“Trying to steal my horse now, too, I see.”
He strides in with Pandora trotting at his heels. He has, despite my objections, changed, wearing a high-collared shirt, trousers and a dark waistcoat, the Victorian equivalent of casual wear, as formal as it looks to me. He carries a picnic basket even larger than my own.
“You didn’t trust me to bring enough food?” I say. “Or didn’t trust my cooking?”
“I trust both very well,” he says, patting Balios’s nose. “But apparently, we think far too much alike. I had asked Mrs. Shaw to prepare a cold supper, planning a surprise picnic of my own. Please tell me you haven’t already picked out a spot to eat it. And if you have, perhaps pretend otherwise, allowing me some small advantage.”
“I hadn’t gotten that far.”
“Excellent.” He reaches for my basket. “I have the perfect spot in the moors, one I discovered a few years ago. It’s a bit of a walk, though . . .”
“Then, it’s a good thing I dressed for walking.”
His gaze slides down my sundress.
“Did you want me to change into something from the closet?” I ask.
“Certainly not. However, since you mentioned the suitability of your outfit, it gave me the excuse to properly scrutinize it, which I was loath to do before now.”
I sigh. “It’s a sundress. A very proper sundress. It covers my knees, my shoulders and my”—I look down—“most of my bosom. Believe me, I have ones that show off much more, and none of them would be out of place on a city street.”
“I was clearly born in the wrong century.” Another look up and down my dress. “If you would be more comfortable in another of your dresses—a less ‘proper’ one—I wouldn’t object.”
“Somehow, I don’t think my comfort is the issue. I’ll stick with this one . . . or I’ll spend the picnic talking to the side of your head as you politely avert your gaze.”
His eyes glint. “I would only avert my gaze if it caused you discomfort. Since that doesn’t seem to be the case . . .”
“Look all you want,” I say. “Pay particular attention to my sandals, which scandalously expose my bare ankles.”
“I noticed.”
“Of course you did.”
I shake my head and give Balios a final pat before we leave the barn.
15
William leads me to a spot that I can’t believe I’ve never found before. That’s my first reaction. Once I consider, though, I can see why I haven’t. He only found it himself a few winters ago, and even then, it was Balios who discovered it.
It’s a natural spring, bubbling over an outcropping of rocks, with a patch of moss below, so green and smooth that it seems like a picnic blanket spread by Mother Nature herself. The water explains why Balios found the place and also explains why we didn’t. At the source, the spring runs fast and free into a small stream, but a little farther down, the stream feeds a bog that travelers avoid, which means they miss the jewel at the center.
When the bog thawed, William found a path through the rock on the other side. That rock acts as yet another natural barrier—why pick your way across ugly and jagged stone when there are so many lovely paths to follow?
I spread the blanket, and we settle in. Pandora had followed us part of the way, but when she discovered this wasn’t a short jaunt, she returned to her kittens. We’re alone with the cries of the plovers and the burble of the stream. The burble, too, of our conversation, which hasn’t ceased since we left the stables.
My life dominates the conversation. Which is not what I’d intended, but as William points out, I heard all about his horses yesterday, and it’s time for him to learn more about my career. He lives in a time when women don’t attend university, much less teach at one. The first women’s college had opened a few years ago, but it was geared toward producing governesses. Yet William is neither shocked nor even surprised that I hold a job unknown to women in his era. When we’d known each other at fifteen, our conversation taught him more than the technological advances to come. They gave him insight into the social advances, and being a Thorne—known for their progressive ideas—for William, women holding careers is hardly a sign of the apocalypse. In truth, a career like mine was nearly as much an impossibility for a man in his position, and it’s an opportunity he’d have liked for himself.
As a historian, I know that when we pride ourselves on our “social advances,” part of that arises from a misunderstanding of the past. Looking at England going into the nineteenth century and then coming out of it, you see that it advanced at least as much as it did during the twentieth century.
When William realized I’d married an African man, he may have been surprised, but he would also realize that was as natural a progression as women taking careers as university professors. England had its colonies, and while travel wasn’t easy, colonial subjects did emigrate from Africa and Asia. Ronnie and Archie’s family had been in Yorkshire for generations. That doesn’t mean people of color enjoyed social equality in Victorian England, any more than women did.
William opens a jar of lemonade, and I prepare dinner from his basket, mine being more suitable for dessert. We dine on cold beef sandwiches, and cheese and pickled vegetables as we chatter like magpies. Or I chatter like a magpie. William might talk just as much, but the analogy doesn’t work as well for his low rumble of a voice.
When we finish the meal, I present the dessert course, opening my basket to see his eyes light up.
“Cookies?” he says.
“Yes, chocolate chip, peanut butter . . . and peanut butter with chocolate chips.” I lay three cookie stacks on a napkin.
With one big hand, he sweeps the top cookie off each stack and begins munching the chocolate chip one.
“You know I gave you the recipe for those,” I say.
“And you know I have no easy access to chocolate or peanut spread,” he says as he pours us each a glass of port. He’s right, of course. The chocolate bar may have just been invented, but it won’t be easily available until the factories in York open a couple decades from now. Peanuts have only recently become a commercial crop . . . in America. Peanut butter was an early twentieth-century invention, with both peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies arriving in the 1930s.
He continues, “You only provided the recipes to tease me. Even if I could obtain the ingredients, how would I explain the recipes to Mrs. Shaw?”
“Forget Mrs. Shaw. Bake them yourself.”
He stops mid-bite and looks over as if I’ve suggested he dig his own well. No, that’s unfair. William is perfectly capable of digging a well, and he would if the need arose. Baking cookies, though, is like asking him to paint a landscape when he’s never lifted a brush.
Being a bachelor with only day staff, William can carve a ham or brew a pot of tea, but that would be the extent of his culinary skills. When I used to bring him cookies and say I made them myself, he thought that meant I hung around the kitchen and perhaps stirred the bowl once or twice under the cook’s watchful eye. But when I explained we didn’t have a cook, he’d been shocked. Being “in service” was one of the primary sources of income for the lower class, and that had led to a long discussion of the Industrial Revolution.
“I could possibly learn to bake,” he says finally. “However, I fear I would never create anything as delicious as these. You have a gift.”
I sputter a laugh. “You didn’t see the batch that went into the trash. I got distracted and forgot to take them out of the oven.”
“All of mine would have been like that.” He takes another bite. “No, you’ll simply need to continue supplying me with cookies as I am quite incapable of making them myself.”
I smile and shake my head. He eats his cookie, paying more attention to the endeavor than it requires, and then picking crumbs from his shirt as he asks, with studied nonchalance, “You did say you were up for the entire summer, didn’t you?”
“Until the first week of September, yes.”
“Excellent.”
“I’ll drop cookies in your room each week while you’re out riding Balios so I don’t bother you.”
“You may come, too,” he says. “For short visits. Just long enough that I will not feel rude, taking your cookies without offering the pleasure of my company, however briefly.”
I roll my eyes. He takes another trio of cookies from the stacks.
“I’m glad you like those,” I say, “but if you gorge yourself on them, you won’t be able to eat these.”
I pull out a banana and an orange, and his eyes light almost as much as they did for the cookies. Oranges are a Christmas luxury, and while bananas are available, they don’t become popular for another twenty-odd years, until Jules Verne included them in Around the World in Eighty Days.
He takes the fruit and says, “Anything more in that basket?”
I lift another couple of oranges. “There are more bananas, too, though I thought you’d keep them for later.”
“I’ll secret them away in my bedroom as I did when I was five.” He opens a banana. “Did I ever tell you about the time Mrs. Shaw found two of these peels in my dresser drawer?”
I laugh. “No. What happened?”
“I mimicked utter bafflement. She decided they were an Irish curse and nearly fired our new Irish maid until my father stepped in and declared that the peels were clearly rotted vegetation I’d dragged in from the moors.”
He takes a bite of banana. “So there’s nothing else in that basket?”
“Are you hinting for me to bring you something?”
“Mmm, no. I just . . . I keep visualizing another item. A small black pouch.” A sharp shake of his head. “Strange.”
When I don’t respond, he reaches for the basket. I whisk it out of his way. Then I pause before lifting the pouch, gold coins clinking.
“However did I know that was there?” he murmurs. “One would almost think I could predict it, knowing that despite my sternly worded letter, the person who brought that basket would still risk my wrath by returning my coins.”
“Wrath?”
His lips purse. “Strident disapproval?”
“I just—”
“—wanted to be sure I really meant it. Wanted to be sure I understood that you are not wearing rags and cooking bone soup, creditors at the door, a debtor’s prison in your future.”
“There are no debtor’s prisons in the future. And creditors don’t knock at the door. They just call. And call. And call. At all hours of the day and night.”
“Sounds terribly annoying. I believe I would prefer prison.” He peels off a section of orange. “You are familiar with creditors, then?”
I realize I walked into that. “I had some trouble after Michael’s death. Health care is free in Canada, but there are always . . .” My cheeks burn. “We have as many quack doctors and charlatans as you do, and I’m embarrassed that I fell for it.”
“Someone you loved was dying at far too young an age. The charlatans offered hope where hope was desperately needed.” He meets my gaze. “Falling prey to that isn’t weakness, Bronwyn.”
“But it was foolish, and yes, I’ve experienced the relentlessness of creditors firsthand, but I’m long past that. I own a condo—an apartment—in Toronto, which is not a cheap place to live.”
“A large and lavish apartment.”
“I’m on my own. I need neither large nor lavish. I just inherited a house in England, and I can afford to keep it. That puts me well above poverty, William. So far above it that I can’t accept—”
“Charity?”
I squirm. “Generosity. I don’t need—”
“And neither do I. My will bequeaths the manor to a second cousin I’ve only met once. My lifestyle is simple enough that the income from my horses covers it. That cousin will inherit both a grand manor and a tidy fortune.”
“You’re thirty-eight. A long way from—”
“I am not about to develop an opium habit, Bronwyn. Nor take up residence in a gambling hell. Nor marry some empty-headed chit who’ll drain my coffers. Those are the only ways I can possibly die without thousands of those”—he points at the pouch—“going to a man who, while decent enough, has done nothing to deserve it. The advice you gave me all those years ago saved this house. It let me retire here to the lifestyle I dreamed of. You will allow me to repay you with a dozen pouches—a hundred if I wish.”
“I don’t need the money.”
“And, again, neither do I. Indulge me, Bronwyn. Or, if you cannot, grant me indulgence. At least let me feel as if I have repaid my debt.”
When I still hesitate, he says, “I meant what I wrote. If you do not take the pouches, I will keep adding to the stash, and some future homeowner will reap the benefits. He—or she—will almost certainly be a complete gadabout who will fritter it away while our poor house rots from neglect.”
He’s right, of course. There’s also something about the way he says “our” house that melts my resolve. It is indeed ours, now that I have inherited it. His in his time, and mine in mine. Yet it’s also a reminder of that divide, a gulf we cannot breach. It’s “ours” in the sense that we both own it, but not “ours” in the sense that we share it. He cannot come into my world, and I don’t know how long I can stay in his.
I shake off that melancholy thought. “I will use the money for our house.”
“Fifty percent. Or, if you’d prefer to skip the negotiating process, I’ll settle for seventy-five. Three-quarters spent on our house, one-quarter on yourself. Pay off your debts. Buy yourself frivolities.”
“Like first-class airfare?” I smile. “I’ll admit, while I can scarcely imagine paying that much for bigger seats and better service, after seven hours in economy, I’m tempted.” I catch his look. “Yes, I know. I can cross an ocean in seven hours, and I’m complaining about legroom. Twenty-first-century problems.”
“I was not going to comment. If I did, I would only say that if more legroom makes you happy, then you should have it. Everyone needs things that serve no greater purpose than to make them happy.”
He reaches for another cookie and finds the napkin empty. A glance at me.
I sigh and take out the last three cookies, laying them on the napkin. He passes me a chocolate chip. I accept the offering, and he takes a bite from a peanut butter one, crumbs tumbling onto his shirt before he continues.
“What do you have in mind for the money?” he asks.
“I . . . I haven’t thought about it.”
“Liar,” he says. “Which does not mean you wouldn’t have returned the money if I allowed that, but your mind will have permitted some forays into fantasy, how you could use it if you kept it.”
“Parlor furnishings,” I say. “Aunt Judith had to sell them for the house upkeep after Uncle Stan’s death. Also, the fridge leaks.”
“That sounds dire.” Another bite of his cookie. “Notice that I say that as if I fully understand what a fridge is.”
I smile. “Sorry. Refrigerator. It’s—”
“—an automatic icebox. One that runs on electricity, keeping food cold without the constant replenishing of ice. I just didn’t know the term fridge. I remember every detail of every modern miracle you mentioned, Bronwyn. That is why you have a pouch of gold sovereigns in that basket. Now, while I’m certain a non-leaking icebox and a furnished parlor will bring some satisfaction to your life, not everything is about necessity. A home needs indulgence, too. What dreams do you have for our house? Completely nonessential flourishes and luxuries you would like to add?”
I try to demur—I live a life where every cappuccino comes with a prickle of guilt. But William pushes and suggests, and soon we’re deep in a discussion of the necessities and frivolities I could add to the manor.
16
We talk about the house, and we drink the port, and by the time the sun is setting, we’ve abandoned all vestiges of formality, William lazing in the heather, me on my back gazing up at the sky.
�
��Did you become a ballet dancer?” he asks.
I laugh. “Do I look like a ballerina?”
His brow furrows. “I will admit, I’ve only attended the ballet twice, and merely because my fellows insisted. It is not a . . . high form of art, but I seem to recall it is different in your time. If you mean do you look like one of the ballet dancers I saw, I would certainly not mistake you for one of their ilk.”
He’s being very circumspect here, and I have to smile. During the Regency era, ballet gained a reputation as a place where men of the ton might select a new mistress. By Victorian times, while there were excellent troupes, the performances William likely saw would have been more slanted to the, ahem, male gaze.
“No,” I say. “The life of a ballerina was never in my future. I’m far better suited to imbuing hapless undergrads with a passion for bygone worlds.”
“Tell me you didn’t entirely give up on dance.”
“Never.”
He tilts his head. “I’m not certain I believe that. You will need to demonstrate.”
“Oddly, I feel no overwhelming need to prove it to you.”
Silence.
I glance over at him. “I’m no longer five, William. You can’t persuade me to dance by pretending not to believe I can do it. Just as you can’t dare me to crawl into secret passages or jump from tree branches. Mere challenge is no longer the motivator it once was.”
His lips twitch. “No?”
“No.”
“You’re right, then. You asked whether you looked like a ballerina, and I kindly pretended I did not know what you meant. The truth is . . . you are a bit . . . longer in the tooth than the average dancer.”
I shoot up to sitting. “Hey!”
He arches a brow. “Am I incorrect?”
I glower at him. “You and I are the same age.”
“Yes, but it is different for a horse breeder than a ballerina. Also different for a man—”
“Finish that sentence at your peril, sir.”
A Stitch in Time Page 13
