Free A Wife in Time (Silhouette Desire) by Cathie Linz Page B

hotel room, because frankly I don’t have time for any of this,” he growled.
    “Time is something you can’t control. I think we’re excellent examples of that fact,” she countered.
    He made no reply, simply loosened the remaining buttons on his shirt and closed his eyes.
    “Aren’t you going to get undressed?” she asked.
    He popped one eye open to lazily inform her, “Nope. No floor show tonight. Turn out the light.”
    The man was impossible! “Turn it off yourself,” she muttered, focusing her attention on placing the thickly rolled-up quilt in the middle of the bed—from headboard to footboard.
    While Kane got up to turn down the gaslight, Susannah quickly scrambled into bed, pulling the mosquito netting on her side down before tucking it in beneath the mattress so that there were no openings for the bloodsucking little devils to work their way in.
    However, once the lamp was out and darkness filled the room, Susannah found she couldn’t sleep. The reality of her situation was sinking in—but good!
    Kane was sound asleep; she could hear his rhythmic breathing—almost a snore but not quite. Restful respite failed her, however. Kane was right: she was starting to talk and even think like a Victorian.
    And like any proper Victorian miss, she was on the verge of having a fit of the vapors. Or was that a Regency expression? Whatever, she felt like having a major crying jag. Here she was, stuck in 1884 with the last man on earth with whom she wanted to share company—let alone share a bed!
    She felt lost and alone. Marooned. Tears threatened at the back of her throat and eyes.
    She hadn’t felt this weepy since a disastrous trip down to St. Martin last year—to a resort that hadn’t even finished being constructed, let alone matched the shiny brochures. She’d held up pretty well then, taking the hole in the roof, the broken air-conditioning, the backed-up toilet, with a stoic stiff upper lip. But when she’d turned out the light and seen beady lizard eyes, a dozen of them, glowing at her from the hole in the roof, Susannah had lost her composure. She felt like that now. On the verge of losing her composure.
    Oh, hell, who was she kidding? She’d lost her composure some time ago—probably from that first moment when she’d walked out of the historic Whitaker house and had a bad feeling. She’d lost even more when she’d read the nineteenth-century date on that circus handbill posted to the lamppost.
    While the idea of time travel might sound romantic and exciting, she had to admit that the reality was downright...scary. This was completely unknown territory for her, and she wasn’t real fond of unknown territory.
    Okay, so she knew something about the time period, at least. But she was certainly no expert. She didn’t even know when yellow fever had been cured, for cripes’ sake. That information would have come in mighty handy tonight.
    So what was she doing here? Most time-travel claims she’d heard or read about seemed to revolve around big historical events, like the Civil War or the American Revolution. Now that Susannah thought about it, no doubt that was a similar phenomenon to so many people believing they’d been Cleopatra or someone equally famous in a previous life. Everyone wanted to be a major player. No one wanted to get lost in the shuffle.
    Susannah had ended up in a shuffle, all right—a time shuffle. But did she end up in the midst of historical actions of monumental consequence? No, of course not. She ended up on a quiet street in Victorian Savannah, sharing a bed with a man who kissed like the devil and was sure to drive her nuts.
    Okay, so she was grateful not to have landed in worse times. But given this time period, she could have ended up in the Vanderbilts’ Fifth Avenue mansion—that might not have been too hard to take. Or she could have ended up in one of New York City’s many tenement buildings. Or in a sod house out in the middle of Nebraska. There was such a