The Rose Garden

From the glance Wilson gave me I guessed he was finding my presence a bit of a nuisance. His next words were proof. ‘Surely Mistress O’Cleary will much prefer waiting out here while you show me which stall I may use for my horse?’ And directly to me he said, smiling, ‘You’ll not want to ruin your slippers.’

He appeared to be expecting a response from me, but Daniel stepped in smoothly.

‘She has not the use of speech.’

The man named Wilson raised his eyebrows. ‘Does she not? And how then was she robbed of it?’

‘It is my understanding she has been afflicted since her birth.’

‘Remarkable.’ He looked at me as though I were a scientific specimen, and I had the impression he’d just dropped me down a few points on the scale of intelligence. ‘How sad,’ he said, then turned away dismissively.

I knew Daniel would have to follow, so I lifted my hand from his arm and the look he angled down at me held quiet thanks. He said, ‘Please go and let your brother know that we will have a guest for dinner.’

With a nod, I went. I looked back once, but they had gone into the stables with the horse already, and the yard was empty. When I brought my head back round I saw that Fergal had come out to stand within the open doorway, hands on hips. He frowned. ‘I thought I heard a horse.’

I quickened my steps, knowing I’d have to be in the house with the door shut, and able to talk without worrying Wilson would hear, before I could tell Fergal what was going on.

‘Has someone come?’ he asked.

I gave another nod, but faintly, because something had begun to change in Fergal’s face. He was looking at me strangely. With my next step I came close enough to see his eyes, to watch the question in them change to open disbelief. And then he raised his hand and crossed himself. ‘Sweet Jesus.’

And before I could react, he started wavering and faded to a shadow and then vanished altogether like a breath of smoke dissolving in the air.

I stopped walking.

And suddenly I wasn’t in the yard myself, but stepping out onto the open hillside from the Wild Wood, with sunlight breaking through the clouds above me and Trelowarth waiting patiently to welcome me, and Susan a small figure heading off towards the greenhouse.

I hovered in confusion for a moment before memories started swirling back – my evening spent with Claire, my sleeping over at her cottage, and my waking up to find she’d gone out before me. Coming back along the coast path through the woods, and then the sudden rain, and running for the house, and …

That had happened two full days ago for me, yet here I was back in the present day, and it was plain to see no time had passed. When I looked down I saw the deep impression of my footprints in the muddy ground that led to where I stood now on the soft grass of the hill, and everything was as it had been. As it should be.

Well, perhaps not everything.

I ran my hand down one hip to make absolutely certain, and my fingers smoothed across the silken fabric of the gown I was still wearing. And beneath its linen covering my hair was still pinned up in its elaborate style. Not things that could be easily explained, I knew, if anyone should see me.

It was that one thought that shifted me to motion, forced my feet to leave the spot where they had taken root, and lead me running uphill in a hurry to be safely out of sight.

At this hour of the morning Mark should already be out and working. I could only hope that he’d be keeping to his schedule. But in case he was still finishing his breakfast in the kitchen, I went in by the front door and made a beeline for the stairs.

I’d gone halfway up before I heard a door close overhead, and cheerful humming that I recognised as Claire’s. There was no chance for me to make it to my room without her seeing me, and since her steps were coming down the corridor right now there likely wasn’t even time for me to turn and go downstairs again. I’d never cross the hall in time.

I was panicking, pressing my back to the panelled wood wall, when the feel of that wood stirred my memory and I turned to push the panel on the landing in the way Daniel had shown me. Part of me didn’t expect it to open, but it did, and just in time I slipped into the cramped and cobwebbed space and pulled the panel closed again behind me as Claire’s footsteps neared the stairs.

I heard her light and even tread come down and cross the landing, passing close beside my hiding place, and without pause she carried on and down the final half-flight to the hall.

The dress looked different, here. I spread it on my bed and touched its folds with careful fingers, for the journey across time had left it faded, and the stitching of the seams showed through in places, weakened. Fragile.

Such a lovely thing, I thought. And now I’d brought it here, and there was likely no way I could ever take it back to where it properly belonged. My own clothes, left behind in Daniel’s time, were easy to replace, but this …

‘I’m sorry,’ I said quietly, although I knew the people the apology was meant for couldn’t hear me. I found a padded hanger in my wardrobe and I hung the chemise and skirt and bodice on it, then I covered all of them with Daniel’s red silk dressing gown – his ‘banyan’, he had called it – because somehow it seemed right to me for them to be together. They were almost too bulky to keep in the wardrobe now, and anyone who opened up the wardrobe door would see them, but for the moment it would have to do.

The slippers and hairpins were easier. Wrapped in the soft linen cap they tucked tidily into the drawer where I’d already hidden my sleeping pills, wristwatch and phone. I’d left the watch and phone there even after I had figured out that stress was not my problem, since I didn’t want to run the risk of taking either item back in time with me. Modern technology didn’t belong in the past.