I sat with the countess for hours, making light conversation. Occasionally, when I slipped up and mentioned an object or a phrase that hadn’t been invented yet, the countess would nod and blame it on my Eastern upbringing. She didn’t question me about Lithuania any further, seeming to think that this court was the only place worth talking about.
I spent so much time with the countess that she seemed to have grown used to having me by her side at certain times during the day, especially before and after meals. But today I needed to pick up the clock.
“I think I’ll take a walk after supper,” I said.
The countess looked surprised, but I didn’t know whether it was due to my abruptness or whether she was surprised that I wouldn’t be sitting with her as I usually did.
“Did you want me with you?” I asked. “I could always go later.”
“Oh, no. You go on ahead. Fresh air would be good for you. It’s always good for the young.”
She said those words, but I didn’t believe her. Though the countess would never admit it, I was pretty sure she knew she was going to miss me. It seemed I was the only person who spent time with her—besides Joan and Helen, of course, but she didn’t seem to talk to them besides giving them a list of tasks.
In any other circumstance, I would have made time to sit with her, but since I was trying to leave to go to the clockmaker’s to pick up the clock, I had to go.
I excused myself and walked down the bustling hallways, squeezing between extravagant skirts and velvet leggings.
This was it. Possibly there was now a way out. I knocked and waited. On the other side of the door, I heard small footsteps. The young girl, perhaps?
I opened the door, but she didn’t greet me.
“Here for your order?” She was as sullen as ever.
“I am,” I said. “Where is your . . . grandfather?”
The girl spoke to me forcibly. “The clockmaker is not here.”
“Should I come back at another time?” I was disappointed, to say the least. I knew that with every day wasted, the risk—both of the murderer and slowly going insane—only grew.
“That will not be necessary. Your work is ready.”
I followed her to the back room.
Today the room seemed to be lit with more candles than usual. As the girl stood to look through boxes and miscellaneous items on the shelf, a halo effect was created by the light behind her. Her hair ran down over her shoulders and glowed warm in the light.
“Here you go,” she said.
I held out my hands, expecting a great weight to be put into them. But that didn’t happen.
I looked down when I felt a small disk, cold to the touch, placed in the palm of one hand.
“This isn’t it. I don’t understand.”
“You are Lady Eleanor Shelton, are you not?” The girl looked up at me and cocked her head.
“Yes, I am—” I had no recollection of giving either her or the clockmaker my name.
“Then this is yours,” she said.
I began to grow frantic, and my voice rose. “This clock looks nothing like the one I drew.”
As I turned it over, the silver metal of the miniature clock glinted in the light. I could feel it ticking in my hand. The clock’s cover had flowers and vines engraved onto it. Climbing roses, maybe?
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” The girl peered into my hand. “He calls it a pocket watch. The clockmaker must have thought it would be more becoming of you to have this instead. It’s something he does all the time. It’s free of charge, when he does it. He only does it when he feels strongly. But still . . . I’ve never seen something so small, so intricate.”
“But it’s not what I want.”
“I know,” she said. “But it’s what’s better for you.”
“If I’m the one commissioning a clock, I think I should get what I want,” I said.
“Don’t worry, it’ll grow on you.”
Don’t worry? I didn’t know how I could not worry. My last resort had run down the drain.
“I’ll pay extra—”
“It isn’t about the money,” she said. “Though we could certainly use it, money has never been a big factor with the clockmaker. It doesn’t motivate him.” The girl shrugged, and I felt I was having this conversation with a thirty-year-old woman, instead of just a girl.
“I just want what I came here for.”
“I know you do,” she said. “That’s what they all say, but soon you’ll be better off this way.”
She started toward the door, and I had no choice but to follow her.
“Will you at least tell me when the clockmaker will be in again?” I asked. “This is really important to me.”
“He’ll be back this evening. He only went to the neighboring village for some parts,” she said. “But if you’re planning on trying to change his mind, you might as well give up. He’s never changed his mind on things like this. When he feels strongly about something, that’s the way it goes.” She laughed, and it was a sound I had never heard from her. “You look like you ate something sour.”
I couldn’t respond.
“On the bright side, it often works out for the better when people take his suggestions.”
I wanted to reply that this wasn’t a suggestion. He had given me a clock I hadn’t ordered. This was a far more important matter than someone at court ordering a clock to please their sweetheart. However, she smiled sweetly and shut the door, and I had no choice but to take the pocket watch and put it into the small velvet pouch that hung from a belt-like fixture on my dress. I couldn’t leave it around for Joan or Helen to find. With its minute and second hands, it barely looked like something from this time. I couldn’t have them—least of all the countess—starting to ask questions. No, it was safer to simply keep the watch with me.
My nails dug into my palms. This couldn’t be happening. Henley’s words came back to me: Well, it is what it is.
I wanted to scream.
I spent the next hours staring at the wall, waiting for it to be evening. The weight of the pocket watch in the pouch against my side was unfamiliar and caught me off guard whenever I so much as moved to close a door.
After another night of supper with the countess, I pretended to excuse myself to my room.
“I’m just feeling a bit tired today,” I said.
“My, my” was all the countess said, but she didn’t move to stop me.
I slipped into my room, quickly pulling on a cloak I had set aside. I tiptoed right out once I made sure that Helen and Joan were busy and nowhere to be seen.
The cloak was one of the things the dressmaker had made for me. The countess had told me it was in fashion, and that the deep blue color would show my station, but it had never come in handy until now.
I felt like a teenager in one of those old movies, sneaking out to see her boyfriend. I remembered seeing a few of those movies with my mother, or rather, Cynthia’s mother, before Miss Hatfield turned me immortal and I had to leave that life. After that, Miss Hatfield had taken the place of my mother, and she became the person who sat next to me on the bench when we watched movies in the twenty-first century.
I felt exactly like one of those, only I was dealing with a matter greater than life or death. Anyway, it was all the same, since the countess wouldn’t approve no matter my reason for leaving.
I snuck out of her chambers and made sure I crept quietly, keeping close to the tapestries that covered the walls, even in the corridors. It was dark out, and the countess would have had a fit if she knew I was going out at night alone. I had to speak with the clockmaker. Changing his mind was the only chance I had for getting out of here, not to mention staying alive and sane.
Just as I found the clockmaker’s door in the dark, I heard something.
I pulled up the hood of the cloak, so as to hide my face, and flattened myself against the wall. I held my breath. The dark blue melded with the shadows, and I hoped that was enough to keep me co
ncealed.
Someone was rummaging near the clockmaker’s door. There were a few torches set far apart in the corridor, but the closest one was too far, and I couldn’t see who it was.
The rummaging sound stopped.
“Show yourself.”
I froze.
“Lady Eleanor, I know it’s you,” the figure said.
My heart hammered, but I stepped forward into the light of the nearest torch.
Upon stepping closer, I found out who the figure was. It was the clockmaker.
“Now, what are you doing here?” he asked.
“Looking for you, actually.”
I waited for him to unlock the door and let me in, but he made no move to do so.
“There’s no need to thank me for your gift,” he said. “I do that often for clients I take a special interest in.”
“I did come to talk to you about your gift.” I hadn’t been intending to call it a gift, but I wanted to stay on his good side. “I love it,” I began. “I think it’s very beautiful. But it’s not what I asked for. And you see, I really had my heart set on the gold clock exactly as I drew it.”
“I know you did, my dear. But this one better suits you and your needs.”
He was being stubborn, but I had expected that. I just had to be more forceful. “I know you believe that. But as the patron, I’d like what I ordered. It’s something I need.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I’ll pay more money.”
He studied my face. “You insult me, my lady.” He unlocked and opened the door. “Good night.”
The clockmaker shut the door behind him, and I could feel my hopes crashing to the floor.
I took the pocket watch out of the pouch at my side and again ran my fingers over the engraved cover. Glinting in the dark, it almost looked like it was ridiculing me. This stupid, damned watch.
He had to be the clock’s creator. Hadn’t the girl said that the golden clock looked like one of his designs? And yet, the clockmaker wouldn’t make it for me. It had seemed I was so close to getting out of here and returning to whatever “normal” was for me, but in reality, I was no closer to getting back than the day I arrived here.
I pocketed the watch again and crept back to my room, knowing there was nothing I could do tonight except sleep. I resolved to go back again the next morning. The clockmaker would soon see I was just as stubborn as he was. This wasn’t something I could give up on.
NINETEEN
THE NEXT MORNING, I marched straight to the clockmaker’s after Helen dressed me. I must have looked such a sight that neither Helen nor Joan said a word. They looked scared.
I rapped at the door and thought I heard voices on the other side.
“Lady Shelton, I won’t be changing my mind.” I heard the clockmaker’s voice from inside.
I rapped again. This time even more insistently.
“I just want to talk to you. This is very important to me,” I said.
“I’m sorry, my lady. But I don’t want to talk.”
The door didn’t open, and I stood there dumbfounded. I didn’t know why he was doing this to me.
I stood with my back supported by the opposite wall of the alleyway, before I sank down to my knees. There went what I thought was my last and only chance. I was sure that the clockmaker was the creator of Miss Hatfield’s clock, and without it I wouldn’t be able to leave this time. I was never going to get back.
“You look angry.”
I looked up to see Richard standing in front of me. “Not now, Richard.”
“No ‘Hello, Richard! Why, isn’t the weather marvelous today’?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, I was about to say that you look beautiful, but in truth you look more angry than beautiful. Furious, even.” Richard took my hand and stood me up. “Now, if you don’t have anywhere to be, come take a walk with me and tell me what’s wrong. Fresh air will do you and your anger some good.”
He was right, and I didn’t have any place to be. I took his arm as usual, and walked beside him.
I told him about the clock.
“Ah, yes, well, the clockmaker is famous for doing that for a few of his patrons,” Richard said, after listening. “I think that was the reason the king brought him to his court in the first place. You know the king . . . he likes to amuse himself with things like that.”
“Well, it’s certainly not amusing for me.”
Richard smirked, but agreed with me.
“I was so specific with what I needed done! And he refuses to do it!”
“Eleanor . . .”
Richard startled me.
“. . . if I may call you by your first name,” Richard quickly said, seeing the look that must have been on my face.
“Of course,” I muttered. “I told you that you could.”
“I feel we know each other well enough.” He smiled.
“Certainly.”
“Now, Eleanor, as I was about to say before I digressed, could you loosen your grip on my arm?”
I looked down to see that my knuckles were turning white where I was holding on to Richard. Embarrassed, I dropped my hand.
“You know you don’t have to take away your hand completely,” Richard said. “In fact, I much prefer having your hand there.”
My cheeks must have flushed a deeper shade, as he brought my hand back up to his arm.
I tried to act as if I hadn’t noticed. “What were you going to say? You just interrupted yourself.”
“No, that was it. I just wanted to still have a functioning arm after my stroll with you.”
I didn’t think it was possible, but my cheeks went redder.
“You’re even more beautiful when you’re embarrassed.”
He didn’t know that part of the reason my cheeks burned was because I knew that Henley could be watching all of this. Richard’s words, my reactions—everything. It would be just like him to focus in on this moment and watch.
“Tell you what,” Richard said. “If this means so much to you, let me try talking to the clockmaker myself.”
“Be my guest,” I said. “But I’m warning you, he can be very stubborn.”
“I’ve been told I can be very persuasive.”
“By who?”
He looked away. “Lady Sutton.”
We erupted in giggles, and Henley flew out of my mind. He wasn’t here—not really here in person, at least. Even if he was watching, he couldn’t stop me from enjoying myself.
Things were so natural between Richard and me that it just felt right, regardless of whether we were talking, or walking in silence. It was all intuitive, with no hard explanations involved. I couldn’t help thinking that this was what all human relationships were meant to be. And Henley . . . I wished my relationship with Henley were like this. I knew even forming that thought in my mind was betrayal, but I couldn’t help it. Our relationship used to be like this—Henley always joking around, and me laughing with him. I missed that. And realizing that, I tucked that thought into the back of my mind, hoping it wouldn’t spring up again.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said suddenly.
“Like what I had for breakfast?”
“Anything you think I need to know.”
He thought for a bit before responding. “I believe in people.”
I smiled to myself. No one else would think to say that.
“I believe in their abilities. And that something pure exists somewhere in this world, whether it be religion or something else,” he said. “Is that good enough for you?”
“Yes.”
I saw him furrow his brow.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s just that no one’s ever asked me something like that before. I’ve always had to do the asking for myself, and even then, I’ve never had to articulate what I believe in.”
Richard was someone from a different time than my own, with a background and experiences much different from mine, and yet I
knew exactly what he meant.
No one asked me these questions either—at least not since I had left Henley’s time. I was alone with my thoughts, and that became tiring after a while.
We all need someone. That is how we are built. We spend our entire lives trying to find someone we can connect with—who will ask us those questions—and fearing our loneliness if we don’t find that one person. That’s all anyone ever wants. That’s all I ever wanted.
When Richard walked me to the door of the countess’s chambers, he gave my hand a squeeze.
“I wish that walk was longer. Oh, why do you have to live so close?”
I chuckled and wished him a pleasant rest of the day.
“Pleasant? I think it’ll be anything but pleasant without your company,” he said, and I walked into the sitting room.
“I don’t know if I like that boy.” The countess was sitting by the window.
“R—Lord Holdings?”
“He is from an old family, I’ll give you that. And they are wealthy. But not incredibly so. And he’s not the oldest son either. He’s a very nice boy, or so they say. But I think you could do better,” the countess said. “I’m sure your father would also want you to do better.”
“Lord Holdings is just a friend.”
“A lady does not have friends like that. And friends don’t walk unchaperoned.”
“I was asking him for a favor,” I said.
To my surprise, the countess did not scold me. “Do be careful” was all she said, disapprovingly, before waving me off.
After that strange conversation with the countess, I no longer told her when I was out with Richard. The fact that she hadn’t criticized me affected me more than if she had. In fact, I almost wished she had scolded me! Anything would have been better than the cold disapproval in her tone.
I knew it was juvenile, but I couldn’t help wanting to please everyone at once. In wanting to please the countess, it was easier to not tell her I was seeing Richard as much. I didn’t outright lie to her. I just didn’t tell her where I was going. Occasionally, when she asked, I told her I was wandering, which was true in some sense.
The Time of the Clockmaker Page 18