Free Aching for Always by Gwyn Cready Page A

the door of the tailor shop opening. She paused. A man stepped outside. It was the man from yesterday. She would have recognized the shoulders anywhere. Only today he had ditched the old-time navy clothes and was wearing finely cut pants, a vest and an ocean blue shirt. He turned to lookup the street, and she found herself making a 90-degree turn to disappear out of sight on William Penn.
    Oh, for God’s sake.
    But it wasn’t fear, exactly. It was . . . She searched her brain for the root cause, and an image of Carter Fee, her fifth-grade desk partner, popped into her head.
    Omigod, I have a crush on him!
    That was just ridiculous, all evidence of heat on her cheeks to the contrary. She was an engaged woman—practically a married woman. She did not have crushes on men she’d barely met. Heck, she didn’t really have crushes at all. The last one she remembered was Carter, and it had upset her so much she’d punched him in the shoulder anytime he did so much as look at her.
    She peeked around the corner.
    The man stood with his back to her, his head tilted as if checking the wind. He was well dressed, but there was a certain untamed wildness to the dark curls flapping at his collar and the way he held his shoulders open and at the ready, as if he were a marauding Viking ready to charge.
    A blond woman with cheeks like Cameron Diaz and legs to match stepped out and walked to his side. She wore a pair of formfitting navy sailor pants—very on trend—and leaned in when she spoke. He listened intently, and they both swept the alley with careful looks. They seemed an odd pair to be running a tailor shop. Joss couldn’t quite put her finger on why. Perhaps because they were both attractive—not that attractive people didn’t run tailor shops, of course—but attractiveness combined with an air of being hyperalert made Joss think they were doing something illegal or having an affair or both.
    *  *  *
    The click of Fiona’s heels behind him roused Hugh from his dark reverie.
    â€œHave you eaten?” she asked, leaning in so close he could smell the scent of her hair. “You’ve been up half the night.”
    â€œI’ll eat later. We need more on Brand. The company isn’t enough.”
    Brand hadn’t ventured far from his escape hole. After a few careful questions of a local militia man this morning, they were directed to something called the Carnegie Library, where they’d learned Brand Industries was located in the tallest building in the town, the iron and glass one that towered over the head of the alley like a Moorish man-o’-war. Hugh had spent a good part of the morning walking the building’s perimeter and observing what he could.
    â€œI can take that,” Fiona said. “A nice publican down the street offered me whatever help I needed last night.”
    Hugh made a private cough and returned his gaze to the sky.
    â€œAt least we know where the passage is,” she said, “and that it can be traveled safely.”
    â€œWhere
one
of the passages is,” he corrected. “There’s more than one.” The men who had returned from the past via that small cave on the islet had not traveled to the past the same way. Of course, Fiona would not be aware of that.
    â€œI suppose you’re right. We only know of two travelers, Phillip Belkin and Alfred Brand—well, five now if you count you, me and Nathaniel—but there must be more. And they couldn’t have all come by way of the islet.”
    Hugh knew there was at least one more traveler, a man named Collingswood. There would have been a seventh as well, a man named Spears, if he hadn’t been shot and killed. But he held his tongue.
    â€œWhere would Brand keep the map?”
    Hugh had been pondering that himself. And despite what he’d told Nathaniel, he did try to maintain a careful level of skepticism when it came to Fiona. He believed her