Not Quite Darcy (20 page)

There wasn't a way to turn back, and the situation demanded she not be the turning back kind, so she boldly continued down the straightaway, moving across the room to sit on the floor at his feet. That, at least, got his attention, and he looked down at her with wary eyes.

“If you think about it, you'll see how much sense it makes. My odd ways? My not knowing bupkiss about English culture or who the Queen is? The songs I sing and the stuff I do? It's because I'm out of my time, William.”

The awful silence served only to feed her desperation.

“I wasn't planning on any of this. Not planning to feel for you as I do. And definitely not planning on hurting you.”

“What were you planning on, then? Who do you claim Lancaster is?” He did not meet her eyes.

She let out a heavy sigh. “I'm not supposed to tell you any of this. They said you'd have me locked up if I did.”

He raised a brow at that. “They?”

“Lancaster and York.”

“Lancaster and York. The two sides in the War of the Roses. Naturally.”

“Look, it sounded preposterous to me too. I wish I could dazzle and amaze you with my amazing predictive powers and a bunch of Marty McFly crap, but I can't. I didn't pay enough attention in History to be able to convince you of a thing. I didn't even pay enough attention during
Back to the Future
to help me out here.”

Now that she was actually giving her speech, it sounded a lot less impressive than it had in her head. Closer to
What I Did Last Summer
than
I Have a Dream
.

“I get that you don't believe me. It wasn't until I actually landed here that I believed Lancaster and York myself. But all I've got is the truth.”

He stared down at the carpet for a long while, then lay his head back in the chair, eyes closed.

“How do you claim these men ‘sent you through time'? What is the mission you keep speaking of?”

“They sent me back through a mirror.”

“And where is this mirror now?” He rubbed a hand over his chin, but didn't open his eyes.

“Well, I don't have it with me.”

“Naturally,” he muttered.

“And the mission part is complicated, mainly because I don't know what it is.”

“They sent you on a mission of which you have no knowledge?”

“Well, they said that I needed to fix something in the past, but they couldn't let me know exactly what it was. They said that I'd know what to do when the situation came along. York said it has something to do with you.”

“With me?” He opened his eyes at last, but they did not look on her with kindness. They held a guardedness she'd never seen before. His mouth was a grim line.

“You don't believe me, do you?”

His expression was so sorrowful she could hardly bear it.

“Do you think I'm lying?” She had to ask. She was in this far.

He said nothing at first. His blue eyes not looking away from hers. “I'm sorry, Eliza.”

She stood, but her legs felt too weak to support her, She rushed toward the library door. If the floor was going to drop out from beneath her, she'd rather have it be in the hall where he couldn't see.

“I'll leave then, as I said I would. First thing tomorrow morning, I'll go.” Her words came out with a choking sound.

Just as she reached the door, she felt the pressure of his hand on her shoulder, tentative and trembling.

“Please, let me finish,” he said.

She stopped, but didn't turn to face him. If she looked at that face, she knew she'd no longer be able to hold back her tears.

“Though I cannot believe such a tale of traveling from the future, neither would I want you to leave.”

“Why not?”

“You're good for my mother, Eliza. I trust you with her, though some may think me a fool for it.”

“You trust me, but you don't believe me. How does that work?”

“I don't know.” There was a long pause before he continued. “Stay, Eliza. Please. Just for another week, until we sort this out.”

She tried to speak but no words came out.

“Stay because I can't bear to watch you go. Stay for me, Eliza.”

She lifted the latch and let herself out into the hall. Not feeling brave enough to meet his eyes, she nodded miserably. “Okay, William. Another week. Then we'll talk.”

Chapter Twenty-One

The week dragged by. At the end of each day, Eliza felt a little lower than the day before.

The household had returned to its earlier, familiar patterns and Mrs. Brown had taken a turn for the worse. Her brief foray downstairs had ended almost as soon as it had begun. Eliza spent her mornings cleaning and afternoons with her patient. She saw little of William. Though he hadn't gone into hiding this time, they maintained distance from one another, as if they held an uneasy truce between them.

On the few occasions they spoke, the conversation was brief and only concerned his mother's health. He held himself stiffly, carefully controlled. Neither of them managed to make eye contact. It was just too painful.

Eliza was brushing Mrs. Brown's hair late one afternoon when she heard the familiar
thut
of the front door closing, then the soft tread of William's feet coming up the stairs. When he opened the door to his mother's room, his expression was troubled and he seemed distracted.

“William? Is anything the matter?” Mrs. Brown asked.

“I've just received a letter from Uncle Thomas regarding his travel arrangements. It seems that I've quite managed to forget about his visit.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Brown seemed far more pleased by the situation than William. “It slipped my mind completely as well.”

“I suppose we should inform the staff as soon as possible.” He tugged on his hair, then nodded and left the room.

Eliza bit her lip and said nothing. The dreaded uncle that William had told her about—the kind William that he used to be, not this new, distant creature. It had been nearly two weeks since he'd asked her for advice in how to handle the man. Back then, she wouldn't have been able to imagine the chasm that now stretched between them.

The next two days were a frantic blur of cleaning. Eliza had thought she'd known the anal-retentive depths of cleanliness to which Mrs. MacLaughlin could sink, but in reality she hadn't scratched the surface. Eliza felt a sense of doom gathering about her like a cloak. If Uncle Thomas could inspire such ferociousness in the battle axe of a housekeeper, he must be a real terror.

Walls were scrubbed, floors were polished until they shone and every bit of glass and metal in the home positively gleamed—all at the hands of Eliza and Dora. By the day of Uncle Thomas's arrival, Eliza's muscles ached, and her hands were cracked and raw. The only blessing in the whole flurry of cleaning was that she'd been too exhausted to dwell on the impasse she and William had come to.

William set off to King's Cross Station late Friday afternoon, wearing an attitude of resignation that was fit for facing a firing squad. Even the usually expressionless Davy looked dour as he pulled the carriage away from the house.

Eliza did hold one hope, which she kept tucked deep in the back of her mind and only took out when she felt especially bleak. Perhaps Uncle Thomas held a kind of key to the puzzle, to her mission. It wasn't completely unreasonable. She'd been at the Brown household for more than a month already—far past the time the Repairmen had estimated. So much for
Time is short. Make it count.
It was one more thing the gentlemen could add to her list of failures.

Eliza and Dora were setting the dinner table when they heard the front door open. Mrs. MacLaughlin burst into the room and gave the girls a stern glance. “To the hall,” she ordered.

The men had already entered by the time the three women arrived at the foyer. Davy's arms were loaded with baggage. Dora quickly rushed to shut the door behind him.

Eliza had expected that the infamous Uncle Thomas would be imposing, with overgrown muttonchops and a round belly. He was the opposite. Tall and skeletal, inky strands of hair clung to his scalp like spider's legs. His lips were thin and his nose long and fine—exactly like his sister, Beatrix. He wore a plain brown suit and a sour expression.

“I'm sure you remember our housekeeper, Mrs. MacLaughlin,” William said, without a hint of enthusiasm.

“Welcome back, sir.” Mrs. MacLaughlin's usually booming voice was shockingly diminished.

“And Dora,” William continued. “Eliza has recently joined us. She's been serving as Mother's nurse when I'm unable.”

“You're away from Beatrix often, are you?” Uncle Thomas ignored the staff's curtsies and gave William an appraising look.

“Only when necessary.” William turned to face Davy. “Could you please carry those up to the Rose Bedroom?”

Davy looked confused.

“The one next to the missus. I'll show you.” Dora scampered ahead of Davy and led him upstairs.

“An appalling lack of discipline in your girl, William,” Uncle Thomas said.

Eliza held in an exasperated sigh. It was going to be a long damned week. She was going to need a reservoir full of “tact” and “holding your tongue.”

Who was she kidding? Even at her best, she never had much of that to spare.

On a normal day, Eliza would have listed beating out the carpets with a large wooden thwacking device way down on her list of fun things to do. Today was far from a normal day. She smacked the center of the carpet with an arm-wrenching but satisfying thud. When she pictured Uncle Thomas's face in the center of the carpet, the whole activity became downright pleasurable.

She and Dora were in the back garden, carpets thrown over a line and oversized mobcaps on their heads. As if the maid uniform wasn't quite demeaning enough, the headgear made her look like a lunch lady from hell. God, she hoped William didn't wander into the backyard and see her this way.

It was an utterly pointless activity, as the carpets had just been cleaned days ago. This was not good enough for Uncle Thomas, however. After the annoying man complained about the condition of the carpets, Mrs. MacLaughlin had sent the girls out for another go-round. The housekeeper had probably only agreed to it so that the irritating windbag would stop following her around the kitchen.

“He's going to come out here. I know it!” Dora whispered.

“Wouldn't surprise me a bit.” Eliza thwacked the carpet.

“Always lurkin' about with that fiddle face of his. Back at the estate, he's only got a staff of four! For a place that big? Must work them to the bone!”

Thomas Waring had plagued the Brown home for only four days, but it seemed like a month. All the familiar routines had been upended and the atmosphere changed as though someone had tossed a funeral shroud over the house. The dreadful man had managed to transform everyone's personalities as well. Chipper Dora had turned into a weeping, insecure mess. Davy, the rarely seen stable boy, became the never-seen member of the household. Even booming Mrs. MacLaughlin had transformed into a muffled little mouse. Maybe a rat.

Mrs. Brown was the only member of the household who seemed remotely to enjoy her brother's company. At least as far as Eliza could tell. When Uncle Thomas was around, he tended to be the only one saying anything at all. Since Mrs. Brown was the single person who didn't avoid the man as if he carried bubonic plague, Eliza took that as a sign that she liked him.

William's avoidance techniques were especially effective. If he wasn't with his mother, he was out at his club.

Eliza smacked the rug again and muttered under her breath. “It's not even the constant correction I mind so much, as all the bible verses that go along with it. It's uncanny how that man has a verse for everything.”

“Well, he certainly knows the good book,” Dora said. “I had no idea God had such a lowly opinion of women until Mr. Waring came along. On his last visit, he reduced Mrs. MacLaughlin to tears, and that's a woman who didn't say so much as ‘ouch' when she gave birth to twins!”

It was at that moment that Uncle Thomas inconveniently made his way into the back garden to supervise the young women, putting an effective muzzle on further conversation and any sliver of pleasure they may have been able to find.

Eliza noticed that, as sick bastard control freaks are wont, he saved his scorn for the most malleable person within range, and he picked on Dora mercilessly. Didn't she remember how he told her to place her hands on the handle? Did she know how lucky she was to have a job here? Was she aware of what the good book had to say about sloth?

It was all Eliza could do to remain silent. She'd tried to intervene on Dora's behalf before, but Uncle Thomas took any intervention from Eliza as a sign to redouble his efforts to correct Dora.

“Again, girl. Demonstrate to me again. The right hand goes over the left.” Uncle Thomas seemed to feed off Dora's imagined failures.

Eliza smacked the carpet harder, creating a little inner fantasy in which Uncle Thomas's head came into accidental contact with the business end of her thwacking device.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement from the back garden. The elusive Davy was making his way up from the carriage house. With his shoulders square and expression firmly set, the lad had never looked less like a stable boy. Eliza's arms froze, mid-swing.

Upon reaching the bottom step of the porch, Davy cleared his throat and removed his hat. “Mr. Waring, sir, if it's not too much trouble. I've a question about proper brushing techniques for the horses and was hoping you could assist me in the matter.”

It was the most Eliza had ever heard him say. It very well may have been the most he'd ever spoken.

Uncle Thomas blustered something about the general ineptitude of everyone on the staff and followed the boy down the pathway to the carriage house, no doubt racking his brain for proper scripture references regarding horses and tack. With tears in her eyes, Dora looked at the retreating back of the stable boy: her gallant knight in bright armor. She grinned widely at Eliza—the first time the girl had smiled in days.

They finished beating the carpets in record time and hauled them back inside the house before Uncle Thomas made another appearance. By the sounds of clattering pans from the kitchen, Uncle Thomas had already been in to ruin Mrs. MacLaughlin's day. Dora went off to help prepare dinner while Eliza stole away to her refuge—the library. She'd given up hope of running into William days ago, but she found the room comforting all the same.

When she slipped into the library, she was surprised to see William seated at the desk in the corner. “Eliza,” he offered with a nod.

“Oh, sorry. I thought you were at the club. I'll go,” she said.

“No, please don't.” He looked at her, his pen paused mid-stroke.

“I really don't have a good reason for being here.”

“I should think you do,” William said. “I rather suspect that getting away from Uncle Thomas is an excellent reason.” Then he smiled. A small thing, really. The smallest. But she felt a terrific weight lift off her chest.

“Uncle Thomas is, eh, something else.”

“I thought you might say ‘bastard' or…that other term you had for him. What was it again?”

“Assclown.”

He grinned widely, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “That's the very word. Quite fitting, really.”

Conversationally, it was difficult to move on smoothly from “assclown,” so she chose another direction. “How long is he staying, again? What's a fortnight—you know, in English?”

“A fortnight means a period lasting two weeks. And I was under the delusion that I was speaking English, Eliza.”

Eliza. She hadn't heard her name from his lips for such a long time. “Uncle Irritating is going to be here for ten more days? I think the staff might mutiny by then.”

“I may join them.” He rifled through the papers on his desk. “Which reminds me, something arrived for you the other day.” He held out a stiff ivory card. She turned it over, curious.

Miss Jennie Jerome requests your presence…

Eliza shook her head. “She remembered. I'd forgotten all about it.” And her mission, she thought guiltily.

“I thought the timing of the ball most fortuitous: the evening after my uncle departs.”

“That does make things easier. A little bit.” Eliza bit her lip. Now there was only a matter of getting there, managing time off work and somehow finding something remotely appropriate to wear.

“I can arrange for Davy to drive you.” Once again, it was as though William had read her mind. “And I could arrange to be home with mother for the evening to free you from your duties.” He watched her carefully.

She scanned the invitation, then hesitated for a moment. “It states that I may bring a guest. I don't suppose you'd…”

He gave her a reassuring smile, his clear blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “I'd love to.”

“Really?” She looked at him to gauge his sincerity. “But you hate balls.”

His smile widened. “Curious, isn't it? I do. I do believe I would quite enjoy this one.”

She paused for a moment, but had to ask
.
“Have you had a chance to talk to your uncle about the money situation? You know, the thing we talked about with him giving money to the Vice Squad?”

William looked thoughtful for a moment as he processed her words. “The Society for the Prevention of Vice—yes.”

“Yes? You've talked about it.”

“Ah, no. Yes as in, I understood what you were talking about. I don't always.”

Unsure of how to respond, she said nothing and met his gaze evenly.

“I've followed your advice, Eliza. I've arranged to take him to my club shortly. That way I avoid involving Mother in the conversation. Several gentlemen at my club have a similar distaste for this group. I feel that with their support, I have a reasonable chance to change his mind about investing so much of our money into their schemes.”

“Well thought through. I'm proud of you.”

He blushed at that. “Uncle Thomas hasn't been unkind towards you, has he, Eliza?”

“Yes, but he's unkind to everyone. You know that. It's just an extension of his inner misery. Mostly, he leaves me alone. He senses that he'd do well not to mess with Bess.”