In the meantime, downstairs, as impossible as it seemed, Dayna’s wedding reception was still going on.
There was a knock at the door and a soft voice called out “Emily?”
For a brief, disconnected second, she thought it might be Beck bringing her a cup of tea.
She hurried to the door and opened it a crack, pulling her towel tight around her. Celia, a college friend of hers and Dayna’s, stood there. “There you are!” Celia said. “I was wondering what happened to you? What did happen to you?” she asked, taking in the towel and dripping hair.
She could tell her the truth, that she’d spent a month in the past, but she didn’t think that would go over so well.
“I had an accident.” She opened the door a little farther. “Come on in while I get dressed.”
“Did you spill something on the dress?” Celia asked as she came into the room. Emily closed the door behind her.
“Yes.” Though not technically true, it would do as an explanation. “I can’t wear it.”
“Find something else to wear before Dayna starts wondering where you are.”
She grabbed the dress she’d worn to the rehearsal dinner the night before. “I suppose no one will care if I wear this again.”
“Since the other option seems to be a towel, that is your best bet.”
She brought it into bathroom and slipped it on. Looking at herself in the mirror, she was once again her proper twenty-first century self, but it didn’t feel right, she missed the person she had been when she was with Sam, and now she didn’t even look like her anymore. She stuck her head out of the bathroom. Celia sat on the bed, her shoes off, rubbing her feet. “You can go back down. You don’t have to wait for me. I still have to do my hair and my make up.”
“Eh, it’s nice and quiet up here. I don’t mind a bit of a break. I’ll wait.”
There’d be no excuse then for simply climbing under the covers and letting herself dream of Sam. Soon enough her hair was styled and mostly dry and her make up was acceptable, and it was time to go downstairs.
“You’re not going to lock up?” Celia asked as they left the room.
“My key is in my bag downstairs,” she said.
“How’d you get in before?”
“Didn’t lock it before.” Emily shrugged. It was undoubtedly careless of her, but it had saved her from traipsing through the ballroom in Sam’s dressing gown, so there was that.
At the entrance to the ballroom, she paused. She didn’t feel at all like the same person who had originally been at this party.
Celia headed straight to the dance floor, but she wasn’t ready for that. She made a beeline for the bar and asked for a whiskey sour. She didn’t have a dollar to put in the tip jar, her purse was probably still by the table, she’d have to make up for it later. She took the drink as if it were a lifeline and took a big sip. The world didn’t make any more sense, but she could feel herself starting to calm down a bit.
Johnson, resplendent in his tuxedo, spotted her. “Did you change your dress, Emily?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, surprised he noticed. But then, he was a detective, trained to notice details. “I spilled something on the other one.”
He accepted that as perfectly natural. “Dayna was looking for you before. I guess you were changing.”
“Probably,” she answered. It was at least an explanation people would believe. “Where is Dayna?”
“She was heading to the bathroom last time I saw her.” He turned to the bartender and got himself a beer.
Ah, Dayna wanted her for bathroom duty again. She grinned to herself and thought of Beck helping her with her voluminous gown at her own wedding a few days ago, a few hundred years ago. She took a gulp of her drink.
“Go easy there,” Johnson said, eyeing the drink in her hand.
“I’m fine,” Emily assured him. And in regards to alcohol at least, she was. She’d walked back in that door relatively sober, except for the lingering effects of the minibar whiskey. She actually needed to remedy that. Tonight, right now, was not a time she particularly wanted to be sober.
Someone else came up to talk to Johnson, and she used that opportunity to slip away. She headed toward the patio for a bit of air and respite from the noise. It had been a month since she’d heard anything at the volume the band was playing. She had become unaccustomed to it, and she’d thought it was too loud earlier anyway.
She sipped her drink, standing on the patio, the party swirling around her, lost in her own thoughts. Could she go back? Since she had no silver, and the moon’s reflection no longer filled the pond, she’d have to wait for the next full moon, but should she do it? Take the chance that he was still alive there, and she could see him again? When exactly did he die? She needed to find out. She needed to learn all she could about him and what had happened to him. Maybe she’d even find out that they’d had six kids, in which case, she would know she had to go back, so that could happen. And if after a month in the past, virtually no time had passed in the present, who was to say that if she waited until the next full moon, she wouldn’t go back to exactly the same time she had left. Time travel apparently worked by its own rules.
Draining her glass, she walked back through the ballroom to the entry hall where the portrait hung. There he was, her Sam, looking so much like he had when she’d last seen him. But the portrait didn’t really capture him all the way. It didn’t show the way his eyes glittered when he laughed or the way his dimples appeared when he was really happy. Looking at the portrait you would never know that he smelled of cinnamon and peppermint and sometimes horses, you wouldn’t know that he had gentle hands and soft lips and was an amazing lover. The portrait told you none of that.
“I see you are fascinated by the portrait.” The owner was beside her again.
“I am.” She couldn’t even begin to tell this woman just how fascinated she was by the portrait. “What do you know about him?”
“This was his family’s plantation. He died in the Civil War. He was a poet. I showed you the poem already, didn’t I?”
“You did, but I’d like to look at it again, if I may.” Emily tried to keep her hands from trembling.
“Of course.” The woman pulled the laminated copy out of the drawer and handed it to her. “And you said you were Emily, right? This could have been written for you.”
Emily’s Song
A sprite from the land of Faerie
Bewitching me with a glance
She touched my hand and stole my heart
Our meeting: more than happenstance
Bewitching me with a glance
Her laughter was like bells in the wind
Our meeting: more than happenstance
I knew I had to have her; if only for a while.
Her laughter was like bells in the wind
As we danced the Zingirella for the ball
I knew I had to have her; if only for a while
For when I was with her time stood still
As we danced the Zingirella for the ball
The waterfalls played the only music we needed
For when I was with her time stood still
My sprite would be my bride
The waterfalls played the only music we needed
She touched my hand and stole my heart
My sprite would be my bride
Emily you have my love forever.
This was written for her. By her husband. However, she couldn’t possibly begin to explain that to this woman, or anyone. She read the words, and Sam was so alive to her that she expected to look up and see him. When she looked up, all she was his portrait and the owner.
The owner. Why did she look so familiar? Emily glanced farther down the wall to another painting that she was so used to seeing in the Marshall home, then back at the older woman in front of her.
“Elsbeth!” She could barely breathe.
The woman’s eyes opened wide and then narrowed. “So, you are Emily after all.”
“Tomorrow, before you check out, you come to my office. I have some things you might be interested in seeing.” Her eyes glimmered with hope and happiness and Emily realized that this woman was the key. That if there was a way to get back to Sam, she would know it.
“But how did you get here?” There was so much she needed to know. So much this woman could tell her.
“We’ll talk in the morning, dear,” Elsbeth said and with a gentle pat on her shoulder moved on, leaving her dazed and confused. She wanted to chase her down and ask her a dozen questions, but she’d have to wait for morning, which suddenly seemed way too far away.
She took one more look at her husband’s portrait and headed back into the ballroom. There was no waltzing or dancing the Zingirella, but she thought she could have a good time anyway, for the last hour of the reception, now that she knew she could get answers. She danced with Johnson and his friend Brian and Dayna’s brother and with all the bridesmaids and then the band announced the last song, and the reception came to an end. Everyone gathered around Dayna and Johnson to wish them well as they started their life together. She watched from a distance, remembering her wedding dance with Sam in this same room.
Dayna caught her eye and signaled to her to come over. She wanted to tell Dayna everything that had happened, she needed to tell her, but how could she possibly begin? And this wasn’t the time or the place. She went to her.
“Em, sweetie,” Dayna said. “We want to have the bridal party in our room for one more celebratory glass of champagne, but we can’t let it go on too long because our taxi is getting here at five to take us to the airport. Can you gather people, and shoo them out again before it’s too late?”
“You know I can,” she said, relieved to have something concrete to concentrate on.
Dayna grabbed her arm as she started to leave. “You okay?”
“We’ll talk later.” She made sure to smile so Dayna wouldn’t worry. She gathered the bridal party, made them swear to leave after one or two drinks and ushered everyone up to the bridal suite. Mr. and Mrs Marshall’s bedroom. But of course, she was the only one here who knew that.
Dayna and Johnson simply glowed with happiness, and their joy was infectious. They poured the champagne and everyone made toasts and then they filled glasses again and more toasts and Emily found it impossible not to be happy with them. But two bottles of champagne had been emptied and the bride and groom needed their privacy. Emily herded everyone out the door.
Soon she stood at the door to the suite with Dayna, itching to tell her everything that had happened, but knowing it would have to wait. She gave Dayna a hug.
“Have a great time in Hawaii!”
“We’ll talk when I get back,” Dayna said and Emily shut the door behind her, leaving the newlyweds alone.
She went down the hall to her room. Sam’s room. Her bridal suite.
She undressed and climbed into bed. The bed was different, larger, more comfortable all around, but it was missing Sam and therefore completely unsatisfactory. She got up and wrapped herself in Sam’s dressing gown. It had been real, here was the gown to prove, it. She looked out the window at the stars and the moon and wondered where Sam was, and if there were any way at all to ever find him again.
****
Morning came and she lay in bed wondering what was real and what wasn’t. It was the morning after Dayna’s wedding, yet she had very vivid memories of her time with Sam. Could it all have been a hallucination of some sort? Did she make it all up? But if she did, then how to account for the dressing gown, and the chemise? Both of which did not belong in her twenty-first century wardrobe. She dressed in jeans and a tunic top, relieved at not having to wear a corset or yards of material, but yet oddly missing the elegance those items brought to her look.
She set about packing. Her bridesmaid’s dress was gone. Good thing she hadn’t really been planning to wear it again. Instead of course she had the nineteenth-century dressing gown. She held it to her nose and sniffed, yes, she could still smell the scent of Sam on it. The cinnamon and tobacco smoke and peppermint. Her heart did a little tumble, but she took a deep breath. There was no reason to panic until she found out what Elsbeth could tell her. Once her bags were packed, she looked around the room one last time, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave yet. This was Sam’s room. It might not look like his room anymore, but it was still his room. If she left, would she lose any connection she had with him?
No. That was silly. Her connection with Sam went much deeper than a room. She picked up her overnight bag and garment bag and went downstairs. She grabbed a cup of coffee in the breakfast room, or dining room, as she couldn’t help thinking of it, and went in search of Elsbeth.
“Ah, you’ve come,” the woman said with a smile. “I imagine you have questions. Let’s go into the parlor. It is more comfortable.”
She followed her into the parlor, which was now set up like a tearoom for small events. She put her bags by the door and sat in one of the wing back chairs when directed. Elsbeth took the other chair. They were not the same chairs from Sam’s time. She wasn’t sure if it would have made it easier if they were.
“Thank you so much for seeing me, Ms. Marshall,” she said, sitting primly on the edge of her chair, holding her coffee like a life line.
“Winters,” Elsbeth corrected. “Mrs. Winters. And you are Mrs. Samuel Marshall, is that correct?”
Emily nearly spilled her coffee.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“The same way you knew who I was, though I must say you look much more like your picture than I look like that portrait in the hall anymore.”
“What picture?” She was afraid to hope it could be her wedding picture, taken only days before.
Elsbeth held out a scrap book, and Emily put down her coffee and took it. She opened it to see exactly what she had been hoping to. Her wedding picture. Her and Sam. She reached out and gently touched his face in the photo, while tears pooled in her eyes.
Elsbeth handed her a tissue, and she wiped her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“What for?” the older woman asked. “For breaking down crying when you see a picture of the husband you will never see again? No, I think that’s a perfectly fine reason to cry. Trust me, when I first ended up here, in an abandoned house, my family over a hundred years away and no way to get back, I cried plenty. No shame in it.”
“Then you don’t think I could go back?” The last hope gone. If her heart wasn’t already shattered into pieces, it would have broken.
“It only works in one direction.”
“But it doesn’t!” She sat up straighter, closing the scrapbook on her lap. Elsbeth might not have the answers she needed after all, but perhaps between the two of them they might figure something out. “I was here, you saw me, at the wedding, and then I went to the pond and it was the full moon and next thing I knew I was in eighteen sixty-one.”
Elsbeth stared at her, eyes wide. “You were here first? You came back? To the same day?”
A shiver went down her back and she grabbed her coffee for fortification. “It was like no time had passed.”
“And how long were you in eighteen sixty-one?” Elsbeth leaned forward in her seat, intent on her answer.
“A month. From one full moon to the next.” Had it only been a month. It seemed like a lifetime.
“Tell me your story,” Elsbeth said.
So Emily did, as completely as possible, including figuring out what the magic chant was that the slaves thought was the key to time travel.
“Ah, that’s my fault, I’m afraid,” Elsbeth said. “When I questioned DayJon and found out what I could about how he got here, he told me the poem, such as it is, in English. I didn’t want to be found out, so I translated it into French. He must have taught it to the slaves in French, Or maybe young Moses overheard me, since I repeated it over and over so I wouldn’t f
orget what I had to do.
“So, you left on purpose.” She was starting to piece things together.
“I did. I was engaged to a man I could not stand and saw it as a perfect opportunity to get away.”
“Will you tell me your story?” She took another sip of her coffee and saw the cup was nearly empty.
Elsbeth saw and took her cup, refilling it by a coffeemaker in the corner. She filled a cup for herself before settling back in her chair.
“My story,” Elsbeth said thoughtfully. “You realize I’ve never told anyone.”
“No one? Not even your husband?” She couldn’t imagine keeping a secret that big from Sam.
“No. I didn’t think anyone would understand. But you would, wouldn’t you?”
Yes, she would. She took a sip of her coffee and waited.
“You know about DayJon,” Elsbeth began and Emily nodded. She still needed to warn Dayna about that, but there was time, plenty of time for that. “He came and his stories were fascinating, and while the slaves thought he was a conjurer and the overseer thought he was a trouble maker, I understood that he offered hope for a better future for me. I memorized his poem and waited for the next full moon, which, as luck would have it was mere days before my wedding day. It was cutting it close, I know, but I saw no other way out.”
“What if it hadn’t worked?”
“I’d have been married to a man I did not love and would have made the best of it, as people do.” Elsbeth took a dainty sip of her coffee. “But that is not what I did. I went to the pond, with a silver bracelet my father had given me, and when the moon filled the pond, like in the poem, the mist came and when it had gone, the house was abandoned. In ruins. I wasn’t prepared for it to work. I didn’t know what to do. I sought shelter in the house until I could get my wits about me.”
“What did you do?” Was it worse to be thrust back in time like she had been, or forward. Either way everything was different, and there were no friends or family to help.
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