‘I know that you are.’ I snuggled into his neck.
‘I am still angry,’ he murmured, as he kissed my collarbone. ‘Not with you. But with the world. This incomprehensible, awful world that we find ourselves in.’
I turned to him, stroking his beard, his chest.
‘Time has bent for us already,’ I murmured. ‘It’ll bend again, no doubt. The world and all its awfulness can wait. Just a little.’
William kissed me, then, softly, and I felt time slipping away from me. But this was a loss that, for once, I was willing to release.
TEN
I woke up at dawn, wrapped in William’s arms. I’d had a strange dream, and I started as I awoke and realised where I was.
In the dream, I had been at a wedding. Just me, a shadowed man that I couldn’t quite see and a priest. We were standing in woodland; it was cold, and wet underfoot. I looked down at myself: I wore a beautiful white dress, and there was a gold band on my finger. The priest turned to me; I knew I had to repeat the words he had just said, but I didn’t understand them. They were in a language that didn’t make any sense to me.
I had the overwhelming feeling that I hadn’t chosen this marriage; that I was there under duress. The shadowed man held my hands in his firmly. I had to repeat the words. I couldn’t see his face.
William was already awake, staring at the ceiling of the little shack. It was cold; my breath made a fog in the morning air.
‘Good morning.’ His voice was low; his dark eyes unreadable.
‘Good morning,’ I replied, shyly. I pulled the blankets over myself in an attempt to get warm. I wasn’t sure what to feel; the night before, we had come to each other in passion, but now, everything felt chilly, and it wasn’t just the frigid air in the hut. The dream felt like it lingered in the air between us.
‘We should get up. I imagine Miss Willcock’s cottage will be warmer than this.’ He sighed, sitting up and pulling on his shirt, which he had discarded on the floor the night before. ‘It pains me that a draughty pellar’s cottage should be the only place I have to go, unless I want to take my pick of whatever gamekeeper’s hovel should be empty.’ He grumbled as he got dressed. ‘How did it come to this? I cannot fathom that I may never see my home again. What will I do if I am never Lord of Trevarron again?’
I didn’t want to tell him that I felt it was fairly unlikely that he would return to his old life. Given that all was even in the mechanics of the time portal, which I still didn’t really understand, it should be equally easy or difficult for either one of us to return to either 1755 or the twenty first century. Yet, in 1755, William was wanted for assault and possibly murder. He couldn’t go back there.
‘I don’t know, William. It’s something we’ll have to work out together.’ I sighed, taking a deep breath before I pushed off the thin blanket and reached for my jumps and the little jacket that went over them, which had been torn off in passion the night before, as were my skirts. I dressed hurriedly, the cold prickling my skin.
‘Now that I am no longer the Lord of Trevarron, I have nothing. No money. No land. No title,’ he repeated dully as he watched me dress. ‘You will tire of me without it, Tegan. I told you last night.’
‘And I told you that I won’t,’ I replied. ‘Lace me up, will you?’
‘See? You already treat me as a servant.’ He was mulish, but came to stand next to me and began lacing up my bodice with deft fingers.
‘If I tire of you, William, it’ll be because of your character, and not because you’re no longer a lord. That was the thing that stood in our way, if anything.’ I watched him as he concentrated on the lacing, his noble face frowning. Not for the first time, I admired his high cheekbones; that handsome face.
‘How so?’ He frowned.
‘Because, as lord, you had power over me in a way that wouldnever be healthy. I was Edith’s maid. What hope did we ever have to be together? Now, at least, you have no obligations. No restrictions. You can go wherever you please, do whatever you please,’ I said. ‘I know that we don’t yet know where or what that might be. But it’s something. We could choose to see this as a possibility.’
He regarded me seriously. ‘Tell me, what is it like, the time you are from? Are you even a maid there? Who are you? What do you do?’
‘That’s a very big question.’ I wanted to touch him; I wanted to kiss him, but after the fire of the evening before, the energy between us felt frosty. ‘It’s very different. There’s central heating, for a start.’ I shivered. ‘Imagine, heating that turns on at the flick of a switch. Let’s go back to the cottage. At least there’ll be a fire there, as you say.’
‘If you’re not going to take me seriously…’ he began. I felt immediately awful for hurting his feelings, but his sudden change of sentiment had caught me off guard. I was still processing everything I felt about the transition from 1755 to the 1800s. I still felt lost, and I had no idea what to do next. I was very aware that, despite the fact that I had ended up here with William, I was still alone in a sea of time, lost without any anchor to home. And, I felt responsible for bringing him here, too. It was at least half true that, because of me, William had lost everything. If I had never appeared in his life, he wouldn’t be here now.
But, I couldn’t think like that. I hadn’t intentionally travelled to this time, and the things that had happened at Trevarron House in 1755 – the bad things that had happened, especially to Edith – were already happening without me being there. I knew that, if anything, I’d tried to help. But it was hard to remember that when William was so heartbroken, so lost and broken.
‘William. It’s not that I’m not taking you seriously. It will just take time. Can you give me time to tell you?’
‘Of course. I am trying to have an open mind. Believing that you are from another time, from the future, is a lot to understand. Ifeel… disconnected,’ he said, gruffly, but I knew he was trying to understand.
‘I know you do. All right. No, I’m not a maid in my own time, that was just something I had to do when I came to Trevarron. I had to be able to live somewhere while I worked out how to get home. Not that I did manage to.’ I sighed. ‘But, in my own time, I’m a student. At a university.’
‘A student? Of what?’
‘History.’ I gave him a wry grin. ‘If you can believe it.’
