Timeless (A Time Travel Romance)

by Jasmine Cresswell

  “To warm it, my lady, since you have been out in the starving cold for so long. ‘Twill feel good and hot when you are ready to put it on.”

  Robyn set Zach in his cradle, where he fell instantly asleep. “You spoil me,” she said to Mary. “I’m getting so that I soon won’t remember how to dress myself.”

  “But there’s no reason for you to dress yourself when I’m here, is there, my lady?” Mary bustled around, bringing scented cloths for Robyn to wipe her face and hands, then expertly tying and lacing her into an apricot velvet outfit. She shook out the skirts, adjusted the folds individually. Not satisfied, she shook and folded and shook some more, then sighed. “It looks well enough, my lady, although if you would only allow me to tighten your stays—”

  “Don’t even mention my stays, Mary. I’m already half-dead from lack of oxygen... I mean air.”

  “All I can say is, you look very lively, m’lady, for a woman what is claiming to be half-dead. Still, if you won’t let me lace you up proper, there’s nothing more I can do. You look the best I can manage, m’lady.”

  “It’s an excellent best. You take wonderful care of my clothes, Mary, and of me.”

  The servant flushed. “Thank you, m’lady.” She pointed to the dressing table. “Now, if you’ll sit down, I can brush your hair. We could even use powder and make you look like a proper lady again. I must say, ‘tis downright wonderful how quick your head has healed over. I never would have believed that wound on your scalp would close up so nice, with you insisting on washing your hair so often like you do.”

  Robyn smiled a touch ruefully. “Even crazy people have their flashes of wisdom, it seems.”

  “Right, my lady.” Mary risked a smile. “But not too many of them.”

  Robyn chuckled. At moments like this, she allowed herself to hope that it wouldn’t be long before she persuaded Mary to relax and become the lighthearted, jolly woman she was sure lay trapped somewhere behind the servant’s thin lips and cowering demeanor. At other times, she was less optimistic. Even now, Robyn could sense the fear that hovered beneath every smile, the hesitation that lurked behind every vestige of initiative that Mary showed.

  “What do you say, then? Shall I powder your hair, m’ lady?”

  “Oh, not today. It would take me hours to wash the powder out again. Just pin it up, can you? Nothing too elaborate because we haven’t got time.”

  She did, however, allow Mary to cover the remnants of her red nose with a swish of rice powder, and paint her lips with a carmine concoction that Robyn sincerely hoped didn’t contain anything deadly poisonous like lead or mercury, favorite ingredients in eighteenth-century cosmetics. Then she looped her skirts over her arm and hurried downstairs. She gave an absentminded smile to the inevitable lackeys, posted at the foot of the staircase and staring mindlessly into space. This evening, after dinner, she really would have to talk to William about the swarms of footmen who inhabited Starke. There must be some way to employ them more usefully than posted as sentinels with no function other than to look decorative in blue livery and open doors that Robyn and William could perfectly well open for themselves. With a murmured word of thanks to the bowing flunkeys, she entered the morning room.

  Mrs. Wilkes was seated on the needlepoint embroidered sofa, next to William. In the split second before Mrs. Wilkes looked up and William rose to his feet, Robyn gained a vivid impression of intimacy between the two of them. Mrs. Wilkes had spread out a set of sketches and William laughed as she made some comment. Decorously separated by a foot of hooped skirt from any contact with William’s body, there was nevertheless a hint of yearning in the way Mrs. Wilkes leaned toward him. And in William’s eyes, Robyn could see a glow of answering admiration.

  “I apologize if I have kept you waiting.” Robyn was horrified at the acid note that soured her voice. Good Lord, what was the matter with her? The tightening in the pit of her stomach felt astonishingly like jealousy. She walked quickly across the room, holding out her hands to Mrs. Wilkes, her smile all the more effusive to make up for that odd, irrational moment of resentment.

  “I trust my husband has been keeping you well entertained,” she said. “I had to feed the baby and so took much longer to change than I would have wished.”

  “You have no reason to apologize, my lady. The needs of your new son must take precedence over an uninvited visitor.” Mrs. Wilkes looked flushed and almost pretty, but her voice remained calm and amicable. Whatever her feelings for William, clearly she was accustomed to keeping them well under control.

  “Mistress Wilkes has been showing me some sketches of furniture,” William said. Robyn noticed that his easy manner disappeared as soon as he spoke to her. In fact, he appeared thoroughly disapproving as his gaze flickered over her carefully chosen dress and the swell of her breasts, inevitably displayed by the square, low-cut neckline. Tension stretched between the two of them, their camaraderie of the snowball fight already forgotten in the habitual tug and strain of their relationship. Robyn was aware of a piercing sensation of regret. The game that morning had been such fun.

  “Do you plan to buy new furniture?” she asked Mrs. Wilkes, tearing her gaze from William’s and trying to establish a neutral, friendly topic of conversation. From the silence, and the quick exchange of glances between William and the widow, she realized she had said something foolish.

  Mrs. Wilkes, ever the peacemaker, tried to gloss over Robyn’s error. “You have probably forgotten that we spoke just before your lying-in of my father’s plans to redecorate Oakridge,” she said, her voice encouraging rather than condemning. “Of course, with a new baby to fill your time, you have much more important things on your mind nowadays than the problems I am encountering in choosing a design for my father’s wallpaper!”

  Robyn’s hands felt chilled and she held them out to the blaze of the fire. “Er... yes, it has been a busy time for me, with many changes in my life.” She hesitated for a moment, then decided to confront the problem of the Gallery’s “Farleigh cabinet” head on. “Is it possible... I seem to remember that we talked about a new cabinet your father has ordered,” she said, with a false air of casualness. “Am I right?”

  “Indeed you are,” Mrs. Wilkes said warmly. “I mentioned to you that there is a talented young cabinetmaker who has just set up a temporary workshop in Bristol, and my father has decided to purchase a cabinet and several chairs from him. Master Chippendale has been most diligent in executing the commission.”

  “Master Chippendale!” Robyn exclaimed. “Do you mean Thomas Chippendale is making your new furniture?”

  Mrs. Wilkes smiled at her obvious excitement. “Why yes, I believe that is his Christian name. How clever of you to remember! My father prides himself on his expert eye where cabinetry work is concerned, and he insists that this young man is destined to go far.”

  “Your father is evidently a man of discernment,” Robyn murmured. “Are these the sketches of Chippendale’s work?” She sat down on the sofa beside Mrs. Wilkes, rather pleased with the cool nonchalance of her manner. Inside, she was experiencing a riot of conflicting emotions, not least the professional excitement of actually seeing and hearing Thomas Chippendale’s work discussed years before he had become an object of veneration to furniture makers around the world.

  “These are the pieces my father has already decided to buy,” Mrs. Wilkes said, spreading out the drawings. “Here is the cabinet Papa is so excited about.” She pointed to a well-executed sketch, delicately colored, and Robyn felt almost no surprise when she realized that the drawing was of the cabinet she had last seen displayed in the showrooms of the Bowleigh Gallery.

  “Why does your father like this cabinet so much?” she asked, needing to say something to cover the disorientation she felt on seeing such a tangible point of convergence between her two lives.

  “Because of the exotic decorative motif.” Mrs. Wilkes smiled fondly. “My father visited India once, as I am sure he has mentioned to you on far too many occasions, a
nd he actually saw several elephants during his stay there. He swears it is as strange a beast as the artist depicts here, and of the most enormous size, three times as tall as a man.”

  William chuckled. “Your father’s tales of his travels are highly entertaining, Mistress Wilkes, but I must inform you that the size of the elephant increases every time Mr. Farleigh recounts the hair-raising story of his ride between the beast’s giant ears. I am beginning to think that, in truth, the monster is not quite as awesome as its reputation.”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Farleigh isn’t exaggerating, elephants are huge,” Robyn said, looking up and forcing William to meet her eyes. “Perhaps not quite three times the height of a man, but they weigh as much as six tons when they are fully grown. Even in captivity, they routinely live to be sixty years old, and in the wild, there are many stories of hundred-year-old animals.”

  “You are remarkably well informed,” William said. “I would be interested to hear the source of your information.”

  “My first-grade teacher,” Robyn said sweetly. “And the tour guides at the Washington Zoo.” Her voice tailed off into silence as she registered the look of pain in William’s eyes and saw the array of embarrassed emotions crossing Mrs. Wilkes’s face. The widow looked first bemused, then startled, and finally her expression softened into sympathy.

  “How... how interesting,” she said, hastily gathering up the pictures of the furniture and reaching out to lay a soothing hand on Robyn’s arm. She smiled brightly. Too brightly. “Now, my dear Lady Arabella, we must not talk anymore of bizarre beasts like elephants when we have so many more important matters to discuss. Tell me how your new son fares. I trust he is as robust as his lordship has been telling me?”

  “Yes, he is very strong, thank God.” Robyn flushed guiltily. She had recited her information about zoos and elephants knowing that she would cause consternation. She had deliberately tossed her alien wisdom into the conversation and sat back to watch the reactions of William and the too-good-to-be-true Mrs. Wilkes. Whatever she had hoped to achieve, she had failed. She had simply confirmed that it was easy for her to cause William pain, and that Mrs. Wilkes was a genuinely kind woman who reacted to signs of Lady Arabella’s “madness” with nothing but compassion.

  Hoping to make amends, she smiled at Mrs. Wilkes with all the friendliness she could muster. “Zachary is in my room,” she said. “Why don’t you come upstairs to my bedroom and we can see if he is awake? As you can imagine, he still spends most of his time sleeping.”

  Mrs. Wilkes folded her hands tightly in her lap. She appeared stunned. “Z-Zachary is in your... bedroom?” she murmured.

  “Lady Arabella has chosen to call her son by my brother’s name,” William said, his voice cool as a floating iceberg.

  “Oh, good heavens, you mean the baby is in your bedroom. I had no idea you had called him Zachary. I understood he was to be christened Arthur. At this perilous time, the risks—” Mrs. Wilkes broke off abruptly. “I beg your pardon, I am becoming incoherent. No doubt I have been traveling too long and the jouncing of the carriage has rattled my wits.”

  Robyn’s smile was tinged with bitterness. “My dear Mrs. Wilkes, pray don’t apologize. Surely you realize by now that in this house, rattled wits are all the fashion.”

  A muffled sound from William’s direction might have been a crack of laughter, but when Robyn turned to look at him, she could detect only remote, bland indifference. She held his gaze, her chin thrust upward in challenge. “Do, please, come and see the baby, Mrs. Wilkes. I want you to tell me how handsome he is, and of course, you mustn’t forget to mention how much he looks like his father. William insists he cannot see the likeness.”

  In the end, Mrs. Wilkes not only spent half an hour admiring the baby, at William’s invitation she also stayed to eat her dinner at Starke Manor, leaving just in time to complete the eight-mile drive back to Oakridge before darkness closed in completely. Robyn was grateful for the widow’s tranquilizing presence at the dinner table. By sheer force of her good nature, Mrs. Wilkes kept the conversation flowing, displaying a kindly disposition, spiced with intelligence and keen powers of observation. Robyn decided she would have liked the sprightly Mrs. Wilkes even if the widow hadn’t demonstrated her superb good sense by falling in love with baby Zach the moment she set eyes on him.

  William was all smiles and kind solicitude as he waved good-bye to Mrs. Wilkes from the portico, but as soon as her carriage rumbled out of sight, he retreated to the library without attempting to speak to Robyn. So much for their supposed truce, Robyn thought ruefully. The evening stretched ahead, long and lonely. There was nothing for it but to retire to her sitting room and take another stab at adding a few stitches to the flawless embroidery Lady Arabella had been working on prior to the accident.

  She was halfway up the stairs to her room before indignation overtook her. Why was she giving in so meekly? What was William’s problem, anyway? By what right did he bestow smiles and kind words on Mrs. Wilkes, and simultaneously heap scorn and disapproval on his wife? No wonder Arabella flirted with every male specimen who came in sight if she was constantly subjected to William’s freezing and irrational displeasure.

  Robyn swung around and stormed down the stairs, her temper on slow simmer. She marched along the hallway and flung open the door to William’s study. It banged back against the linen-fold paneling, but Robyn didn’t even wince at the prospect of damage to the priceless wood carving.

  She glared at William. “What the devil have I done to offend your high and mighty lordship this time?” she demanded.

  With careful deliberation, William set down his quill and closed the small ledger in which he had been writing. Illogically, it infuriated Robyn even more to think that he had been calm enough to sit down and tot up the estate accounts, or write business letters, or whatever he’d been doing. Why hadn’t he been drowning his sorrows in after-dinner brandy, for heaven’s sake? Didn’t anything ever ruffle the wretched man’s composure? And most infuriating of all, did he always have to look so wretchedly handsome?

  “Don’t rush into an answer,” she said with heavy sarcasm. “Take a week or so to think about it, if you need the time. Lord knows, you may have to scratch around before you can find anything remotely logical to complain about in my behavior.”

  “I need no time,” William said, his voice sounding flat and distant. “You mistake the situation, my lady. You have not displeased me, and I am not angry.”

  Robyn almost snorted. “Well, if this is your way of showing warm approval, I sure as heck hope I never do anything to offend your high and mightiness. If I haven’t offended you, then what’s the reason for the freezing looks? The hostile silence? Come to that, what’s happened to the truce I thought we’d agreed on yesterday?”

  William pushed back his chair and walked across the room to the fireplace. He stared into the heart of the fire, his face in shadow, his body silhouetted against the flickering yellow glow of the flames. “I apologize,” he said at last. “I have not been very good company. I did not intend to appear discourteous—”

  “You weren’t discourteous,” Robyn said impatiently. “You were angry. Why? What have I done?”

  “Nothing that I should not have expected,” he said. “You cannot help yourself, Arabella, I realize that now. But Mistress Wilkes is a good woman who has extended nothing but kindness to our family. She makes no pretension to beauty and high fashion. She would laugh at the very idea that anyone might consider her your rival. Was it really necessary for you to set out with such brutal deliberation to humiliate her?”

  Robyn blinked and shook her head. “Wait a minute, say that again. You’re accusing me of setting out to humiliate Mrs. Wilkes? You can’t possibly mean that I did something to hurt her feelings today?”

  “Of course you did, Arabella.” It was William’s turn to sound impatient. “I know how angry you must have been that Mistress Wilkes encountered you when you came in from the snowball fight, wearing an old woo
len gown, but that was not reason enough to wreak such a mean-spirited revenge.”

  Robyn’s indignation dissipated in a cloud of bewilderment. “You won’t believe this, but I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Have you not?” William gave a muttered exclamation and strode across the room, grabbing her shoulders and spinning her around so that she stood in front of a beveled glass mirror that adorned the space between two sets of bookshelves. “Look at yourself,” he commanded. “Look at yourself and then tell me that you bore no malice toward Mistress Wilkes when you ordered your maidservant to dress you in this outfit.”

  Robyn stared into the mirror, her stomach jolting with shock as it always did when she confronted the alien image of Lady Arabella. She could see absolutely nothing special about her appearance, however, and she spoke stonily.

  “Except for flushed cheeks and a lingering trace of red nose, I see only the usual Lady Arabella,” she said. “But what has my appearance to do with our discussion? I bear Mrs. Wilkes no malice, and I assure you that I did not intend to hurt her feelings in any way.”

  William’s face darkened with a flush of renewed anger. “You are not a convincing liar, my lady. You have exquisite judgment where matters of dress and fashion are concerned. Why did you leave your hair uncurled and unpowdered, if not to contrast with the unfortunate style of Mistress Wilkes’s wig? Why did you choose your most richly embroidered gown if not to emphasize that Mistress Wilkes came calling in crumpled travel clothes of gray serge and dark worsted?”

  She was so stunned by the misconstruction he had put on her efforts to dress smartly in honor of their visitor that for a moment she couldn’t speak. His expression turned to one of mockery, and he flicked the lace ruffles that formed a collar to her dress.