Ripping Time by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

Ianira brushed fingergips across Jenna’s abdomen, across the queasiness which had plagued her for nearly a full week, now. “You carry his child,” Ianira said softly.

When the room greyed out and Jenna clutched at the edge of the bed in stupid shock, the prophetess spoke again, very gently. “Didn’t you know?”

Someone had Jenna by the shoulders, kept her her from falling straight to the floor. Dear God . . . it’s not fear sickness, it’s morning sickness . . . and I am late, oh, God, I’m going to Victorian London with Daddy’s killers trying to find me and I’m carrying Carl’s baby. . . . How long would they have to hide in London? Weeks? Months? Years? I can’t go disguised as a man, if I’m pregnant! But she had no real choice and she knew it. Her father’s hired killers would be searching for a frightened girl in the company of a detective, not a lone young man travelling with several large steamer trunks. When she looked up, she found Ianira’s dark gaze fastened on her and, more surprisingly, Noah Armstrong’s grey-eyed gaze, filled with worry and compassion.

“You’re . . . sure . . . ?” Jenna choked out.

Ianira brushed hair back from Jenna’s brow. “I am not infallible, child. But about this, yes, I am certain.”

Jenna wanted to break down and cry, wanted to curl up someplace and hide for the next several decades, wanted to be held and rocked and reassured that everything would be all right. But she couldn’t. She met Ianira’s gaze again. “They’ll kill us all, if they can.” She wrapped protective arms around her middle, around the miracle of Carl’s baby, growing somewhere inside her. A fierce determination to protect that tiny life kindled deep within. “I’d be in a morgue someplace, already, undergoing an autopsy, if Noah hadn’t dragged me out of that trap where Aunt Cassie died. I’m not going to let them win. Not if I have to spend the next forty years on the run, until we can find a way to stop them.”