Forever, Lately

by Linore Rose Burkard

  Lady Merrilton gave him a hollow smile. “And has she caught your eye, sir?”

  He surveyed Claire, who was now speaking with Miss Margaret. “She is an innocent, my lady.” He turned and gave her a look.

  Hurriedly she said, “Oh, to be sure, I’ve no doubt. A proper young woman, and therefore a bore—to a man like you.” She glanced at him and then back at Claire.

  “On the contrary,” he said. “I found her delightful. She is quite unlike our Miss Andrews.”

  “Well, Julian,” she said, before turning away, “I daresay you know where to find me. When your Miss Innocent bores you to distraction.”

  He made a small grimace, and nodding his goodbye, said softly, “You know better than to expect me.”

  Lady Merrilton was left looking after him, her gaze a mixture of wistfulness and resentment.

  Claire sniffed and gave a little smile to Miss Margaret. “You seem awfully wise for a fifteen-year-old younger sister. I hadn’t realised how wise you are.”

  Margaret beamed for a moment. “You have no idea, Miss Channing.”

  Claire looked struck. Could Miss Margaret be so different—even though Claire had invented her—that she could have no idea of her true character? The thought was preposterous! But she’d had enough of this dream for now. “Can you take me somewhere so I can be alone?”

  Margaret’s eyes lit up. “So you can vanish again?”

  Claire let out a breath. “Well, I hope so. I think I’m dreaming, actually. So all I really need do is awaken.”

  Margaret took her hand. “Come along. You are not dreaming. But I’ll show you the water closet.”

  Claire stopped. “Really?”

  Miss Margaret giggled. “You said, alone.”

  They resumed walking. Claire realised it was actually a great opportunity to see an actual Regency water closet. She never mentioned them in her novels, for it wasn’t fun reading, to her mind, to be reminded of the mundane details of existence. Novels were for exciting stuff—romance, adventure, mystery.

  Ballrooms with handsome men.

  After leaving the dance floor and following a narrow corridor for a short space, Claire saw a side room, closed with only a curtain. A woman was leaving as they passed, allowing her to glimpse a number of ladies in it. She stopped.

  “What is this room?” she asked.

  “The retiring room,” Miss Margaret said. “Would you like to check your hair? Fix a loose stocking? ʾTis what we do here.”

  Claire said. “Ah. Please, just for a moment.”

  They went in.

  Miss Margaret surveyed the ladies for a moment as if seeking an acquaintance, but finding none, motioned with her head toward a looking glass. There were a number of them, evenly spaced along the wall. Claire went to one. And gasped.

  There, reflected back at her in the glass, was Miss Andrews! Only it wasn’t Miss Andrews. It was Claire. She looked astonishingly different than her usual self.

  Her hair was done up in Regency fashion, tightly pulled back, with curls allowed to hang down to frame the sides of her face. On her head, instead of the popular ostrich feathers, she wore a simple tiara, a beautiful little piece with sparkling gems—they looked real, like diamonds and pearls! Gracing her neck was a pearl necklace, and even her reticule had a little tassel containing tiny pearls in the strands. Her appearance was fascinating! Her dress had short, puffed sleeves and a square bodice. She wore perfect three-quarter length gloves on her arms, and the shawl around her was the tallit! How strange.

  Even stranger, though, was how this style of hair and clothing brought out a beauty in Claire that her usual straight-hair and bangs utterly failed to. Her features looked delicate, her nose diminutive. Somehow Claire really was every bit as beautiful as Miss Andrews. They could be twins! She touched her own face in wonder.

  “Are you different here?” Miss Margaret asked in a whisper. Another lady was mending a tear in her gown on a side bench, and one woman was applying some kind of rouge from a porcelain box to her cheeks, but neither paid any attention to them.

  Claire turned to the girl. “Yes. Please, let’s go.” They turned back into the corridor and followed it farther down, until Miss Margaret turned off into a mostly empty room. On the far side of it was a wooden door. She stopped in front of it and motioned with her head. “This is it.”

  “Thank you,” Claire said.

  “May I watch?” Miss Margaret asked eagerly.

  Claire looked at the door of the water closet, blushed, and then looked back at the girl.

  Miss Margaret smiled. “I mean, watch you vanish.”

  Claire wasn’t sure she would vanish, but she said, “Why not?”

  She turned the handle and pushed open the door. Simultaneously, she heard the loud, rushing sound like a great wind—and found herself at the kitchen table before her laptop.

  We are what we see. We are products of our surroundings.

  Amber Valletta

  CHAPTER 11

  Dove Cottage

  Note to self: Learn how to wake from a lucid dream!

  Damp with sweat, Claire gripped the table, her legs weak. She took deep breaths while Charlie barked and came and sniffed her, wagging his tail. “Just as if I’d been gone,” she murmured, reaching a hand to pat his shaggy mane.

  When the weakness subsided, she took stock of herself. She had on her usual jeans and shirt. She thought back to the beautiful Regency gown she’d worn in the ballroom. Wait—what was she thinking? It couldn’t have been real. She looked at the clock and saw that an hour had passed since she’d sat down to write. It felt as though she’d been in that ballroom for an hour.

  She came slowly to her feet and stretched. She turned on the porch light and peeked out as best she could, mindful that St. John might show up again on her property. Seeing no one, she let the dog out, but again her hands shook. She poured a glass of wine, hoping to stop the shaking. Surely a vision shouldn’t leave her sweating and shaking.

  Surely a vision should not seem so very real.

  She let the dog back in, locked up, and showered. In the bathroom mirror, she played with her hair, trying it up in various ways and looking at herself. To her amazement, with her hair up, she really did look like Clarissa. Unlike that lady, however, Claire’s brows needed plucking, and her face could use a good rejuvenating mask.

  As she plucked her long-neglected brows and reflected on her ballroom adventure, she decided that either she was having incredibly lucid dreams, or surely she was losing her mind.

  If her mother was right, and her grandmother was nuts—so, now, was Claire.

  I am a writer. Therefore. I am not sane.

  Poe

  CHAPTER 12

  Miss Margaret gasped in delight. Miss Channing could indeed appear and disappear! She searched briefly to be sure Claire wasn’t hiding behind the door, and then turned back toward the ballroom with a wide grin. She was fond of Mr. St. John and had no wish to see Clarissa win him—not that there seemed to be a danger of that, but Clarissa was a beautiful woman, and St. John a red-blooded man. Miss Channing’s sudden appearance—a rival for Clarissa—filled Margaret with hope. Not only would Clarissa fail to get St. John, but she might have to stand by and suffer another woman to do so. It was the perfect revenge for the years of misery Margaret had endured at her sister’s hands, who ruled their household with an iron fist since the death of their mother a decade ago.

  Respect cannot be inherited; respect is the result of right actions.

  Amit Kalantri

  CHAPTER 13

  While Claire’s nerves settled and she got her bearings, her cell phone trilled. She didn’t bother to reach for it until the call ended.

  “Hey, it’s Adam” said the message. “Just checking that you’re okay.”

  Did he think she needed a babysitter?

  “Uh, if you see any more strange men in strange clothes on your property…I’m here, babe. Ciao.”

  Claire shook her head. Was he for
real? She’d call him as soon as volunteer for a root canal. Maybe she was being hard on the guy. But he wanted her cottage. She didn’t trust him.

  The phone trilled again, and it was Adam again. “Um. Just wanted to remind you about next week’s mixer. The neighbors want to meet the new famous writer in town. If you need a ride, I’m your man.”

  She turned her phone off. The new famous writer? The new has-been, more like. And if she told anyone she’d felt as though she visited the world of her book? Infamous writer would be lucky. Insane would be more apt.

  She went over her book’s outline, printed and kept in a binder. She checked off scenes as she wrote them or added in new ones if they became necessary, but the checkmarks stopped at the scene when Clarissa should have apologized.

  “Well, I tried doing that for you,” Claire said aloud, “But St. John wasn’t buying it. Today, my dear Clarissa, you need to do it yourself.”

  She studied the next few scenes and put the binder aside. Then she sat staring at her laptop. Earlier, the moment she’d put her hands on it, she’d been taken to the ballroom. She sort of hoped it would happen again, but also sort of didn’t. It was stressful appearing in her book—it was too real. If only she could appear invisibly and just be an observer.

  She took a breath, logged in and put her hands cautiously to the keyboard.

  Nothing. Whew. So it really had been a mere flight of fancy. Otherwise, why wasn’t it happening again?

  She scrolled over yesterday’s ballroom scene to edit. Housecleaning, she called it. Polish the grammar, discard extra words, stage important lines for the biggest impact. Claire lost track of how long she sat there until Charlie brought his leash in his mouth and dropped it at her feet. Claire hadn’t used the leash since they’d come to Maine, but she got the message.

  She let out the dog, shivering while waiting for him to return. Wait—shivering? The fire. Why couldn’t she remember to keep it fed and stoked? The cottage had propane but she preferred to conserve it. After Charlie was back inside, she fed him and then added logs to the fire. After trying for minutes and minutes to get a good flame going only to watch it fizzle out, she called it quits and turned on the heat. If only she’d not let it go out in the first place.

  She grabbed the tallit and went back to work. Charlie came and sat by her feet. When she looked down at him, he thumped his tail in appreciation of the attention. “OK, pal,” she said. His tail thumped harder. “Let’s blast out this book.” She wrapped the tallit around her shoulders.

  Oh my, it was happening! That sound of rushing water or wind…and, oh dear, she was back at the ballroom! Couldn’t she be done with that scene?

  My imagination functions much better

  when I don't have to speak to people.

  Patricia Highsmith

  CHAPTER 14

  Claire blinked and put a hand against a wall as the room came into focus—thank goodness she materialised in the ballroom in an obscure corner. Here she could be a silent observer—just what she wanted. She looked out at the scene, not much varied from what she’d left. Miss Andrews came out of the retiring room and searched the dance floor. Her eyes lighted upon St. John striding toward the exit. Claire’s heart sank, though she didn’t know why it should. If he was taking himself off for the night, she wouldn’t have to face more conversation.

  Clarissa hurried toward St. John, calling out to him.

  He turned. His face registered dislike for the merest second, but was swallowed by good breeding. He nodded curtly.

  Clarissa curtseyed. “You were, I believe, speaking with a woman a short time ago—do not ask me her name for I know her not—but I wonder if you discovered it?”

  He gave her an odd look. “Her name, as you well know, is Miss Channing. Is she not your cousin or some such relation?”

  “My cousin? That—imposter? No!”

  St. John studied her. “I have no time for pranks, Miss Andrews,” he said, and with another short bow would have turned away, but she cried, “I do not comprehend you, sir!”

  “Your sister spoke for her,” he said derisively. “Good evening.”

  She almost called him back. How dare he accuse her of a prank when she wasn’t playing one! Whoever this woman was, Clarissa would soon put her in her place. She’d seen the unmistakable similarity in their appearance, but she would have known of a cousin. There was no cousin, certainly no female cousin that looked like her.

  And no one else must turn St. John’s head. She spun about at that moment and saw—the imposter! And headed in her direction.

  Claire saw Clarissa coming and swallowed involuntarily. A quick glance at her clothing told her she was still dressed appropriately in the same gown, though it boggled her mind how it could be so. Hardly realizing it, she headed for St. John. He seemed the safest place to go. She might have invented Miss Andrews, but that lady was proving to be formidable. Just then, Clarissa put herself squarely in Claire’s path.

  “So,” she said, looking at Claire with compressed lips, “we are cousins, you say?”

  Claire stared at her. “I never made that claim.”

  “St. John said you did. You or Margaret—and Margaret is incapable of thinking for herself, so it must have been you.” She took a breath and raised her head importantly. “If you think, Miss Channing, for a second, that I will let you turn his head—”

  “I have no intention of doing any such thing,” Claire interjected quickly. “In fact, Clarissa—”

  “How dare you!”

  Regency etiquette! How could she forget! “I beg your pardon; I simply want you to understand,” she continued, but suddenly St. John was there. She’d been about to tell Clarissa she wanted nothing better than to see her and St. John get on, for they needed to be married, but she held the thought.

  St. John turned to her. “Is Miss Andrews plaguing you?”

  Claire wavered for one second. “No,” she said.

  Miss Andrews flicked out her fan. “This has nothing to do with you, Julian. Miss Channing and I were coming to an understanding.”

  “Indeed we were,” agreed Claire, for she felt Clarissa would cease being antagonistic as soon as she understood Claire was not her rival.

  St. John gave Clarissa a sour look and held out his arm to Claire. “May I, Miss Channing?” Claire eyed him uncertainly but then took his arm. How could she refuse such a man? As they walked off, she looked back. Miss Andrews’s eyes blazed at them.

  Claire turned her gaze to the distinguished profile beside her. “I was trying to tell Clar—Miss Andrews—that I am no threat to her.”

  He looked down at her with a small smile. “I think you may be, Miss Channing, whether you would, or not.”

  He walked her toward the exit. “Where shall I take you?” he asked. He looked around the room. “Did you come with the Andrews?”

  “No.” She studied him a minute, remembering Miss Margaret’s warning to tell him the truth. “I must tell you; I am not—”

  But waves of people were suddenly sweeping past, for the last dance had ended and everyone wished to return to their carriages and homes, and he moved her aside protectively. “Whom shall I bring you to?” he asked, over the din. “Who are your friends?”

  She drew her hand from his arm and looked around helplessly. “I am sure to find them. Please do not concern yourself. Goodnight.” She smiled, hoping to reassure him, though she felt utterly alarmed. Everyone was leaving, but she had nowhere to go. She suddenly thought of the water closet. She’d make her way to it, and hope the door was a portal again.

  A half smile played around his mouth. “I believe I’ve just been politely dismissed.” Claire could well understand his amusement. He wasn’t a man used to being dismissed; most women coveted his attention, she knew that as his author.

  Intrigued, he said, “As you won’t volunteer who your friends are, I must know the mystery. I’ll wait for them to claim you.”

  Claire’s eyes widened, but she turned, hoping to hide her a
larm. People going by hailed him, calling out greetings, and looked curiously at Claire. Mr. Timbrell stopped. “Are you in need of an escort home, Miss Channing?”

  St. John listened for her answer. When she hesitated, he said, “Whatever makes you think so, Charles?” His tone and look were just forbidding enough that Mr. Timbrell bowed his head. “My mistake.” He eyed St. John. “You don’t escort ladies home these days, Julian. How was I to know—”

  “Good evening, Charles.”

  He bowed to Claire, who curtseyed. “Good evening.” And he walked off. St. John turned to Claire. “Am I to understand that you are in need of an escort?”

  Claire looked helplessly at him. Miss Margaret had said to tell him the truth as soon as possible, and indeed, she had no wish to bamboozle him. “In all honesty, sir, I don’t believe you can help me get home, though I thank you.”

  He gave her a quizzical look. “You are concerned about propriety. I am a gentleman, Miss Channing. If you’ve heard otherwise, I assure you, those days are all in the past. I guarantee you shall be safe.”

  What did he mean, ‘those days were all in the past?’ Hadn’t St. John always been a gentleman? But there was no time to think on it. She opened her mouth to explain, but he offered his arm, stifling a smile. “Come,” he said. “Unless someone else claims you, I must be of service to you.” Claire, feeling hopeless, went along with him. He did not understand; how could he? She tried frantically to think of a way to excuse him without injuring his feelings, but nothing came to mind.

  There were only stragglers left. Miss Andrews and Miss Margaret had gone already, Clarissa staring icily at Claire as she passed, and Miss Margaret, with an impish wink.

  Claire thought hard. Ought she to run to the water closet? It had somehow ended this illusion of being in the Regency. What if she left this place with St. John and had no way of getting home again? She’d be as good as a ghost—a homeless wanderer, without an identity or friend in the world. But then, the water closet had not been her portal for getting there, so why should it be her only means of escape? It was all so befuddling!