A Stitch in Time

by Kelley Armstrong

  I catch the movement out of the corner of my eye and hit the brakes. There, stepping from my front door . . .

  My entire body seizes, as if convulsing. I don’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

  William.

  It’s William, wearing his cutaway morning coat, with Pandora at his feet.

  He raises a hand in greeting, and I want to hit the gas. Hit the gas and speed away as fast as I can, because I cannot be seeing this. I have not fallen back through time—I’m in my car, on my paved drive, looking over my ripped-up lawn, gardening project in progress. This is my world, and William is in it, and that’s the cruelest trick my eyes could play on me.

  Unless . . . I remember that movement in the window, thinking it was a ghost.

  You want your William back? Here he is. Yes, the records indicate he died at ninety-three, but you changed history, Bronwyn. The butterfly effect. He died at thirty-eight, and you may have him now, a spirit in your world.

  I’m frozen there, staring. William strides out as Pandora disappears back through the open door.

  He keeps walking until he’s twenty feet away. Then he eyes the car, his face creasing in a smile as he says, “That does not look like a horse.”

  And I cry. I burst into tears because I know this is not real. He can’t be here, and I don’t want him to be if he’s a ghost, and so I pray it’s my mind, snapping at last, showing me the thing I want most in the world.

  When I burst out crying, he breaks into a jog, reaches into the car and wraps his arms around me. Solid, warm arms. My hands fly to his chest, and his brows rise at that. Then he realizes I’m pressing my hands to his heart, which beats strong beneath them.

  “Not a ghost,” he says.

  I cry again, a huge wracking sob of a cry as I melt against him and he lifts me out of the car. He lowers me onto the hood, his arms still around me.

  “How?” I manage.

  “I have no idea. I was in your new office, and then the room changed entirely. It was most disconcerting.” A hint of a smile. “Then I realized it was your bedroom, which was a far more pleasant surprise. I went to the window and saw you returning from a walk. I came down the stairs, and I had a devil of a time unlocking the front door. By the time I did, you were speeding off in this beast.”

  He eyes the convertible warily.

  “It’s a car,” I say.

  “I imagined that. I believe, however, I will stick with horses.” He squints at the garage. “Are there still stalls in there?”

  I start crying again. I can’t help it. I cry, and I hug him, and he holds me and kisses the top of my head.

  “No matter,” he says. “I’ll simply need to build a new barn.”

  “You may want to start with a nursery,” I say.

  He gives me a blank look until I set his hand on my belly, and his eyes go wide.

  I laugh. “Good news, I hope?”

  “Of course,” he sputters. “The best news.”

  He hugs me then, tight, before suddenly backing away in horror, looking down as if he might have crushed our child.

  “I’m not that pregnant,” I say.

  He hugs me again, looser, breathing in my ear. “A baby. I can scarcely believe it.”

  “August did say we should start soon.”

  He laughs. “And so we did. Well, then, there’s only one thing to be done. We must postpone plans for both a nursery and a new barn as we have a wedding to plan before your belly begins to show.”

  “William Thorne,” I say. “That is the most romantic proposal I have ever heard.”

  “You’re a widow,” he says. “It’s really more of a practical arrangement.”

  I sock him in the arm. When a sound comes from the house, we look to see Pandora holding Enigma in her mouth, meowing around the kitten.

  “She’s telling you she found her kitten,” I say. “And you all can go home now.”

  “She can if she likes. She can go, and then she can return. The way is open now, for all of us.”

  “That would be . . .” My voice catches. “Amazing. But . . .”

  “What if it’s not? That is the question, isn’t it? Perhaps we should stay here and not tempt fate.”

  That isn’t an option. I know that. I couldn’t stay in his world forever because I had a life here, and William can’t stay here forever because he has a life there.

  “The kittens all have homes,” he says, as if reading my mind.

  “Mrs. Shaw—” I begin.

  “—is overdue for her retirement.”

  “Your horses . . .”

  He’s pensive for a moment before shrugging. “If given a choice between you and them, there is no question. They will find good homes, and I will buy new ones. If you doubt that we can pass freely between our times, we will stay here in yours.”

  Yet even that does not resolve the problem. More than once, I’ve fallen through time by accident, pulled back here when I didn’t intend to cross. If William stays and we ignore the time stitch, I’ll spend my life dreading the moment when he falls back into his own time . . . stranding me in mine with our child. Or, worse, without our child.

  William lifts my face to his. “I believe the way is open. My gut tells me that it is. But we do not know how I crossed, and so perhaps it is unwise to take a chance.”

  I glance out at the property, and I imagine a figure holding a spade. A figure who’s no longer there and never will be again.

  I look up at William. “Just before you arrived, Harold showed me where he buried Cordelia’s chest, and I realized he wanted me to name him in her death. To set him free. I did so, and that’s when I saw something in the window. That’s when you crossed over.”

  “The spirits all finally at rest, the stitch opened for us both. Permanently.”

  “I hope so. Perhaps we ought not to tempt fate, but . . .” I look up at him, heart slamming against my ribs. “I believe we must, or I’ll go mad, waking every morning, fearing you’ve fallen back into your own time where I cannot follow.”

  He nods gravely and says, “Yes.” Nothing more. Just “Yes.”

  We stand there, frozen in place. Then he scoops me up over his arms.

  “Do we dare?” he asks.

  My breath catches, and I want to refuse. I’m afraid, and I don’t want to risk it.

  I lift my chin and look up at him. “Yes, Lord Thorne. I dare.”

  “Then let us madly tempt fate together.”

  He carries me into the house and up the stairs. Once in my bedroom, he kicks the door shut behind him, to the protests of two cats. Then he gently tosses me on the bed and lowers himself over me, his face poised above mine.

  “Now?” he whispers.

  I nod, and I close my eyes as he closes his, bending to kiss me, lips touching mine as I imagine his room and—

  I fall.

  I literally fall, hitting the floor hard, William landing on top of me.

  “Oww . . .” I say.

  He lifts his head and peers about my new office, the two of us lying on the floor.

  “Forgot there’s no longer a bed here, didn’t you?” I say.

  “Damnably inconvenient.”

  I grin up at him. “Shall we return to the timeline with the bed?”

  “I believe so.”

  He kisses me again, and I picture my own room and—

  I land in my room—under the bed—William on top of me, crushing me.

  “Bloody hell,” he grunts as he wriggles out.

  I laugh. It’s all I can do, throw back my head and laugh as he tugs me from under the bed and lifts me onto it, and then I stop laughing as his lips press to mine, firm and warm and solid. His arms go around me, and mine around him, and the world stays where it should be, the two of us locked together in time at last.

  Thank you for reading!

  I hope you enjoyed Bronwyn and Willam’s story. If you’d like to know what happened after A Stitch in Time, I have two more stories coming your way.

  * *
*

  The first is a holiday novella out mid-November 2020. Ballgowns & Butterflies be part of an anthology of four winter holiday novellas. My story will feature Bronwyn and William’s first Christmas together. Look for details on my website page here.

  * * *

  The second is a companion novel featuring Rosalind and August. As you may have guessed, Rosalind didn’t ride off a cliff or abandon her husband and infant son. Tentatively titled A Twist of Fate, this fall 2021 release tells the story of what happened to Rosalind when she disappeared…and what happens when she finally gets back to her family. Turn the page to read an early draft of the first two chapters.

  A Twist of Fate: Chapter 1

  There are two things I do before I leave the house that night. Two snippets of time to be preserved in the amber of memory, polished until they gleam sun-bright.

  After August falls asleep, I slide from our bed and pull on the riding dress I secreted away before we retired. He groans, and I go still, my heart hammering. A thump behind me, and I turn, barely daring to breathe. He’s on his back now, eyes closed, sound asleep.

  I exhale. As I do, clouds shift beyond the window and moonlight hits him. That sliver of light plays over his bare chest and face, and three years seem to disappear, and instead it is our wedding night and I’m looking over at my new husband, breath catching as the moon plays over him.

  I will never be this happy.

  That is what I thought. I’d been almost shamed by my joy, as if I did not deserve it. I’d been afraid for it, too, wanting to swaddle it in wool, lest it break.

  How did I get so lucky?

  I’d thought that, too. August Courtenay was the third son of an earl, and for a young woman like me—with a good name but nothing more—our marriage should have been the achievement of a lifetime. His name and his fortune meant nothing to me, though.

  Perhaps, then, my joy should come from what that moonlight revealed: a man with the face and body of a Greek god. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t thoroughly enjoyed the sight of him. Yet again, that wasn’t the source of my happiness.

  If anything, August’s title and wealth and looks had been detriments to our union, sending me fleeing his early pursuit. Only a fool falls for a man like that. A fool who thinks she’ll win more than a few nights of passion and a cheap bauble for her finger instead of a wedding band.

  No, my joy in that moment, waking beside my bridegroom, was the happiness of finding that most elusive of romantic prizes: love. Love from a man who saw to the core of me, past all my quirks and idiosyncrasies. And I saw everything in him, and loved him back. Loved him beyond imagination, beyond measure.

  That was three years ago. Now . . .?

  I have a secret passion for Gothic tales, and I know how this one should go. Penniless girl weds a wealthy angel and finds herself shackled to a demon instead. There is nothing demonic in August. Just something small and frightened that I desperately want to soothe, and I cannot.

  In each of us, we carry a shadow of the child we were, and August’s is a very sad and lonely boy who is certain every woman he loves will leave him. One would think that marriage, and then a child, would cure his fear, but instead, the more tightly we are bound to one another, the more fearful he becomes, that fear manifesting in an anger and a jealousy that has begun to frighten me.

  I picture the bride who woke beside her husband three years ago. I imagine what she’d think if she could see herself now, slipping from bed, pulling on a riding gown, preparing to sneak back to Thorne Manor and retrieve her wedding band, innocently left in the kitchen as she helped the housekeeper fix an uncooperative bread dough.

  That bride would laugh at her future self. Why all the intrigue? August knows she helped the cook with the dough. He’d understand her removing her ring. What else would he think? That she’d taken it off for a tryst with the owner of Thorne Manor . . . August’s oldest and dearest friend? How absolutely preposterous.

  That is the extent of my husband’s jealousy. The sick and sorry truth of it, that I have done nothing to ever give him cause for concern. I would never do anything, still being as madly in love with him as I was on our wedding night. Yet he cannot rest his watchful gaze when I am around other men, even his most trusted friend, who has treated me like nothing but a dear substitute for the younger sister he once lost.

  And so I must slip from bed and ride through the night to retrieve my wedding band, while praying—praying—my husband does not wake to find me gone.

  I watch August, and my chest tightens with love and with loss, and with the determination that we will get past this. We must. I won this incredible man, and I will not give him up so easily.

  I ease from the room and into the one beside ours, where I creep to a bassinet. Our son—Edmund—sleeps as soundly as his father.

  I bend and inhale the sweet smell of him, his milky breath, his talcum-scented skin. I cannot resist brushing my lips across his head, already thick with his father’s blond curls. One light kiss, and then I slip away, whispering a promise that I will be back long before he wakes.

  Escaping the house not easy. It is August’s ancestral estate, a “country home” that would fit five of our London townhouse. Having grown up in London, I’d shuddered when August first invited me to his family’s Yorkshire estate. Afterward, he joked that I very coincidentally fell in love with him afterward, and it was the countryside that truly won my heart. Not so, but I love Courteney Hall with a fierce passion. It is, of course, his eldest brother’s estate, yet the earl abhors the countryside, and we are free to summer here.

  A house of this size, of course, requires staff, and I must sneak out as stealthily as any burglar would sneak in. At one time, the staff was accustomed to their young mistress creeping out for a moonlit ride. I’d ride under the stars, across the estate’s vast meadows and through its game forests, and I’d never encountered a single person who might feel obligated to tip his hat or look askance at my windswept hair. I’d return after an hour or so, and crawl into bed, drunk on moonlight and freedom, and August would sense the cool draft of my night-chill body and roll over to greet me with lovemaking.

  Last month, when we arrived at the summer estate, I’d slipped away for a ride . . . and August had followed. He’d stuck to the shadows, and when I caught him, he insisted he’d only been concerned for my safety. If that were the case, he’d have said so and ridden with me. No, he’d been following me.

  So while I do not fear being stopped by staff, I do fear them innocently mentioning my moonlit ride to August. I am prepared, though, and soon I am on my horse, riding from the estate without attracting any notice.

  Thorne Manor is not, unfortunately, over the next hill or down the next dale. It’s nearly seven miles away. I am only glad that I have a young and healthy gelding and that the roads are empty at this hour.

  When I near the village of High Thornesbury, the sound of voices drifts over on the breeze. Drunken male voices. I skirt the village at a quieter pace, and then set my mount galloping up the hill to the manor house.

  A light burns in Thorne Manor, but the house is empty. William had business to tend to in London, and so August insisted he take our coach. Yes, a lord, particularly one with William’s income, should have his own coach, but our William was perhaps even more eccentric than I. As for household staff, he had only his aged housekeeper and groom, and he’d given them two nights off to stay with their children in High Thornesbury.

  I don’t stable my horse. I’ll give him a quick grooming before the return journey. For now, I leave him at the water trough and then slip in through the kitchen door, which never quite locks properly and needs only a certain lift-and-pull to open it.

  I slip inside. My goal is less than ten paces from the door, where I’d helped the housekeeper, Mrs. Shaw. Baking is my passion, and it had also been my salvation, when my parents died, leaving their three daughters with a comfortable home and a small income but no dowries. As the oldest, I considered it my re
sponsibility to provide that for my sisters. There’d been an easy and acceptable way—marry one of several rich suitors—and a difficult and scandalous way—open my own bakery. Naturally, I chose the latter.

  My wedding band is exactly where I left it, tucked behind a canister of flour. I’m putting it on when a scream sounds overhead, and I jump, my riding boots slipping on the kitchen floor.

  Eyes wide, I press myself into the shadows as something thumps on the floor above. I hold my breath and measure the distance between myself and the door. Another thump, and I turn instead to a hanging meat cleaver.

  I ought to run. That is the sensible thing to do. Yet I keep imagining that scream. A high-pitched screech, like that of a terrified woman. No thief is going to make a noise like that.

  William is away, and most of High Thornesbury will know it. How many also know about that broken door? For a man with William’s dangerous reputation, one would think he’d be far less trusting. Or perhaps he expects his reputation to keep invaders at bay.

  When I confront August about his jealousy, he insists it’s men he doesn’t trust, as if they lurk behind every shadow, waiting to assault me. I counter that I spent five years without parent or guardian, raising my sisters and running a business. I learned to avoid more than wandering hands. Yet even my preparedness would not protect me from a man intent on his purpose. Hearing that sound above, my mind leaps from burglary to a woman brought or lured to this empty house.

  And so I do not flee. I touch the handle of the cleaver, and then think better of such a sharp and unwieldy weapon, and I take a poker from the hearth instead. Then I creep sure-footed to the stairs.

  I’m halfway up before a sound comes again, and it stops me in my tracks, my mind struggling to identify what I’m hearing. It’s a hollow and haunting sound, half yowl and half keening, raising the hairs on my neck.

  I climb slower now, poker gripped in both hands, gaze straining to see in near darkness.