Timeless (A Time Travel Romance)

by Jasmine Cresswell

  “I have your new stays, my lady. I sewed on the lace whilst you wus laid up from birthing the babe.” Mary held out an ominous-looking white corset, and Robyn shuddered. She had a sudden memory of talking with Zach in his apartment about the horrors of the old-fashioned corset, and she felt a surge of such aching loneliness that her throat tightened and she knew she was only the blink of an eye away from tears. Dear God, what did she need to do in order to escape from this nightmare and find herself back in secure, familiar surroundings, with Zach waiting to welcome her? Cradling her arms around her waist, she faced the fear that was growing stronger with every passing minute: maybe she wasn’t going to wake up. Maybe the bullet had damaged her brain so badly that she was condemned to spend the rest of her life trapped in this eerie fantasy world.

  “M’lady?” Mary sounded hesitant. “M’lady? Is something wrong? You’ve gone horrible pale, like.”

  “No, I’m fine.” Robyn forced herself to smile. “But I think I’ll skip the corsets... the stays today.”

  “I don’t understand, m’lady. What has skipping to do with your stays? Skipping is a game for children, m’lady.”

  “Right, I guess it is.” Robyn drew in a deep breath. “Okay... I mean... very well, tell me the worst. How tight are you planning to tie those things?”

  “Don’t worry, m’lady, I’ll tie ‘em ever so tight.” Mary beamed, pleased to have given the right answer at last. She hummed under her breath as she slipped the straps of the corset over Robyn’s shoulders. “Is any of the stays poking into you, m’lady?”

  “Yes, all of them.”

  Mary fussed and fidgeted until Robyn agreed that none of the steel spines was hurting her. In truth, the corset was well padded and cupped the underside of her breasts so that it so that it was nowhere near as uncomfortable as she’d imagined.

  “You hold on to the bedpost and I’ll tug and pull till you’re squeezed right back to your proper shape, m’lady. We can do it, I know we can.”

  “Straight out of Gone With the Wind,” Robyn murmured to herself. “Any minute now I can pretend to be Vivien Leigh playing Scarlett O’Hara and throw a temper tantrum because my waist isn’t eighteen inches anymore. Ouch!” She let out a yell as Mary gave a final brisk tug to the corset strings.

  “Stop, for heaven’s sake!” Robyn protested, all thoughts of Scarlett vanishing in a gasp of pain. “Good grief, Mary, you’ll crush my ribs if you tighten those laces any more.”

  “No, m’lady, don’t worry. The ribs in these stays be made of finest steel. They won’t break no matter what.” She tugged again, and Robyn could feel the breath squeezing out of her lungs.

  “Enough,” she insisted. “Mary, no more.”

  The maidservant frowned. “I don’t know as how you’ll be able to fit into your gown, m’lady, with your stays that loose. Although you lost some flesh what with the birthing fever and all.”

  Loose? This corset was supposed to be loose? No wonder women in the eighteenth century had died young, Robyn thought hysterically. The effort to breathe when stuffed into their tight stays undoubtedly killed them off in short order.

  Mary removed the muslin wrap from the, gown lying on the bed and held it up for Robyn’s inspection. “I chose the blue silk, m’lady. I know ‘tis one of your favorites.”

  Robyn stared at the silvery-blue dress in silence. Mary rustled the peach-colored flounce anxiously, smoothing out a nonexistent crease in one of the velvet ribbons. “I can fetch another gown, should you prefer it, my lady.”

  Robyn swallowed hard. “No, no. That one will be fine.” In truth, she didn’t think she had ever seen a more stunningly beautiful gown. A tiny part of her couldn’t help thinking how much fun it would be to wear such a fabulous outfit.

  “Very good, my lady.” Mary slipped the dress over her head. It fell in soft, shimmering folds of satin over the stiffened, starched layers of her petticoats.

  “The bodice, my lady.” With skillful fingers, Mary attached the tabs of the bodice to the matching tabs on the skirt, creating the illusion of a one-piece gown.

  “The sleeves, my lady.” Mary adjusted the blue satin sleeves over the linen sleeves of Robyn’s shift, leaving the lace ruffles of the shift clearly visible beneath the outer sleeve, and fixing the outer sleeves in place with a combination of gold-tipped pins and tiny ribbons.

  “Your dressing cape, my lady.” Mary wrapped a full, waist-length cloak of white linen over Robyn’s shoulders. “If you would sit at the dressing table, my lady, I will paint your face and dress your hair.”

  “I’m not going to bother with makeup... paint... today,” Robyn said. She suspected that if she once sat down on the embroidered damask stool in front of the dressing table, she would be too exhausted to get up again and go downstairs. And she was determined to leave the bedroom before fatigue overcame her. She cherished the hope that the moment she stepped out into the corridor, the dreamworld would vanish. If not that, then at least she hoped to find another mirror. She clung to the belief that if she looked into a full-length mirror, she would see the old, redheaded Robyn she knew rather than the blond, blue-eyed Lady Arabella everyone insisted she had become. Robyn felt she had good grounds for hope—it was highly suspicious that William had ordered the mirrors removed from her room. Surely that meant he was afraid she would see her own familiar image reflected back to her instead of the alien image of Lady Arabella? And once she mentally reclaimed her own body, Robyn was confident the dream would end.

  She rubbed her aching forehead, and Mary picked up one of the silver-backed brushes from the dressing table. “Does your head hurt, my lady?”

  “Just a little.”

  “I have to pin your hair up, my lady. You cannot leave your bedchamber with your hair hanging loose about your shoulders.”

  “You’re right, but chose a simple style, will you? The cut on my scalp is still quite sore.”

  “Yes, m’lady.” The maid brushed gently, her expert fingers making short work of the snarls. There was no mirror, of course, but Robyn could feel the expertise with which Mary swirled her long hair into a soft knot at the nape of her neck, and then pinned it into place.

  “I be finished, my lady. I have done the best that I can. There has been no time to heat the curling irons.”

  Robyn heard the note of hesitation in the maid’s voice, the familiar undercurrent of fear, and she hated knowing she was the cause of it. She swung around on the stool, resting her hand gently on Mary’s arm.

  “You’ve done a wonderful job, I’m sure,” she said. “Besides, everyone knows that my head was cut open. No one will blame you if my hair doesn’t look quite as stylish as usual. Certainly not me.”

  Mary’s eyes were watchful, uncertain. “You are very good, my lady. Thank you, my lady.”

  The maid’s gratitude was almost as bad as her fear. “I’m not good at all,” Robyn said. She stood up and shook out her skirts, mentally preparing for action. “Time to sally forth. I wonder what I’m going to find out there in the hallway?”

  Chapter 8

  Robyn stepped out of the bedroom, heart pounding hard and fast with anticipation. Feeling very much like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, she squeezed her eyes tightly shut and wished with all her might to wake up in familiar surroundings. After thirty seconds or so, she opened her eyes and glanced around, slowly expelling the air from her lungs as she fought to control her disappointment.

  Nothing had changed. She was still in an old-fashioned hallway, still wearing the same satin gown, still laced into stays that pinched if she moved too quickly. Robyn pressed her hand against her mouth, clamping her teeth together so that she wouldn’t scream or cry out. She had been counting heavily on waking up as soon as she left Arabella’s bedroom, but it seemed that escaping into the hallway hadn’t broken the spellbinding power of her dream.

  What if this isn’t a dream?

  She couldn’t prevent the terrifying thought from taking shape in her mind. What if she had gone mad, and was
hearing conversations that weren’t really taking place, and seeing people who weren’t really there?

  What if the bullet shot into her brain had thrown her into some hideous time warp, and she was living the life of Lady Arabella Bowleigh, nearly two hundred and fifty years in the past?

  “No!” Robyn realized she had spoken aloud at the same moment she realized she was shaking from head to toe. Good grief, if she ever started to believe she was trapped in the past, imprisoned inside another woman’s body, she might as well accept that she had gone mad.

  “Get a grip on yourself, kid,” she muttered. “Okay, so you didn’t wake up when you left Arabella’s room. No big deal. Just make yourself a new plan. It’s up to you to decide how to end this dream.”

  What should she try next? Would going downstairs break the spell and allow her to wake up?

  Robyn looked around, registering the perfect eighteenth-century ambience of her surroundings. But, of course, that didn’t mean much. She knew enough about antique furniture and decor that her mind was perfectly capable of providing her with an authentic setting. The corridor looked like a dozen other hallways she had visited in historic manor houses, with paneled walls, a white plaster ceiling, and a polished wooden floor covered by a center strip of patterned carpeting. The staircase itself was an exquisite period piece, typical of the late seventeenth century, and gorgeously decorated with painted panels of cherubs, mythical beasts, and scenes from Greek legends. It would fetch a small fortune on the international antiques market—except that it existed only in her imagination.

  “Mamma, Mamma! You is all pwetty again!” Clementina hurtled down the stairs from the third floor, with Sukie running behind her. “I am pwetty, too! Look at me!”

  The maid grabbed Clementine’s sash just before the child careened into her mother. “Miss Clemmie, remember your manners!” she hissed.

  Clementina pouted, but she skidded to a halt two inches from the edge of Robyn’s huge skirts and dipped into a curtsy. “Good day, Mamma. I hope you is feeling better. I have been a good girl. I di’n’t get my dwess dirty.”

  Robyn laughed, delighted to have her gloomy thoughts interrupted. She bent down so that she was almost at eye level with Clementina and gave the child a quick hug.

  “I’m glad to see you,” she said. “Very glad. I was just going to take a walk around the house. Would you like to come with me?”

  “Downstairs?” Clementina asked. Her hazel eyes opened wide with wonder. “You mean I can come downstairs wiv you?”

  “I will take her back to the nursery, my lady.” Sukie bowed her head. “I’m sorry she got away from me, my lady. Sometimes she do move so fast, I can scarce catch up with her.”

  “There’s no need to apologize.” Robyn was heartily sick of cringing servants and cowed children. “I’m glad to spend some time with my daughter. I’ll take care of her, so you can have a rest from chasing her for a while.”

  She held out her hand and Clementina took it after a split second of hesitation. “All right, Clemmie, where shall we go first?”

  “To the kitchens!” Clementina exclaimed. “We can play wiv Polly. She is fat.”

  “Is Polly the cook?” Robyn asked, and knew she had guessed wrong when she saw Sukie stare.

  “Polly is a cat,” Clementina explained patiently. “My old mamma—the one who was here before you—doesn’t like cats, but I like Polly ‘cos she is soft and furry. Do you like cats, Mamma?”

  It was disconcerting to hear the casual way in which Clemmie accepted the disappearance of one mother, and the substitution of another. Perhaps she was so close to infancy that she saw with the clear-sighted vision of a soul not yet tainted by subterfuge. Robyn looked like the missing Lady Arabella, but Clementina instinctively recognized—and accepted—that a different person lived within the familiar body of her “old Mamma.”

  “I like cats. And dogs, too,” Robyn felt the waves of disbelief emanating from Sukie. All right, so Lady Arabella didn’t like pets, Robyn thought. Well, too bad. The woman sounded like a totally obnoxious person, who didn’t deserve to have a daughter as cute as Clementina and a beautiful son like Zach.

  Robyn pulled her thoughts to an abrupt full stop, afraid of the direction they were once again taking. “Come on,” she said to Clementina, helping the little girl to hop down the stairs on wobbly, pudgy legs. “Let’s go and meet Polly and ask her why she’s so fat. Has she been eating too much of Cook’s roast beef, do you think?”

  Clementina giggled. “She eats mice, Mamma. That’s why she lives in the kitchen. To eat up all the mice. And the rats, too, if they aren’t too big.”

  Mice and rats in the kitchen? Robyn decided to change the direction of the conversation. “Let’s ask cook to make us a special treat for our lunch,” she said. “What would you like best of all?”

  “Spun sugar swans!” Clementina jumped up and down in excitement. “Sugar swans, and custard tarts and syllabubs.”

  Robyn chuckled. “Whoa, steady on! If you eat all those desserts, you’ll get as fat as Polly.”

  “My ozzer mamma said I was pudding faced. Is that the same as being fat?”

  Robyn squashed an irrational impulse to find the missing Lady Arabella and inform her she was a rotten mother. “No, of course you’re not fat,” she told Clementina. “In my opinion, you’re just right. And your face is the perfect shape for a little girl who is three.”

  “I is nearly four.” Clementina glanced thoughtfully at Robyn. “I’m glad my old mamma went away,” she confided. “You smile a lot more than my ozzer mamma.”

  Robyn looked down at the upturned face of the little girl, swallowing over the lump that had suddenly appeared in her throat. She bent down and put her arms around Clemmie’s shoulders. Quite apart from the hazel-brown eyes, the child’s features bore no resemblance to William’s. So who was her father? Robyn wondered. She wished she’d taken possession of Arabella’s memories as well as the wretched woman’s body, then she would know who the child’s father was. It was so frustrating to be thrust into a situation where she could lay claim to only a tiny fraction of the facts.

  Chills feathered down Robyn’s spine as she realized what she was thinking. Furious with herself, she pushed the crazy thoughts away. She might have been struck in the head by a bullet but she wasn’t going to glide into madness. Not while she had the willpower left to prevent it.

  Clementina patted her cheek. “Don’t look sad, Mamma. We is going to have a lovely day.”

  Robyn nuzzled Clemmie’s soft curls and gave up trying to understand what was happening to her. “Yes,” she said. “We’re going to have a lovely day. Listen! Did you hear a cat meow? I think it’s time for you to introduce me to Polly.”

  * * *

  In the space of four exhausting days, with the twins and Clementina romping happily at her heels, Robyn explored Starke Manor from attics to cellar. The twins were eager to lead her into tiny rooms under the eaves that she might otherwise have missed, and she even breached the sacrosanct precincts of William’s library, but she still found no trace of a piped water supply, or electricity, or a phone, or a fridge, or a TV, or any of the other appliances that kept life functioning at the dawn of the twenty-first century. In fact, the harder she looked, the more Robyn was forced to concede that there wasn’t a single item anywhere in the house that looked as if it had been produced after the middle of the eighteenth century. Mary had claimed they were living in the year 1746, and Robyn could find nothing in the house that gave the lie to the servant’s outrageous statement. Her subconscious, she thought with wry humor, was determined not to let her slip into anachronisms.

  She did find several mirrors, but they provided no comfort. All of them reflected back the disquieting image of a willowy blonde, with a fragile, delicate neck, and huge, worried blue eyes. Robyn recognized the woman who appeared in the mirrors all too well—she was Lady Arabella Bowleigh, the woman in the Gainsborough portrait hanging in Zach’s living room. Seeing the fair perfe
ction of her new features, Robyn would never have believed she could yearn with such intensity for the return of her once-despised red curls, not to mention her snub nose and freckles.

  She was nursing baby Zach, and struggling to make sense of her discoveries, when Mary came into the bedroom, a burgundy satin gown draped over her arm and a note in her hand. She held out the note to Robyn. “From his lordship, my lady.”

  Robyn managed to unfold the heavy, cream-colored paper without causing any interruption in baby Zach’s eager suckling.

  My Lady, the note said in exquisite black-inked copperplate. I wish that you will join me at dinner today so that we may celebrate your rapid return to health and strength. We shall dine at three. Ever Yr. Obedient Servant, Yr. Husband, William Bowleigh.

  “The master has ordered dinner to be put back an hour so that you may have time to complete your toilette, my lady. I finished sewing the skirt of this gown back together so as you could wear it, if you wish. It cleaned very well, and looks as good as new.”

  Dinner at Starke Manor seemed to be served in the early afternoon rather than at night, but Robyn was already hungry—nursing the baby always left her feeling ravenous—and she squashed her instinctive impulse to refuse William’s peremptory invitation. Since she couldn’t seem to wake up from this dream, why not spend an hour or so pretending that she was dining with an eighteenth-century aristocrat in his country manor? She laid the drowsy baby in his cradle, which she had ordered brought from the nursery, and smiled at the maid. “Okay... I mean... very well. Baby Zach’s changed and fed, so I’m ready for my bath.”

  “The water’s being brought, my lady.” Mary sounded resigned. After days of argument, the two of them had reached an uneasy compromise. Mary no longer protested her mistress’s insane obsession with soap and water. Robyn no longer protested the layers of petticoats and the hours, literally that it took to lace, tie, pin, and sew her into each elaborate outfit.