Again, My Lord: A Twist Series Novel (6 page)

“Do excuse me, Mrs. Tinkerson,” she said, and pushed past the woman.

Tacitus crossed the room. No matter how strangely she was behaving, he owed her an apology. Mallory had been a wretched influence on him, obviously. His own mother must be rolling in her grave at present.

“With this flood you will be here until tomorrow. How splendid!” Mrs. Tinkerson hurried after her. “I have a millinery shop now. Do say you will come see it. I daresay it’s as elegant as any shop in London you’ve ever seen,” she said to Lady Holland’s back as she went up the stairs.

“Yes, of course,” she murmured without turning around, and disappeared on the upper landing.

“Lady Holland is a bit under the weather now,” Tacitus said to the milliner. “If you will excuse her.” He took the stairs two at a time.

She was standing before her door, a cat curling around her ankles.

“I don’t care for cats,” she said to it in a weak voice. “I have told you that twice already. Two days in a row. Now go
away
.”

His footsteps sounded on the top riser and she turned her head as the cat slunk away.

“Lady Holland,” he said as he went forward, his cravat far too tight. “I beg your pardon for insulting you. I don’t know what came over me.”
Her
. She had come over him. As she had six years ago. But this time
she was married
.

“Insulting me?”

“Pinching you,” he clarified, somewhat strangled.

“I asked you to.” She shook her head. “Do you know, I am not entirely sure this is a dream after all. If it were, I’m certain I would not have you apologizing for pinching my behind when it was quite a lot more like a caress, now, wasn’t it?”

His mouth, dry as an old bone, opened and nothing came out.

Her perfect teeth showed between her parted lips and her breasts rose upon a quick breath.

“I am dreaming,” she said a bit raspily. “I am sleeping and merely dreaming now.” She was staring at his mouth.

Quite abruptly he could not think.

“I have heard of this before,” he managed to mutter. “Sleepwalking, I believe the men of science call it. Good God, what do they say to do with a sleepwalker?”

“Never try to wake a sleepwalking person,” she said. “You must gently encourage him to return to bed, then he typically falls into deeper sleep quite readily. I read about it once.”

“All right. Excellent advice.” He moved toward her as footsteps sounded on the stairs. “Why don’t you open that door and I will make certain you tuck yourself in nicely.” The air was surely lighter upstairs than down. He felt downright dizzy. Good God, he had never in his life wanted to put a married woman to bed. Any bed. Anywhere. Any married woman.

Until this moment.

“Milord,” Mrs. Whittle said behind him. “I saw that her ladyship is feeling poorly,” she bustled toward him. “How may I help?”

“Do wait a moment, Mrs. Whittle,” Lady Holland said and took a single step that brought her right before him. She looked into his eyes. “I am most certainly dreaming. There can be no two ways about it. And while I would never commit actual adultery, no matter how evil Richard is, I don’t think that doing this in a dream really qualifies as infidelity. I think. I hope. I don’t know. It’s just that for six years I have wanted to … I …” She took a mighty breath. And then she went onto her toes and pressed her lips to his.

It was over as soon as it began. She jolted backward, butted her shoulder into the door, fumbled for the handle, then opened it and slipped inside. Tacitus heard the lock turn.

“Goodness me,” Mrs. Whittle said.

Tacitus swallowed. Then again. Tried to breathe. Found it a futile effort. And then tried to breathe out, to expel entirely from his senses the honey scent of her skin and the soft warmth of her lips and everything that
he
had been dreaming about for six years. But it was impossible.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

Calista removed her stained gown
and climbed into bed, bemused and muddled from hunger.

She should not have kissed him. Even in a dream.

If she were dreaming.

She must be dreaming
. But perhaps she had dreamed
yesterday
.

How on earth would she have dreamed yesterday almost exactly like today before she had actually lived through today?

Pulling the pillow over her head, she willed herself out of the dream.

The church bell started tolling. She counted. It ceased at eight. If Mrs. Whittle were to be believed about the bell’s regular habits, it was not yet Sunday, but still Saturday.
Again
.

This could not be happening. Unless it was some sort of hypnosis. She had heard of stranger things. Evelina had written to her recently that their mother tried to take her to a
séance
in London, presumably to ring a peal over their father’s ghostly head. But a person must agree to be hypnotized for that, or some such thing, she thought.

Perhaps if she simply went through this day calmly, it would all end and tomorrow she would be on her way. She could not return to the taproom, though. Not now that she had kissed him. Not even under hypnosis or in a dream was she prepared to see him again after that.

That
.

His lips—soft and firm at once. His scent—warm and real and intoxicating, his scent that all those years ago had made her positively silly every time he had come close to her. If she had managed to convince him to spirit her away from Dashbourne, she might have already been enjoying that intoxication for six years. Instead, beneath his disapproving regard in the doorway of the inn that day, her resolve had crumbled and she let him take her home.

It was for the best, of course. If she had convinced him, she would not now have Harry, and that was not imaginable.

“Of course, Harry’s mother is now a madwoman,” she mumbled to the Aphrodite statue.

It did not reply. But something … something was different about the statue’s face today.

The eyes.

Slowly Calista approached it, studying the beautiful face and sinuous body that had been carved from a single block of flawless alabaster. Up close, nothing was out of the ordinary. The limbs and gown still seemed to undulate with sensual delight even as the stone remained perfectly immobile, and the eyes were still as empty as Calista’s stomach.

“You are not glowing. You are not smiling. You are not glittering and I do not smell cakes.”

Hauling it up from the dressing table, she threw it into the box, packed the stuffing around it, clamped the lid down, and pushed it all the way under the bed with a loud scraping of the crate against the floor. This time if someone moved it while she was asleep at night, she would hear it.

Pulling an old magazine out of her traveling bag, she sat down for a long day of hiding from everyone until this strange hypnosis had passed.

Two hours later, as Old Mary was tolling the ten o’clock hour, a knock came at the door. The dressmaker stood in the opening, her compact frame draped in the same gorgeous walking gown and pelisse that she had worn to call upon Calista here yesterday.

“Good day, my lady. I am Mrs. Cooke,” she said in the smooth, cultured tones of a lady of birth. She was no more than four or five years Calista’s senior, with large hazel eyes and dark hair pulled back in a chignon. “Mrs. Whittle sent Molly to me with the request that I call upon you immediately this morning.” She folded her hands before her and perused Calista’s stained frock. “What a shame,” she said. “That is a very serviceable fabric, but it will have to be dyed entirely brown now if you wish to use it again. In the meantime, I will be happy to loan you a gown today.”

They were
the exact words
Mrs. Cooke had said to her yesterday.

Untying her tongue, Calista admitted her. She would play this mystical game, go along with the hypnosis or dream or whatever it was, and do everything she had done yesterday. And tomorrow when she woke up, she would set her mind again to devising a plan for wresting both her and Harry from her husband’s home.

For there was only one explanation to this repeated day: the misery of life with her husband had addled her brain so dreadfully that she was going insane. The sooner she permanently freed herself and Harry from that life, the better.

~o0o~

Old Mary’s dawn alert tore through the little bedchamber and Calista’s head, waking her to the gray of early morning.

Blinking her eyes open wide, she counted the tolls. The seventh faded into silence. No eighth ring came. Mrs. Whittle had certainly gotten that little detail of life in Swinly wrong.

Pushing the covers away, she set her feet on the cold floor. Then she saw it.

Across the room, atop the dressing table, the Goddess of Love’s pale white face stared at her with blank eyes as the drumming of rainfall outside filled Calista’s ears.

Lady Holland left the inn
without speaking to or looking at anyone, and without opening an umbrella or donning a bonnet against the rain. Eyes blank, she looked like she had seen a ghost.

Tacitus had seen a sleepwalking person once with eyes like that, fixed in some invisible place that was part of the dream. Given the flooding, if she were sleepwalking someone needed to watch her to ensure that she did not accidentally drown herself. When through the window he saw her turn toward the high street, he abandoned his coffee, grabbed his greatcoat and hat, and went after her.

He remained at a distance. If a woman wanted to walk around in the rain, he didn’t have any business spying on her.
Or getting caught spying on her
.

She walked all the way to the ford without once breaking stride or turning her head. Her cloak, sodden and dragging in the mud, clung to her arms and hips, defining her curves decadently. Motherhood had only improved her figure, giving a pleasing roundness to her slender shape.

Slowing his steps as she approached the ford, he watched her halt before the roiling water, and held himself in check from going forward. If in a sleeping daze she waded in, he was close enough to run and grab her from it.

Still, he felt like a voyeur watching her now. It was true, of course, that he had never really been able to help himself from watching Calista Chance. He had followed her even then, six years ago, from party to party in London, from London to her family’s estate, and then around the countryside for an entire month, driving her and her siblings about, walking through woods and ruins and every village within miles, as the Earl of Chance’s offspring sought amusement away from their house.

Just as then, he was captivated now. Calista Chance could be soaked in rain, with mud up to her ankles, shadows beneath her eyes, and lines creasing her brow, and he would still be captivated. Even a sharp word on her tongue like the night before when she had called him peculiar could not quell his interest. It was his sorry fate, he supposed, to find her more compelling than any other woman he had ever met.

Abruptly she pivoted away from the ford and her eyes came to him. As he was the only thing in the road, it wasn’t to be wondered at. She moved toward him, and he met her in the rain.

“Good day, my lady,” he said with perfect inanity.

Upon a gust of wind, the rain canted to the side, slanting down between them.

“I realize it was a mistake to kiss you like that,” she said. “But you needn’t worry. I won’t do it again.”

Rain dripped off the tip of his nose. “I beg your pardon?”

“How often do you say that? ‘I beg your pardon?’ Or do you say it only to me?”

“I beg—” He coughed. “That is, may I escort you back to the inn? I don’t believe you have taken breakfast yet, and you must wish to change out of those wet clothes.”

“I haven’t any other clothes with me. There, I have said it. I have no other clothing and no money. I cannot afford both breakfast and dinner today, my lord.”

Something in his stomach tightened. No
money
? The sister of an earl?

“Allow me to treat you to breakfast. But not until you have changed out of those wet garments, I think.” He offered his arm, both hoping and dreading that she would accept it and after six years of drought he would again drink of the madness of her touch.

Her lovely brow furrowed and her crystal blue eyes seemed to glitter behind the curtain of rain.

“You don’t remember that I kissed you, do you?”

Tacitus was fairly certain that if this woman had ever kissed him, he would not only remember it, he would very possibly have swooned and immediately thereafter written an epic poem about it.

He lowered his arm.

“I do not, in fact,” he said. “But I see that in one manner you have not changed in six years. You still like to tease a man, don’t you?”

“I am not teasing,” she said without a smile, the shine in her eyes now brittle. “Yesterday, I kissed you. Very swiftly, of course. I thought I was dreaming, but even so I should not have. Yet you don’t remember it. Do you remember Molly spilling coffee on my gown?”

“The gown that you wear now? Your only gown?”

“Yes.” She parted her cloak further and spread her skirts with both hands. “Just here, on the skirt and all across the bodice.”

“Perhaps the rain has obscured the stain,” he said and dragged his eyes up from where her fingers were splayed across her breasts that were the ideal size to fit into a man’s hands.

“There is no stain today,” she said. “It hasn’t happened yet. Not this today, yet.” She blinked swiftly, repeatedly. “I think I would like that breakfast now, if you are still offering it. I feel remarkably light-headed.”

“Of course.” He extended his arm.

“No. No, thank you. I don’t think I should touch you,” she said, and started back up the road.

He came astride of her. “Had you plans to travel farther today, that this flood has ruined?”

“I was to go home.” She flicked a swift glance at him. “You did not ask me about my travel plans yesterday,” she said. “You gave me your table and were ready to ignore me. In fact, the day before that, you did ignore me, until later, and the rainbow.”

“The rainbow?”

She halted in the middle of the road. “Why are you here now, away from the taproom?”

“I saw you leave the Jolly Cockerel looking … odd. I was concerned.” More so now. This babbling did not bode well. Perhaps she was not in her right mind. But the night before she had seemed perfectly sane with her son and Lady Evelina.

“You were concerned? About
me
? I insulted you last night in front of the others, and yet today you followed me out here in the rain because you were concerned?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” She nodded, but her eyes looked even more distracted. She headed toward the inn anew. Just as they reached it, the infernally loud church bell began tolling the hour. A woman in a hat suited to Ascot twirled about in the foyer and her eyes popped wide.

“Lady
Calista
? Lady Calista Chance? It
is
you. Calista Chance—oh, but I’d heard you
married,
of course. Oh, what a delight to see you after all these years!” The ribbon tied beneath her chin quivered with her excitement. “Dear Lady Calista, don’t you remember me?”

“You are Mrs. Harriet Ryan Tinkerson,” she replied and walked past the woman into the taproom.

Mrs. Tinkerson stared wide-eyed at the doorway, then at him.

“What a delightful person she is.” She smiled uncertainly. “How do you do, sir? Oh! You are the Marquess of Dare! I saw you in the prince’s review two years ago. It is such an honor, my lord.” She fell into a deep curtsy.

He bowed. “Pardon me, if you will, madam.” He went into the taproom. A grizzled-looking fellow with white whiskers had joined the guests among whom Tacitus had breakfasted earlier. Lady Holland stood dripping before him.

“The ford is flooded and the north and east fields are flooded as well, all the way across the valley,” she said to him. “And there is no way out of this village, no matter how eager one is to leave it. Is this not correct, Mr. Pritchard?”

He stood up. “Yes, ma’am. That’s correct. Swinly might as well be an island today.”

Tacitus moved forward. “What do you mean? This village is now entirely encircled by water? Not only the flooded ford?”

“Like a sailing ship upon the ocean, sir,” the fellow said. “Just as the lady here said, Butcher’s fields to the north and Drover’s field to the east as well. Hip deep, they are, though I don’t know how she knew it.”

Lady Holland grasped Tacitus’s coat sleeve and dragged him to an empty table.

“Please, sit,” she said, and released him.

“Just a moment.” He turned away.

“
No
. Don’t leave.” Her eyes were fraught. “Please,” she whispered.

“I am going to call up some breakfast for you. You are too pale.” And obviously agitated.

She nodded. Moving swiftly through the taproom and foyer to the kitchen door, he poked his head in. The innkeeper looked up from her dishes.

“Milord! You shouldn’t be in here.” She bustled toward him.

“Mrs. Whittle, breakfast for Lady Holland, if you will. And coffee. Quickly, please.” He smiled. “Thank you.”

He returned to the taproom. The woman in the tremendous hat was standing over Lady Holland waving her hands about and practically giggling. Lady Holland’s eyes rose to him shockingly bright. Panicked. Her hands were fisted in her lap.

“Why, isn’t it delightful, my lord? This dear lady has promised to take tea at my shop today. How happy I am that the flood came so providentially and she is trapped here so that we can have a nice long cozy chat and catch up on all these years apart! Why, you know, Calista, how I always did like hats better than painting or French or anything else those horrid spinsters made us study. Didn’t I?”

“You certainly did,” she replied in a flat tone.

“My shop is right in the middle of Swinly, my lord, on the high street and safe from the flood. I will adore giving Lady Calista—oh! Lady
Holland
—the grand tour of it today. Do say you will come for tea too, Lord Dare. I daresay my darling little shop is as elegant as any shop in London you’ve ever seen.”

“As I don’t often have the occasion to visit millinery shops, Mrs. Tinkerson,” he said, his eyes on Lady Holland’s drawn face, “I could not say. Would you excuse us now?”

“Oh!” She looked back and forth between them curiously. “Yes, of course. Now don’t be late, dear Calista. My lovely little parlor in the room next to the shop will be all ready for you at teatime. Adieu!” Smiling vapidly, she fluttered out of the room.

Tacitus took the seat beside Lady Holland. Molly came forward with a pot of coffee and a cup. A farmer leaped up from his seat.

“I’m giving this one a wide berth!” he said heartily to his tablemates. They all chuckled and Molly’s cheeks flamed.

“She spilled coffee on him a quarter hour ago,” Lady Holland mumbled. “Right about the time we left the ford.”

“Did she?” Tacitus looked around. Sure enough, the farmer’s trousers were splattered with a brown stain. “How do you know that?”

“It happened yesterday. And the day before. Only she spilled the coffee on me instead of him. I was standing just beside him.”

“Perhaps you should eat before saying anything more.”

“It won’t make any difference. After I ate yesterday it was the same. The day before that, of course, I did not eat until dinnertime.
Tea,
” she said firmly as Molly set the cup on the table and lifted the coffee pot. “I don’t care for coffee,” she added less steadily.

“Yes, milady.” Molly scurried off.

“If you haven’t been eating properly,” he said, “it’s no wonder you’re not quite top of the trees today.”

“Lack of food has never before made me relive the same day three times in a row. Or at all. And did you really just use the phrase ‘top of the trees’?”

“I did. Do you have a problem with that?”

“I have a problem with all of this!” She cast her hands out to either side and Molly, carrying a plate and teapot, jerked abruptly, splashing tea across Lady Holland’s lap.

The lady’s nostrils flared. “Cannot you refrain from dousing me
any
day?”

“Oh, milady! I’m that sorry, I am! I’ll fetch a rag right quick.”

“Don’t bother. Just set down the plate and pot and go.” She snatched up a table linen and dabbed at her skirt. “I have a problem with
all
of this,” she whispered when the girl had gone, and stared at the food before her. Then she looked up at him. “This is the third time I have woken up to today.”

Tacitus studied her fevered eyes, her graceful cheeks that were decidedly pale, and her posture of impatient tension.

“You woke up twice before the bell rang this morning?” he asked. “That isn’t to be wondered at. The rain made such a racket on my windowpanes all night long, I barely slept either.”

“No. You’re not listening. I have woken up today, on Saturday, February twentieth, at seven o’clock, to the ringing of the church bell, three times. I have already lived through this day twice.”

He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.

“You know,” he said, “it really is a shame Lord Mallory continued on to his destination last night. If he were here now, I am certain he would be delighted to share this table with you. He enjoys a fine joke.” He blew out a breath. “I am unfortunately not as susceptible to the delights of bald teasing.” He stood up. “I bid you a good day, Lady Holl—”

Her fingers clamped around his wrist.

“Don’t leave,” she whispered harshly. “I beg of you. I— I need
help
.”

He might have pried her hand off of him, no matter how much pleasure the mere contact sent through him. He might have told her precisely what he thought of foolishness like this. But something in her eyes, the panic, gave him pause.

“You expect me to believe this?” he said warily.

“Of course not,” she snapped. “I don’t believe it myself and I am the one living it. But I don’t know anybody in this village except my coachman and I think I should probably see a physician.”

He nodded. “All right. Stay here and finish your breakfast, and I will make inquiries.”

Calista’s tight chest loosened enough so that she could feel her heart knocking against every rib.

“Thank you,” she forced through clenched teeth, and took up her fork.

By the time she had eaten everything on her plate, he returned, carrying a woman’s cloak.

“I have the address of the local doctor. He comes highly recommended by several people in the village. I did not delay in vetting him for you first, but I sent a boy to tell him we were on our way. I thought you would like to see him sooner than later.”

“Yes.” She stood. “Immediately.”

He wrapped the cloak around her shoulders. It was an elegant garment made of fine green wool, the likes of which she had not owned since she was a child.