Ballgowns & Butterflies: A Stitch in Time Holiday Novella

by Kelley Armstrong

  Butterflies.

  What holds me back is a little thing called the butterfly effect, which gets its name from the idea that the mere flap of a butterfly’s wings could set about a chain of reactions that cause a tornado.

  For the average person, the “butterfly effect” is usually heard in terms of time travel. What if we could go back in time? What effect would our actions have on the future? Even if we actively strove to do good, couldn’t we unknowingly cause future harm? What if we traveled back in time to stop a killer, only to discover that one of his later crimes had launched a revolution in forensic science or victims’ rights, so we’ve saved a few lives only to ruin thousands?

  This is the dilemma I struggle with as a bona fide time traveler. I didn’t, at first. As a child, one hardly considers such things. As a teen, quite frankly, I didn’t care. As an adult, though, I am keenly aware that I am tampering with history. Even my existence in this world could have unforeseen effects, and I cannot add to that by meddling.

  I’m not a monster, though. I won’t let Mary be married to a middle-aged man who only wants free childcare and housekeeping. Nor will I let her be shipped off to Whitby, away from her family, her seamstress talents wasted doing backbreaking physical labor. I will find another solution to this problem, and so I tell her I’ll think on it, and she tries not to let me see her disappointment at that.

  5

  By the time William bundles me into the sleigh, I’m ready to fall asleep against his shoulder. I’m stuffed with plum pudding and pie, and my brain is buzzing with all the things I saw and heard, cataloging them for Freya. I’m also making mental notes of names and occupations and the spiderweb of relationships that is at the heart of an English village. I want to be like William, able to put names to faces and ask people how their sheep are faring or whether their newly wed daughter is settling in well.

  Of course, thoughts of married daughters remind me of Mary. The obvious answer is to discuss this with William. He at least needs to know she asked about employment. But when it comes to my butterfly-effect concerns, he has decided not to interfere. I must work this out for myself. His opinion would be that I shouldn’t worry about it, and he realizes that could sound as if he’s belittling my concerns. So he’s keeping mum on the subject, and I agree that’s best in general. Still, I would like to know whether I’m overreacting here.

  “I spoke to Mary,” I say, raising my voice to be heard over the swish of snow beneath the runners.

  “I thought I saw you two together,” he says. “Did she say when she’ll be up tomorrow for the fitting?”

  I pause. “She asked about speaking to me when she came to the house, presumably for a fitting, but we didn’t set a time. Had she already arranged an appointment with you?”

  “I discussed it with her yesterday when I knew you were on your way home early. The Festival of the Penitent Rapscallions isn’t the only thing that you arrived just in time for. There’s also the Yuletide Ball at Courtenay Hall.”

  “What?”

  He smiles over at me. “August’s family holds a holiday party every year. You finally get to see Courtenay Hall and attend your first ball.”

  His smile widens to a grin, setting his blue eyes twinkling. The first time I met Mary, he’d hired her to play lady’s maid for me as I prepared to attend a ball—a private ball for just William and me. That was our first night together as a couple, and it’d been the most perfect, magical night ever, meant to fulfill my teenage fantasy of having William sneak me into a Victorian gala.

  Now he’s giving me a proper ball, at the summer home of one of my favorite people on this side of the stitch: William’s best friend, August Courtenay. I’ll get to see August and his three-year-old son, Edmund, plus visit their estate and attend my first ball. Even better, I don’t need to sneak in. I am Lady Bronwyn Thorne, an invited guest. A thrill darts through me, and I find myself grinning back at him.

  “I thought you might like that,” he says, his arm going around me in a quick squeeze.

  “When is it?” I ask.

  “Tomorrow night.”

  My smile falters as I inwardly collapse into a puddle of exhaustion. I recover in a blink and deliver a quick kick to my mental backside. None of that. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, and I’m damn well going to seize it. It’s only midafternoon. I can nap as soon as I get home, and if I’m still tired after that, I’ll extend my nap into an all-night sleep so I’m fully refreshed and ready for tomorrow.

  I have a holiday ball to attend, and I cannot wait.

  So, that plan to crawl into bed when I get home? It starts to fall apart as soon as we get back to Thorne Manor. William wants to escort me inside and then stable the horses, but I insist on accompanying him into the barn. Horses may be his passion, but they are an old love of mine, one I’m rekindling as fast as I can.

  First, I must greet all the horses while trying very hard not to lavish undue attention on my personal favorite, Epona, named after the Celtic patron goddess of horses. The two-year-old gray filly is Balios’s offspring, and she’s promised to a London buyer once she’s old enough to be trained. I don’t have a horse of my own yet—I usually ride the gelding William uses for pulling the sleigh, who is a fine horse but more trained for carts than riders.

  We’re still trying to decide whether I should claim a future foal or buy a young horse of proper riding age. While I would love a horse from William’s stock, he has buyers for two years’ worth of colts and fillies, and I’m not sure I care to wait that long for a horse to call my own.

  An hour passes between feeding treats to the horses and discussing whether riding is safe in my condition. The doctor says it is, but William would prefer we didn’t take the chance, and I’ll grant him that.

  When William finally shuffles me into the house, I’m ready for bed. Instead, he steers me to the time stitch because, apparently, we have a tea date with Freya and Del, and just enough time to go back to the modern world, change and then drive over to their place.

  Sleep. Someday I will sleep. Just not today.

  6

  “There,” Freya says, closing the door behind William as he heads outside with Del. “They’re gone. Now get your dead-beat self onto Del’s chair for a nap.”

  She points at the recliner by the window. It’s old and ratty, clearly his contribution to the marital home, and yet it looks like the most comfortable chair I’ve ever seen. My knees wobble just seeing it.

  Freya puts a hand against my back and steers me toward it. When I dig in my heels, she walks where I can see her and crosses her arms.

  I lift one eyebrow at her stern expression. “Is that the look you gave your students when they misbehaved? If so, may I tell you why it didn’t work?”

  “Oh, it always worked. I might have been the softest touch at the academy, but that only meant my pupils hated to disappoint me.” She looks up into my face. “You are disappointing me, Ms. Dale.”

  I sputter a laugh. But I do lower myself into Del’s chair with an audible sigh of contentment.

  “So,” she says, “are you going to tell William how exhausted you are—having flown across the world, six months pregnant, right after exams—or am I going to need to have a word with our Lord Thorne?”

  I sigh. “It’s not his fault.”

  “Nope, it’s yours.” She catches my look and arches her white brows. “Well, it is. He’s like a child who just devoured an entire bowl of sugar. His new bride is home, at the holidays no less, and he’s too excited to pause long enough to see that the only place you want to visit is your bed.”

  I sigh again. Deeper. Then I straighten. “Oh, I haven’t told you where we went this afternoon.”

  “Don’t change the subject. We’re—”

  “The Festival of the Penitent Rapscallions.”

  That stops her. She blinks. “The what?”

  I smile. “You mean you haven’t heard of it? Aren’t you the local historian and folklorist?” I lean back in
my seat. “Well, I suppose it’s not that important. Just a forgotten local tradition that I attended personally and could tell you all about . . . if only you wouldn’t rather discuss my need for sleep.”

  She glares. Which is adorable, really. Freya is barely over five feet tall, plump and white haired, and about as menacing as a Persian kitten.

  “Would you like to talk about the festival?” I say.

  “Would you like to tell William you’re too tired for all this holiday running about?”

  “After the ball. I really do want to go to that. Until then, if I can just sit here with a nice cuppa and a biscuit or two to sustain me . . .”

  She rolls her eyes but walks to the table and pours me a tea as I start telling her about the festival.

  “That is remarkable,” she says, twenty minutes later, sitting in her own chair, madly typing my observations into her laptop.

  “You’ve never heard of it?” I say.

  “I have heard of a local tradition involving pardons, but I was never able to track down details. It seems I was looking in the wrong direction. Pardons are primarily Roman Catholic in nature, mostly associated with Easter and Michaelmas. There’s very little Catholic influence here, though, which is why I wasn’t getting anywhere. What you’re talking about more likely holds traces of Saturnalia.”

  She chuckles at my expression. “Yes, you’d best not tell the vicar that their beloved festival is rooted in paganism.”

  “Aren’t most, though?” I say as I glance around her living room.

  While there’s a small tree in the corner, her own decorations suggest a celebration of Yule and the solstice more than Christmas, though they also bring to mind the Victorian decorations William put up, strengthening the commonalities between the two.

  The emphasis is on nature, with evergreen boughs and holly, dried citrus slices, mistletoe balls and pine cones. And, of course, candles. So many candles, as if to summon the sun indoors as the days grow ever shorter.

  “Saturnalia, then?” I prompt. “Roman holiday held in December and one of the precursors to the non-Christian aspects of Christmas.”

  She smiles. “Correct. Saturnalia celebrated freedom, among other things. Masters would serve dinner to their servants and slaves, who were free for that brief period of time. According to some historians, there was also a practice of pardoning criminals during that time. Your local penitent festival could have its roots there. There are also potential origins closer to home. In the Middle Ages, York Minster hosted a winter mistletoe service that pardoned wrongdoers. It clearly rose from pagan practices.” She taps her keys, making more notes. “I’ll take a closer look at the York mistletoe service and see whether the practice spread to any other villages in the area.”

  We chat a bit more about the High Thornesbury festival and its possible antecedents. Then I pull my feet under me. “I also had . . . Well, I have a situation I need to discuss with you.”

  I tell her about Mary.

  “And you’re hesitating to hire her?” Freya says. “For fear of what exactly? That you might interfere with her destiny to die broken down in a field by the age of thirty?”

  I give her a look.

  “Well?” she says.

  “It won’t come to that, obviously. If I don’t hire her, we’ll find another—less intrusive—way to help. But it’s a symptom of an issue I need to deal with. What if, in the correct timeline, she went to Whitby, met the farmer’s son, fell in love, and lived both happily and comfortably for the rest of her life? What if, by hiring her as a nursemaid, I sentence her to a life in service, never able to give up the steady paycheck to follow her dreams?”

  “And what if, by squashing a bug in Victorian England, you bring about World War Three?” Freya snaps her laptop shut. “Where do you draw the limit, Bronwyn? And at what point is that limit going to interfere with your life and the lives of your family? Yes, your baby doesn’t need a Victorian nursemaid. But maybe she should have one. Maybe that’s her destiny.”

  When I don’t answer, she sighs and says, “You do realize the butterfly effect is pure fiction. An author’s creation.”

  “No, it’s not,” says a thickly accented voice from the doorway. “It’s chaos theory.”

  I look up. Del is in the doorway, pulling off his boots, with William coming in behind him. Del had been Thorne Manor’s caretaker for years, my aunt hiring him when she stopped coming up to North Yorkshire after her husband died.

  My early correspondence with Del referenced his legal name, as he was part of Aunt Judith’s will. That name is Delores Crossley. It’s almost hard to remember that now, arriving and being confused for about five seconds before I figured it out.

  Del presents as male and uses male pronouns. As for the specifics, it’s none of my business. He is Del Crossley, caretaker of Thorne Manor, devoted husband of Freya, and our friend. He’s also a retired physicist, which was more of a shock than anything else. The man looks as if he’s spent his life with grease on his hands and a pipe clenched between his teeth.

  Del walks in and pokes around the tea table before selecting a square of cucumber sandwich.

  “Chaos theory,” I say. “That’s science, right?”

  He snorts. “Yes, Dr. Humanities Professor, it’s one of those science-y things.”

  He eyes his chair—with me in it—and I start to rise, but he waves a gnarled hand and lowers himself beside Freya, who leans against him briefly in greeting.

  “Is it a physics science-y thing?” I ask as William comes in and silently takes a seat near me.

  Del sighs, as if I’m asking him to roll a boulder uphill, not talk about a subject he enjoys as much as William likes talking about horses . . . or Freya about folklore . . . or I about Victorian history. We are passionate about our passions, which is probably why we’ve become such good friends.

  In normal conversation, Del’s North Yorkshire accent is porridge thick and liberally salted with local dialect. I think that’s partly a choice and partly camouflage. The average retired physicist—or historian—might want people to remember they have a PhD after their name, but Del would be quite happy if most of his neighbors forgot. He wants to recede into village life for his retirement. Hence the accent. When he launches into lecture mode, though, all that falls away.

  “Chaos theory is the study of random or unpredictable behavior within systems,” he says. “When it comes to time travel, many theoretical physicists disagree with the so-called butterfly effect. They believe that it’s ridiculous to think one small action could disrupt a future that has—in the traveler’s time—already taken place. According to them, the universe would heal itself.”

  “How?” I say. “Any change I make here must ripple through time.”

  “Must it? That makes the universe seem an awfully fragile thing.” He leans back. “The butterfly effect is a Hollywood gimmick, a constraint to place on time-travel stories. Raising the stakes and all that nonsense. But those writers live in a world where they don’t know time travel exist. If it does—which we know—the results cannot be catastrophic.”

  William rises and brings the teapot over to refresh my cup. “That presumes, of course, that time is linear. Or that my world exists in the same timeline as yours.”

  “Precisely,” Freya says. “I don’t think it does. It’s like I’ve said before. Time seems to be stitched together at a point where you two can cross. It’s probably also stitched at other points. That would mean multiple layers of time rather than one set timeline.”

  And so it goes, launching into a heated discussion of the nature of time travel. I join in a bit, but my mind keeps circling back to what they’ve said about the butterfly effect and chaos theory.

  There are no answers here. Oh, I could try to get answers. I’ve already affected William’s own timeline. I can check the archives and see whether anything has changed.

  I did check once, when I feared I’d never get back to William. I learned that he died an old man in his ni
neties and never married.

  If I check again, will that have changed? Even if it has, does that prove this is one uninterrupted timeline? I’m not sure it does. Maybe only my timeline changes, the effects I’ve wrought appearing in the archives in my own time but not in the future one of his. Yes, it makes my head hurt just thinking about that.

  But even if I could prove, beyond a doubt, that it is a single timeline, does that also prove that me hiring a girl in nineteenth-century England will have unforeseeable—and disastrous—effects on the modern day? Of course not.

  These answers do not exist for me to find. I need to make choices on my own. To decide for myself what I believe and what I’m going to do about it.

  7

  Despite my busy day, William is careful not to keep me out too long. By dinner, we’re back in Thorne Manor, and then it’s a quiet evening and off to bed early. Which would be lovely if my racing brain would actually let me sleep. It’s not just my brain. Little Melvina is restless, too, kicking and squirming, as if she senses my disquiet.

  This is, of course, all her fault. Yes, I’m already shoving blame onto my poor unborn child’s shoulders. The fault, I think, lies with impending motherhood. Or maybe just hormones. All I know is that, five months ago, I enjoyed a glorious newlywed summer with William, unhampered by thoughts of what havoc my existence might wreak on history. We spent most of our time holed up in Thorne Manor—on one side of the stitch or the other—and we interacted with the outside world no more than we needed to do to establish our story as a newly wedded couple.

  But then I returned to Toronto, and as my belly grew, I began to think more and more of myself as a mother, and with that came an additional sense of responsibility. It didn’t help that I was teaching Victorian history, constantly reminded of the impact people and their actions have had on our past.

  Lying in bed that night, my brain ping-pongs from one side of this debate to the other.