Timeless (A Time Travel Romance)

by Jasmine Cresswell

  The traditional plum puddings had been boiled months earlier and put into the larder to steep in brandy, but Jean-Luc still worked at frenzied speed, supervising his kitchen minions in an orgy of baking, boiling, and roasting, preparing special treats for each of the Twelve Days of Christmas, and organizing huge quantities of food for the Boxing Day feast. The day after Christmas, the dependents of Starke would come to the Manor and gorge themselves on ale, cakes, and hot ham, before collecting their Christmas boxes as a reward for another year of loyal service to the baron. Wages for the laborers on the estate amounted to about fifteen pounds a year—William was considered a recklessly extravagant employer—so Robyn soon realized that the silver penny polished and wrapped for each child was a generous gift. Excitement was guaranteed as the children searched for their pennies, hidden in the family Christmas box amid nuts, prunes, and fragrant dried apples from the Manor’s own orchards.

  Now that she had learned not to ask the ingredients of the dishes served to her, Robyn was finding Jean-Luc’s food delicious. Mince pies, rich with suet and far less sweet than their twentieth-century counterparts, had become Robyn’s personal nemesis. With so many servants waiting to do her bidding, she fought a constant battle against the temptation of ordering pies at all hours of the day and night. On this chilly, overcast morning, she had just succumbed to temptation and was biting into the hot, flaky crust of a sample from Jean-Luc’s latest batch, when the twins and Clemmie gave a perfunctory scratch at the door and burst into her sitting room. They sketched the obligatory bows and curtsies and tumbled across the room, calling out instructions as they progressed.

  “You must come now,” Clemmie informed her. “You are late.”

  George nodded. “Hurry up, Mamma, there is no time to waste eating.

  Robyn, who would have expected the twins to find time to eat on their way to the Day of Judgment, abandoned her pie. “Good heavens, what’s happened? What’s wrong?”

  “Papa is taking us to bring home the Yule log!” Freddie announced.

  Robyn’s acquaintance with Yule logs had been limited to chocolate cakes in the supermarket freezer. “Papa is bringing home the Yule log? I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what you mean.”

  “Of course you do, Mamma.” Freddie took her hand. “You know that Papa always cuts down the tree three days before Christmas.”

  “We must set the Yule log burning as soon as dusk falls on Christmas Eve, and keep it burning all night long, to light the way for the Christ child.” George couldn’t understand his mother’s failure to start moving. Even Clementina tugged at Robyn’s skirts.

  “Come quick, Mamma. Papa is waiting.” She waved her muff in the air, and gave a little twirl of anticipation: “I love chopping down trees!”

  By the time Robyn arrived downstairs with the children, a spirited knot of servants had already gathered outside the front door, mugs in hand. William was seated in one of the farm carts, holding the reins of two sturdy plow horses, strong enough to haul home the log. In honor of the occasion, the cart had been decorated with banners of bright red flannel, the manes of the horses plaited with ribbon, and the plank seats of the cart lined with thick woolen blankets. Chattering nonstop, the children clambered into the cart, impatient to be off.

  William looked down at Robyn and his mouth curved into a faint smile. He swept off his hat, absurdly elegant even though he was seated at the helm of a hay cart. He inclined his head. “My lady.”

  She hoped the servants would attribute her bright red cheeks to the cold. She curtsied. “My lord.”

  He leaned down and offered her his hand to assist her into the cart. “I was not sure that you would come,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

  He looked at her, eyes gleaming. “How relieved I am that your... exertions... last night did not exhaust you.”

  The red in her cheeks flamed several degrees brighter. Despite three weeks of sharing William’s bed, she still didn’t feel relaxed in his company. She looked at him with deliberate blankness. “What exertions do you speak of, my lord? I confess that I can’t recall anything special.”

  William’s eyes gleamed darker. “Can you not? I am desolate. Tonight I must clearly strive to make more of an impression.” He whipped up the horses, giving her no chance to reply, since anything she said would have been drowned in the chorus of encouraging shouts from the accompanying servants and children.

  The plow horses traversed the countryside at a steady, ambling trot. In the back of the cart, the children started to sing. Clemmie’s voice, although scarcely out of babyhood, was clear and true. The twins, less tuneful, sang with equal gusto, and the servants occasionally hummed the harmony or banged out the rhythm with their mugs. The words of the songs were unfamiliar, but Robyn recognized most of the melodies. It gave her a strange feeling to realize that a dozen generations into the future, children still sang the same Christmas tunes as their ancestors.

  The oak tree that had been chosen as the source for this year’s Yule log grew to the north of the woods where Robyn had first encountered Captain Bretton. With a disregard for safety that would have given any twenty-first century employer heart failure, two dozen of William’s men had gathered to chop down the tree, which stood almost thirty feet tall, and measured close to a yard in diameter. Alternately swinging lethal-looking axes, and reinforcing themselves with something potent out of stoneware jars, the self-appointed woodsmen were clearly having a wonderful time. Robyn was relieved to see that there were some ropes looped around the upper branches, presumably ready to guide the tree to the ground, but the whole operation looked dangerous in the extreme. She ignored the children’s protests and held Clemmie firmly by the hand, insisting that the twins stay close to her, out of range whichever way the tree happened to fall.

  William didn’t attempt to countermand her orders to the children, but he tried to reassure her. “My men know exactly what they are doing, you know. You need have no fears for the children’s safety.”

  “How can you say that? Good Lord, William, half a dozen of those woodcutters can barely stand upright, let alone make intricate calculations about the angle of their cuts!”

  “But if you watch closely, you will see that the ones who are drunk are no longer working. Those who drink are the older men who have already completed their share of the chopping.”

  “Well, I sure hope the tree falls down before they do. What are they imbibing with such enthusiasm?”

  William smiled. “Ginger wine, made from a recipe first written down by my father’s grandmother. You should taste it sometime. It does a marvelous job of keeping out the cold.”

  “And numbing the brain, too, I’ll bet!”

  He smiled again. “Don’t worry, my lady. The Yule log will be cut and shaped without mishap, ready to burn for us on Christmas Eve.” He strolled over to the trestle table and accepted a pewter tankard from Aaron, who seemed to be acting as impromptu foreman for the operation. Robyn couldn’t hear what they said, but she was horrified to see William drink deeply, then accept an ax from Aaron and stroll toward the ominously swaying tree.

  “Good heavens, what is your father going to do?” she demanded of the children.

  “He is going to cut down the tree for the Yule log,” George said.

  “Himself? In person? But I thought aristocrats never lifted a finger in the eighteenth century! For goodness’ sake, doesn’t he realize that chopping down a tree that big could kill him—could hurt somebody?”

  The twins looked at her blankly. “Papa is the Baron of Starke,” Freddie reminded her, as if that explained everything. “It is his duty to cut down the Yule log.”

  “It is the tradition,” George said and Freddie nodded, clearly considering this the final word on the subject.

  Clemmie skipped in a small circle, clapping her hands. “Look! Papa is going to cut the tree down now!”

  A great cheer rose from the assembled laborers as their lord and master stro
de into the chip-strewn clearing around the tree. William bowed in acknowledgment, then raised the ax and brought it down with a thundering blow at the apex of the tree trunk. The tree shuddered, but remained standing. He swung the ax twice more, and then a third time. The tree teetered, creaked, and swayed into a lumbering, graceful fall. The noise of its crash was deafening, and when the reverberations finally died away, a roar of approval went up from the crowd.

  “Hurrah! The Yule log is cut! Three cheers for his lordship!”

  “Four blows,” George said. “That was very good of Papa.”

  “Last year he took six,” Freddie commented.

  As the cheers died away, Robyn could hear the twitter and caw of frightened wildlife, but nobody else paid any heed to the scampering squirrels and nervous rabbits. A swarm of men descended upon the tree the instant the dust cleared. Some worked at chopping off the upper branches, but the largest number ranged themselves on either side of a huge saw, supported on trestles. Four men worked in concert on each side, sweat running off their foreheads and dripping from their noses as they sawed through the massive trunk. After fifteen minutes or so, the first team of cutters was replaced. and the rhythmic sawing continued with new men. Robyn realized that cuts were being made at foot-long intervals, and each man was taking possession of a giant wheel of trunk, leaving a section about six feet long and three feet in diameter to serve as the Yule log for the Manor.

  Tired of standing on the sidelines, Clemmie and the twins begged for permission to join the other children, who were playing a game similar to pin the tail on the donkey, except that a wooden peg had to be slotted into a small box. With the tree safely felled, Robyn gave them permission to play. The twins instantly improved the game by surrounding the box with a wreath of holly, which meant that misjudgments by the “blindman” were inevitably punished by a painful scratch. The twins’ innovation was much admired by the other children, who all competed to show the most bravado when pricked by the holly. All, that is, except Clemmie, who showed no bravado, but won the game by the simple process of peering under the blindfold and cheating. Robyn wasn’t sure whether to be appalled at Clemmie’s lack of honor or impressed by her ingenuity.

  Shrugging back into his greatcoat, William came over to join her as the children refreshed themselves with foaming mugs of ginger beer and heavily spiced ginger cookies. “We are fortunate that the ground remains frozen,” he said. “Last year we ended up slithering around in a pool of mud. You can scarcely imagine the spectacle we presented by the end of the morning.”

  “On the contrary, I can imagine it well.” She smiled. “You may have been chilled and dirty, but I’m sure none of you felt any pain.”

  He frowned in puzzlement. “Why would we feel pain? We were not wounded.”

  “I meant only that you would have been warmed by the ginger wine,” she said, disconcerted at the need to explain her idiom.

  “Ah! Now I understand. But you wrong me, my lady. I was, as always, the very model of dull sobriety.”

  “You are never dull, William, and you know it, so stop fishing for compliments.”

  He smiled. “How can I, my dear, when you deliver them with such sweet tartness?”

  A robin, disturbed by all the commotion, flew out of the undergrowth and perched on the branch of a young oak. Plump, tiny, with a particularly brilliant red breast, it cocked its head and looked straight at Robyn.

  “Don’t glare so accusingly,” she told it. “I’m not the cruel person who chopped down your tree.”

  The bird chirruped, and Robyn laughed. “Sorry, fella. If you have a complaint, speak to the lord of the Manor, who is right here with me. He’s the coldhearted villain who wrecked your home.”

  William stared at her, genuinely astonished. “It may have escaped your notice, but he does have an abundance of other trees in which he may pass the winter.”

  “How can you be so heartless? I’m sure he had a particular fondness for the one you cut down. It was the tallest in the wood, after all, and gave him a splendid view of Starke Manor.”

  “In that case, of course, I extend to him my deepest and most heartfelt apologies.” William took off his hat and swept an exaggerated bow.

  The robin flapped his wings, chirruped twice, then flew away. “I’m afraid he wasn’t impressed,” Robyn said. “He doubted your sincerity and with good reason, I’m sure.”

  “I did not mean to destroy his home—” William cut off abruptly. “This is absurd!” he exclaimed. “You’re trying to make me feel guilty because a bird failed to accept my apology.” He stopped again, shaking his head. “What is the matter with me? The bird didn’t refuse my apology. All that happened is that a robin perched on a branch and then flew away.”

  Robyn chuckled. “Are you sure?”

  “No, curse you, I’m not!” He turned to her and their laughter died away. He rested his hand lightly against her cheek. “I cannot remember a time of so much happiness,” he said. “These past few weeks you have been like that robin. Your presence has brought a splash of warm color into the cold winter of our family life.”

  “Thank you,” she said huskily. “I’m glad you feel that way. I have been happy, too.” Robyn realized that she had been given an opening to make a request that had been on her mind for several days. “When I was a little girl, my mother used to call me Robyn,” she said with perfect truth. “She spelled it R-o-b-y-n. I wish you would call me by that name, too. At least when we’re alone.”

  “The Countess of Marshe called you Robyn?” William’s eyes widened in surprise. “I’m amazed that your mother permitted such a plebeian name to be appended to her elegant daughter. You are much too beautiful for such a plain name. If you are to be called after a bird, it should be at least a swan or a peacock.”

  “Nevertheless, if you would try calling me Robyn for a while, I would be most grateful. The name has a lot of sentimental significance for me.”

  “Does it, indeed?” William took her hand from her muff and chaffed the tips of her chilly fingers. “How grateful might you be if I agreed to this change of name?” he inquired with suspicious smoothness.

  She blushed. “Very grateful, William.”

  He stepped in front of her, so that she was screened from the view of the woodsmen. Then he leaned forward and brushed a quick hard kiss across her mouth. “In that case, my dear, I daresay I can be persuaded to put aside all thought of peacocks and swans in favor of the humble robin red breast.”

  His eyes gleamed, and his smile became predatory. “I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to nightfall, and the full demonstration of your gratitude.”

  “That’s bribery!” she protested. “William, I’m shocked. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

  He pressed a hot, hungry kiss into her palm before tucking her hand back into the muff. “Alas,” he said. “Dear Robyn, I fear not the tiniest bit.”

  * * *

  The Delaneys had obviously decided to put on a brave show for the holidays, even if they didn’t have too much to celebrate. The Douglas fir in their front yard had been festooned with colored lights, and a collection of silver bells jingled merrily when Zach pressed the doorbell. Al Delaney opened the door almost at once.

  “Zach, come along in! Good of you to stop by.”

  “How are you doing?” Zach stepped into the little entrance hall, which was fragrant with the smell of Christmas baking. “Mmm, something smells wonderful.”

  “Mince pies,” Muriel Delaney said, poking her head out of the kitchen. “Come on back to the family room and help yourself to some before the grandchildren wolf them all.”

  “Thanks, a mince pie would be great, but I mustn’t stay too long. I have to catch a three o’clock flight to L.A.” He felt his face break into an unexpected smile. “My brother’s getting married tomorrow and I’m acting as his best man.”

  “How nice! Christmas is a lovely time for weddings.” A shadow crossed Muriel’s face. “I always teased Robyn that everyo
ne else in the family got married in midsummer, so she’d have to oblige me with a winter wedding.”

  Zach cleared his throat. “Speaking of Robyn,” he said, trying to sound cheerful and sounding unctuous instead. “How’s she doing these days?”

  Muriel and Al exchanged glances. “She’s keeping busy,” Al said.

  Zach kept his smile fixed. “Did she start work with the occupational therapist in the end?”

  “Yeah, and we think that helped some. She’s doing a lot of sewing, so I guess that’s an improvement.”

  “The therapist suggested she should do something to get her hand-eye coordination going again,” Muriel said. “It was amazing. As soon as we gave her needle and thread, she turned out some beautiful embroidery. Really wonderful stuff.”

  “It’s real nice,” Al agreed. “Even I can see that. Professional standard, according to the therapist, isn’t that fight, Muriel?”

  “She told us Robyn could sell her first piece for a lot of money, and this one she’s working on now is even better.” Muriel shook her head. “I can’t imagine where she learned to do embroidery like this. She never told any of us that she’d been taking lessons. Maybe she took a class when she was studying at the museum over in London.”

  Al pushed open the door to the family room. “Ask her to show you the piece she’s working on right now, Zach. She’s always willing to show it off.”

  Mentally armoring himself against the pain of seeing Robyn’s familiar face superimposed on a personality that bore no relationship to the woman he’d loved, Zach entered the family room.

  Gerry Taunton was seated on the sofa, sipping a cup of eggnog.

  Zach felt a surge of surprise that was out of proportion to the situation. “Gerry!” he said. “What’s up? I had no idea you were going to be here.”