Claire worked like one possessed, for she was, by desperation. She wrote all day and far into the night. If she stopped to eat or rest, she continued brainstorming and had the whole story worked out, so that each day it was only a matter of getting it on paper. She had to keep working frenetically, for if she didn’t, St. John was before her. The thought of him was as someone who had died—and he had died, hadn’t he? In 1816. And yet she couldn’t forget that back in the past it was still to happen! As if her life hadn’t become crazy enough with time traveling, she’d go truly insane if she dwelt upon Julian, for he was doubly lost to her. Separated by 200 years, and lost to an impending tragedy that she ought to have prevented.
More days passed, and Claire continued to write like a madwoman in order not to become one. She took breaks only to eat or shower. Writing at such a pitch, she was amazed to find that her brain got on board with the urgency; she switched into a gear of creativity she’d seldom felt before, and the words flowed as if fueled by some inner power she hadn’t known she possessed. When she reviewed her work, it was good—really good. At times she wrote with tears flowing, but she knew her readers would cry too, and love the book for making them do it.
When the new first draft was finished—the book was shorter than any of her previous novels, at only 160 pages—she put together a proposal and emailed it to her agent, along with the first three chapters. Normally, she’d put aside a manuscript for a few weeks or even months before taking a fresh look and deciding if it was agent ready. But she didn’t have a few weeks or months.
The very next day, to her surprise, her agent called. He loved the story idea and felt optimistic about selling it. He asked for the full manuscript, which Claire sent. She was pleased, but there was a wall around her heart. All the excitement of writing the story of her life had disappeared. Her time in 1816 had indeed given the perfect fodder for a great historical romance, a groundbreaking book, but it was all too true what Grandmamma had said: what was a book compared to a man who loved her? And whom she loved! A book, even if it became a blockbuster, was small comfort next to losing Julian.
There's just something obvious about emptiness,
even when you try to convince yourself otherwise.
Sarah Dessen
CHAPTER 40
St. John had been three times to Lady Ashworth’s home since Claire’s disappearance from his house, and each time had been prevented from seeing her. Lady Ashworth was now refusing to see him. When he’d stormed over on the morning after he’d read the note from Claire and discovered her deception, Lady Ashworth seemed quite speechless at first, except to insist Claire was not well and could not be expected to face him. She utterly decried the note, saying she was sure Claire had not written one to Clarissa. As for the other note, with the elaborate explanation about time travel, Her Ladyship merely said, “You see, she is not well.”
All of this would have been frustrating enough on its own, but today a new development would have made Julian challenge the marchioness, had she been a man, to a duel! One of his servants had found through the servant-grapevine that Miss Channing was not in residence at the marchioness’s house. Not only that, but she hadn’t been seen there since before her appearance at St. John’s house. Which meant that Her Ladyship had been lying to him all along about Claire being indisposed.
He went once more to the mansion on Berkeley Square, prepared to end ties with Her Ladyship if she did not come clean about whatever she was hiding concerning Claire. And where was that deuced woman, if not with the marchioness?
Another frustration was that Miss Andrews still clung to her obsession about him. Whenever he went out in his carriage, another coach would shortly appear behind his, which his footman recognised as belonging to Miss Andrews. He considered confronting Clarissa but decided to ignore her instead. However, it was irksome. What did she hope to gain by watching his comings and goings?
When he arrived at Berkeley Square, Clarissa’s coach likewise stopped at the kerb, not too distant from his equipage. Ignoring it, he handed the reins to a servant and went into the house. Yates insisted that his mistress was indisposed, but St. John said, “I’ll be in the yellow saloon. Tell Her Ladyship that she must see me, or—” He thought for a moment.”Or I will marry Clarissa.” He had no intention of marrying Clarissa, but Lady Ashworth wouldn’t know that.
Yates nodded. “Yes, sir.”
In less than five minutes, Claire’s grandmamma entered the yellow saloon, her face a picture of alarm. St. John was leaning against the mantel with his arms folded, but he came to attention and gave her a pointedly brief bow.
“What is this fustian I hear about you marrying Clarissa?” she said, without preamble. “Did you not tell me yourself that you made an offer to my granddaughter, sir?” She hadn’t even taken a seat.
“As a matter of fact,” said St. John, coming and standing abreast of the woman, his hands tightly closed behind his back, “I did. And she accepted. But speaking of fustian,” he added, “I happen to know that your granddaughter is not here. In fact,” he went on, while a guarded look crept onto the woman’s face, “she has not been here since before she came to my home.” He paused, searching the marchioness’s face. Hardly able to keep his anger in check, he asked, “Where is she?” He crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at her.
Lady Ashworth looked supremely uncomfortable but made no reply.
“You have deceived me in this. What are you hiding? I cannot fathom it.” He stared at her with a piercing eye, one brow raised.
Lady Ashworth started pacing, looking at St. John now and then with a vastly troubled expression.
“My lady,” he said, through gritted teeth. “Your explanation, if you please.”
Lady Ashworth took a seat and motioned for St. John to do likewise. Reluctantly he sat across from her, but leaned forward impatiently. She produced a handkerchief from a pocket of a gown and wrung it in one hand. “Julian, I never meant to deceive you, truly!”
“But you have. Where is she?”
Lady Ashworth hesitated. She looked at him regretfully. “Everything you need to know is in that note she left you.”
He stared. “There is nothing in that note except her delusions. Are you suggesting the explanation is that she is not in her right mind?”
Her Ladyship shifted on her seat, coming to the edge of it. She looked apologetically at him. “They aren’t delusions. You see. I, too…” Her voice trailed off for a moment, and she licked her lips. “Came here from the future.”
Julian shot to his feet. “You must think me a simpleton—no, a fool! Who else would believe such an outlandish claim?” He paced a few feet and then turned on her. “What is there to gain in this? If Claire wishes to cry off, she might do so without the elaborate deception. I fail utterly to comprehend the meaning of this.”
“I kept expecting her to reappear,” said Her Ladyship, wringing one hand. “She did the last time she vanished. She had the tallit—she ought to have returned. I thought if she loved you, surely she would.”
“She had what?”
“The tallit. Her shawl. I bought it in Israel; it is a Hebrew prayer shawl. But it wasn’t ordinary. When I wore it, I would suddenly find myself here. In the Regency.”
He turned with a look on his face of incredulity. In a tone edged with derision, he demanded, “Are you telling me—that story she wrote—that wearing the shawl could actually transport someone from one time to another? Like some kind of—of—magic carpet? That it’s true?”
“Not like a magic carpet,” said Her Ladyship, blinking back tears. “But the shawl is indeed magical. Claire moved into my home, the cottage I left behind. The shawl had vanished from my hands after I married the marquess and evidently returned there. She must have put it on, and she wound up in that ballroom. She tried to tell you all of this, Julian. She never wished to deceive you!”
He stood up and began pacing. He went to the window and peered out. With his back turned, he said, “She
disappeared without the shawl. If it is supposedly the means of transport, then how could she go back without it?”
Lady Ashworth shook her head. “When I came here for good, the shawl went back without me. That’s why Claire found it in my house. And now she's gone back without it!”
“And the amnesia?” he said, his voice clipped.
“An explanation to satisfy you at the moment. I knew I should face—well, this very scene were I to try and tell you the truth.”
He spun around. His eyes glinted dangerously at her.
Lady Ashworth said, “How do you know she went back without her shawl?”
“She gave it to me. She asked me to destroy it.”
Her Ladyship gasped. “And you did! That’s why she hasn’t returned! She cannot!”
He surveyed her calmly. “I did not destroy it. But Clarissa almost did. She fought me for it and it tore in two.”
Lady Ashworth’s eyes bulged. “Do you have both pieces?” She sounded as if she dreaded the answer.
“I have only the one half. I’m afraid Miss Andrews has the other.” He looked coldly at Her Ladyship. “But I’m also afraid I cannot believe this elaborate deception.”
“Julian! I love you like a son! Why would I make up something so preposterous? And Claire loves you! Why wouldn’t she be here if she could?”
He let out a derisive breath. “She loved me enough to warn Clarissa that she would ensnare me.”
“You still maintain that she wrote that Banbury tale?” Her Ladyship shifted on her seat.
“The handwriting matched. There is no other answer for it.” He was slowly approaching her. His face still wore the look of an animal preparing to pounce. Julian could be vastly intimidating, but Lady Ashworth loved him too well to fear him. In fact, she felt suddenly impatient with his stubbornness.
“Go home and examine both notes again, minutely. I’m sure you’ll find one is a forgery. I know my granddaughter. She could not have written that note, and the fact that it came from Clarissa should be enough to convince you likewise.”
He paced back to the window, and stood with his hands behind his back. He turned and looked squarely at her. “My lady, it was delightful to know you. Until now. I am sorry for it, but this must be our last interview—”
“Julian! Don’t be pigeon-headed! You must know, there is nothing I want more than for you to marry Claire!” In exasperation she ventured, “Why do you not bring me the shawl—the half you have? I’ll get the other from Clarissa. And mayhap I will be able to reach Claire, as once I was able to.”
“In the future, you mean?” His gaze was veiled.
She nodded.
He bowed. “Good bye, Lady Ashworth.”
The marchioness covered her mouth with a hand. Tears pooled in her eyes as he strode purposefully from the room.
He left shaking his head, more frustrated than ever. “My coach,” he said curtly to Yates, when he saw the butler. He felt ready to push his coachman aside, snap the reins and leave town for a good rollick on the road. But he was too upset to wait in the dwelling and went out to the street. When he saw Clarissa’s coach, anger welled up in him. He stalked to the vehicle. She opened the door before he could.
To her coy smile, he said, “If there is one more occasion of your coach following mine, I’ll take you to the magistrate and press charges.”
She turned to push out her bosom in his direction. “What charges might that be?” she asked, innocently.
“Vexation, if nothing else,” he said.
“What you call vexation, I will call coincidence. There is no law against being on the road the same time as you, Julian.”
He put his head back. “If you were a man, I’d see you on the field for that.”
“Sir!” It was Miss Margaret, who now leaned forward around Clarissa. With a look of alarm she cried, “My sister does not mean to harass you! She thinks she loves you and is slightly brain addled! Surely you can forgive her!” To St. John’s consternation, she started crying. “She does not mean to—to plague you! Please promise you won’t press—press charges, or meet—meet her on the field!”
Clarissa blinked at her sister, surprised by this show of affection.
St. John was equally surprised. He said, “Miss Margaret—”
But the girl cried, “She cannot help following you—or watching you—she loves you so well, you see! She only wrote that false note in Miss Channing’s hand because—!”
“Margaret!” Clarissa cried. “Whatever are you talking about? I did no such thing!”
“I’m too worried about you!” Margaret cried earnestly. “I must make St. John understand that you only mean to love him! Else you would never have been so deceptive!”
“Margaret, you lack wit!” cried Clarissa. “Do be quiet!”
St. John heard enough. He stepped back but caught a last look at Clarissa’s sister, whose tears had magically disappeared. She seemed, in fact, to be wearing a secretive little smile as she looked at St. John. He winked at her, with a little nod of thanks.
Clarissa, looking thunderously upset, hit the wall of the coach with her parasol. “Move on!” she cried, without once looking back at St. John. But she turned to her sister with a look of rage. Suddenly tears returned to Margaret’s face. “Did I do something wrong, Clarissa? I’m sorry. I was so frightened for you when St. John said he’d meet you on the field! I—I wanted to protect you!”
Clarissa frowned mightily at her sister. “He said, if I were a man, he’d meet me on the field, you foolish chit!”
“But—I was frightened for you!” Margaret dabbed her eye with a handkerchief. “I don’t know half what I said to him! I just wanted him to forgive you!”
“Oh, Margaret, you are a lack wit!”
But that was all she said. And when Miss Margaret turned her head away and faced the window on her side of the coach, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, she was smiling.
St. John told his coachman to get him home as fast as a coach and six. When he blasted through the front door, he flew past Grey without a word and bounded up the steps two at a time. He made his way hastily to the library, hurried to a desk and pulled out a drawer. He drew forth the folded notes; the one from Claire and the other, Clarissa.
He went by a window and opened both sheets of writing. He compared them again, this time closely. And suddenly it was absurdly clear that the handwriting was not identical. One looked as if pains had been taken to be neat, the other as if pains had been taken to form letters a certain way. To copy a style. He sat back and stared ahead, at nothing. Claire wasn’t like Clarissa. He’d been wrong, utterly wrong about that.
The truth is incontrovertible.
Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.
Winston Churchill
CHAPTER 41
With only two days before Claire’s heart would explode, for Julian would be lost forever—dead in the past, irretrievably lost with the cottage’s demise in the present—Claire’s agent called again. He’d sold the story! And not only that, but to a top publisher. “Hold onto your hat,” he said. “You’re getting a six-figure deal.” He’d gotten an extra $50,000 simply by hinting he might shop it around to compare offers. Six figures! She’d get half when the contract was signed, and the second half after the book went into production.
Her agent gushed on, saying the editor hadn’t seen such a heroine as Miss Gladstone—the new name for the villainess based on Clarissa—since Scarlett O’Hara. Readers would love and hate her, just like the owner of Tara.
When the call ended, Claire sat there trying to let it all sink in. Everything she’d ever wanted professionally—a six-figure contract, an enormous advance, a major New York publisher, was hers. And she felt empty.
How unfair! If she’d never met St. John, she would be ecstatic. Of course, if she’d never met him, never gone to 1816, she couldn’t have written the same book. It seemed she couldn’t have success without the heartb
reak. Now, her career would be set. She’d be wined and dined, toasted, and treated like a celebrity when the book launched. What more could she want?
Julian.
She hated to think that now Clarissa would be putting all her diabolical efforts into plaguing him. In only two days she was going to instigate a hare-brained carriage chase that would kill him! The irony hit her afresh—the same day Julian would be killed was the day the cottage would be razed. Her hope of him in either world, simultaneously demolished at once.
She tried convincing herself that Julian’s life—and death—had already happened; it was all in the past. But she’d visited that past. She could have changed that past. She might have saved his life.
Note to self: Never pass a chance to save a soul. The one you lose is your own.
She went out and did something she’d never thought to find herself doing: she bought a bottle of blackberry brandy and gave herself a chaser before bed. She had to drown out her sorrows somehow, for she felt little better than a murderer. Clarissa might be the one who caused the accident, but Claire had been given a chance to prevent it, and hadn’t. Her failure had killed Julian—or would kill him. Which was it? She didn’t know.
And what did it matter? He was lost to her forever.
You cry and you scream and you stomp your feet and you shout.
You say, ‘You know what? I'm giving up.’
Nicole Scherzinger
CHAPTER 42
St. John dropped Clarissa’s forgery back on the tabletop in disdain. The note from Claire he read again, very slowly. After the morning of her disappearance, he couldn’t bear to look at it; he was too filled with disgust at what he thought was her deception. Now he read it, and read it again. With a troubled visage, he folded and tucked it inside a waistcoat pocket.
He walked as in a daze to his bedchamber. Fletch was putting away neckcloths, and looked at his master in surprise. “Can I help ye, sir?”
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