Read Through The Leaded Glass for Free Online Page A

spun around. “Really? You can require my
entire body in marriage and you won’t be getting it. I. Am.
Leaving. Got it? Going back home. Where I belong.”
    She headed toward the opening again, but Alex
caught a swath of her skirt before she made it. He was unaccustomed
to begging, but then, today was unlike any other. “Please, Kate.
You must listen to me.”
     
    His death grip on her gown stopped her. As did
that word. Please . Why did it sound as if it wasn’t one he
often used?
    Which was one more reason to get the hell out
of here. She’d had it with chauvinistic, selfish men. She tugged
her dress free, completely uninterested in whatever he had to say.
The only thing she wanted to hear anyone say was, “Welcome to
Wendy’s, may I take your order?” Or, “You’ve got mail.” Or, hell,
even, “License and registration, please” would do. Something, anything to tell her this was all some hideous dream and she
was alive and well and living more than five hundred years in the
future.
    She plunked down onto the stool, her knees
giving out at that thought. Which annoyed her. She, who had stood
before CEOs and Boards of Directors proposing million-dollar
expenditures, she wasn’t frightened of anyone. Anything.
    But then, she’d never exactly experienced this . And how would this go over if she missed her
appointment with the adoption agency? Sorry, but I was off
gallivanting around fifteenth century England. Can we
reschedule?
    Yeah, that’d go over real well. She’d have to
kiss Emma goodbye. Figuratively, because they wouldn’t allow
anywhere near her daughter after that. She needed the window. It had to be the key to this mess because the ring was doing
diddly-squat and she’d been alive and well and hanging out in PA
until she’d touched that thing. Which meant she had to humor him
enough to be able to get to it so she could get out of
here.
    “ Okay, Alex. Why do you have this
ridiculous notion we should get married?”
    “ How did you come by my
ring?”
    “ I already told you. I’m not a
thief. I’m an Assistant Vice President for a highly respected
advertising firm. And while that holds quite a bit of sway where I
come from, I doubt there are people lining up to hire any around
here. And female ones, at that.” She shook her head. Thirty-some
years of women’s lib, ninety-plus years of the right to vote, and
in one fell swoop she was back in the days of chattel. And after
she’d taken such pains to divorce the one man in the twenty-first
century who’d still thought of his wife that way. Oh, the
irony.
    She wasn’t about to re-live it. “Alex, really.
Here.” She pulled the ring off and held it in her palm. “Take the
ring back. Tell Lady Aubridge she’s mistaken. Or that I stole it.
Or ran away. I don’t care what you say, I just want to go find my
window and get out of here.”
    Alex looked at it, then back at her. He said
something, but she didn’t understand a word.
    “ What?” she asked.
    He said something else. More
gibberish.
    “ Speak English, please, Alex. I
don’t understand Vulcan. Or Hobbit.”
    Alex stopped mid-sentence and tapped his ear,
then uttered something which sounded familiar. Sort of. Sort of
middle English… Medieval English.
    Kate put the ring back on. “Say that
again.”
    “ Say what, Kate? And what language
did you speak? It didn’t sound like any I am familiar with, though
it does prove you have some education—”
    “ I’ve got more of an education than
you can imagine. And it was English all right, just not the one
you’re used to. Turns out—” She wiggled her finger. “I think this
ring is a translation device.”
    “ A what?”
    “ It lets us understand each other.
Your English is different from my English, and I couldn’t
understand you when I took it off. See?” She took it off and
started reciting the Pledge of Allegiance—something he wouldn’t be
familiar with.
    Alex shook his head, took the ring, and slid
it back onto her