“I have, and so has my daughter. That’s why I’m calling you. She’s obsessed with it, with the house and the family. And I have to admit, I find them quite haunting too, if you’ll forgive the expression. We have all kinds of old legends about ghosts in my family’s château in Dordogne, and Laure is fascinated by them. She’s convinced there must be some in your mansion too.” He laughed as he said it, and Sybil grinned. He had no idea what he was getting into with the Butterfields. But that was precisely why she had contacted him. And he, or at least his daughter, sounded hooked, or intrigued at the very least.
“She’s spending Christmas with her mother in Normandy. But we have quite a long Christmas break at the university. She wants me to come over with her to visit you, sometime during the holiday. Perhaps around New Year’s. Would that be terribly inconvenient for you?” he said apologetically. “We would stay in a hotel of course, but it sounds like you have family plans.”
“It wouldn’t be inconvenient at all,” Sybil said, thinking about it and trying to decide just how far she wanted to go. And then she decided to go further. She owed it to Gwyneth and her family, to all of them, to make the meeting possible, and comfortable for them. She was the liaison between their two dimensions, and it was very important to her to do this right. “You can stay with us. You don’t need to stay at a hotel,” she said bravely, hoping that he and his daughter were up to it. “We have plenty of guest rooms, as you can imagine.”
“Your husband and children won’t mind? We’re strangers, after all.” He sounded cautious and polite.
“No, you’re not. You have more right to be here than we do. Ancestrally speaking, you’re Butterfields. We’d love to have you.” And so would all the others, once they met them. She knew Gwyneth would be happy.
“You’re very kind.” It was one thing he’d always liked about Americans. They were always so hospitable, even to strangers, if they had some common connection. But in his mind, this was a thin one, and Sybil had been charming to him since the beginning. And he had found the book riveting, as he read about all his distant and not-so-distant relations and how their lives had turned out and the challenges they’d faced at interesting times in history, the Great War, the Spanish flu epidemic right afterward, the Crash of ’29, the Great Depression that had swept away their fortune. Samuel knew the more recent history, about when his grandmother had bought the house back, and when his mother had sold it again, but he had known none of it from before that, until he read the book.
And Laure, his daughter, was even more excited about it than he was. Although he had insisted to her that Sybil had said there were no ghosts in the house, Laure was sure there had to be, with such an intriguing family once living there. She loved the idea of being related to them. And, despite his initial reluctance, so did he. He wanted to meet Sybil, and thought her a very interesting person too, for being so dedicated to them, simply because she and her husband had bought their house. He had looked Sybil up on the Internet, and was very impressed by her professional credentials as a writer and curator. And she had obviously researched the Butterfields carefully, since she knew so much about them. He had been moved by that too when they last spoke.
“Do you have the exact dates that would work for you?” Sybil asked him, wanting to pin him down.
“Perhaps we could arrive around the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth? We won’t stay for more than a few days.” It was six or seven days away, but it worked well for her too. She didn’t think Blake would mind, or her children. They would have Christmas en famille, with the Butterfields, and then Quinne and Max were coming anyway. The more the merrier, as far as Sybil was concerned, and she could hardly wait to tell Gwyneth that her great-grandson and great-great-granddaughter were coming. She just hoped the others would be willing to welcome them too.
“That’s perfect. Let me know your flight, and we’ll pick you up at the airport,” she said warmly.
“There’s no need to do that. I’ll rent a car. We’ll need one anyway, so we can see the city, and we don’t want to be a burden on you. I’ll let you know what time we’ll arrive at the house, and on which day.”
“I look forward to meeting you and Laure,” Sybil said, excited about it. “Have a lovely Christmas in the meantime.”
“You too, and your family. And thank you again for allowing us to make this pilgrimage,” he said, laughing. It was Sybil who had started it, and she was glad she had. Calling him had been so much the right thing to do. It would complete everything to have the last of the Butterfields come to meet their family. And maybe he would write the next book about them.
Sybil was excited about their visit, and she knew Gwyneth would be too. It hadn’t been a crazy idea after all. It had been inspired. She couldn’t help wondering what had impelled her to do it. Maybe even Bettina herself. But whatever the reason, her efforts had been successful so far. She sat in her office smiling after they hung up. Their visit was the best Christmas gift of all. And after that, she wanted him to write the book.
Chapter 18
When Sybil told Blake that Samuel Saint Martin and his daughter were coming to visit, he was dubious at first, and wanted to know how it had happened. The coincidence was too great, and the connection too slim. He questioned her intensely, and she admitted to having contacted him, and he expressed strong disapproval.
“You’re not supposed to meddle with these things,” he reminded her. “I thought we agreed to that in the beginning. It’s their lives and their destinies. We’re just the observers here, by virtue of a very strange freak phenomenon that none of us understand.”
“I’m not trying to change anything, or warn them,” which was what she and Blake had agreed not to do. They behaved at all times as though they were on real time, whatever the event, date, or century. They did not interfere or tell them the future. They felt they had no right to do that, whatever the outcome, or however hard it was to watch it unfold, like when Josiah went off to war, or knowing that Bettina would remarry and leave San Francisco.
“If they were meant to meet their great-grandchildren, they would have, without your help. What if they don’t want to and refuse to appear? Or it traumatizes them? Bert has no idea that the crash and the Great Depression are coming. He thinks they are secure for life. If he knew now that they were going to lose everything, it would break his heart. What if finding out about it now precipitates his death earlier?”
Sybil hadn’t thought about that and it panicked her. “I can warn Samuel if he meets them, and tell him he has to live by the same rules we do. They may not even see each other. The family may not want to include anyone else in that circle, and not appear.”
“I don’t think they have that choice,” Blake said to her seriously. “They didn’t decide to meet us. They were as shocked as we were. It just happened.”
“Supposedly it happened because we were open to it. Maybe Samuel and his daughter won’t be. We can’t predict that.”
“You’re playing with fire, Sybil,” he said sternly, and she felt mildly guilty about it after what he said, particularly about Bert and the stock market crash and the dire results for them. In fact, the consequences of it had killed Bert and Gwyneth within a very short time, and it was slowly approaching in the dimension they were in now, though it was still ten years away. “I think what you’re doing is very dangerous,” he reproached her.
“I don’t want to do anything to hurt them. I love them,” Sybil said with feeling. “They’re our family now too. I just want to help them complete the circle, and to know their children’s children, just like they know us and our kids, and love them. I want them to see that it came out all right in the end, in spite of the hard times they went through, and the end of the story is a good one. It does have a happy ending. We’re all together now. And they’re still together. It didn’t end with Bert, or Gwyneth, and losing everything. Don’t you think they should know that?”
“They’ve gone back to a comfortable time in their lives. T
hink about it. We met them in 1917 for them, before the war, when everything was still all right,” Blake reminded her.
“Yes, but Josiah was killed in the war anyway, and Magnus had died before we met them. We can’t protect them from the bad things that had to happen, any more than they can protect us.”
“But they teach us things that we wouldn’t know otherwise,” Blake said soberly. Bert had literally saved him from financial ruin in the past few months, sure disgrace, bankruptcy, and maybe even prison, with his experience and sage counsel. “I just don’t want you to break the rules we all respect, or hurt them. I think you’re taking a tremendous risk and I don’t like it. What if their great-grandson is an asshole and ridicules them, or exposes us or them in some way, and turns our lives into a freak show? That could happen. Reality TV at the Butterfields’, with Uncle Angus in a ghost costume playing the bagpipes.”
She laughed at the suggestion. “I don’t think Samuel is a jerk, and what I’m hoping for is that he’ll write a book about them. They deserve to have a really great book written about the family. They were important at the time, and it could be done with insight and dignity.”
“Why don’t you write it?” Blake suggested. He knew Sybil would do it lovingly and well. He trusted her, not a great-grandson he didn’t know.
“I’ve thought about it, and I’m not sure I’d do it justice. Their great-grandson is a historian, and a good one.” She had looked up his credentials too, and read a translation of his writing, and it was excellent. He’d had impressive reviews on all his books. They were said to be historically accurate and respected. A writer like Samuel Saint Martin was not going to exploit the emotional aspects of their tragedies. He would weave the important historical facts of the times into their story. They had lived at a key time in American history, when everything had changed dramatically socially, economically, industrially, and scientifically. She was sure Samuel would do justice to that, and to them.
“You may be right,” Blake conceded, “but I’m worried. I just don’t want anything to go wrong for them, and it could. I don’t care about him or his daughter, but I do care a great deal about the family we know and love, whom we live with. The privilege we’ve been given of knowing them, seeing them, and living with them in their time frame and ours is an enormous gift from an unknown source. Let’s not damage that, or hurt them.”
“I won’t. I swear,” she promised him, and reported the conversation to Gwyneth that night at dinner, in a whisper. She told her that Blake wasn’t in favor of the meeting, which was disappointing.
“I’m sure Bert wouldn’t be either, but I won’t tell him. Hopefully, it would just happen the way it did with you. Naturally, even if it surprised all of us.” Sybil smiled at the memory of their first dinner together, and how shocked they had been. And Gwyneth did too. “Are you going to cancel their coming?” She looked dismayed at the thought and Sybil shook her head.
“Blake will be furious with me if something goes wrong. But I think it’s important to do. And if you’re not meant to meet them, you won’t. It won’t happen. You can’t force it.” Alicia and others who came to the house had never seen them. No one entered their common dimension unless they were meant to. And for the past three years, that had been only the Butterfields and Gregorys, with very rare exceptions, and with their approval. It reassured both of them to know that. In some way, they were all protected. And the bond they shared linked them closely to each other, which kept them safe too. It was very much what Michael Stanton had said in the beginning. Others just could not see them, which was as it should be. It was extremely selective. And Sybil felt privileged that her family had been chosen. None of them knew why it had happened or who had ordained it. And there was no telling if the great-grandson and his daughter would be included in the magic circle. It was entirely possible that they wouldn’t be, in which case they could tour the house and learn the family’s history, but it would go no further than that and they wouldn’t see them. Both women found that reassuring.
No one had noticed them whispering at dinner, because Andy and Caroline had come home that afternoon and there was much chatter at the table, and a volley of questions aimed at both of them about school, their friends, and their romances.
“When is the blue-haired countess joining us?” Augusta asked him.
“In three days, Grandma Campbell,” Andy answered. It was what Sybil’s children called her now, and Augusta liked it. She had taken them into her heart long since, particularly Charlie, whom she thought was an endearing imp, and she liked Andy and Caroline too.
“She’ll have to give up that hair color when she inherits the title. Are you engaged yet?”
He guffawed. “We’re too young, Grandma.” Sybil smiled. Her children finally had grandparents after all.
“Nonsense,” Augusta responded. “How old are you now? Twenty? You should be married by next year, and she’ll wind up a spinster if she’s not careful. I was engaged two weeks after I came out, and married at eighteen. You young people are too slow these days. You’ll all wind up spinsters and fussy old men who never marry,” she warned him and everyone at the table laughed, thinking of Angus, who was just that. “I like her,” Augusta added. “You should get engaged. And you too,” she said pointedly to Caroline, who still had to finish college and wanted to go to graduate school. None of them had the least bit of interest in getting married, which was appropriate for them—but wouldn’t have been for the Butterfields in 1919, which was where they were. In nine days, it would be 1920 for them.
—
Christmas was as beautiful as it had been for the last three years together. Both families blended perfectly, exchanged presents, played charades, looked elegant at dinner, danced in the ballroom, and spent a memorable holiday with each other. And two days later, Quinne arrived from Scotland, with her hair slightly bluer, and a shocking pink streak in it. She looked a little more grown up, and had two new tattoos, and if possible her skirts were a fraction shorter. Everyone was delighted to see her, including Augusta. Quinne had just spent Christmas at Castle Creagh with her parents and siblings, which she said was very boring. She said even the ghost in the chapel tower hadn’t bothered to show up, and had probably died of boredom. She was delighted to join the Gregorys and their extended family in San Francisco. She and Andy were going to go skiing in Squaw Valley for a week on New Year’s Day, but they were planning to spend New Year’s Eve with everyone at home. And so were Caroline and Max, whom the Butterfields had graciously included in the group for Caroline’s sake. After that, Caroline and Max were joining his family in Mexico for a few days before they went back to school in Los Angeles.
Sybil told her children, but not the others, that they were expecting guests from Paris, and she hoped that they would show Laure around the city while she and Blake entertained her father. So far, no one had complained, and the kids said they would take Laure under their wing. Sybil and Gwyneth still had not warned the others about Samuel yet and had decided to see what happened when they arrived. And Blake still disapproved of the plan.
—
The day that Samuel and Laure arrived in San Francisco was bright and sunny, as San Francisco often was in December, although it was cool. But it had been snowing in Paris when they left, so the weather was a pleasant change for them. Sybil was home waiting for them anxiously, when Samuel pulled up at the gate in a rented white station wagon, and Sybil went out to the courtyard to let him in herself. He parked the car and got out, looking very French in a tweed jacket and turtleneck with a windbreaker over it, jeans, and hiking boots, and his salt and pepper hair was tousled after the flight. He was taller than Sybil had expected him to be, looked ten years younger than he was, and didn’t seem like a professor to her. He smiled as soon as he saw her, while a pretty young girl got out of the front seat. She was petite and very delicate looking with long blond hair and big blue eyes, and she looked instantly familiar to Sybil, but she wasn’t sure why. Sybil shook hands with
both of them, as they gathered up their bags and followed her into the house. They were tired from the flight.
“You’re so kind to let us stay here,” Samuel said warmly, as Laure looked around the long front hall with interest, and glanced up at the Butterfield portraits. And before she could say another word to the Saint Martins, Sybil saw Angus walking toward them, with his enormous English bulldog trotting along at his side. He smiled when he saw Sybil, and glanced at her guests. He was wearing a velvet smoking jacket and matching slippers, and smoking the new pipe she had given him for Christmas.
“Sorry, dear girl, I can’t find my bagpipes. Have you seen them somewhere?” He seemed slightly confused, as Sybil walked hastily toward him and gently turned him around toward a door to the back stairs, just as Phillips emerged carrying his bagpipes. Phillips was in full livery, and Sybil was taken aback. She had never seen him around the house in the daytime, only serving dinner at night.
“Found them, sir,” he told Angus, ignoring Sybil.
“Excellent!” Angus said, and followed him through the door with a wave at Sybil and her guests. She was stunned to have seen Angus and Phillips in the front hall, and turned to Samuel and Laure to see their reaction and if they had seen them too. Samuel was smiling and it was obvious he had, which answered her question about whether they would choose to be visible or not. Decidedly they were going to be open with him, or Angus was. It was a start.
“Sorry, it gets a little chaotic here at times,” she said, trying to be nonchalant. Angus normally never wandered around the house either, and certainly not in the daytime with his dog.
“Your father?” Samuel asked, looking amused, although the elderly gentleman looked more like her grandfather, and had seemed ancient but good-humored.
“Actually, no. Not really.” She dodged the question, and they had just walked past Angus’s portrait on the way to the grand staircase, but neither Samuel nor Laure had noticed. “Are you hungry?” She stopped to ask them. “Would you like something to eat?”
Past Perfect Page 22
