As soon as she primly placed her napkin alongside her plate, he handed her the letter. Her eyes widened.
“What’s this?”
“Just read it,” he said.
She unfolded the creased, crackly paper and squinted down at it. The ink had faded over time, but he’d read it so many times he had it memorized and recited it in his mind as she read it.
Dex, I pray you find this and that it’s not too late. Ariana’s gone missing. We’re not sure if she used the portal or some spell. She found that horrible book and has been secretly studying it for years. I don’t know if she’ll turn up in your time but please, please keep an eye out for her. I can’t stand the thought that everything’s going to come true. Keep her safe and make her come home.
He could tell when Ariana pulled the letter closer to her face that she’d come to the part that was smudged, probably from Tilly’s tears falling on the page as she wrote.
“H-how did you get this?” she asked in a tiny voice. “How does Mum know I’m gone?”
“I guess your little spell to only be gone a few minutes didn’t work this time,” he said. When he noticed her hands shaking, he dialed back his smugness. “I found that in my office behind a file cabinet a year ago. Or rather, the cleaning crew did, wedged into the baseboards. Thankfully they aren’t an overly curious lot or it might have raised some questions I’d have no good answers for.”
“A year ago?” she shook her head as if trying to make everything fit.
“We’re two hundred years from when you belong,” Emma said, pouring more water into Ariana’s glass. “We might have found it ten years ago or never found it at all. We’ve been carrying around this worry all this time, waiting to see if you turned up. Thankfully you did before—”
A door slammed, cutting off Emma’s tirade. Dahlia stormed through the kitchen. “Do you mean to starve me?” she whined, then stopped dead at the sight of Ariana in her fine gown. She blinked and the pout slid off her face, replaced with a huge grin. “Tilly?”
Ariana gaped and slapped her hand on the table, causing the glasses to rattle. “She knows my mother as well?”
“This is Dahlia,” Dexter sighed. “Dahlia, meet my second cousin Ariana. And she only knows about your mother from old photographs.”
“But she knows about her?”
Dahlia yanked back a chair and sat down, leaning eagerly toward Ariana. “You’re her daughter, then? How’d you get here? I thought the portal was sealed up for good?”
Ariana’s face turned ashen, then slowly purpled to the point he feared she might faint from holding her breath. She finally let it out in a gust and ground out through clenched teeth, “She knows about the portal?” She rounded on Dahlia. “How old are you?”
“Fourteen,” she said. She got a dangerously saucy look on her face. “But I’ve known since Dex and my mum got together when I was eleven.”
Ariana’s eyes filled with tears. “It must be very nice to have parents who don’t lie to you.”
“It doesn’t hurt to be a massive snoop, either,” Dahlia said. “But maybe my parents are just sloppier.”
“Enough, Dahlia. Don’t stoke the fire,” Emma said, placing her hand on her daughter’s wrist.
Dexter could see a flash of pain in Ariana’s eyes at the motherly gesture. So the wretch missed her mum, did she? He wondered how long she’d been away from her proper time before turning up with them.
“Dahlia, fix yourself a plate to take back to your room and leave us to our conversation. There’ll be time enough for visiting tomorrow.” He glanced at his watch. How had it become so late? He hadn’t been able to give Emma her anniversary present, his dinner had been ruined, Dahlia seemed to be on the road to reform school, and now he had a runaway from the past to deal with.
Dahlia looked like she might fight to stay and listen, but then the two girls exchanged a look and Ariana yawned showily. She slapped her hand over her mouth and said primly, “Oh goodness, I beg your pardon. I’m just so tired.”
“She can bunk in with me,” Dahlia offered sweetly.
“But the letter,” Dexter argued.
Curiosity warred with wanting to get out of a lecture as Ariana looked from the crumbling note to them and back again. “I’m not going back tonight,” she said finally. “You said I could have a proper visit. And like Emma said, I’m safe now.” Her lips twisted into a pucker and she rolled her eyes. “Not that I wasn’t anyway.”
He didn’t like that the girls seemed to be silently conspiring against the adults and opened his mouth to assert that he was in charge when Emma squeezed his shoulder.
“What year did you say you came from, Ariana?” she asked, but looked at him with serious fear in her eyes.
“1889,” she said, yawning again. This time she didn’t bother to apologize.
“Go on to bed, girls,” Emma said, standing up and shooing them toward Dahlia’s room. “Dahl, love, give her something comfy to wear. And Ariana, if you’ll bring me your gown, I’ll see that it gets properly cleaned. It looks as if you rode for miles in that dusty thing.”
“I did ride for miles, actually. That’s very kind of you, thank you.” She trotted off after Dahlia who was already chattering away.
“Why’d you let her get away?” He turned his overall irritation with the night on Emma.
She gave him a look that made him instantly contrite. None of this was her fault. She should be irritated with him for having such nonsensical family issues.
“1889?” she snapped back. “Isn’t that the year Tilly told you she found out…”
He gulped. “I think you may be right. What in blazes is she doing in that year? She should be an old lady if she were to live to that time.”
“God only knows. And if we start nagging at her and telling her she has to go home, she’ll flee right back to that time instead, and then…”
He understood why she couldn’t finish the sentence every time she tried. The thought of anything Tilly had found out coming true scared the stuffing out of both of them.
“You don’t think she’d pull a runner on us?” he asked. “She was determined to have a proper visit.”
“I doubt her idea of a lovely family reunion involves getting hounded with stories she won’t possibly believe. It’s safer to keep her here until we can gently cajole her into going back to 1832.” Emma put a firm emphasis on the gently cajoling part.
“Is it so obvious I want to wring her neck?” he asked with a tired chuckle.
“Very obvious.”
He clasped his hands nervously, wishing for something stronger than wine but knowing he had to keep his wits about him. “But you don’t think she’ll run off, do you?”
“I don’t think so, no.” Emma stood and massaged his shoulders. “But I’m going to hide her gown to make sure she doesn’t. I doubt she’d want to turn up back then in one of Dahlia’s old tracksuits.”
He laughed, amazed for the millionth time at her quick mind when it came to teenage girls. “What are we going to do?” He dropped his head onto his arms and groaned.
Emma patted his shoulders briskly, then whacked him upside the head, a little less than playfully.
“I haven’t the faintest idea, my darling.” She leaned over to get eye level with him and gave him her sternest look. “What we are not going to do, however, is blurt out everything we think we know. We have to be diplomatic and not treat her like a child. Get her to want to go back on her own. Understood?”
He smiled and craned his neck to kiss her, then pushed away from the table. Perhaps the night wouldn’t be a total wash after all.
“Understood,” he said, pulling her close to him. “Let’s go to bed and try and put this anniversary back on track.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her cheek against his shoulder. “What a wonderful idea.”
***
Ariana wrapped a blanket around herself and scuffled down the hall to where Dahlia had pointed out the laundry ro
om. The room turned out to be a small closet with two shiny, white boxes with round windows in them stacked on top of one another. Each one had a fascinating array of buttons and symbols. She left her gown in a heap on top of another pile of clothing and hurried back to Dahlia’s room. She had been assured the snug, soft trousers she’d been given were perfectly fine and not inappropriate, but the loose fitting top barely covered her bum. She would die of mortification if Cousin Dexter saw her dressed like that. She’d feel much better in something like what Emma had been wearing. That dress was flimsy and above the knees, but it still felt more proper.
“She’s going to hide your dress so you don’t take off in the night,” Dahlia said, staring down and poking at a thin metal and glass rectangle that never seemed to leave her hand. “Just so you know.”
Ariana sniffed. “I’ve no intention of running away. I came to visit, so I shall have a proper visit before I go.”
“You’re the most posh person I’ve ever met,” Dahlia said, finally looking up and squinting at her. “And I have a friend who has a horse.”
“What is the thing I came in to get here? I would think that would be far more exciting than having a horse.”
Dahlia tipped her head to the side. “You mean the car? That old thing? I suppose it’s something to have a car here in the city but that particular one’s nothing to be proud of. Dexter’s had it since before he met Mum.”
“Well, it’s nothing to have a horse where I’m from.”
“Which is here, right? I mean, Belmary House? You actually live in that old place in your time?”
Ariana settled herself stiffly on a chair that had wheels and swiveled precariously. When she stayed lost in thought, Dahlia persisted with her questioning. “Do people call you by a title?”
“No. My brother Christian will inherit the earldom. People just call me Miss Alexander.” She thought of the people she’d set up at her country mansion. Her coven. With a wrinkle of her nose she realized she didn’t miss them at all. “Well, some people use a title, but it’s more of a joke I suppose. It’s really not proper to do so.” She tried not to swivel away from Dahlia’s persistent gaze. She felt like the beetles her youngest brother put in jars and stared at for hours. “I suppose we’re cousins of a sort,” she said. “I appreciate you helping rescue me from—” she stopped, not wanting to be rude.
“Hours of boring recriminations,” Dahlia finished for her. “You actually rescued me. I was sure to get it again if you hadn’t turned up.” She waved her hand around her compact room. “Though why you’d want to come here when your room is probably as big as this whole flat, I have no earthly notion.”
It was probably bigger, but Ariana wouldn’t admit it aloud. She liked the pink and gray room, with its shelves stuffed with brightly colored plush animals and its riot of pictures tacked willy nilly all over the walls. And it wasn’t only recriminations she wanted to escape, it was worry over why her spell had gone wrong. And guilt about that tear-stained note.
“Well,” Dahlia prodded. “Why did you come? It’s pretty clear you’re not meant to be here.”
Instead of answering the question, Ariana asked one of her own. “You say you know about the portal and the fact I’m from another time didn’t even make you blink. What else do you know?”
The younger girl, who looked far more worldly than Ariana could ever pretend to be, shrugged. “Just that my mum got sucked through the portal to the past and almost got stuck there. She says she was gone more than a year, but I never knew she was missing until she told me about it because Liam brought her back to right when she left. Then he closed up the portal for good so my mum could keep working at Belmary House. Dex said he’s visited the past but it was before my mum and him got together. I asked why I couldn’t go back to meet you lot and my mum about swooned and Dex said he couldn’t do the spell on his own after old Liam passed away.” She took a breath and finished, “That’s all I know, I swear.”
“That’s not much more than I figured out myself, but thank you.”
It felt good to speak comfortably with someone her own age again. It had been so long since she’d yammered away with a friend. The witches at the estate were less than chummy with her. Even Nick made it difficult to be herself sometimes.
“How old are you?” Dahlia asked. When Ariana answered, she raised her eyebrows. “Shouldn’t you be married and have children by now back in your time? Aren’t you about to be on the shelf or some such?”
Ariana scowled. “Goodness, what do you think you know about my time? I suppose I could be married if I wanted to be, though.” Now that Nick had invaded her thoughts her mood threatened to turn bleak. She knew she should be worried about him, about to board a ship to Italy, but her worries were all for Owen, disappearing into thin air as he’d seemed to have done.
Dahlia rubbed her hands together, then hopped off her bed, beckoning Ariana to follow her. “We have to be silent as church mice. I’m already in a heap of trouble.” She smiled as she cracked open her door and looked out into the darkened hall. “I’m glad you turned up when you did to distract them or I’d probably still be listening to them rage.”
They tiptoed down the short hallway to a living area that was attached to the dining area where they’d had supper. Past the table, the kitchen was only a few feet away, which was barely wider than the hall they’d just traversed. Dahlia plopped herself down on the floor near a bookshelf. Ariana joined her, giving up being ladylike in the new clothes and copying Dahlia’s cross-legged position.
“Why are you in trouble?” Ariana asked, hoping it wasn’t too forward.
Dahlia stuck out her tongue. “I nicked some things from one of the high street shops.”
Ariana gasped. “Oh my goodness, are you so very poor?” Her mind was in high gear, working out ways she might help without bruising her older second cousin’s pride.
“We’re not poor at all.” Dahlia’s face darkened with outrage. When Ariana’s eyes cut to the confines of the small flat, she hissed, “Yes, I know where you’ve grown up. I’ve been to Belmary House more times than I can count. But I happen to know the mortgage on this place is close to two thousand pounds a month. That’s probably a load of money for your lot to spend in a whole year, isn’t it? And your giant mansion is just a museum now where my Mum and Dex work. What do you make of that?”
Ariana was stunned by her ferocity. More stunned by how expensive things were in this crowded future. And the last bit made her blink with cold fear. She’d noticed that some of the open bedroom doors in Belmary House looked like they’d been converted to offices and seen the welcome desk when she’d been herded out by Dex earlier. And she knew he worked there because Mrs. Hedley, the housekeeper in 1889, had told her so. She supposed she’d assumed he kept the accounts or something, much like Kostya did at the Scottish estate. But if it was a museum, that meant her family no longer owned it. What had become of them? Between her and her three brothers, surely someone would have carried on the name. Did the Alexanders all die out? Go bankrupt? Lose the titles and the properties to some scandal? She clutched her churning stomach and realized Dahlia was no longer fuming. She looked wide-eyed and remorseful.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you,” Ariana said, barely able to get out the words. “I had no idea…”
“No, I’m sorry,” the younger girl blurted. “I’m sure Dex can explain about the house. He’s probably told me a dozen times, but I tend to tune out when they get all historical minded. I’m sure it’s nothing bad. I got offended that you called us poor and mouthed off.”
“Then why did you steal? Weren’t you afraid of what your mum and Dex might think?”
Dahlia peered at her through narrowed eyes and when she deemed Ariana wasn’t judging her, she shrugged. “Haven’t you ever done something just to do it? That your parents would be horrified about if they knew?”
It was as if an avalanche of guilt tumbled over Ariana’s shoulders. She laughed wistfully. “You hav
e no idea.”
“It’s funny we’re not really cousins, but we seem to be a lot alike,” Dahlia said.
Ariana accepted the olive branch. Pushing aside the disconcerting news that her childhood home was now a tourist destination, she smiled warmly. “Yes, like Owen and me. We’ve called each other cousins our whole lives but we’re not related by blood in any way at all. But we can almost read each other’s thoughts.”
“Ooh, is Owen the boy you could be married to if you wanted?” she asked.
Ariana started, feeling her cheeks warming to an uncomfortable degree. She had never once considered being married to Owen and the thought of it took her breath away. She knew beyond a certainty they’d always be together, but in that way? She shivered but couldn’t figure out why the idea shook her so much. It wasn’t bad, not at all, but…
She shook her head and tried to get control of herself before Dahlia got the wrong idea.
“N-no,” she said, a great sadness sweeping over her. Was it certain she and Owen would always be together? He might very well despise her, and even if she knew where he was, they were ages apart. “Not Owen. He’s only my best friend, nothing romantic.”
But could there be? She didn’t think she’d ever missed anyone as much, or worried about anyone as much as she did Owen. Her actual intended was heading off into another time and a different country and she could barely muster the energy to bid him a proper goodbye.
“Well, who, then?” Dahlia prodded, pulling Ariana back to the present.
Now was her chance to impress the worldly and confident younger girl with something juicy. And take her mind off her loneliness.
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