He couldn’t find it in his heart to hate her for long, though. He clung to the belief that one day she would see sense and return, and he resigned himself to having to wait. But as the weeks turned to months the reality of his plight began to sink in. Anger turned to despondency.
His friends tried to rally him. He himself tried to rekindle his interest in other women, but all of them were pale reflections of the real thing. He had no desire for any woman but one. One stubborn woman who had left without a proper explanation.
Why? Why had she put an end to it all? What was it that wasn’t enough? What more could there be? The answer that came to him was both a relief and an enigma. Love. Could it be love that was making him feel like this? Was love the mystery missing ingredient from his life? Was it love that made Errin dissatisfied with her transient role in his world? Love? Was that the source of these feelings of loss and emptiness and longing and listlessness and—and devil take it, this damned unhappiness that could only be relieved by her presence? Was this what they meant by love?
If so, it was nothing so simple as nature’s way of ensuring the continuation of the species as he had believed; it was much more elemental than that. He desired Errin, he ached to make love to her, but more than anything he just missed her being by his side. Could that really be love?
Eventually, the conundrum proved too much for him. In an effort to make some sense of his confusion he reluctantly broached the subject with that latest convert to the state, Nick Lytton. After listening carefully to his friend’s tale of woe, Nick delivered his judgement with characteristic frankness. ‘Thus are the mighty fallen! Of course you’re in love, you ninny. And don’t think you’ll grow out of it either. Take it from one who knows, if it’s the real thing—and judging by your hangdog expression, I reckon it is—then you may as well get on with enjoying it.’
He knew Nick was right. He was even relieved to have an explanation. Except...
Except for the one huge hurdle of which Nick was oblivious. Errin wasn’t just living on another continent; she existed in another time. Errin, his own lovely Errin, whom he loved—he really did love her; it really was that simple!—was lost to him forever. He, who prided himself on his intellect, had been as complete an idiot as it was possible to be. He loved her. She loved him. And there was nothing in this world he could do about it. Thus indeed were the mighty fallen.
Despair took him in its hold then. It hovered over him and threatened to envelop him. Desperation it was that had him firmly in its grip when Richard sat in the wingback chair for the thousandth time since Errin had gone and wished for her presence. For the thousandth time nothing happened. Richard clenched shut his eyes. ‘Errin. Errin. Errin.’ Nothing. ‘I love you.’ He said the words out loud for the first time. ‘I love you,’ he said again.
Something felt different. The chair seemed to caress him. He felt drowsy. A fiercely hot pain seared through his head, crimsoning his vision. Then a blinding light. Then nothing. Terrified of what he might see—of who he might not see—Richard prised open his eyes.
She wasn’t there.
She wasn’t there.
She really wasn’t there.
It hadn’t worked. He dropped his head into his hands, overwhelmed with disappointment, and as he did so, the absence of his own hearth struck him.
He wasn’t in the library! Warily, terrified lest his desire to find her was playing tricks upon his imagination, Richard took stock of his surroundings. His next thought, that it was the shop that Errin had described, Pandora’s Box, was quickly discarded. This place was too big. A vast, echoing space full of enormous crates and stacked furniture. Some sort of store? Had the chair been sold? Where the hell was he?
The air smelled stale. The floor underneath his polished top boots seemed to be constructed of some sort of stone. His chair, now he looked at it more closely, was extremely forlorn. The leather was worn, the woodwork scratched. A piece of paper, some sort of tag, dangled from the back of it. Errin McGill, 119 Washington Street, NY.
NY? New York? Could he be in New York? Or was this some sort of warehouse in the London Docks? In his mounting excitement, Richard almost overlooked the most salient point. The chair—his chair—had her name on it. She hadn’t abandoned it. Or him. The knowledge gave his flagging hopes an enormous boost. Edging his way past the plethora of crates and other obstacles, he made his way towards the light, which turned out to be a huge loading bay. Men in boots and rough work clothes wearing strange-coloured hats stared at him, but he ignored their shouted calls to explain himself and headed outside, only to stop in complete and utter astonishment.
He was not in London, that much was for certain, though the river that flowed in front of him was the same brown colour as the Thames. The sky was pale blue. The air was mild. Spring, he surmised, though he could see no other evidence of greenery, and looking around, what struck him most was the crushing presence of buildings. Buildings such as he had never seen before, impossibly tall and thin, many-windowed, many-shaped, reaching up towards the heavens, as if all the spires from all the churches in the land had been stretched and bundled together, crowding in, jostling for space. The air smelled strange, metallic and dusty and heavy. And the noise! The noise was unbelievable.
A huge contraption, like Stephenson’s locomotive, which Richard had gone to see at Killingworth, though without the rails, passed by him at great speed. Smaller, less noisy contraptions, bright yellow and brown and white and silver, took up the thoroughfare. These must be the horseless carriages of which Errin had spoken. Under normal circumstances Richard would have been fascinated, but for now even the utter strangeness of this world made only a glancing impression on his conscious mind, for his entire focus was on finding her. Errin. The woman he loved.
He stopped a man and showed him the label. ‘Can you tell me where this is, sir?’
‘Going to a fancy-dress party, buddy?’ the man asked with a grin, walking quickly away when his sally was greeted with a blank look.
Richard walked on to a main thoroughfare bordered on both sides by towering edifices, where the noise of horns and the roar of horseless carriages clamoured so loudly he wondered how anyone ever made themselves heard. Twice more he attempted to stop a passer-by but both times they walked past eyeing him askance, their paces quickening, as if they were afraid of him or thought him some sort of footpad.
‘Can I help you?’
He was standing by a crossroads, calculating the odds of reaching the other side in one piece, when the girl spoke. ‘It’s in the meatpacking district,’ she explained when he handed her the paper, and proceeded to give him directions. ‘You got that?’
Richard nodded. ‘You are most kind, madam,’ he said, earning himself a dazzled smile in response to his elegant bow.
It took him the best part of an hour but finally he arrived at his destination. His heart pounding, he entered a building where a man who must be the butler asked him who he was looking for, then directed him to another door, which opened into a small boxlike room. ‘Press P,’ the man shouted, which Richard did as the doors closed seemingly without assistance, and the box began to move. Staggering out when it finally stopped, he was confronted with another door. He felt nauseous, he had a headache, and he was completely disoriented, but then he saw her name. E McGill. And nothing else mattered save the fact, the hope, the ardent desire that she be there on the other side of the brightly painted door.
Sick with anticipation, he knocked, realising that despite months to prepare, aeons to think about it, he had no idea what he was going to say. He was about to knock again when he spotted a button underneath her nameplate and cautiously pressed it. Somewhere inside, a strange buzzing set up in response. A few moments later, as he was making a vain attempt to straighten his neckcloth, the door opened.
* * *
She had been sleeping, her first day off in over a month, for she had thrown herself into her work in an effort to forget. Ironically, a review by one influential styl
e magazine of her latest interior makeover had raved so much about her ‘freshly authentic’ designs that she’d been inundated with new commissions. Errin opened the door blearily rubbing her eyes, expecting her grocery delivery. Instead, she was confronted with a pair of long, masculine legs clad in close-fitting pantaloons of a familiar biscuit hue. Highly polished hessian boots. A dark blue superfine cutaway coat. A paler blue waistcoat fastened over a broad chest with a familiar watch fob hanging from it. A neckcloth looking slightly the worse for wear. And a face, also slightly the worse for wear, and so familiar she felt the blood drain from her own.
‘Pray don’t faint on me.’
His voice. It was his voice. ‘Richard?’ Her own was the faintest squeak. Her knees turned to jelly. People really did go weak at the knees! She clung to the doorway and stared. ‘Richard? How...?’
‘It’s a long tale. May I come in?’ Now he was here, in her presence, in her time, in her country, he felt unsure. Terrified, actually. All his certainties were ebbing away as the utter strangeness of the situation took hold. Errin too seemed shocked. He could not tell, he did not want to know yet, if it was good shock or bad. Could shock be good? God, he hoped so.
He followed her into her abode. A narrow corridor with a number of doors leading off it. The air was cool even though it was muggy outside. The place smelled like her, citrusy and fresh. She opened a door that led into an unexpectedly large room with polished boards and light flooding in from the spectacular wall of glass that formed one side. Richard halted, dazzled. ‘Wow, I think the correct expression is,’ he said with an attempt at a smile.
Errin gave a little peal of laughter so hauntingly familiar that Richard once again forgot everything else. ‘Errin.’ He took a step towards her. Then another. And then he swept her into his arms. ‘Errin. Darling Errin, I can’t believe you’re real.’
‘Richard.’ She clutched at him. ‘Richard.’ It was all she could say. She couldn’t think.
‘You kept the chair after all.’ He stroked her hair. He nuzzled his face into the warm crook of her neck, drinking in the essence of her, which emanated from her skin, her hair, her simple presence.
‘I was determined not to, but in the end I couldn’t bear to leave it behind.’
‘Oh God, Errin, I’m so glad you did. If you hadn’t...’
‘Well, I did. And here you are. I can’t believe it.’ She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted to lose herself in him. She wanted him to make love to her. She wanted...
Sanity returned. ‘Richard, why are you here exactly?’ she asked, disentangling herself.
‘To tell you that you were right. There is more. Much more.’
‘What do you mean?’ She wouldn’t hope. She wouldn’t dare. But there was something in his expression. A pleading. An unusual lack of confidence. ‘Richard?’
‘I love you.’
Three simple words. She’d longed to hear them. Now she couldn’t believe she had.
‘Errin, you were right. There’s more, much more than what we had. I love you so much I’m lost without you. I want you with me. I want to wake up with you and go to sleep with you and argue with you and make up with you. I want us to grow old together. I want all of it. I love you, Errin. Please, please say it’s not too late.’
‘Say it again,’ she said.
‘I love you.’
‘Again,’ she whispered, her smile beaming at him now.
‘I love you. I’ll say it as many times as it takes to persuade you. I’ll never grow tired of saying it.’ He pulled her into his arms again. ‘I love you, Errin. Say you love me too. Say it’s not too late.’
‘Richard.’ She wrapped her arms around him, snuggling into the familiar strength of his body. ‘Richard, how can you doubt it? I love you too much to settle for less.’
‘Wise Errin.’
‘Foolish Richard.’
He kissed her then. Tenderly then passionately, his mouth, his lips, saying more eloquently than words ever could how much he loved, would always love her. She kissed him back with equal ardour, one of the things, one of the many things, he adored about her. They made love on the bare boards of her loft apartment with a joyous abandon, a new kind of love that had no restraint, which soared to new peaks and held them floating blissfully, cocooned and sated in their new world.
Their own world, their own time. There would be a time for explanations, a time for big decisions, but it was not now. They would create their own future. Or their own past. Whichever they chose, they would be happy. They knew that then. Somehow, love would conquer all. It always does.
* * * * *
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ISBN: 978-14603-0742-7
Lost in Pleasure
Copyright © 2013 by Marguerite Kaye
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