Moonlight Wishes In Time (33 page)

William took a deep breath. “Yes, of course, you are right. It has not been thirty days. We are only at the twenty-seventh day. I have been counting.”

“I promise not to wish to go home,” Mattie said with a weak chuckle.

“And I promise not to wish you will stay, as difficult as that may be for me.”

They stepped down from the terrace and moved across the lawn toward one of the gardens. William tucked Mattie’s hand in his arm as he tried to ignore the large silver orb overhead. The lights, still on in the house as the servants cleared from the dinner party, illuminated the gardens just enough to be able to see.

They strolled along the rectangular pond, one of William’s favorite spots in the garden. The moon, ever omnipresent, reflected in the still waters, its image broken only by the occasional clump of lily pads.

William absentmindedly covered Mattie’s hand with his own.

“As long as we are joined like this, the moon cannot separate us, I think.”

“Even if the moon has anything to do with it at all,” Mattie said in a quiet voice. “I still have no real idea how I got here.”

William looked down at her. “I believe with all my heart that you are here because I wished for you, though I did not know it at the time.”

Mattie’s step faltered. “Oh, William,” she breathed.

He paused and pulled her into his arms. “I love you, Matilda Crockwell. I shall never love another as I love you. I would do anything I can to help you return home as I know it to be your heart’s desire, but I cannot reverse my love to help send you back.” He bent his head to kiss her, folding her to him. “I wish only for your happiness,” he whispered against her lips.

Mattie froze. “Don’t wish,” she whispered. But it was too late.

His arms were empty.

Mattie opened her eyes. She lay on the balcony of her apartment in Seattle, her head pressed against the wooden railing. Lights from the surrounding apartments broke the darkness—those and the moon overhead.

She attempted to scramble to her feet, her skirts twisted about her ankles. Her skirts! She still wore Sylvie’s lilac dress. It hadn’t been a dream. She’d really been there in the Georgian era!

“No, no,” she moaned as she managed to right herself. She stared at the moon. Was it full? What had happened? Had she wished? She gripped the railing tightly, her nails digging into the resistant wood.

William! Where was William? She’d been holding on to him. He’d been holding on to her. Did he travel with her? She yanked open the balcony sliding door and yelled his name, uncaring of the neighbors.

“William,” she shouted. “William.” She tried to remember where the lights were, so long ago, and yet only a month. Switching the living room light on, she scanned the room, scanned the kitchen then ran down the hall to her bedroom. Please, please, let him be sitting in her chair, holding her book and wondering how on earth he got there!

But the bedroom was empty. The adjoining bathroom was empty. William wasn’t there.

Mattie spied the book on the small TV tray by her chair. She grabbed it, sank into what had once been her favorite place in the world and pressed the book she had once loved so much to her aching chest while she cried. The power of her sobs frightened her as she gasped for breath. Could one survive such pain, such heart-wrenching grief? How could she find William again?

Wish again! She held onto her book and ran back to the living room to burst onto the balcony. She kissed the cover of the book and held it up as an offering to the moon.

“Please let me get back there! I wasn’t ready. We didn’t say goodbye. I don’t want to say goodbye. He wished for my happiness. Was that what did this? His wish? You weren’t even full. How could you let this happen? Is this my happiness? Wasn’t I supposed to wish, too? Please send me back. He must be so worried about me. Please, please, please…” Mattie’s trembling legs gave out, and she sagged to the balcony floor. Several lights from neighboring apartments had come on, but she didn’t care.

“Please don’t do this to me,” she begged. “Please let me go back. I
wish
to go back.”

Nothing happened. She remained where she was, kneeling on the balcony, embracing the book as if it were William himself.

She waited and wished all night, hoping the moon would relent and send her back. Certain no one had ever stared at the moon so long; she thought she must have memorized every crater and valley on it. The sky lightened, dark purple turning into lavender and then a soft mauve. She stayed with the moon until she could see it no longer as the sun rose.

Stiff from sitting in a rigid position in the cool air all night, she rose slowly and entered the apartment. She returned to her bedroom and dropped into her chair, wondering vaguely how long she had been gone. Running her hand along her dress, she told herself that she had indeed been gone though because she didn’t remember buying an empire-waist satin gown to traipse about the house in.

She slipped off her black satin slippers—Sylvie’s slippers—and pulled her feet up under her. With the book pressed to her chest, she closed her eyes and willed herself to dream. To dream of William.

Her last thought before she slept was that she would try again that night. And every night while the moon was full. And every night that it wasn’t full.

*****

A month later, Mattie still retreated to her balcony every night to wish on the moon, even when she couldn’t see it. She knew it was there. In the intervening weeks, she had tried desperately to bury herself in her book again, to find William within its pages, but she couldn’t find the courage to do more than stare at the cover without opening the book. Somewhat numb at the moment, she dreaded any return to the pain she’d experienced when she had first returned.

She’d been let go from her job, having truly been gone for almost a month without giving notice, but she hardly cared. Savings helped her pay long-overdue bills, and she resisted looking for another position until she found out what would happen on the next full moon.

“What happened to you?” Renee, her coworker, had asked over the phone. “When you didn’t come to work the next week, I came to your apartment looking for you, I called your landlord, I even called the police. I tried to cover for you at work, but they only believed the dead grandmother story for about two days.”

“I wish I could explain, Renee. I really wish I could, but I can’t,” Mattie said. Of course, she wouldn’t have explained. Her time with William, in 1825, had been hers and hers alone. She couldn’t share that with anyone. Even in modern times, they still locked people up for being crazy.

“Can I come see you, Mattie? I’m worried about you.”

“Not right now, Renee. I’m so sorry. I just need to be alone. I think I had a nervous breakdown, and I need to be alone now. The doctor said it’s best for me.” Her story didn’t feel far off the truth.

“Mattie! Were you in the hospital? Because you can get your job back if you were in the hospital! Are you all right? Oh, Mattie, I’m so sorry.”

“No, I’m fine. I’m not coming back to work for a while. Doctor’s orders,” Mattie murmured.

“Oh! I see.” Renee paused as if waiting for Mattie to fill in more details, but Mattie had exhausted her thought processes with the few lies she’d dreamed up. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually been honest with anyone, either in this century or the nineteenth century. She wondered what it would feel like to be totally truthful with someone, anyone. Well, perhaps she had been more open with William than with anyone else.

“Okay, well, call me if you need anything, Mattie. And let me know when I can come see you.”

“Okay, Renee. Thanks.” Mattie hung the phone up and set it on the table beside her chair.

She looked at the book once again, running gentle fingers across the cover, allowing them to pause on William’s face. No, Lord Ashton’s face, she corrected herself. She looked at her bedside clock. She still had an hour before moonrise. She’d become quite the expert at the different phases of the moon over the past month.

Tentatively, she lifted the book and settled it on her lap. She toyed with the edge of the cover, noting that the pounding of her pulse grew louder in her ears, sometimes erratically, as if skipping a beat. She dragged in a deep breath and opened the book, the pages falling to a well-worn spot in the book.

“The moon shines for us because it has given me my heart’s desire.”

Rather than cry, she surprised herself by smiling. So hokey. She hadn’t been in any danger at all, had she? Not from men who wanted to kidnap her for her fortune or her virtue, not from stagecoach robbers, not from French or American spies.

The name of the author, at the top of every other page, caught her attention once again.
I. C. Moon.
Mattie blinked and stared at it again. She closed the cover and looked at the large print.
I. C. Moon.
Good gravy! Was that a play on the words “I see moon”? Her heart thudded even louder. She remembered, though, that no author biography was included in the book.

With shaking fingers, she riffled through the book until she found the copyright page. The book was out of print, that much she knew because she would have bought it to keep rather than worry about having to return it to the library.

Original work by I. C. Moon first published 1859 by Sinclair Publishers Limited, London, England. Twenty-sixth printing 1950, Sinclair Publishers International, New York, New York.

“Sinclair Publishers,” Mattie said aloud. “Sinclair.”

William’s company? To think otherwise was too much of a coincidence. Had William begun a publishing house? She noted again the New York address and the word
International
. The company appeared to be prosperous.

Who was
I. C. Moon? Mattie bit her lower lip, waves of excitement coursing through her body. It could only be one of two people. William or her—the only two who “saw the moon.” She tried to imagine William writing a romance in 1859. It hardly seemed likely that he would write a romance novel. Had he survived until 1859? That would make…would
have
made him sixty-four at the time of the first publishing of this book.

The internet! Why hadn’t she looked the author up on the internet before? Were there other books by the same author? None were shown in her book. She could look up Sinclair Publishing and see what its history was as well.

She tucked the book under her arm and dashed into the living room to find her laptop. Perched on the dining room table, she turned it on and waited for what seemed like hours for it to warm up. Finally, her browser came up, and she keyed in
I. C. Moon
, which prompted a myriad of sites regarding the moon, some she’d already been researching over the past month. She scrolled through the pages looking for any references to the author. Several links to web pages came up, and she clicked into them.

I. C. Moon, pseudonym for Georgian- and Victorian-era American romance author rumored to be Matilda Sinclair, wife of William Sinclair, member of the landed gentry and owner of Sinclair Publishing. Mrs. Sinclair published an impressive forty-two romance novels in her lifetime, all published under the umbrella of her husband’s company. Her novels, featuring paranormal elements of time travel often involving the moon, continue to be read today but most are out of print.
A list of the books followed.

Mattie read the paragraph again and again, trying to comprehend the enormity of what it said.
Matilda Sinclair
! Her heart thudded against her chest. So, she
did
go back—and for all her whining,
had
apparently lived in the nineteenth century. And she had married William. Thank goodness no death date was given in the article. She opted not to read any other websites associated with the pen name, which seemed to be more about her books than details of her personal life on the off chance she would see something she didn’t want to. She couldn’t imagine anything worse than knowing the date of her death, except for the date of William’s death.

As much as she wanted to click on references to Sinclair Publishing, which she noted from the references appeared still to be in existence, she balked at the thought of possibly seeing William’s name plastered on the top of the site along with his birth and death dates, such as one might see on a wall of portraits of CEOs.

Though she longed to know William’s future—and her own—she couldn’t risk looking. It seemed likely that she had lived a long time—long enough to write and publish forty-two novels.

A sudden thought occurred to her, and she keyed in several more names. A broad smile spread across her face as she read the screen. A site on American culture in the 1800s revealed that none other than Mr. Thomas Ringwood had been the publisher at Sinclair Publishing in New York. A portrait of an older, more distinguished Thomas with lamb-chop sideburns and mustache, and Sylvie, the spitting image of her mother albeit in Victorian dress, accompanied the article. Despite her best efforts to screen the article with her eyes half closed in anticipation of seeing dates, Mattie wasn’t able to avoid seeing the dates of their deaths on the website, and although she knew a moment of grief, she was comforted to know they’d lived long lives.