Page 68 of Watch For Me By Candlelight

Please don’t strike, she silently begged the clock. Please, just don’t do it. I want to stay here.

‘Oh, well, if that’s all it is,’ Kate said, far too cheerfully. ‘You’ll soon be cured.’ Impulsively, Kate hugged her friend, holding her tightly. She was so thin and frail it was heart-breaking. She had a feeling this would be the last time she saw her.

But how had she arrived here this time? She hadn’t heard any clocks striking.

‘Yes, a cold. That’s all it is,’ Millie replied comfortably. She wasn’t a very good actress, and Kate doubted even Millie knew the extent of the disease.

Kate turned her attention back to the scrapbook and cleared her throat. ‘So, you didn’t answer my question. What’s so special about this letter and rosebud, Amelia Violet Aldrich?’

‘Oh, no! Really? Is it so obvious?’ Millie’s blue eyes were wide and disbelieving.

‘Utterly obvious.’

‘That rosebud was given to me at that ball, by a very special person.’ She blushed again and dropped her eyes. ‘But I can’t tell you who. We don’t want anybody to know yet.’ She compressed her lips, as if she’d said too much. ‘Please. It’s just embarrassing now. And I can’t tell you who it is. I can’t tell you most of all.’

By implication, that meant that she desperately wanted to tell her everything about the mystery man.

‘Why not?’ Kate asked curiously.

‘Well, because of Will, mainly,’ Millie said in a low voice. ‘I don’t want to bring all those feelings back to you. Why, I think I should simply die if anything should happen to — him. And you, dearest Cat, have lived it all. It’s happened to you and I — we — feel guilty for our happiness.’ She frowned, fighting some inner conflict. She fingered the rose again. Kate felt terrible that Millie would probably be the one to die first anyway and couldn’t look at her for a moment. Millie coughed again and Kate cringed inwardly as her friend struggled to catch her breath after the fit had passed. ‘And of course, after what you told me about Edward last week — it’s adding insult to injury!’

A memory flooded in — a ball at a neighbouring estate; a muffled giggle from behind the topiary hedge as Cat wandered through the formal gardens searching for Edward. She’d had her suspicions, of course she had. And then he had made an excuse and left her alone — and he hadn’t come back for the dance he had promised her. The eager, pink frothy girl from the Hartsford Midsummer Ball — Maria — had disappeared as well — and Cat, being Cat, had gone out into the formal gardens to search for them both. She’d found them and was about to challenge them — loudly — but at the last minute her courage had failed her and she had peered at them from behind a shrub, horrified, as their hands explored each other through the layers of formal clothing. He pressed the girl back against the wall of the dovecote, and she arched her back, eager for him to do more . . .

Cat had run away, back to the ball, and immediately sought Millie out to tell her. Then Millie had feigned illness, and Cat had been “forced” to take her home. And they had discussed Edward with righteous indignation ever since. Cat felt particularly stupid and didn’t know, she’d said, how she could quite face either of them again.

But she had to. Of course she had to. Hadn’t her aunt and uncle made it quite clear? He was suitable, they said, and seemed to be doing all in their power to push them together. This was 1885, Kate reminded herself; did women have the choices then that they had in her own world? She knew, deep down, that they didn’t and it was quite depressing.

Eventually, she composed herself enough to speak; she assumed Millie would think it was memories of Will that had upset Cat the most — and she would have been right, sort of. The memories of him — Cat’s memories — were strong and overwhelming, even as they sat here in the cosiness of Millie’s bedroom.

It was slightly overdramatic, perhaps, but Kate really did feel surrounded by death and misery and bad memories here today. She missed Will. She missed going into his little cottage and having him push her around the estate or lift her up in his strong, capable arms. She missed his touches and his kisses and the way he looked at her with such a sense of wonder. She hated to think of him not being here, and the idea that he — or Theo, at least — was alive in Kate’s own time; and bloody hell, didn’t she have a chance to be with him then? But it seemed that this time, Theo needed to let go of his most recent past — and it wasn’t going to be pretty. Kate knew she was deliberately shying away from him, despite every ounce of her soul being drawn towards him.

After Chris, she didn’t want a part-time boyfriend; she didn’t want someone who she couldn’t be with fully. And to complicate matters even further, part of her wanted Poppy to be his, because she thought how awful it would be for him if she wasn’t. But, then, if Poppy wasn’t his, then that meant a clean break from Lori and a bigger part of her wanted that . . .

‘Whatever you and your friend feel for one another,’ Kate said carefully, ‘will never change what’s happened to Will. I’ll always love him. And I can’t begrudge you that chance at happiness just because mine has gone.’ Her voice broke as she finished. Would Millie even get a chance at happiness?

Kate looked up at Millie and her lovely face was full of pain.

‘I am longing to tell you about him,’ she said quietly. ‘May I?

Kate nodded.

‘It’s Charles,’ Millie said, completely throwing her, ‘can you believe it?’

‘I — no. No, I can’t. Charles? My brother Charles?’

‘The very same.’ Millie blushed again and looked at the rosebud. ‘I know it’s very strange, and we are cousins, of a sort. But that doesn’t stop the way we feel about one another.’

‘And Fred?’ Kate asked, tongue-in-cheek.

Millie laughed, the awkwardness suddenly gone. ‘Fred was a passing infatuation. He cannot compare with Charles!’ Then she clamped her hand to her mouth and her eyes were wide and comical above it, overly-bright. ‘Oh, no, what if anyone hears me saying that?’

‘What of it?’ A rush of affection flooded through Kate. ‘I, for one, am entirely supportive of whatever makes you happy. You are the best friend I could ever have, the most wonderful cousin and you will be my dearest sister when the time comes,’ Kate told her sincerely. On some level, she firmly believed that would be the case. The other possibilities were just too awful to comprehend.

Millie smiled. ‘And you will be my dearest sister as well. Oh! That reminds me. I was cursed with a vile brother, and he did this — remember?’ She rearranged some bits and bobs on the table and pulled out a couple of photographs. She pushed them towards Kate and her stomach lurched.

There, before her, were two pictures. One was of Kate — or Cat, rather — scowling in her Bath chair, and the other one was Cat and Millie laughing and holding each other up on a section of frozen river. They were both balanced on identical ice-skates, one of Cat’s arms was thrown outwards to help keep her balance and Millie had both arms around Cat. They looked wobbly as hell, but seemed to be having such a good time.

The memory of that moment came back to Kate in a flash. Philip had taken the picture, practicing with his new camera, which had been, she knew, a Christmas gift. They had been unwilling to pose in the Hall gardens as they had new ice-skates and wanted to test them out. It was February and the first real ice had formed thickly on the river. Kate suddenly knew why Cat had written her name inside the skates; it was so they didn’t get mixed up with Millie’s. She felt so sad — where were Millie’s skates now? What had happened to them? Kate suspected they’d just fallen through time, or been discarded when Millie died.