I might not be the writer in the family, but I could pen my entire novel in my first year in the twenty first century. It would be an adventure, a mystery, a tragedy and a farce, and at times a tale of horror.
In a terrible way, it is my parents' untimely passing that
allows me to survive in this new world. We may have had
little money, but our parents made sure their daughters
wanted for nothing. Our mother educated us. Our father
hired tutors when we had the extra funds. I was given free
rein in the kitchen, even when I ruined a small fortune in
ingredients, testing new recipes.
We were spoiled in other ways, too. Relatives breathed a
sigh of relief when I neared marriageable age. Here, clearly,
lay the solution to my parents' financial woes. I might be an
odd girl, but smitten young men already penned odes to my
fragile beauty. I could be married oŷ soon and married off
well to a wealthy bridegroom who would extend his
generosity to my sisters and help them make equally good
matches.
A sensible plan. But if my parents had been sensible
people, their daughters would not have been dowryless. My
parents were not fools. Nor were they spendthrifts. They
were something even less acceptable in society. They were
romantics.
My father was the second son of a baronet, whose only
chance at a gentleman's life had been to make either a good
marriage or a good career. Instead, he became a physician
and married his mentor's daughter. While he was an
excellent doctor, he shared his wife's charitable heart and—
like her father—insisted on charging patients according to
what they could afford. We were far from penniless, but my
sisters and I were often the only girls at a party wearing last
year's fashions. Worse, we weren't the least bit ashamed of
it.
My parents married for love and found wedded bliss, and
so that would be my dowry: the freedom to marry the man of
my choice. And I had been in absolutely no rush to do so.
Had they lived until I wed, I'd have gone straight from
their home to my husband's, never needing to worry about
the myriad concerns that come with independent life. If I'd
been that girl, I doubt I'd have survived my first year in the
twenty-first century. Instead, I'd lost them when I was
nineteen, alone and unwed, with two younger sisters to care
for.
Even with that experience, in this new world, I am like a
baby taking her first steps, putting each foot down with care
and deliberation, constantly assessing and analyzing her
environment. Oh, I suppose there are babies who fearlessly
rush into ambulation, accepting the bumps and bruises as an intrinsic part of the process; I was not that child, and I am
not that adult. I consider, consider and then consider some
more.
That first year is an excruciatingly slow process of
learning about my new world. I raid gardens for months
while I determine the best and safest way to gain
employment. I live in sheds for months more until I have the
money and knowledge to rent a room. Others would move
faster, but my careful deliberation allows an easy transition.
I do not make mistakes that mark me an outsider. Mistakes
that might have landed me in a psychiatric ward.
I assimilate. That is the word used for newcomers to a
land, and that is what I do. Slow and careful assimilation, all
the while telling myself it is temporary.
I return to Thorne Manor every month, matching the
moon cycle. With each failure, I fortify my defenses against
despair until the day I arrive to find the house occupied.
Seeing that, something in me breaks. The change is not
unexpected—I noticed a caretaker had been preparing the
house in the last month. It is not even an unmovable obstacle
—the new owner doesn't change the locks, and I had a key
copied from one found in a kitchen drawer. Yet as the house
moves into her new phase of life, it draws back the shroud on
a mirror I've kept carefully covered, refusing to acknowledge
the reality reflected there. The reality that I am not moving
forward in my own life. That two years have passed, and I am
no closer to home than I was that first night.
That mirror also shows a woman two years older. A
mother with a son who will now be three years old. A wife
with a husband who . . .
I've tried so hard not to finish that sentence. Not to
wonder what August thinks happened to me. I tell myself
that perhaps time is frozen in their world, and when I return,
it will still be that same night. My years away will have been
an adventure during which I grew and learned so much. I will
return no longer the young bride, cowed and confused by
August's jealousy, but a twenty-first-century woman with
the skills and the confidence to correct the problem. To save
my marriage without losing myself in the process.
A glorious fantasy. The reality? The reality is that my gut
tells me time has not stopped in that world. My infant son is
a young boy now and almost certainly has no memory of me.
My husband will have thought I ran away, abandoned him,
his worst fears come true.
I've refused to face these things because they loose a wild,
gnashing, all-consuming terror inside me. I've been
forgotten by my son, reviled and hated by my husband, and
there is naught I can do about it.
Has August moved on? Found a new wife for himself and
a mother for Edmund? The thought ignites outrage. His wife
is alive. Edmund's mother is alive. Yet when I consider it in
the cold dark of night, I must face an equally cold and dark
truth. I almost hope August has moved on. For his sake. For
Edmund's.
I do not want them to mourn me forever. I do not want
that place in their life vacant forever. If I cannot return
home, I want August to have found a woman who makes him
happier than I did, a woman who can silence his demons, a
woman who will love my son as her own.
And where does that leave me? Does the woman in the
mirror stay frozen forever, aging but unmoving? Subsisting
and existing but never truly living? Alone and lonely, the
exact fate I would never wish on August?
Is it time for me to move on? More than a year will pass
before I'm ready to answer that question.
IT IS YEAR FOUR. MY SON HAS JUST TURNED FIVE. MY HUSBAND WILL
turn forty soon. I myself have celebrated my thirty-first
birthday. Time passes, and I stay still, and I am, in this very
moment, facing that as I've never faced it before. I stand in
my bakery, looking at a man who could be part of my future.
He could or he could not, and either seems equally likely. I
do not know him that well. We may realize we are not
compatible. Yet it isn't about this man so much as it is about
taking this step.
Eight words. "Would you like to go for tea later?" Even if
nothing comes of it, by speaking the words, I am
acknowledging that I may never return to August and
Edmund.
The man—Noah—has no idea what I'm contemplating.
He's pretending to choose two macarons. For over a month
now, at precisely one o'clock each afternoon, Noah stops to
pick up macarons for his afternoon tea. I'm not even sure
whether he eats them. The first time, when he'd come
wanting sweets for his mother, he'd declared he wasn't
much for pastries himself. That, apparently, was before he
tried my macarons.
They're decent macarons. Not my finest pastries. The
delicate almond cookies sandwiched with ganache are
currently in vogue, and I do them well enough. My
minuscule bakery in the Shambles has won awards for my
cannels and my jam tartlets, but the tourists want
macarons, and apparently, so does Noah. He's just never
certain what flavor he wants on that day, which is an excuse
to linger and chat with me, and I am fine with that because
he is an excellent conversationalist.
Do his visits remind me of August's wooing? Of how my
husband wandered into my shop looking for a gift—for a
lover, of course—and left nearly an hour later with a basket
of pastries, none for his lover? Do I compare and contrast
August's visits with Noah's and find the latter lacking?
Excellent conversation, to be sure, but bereft of the charm,
the spirit and the sheer overwhelming Augustness of August
that finally won me over.
It is not the same. Nor do I want it to be. I look at Noah, a
handsome divorced thirty-five-year-old with a steady office
job and a good flat and a kind manner, and I know that if I'm
to take this step, he is an excellent man to take it with. He is
safe.
I will not say he is boring. I will not. On a scale of one to
ten, with one being deathly dull, Noah rates a perfectly
respectable seven. It's not his fault that August was a twelve,
and really, if I'm being clear eyed with myself, honestly
remembering the tumult and heartache of our last year
together, perhaps I would, in the long run, be happier with a
seven. Just as August, if he has found new love, has hopefully found someone more conventional, able to placate his
jealousy in a way I could not.
Noah leans over the counter, dark hair tumbling forward
as he peers through the glass at the jewel-toned cookies
below. "They're all too good, Rosie. That's the problem."
"I should suggest one of each, but I'm a terrible
salesperson."
He smiles. "And as much as my stomach would love that,
my waistline would not. You need to start oŷering only two
types a day, so I don't need to choose."
"Is that what you'd like?" I say. "Grab two and be on your
way?"
Rosalind Courtenay, are you flirting?
Yes, I am, and when Noah lifts his eyes to meet my
dancing ones, his cheeks color. "No, I suppose that isn't
what I'd like at all."
I wait for him to say more. He won't. His gaze slips to the
wedding band on my finger, and that is enough. He knows I
claim widowhood, but as long as I wear that ring, he is
respectful of my grief. If a step is to be made, I'm the one
who must make it.
We speak instead of local politics and an upcoming
festival where I will have a booth. I'm debating what to sell
—in addition to macarons, of course—and I ask his advice,
and we chat until a queue forms and my shop girl—ahem,
sales associate—cuts me a look that politely begs for help.
Noah sees it and chooses swiftly, as considerate as ever.
He's barely out the door when I make my decision. I will
ask him to tea. Today. Now.
I serve one quick customer and then apologize to my
assistant and promise to be quick. Apron oŷ, I'm out the
back door, ducking down the narrow alley to intercept him.
He's moving fast, his tall and lanky frame expertly
weaving through tourists milling through the Shambles.
Tourists. I owe them my success. As lauded as my pastries
might be, it's my key location and those tourists themselves
who allow me to pay the rent on both my tiny shop and flat.
And yet, well, I'd be lying if I didn't admit there were times
when I cursed them, muttering that the lack of tourist
hordes was one thing definitely better about the nineteenth
century.
With his height and his sharp suit, Noah easily cuts
through the crowds. I'm a five-foot-tall, slight-figured
blonde in a sundress. No one moves for me. No one even
notices me. Well, yes, some men do, sadly, but not to move
out of my way.
I'm weaving through the crowd when a child's screech
catches my attention. Children—particularly young ones and
particularly happy ones—always have that eŷect on me. I'm
like a pointer hearing a game bird. I stop whatever I'm doing
as if that joyous cry might somehow come from my son.
This time, it's not even a boy. It's a girl of perhaps
eighteen months. She's spotted a bright-colored toy in a
shop window and nearly launched herself out of her father's
arms, reaching for it. That makes me smile, even as a pang
shoots through me.
I'm about to turn away when the father's voice cuts
through the surrounding burble of tourist chatter.
"Yes, yes, Amelia, that is a toy. A lovely toy, and we shall
return for all the required closer examinations once your
mother has shown me this magical bakery, which is
apparently, even more magical than all the other bakeries
she adores."
The first thing to catch my ear is the name. Amelia. I've
always liked that name. Then I notice the man's tone. It's
oddly formal . . . and yet not. Almost a mockery of the speech
of my own world, like an actor well-versed in older
language, using it to humorous eŷect. Both of these,
however, would not hold my attention if it were not for one
more thing.
That voice.
I know that voice, and on hearing it, I turn slowly, my lips
parting in a whispered, "William?"
While he's facing the toy shop, his figure matches that of
William Thorne. Dressed as I never saw Lord Thorne dressed,
of course—in a casual shirt and trousers, with a zebra striped baby bag over his shoulder—but he's tall and broad
shouldered with dark hair that curls at his neck nape. And
the woman beside him, angled sideways from me?
I remember August's words from that night in our
stateroom.
I resolved not to tease him about his mysterious buxom
brunette.
The woman with William is tall with chestnut-brown
curls and a full figure. She's also pregnant, and though I
can't see her face, her figure nudges at my mind. I'm chasing
that nudge when she smacks her husband on the arm.
"If you're going to mock my love of bakeries, William,
perhaps you shouldn't bring treats to the flat every evening."
"Mock? Did I mock? Never. I happily indulge your passion
for pastries. I simply wish that if you were to discover the
most magical of all magical bakeries, it could be located
somewhere other than this."
He turns to look meaningfully along the narrow cobbled
road with its cutesy shops and gaggles of tourists. I have to
smile as he shudders. His companion rolls her eyes, her
response swallowed by passing college students in Harry
Potter robes, shouting, "Expelliarmus!"
It is only then, as the students pass, that I realize William
has turned. That I see his face, and that it is, beyond any
doubt, his face. And the woman with him is his "girl" from
the future.
The latter might seem wild conjecture. After all, buxom
brunette is hardly an uncommon descriptor. Yet I see her face
now, and I am, for a moment, back in twenty-first-century
Thorne Manor.
I might have lived there for two months, but I'd never
paid much attention to the house itself. I'd paid particularly
little attention to the objects that make a house a home. The
books on the shelves, the photos on the walls, the papers on
the desk. Those were all reminders that I was trespassing on
another's property, invading another's most private place.
Yet when I see the woman's face, I cannot deny that I've
seen it before. An old photo at Thorne Manor, one of a young
girl with her parents, all of them in modern dress.
This woman was once a girl with a connection to Thorne
Manor. A relative of those who owned it in the present. That was how she met William, how she'd passed through time to
spend a teenage summer with him.
More than that, I know her. Not the girl, but the woman. I
see her face in full, and recognition strikes like lightning.
She has come to my shop thrice in the past week. We've
spoken on the last two occasions, but even on that first one,
I'd noticed her.
I can picture her, standing in my shop, eyeing the pastry
display, her daughter on one hip. I noticed her, not because
she was beautiful or unusual. I noticed her because she was
happy. A mother perhaps nearly a decade older than me with
a baby on one hip and another in her belly. A mother glowing
with contentment and joy. I saw her, and I'd retreated into
the back. As I did, our eyes met, and hers widened, and I'd
thought it was because she realized I was backing away.
When she came two days later, I made a point of serving
her, shamed by my first reaction. She'd asked questions in
an accent I'd mistaken for American. As we talked, I learned
she was a history professor from Toronto, married to an
Englishman. They had a summer house in North Yorkshire,
but her husband was in York for a horse show, and they were
spending the week at a holiday flat.
When she'd come by yesterday, I'd found myself smiling,
happy for the excuse to chat. I even oŷered her my card and
said the shop shipped throughout Yorkshire. We don't ship
anywhere, actually, but I'd felt the urge to reach out. I've
come to realize I've omitted one very important part of a
satisfying life: companionship. So I was seeking that,
whether with this woman or with Noah. Baby steps toward a
fuller life. Now, seeing the woman with William, I know exactly why
her eyes had widened that first day. Why she'd returned
twice more and made a point of talking to me.
She knows who I am.
She has seen a portrait or photograph of me in my world.
Her husband was August's best friend. She would know his
wife had vanished, and she might even know my former
profession. One day, she walks into a bakery in York, and
who does she see? She cannot believe her eyes, quite
literally, and so she comes twice more, striking up
conversations as she continues her assessment. When she
has decided I am indeed Rosalind Courtenay, she brings
William to confirm.
I watch them. Her face is turned up to William's, his own
countenance as joy-bright as hers. Tears spring to my eyes. I
could not be happier for him. He is a dear friend and a good
man, yet there has always been a shadow in him. Now it is
lifted, and he glows with its leaving, and I want to run to him
and throw my arms around his neck.
William. Dearest William. It is I. Rosalind.
Yet my feet do not move. I only stare, and that moment of
joy on seeing him freezes in my gut as one tear trickles down
my cheek.
William.
I want to run to you. Throw myself at you. Beg you and your
lovely new wife for help. You are here, in my world, and you can
take me home.
Tell me you can take me home.
What if you cannot? What if you are trapped here, too?
Only for you, it would be a blessing. You have your wife. You have your daughter and another child on the way. You have
your home and even your beloved horses. You will miss
August dreadfully, but otherwise, there would be nothing
tying you to that other world.
Even if William and his wife can move freely between
worlds, that does not mean they can take me back. What
would we do then? Have William return to tell August that
I'm trapped forever in the future?
As I watch, William and his wife continue toward my
bakery, and my feet remain rooted to the cobblestones. They
are nearly past the alley when William half turns, frowning.
My breath catches, but his gaze only slides across the
shadows before he continues on.
I wait until they are gone, and then I run. It is time to go
back to Thorne Manor. Back to that spot that brought me
here, in the hope—the wild hope—that seeing William
means I can finally return home.