“This dream is becoming exceedingly tedious,” Robyn said, and even as she spoke, her stomach gave an odd little kick of fright. When she was with William, he seemed so real that she had to keep reminding herself that this must be a dream. Either that, or she was stark raving mad, and she preferred not to believe in her own madness.
This is a dream, she told herself and kissed the top of baby Zach’s head. Maybe she could simply wish William away if she closed her eyes and concentrated hard.
“Arabella, what ails you? Are you in pain?” William’s voice interrupted her reverie. Damn him! She’d been doing such a good job of mentally consigning him to oblivion.
She opened her eyes and glared at him. “What ails me is that I’m sick to death of being treated like an empty-headed nincompoop. I’m tired of this dream and I can’t imagine a single good reason why I invented you. You’re a macho nightmare, and I loathe macho men.”
“Enough,” William said tersely. “I cannot allow you to continually give voice to these ravings. For your own sake, if you cannot speak sensibly, you must learn not to speak at all—”
“You don’t seriously believe you can order me to keep silent and expect me to obey?”
“You are my wife, Arabella, however much such a position may irk you, and you must face up to the responsibilities you assumed the day you decided to marry me.”
“Wait, let me get this straight. You’re saying that it’s my wifely duty to lie in bed, doing nothing, preferably not speaking, despite the fact that I feel strong enough to get dressed and go downstairs?”
William looked frustrated. “No, I did not mean... That is to say, you mistake the degree of your strength—”
“Then let me discover my mistake for myself,” she said. “I’m an adult woman, capable of making sensible decisions. I’ll attempt to dress and go downstairs. If I’m exhausted, I’ll come back to bed.”
William looked at her, then smiled—a smile cold enough to raise goose bumps on Robyn’s arms. “Ah,” he said softly. “I see that I am being gauche. Forgive me for the slowness of my wits this morning.”
“What the devil are you talking about now?”
He turned away and walked over to one of the windows. “Undoubtedly you have arranged an assignation with your lover and must needs go downstairs to speak with him. My clumsy concern for your health is destroying your plans.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Of course I don’t have plans for an assignation with my lover. Good grief, even a nymphomaniac wouldn’t want to meet her lover a week after giving birth.” Robyn stopped abruptly, alarmed at what she’d just said. In the heat of her argument with William, she’d again forgotten that this was a dream, and that his accusations were simply another figment of her overactive imagination.
William mistook the reason for her sudden silence. “You always sound most self-righteous when you are most guilty, my dear. The tactic worked for the first few years of our marriage, but the time has come for you to develop a fresh stratagem. Nowadays, your vehemence merely makes me suspicious.”
Her subconscious was obviously determined to depict her as a bitchy blonde with overactive hormones—a startling contrast to her real-life, everyday personality. Why not go with the flow? Robyn thought. It was tantalizing to discover that her character within the context of this dream was so radically different from her true personality. She leaned back in the chair, instinctively shushing and cuddling the baby when he whimpered to protest her movement.
Drawing in a deep breath, she asked William’s back, “What makes you think I have a lover?”
He swung around, seeming momentarily transfixed by the sight of her hand, gently rubbing the baby’s back. He brought his attention back to their conversation with a visible effort.
“Why do I think you have a lover?” He shrugged. “Experience would suggest that it is inevitable. You always have a lover, or at least some poor potential victim caught in your toils and ready to succumb at the first friendly flash from your dazzling blue eyes.”
“Is that how you were caught, William? With a flash from my dazzling blue eyes?”
“Not at all,” he said coolly. “I was a far greater fool than most of my rivals. You did not have to catch me. I jumped headlong—willingly—into your claws.”
“Did you get badly mauled?” she asked softly.
He kicked a log farther into the fire. “I cannot imagine what has provoked this sudden interest in the sorry history of our marriage, my lady. Suffice it to say that I am now impervious to your blandishments.”
“We made a baby together less than nine months ago. Perhaps you are not quite as impervious as you would wish, my lord.”
His mouth tightened. “What happened between us last April was a momentary aberration on my part. Do not count upon repeating that successful seduction scene ever again, my lady, for you will catch cold in your endeavors. Next time you find yourself carrying your lover’s seed, you will not be able to conceal your indiscretion by luring me into your bed and pretending the child is mine,”
Robyn was horrified. “William, you can’t possibly believe I would behave so badly... For goodness’ sake, this baby is your child! Look at him, for God’s sake. I’ve never seen a newborn who looks so much like his father!”
“Such vehemence, my lady, when we both know any resemblance to me is purely coincidental.” William’s voice was coolly mocking. “Change your tactics, my dear, or perhaps save them for Captain Bretton. He is your latest victim, is he not? A successful renewal of old conquests. For myself, I am no longer susceptible.”
“The baby is your child,” Robyn said tersely. She cradled Zach in her arms, rubbing her cheek against his soft skin, frightened and furious to think that his own father was rejecting him.
She felt William’s gaze on her, but she refused to meet his eyes, concentrating instead on Zach’s chubby cheeks and feather-soft hair.
“This argument achieves little,” he said finally. “If you are concerned that your son will be thrust out penniless into the world, you may set those fears at rest. I have never wished to punish your children for the sins of their mother.”
“Our children,” she corrected automatically. “You always call them my children but they are our children, not only mine but yours as well.”
As soon as she spoke, she knew that she was lying. The twins looked very much like their father, but she realized with sudden, devastating certainty that Clementina was not William’s child—couldn’t possibly be his child.
Clementina had brown eyes.
She dropped her gaze from William to baby Zach and shook her head, feeling woozy with the absurdity of her own thoughts. What was wrong with her? This was a dream, why in the world was she arguing with William about the parentage of their nonexistent children? Certainly there was no reason for her to worry about Clementina’s eye color. If she wanted, she could change the child’s eyes from brown to blue with a flip of her own subconscious. She could certainly ignore genetics or any other scientific fact if she chose.
“Your face is unexpectedly revealing, my lady. You are looking most unusually guilty.”
There was absolutely no reason to tell him about Clementina’s eyes. Even in a dream, she didn’t have to confirm William’s darkest suspicions. “I’m not looking guilty, my lord, merely tired. I feel very tired.”
That, at least, was true. She was tired of dreaming this dream, tired of being trapped inside a fantasy world that felt too real for comfort. She wanted, desperately, to wake up.
She looked at William, annoyed to feel her heart beating faster than usual, and even more annoyed to feel her stomach clenching in a sensation close to sexual desire. It occurred to her suddenly that she would only be able to break free of her dream if she refused to accept the limits her mind was imposing. Of course! If she confronted William with the scientific truth about Clementina’s genetic makeup, the fantasy of her eighteenth-century dreamworld would be shattered, and she would wake up.
“I don’t have to worry about hurting your feelings,” she muttered, staring at William. “You’re a projection of my own imagination, so you must know as well as I do that Clementina isn’t your own flesh and blood.”
When she thought about it, that statement didn’t altogether make sense. William was looking at her in stunned, blank silence, and she shrugged her shoulders, impatient with the dream, with herself, with him. “Dammit, William, stop staring at me like that. You must know Clemmie isn’t your daughter. She has brown eyes, for God’s sake!”
The fateful words were out. She waited hopefully to wake up. Nothing happened. The room didn’t dissolve, to be replaced by a hospital bed, and William didn’t move. “Brown eyes?” he repeated at last. “I do not believe I understand you, my lady.”
“Of course you do,” she snapped. “You’re a projection of my subconscious, which means you know everything I know. And that means you understand simple genetic theory. You have blue eyes. I have blue eyes. Blue eyes are a recessive gene, so it’s physically impossible for two blue-eyed parents to produce children with any eye color except shades of blue. Brown-eyed parents can sometimes produce blue-eyed offspring if they both carry a recessive blue gene, but it’s genetically impossible the other way around.”
“Jen-eticlee?” he said, stumbling over the word.
“Yeah, genetically.” Robyn could feel her nerves winding tight with fear and frustration. “William, stop looking so stupidly blank! You know what I’m talking about. Mendel and his experiments with pea pods, or sweet peas, or whatever the heck he studied way back in the nineteenth century. And then in the twentieth century we discovered DNA... the chain of life... and all that other good stuff.”
William stared into the fire. “Many children do not have the same color eyes as their parents,” he said.
Robyn’s thin hold on her patience snapped. “Stop it!” she shouted. “I want this farcical situation to end! Give it up, William. Whoever Clemmie’s father was, you can count on the fact that it wasn’t you. The guy had brown eyes, and passed on his dominant brown-eyed gene to Clementina.”
“So, it seems that Clementina is not my daughter.” William’s face gave no clue as to how this news had affected him. “Tell me, my lady, why do you feel this sudden need to confess that your daughter is no offspring of mine? I do not understand your purpose. You have sworn to me, over and over again, that you have taken no lovers since our marriage. I have never believed you, of course, but your teary-eyed pleas for my faith and trust have been one of the more frequent elements of your role as misunderstood and neglected wife. Now today, for no reason that I can discern, you choose to confess that you have been unfaithful.”
“Maybe I’m tired of lying.” Robyn rose to her feet, her arms tightening around the solid warmth of baby Zach’s body. “Oh, God, I want this crazy charade to end! Why can’t I wake up, dammit! I’m tired of being trapped in a room with a two-hundred-year-old lunatic!”
William tugged at an embroidered bell rope that hung by the fireplace. Without saying a word, he swept Robyn into his arms, carrying both her and the baby over to the bed.
“You need to sleep,” he said, settling her against the pillows. “Trust me, my lady, you will feel better shortly. The blow to your head has doubtless affected your mind more than any of us had realized. Your speedy return to apparent health has deceived us as to the extent of your mental weakness. Give me the baby, Arabella, and I will send Mary to you with a sleeping draft. You must rest, and gather the strength that will allow your wits to return to you in full measure.”
She was perfectly willing to sleep, because if she slept, then she could hope that she would wake up back in the real world, back in the hospital where she undoubtedly lay, surrounded by tubes, IVs, and beeping monitors. But the baby seemed so real to her that she hesitated to hand him over to William. She didn’t want to wake up tomorrow and discover that her husband had murdered her baby. The emotions she felt in this dream were too vivid, too intense, to risk courting that sort of grief.
“This baby is your child,” she said urgently, struggling to sit up in the enveloping softness of the feather mattress. “Don’t hurt him, William, will you? Promise me you won’t hurt our baby?”
“I am not a monster, Arabella. I would not seek revenge for your infidelities upon a helpless infant.”
She realized that he had not accepted the baby as his, but for some reason, she believed absolutely that he wouldn’t hurt the child. Relief sent her collapsing back against the pillows just as Mary came into the room, panting slightly.
“You rang for me, my lord?”
“Her ladyship is exhausted,” William said. “She needs to sleep. You may give her some laudanum to help her rest.”
“Yes, my lord. Do you wish me to send for Annie to take the baby, my lord?”
“I will take him to the nursery myself.”
“Yes, my lord.”
He walked quickly toward the bedroom door without saying another word. Robyn scarcely knew herself why she called him back. “William!”
He hesitated, then swung around. “Yes, my lady?”
“The new baby has blue eyes,” she said.
William didn’t respond, then he smiled bitterly. “Indeed he has. What a fortunate coincidence for all of us.”
* * *
“You will catch your death, my lady.” Mary had been repeating variations on the same theme for close to an hour. She had watched dourly as sweating maidservants poured copper jugs of boiling water into the porcelain tub set in front of the fire, and by now her mouth was pinched tight with disapproval.
Robyn ignored the maid’s warning, just as she had ignored a dozen or so earlier ones. She smiled at the young girl who had brought up the final jug of hot water. “Thank you. Your name is Sukie, isn’t it?”
The girl nodded, bobbing into a curtsy. “Yus, m’lady. I be Sukie.”
“Leave the jug in the hearth near the fire, will you, Sukie? That way, it’ll keep warm. I need to wash my hair.”
The girl gasped and Mary paled. “My lady, the wound on your scalp—”
“Is entirely scabbed over. Mary, no more arguments. I can’t stand to feel this dirty any longer. I’m taking a bath whether you approve or not. Could you please fetch me some soap?”
Mary bent and whispered something into Sukie’s ear. At this precise moment, Robyn didn’t much care what. Sukie nodded, and backed hurriedly from the room. Robyn sighed. Probably another story about her ladyship’s insanity would soon be doing the rounds of the servants’ quarters.
She pulled herself up short, frightened by the ease with which she kept falling into the trap of behaving as if her surroundings were real, and she was truly living this strange life from the past.
Watch it, kid, she warned herself. Remember there are no servants’ quarters. Sukie has no existence once she’s out of your sight.
Imagined or not, the hot bath felt heavenly. Robyn soaped every inch of her skin, refusing to be embarrassed by Mary’s hovering presence, and refusing equally to listen to the maid’s litany of dire warnings about the consequences of immersing her ladyship’s recently pregnant body in such unseemly quantities of hot water.
In the end, Robyn had to give up on the project of washing her hair. Mary flatly refused to help, and lacking the strength of lift the heavy copper jug, Robyn could do no more than soap the ends of her long blond hair and rinse them out in the tub water. Lathering her soft white skin and feeling the alien contours of her body beneath her fingertips was a frightening experience. Even more frightening was the realization that her slender, blue-veined hands had already become familiar to her. Too familiar. She wondered how long it would be before she totally lost her capacity to distinguish between dream and reality.
The bath tired her more than she cared to admit, and she was quite glad to submit to Mary’s determination to wrap her in a huge linen sheet and pat her dry in front of the fire. She was even glad to put on her silk-lined robe and sip a c
up of tea before tackling the task of getting dressed. Her spirits sank even further when a grim-faced Mary started to carry out layer upon layer of starched petticoats, bodices, underblouses, sleeves, stomachers, and satin overskirts. Robyn thought wearily that her subconscious was impressive. She’d had no idea how much information her brain had stored away about female articles of clothing, as worn in the clothing of the eighteenth century in England.
“Your shift, m’lady.” Mary eased the thin linen garment over Robyn’s head, and shook out the heavy lace frills that hung from the sleeves, ending two or three inches above her wrists. The neckline of the shift cut off in the middle of Robyn’s breasts, and the hem reached only to midthigh.
“Where are my pantalets?” she asked, scanning the pile of clothes on the bed. She willed her subconscious to make a pair of panties appear, even if in the guise of an old-fashioned, long-legged garment.
Her subconscious failed to cooperate. Mary looked utterly blank. “Panderlets, my lady? What be they?”
Robyn sighed. “Don’t worry about it. My subconscious is obviously into authenticity today.” She knew from a college course in historical costume that women had gone naked beneath their layers of petticoats until very late in the eighteenth century. Damn! If she hadn’t known that fact, would Mary have been able to produce a pair of panties? Why was her subconscious so fixated on the need to make this dream totally authentic?
“Be you ready for your stockings, my lady?”
She sighed. “Yes, I am. I guess.”
Mary soon had her tied into a pair of knee-high white knitted stockings, which she covered with three layers of stiffened, ruffled petticoats. Robyn hadn’t been standing for more than ten minutes and already her legs ached from the weight of all the material she was carrying around. No wonder William had warned her that getting dressed was an exhausting business. This wasn’t exactly the equivalent of slipping into a pair of sweatpants, topped by a cozy sweater.
Timeless (A Time Travel Romance) Page 15