Lady in Lace: Regency Timeslip

by Joanna Maitland

  On her way back to the museum, the traffic was a nightmare. There had been a serious accident on the dual carriageway and the police had closed the whole road. Emma found the best detour she could, but lots of other drivers seemed to have had the same idea. The going was very slow. By the time she got within half a mile of the museum, it was already almost six o'clock. She would have very little time for her researches. And the nightmare drive had given her a thumping headache.

  She didn't care about that. There was paracetamol at the museum. She could take a couple, if she had time, but it was much more important to follow up this last lead about Lady Emma. There would just about be time before she had to get the gold lace gown out of store. Once she was back in the Regency, her modern-day headache would disappear anyway, so what did it matter?

  The museum car park was empty when she drove in. Everyone had gone home. The museum itself was dark. Good. There would be no one to ask her why she had come back when she was supposed to be at the Lamb House for the whole day.

  She was smiling as she got out of her car and pinged the lock. She made for the staff entrance with a spring in her step. This time she was going to discover the truth about Lady Emma. She was sure of it.

  "Slut!"

  Emma whirled round. "Julian!" she gasped. She plunged her hand into her coat for her rape alarm. She couldn't find it. It should be there. It wasn't. She backed off a step, still scrabbling around at the bottom of her pocket.

  "You've got that slut walk. That hip-swaying I'm-being-fucked-out-of-my-mind slut walk. I know. I've been watching you, bitch."

  "You have no right," she spat. "We're divorced, remember?"

  Julian was a big man, and strong. He was blocking the route to her car. And there was no one around to see what was happening.

  Emma knew she had to divert his attention so she could use the self-defence moves she'd been taught. They might give her precious seconds to run back to her car.

  Her scrabbling fingers found the museum keys. She pulled them out and pointed them, like a weapon.

  Julian glanced down at her hand and laughed. Nastily.

  "You don't own me, you bastard," she yelled, gripping her keys even tighter.

  Julian's lips curled into a familiar snarl, the snarl that was always followed by a clenched fist. Usually to her gut.

  Sweat prickled down Emma's spine. Automatically, she took another step back, to avoid the blow she knew would come.

  No use. He was too close. And much too big.

  He knocked her hand aside. His punch took all the breath out of her and doubled her up. She began to fall, arms flailing for support. But there was none. It felt like being in a slow motion movie: she registered the tiny quirk of triumph forming at the corner of his mouth, the quick double nod – masculine pride, at a job well done – as he turned to leave.

  Emma's head hit the edge of the pavement. The last thing she saw was Julian's back as he strode away. Then everything went black.

  ~ ~ ~

  The light had almost gone when Emma came to. How long had she been out for? Quite a while, possibly. She lifted her head, very painfully, and looked around. There was no one at all in the car park. Julian had disappeared, as he always did after attacking her. When the ambulance came, he was never there. And he always swore he never had been. Emma was on her own with her hurts, as usual.

  She pushed herself to her knees and then, very gingerly, to her feet. She felt herself swaying and stumbled across the pavement to clutch at the museum wall for support. How her head ached. Her vision was a bit blurry, too. She put a hand to the back of her head where the wound was. Blood. Not bleeding a lot now. Just oozing. But her hair was thickly matted with it. So there must have been a lot of bleeding when she fell.

  And then that vicious bastard smirked at how well he'd asserted his proper manly authority and stalked off without so much as a glance to see what damage he'd done. If only I could—

  St Mary's struck the half hour.

  No time to lose. Julian, and reporting the assault to Flo, would have to wait till Emma returned from the Regency. Time wouldn't have moved on in the twenty-first century so no evidence would be lost. But the window for the transition to Will was so very narrow. She mustn't miss it.

  Where were her keys? She'd had them in her hand, hadn't she?

  She found them on the ground near where she'd fallen. Bending down to retrieve them was touch-and-go. She almost passed out all over again.

  Clinging to the wall for support, Emma felt her way along to the staff entrance. It seemed to take an age to fumble for the right keys and then insert them in the complicated locks. But at last she was inside and the door was safely relocked behind her. She had managed to get to where she desperately wanted to be. And at least Julian couldn't touch her again while she was here inside.

  She had to screw up her eyes to focus enough to check her watch. She found she had less that twenty-five minutes to open the key safe, retrieve the lace gown and get herself ready in the research room. And she so much wanted to go to the shower room and bathe her aching head. Would she still be bloody and faint after she reached the Regency? She couldn't be sure. And what would Will say, or do, if he saw her in such a state?

  She had no time for agonising over that. She decided she could spare five minutes to bathe her wound with cool water, though. If she didn't, there was a fair chance she might pass out, right there in the research room, and lose the magic window to the past for another day.

  That was a risk she wasn't prepared to take. Another day, another encounter with Julian? Anything could happen. Next time, he might kill her. He'd threatened it enough times.

  She kept one hand on the wall for support, all the way to the shower room. There, she dragged the single chair across to one of the washbasins and collapsed onto it with a groan.

  No time to waste. Got to bathe my head and then get out of these clothes before I go down to get the gown. Mustn't get any blood on the lace. Should I bandage the wound to make sure? No. No time for that.

  In any case, the bandages were in the first aid box, upstairs in the staff room. Emma was going to have enough problems with the stairs down to the basement storeroom and back. She wasn't at all sure she could manage the flight to the staff room as well.

  The paper towels by the basin made a fairly serviceable wound pad, even when wet. And the cold compress was bliss on the back of her head. But it didn't stay cold for long. After barely half a minute, she had to throw the bloody towels into the bin and make another pad. More cooling bliss. She allowed herself to repeat the process a couple of times more. And she was surprised at how much better she felt, even though her hair was still pretty matted and the wound was bleeding quite a lot faster than before, now that the clotted blood had been sponged away.

  "I don't care. I can do this," she said aloud. "I can."

  With one hand on the back of the chair, she pushed herself to her feet, toed off her shoes and began to unfasten her shirt. It took longer than usual to get down to her underwear, because she was wary of using both hands at once, in case she keeled over. But at last it was done.

  Her watch showed twelve minutes to seven. Time enough. Just about.

  It took precious minutes to open the key safe and grab the storeroom keys. She started for the stairs to the basement, telling herself that, barefoot, she was less likely to stumble and fall. She could do this. She would.

  She was gasping for breath by the time it was done, but she did make it back up to the research room with the lace gown over her arm.

  It was four minutes to seven by the church clock.

  Emma spread the gown across the table and sank into her usual chair. She allowed herself a smile of triumph, though her cheek muscles did protest a bit. She was probably black and blue there, as well, but she didn't care. What mattered was that she had a chance to make the transition to Will. She desperately needed to make things right with him. She owed him. All she had to do was stand up, wait for the clock to chime
and start to put her arm into the sleeve.

  Two minutes to go.

  One.

  She pushed herself up and reached for the lace gown.

  "I love you, Will," she whispered, as St Mary's began to strike.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Emma couldn't believe the evidence of her senses. Her head was whole again – no blood in her hair, no swelling on her face. Her body didn't ache either. She felt perfectly normal. Most astonishing of all, the blue bedchamber looked exactly as it had when she left it. It was surely impossible? She'd been in the twenty-first century for a whole day.

  She checked round the room, more carefully this time. Yes, the single candle was sitting on the hearth where she had put it, for safety. The servants would never have left it there. And it didn't seem to have burned down very far at all. Nor had the fire.

  Everything else in the room seemed to be the same too, even – she realised with a start – the bent hairpin she had used to lever up the floorboard. She had forgotten to unbend it. But that was something else that no servant would have left lying on the dressing table.

  So, almost certainly, no one had been in the room while she was gone. There hadn't been time. Twenty-four hours might have passed in the modern world, but she doubted if even twenty-four minutes had passed in this one.

  One thing might have changed, though. Something she needed to know.

  She grabbed the bent hairpin and knelt by the hearth to lever up the floorboard again. Was the miniature where she had hidden it?

  The little space was empty. Her questing fingers found only dust. The miniature had been retrieved, in that other world, by kindly, lilting Owen Evans.

  It was a good omen. Emma had a second chance. With Will. Who loved her, here in this world. Loved her enough to give up so many of a Regency husband's rights. Will's was a very special kind of love.

  And in the modern world? Who loved her there? She had no family. She had colleagues and friends, like Richard and Melanie, but no one who was really close. She had her career, and rapidly increasing approval from her profession. She'd told herself it was enough but it wasn't. It never could be. It could never make up for being alone. And unloved. After Julian, she was always looking over her shoulder, never able to trust any man enough to start a relationship. With Will, it was different. As if their relationship had always been.

  She had a free choice here. She could refuse Will, return to Lady Emma's Mayfair house and then to her modern-day career. It was the easy route. The cowardly one, too. Would she end up regretting the love she had rejected? Almost certainly.

  The alternative was scary. Marriage to Will. She would have to give up all thoughts of ever returning to the modern world. She would have to trust Will with the rest of her life. If it turned out to be a mistake, she could never be free of him until one of them died. She might have a long time, under his control, to regret her decision. Hadn't she promised herself, after Julian, that she would never allow another man to control her?

  Will was not Julian. Will was nothing like Julian. He had a Regency mindset about gender and class, as she had discovered over supper, but he wasn't planning to control Emma. He had offered her financial independence. And love. He was not prepared to give her total independence, though.

  Did any marriage, in any world, offer that? A loving marriage needed compromise. It was a partnership that husband and wife worked out together. As Richard and Melanie had done.

  What she wanted from Will wasn't total independence, she realised. It was partnership. An equal partnership. If he agreed to that, she would marry him. And stay.

  She needed to tell him. Now. She didn't care how late it was.

  She plucked up her candle from the hearth and made her way back downstairs. Where was he? There was a sliver of light under the dining-room door. Everywhere else was dark. Cautiously, she pushed the door open.

  The only light was from the remains of the fire. Will had drawn his chair back to the dining table which was bare except for a half-full decanter and a brandy glass in Will's hand. He was slowly swirling the liquid round and round.

  How much had he drunk? And why? Because of her?

  "Will?" she said softly.

  He wheeled round in his chair and jumped to his feet. "Emma." He put the glass carefully back on the table. She thought he looked guilty. "You find me drowning my sorrows."

  "Sorrows?" she repeated.

  "More like self-inflicted wounds. I insulted you. And I laughed at you. It was unforgivable and no apology could atone for that. Though I am sorry." He sighed deeply. "Have you come for your revenge? I presume you are going to refuse me?"

  "I have come to ask you a question."

  He took the candle from her fingers and set it down. It flickered wildly, casting odd shadows across his face. He offered her his hand, but she shook her head. It would depend on his answer. If he said the words she hoped to hear, she would take his hand and keep holding it until the day she died.

  He let his arm drop to his side. He looked— He looked beaten. Beaten? Will Allmay?

  "When we spoke before, about conditions for a marriage between us, I asked for total freedom, independence to do exactly as I wished. I was wrong to ask for that, Will. It is not what I want. Marriage should be a partnership, where husband and wife love and trust and honour each other. I want a partnership. A partnership of equals."

  He frowned a little but then his expression cleared. "I think I had better know what you mean by that, Emma. We have had enough misunderstanding for one night."

  She smiled up at him. "As your wife, I would want to be involved in everything to do with our life together, business as well as pleasure, and I would ask you to take no decisions about me without consulting me first."

  "I can certainly promise to consult you about anything that concerns you personally, Emma. I would do nothing you did not want. But business decisions? Do you mean investments and the like?"

  "I do. You would find that I know more than you expect about investing. I might be able to give you some shrewd advice. If you are prepared to consult me, that is."

  "While I was at sea, my investments were left to my man of business." He shrugged. "I am only just beginning to get to grips with what I have and what I might do with it."

  "Then perhaps we could learn together?" she suggested shyly.

  "That sounds like a splendid plan." He smiled a little shakily. "Are you saying 'yes', Emma? Will you marry me after all?"

  Emma lifted her chin and looked him straight in the eye. This mattered. She had to do it right. "I shall be happy to become Lady Emma Allmay," she said. She had made her decision. She would stay with the man she loved. The modern world offered nothing to lure her back.

  Will ruined her romantic moment by snorting loudly. He sounded like an outraged plough horse, rather than a man receiving a 'yes' to a proposal of marriage. "I sincerely hope that no one would be so impudent as to use that name to you, my love. They call me that, I know, and worse, but to apply that name to my wife would be an insult beyond bearing. I would call out any man who did so."

  "But you are Sir William Allmay, surely?"

  She had rendered him speechless. He gaped at her. Then he shook his head as if trying to clear it. "How could you possibly think that?" he managed at last.

  Emma began to stammer. "W–well, everyone c–called you simply 'Sir William' or 'Will Allmay'." That could not be the whole truth, Emma now realised. Somewhere in their past, they must have been formally introduced. The problem was that Emma herself had no memory of it.

  "We were introduced, you know, my dear Lady Emma," Will said pointedly. "But, then," he went on, more kindly, "you were introduced to so many people at that ball, and there was so much noise, that it is possible you misheard? Or perhaps you deliberately took no notice?"

  Emma couldn't decide whether his second question was prompted by mischief, or hurt pride. "I can't imagine any lady of the ton failing to take notice of you, Will May All," she respond
ed, too sharply. True, but the wrong thing to say. She put a hand on his arm and smiled up at him apologetically. "However it came about, I must ask your forgiveness, Will, for I had completely forgotten your proper name when we met again." Judging from his softening expression, it seemed he had accepted her far-fetched excuse. And forgiven the underlying insult, too. That was a kindness she did not deserve, but it confirmed much that she believed about the man she was about to marry. No – believed was the wrong word. She knew. Her Will was a very fine man. And would be a good and faithful husband, too.

  "How did it come about that you were given the nickname Will Allmay? Or, indeed, Will May All?" Help. Why had she said that? "Actually, I think I can guess about the second of those," she muttered sheepishly. "No need to explain."

  He gave a choke of laughter. Then he took both her hands in his and turned her to face him. "The first is simple, love. My full name, which you would never have heard, is William Alford Mayfield. The nickname arose in the Navy. After that first boarding, when I was so very stupid as to get myself wounded, I was a great deal more careful and more thoughtful about my planning. Partly as a result, some of my subsequent actions were very successful. Some of that was pure luck, I must say. But the young officers were so delighted at their share of our ship's prize money, they started to call me Lieutenant Allmay instead of Lieutenant Mayfield. And once the men became aware of it, they turned it into a rhyme that spread through the Fleet. There was no stopping it. So I became Will Allmay. Including, on occasion, to my face."