Belmary House Book One by Cassidy Cayman Read Free Book Online Page A

swig herself.
    “I’m just going to start at the beginning, eh, Dexter?” At his morose nod, she closed her eyes and let it out. The secret she’d been keeping for more than a year. “I’m from the future.”
    “Oh, bloody hell, like the Terminator?” Tears rolled down his cheeks and he took a larger swallow of brandy.
    She let him continue to sputter his disbelief, then held up her hand. “Ten years from now I worked in this house. It’s actually a lovely museum in my time, and I was the head curator.”
    “You’re so young,” he broke in, clearly taken aback. “What are you, twenty-five? How’d you get to be head curator?”
    “I’m twenty-eight, and because I’m awesome. And seriously, is that the main concern here?”
    He smiled sheepishly and took another healthy swallow of alcohol. “Sorry, just a bit envious, I guess. So, wait. The house is still standing ten years in the future? It doesn’t get demo’d?”
    “In my time it was still here, but things could be changed when I get back.”
    Her voice caught on the last words and she sat down, pressing her hands into her knees and forcing herself to breathe evenly so the tears wouldn’t come. How much longer would she have to wait?
    “When you get back? Was the ghost going to take you back to your own time? And he got Tilly instead?” He wiped his cheeks and shook his head at the madness.
    Because to him, it was madness. When she first came through, she’d tried to wake up so many times, even considered jumping off a bridge to test if she might already be dead and this was some sort of bizarre purgatory.
    When Ashford finally found her and explained, she’d been so grateful she hadn’t gone insane, the fact that it would be more than a year before he could get her back had only stung a little. She’d been strong, and waited, and kept it together, the same as she always did in every situation. The fact that it was all for naught made her arms and legs feel like they were encased in lead. Her heart ached.
    Only Dexter’s ridiculously handsome tear-stained face kept her from curling into a ball under the work table. She’d make him understand first, then go home and curl up there. Begin waiting again.
    “Ashford isn’t a ghost, but yes, basically, that’s what happened. I told her not to go upstairs,” she couldn’t help add.
    A long silence filled the room, punctuated every now and then by Dexter making broken noises, as if he wanted to say more but couldn’t get the words fully out.
    “Do you swear you’re not having one on me?” he asked.
    “I swear it,” she said, giving him a hard look that told him she wasn’t joking. She might never find a reason to joke again.
    “Is Tilly in the future right now?” He actually sounded a bit jealous.
    She shrugged. “I don’t think so. I was supposed to go back with him to his own time for a few days, a bit like a layover.”
    She grabbed her clutch purse and dug out the letter, which she’d folded into a tiny square, and handed it to him. He unfolded it and read it, still shaking his head.
    “They went through from the house?”
    “Yes, a bedroom upstairs. The thing opens up to different times, I guess, and it’s on a schedule of sorts. He’ll get her back, if he can. Eventually. Just like he’ll get me back. Eventually.”
    Her voice broke and she pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. She felt a warm, reassuring weight on her shoulder, then a gentle squeeze.
    “What do we do in the meantime?” Dexter asked.
    Emma moved her hands away from her eyes and looked at him. She’d been trying so hard to stay strong to keep him from falling apart at the news his cousin was trapped in another century, and the second she started to lose it herself, he became as steady as a rock. A proactive one at that. A glimmer of hope radiated from his determined smile and it strengthened her wrung out resolve. After all, she needed to keep going. She couldn’t give up.
    “We need to keep this