Free Somewhere in Time (The Crosse Harbor Time Travel Trilogy) by Barbara Bretton Page A

lighthouse, unlighted since the advent of war, hoping to find Josiah Blakelee awaiting him but only silence had greeted his return. Blakelee, who owned a farm near Princeton, believed strongly in the cause of liberty and had offered his services in the pursuit of those blessings that flowed from independence.
    Blakelee was one of those rare men whose demeanor and affability made him instantly welcome wherever he went. He also was possessed of a redoubtable courage that took him many times into danger--perhaps for the last time some two months ago when he vanished north of Manhattan Island.
    Andrew had intended to inflict upon Blakelee a sermon whose purpose was to impress upon the man the fleeting happiness to be found with family. Blakelee's disappearance tore at Andrew's soul for it seemed to point out the ultimate hopeless nature of the struggle.
    Family was all. Without it even independence from the Crown meant little.
    But Josiah Blakelee burned with the fires of liberty. For the past few months he had liberally quoted from Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and he understood what Sam Adams said better than Sam Adams did himself.
    Last year, not long after Concord and Lexington, Andrew and Josiah had dined at Braintree with Samuel's irascible cousin John and John's wife Abigail and John Adams had given a vigorous discourse on the necessity to separate the colonies from the Mother Country.
    Josiah had fair to boiled with the righteousness of the cause. There had been a time when Andrew too had known the same passionate commitment as shared by these two fine men but that night he had only sat and listened, his mind on a time and place lost to him forever.
    Mrs. Adams, a small and handsome woman whose powers of intellect were a match for those of her husband, seemed to sense that Andrew gave but lip service to the cause.
    "There is a comfort to be found in a commitment to a cause," she'd said to Andrew over a pot of chicory-laced coffee. She and her husband had lost a child in infancy and they took much solace in diverting their sorrows into pursuing a greater good.
    And so it was that Andrew had joined forces with those who cared deeply about the pursuit of liberty.
    Now he faced the unpleasant task of telling Blakelee's wife that her husband was among the missing. A score of patriots had been rounded up near the Harlem Heights and rumor had it they were on their way to one of the prison ships moored in Wallabout Bay in New York Harbor. A worse punishment could not be imagined and it was Andrew's fond hope that Blakelee had been spared that fate.
    The red-haired woman stirred and his thoughts returned to the moment. The first order of business was to discover why the she had come to the root cellar and what, if anything, she knew about his business.

    #

    If Emilie had fainted back home she would have found herself in the Emergency Room trying to explain her reaction to a pimply-faced intern with a fistful of forms and very little in the way of concern.
    Instead she opened her eyes to find herself lying flat on a stone bench to the right of the cellar door. A man knelt on the floor next to her and she noticed a knife protruding from the waistband of his breeches. It took her less than a second to remember that, like Dorothy, she wasn't in Kansas anymore.
    Sitting bolt upright she fixed him with her deadliest look. "Touch me once and you'll find yourself without a hand."
    He rose to his feet. He was approximately her height but much broader of chest and shoulders. He had the look of a solitary man, one who cared little for fancy clothing or grooming. His light brown hair was shaggy, drawn back into a ponytail and tied with a length of black fabric. His shirt was made of a rough cambric material in a natural color while his breeches were a faded tobacco brown. He looked oddly stylish to her modern eyes, yet totally in keeping with the time period.
    "What brings you to this place, lass?" His accent was part Scottish brogue, part