'Thank you.'
I picked up the gown and smoothed it while Rachel lit the candle by my bed. It must have been her very best nightgown, made of fine white lawn with tiny carved buttons. I doubted whether it had ever been worn.
' 'Tis no trouble.' She blushed with pleasure, hovering for a moment in the doorway with her hand on the latch. 'I'm glad you've come to live here,' she said shyly.
Before I could answer, she had closed the door between us, and I heard her light footsteps retreating down the passage. I was not feeling glad myself. I felt only tired and hollow and hopeless. Stripping off my soiled green gown, I laid it carefully in the clothespress and donned the lovely nightdress, slipping beneath the coverlet of the bed and reaching out a hand to extinguish the candle flame.
There, in the dark, the full weight of my situation pressed close upon me, and misery rose like bitter gall in my throat, thick and choking. I found myself missing London, and the comfort of my own bed, and the gentle touch of my mother's lips cool against my forehead. My mother ...
The thought of her brought a fresh dampness to my eyes. This had been her home, once, I thought, when she was my own age. Before she had met my father and followed him away. Small wonder she had fled so willingly. This was a dark and cheerless house, and no fit place for the laughing, vibrant woman of my memory. Had this once been her room, I wondered, and had she ever cried herself to sleep here as I did now, turning her face against the linens to hide the evidence of her despair?
*-*-*-*
I woke to silence and the cold gray light of dawn. It was the silence that most disturbed me. At this early hour of the day, the street beneath my window in the City would already have been alive with humanity—the hawkers with their pushcarts and barrows, baskets dangling from their arms as they filled the clear morning air with a cacophony of singsong cries, while tired-eyed gallants and their wilted ladies hurried home to bed after a night of exuberant merrymaking.
I was staring at the ceiling, fighting back the rising ache of homesickness and wondering what had woken me, when a knock sounded at my door and, without waiting for an answer, Rachel wafted into the room. She was neatly dressed in a plain coffee-colored gown, her hair arranged simply and without fuss, her scrubbed face shining and composed. She carried a basin of water and a rough flannel.
'I thought you might want to wash before prayers,' she greeted me cheerily, setting the basin beside my bed. 'Did you rest well?'
'Very well, thank you,' I lied.
A cheerful whistle split the silence outside, sounding so much like my father's whistle that I was out of bed and over to the window before my mind had fully registered my actions. The window looked out over the back garden and the stables, with a view to the river that wound its way between forest and fields, and the soft green downs beyond.
A man was walking up the hill from the road, carrying my heavy box of clothing on his back as easily as if it had been a sack of feathers. He walked with long, swinging strides, and while his broad-brimmed hat hid his face from view, I caught a glimpse of a square, clean-shaven jawline and a long curl of natural brown hair.
'Rachel,' I said, motioning her to the window, 'who is that man below? He's talking to my uncle, now.'
Rachel came and looked, obediently, then turned away again, her cheeks curiously flushed. 'That is Evan Gilroy,' she told me. 'He lives at the manor in the village.'
'He has brought my box up from the inn.'
My uncle, who had come out from the kitchen to meet the man, did not appear pleased by this favor. By standing on my toes and pressing myself close against the glass, I could see both men quite clearly as they stood below me. My uncle's face was dark and unfriendly, and though I could not hear his words, the tone of his voice was clipped and harsh. The stranger said something in reply, and I saw the flash of his smile as he swung the box to the ground and turned away, walking in that same jaunty, unhurried pace toward the village.
My uncle stared after him a long moment, then said something to himself and lifted my box lightly onto his shoulder, impressing me again with his great size and strength. I heard the kitchen door slam below me and lifted my eyes, intending to come away from the window, but my attention was caught by a shadow under the large oak in the hollow at the edge of the field. A shadow that shifted and became a man, a dark man on a gray horse, staring boldly up at my chamber window. As I stood there watching, the landscape shifted subtly, becoming fluid, the colors running into one another like paints upon an artist's palette, and then the entire picture began to vibrate and I found myself clutching desperately at the windowsill as the world went black.
Nine
As a child, I always kept my eyes screwed tightly shut when I woke from a nightmare, afraid that if I opened them I might find some truly terrible apparition beside my bed. The same childish instinct made me keep my eyes shut now. I lay still as the dead, curled to the wall, and the blood sang loudly in my ears as I reached out beside me with a tentative hand.
My searching fingers touched the cool, faintly textured surface of a wooden floorboard, skimmed across an abrasive wool carpet, and came to rest on a reassuringly familiar bit of cold tubular steel. Either my drawing board had somehow transported itself back in time, I reasoned, or I was lying on the floor of my studio. Gambling on the latter, I cautiously opened my eyes, blinking a few times to focus.
The room quivered once, and then stood still, and with a rush of relief I saw the solid twentieth-century clutter surrounding me—packing crates and papers and paintbrushes scattered untidily across the floor. Lifting my head a fraction, I craned my neck for a better look round, then sank back onto the hardwood with a ragged sigh.