A Twist in Time by Susan Squires

Author:Susan Squires
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Published: 2010-03-09T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

“So, you ready for the car?”

Galen took a breath and let it out, remembering how fast the thing had gone when they rode in it before. He pulled the lever that opened the door and got in. “Ja. I will learn how to drive this cart as you do.” He set his jaw. “You will teach me, Lucy.”

“That’s a disaster waiting to happen,” she muttered as she slid behind the wheel. He didn’t understand those words. But he got her tone.

“You think I cannot do this?”

“Can we go on our quest first?” She was giving him that look of exasperation. He knew why. It was the kiss. It had unnerved her. He swallowed. It had unnerved him, too.

“Ja,” he answered. For a single instant, she had been so soft, so yielding. He had wanted nothing more than to protect her from her world. For an instant on the deck, she had revealed most clearly that she wanted him and that, even more important, she might let him protect her. When had that become important to him?

He cleared his throat and sat up, grasping the handle on the door to this car with the hand of his injured right shoulder. “We will now go fast.” He braced himself for that unnerving speed.

She reached around him and pulled a thick strap with an iron tongue on it across him and snapped it into a kind of a buckle on his left side as she had before. “Seat belts, everyone.”

The car backed up, slowly, turned as she turned the wheel, then started up the dirt track. As they approached a crossroads, other cars tore by, very fast, in both directions. Lucy took her foot from a lever on the floor and pressed another pad. The car stopped. She pulled a lever by the wheel with her left hand and a rhythmic sound began. He craned to see what she was doing. A little green light blinked, pointing left. She looked both ways, waited for some other cars to whiz by, and then pressed the lever on the floor. The car went onto the slicker, black road. She pressed down harder and the car sped up. He was ready. He braced himself with his good hand on the seat and pushed his feet against the floor. Marshes and reed beds flew past.

He steadied his breathing. Not so bad. How many leagues could you go in one day with a cart such as this? No horses to feed. No need to worry about their stamina. Was there?

“Does the cart grow weary?”

“Weary?” She glanced from the road to him. Her mouth tried not to smile.

He nodded. “Weary.” He liked it when she tried not to smile. Someday, maybe she would not try. She would just smile many times in a day.

“No. But you must give it gasoline. Like food. It goes until it has no more gas.”

They came to a very large village, though its halls were not as high as the ones the first night.

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