"No," Emma said sharply. "There is no need. You may help me to undress and I shall go straight to bed." She yawned. For effect. "I am tired."
"And you have the headache."
"It will pass. Something about that hairstyle – so many pins – it was uncomfortable. I could not wait to pull them all out."
Bailey sniffed. "I am sorry that my work caused you pain."
Oh dear.
"It was probably because we talked so late, Mrs Smith and I."
"Mrs Smith?"
"A chance encounter with an old friend. I will tell you all about her in the morning, Bailey." She yawned again. "For the present, I am much in need of my bed."
Bailey harrumphed and began to undo the cloak strings at Emma's throat, revealing the sapphire pendant. She stopped suddenly, her eyes widening. "Oh, goodness. Your eardrops, m'lady. Do not say you have lost them?"
"What? Oh, no. They were forever becoming tangled in my hair. I took them off and put them in my reticule." She allowed Bailey to remove the sapphire pendant from around her neck. While the abigail was setting the gold collar aside, Emma started to rummage in her bulging reticule. "That's odd," she said. "I remember putting them in here. I know I did." With a grunt of exasperation, she pulled the drawstring wide and upended her reticule into her lap. Handkerchieves, vinaigrette, a packet of pins, a tiny pocket book and other feminine necessaries tumbled out. And among them, a reassuring gleam of blue. "Ah, there we are. I knew I had remembered aright."
"But, m'lady, there is only one."
Chapter Nineteen
Safely transported back to the museum research room, Emma smiled to herself and patted the shredded lace gratefully as the sounds of St Mary's bells died away.
She should put the gown back into the costume store, but first she would go up to the staff room to make a celebratory cup of coffee, she decided. She deserved a reward. It hadn't been too difficult to persuade Bailey that the widowed Mrs Smith, friend of a friend, but with so many interests in common with Lady Emma Groatster, was real. The matter of the missing earring had taken longer, but Bailey had finally been reassured that her mistress could only have dropped it at Mrs Smith's house. That tale had the advantage of being true, too. Mostly. Lady Emma had refused to allow any fuss to be made. She would not permit her servants to disturb poor invalid Mrs Smith, and on a Sunday, too, with enquiries about a lost bauble. She would certainly be able to retrieve her earring on her next visit to her new friend.
Which – she had added very firmly – would be very soon.
Emma grinned at the memory. Poor Bailey had been thoroughly hoodwinked. The abigail hadn't even discovered the little valise until it was safely empty. It provoked a few questions, but Emma's cover story was well prepared and had the advantage of being simple. Mrs Smith, an avid reader, had asked Emma to lend her some books that she might enjoy. The valise was the invalid's, sent for that very purpose, so that Emma's people did not have to fuss around with brown paper and string.
Don't get too cocky, modern Emma told herself sternly. There's plenty that can go wrong, especially with someone as sharp as Bailey.
But, deep inside, she didn't think it would. She and Will – or rather, Regency Lady Emma and Will – were meant to be together.
She was still feeling euphoric an hour later as she drove home. She put her buoyant mood down to the combination of good sex and good luck. What more could she possibly want?
More of Will Allmay. She knew now why the Regency ladies touted him as the best lay in London. They were dead right.
She grinned at herself in the rear-view mirror, turned on the car radio and sang at the top of her voice all the rest of the way to her front door.
~ ~ ~
Emma spent most of the evening on the internet: first on the mundane, but potentially vital, task of finding a riding school where she could learn to ride side-saddle; second on the trickier task of trying to track down a Regency lady called Emma Groatster.
She succeeded on the first, but failed miserably on the second. There was no one at all with the surname Groatster. She tried various spelling permutations, but none of them worked, either. And she already knew that there was no Will Allmay in the records.
Yet they had both been at the Lamb House. So why couldn't she find them?
She could think of only two possible explanations, and both of them were seriously scary. What if she had dreamed it all? What if her "translations" to the Regency had never actually happened? Except in her ridiculous imagination?
If that was so, she was certainly losing her marbles. She should see a doctor.
But it couldn't have been all in my imagination. I brought back Will's dressing-room key. It's in my pocket. And it is definitely real.
That left the most far-fetched explanation of all, worthy of the best science fiction. What if Lady Emma and Will existed right enough, but in some kind of parallel universe rather than in the past of Emma's twenty-first century reality? It was difficult to get her head round that weird idea, but it did have the advantage of explaining why Lady Emma and Will appeared to have no history in Emma's modern world.
Parallel universe? She was going out of her mind.
If such a place existed, and if Emma was somehow getting there via the gold lace gown, she would never know what was going on. She had blithely referred to Waterloo when she was flirting with the officers in the park. So obviously there had been a Battle of Waterloo. But what about all the other historical details she thought she knew? Maybe there was no Princess Charlotte of Wales in Will Allmay's reality? Maybe George III was not mad and was still ruling the country? Or maybe the Stuart monarchs were still on the throne?
In one of her rasher moments, she had fancied she might risk telling Will about coming back from the future. If he really loved her, he would listen. She planned to back up her claims by telling him about things still to come, like Princess Charlotte's death in childbirth and George IV's accession in 1820. Or railroads. Will would undoubtedly pooh-pooh her fantasies at the time, but later, once they happened, he would have to admit that she had been right.
Provided she was right. In an alternative universe, she might not be.
She couldn't cope with such a mind-boggling idea. Her head was beginning to pound. And no wonder. The whole thing was utter madness.
She couldn't afford to worry herself into another migraine. It would ruin all her plans. She would park the idea of a parallel universe and put it out of her mind. Tomorrow, she was definitely going to the Lamb House. With Will's key. And a few other things, as well. As soon as she could manage to slip away, she was going to try Will's key in the dressing-room door. It would fit, she was sure. Then, once she'd proved to her own satisfaction that her time-travel was real, she was going to make a visit to the nightingale bedchamber.
She had a feeling that those shifting floorboards were going to provide at least some of the answers she needed.
Newly determined, she shut down her computer and went into the kitchen to make herself some supper. She would sit with a tray in front of the television and watch the funniest, silliest programme she could find. She would have a couple of glasses of wine, too, since alcohol always made her sleepy. The last thing she wanted was to lie awake for hours, worrying about why she couldn't find Emma and Will.
~ ~ ~
Next morning, she prepared carefully for her drive out to the Lamb House. She felt she knew so much more about the place now, even though she'd seen only a few of the rooms while she was there with Will. He'd promised her supper, but she'd never seen the inside of his dining room or tasted Sanding's military cooking. Somehow, she and Will had got distracted.
What else did you expect from the greatest stud in London?
Her nagging inner voice was back.
She ignored it and turned up the car radio even louder. The sun was shining, it was a beautiful spring day, and she was going to solve at least one of the mysteries around Will Allmay. Old naggy could go and jump in the nearest la
ke.
She put her hand into her coat pocket and shivered when her fingers touched her rape alarm. That wasn't what she wanted to find at all. She had to dig deeper to reach Will's key. But it was there. Touching it made her heart feel lighter. For it was a real, tangible, provable link to the Regency man she loved.
Since the Lamb House had been reopened to the public earlier in the week, Emma needed to arrive well before any paying visitors were admitted. So she'd set off really early. Once the tourists began filing through the house, and gawping at Will's restored master bedchamber, she would have no chance of having his dressing room to herself.
There was only one other car in the staff car park when Emma drove in. It was probably Geraldine, the house manager, who was in charge of security and the house keys. Geraldine had become a little leery of Emma on that last visit, but even Geraldine couldn't be in two places at once. Provided the other woman was busy with something downstairs, Emma would have time to nip up to the dressing room and try her key. Piece of cake, no?
Geraldine was in the basement staff room, making coffee.
Emma wished her a cheery good morning. "Is that real coffee? Wonderful. I'm no good in the mornings without an injection of caffeine."
Geraldine agreed that the same applied to her. She needed the real thing, she said, hence the filter coffee maker. It would be done in another few minutes and then they could both enjoy a quiet cup before the rest of the staff arrived and they all had to start on the mundane business of opening up for visitors. Given the fine weather, there would probably be loads of them.
"But that will be good for the house, won't it?" Emma said brightly. "Money towards upkeep and renovations?" Before Geraldine could reply, Emma said, "Oh, that reminds me. Something I have to check in the costume collection before we start opening the house. I'll just nip upstairs and see to it. I'll be back before you've finished pouring the coffee." She bustled to the door. "Milk, no sugar," she called back over her shoulder as she closed it behind her.
Now for it. She took the back stairs two at a time and was panting a bit by the time she reached the bedroom floor. She had not taken off her car coat. The vital key was in her pocket.
She raced through the master bedroom, still looking totally wrong with those garish red velvet hangings, to the dressing room on the far side. She checked the back of the lock. No key. Well, that was predictable. There was a key, and she had it. She took Will's key out of her pocket and tried it in the lock.
It wouldn't go in at all. For a second or two she stood staring at the door, thunderstruck. Her key must fit. Surely it must?
But it didn't. It was completely the wrong shape for the hole. She could see at a glance that the shank was much too thick.
How stupid of me. It was the key to the outside door that I stole. I remember now.
Shaking her head at her own mistake, she went across to the far door. Again, no key in the lock. This keyhole was bigger than the one in the connecting door. And the whole lock mechanism looked quite a bit older.
Emma pushed her key into the lock. It went in. Easily.
Yes, it IS the right key.
But when she tried to turn it, it refused to budge.
The mechanism was probably rusty inside. Maybe if she put some oil on the key, it would work?
She didn't have time to try that now, so she took the key out, spat on it, and tried it again. It moved a tiny fraction this time, but that was all. Emma muttered a curse.
"What on earth are you doing, Emma?"
Geraldine was standing in the doorway to the bedchamber, frowning angrily. This was her domain and Emma was clearly interfering where she had no right to be.
"Oh, sorry, Geraldine. I…I found this key back in the museum without its label. There was a scrap of label in the same box referring to the Lamb House and it looked as if someone had scribbled something about this dressing room on the back of it. I couldn't really make it out. So I was just trying the key, to see if—"
"To see if it would break the lock." Geraldine marched across the room and pulled Emma's key out of the door. "You, of all people, should know how easy it is to damage the fabric of an old house." She examined Emma's key for a moment. "And I can tell you this is nothing like the key to this door." She dived into her pocket and produced a huge bunch of keys, of all shapes and sizes. Choosing one, she inserted it carefully into the lock and turned it. There was no resistance at all. The mechanism was in perfect condition, clearly. No rust at all.
With a grim smile, Geraldine unlocked the door again and took out her key, holding it up against Emma's so they could compare them. The shanks were similar but the pattern of the teeth was totally different.
Emma knew she must be red to the roots of her hair. "I'm sorry. It was a stupid thing to do. I realise that now."
"I'm glad you do." Geraldine sounded more like a headmistress than a colleague. "And if you come across any more artefacts that you think might belong at the Lamb House, I must ask you, please, to bring them to me." She made to pocket Emma's key.
No. That's Will's. And mine. You can't have it.
Emma raised her chin. "Since that key clearly doesn't belong here, I ought to take it back to the museum." She held out her hand, waiting.
After a moment's hesitation, Geraldine dropped the key onto Emma's palm and turned to go. "If you have no costume business here, perhaps we might go back downstairs? Come on," she added, sounding suddenly much less frosty than before. "Our coffee will be getting cold." She flashed a grin and led the way to the stairs. It seemed that Emma's faux-pas had been forgiven.
Emma automatically followed her to the back stairs. Her thoughts were in turmoil. Her link between Will and the Lamb House was no link at all. The key didn't fit the lock. It should have, but it didn't.
Parallel universes? Was she in a Lamb House that looked the same, but wasn't?
She shuddered and had to grab the bannister for support. Nothing was working out as she had hoped and planned. Maybe she was going mad. It was easier to believe that than the ludicrous idea of a parallel universe.
~ ~ ~
Having worked on the costume collection for several hours, and shown it to a couple of visitors who had paid the extra charge to see it – they were both would-be Regency romance authors so their questions had been very detailed, and thought-provoking – Emma decided to risk the second part of her plan. That confrontation with Geraldine had been humiliating. Worse, it had been all for nothing, because Will's key didn't fit.
The blue bedchamber could be different, though. And Emma would never be able to stop brooding about it until she knew the truth. Since it was now late afternoon, Geraldine would be downstairs in the shop, selling guide books and postcards. The house stewards would be at their stations in the rooms open to the public, answering questions and keeping an eye out to prevent pilfering.
The blue bedchamber was out of bounds to the public. It had no prowling guardian.
Emma retrieved her treasures from her big shoulder bag, stuffed them into her pockets and made for the corridor. Once she was sure none of the staff was watching, she would slip into the blue bedchamber. The chamber of nightingales.
It was surprisingly easy. There weren't enough volunteers to have someone permanently on the landing. One person had to cover both the landing and one of the small saloons attached to the bedchambers. Emma loitered, pretending to be studying an oil painting on the wall. The moment the landing volunteer went back into her saloon, Emma slipped into the blue bedchamber.
Careful. Remember how much noise this floor makes. If there's anyone in the room below, they're bound to hear me.
In the modern room, there was no furniture at all. So Emma didn't cross the floor straight to the fireplace. She crept round the edge of the room instead, hugging the walls. As she'd suspected, the floorboards hardly shifted at all and there was no noise that she could hear.
She grinned to herself. Had her luck changed?
When she got to the hearth, she d
idn't kneel on the floorboards. Too risky. She knelt on the hearthstone instead. Not kind to the knees, but much less likely to creak.
She dug into her pocket for her makeshift hook tool and her pen with the little torch on the end. The edge of the board came up with a bit of a struggle – it probably hadn't been moved for decades, in this reality – and she bent her head down to floor level to follow the tiny torch beam into the dark. Her heart was thumping nineteen to the dozen as she focused it through the gap.
A glimmer of blue smiled up at her. Followed by the sparkle of a diamond.
Emma wanted to whoop with delight. Her sapphire earring was there, translated through two hundred years. She wasn't having hallucinations after all. Her Regency world was real. She had the proof of it. Real proof.
She heard footsteps outside in the corridor outside. The volunteer was on patrol again. No time to waste on the earring. She had never intended to remove it, anyway. She was in the addition business here, not subtraction.
She pulled her treasures out of her other pocket. A small mango, sold to her as perfectly ripe but, in reality, a bit hard and green, and a cheap digital watch. She pushed the mango in beneath the floorboard. It was a bit of a squeeze and the fruit might get bruised, but what did it matter? Next she dropped the watch into the space at the stalk end of the mango. Then it was the work of seconds to push the floorboard back into its place and spread the dust across it with her handkerchief.
She stole back round the walls to the door, trying to scatter the dust as she went. The result wasn't great, but at least she was not leaving a clear track of footprints to show where an intruder had been. Emma stopped to listen at the door for a good minute. She heard the volunteer's footsteps pass and die away. The woman had returned to her post in the saloon. So it was as safe as it was ever going to be.
Emma opened the door.
There were two people in the corridor outside, inspecting some antique chairs. Emma's breath caught. Then she saw that they were only visitors. She marched out of the nightingale room and shut the door officiously behind her. She nodded to the couple as she passed them. "We'll be closing quite soon," she said. "Don't miss the restored master bedchamber before you go. It's absolutely splendid." She pointed. "It's down there." She made for the stairs without waiting for the pair to respond.
Lady in Lace: Regency Timeslip Page 17
