The Rose Garden

He’d spoken quietly, and mindful of the fact there might be other people sleeping in the house, I answered just as low. ‘You never asked it.’

His head turned till he was looking right at me, though nothing else about him moved. The moonlight gleamed behind him but I couldn’t see his eyes or his expression. ‘Do you have one?’

Did I have a name? I couldn’t quite remember. ‘Eva.’

‘Eva. Is that all?’

‘My name is Eva Ellen Ward.’

‘A good name.’ In the dark he looked at me a moment longer. ‘I did fear that you had come to harm since last I saw you, Eva Ward.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘So I do see. And glad I am to see it, for your welfare has weighed heavy on my conscience.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Because I did not think to warn you not to leave the house,’ he said. ‘This countryside would offer little safety to a woman, and the roads around should not be lightly travelled.’

‘I wasn’t on the roads.’

‘No?’

‘No. And I didn’t go outside the house.’

‘So where, then … ? Ah,’ he told me. ‘You went back.’

‘Yes.’ I considered how to tackle this. The last time he had seen me I’d been claiming that he wasn’t real, and telling him to go away. He probably already thought I was crazy. But I wanted to know. ‘Am I right in thinking I’ve just travelled back in time?’

He didn’t answer right away, but after some reflection he replied, ‘That would depend entirely upon where you began.’

Which seemed a logical assumption. I could see no harm in telling him the year that I’d just come from. If he registered surprise, I didn’t notice. ‘Yes,’ he told me then. ‘You have indeed come back in time by some three centuries.’

‘It’s 1715?’

‘It is.’ That did surprise him. ‘How did you know the year?’

‘I did some reading.’

‘You can read.’ It wasn’t actually a question, more a challenge, I could hear it in his voice. ‘A brave accomplishment for a woman, even one who voyages through time.’

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘On the contrary. ’Tis ghosts and walking spirits that I never have believed in, so I must confess I find your tale a singular relief.’ He paused in thought. ‘So, have you learnt to work this magic at your will?’

‘And if I had,’ I asked him, ‘do you really think I would have turned up here, like this?’

‘In my own chamber, do you mean, and in the middle of the night?’ I sensed his smile, but was more focused on his words.

‘This is your room?’

‘’Tis why I chose to fall asleep in it.’

I said, ‘But when I came in here the last time … when I—’

‘Told me I should go away?’ His tone was openly amused.

I hoped the faint light covered my embarrassment. ‘You didn’t tell me this was your room, too.’

‘An oversight on my part, I’ll admit. Perhaps the shock of finding out that I did not, in fact, exist, after a lifetime of believing that I did, had some effect upon my manners.’

I was blushing now in earnest. ‘Look, I’m sorry I was rude to you. I thought that I was seeing things.’

‘I did not take offence,’ he said. ‘It did not trouble me to share my chamber then, no more than it does now.’ He shifted round, and sat up slowly as he swung his long legs to the floor. Somehow he looked much larger that way, sitting with his white shirt gleaming ghost-like in the pale light of the moon. There was a silent moment. Then, ‘You’ve changed your clothes,’ he said, as though just noticing.

If he’d asked me at that moment I could not in truth have told him what clothes I was wearing. Glancing down myself at my plain T-shirt and pyjama bottoms, I said by way of explanation, ‘I was sleeping, too.’

He seemed to be deciding something. ‘If you are still here by day, you will need proper clothes to wear.’

I hadn’t thought of that.

He stood and said, ‘Wait here.’ I had forgotten just how tall he was. His shoulder passed me at the level of my eyes as he went through the door connecting with the small front bedroom next to us, returning not long after with what looked to be a bulky length of fabric that he pressed into my hands. ‘Take this, and wear it if you will.’

I told him, ‘Thank you,’ and he gave a nod, still standing in the door between the two rooms, his expression too obscured by shadows to be clearly seen. He told me, ‘Sleep well, Eva Ward,’ and with a backwards step he closed the door between us.

There was no way I could sleep. I didn’t even try. Instead I sat and faced the window near the bed, the one that had the most familiar view, and fixed my gaze on the far place where the dark sea was met by sky, and stayed there waiting till the sun began to rise.

Its first rays came, not through that window, but the ones that faced the road and flanked the fireplace. The slanting sunlight, faint at first, chased out the shadows from the corners, falling warm across the floorboards and the surface of the writing desk that sat against the wall.

It touched the fabric that I still held in my arms as well, and I could finally see it was a dress – a bodice and a separate trailing skirt, with something like a nightgown underneath them, and a pair of shoes like slippers that fell tumbling to the floor as I rose carefully and spread the clothes out on the bed to have a better look.