inside the car, Lord Hayden commented, "Oscar Creighton, I’ve heard of him."

  Elizabeth also had heard mention of Creighton in archaeological circles. "Isn’t he also an artifact collector, but an unscrupulous one?" she asked as Hayden steered the Buick back onto the dirt road.

  "That is the general consensus," Lord Hayden replied.

  Elizabeth queried, "You are going to South America, of course?"

  "I always finish what I start."

  Elizabeth laughed. "That’s what I like most about you. Your willingness to go to all lengths for a slice of the past. I’ll wire Professor Eldridge. I’m sure she’ll wish to sponsor me for this search as well. I’m coming with you."

  Lord Hayden glanced at her. There it was again, her lips pursing in just a certain way. The resemblance to Elizabeth Eldridge was uncanny. "We could save a tidy sum, if we shared a room," he suggested.

  "And the possibility of a one-night stand, Lord Hayden? I have better things to do with my time."

  So did he, Hayden bristled, black-browed. So did he.

  * * *

  The two archaeologists traced Creighton to his vanilla plantation located in the heart of the Montana region in Peru. Elizabeth had exchanged her straw sun hat for a canvas one with a veil to protect her face from the multitude of insects that inhabited the rainforest. The bronze-skinned mestizo Lord Hayden had hired to guide them to Creighton’s plantation wielded a machete, clearing the thick foliage and obstructing vegetation that grew unhampered over the trail they followed. Besides a machete, Lord Hayden carried a holstered gun at his side, over one shoulder his backpack, and strapped diagonally across his back for easy access, a leather-sheathed sword, shorter and lighter than average, but rapier sharp. The silver plated crossbar handle and the blade bore various black-etched ancient symbols from different parts of the world. When Elizabeth inquired about the sword and the etchings, Lord Hayden explained that it was one of a kind, made to order. The etchings were markers of his journeys and explorations, and he added to them with each new venture. One day the sword would become a collectible itself.

  Half a day into the rainforest, Lord Hayden’s shirt and pants were soaked with perspiration, and his expression below the wide-brimmed hat, somber, as he turned to glance at his companion. Red-gold hair peeped limply from under her veiled hat. Her emerald eyes, normally vibrant and expressive, were clouded and lusterless. Los Cantos had been dry and hot. This region was humid and hot, a sweltering vapor bath. Lord Hayden had not shaved in three days. It was simply too hot. Elizabeth stumbled and Lord Hayden caught and steadied her. The veil clung to her face, outlining her pale features.

  "Are you all right?" he asked worriedly.

  "Y-yes, I’m fine. Just a bit tired." They had been traveling since dawn. He helped her sit on the ground against a clump of thick vines.

  Sunset was nearly upon them. Lord Hayden turned to the head guide. "We’ll stop for the night." He was exhausted, himself. This was no place for a woman. His partner was stubborn, but the South American jungle was more stubborn. They had both received their immunization shots and Quinine tablets. He had made sure to take his daily dosage of quinine. On closer thought, he had not seen Elizabeth taking hers. He heard her moan and turned back to her. She was slumped over, retching.

  The weakness Elizabeth had fought these past three days now numbed her legs and rode waves of nausea up her chest and into her throat. Her head hurt abominably. What little food she had eaten lay in her lap.

  "Grace!" Lord Hayden reached for her.

  "Go away!" she sputtered, embarrassed, though there was no help for it. She wondered what was happening to her as the ringing in her ears intensified to deafening proportions. The space around her spun each time she tried to lift her head. She felt Lord Hayden grasp her arms and pull her gently to her feet. "Easy, girl." His voice held no repulsion, only tenderness and understanding—what she needed most at this moment. "What’s happening to me?" she asked, clinging to him. "Oh, God!" she cried, as she tried to lift her head to look at Lord Hayden. The jungle about her spun furiously. She went limp, her eyes closing to hide from the disjointing, nauseating pressure of the world turning madly.

  Lord Hayden felt her forehead. "You’re burning up. Have you been taking the quinine?"

  "Qui-Quinine? What Quinine? I-I’m not on anything." Eliz
abeth stammered in a weak voice, the spinning addling her thoughts. The jungle already a merry-go-round, went berserk and her legs gave way. Her mind reasoned that she would not break any bones as she fell, because Lord Hayden had caught her and lifted her into his arms, cradling her to his chest. She was in no danger as long as he was there to care for her. By the time he put her down on a soft bed of fronds, she was unconscious.

  * * *

  Elizabeth groped in the flames. Where was Lord Hayden? Only a moment ago he had been here. The fire was all around her, the heat suffocating her. "William!" she screamed. She reasoned he did not answer because he did not recognize her. She was camouflaged as Professor Eldridge, her hair darkened and pulled tightly back and up into that ridiculous bun. She wore her grey-tinted glasses, and her unflattering suit and business sheers, and the white talc on her face, smoothed evenly so no one could tell it was not her own complexion. "Lord Hayden, it’s me, Grace. Not Professor Eldridge. Grace, "she cried.

  For two days and two nights, Elizabeth raged with fever. Her moans filled the night. Repeatedly she cried out for Lord Hayden. He stayed by her side, swabbing the perspiration from her face, administering water and quinine, and caring for her intimately. Propping her up by her shoulders, he fed her broth spiced with the medication. Her lips and throat were parched and she continued to mutter incoherently. " Don’t you know me?" This time her words rang sharp and clear.

  "Easy…" he soothed, wiping her forehead with a cool, damp rag. "Of course I know you."

  There, she saw him through the flames, coming toward her. "Don’t get burned," she hollered. "Oh William, I love you so. Forgive me."

  "It’s all right, Grace. Drink this. It will stop the fever."

  The lukewarm liquid trickled down her throat. It tasted bitter, but she welcomed it all the same. "Please don’t disappear again," she pleaded.

  "I’m staying right here beside you," Lord Hayden assured her.