Luned sat on Bella's sofa, sinking into the softness. "Ah, you have the most wonderful seats in your home, my lady. So comfortable, like the lightest of feather mattresses. If only your beds were the same." She cringed slightly.
"Luned. Stop calling me 'lady.' Things here are very different to what you are used to, like I said." Bella sighed heavily, frowning at the Welshwoman sitting across from where she stood. She didn't like having a constant reminder of what was gone, didn't like the feeling of being responsible for this person who had caused her so much grief, but what could she do? Throw her out on the street with no idea of how to live? No matter how strong the grief was that Bella felt, she was not an evil person. She couldn't do that.
"I should call you Isabella all the time? That seems so odd—" Luned's dark eyes shadowed and she chewed nervously on her bottom lip. "Will I not be punished though?"
"No, Luned, you won't. Not here." Bella sighed again. "Alice and Rose are still here, right?"
"Of course, my—Isabella."
"Bella."
"Yes, Bella. They have not left; they said they were preparing a bed for me." Luned looked even more concerned. "They are not building me one, are they?"
Bella couldn't suppress the giggle. "No, Luned. They mean they're changing the sheets."
"Oh. Do you have more than one? You truly must be very wealthy, just as rumors have it."
Bella giggled again. "No, Luned. More than one sheet is usual for this time." Bella sighed, wondering how to start. Fortunately for her, Luned picked out the key word in the sentence.
"This time? Are you referring to the fact that it is almost vespers? Surely that has no bearing on your wealth."
"Not time as in time of day, Luned. Time as in era. What year do you think it is?"
"Why, the year of our Lord, 1137, of course."
"It's 2009, Luned."
"I'm sorry?" Luned looked lost and confused.
"It is almost 900 years from the moment we…left. Didn't you wonder why everything was so different?"
"You are speaking in riddles, Lady Isabella."
"Just Bella. It's not riddles; it's fact--bizarre fact, but fact nonetheless."
Luned shook her head roughly. "It is the year of our Lord, 1137. I know it."
Bella knelt in front of the younger woman, gazing into her eyes. "It's not. You always thought I spoke strangely, and many of the things I did were odd. It's because this is where I…" Bella gulped, trying to speak past the stubborn lump that kept reappearing in her throat. "I belong here," she finished quietly.
"I do not believe you," Luned insisted. "That would be sorcery of the darkest kind, and I cannot believe that you would…"
"I didn't do this, Luned. It just happened. And it is 2009, for better or worse."
The Welshwoman stared at the person she still considered her mistress, despite all the wrong, all the misery and mistakes. She was frightened--it seemed as though somehow her mistress had been bewitched--somehow she believed they had been moved through time to another year. Not even another year, but another century, another millennium. She frowned, speaking slowly and clearly.
"Bella. It is not possible. We are not in the year 2009."
"You are, Luned." The woman named Alice had entered the room, her feet as quiet as a feather drifting on a breeze. "I know it will be hard for you to imagine, but…"
"No," Luned said stubbornly. "No, I am not."
Luned did not miss the look that passed between Bella and Alice. A look that plainly said, 'how can we make her understand?'
"It's not possible," Luned murmured, fear clutching her heart tightly. "It is not."
"It is," Alice said gently, her demeanor so much like Lady Alison, yet somehow off.
Luned leapt from the seat, her eyes blazing. "I will not sit here and hear your lies." She hurried across the room before either woman could react, and twisted the odd metal handle on the door. A door that was very different to what she was used to.
She ran down the stairs and out of the front doors, breathing the air deeply.
Her lungs squealed their protest. The air here was wrong, like standing in front of an open fire, only subtler, insinuating its way into her body slowly, making her throat tighten slightly, her stomach turn.
She turned left and ran past the oddest assortment of people she had ever seen. Very few women wore dresses. And those that did wore them so short; their legs were exposed, right up to the thigh! The ones who were not wearing dresses were mostly wearing some kind of blue leggings, many of them very tight, every muscle defined. Luned's mind screamed that even the highest quality leggings were never able to fully fit on a woman, as they were all designed for men's use--every time she had worn them there had been a definite lag around the tops of the legs and crotch area, something which did not occur for these women!
She rounded a corner and stopped dead in her tracks, gazing up, astonished and scared witless. There was a picture of a woman, high up in the air, clad in next to nothing, clothing similar to that which Bella had tried to hide, the blue scraps of material she had worn against her skin. Of course, having seen Bella's, it wasn't so much the clothing that shocked her, nor even the lack of. It was the perfect, life-like image.
The very best artists of her time--she was beginning to understand that she was no longer anywhere near home--could not capture their subjects so precisely as this, no matter how remarkable their talent. She had a few times happened to catch sight of Sir Jasper's books, and once or twice the Bible in the church at Cullen Castle, and neither of them had pictures this life-like.
She continued to gaze up, tears welling in her eyes. What if it was some witch's spell that had caught that poor woman? Was it possible that wherever it was that was Bella's home, there were people with magic so powerful they could capture a person's soul, put it on display for all to see?
Luned had no doubt that magic existed; she had grown up in 12th century Wales and England, a time where superstition was rife, and being Welsh only made her convictions stronger. For was not King Arthur himself a Welshman, he and his friend Merlin both? She had been brought up to fear that which was not easily explainable, so fearful she was. This whole place frightened her beyond anything she had ever felt in her life. More even than when Alison had told her Jacob was gone.
Jacob. She closed her eyes against the onslaught of agony. He had been the gentlest of men, the most caring…the threatened tears began to fall.
He had told her that he had watched her from afar for the longest time, had loved her from the first moment he had seen her beautiful face. When he had loved her, the one time he had let himself go and bedded with her, it had been magical. None of the self loathing and disgust she had felt with James had been there, no resentment. Just pure pleasure. And love.
When he asked her for her hand, he had been terrified, like a rabbit worried out of its burrow by a hunting dog. After she had avowed that she would marry him, would wish for nothing more than to be with him until the day they died, and he had swung her around, his face lit with all the joy of a child with a new puppy, she had asked him what had frightened him.
"That you would refuse, my Luned." He had said gently, kissing her forehead lightly. "That you would not consent to be mine."
Her eyes remained closed as her head dropped forward. Now she would never be his. If Bella spoke true, if somehow, she had been carried forward to a time far beyond her own, then her Jacob was far gone, his body would long ago have turned to dust. She was alone, save for her mistress.
A sob escaped her lips. Her final image of Jacob entered her mind, like her own personal hell. His face, a mask of shock and pain, his dark eyes gazing unseeing at her as she spurred the horse forward. She sobbed again, the pain too intense to have any sort of control over. His dark eyes, which had once danced with merriment, his warm mouth that had plundered and looted her own were now forever dead and cold.
And all of it because of her.
She would never forgive herself for what she had cost everyone, all the loves and lives she destroyed. Her fear of this time knew no bounds, but her regrets for what came before settled her. If Bella spoke true, and she was hundreds of years from her own home, then she would do what she must, knowing what she had done could never again be righted. She would do all she could to help Bella, to prove that she was truly sorry, to try and make her friend's life something that was happy and worthwhile--try and give her back what she caused her to lose.
She lifted her face again to the weak sun the somehow found its way through the tangle of high shiny buildings and opened her eyes.
"I still love you, my Jacob. Please forgive me," she murmured to herself.
She couldn't understand anything over the sensory overload of sound and sight and smell, so she stood there, letting this new world envelope her.
It felt alien, strange and overwhelming.
There seemed to be so many people, all rushing to something or other at a pace so fast, she wondered how they didn't consistently trip over their own feet. Suddenly Isabella's clumsiness was much more understandable. Luned was certain humans were not made to move as fast as these people did.
One man raced past her, talking into a little black box he had held to his ear. Luned took careful note, determined to ask Bella later what the thing was, and why someone would talk to it as though it were another person and it could understand what one was saying.
With a thrill of fear she realized maybe it could? Who knew what things there were that she knew nothing about.
She sniffed the air carefully again, wrinkling her nose in distaste. She doubted there would be much about this place that she could enjoy; it smelt strange, the beds seemed as though they should be soft, but were seemingly harder than a pallet on the floor. The things called cars moved so quickly they made her head spin and her stomach turn, and the way people cleaned themselves! The shower--a horrendous device that shot water at you in a continuous stream--there was a form of torture in her own era that used the same technique. She much preferred her normal one bath every season.
She was taking another deep breath and preparing to navigate her way back to Bella's 'apartment' when a heavy hand clapped down on her shoulder.
"Do you need any help?" An unfamiliar voice muttered in her ear.
She leapt a full foot off the ground.
A/N - OKay, so I seem to have left a little bit of confusion...the Isabella of the past died before the current Isabella went back in time, nobody knew until she was gone though, because no one was looking for someone who wasn't lost.
Edward hasn't given Bella one week and that's it, he doesn't know what's happened with her, he's giving her a moment. It doesn't mean bang, one week and love blossoms.
Other than that, thank you so much for making me teary eyed with you adds and reviews...love you guys!