Belmary House Book One (6 page)

He gripped her ankle, looking up at her, shaking his head. “Say it again,” he said. “I don’t think I heard you properly.”

She wrestled her ankle out of his grasp. Poor thing. “You did hear me, perfectly well. Now stand up, let’s go downstairs. I’ll pour you a drink and explain.”

To his credit, he stood up, and as she led him down the stairs by the arm, he muttered, “She thought she saw the ghost of Lord Ashford last night. Is Belmary House really haunted?”

Last night? Ashford had been here the day before as well? He hadn’t mentioned that in his most recent letter to her. That letter hadn’t said much at all, just the terse instruction to be ready at a specific date and time. She checked the room where she’d been flung backwards through time on a regular basis, but hadn’t received any new instructions since. Goosebumps crawled up and down her arms that she might have got it wrong somehow. No, she couldn’t think that way or she’d go to pieces. Taking a breath, she looked up at Dexter, who was practically shaking in his shoes.

“Not haunted, no. Maybe cursed, though. And she probably did see Ashford, just not his ghost.” She flinched again, this time at her bang up job of explaining things. Well, in her defense, it wasn’t an easy thing to explain.

They made it to the main work room where she poured him a glass of the brandy she wasn’t supposed to know all the researchers drank. He barely took a sip before letting loose with a string of questions. She sifted and settled them in her mind while taking a healthy swig herself.

“I’m just going to start at the beginning, eh, Dexter?” At his morose nod, she closed her eyes and let it out. The secret she’d been keeping for more than a year. “I’m from the future.”

“Oh, bloody hell, like the Terminator?” Tears rolled down his cheeks and he took a larger swallow of brandy.

She let him continue to sputter his disbelief, then held up her hand. “Ten years from now I worked in this house. It’s actually a lovely museum in my time, and I was the head curator.”

“You’re so young,” he broke in, clearly taken aback. “What are you, twenty-five? How’d you get to be head curator?”

“I’m twenty-eight, and because I’m awesome. And seriously, is that the main concern here?”

He smiled sheepishly and took another healthy swallow of alcohol. “Sorry, just a bit envious, I guess. So, wait. The house is still standing ten years in the future? It doesn’t get demo’d?”

“In my time it was still here, but things could be changed when I get back.”

Her voice caught on the last words and she sat down, pressing her hands into her knees and forcing herself to breathe evenly so the tears wouldn’t come. How much longer would she have to wait?

“When you get back? Was the ghost going to take you back to your own time? And he got Tilly instead?” He wiped his cheeks and shook his head at the madness.

Because to him, it was madness. When she first came through, she’d tried to wake up so many times, even considered jumping off a bridge to test if she might already be dead and this was some sort of bizarre purgatory.

When Ashford finally found her and explained, she’d been so grateful she hadn’t gone insane, the fact that it would be more than a year before he could get her back had only stung a little. She’d been strong, and waited, and kept it together, the same as she always did in every situation. The fact that it was all for naught made her arms and legs feel like they were encased in lead. Her heart ached.

Only Dexter’s ridiculously handsome tear-stained face kept her from curling into a ball under the work table. She’d make him understand first, then go home and curl up there. Begin waiting again.

“Ashford isn’t a ghost, but yes, basically, that’s what happened. I told her not to go upstairs,” she couldn’t help add.

A long silence filled the room, punctuated every now and then by Dexter making broken noises, as if he wanted to say more but couldn’t get the words fully out.

“Do you swear you’re not having one on me?” he asked.

“I swear it,” she said, giving him a hard look that told him she wasn’t joking. She might never find a reason to joke again.

“Is Tilly in the future right now?” He actually sounded a bit jealous.

She shrugged. “I don’t think so. I was supposed to go back with him to his own time for a few days, a bit like a layover.”

She grabbed her clutch purse and dug out the letter, which she’d folded into a tiny square, and handed it to him. He unfolded it and read it, still shaking his head.

“They went through from the house?”

“Yes, a bedroom upstairs. The
thing
opens up to different times, I guess, and it’s on a schedule of sorts. He’ll get her back, if he can. Eventually. Just like he’ll get me back. Eventually.”

Her voice broke and she pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. She felt a warm, reassuring weight on her shoulder, then a gentle squeeze.

“What do we do in the meantime?” Dexter asked.

Emma moved her hands away from her eyes and looked at him. She’d been trying so hard to stay strong to keep him from falling apart at the news his cousin was trapped in another century, and the second she started to lose it herself, he became as steady as a rock. A proactive one at that. A glimmer of hope radiated from his determined smile and it strengthened her wrung out resolve. After all, she needed to keep going. She couldn’t give up.

“We need to keep this place from getting the wrecking ball. I don’t know what will happen if the house is gone, but I’m fairly certain nobody’s going anywhere ever again.”

He nodded firmly and took her hands. She raised her brows at him, shocked that shy and reserved Dexter would be so bold, but he only held tighter.

“Let’s save the house, then.”

Tilly marveled at the gorgeous dress she’d been given, flipping up the brown silk skirt to admire the dainty embroidery on the muslin shift beneath it. It was no wonder Ashford had disapproved of her costume, now that she saw a gown of this time up close.

Everything was hand stitched, and perfectly at that. Her mother would have loved to see such a dress, and Tilly was so delighted to be wearing it that she almost forgot her dire predicament. Nora, the maid who’d been assigned to help her dress did a few more adjustments, needlessly straightening the shoulders and fluffing up the lace insert at her bosom.

“It doesna look as if it wasna made for ye at all,” she said. “It fits ye quite nicely.”

Tilly didn’t want to think about where the dress had come from at such short notice. That cad Ashford probably had a closet full of gowns from his mistresses, or all the other women he’d bumbled into the wrong time. She took a massive inhale, nearly billowing out of the top of the bodice, and the maid tucked the lace in a bit more securely.

“Your accent sounds a bit like Lord Ashford’s,” Tilly said. His was much more refined, but definitely different from the London accent her cousin and Emma had. “I’m sorry, but I’m from the States and can’t place it.”

Nora nodded vigorously. “Aye, we’re both from Scotland. Or rather, I guess, Lord Ashford lived there most of his childhood, until his father died and he had to take over down here. He goes back and forth, ye see, and I always wanted to see London, so last time he let me come to work down here.”

Tilly felt like she hit the jackpot with the chatty Nora and tried to decide on her next question before the girl left.

“Er, do you know what’s going on here?” she asked carefully.

Nora turned red from the roots of her hair to her tidy starched uniform collar. “Dinna worry, ma’am, we’re all verra discreet.” She turned from red to purple and nearly dropped the brush she’d picked up. Taking a steadying breath, she began to brush Tilly’s hair, but was unable to meet her eye in the mirror. “And no one judges ye.”

Tilly coughed, wondering what in the hell Ashford had told her. It certainly wasn’t the truth, however, which meant not everyone who worked in the house knew about his forays through time, though the valet Duncan seemed in on it.

Duncan was much nicer than his shrunken apple head looks made him seem, and he’d tried to console her as he’d shown her to this room. While he hadn’t explained much more than Ashford had, he assured her she would get home. Eventually.

She felt the swooping drop in her stomach as it struck her again. Three months, trapped in a different century, with people who thought God knew what of her. Well, she couldn’t ask Nora. She’d just have to bear it.

“Lord Ashford lived in Scotland as a boy?” She closed her eyes and let Nora brush out her hair, hoping the open ended question would release a flood of information.

“Aye. His mother and father didna get along, y’see. My mum and da both worked for the estate, so knew the Lady. She died when I was too young to remember her, God rest her. She was a great lady, verra kind, and was wealthy in her own right, just not lucky in love.”

At Nora’s pause, Tilly opened her eyes to see she held out two different hairpins, seeming to want an opinion. Tilly pointed to the one in her left hand without a thought and widened her eyes for the girl to continue.

“Well, since it wasna a marriage of love, they had the children and separated. All the land up there was hers.”

“Children?” Tilly interrupted. “He has siblings? Is he the oldest?”

 Nora frowned slightly and Tilly wondered if these were things she ought to already know. Hmmph. If he wanted to go spreading stories about her, he should have let her in on it if he didn’t want her to mess it up.

“He’s the oldest only by minutes, as he and his sister are twins.” She paused again, frowning even more intensely, as if wondering about something, but shook it off and continued. “Our Lord Ashford didna come to England until he was fifteen or so, and the old lord was verra sickly. I never met the man so canna say, but those that did know him …” She shrugged.

“Not so kind?” Tilly guessed, wondering if there was more to the twin sister. She didn’t know how much she could press without having Nora completely clam up and stop trusting her, and as much as she wanted to know about Ashford, she thought it might be nice to have a friend while she was here.

“Ah well, I dinna want to speak ill of the dead.” She smiled at Tilly in the mirror and flourished her hand around her hair, all neatly tucked back, with a few loose curls framing her face. “Your hair holds a curl quite well,” she said, clearly done gossiping.

A sharp rap at the door and Lord Ashford’s voice cut through it.

“Miss Jacobs, a word, if you will.”

It wasn’t a question, but an imperious command, dousing the relaxed sense of curiosity she’d managed to hide behind for a few minutes. Her blood simmered. Oh, she had a word or two for him.

Nora jumped and ran to the door, opening it at Tilly’s nod. She escaped, slithering past Ashford before he could take up the entire doorway. Tilly took a deep breath, ready to let him have it for abandoning her after dropping the bomb of being stuck in this time for three months, for telling who knew what monstrous tales about her to his servants, and for—

The breath came out in a confused gust, nearly shaking free the carefully placed piece of lace. She clapped her hand to her chest and stared at him. Damn it, but he looked good. He’d changed his clothes and shaved, his unruly dark hair now combed neatly to frame his face. A snowy white cravat made his skin seem to glow with rugged health, and when her eyes meandered down, she gasped and jerked them back up to his face.

Why were men’s clothes so form fitting in this time? It was distracting. Had she been angry about something a second ago? She couldn’t remember. His previous scowl had relaxed to something a little less stern, and his eyes widened solicitously when he saw her.

“You look lovely,” he said. “The new gown suits you well.”

Damn it, why did she have to be so forgiving? She struggled to remember that due to his screw up, she was stuck in a strange century for three months. But, for some bizarre reason, for a second she almost didn’t care. Had she lost her mind? Was that a side effect of the time travel? He took a few steps closer until he stood directly in front of her, looking concerned. His eyes were really the most remarkable color. Like storm clouds.

She scrambled back. Storm clouds, indeed. She’d show him storm clouds. She opened her mouth to tell him what an idiot he was.

“Thank you, it’s the most beautiful gown I’ve ever seen,” came out instead.

He raised an eyebrow and she could have punched herself.

“It’s merely a day dress,” he said, one side of his lip quirking up. “And not even properly fitted to you. I shall arrange for a visit from the dressmaker straight away, so you can choose outfits to your own taste.”

“Still, all the hand stitching and details. And this silk is so fine. Even the slip has the prettiest needlework.”

His eyebrow flew higher at the mention of her underwear. She grimaced at her mistake and clamped her mouth shut to keep from admitting she couldn’t wait to see the dressmaker. The thought actually gave her goosebumps of anticipation. Maybe three months wouldn’t be so bad. Guilt washed over her, as she remembered Dexter, probably out of his mind with worry. And poor Emma, stuck in the wrong time as well.

Ashford took another step toward her, his head tipped to the side. “I must admit I rarely get to your time, but don’t women just buy everything ready-made? You seem to know a thing or two about sewing.”