14. Moving the Clock Ahead
14
MOVING THE CLOCK AHEAD
I knew it had been something of a long shot to go to Mrs. Adams’ shop to see if she had anything that might work for me…but as any longtime fan of horse racing could tell you, sometimes long shots paid off.
“As it turns out, I do have something that might work,” she told me after I explained that we had an unexpected dinner engagement and that I wasn’t sure whether anything I had with me would be appropriate. “Lily Martin commissioned it from me, but then her mother passed and she had to wear mourning and couldn’t take the gown after all. I told her not to worry about paying me, given the circumstances, but I can tell you that it would be good to get it off my hands. Just a moment.”
She headed into a small room at the back of her shop, presumably the place where she hung the finished garments that needed to be picked up. Because Mrs. Adams had already asked Seth and me to sit down, there wasn’t much to do except wait and hope the dress she had in mind would be even remotely suitable.
A moment later, she returned, a gorgeous confection in a deep sapphire blue draped across her arms. “I think the color will suit you very well,” she said. “But it’s probably better if you tried it on. While Miss Martin is close to you in size, it might still need a few adjustments.”
“Would you be able to get the alterations done in time?” I asked, knowing I probably sounded a little too anxious over something that in the grand scheme of things really wasn’t terribly consequential.
Mrs. Adams, to my relief, didn’t look concerned. She seemed to be somewhere in her fifties, with threads of gray in her light brown hair and sharp blue eyes with laugh lines around them. “Oh, it’s the sort of thing that will only take me a few hours at the most. But we won’t know until you try it on — go ahead and step behind the screen and see. Will you need any help?”
Because the new dress also had a bodice that buttoned up the front, I thought I’d probably be able to manage on my own. I reassured the dressmaker that I would be fine, then took the gown from her and went behind the folding Japanese screen she’d indicated. Through all this, Seth had remained silent, as if he knew he was mostly there for moral support and didn’t have all that much to contribute to the conversation.
A rack outfitted with several wooden hangers waited behind the screen, obviously placed there so clients could hang up their clothes while trying on a new commission. My fingers raced down the velvet-covered buttons of my dress, and I hung up the bodice and the overskirt and underskirt before turning to the gown Mrs. Adams had given me.
As much as I might have liked to put the bodice on first to test the fit, I knew there was an order to this sort of thing. First the underskirt, and then the apron-style overskirt with its carefully gathered bustle, and then finally the bodice, which had filmy silk lace around the neckline and fastened with a series of hooks and eyes cleverly hidden by pleated and ruched decorations made of the same fine wool challis as the rest of the gown, with two rows of faux buttons in warm burnished brass as an extra accent.
The whole ensemble was just gorgeous — and also just a bit too big. I moved out from behind the screen, and immediately, Mrs. Adams came over to me, a pincushion strapped around one wrist.
“Yes, I thought it might be a little too large. Still” — she paused there and plucked a few pins from their little velvet cushion, expertly pulling on the seams that needed to be taken in — “not by too much. A little tuck here and there, and this dress will look like it was made for you.”
“I really appreciate it,” I told her, then hesitated. While it always felt weird to ask about money in a society so much more polite than the one I’d come from, this was a business transaction, after all. It wasn’t as though I could expect the dressmaker to give me an obviously expensive gown out of the goodness of her heart. “How much do I owe you?”
“Twenty dollars,” Mrs. Adams said without missing a beat.
Which I knew was a lot…the equivalent of hundreds of dollars in modern money. However, the gown was a work of art, and it wasn’t as though we didn’t have the cash, thanks to Jeremiah Wilcox’s largesse.
In fact, Seth stood up immediately, reaching in his pocket for several of the gold coins Jeremiah had given him. “Here you are, Mrs. Adams,” he said. “We’re very grateful that you were able to find something for our dinner tomorrow night.”
She smiled. “And I’m grateful that I was able to find a home for that dress, since I couldn’t think of who else might want it. The only person with the budget for such things and whose coloring would suit might have been Mrs. Samuel Wilcox, but since she just ordered three gowns from me at the beginning of October, I doubt she would have wanted something else new so soon.”
Ah, yes, Grace Wilcox, the only blonde in that bevy of raven-haired beauties. I wondered why Samuel had chosen her for his wife, when it seemed as if his brothers had selected women on purpose who looked as though they could have been born Wilcoxes rather than merely married into the family.
Somehow I doubted Samuel would be too keen to clear up that particular mystery.
“Then I suppose it was providence that I needed this exact dress,” I said. “Let me just slip it off and get back into my own gown, and we’ll leave you to your work. What time do you think it will be ready tomorrow?”
“Come by around four,” she said promptly. “I have several fittings in the morning, and I’ll have to squeeze the alterations in around some other projects, but I’m sure I’ll have it done by then.”
Since we weren’t expected to be at Jeremiah’s house until six, that timing should work just fine. I’d have an ample span to pick up the dress and head back to the hotel to get changed before Seth and I needed to make our way over to Park Street.
I told Mrs. Adams that sounded fine, then went back behind the screen and took off the dress and climbed back into my own. The procedure went a little faster this time, so about five minutes later, I was ready to go, once again thanking the dressmaker for her help and promising her that I would be back the next day at four.
“That was easy,” Seth said as we made our way back to the hotel.
“Yes,” I agreed…but I couldn’t resist tacking on a small caveat.
“Let’s hope dinner tomorrow night goes as smoothly.”
All the Wilcox homes on Park Street had the gaslamps on their front porches glowing as Seth and I approached. Was that their way of being welcoming, of making sure there was no chance we could get lost coming to an unfamiliar place?
Well, at least they thought it was unfamiliar to us, thanks to Jeremiah’s avoidance spell. All except Emma, of course, who knew the truth of the matter. The primus had made it sound as though she could be trusted to keep our secret, but it wasn’t as if I knew the woman. Yes, she’d healed me, but that was kind of what healers did, wasn’t it?
What if this whole dinner was a setup, and the Wilcox women and their husbands were planning to pounce the second Seth and I sat down at the dinner table?
I told myself that was ridiculous, and even if they had formed some kind of cabal to drive us out of town, none of them were foolish enough to plan something that would force them into direct conflict with their primus . From what I’d heard, while Jeremiah’s younger brothers were fairly strong warlocks — and their witch wives were no slouches, either — even their combined strength wouldn’t have been enough to take the clan leader down.
Sometimes I really wished my chattering brain would leave me alone.
At least I had my new dress to give me courage, and the welcome assistance of Seth’s strong arm as he helped me up the front steps to Jeremiah’s house. I thought it interesting that he was hosting this dinner himself, when it sounded as though the two times my mother had dined with the Wilcoxes, it had been at Emma’s house.
Maybe this was his way of ensuring that he had full control of the situation.
Seth knocked, and almost at once, Mrs. Barton opened the door.
“Mr. and Miss Prewitt,” she said. “Come in. They’re waiting for you in the dining room.”
So everyone was already here? I knew we couldn’t be late, not when we’d left the hotel at precisely ten minutes before six so there wouldn’t be any chance of arriving after the appointed hour.
Well, I supposed they could have all left their houses just a little bit before, since obviously, they had much less distance to cover to get to their brother’s home.
We paused in the foyer so Seth could help me out of my cloak and take off his overcoat and hat, and then the housekeeper led us into the dining room. Although I’d passed it several times, I’d never been in the space before, with its huge dining table that even despite its size would be straining to accommodate all eleven of us and patterned burgundy wallpaper above gleaming mahogany wainscoting. Gaslamps flickered on those walls, and two candelabras studded with a dozen candles each gleamed from the cloth-covered tabletop.
Everyone was chatting when we entered, although the conversations almost immediately died down. Before the moment could get too awkward, Jeremiah came over to us, saying, “How good of you to come, Miss Prewitt, Mr. Prewitt. Please — let’s get you seated. Miss Prewitt, you’re on my right, and Mr. Prewitt, you’re across from your sister.”
He went to the chair he’d indicated was mine and pulled it out, and waited while I seated myself, doing my best to arrange my voluminous skirts. I would have much preferred to have Seth next to me rather than across the table, but I was relieved to find that Nathan, the youngest brother and my great-six-times- over grandfather, was the one who took the chair to my left. From everything my mother had told me about him, he seemed to be the most easygoing of the Wilcox brothers…and the least intimidating as a dinner companion.
After that, everyone took their various positions, all the while saying their hellos to us and also saying they were so glad we could make it to dinner.
“Our clan is very new,” Jennie, Nathan’s wife, said. She seemed pretty young, probably around my age or maybe a year older at the most. “It’s just us most of the time, so we all think it’s wonderful to have some visiting witch-folk to liven things up a bit.”
Yes, I supposed their circle was pretty small these days. It wasn’t as though I’d been hanging out with them much since getting here — or, more to the point, being around them at all — but based on some of the things my mother had said, it sounded as if the women of the Wilcox clan pretty much stuck to their own kind. At least they were a large family, but still, it had to be difficult sometimes. As the years went on, their children would grow up and get married — to civilians, I assumed, because they were far too closely related to start marrying cousins until they had a few more generations under their belts — and eventually, the clan would grow to the enormous size it was in my own time, but for now, they only had each other to fall back on.
And I had to admit they seemed friendly enough, although I had no way of knowing whether their geniality was genuine or just a front they’d put on so as not to act rude in front of their primus .
“We’re very glad of your welcome — and the dinner invitation,” I said, with a slight nod toward Jeremiah. “I have to admit that it is a sad errand which brought us here. No one we’ve spoken to has been able to provide any information to help us learn what really happened to our sister. More and more, it seems as if it is a mystery that will never be solved.”
All the women made sympathetic noises, although I guessed the glint I saw in Samuel’s eyes had absolutely nothing to do with the reflected candlelight from the candelabra sitting a foot or so away. He’d seated himself on the opposite side of the table kitty-corner from me, but as far as I was concerned, the distance still wasn’t sufficient.
Both Nathan and Edmund looked uncomfortable, and I wondered how much they knew of the story. Probably not anything more than what their wives also knew; I’d gotten the impression from Jeremiah that what had happened at the cabin was a secret both he and Samuel had known they needed to keep to themselves.
After all, the fewer people who knew about the kidnapping and attempted murder, the better, even if they were your fellow clan members.
“It is a terrible thing,” Jeremiah agreed. Both his voice and his face were grave, signaling nothing of the truth he hid. “But if our hospitality can provide you with some comfort, then I hope you won’t feel that your journey out here was entirely in vain.”
“And perhaps the gossip is true, and your cousin really did leave town with Robert Rowe,” Grace said.
Everyone else at the table — well, except Samuel, who appeared amused by his wife’s comment — exchanged uneasy glances. Yes, that seemed to be the story most people wanted to go with, but since there was no real evidence that the couple had actually gotten on a train and headed west together, I supposed the Wilcoxes could see why Seth and I weren’t quite ready to accept it as the gospel truth.
“Better that than her being alone somewhere, with no family or friends to protect her,” Seth said. I noted a wicked glint in his eye as he added, “What do you know about Robert Rowe, anyway? He was a stranger in town, correct?”
Again, most of the guests assembled around the table looked less than happy with this line of questioning. I knew that Samuel and Robert had made quite a scene outside church one Sunday morning, but no one Seth and I had talked to during our tenure here in Flagstaff had apparently wanted to mention it.
Most likely, they all wanted to leave the unfortunate incident behind them and pretend that none of it had ever happened.
However, Jeremiah seemed to think it was time for him to step in.
“Yes, Mr. Rowe came here to scout land for a ranch,” he said. “He came from Connecticut, I believe, and it appeared he had ample funds to work with. Other than that, however, I don’t think any of us knew very much about him. He mainly kept to himself — except, perhaps, for his interest in your sister.”
“You saw them together?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer to that question.
Jeremiah’s mouth tightened for a fraction of a second, and I wondered if he was remembering the way my mother had held my wounded father in her arms, thinking for sure she was going to lose him if she couldn’t find a way to somehow get him to a future where he would receive the proper medical help.
However, Jeremiah’s voice sounded smooth enough as he said, “Not really. I believe I saw them speaking to one another at the harvest dance we held several weeks ago, but they did not dance with one another, and they certainly left separately. As far as I’ve been able to tell, the gossip about them is simply that — gossip, and nothing more.”
A believable enough description of the situation…if you didn’t know what had actually happened.
“Which means that, even if we were somehow able to track down Robert Rowe, we most likely still wouldn’t discover what really happened to our sister,” I said.
“I suppose that means you won’t be with us for much longer,” Samuel remarked, his gaze holding mine for a moment longer than was strictly necessary. He’d worn a sour expression during most of the previous exchange, although it seemed he hadn’t wanted to interrupt his older brother. “When did you plan to return to St. Louis?”
The question probably was bordering on intrusive, but it seemed Seth decided to take it at face value rather than call our dinner companion out for his rudeness.
“We don’t want to stay until the weather truly starts to close in,” he said. “So, most likely, only a few more days.”
He sent me the barest sideways glance as he spoke, as if to signal that, while he might have been speaking the words Samuel wanted to hear, he also wanted us to get out of here sooner rather than later.
The conversation moved from there to the possibility of snow over the next week, with pretty much everyone…except Samuel…looking relieved that the conversation had shifted to a much more innocuous topic. It seemed the consensus was that we should probably have a decent storm within the next seven days, although early snow like this generally didn’t stay around for too long.
And while I knew I was growing impatient as well, I honestly had no idea when Seth and I would be able to leave 1884.
So much depended on how my “training” the next day turned out.
It felt kind of strange to go back to Jeremiah’s house the next morning after having been there just the night before. Again, no one seemed to be out and about on Park Street, which meant Seth and I were able to go up the front steps and knock on the door without anyone taking note of our presence.
Today, Jeremiah himself answered the door, since of course the whole point of this exercise was that his housekeeper was thirty miles away and occupied with family matters. He smiled as he greeted us, although I noticed he closed the door swiftly once we were inside and taking off our outerwear.
Just being safe, or was he having doubts about whether his “stay away” enchantment was sufficient to keep his family members from spying where they shouldn’t?
But he didn’t sound particularly worried as he said, “Come into the office. I have some tea waiting, since it’s such a bitter morning.”
That it was. While the air and the sky didn’t have that heavy, lowering feel that always seemed to descend when snow was imminent, gray clouds clustered overhead, and the air felt much more raw and unfriendly than usual. As far as I could tell, our conversation at dinner the evening before had only pointed out the obvious — we were moving into mid-November, and in Flagstaff, that meant snow was pretty much inevitable.
Seth and I thanked him, and for a minute or so, we were occupied with pouring ourselves some tea and doctoring it the ways we preferred. While I only put lemon in my iced tea and nothing else, I always liked having a little cream and sugar in the hot stuff.
“Well, then,” Jeremiah said once we were all done and sipping from our teacups. “I think today we need to be bold. Mrs. Barton will be back a little before five-thirty, which gives us a good amount of time to work with.”
“No pun intended,” I remarked, and his right eyebrow went up ever so slightly.
However, he ignored the interjection and went on, “We should keep some margin of error, so I don’t want to have you return too close to five-thirty, just to be safe. Devynn, why don’t you try to move forward to four o’clock this afternoon? Even if you overshoot slightly the way you did the last time you tried this, you should still return before my housekeeper arrives to get dinner started.”
On the surface, this seemed like a good plan. After all, when I had the amulet to help me, I’d only been a minute late to return. Even if I added in some extra slop, so to speak, because of the greater length of time involved, I shouldn’t be more than a half hour late at the most, and well within the margin of error.
“Sure,” I said, doing my best to sound confident and breezy. Yes, I’d proved the other day that I really could control my time-hopping talent as long as I had the amulet to keep it in check, but still, one small success wasn’t that much compared to all the occasions in my past when I’d messed up royally.
But we were here now, and it wasn’t as though I could back out of the experiment. Otherwise, I might as well throw up my hands and resign myself to staying in 1884, and that sure as hell wasn’t going to happen.
“Here you go,” Jeremiah said as he handed me the amulet. “Four o’clock.” Then he looked over at Seth, adding, “Of course you are welcome to any of the books in the library to keep yourself amused while we’re waiting for our time to catch up with Devynn’s. And Mrs. Barton left a cold meat pie for us in the larder.”
That didn’t seem particularly appetizing, although I guessed it was probably tastier than it sounded. Anyway, it wasn’t as if Jeremiah could take Seth out to lunch to keep him entertained…and although I supposed Seth could teleport himself back to the hotel to wait it out, I doubted he would feel comfortable doing that.
No, he’d stay here until I returned, no matter how long it took.
“That sounds fine,” Seth said, and a small smile flickered in the corner of his mouth. “I’ve been meaning to catch up on my reading anyway.”
“Very well,” Jeremiah said. His gaze went to the clock on the bookshelf behind his shoulder. “Four o’clock.”
I nodded, trying to stay focused on the reassuring weight of the amulet I had clutched in my hand. Attempting a smile was probably a bad idea, so instead I just replied, “See you then.”
And the office blinked away from me, the same way the world always disappeared for that one fraction of a second while I made my time jump.
I reappeared, only to find a worried Seth standing in the far corner of the room, even as Jeremiah called through the door, “I have some paperwork to finish, Mrs. Barton. I’ll be out momentarily.”
Although I always felt a little disoriented when I traveled in time, now I felt extra off-balance. Mrs. Barton?
But then I looked at the clock.
Five thirty-five.
Goddamn it.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Jeremiah said, voice as smooth as ever. Did anything upset the man?
Probably, but he’d made his way through enough calamities in his life that he probably knew better than most that losing his head in a crisis wouldn’t do anyone any good.
“We were starting to get worried.”
Starting?
While Jeremiah was speaking, Seth had come over to me and taken my hand in his. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t shown up just then.”
Gone back to the hotel to wait, I supposed, since it wasn’t as if he would have had too many options left to him.
“At least you can travel using Seth’s talent,” Jeremiah said. He kept his voice pitched low, probably so the housekeeper couldn’t overhear him. You’d think she would have been busy in the kitchen by now, though.
“Only if we use the amulet,” I protested. “Weren’t you just saying the other day that it wouldn’t be as safe in the hotel with us?”
The primus didn’t even blink. “Yes, I did tell you that. However, it’s more important now for you to leave so no one will ever know you were here. I trust you to keep it safe.”
That I would, even if I had to sleep with it on…even if I had to wear it while taking a bath and risk turning my neck green.
“Nothing will happen to it,” Seth said stoutly, and Jeremiah’s stern expression softened just a bit.
“I believe that. Now, though, you should go. I will send you a note when I think we will have an adequate span of time to practice again.”
After this almost-disaster, I was surprised he wanted to try again so soon. But then, he understood that we had no place here, and the longer we remained in the past, the greater the chance we might do something that seriously disrupted the smooth flow of history.
“We’ll keep an eye out for it,” I promised, and almost as soon as the last word left my mouth, Seth had his arms around me, and the office blinked away to be replaced by the now-familiar surroundings of his hotel room.
Once we were there, he didn’t let go immediately. In fact, he pulled me closer, murmuring, “I was so worried when you didn’t show up when we thought you would.”
“It’s because I messed up,” I said. A glance past his shoulder had told me the curtains were pulled tight, but with dusk now well upon us, the room was very dark. We probably should have gone to light one of the lamps, and yet I was content to stay here like this for just a few more minutes, to reassure myself of how real and how strong he was, and how I couldn’t begin to imagine going through all this without him at my side.
At once, he pressed a kiss against the top of my head. “You did not mess up. Remember, only a few days ago, you would have been thrilled to be off by that much when you were traveling through time.”
As much as I didn’t want to admit it to myself, I knew he had a point there. I’d been afraid of my gift for so long that I’d been conjuring worst-case scenarios for years. Being so successful during my first try with the amulet had made me think that maybe I was now bulletproof and that I had nothing left to worry about.
Today’s experiment had definitely proved me wrong. Still, even while it might not have been optimal, I’d managed to stay close to my target and only be an hour off. It wasn’t as though I was calculating a trajectory to land a Mars rover or something; in the grand scheme of things, a single hour really wasn’t that big a deal.
“True,” I allowed, then pulled away the slightest bit so I could look up at him. Even as dim as the room was, I could still see enough detail of Seth’s features to know his was the only face I would ever love like this. We were safe and quiet here, almost cocooned, and it was hard to believe that an entirely different world lay outside the windows.
But it did…and my body was telling me that it needed some nourishment after that eight-hour time jump, especially since I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast.
“We’ll count this as a partial win,” I said, and went on my toes so I could kiss him on the cheek. “But for now, let’s get some dinner. “
Neither of us wanted to go too far afield for our evening meal, so we once again ate in the hotel restaurant, lingering over our food because we knew we’d need to go to our separate rooms afterward so as not to invite any suspicion. So far, we’d been lucky and no one seemed to have paid too much attention to our comings and goings, but all it would take was one nosy patron to notice that Miss Prewitt appeared to be spending an inappropriate amount of time in her “brother’s” room late in the evening, and then we’d have to face questions we really didn’t want to answer.
And I had to admit I was a little glad of the solitude, glad I could finally take off my heavy dress and confining corset, and climb into the flannel nightgown I’d found among my mother’s belongings. Once upon a time, I wouldn’t have been caught dead in such a thing, but I had to admit that it helped me stay warm at night. The potbellied stove in my room managed to keep things from being utterly freezing, and yet it still wasn’t anything close to having central heat.
Just another reason why I really wanted to get the hell out of here. I didn’t know whether houses in 1926 had real heat, either, but if we returned anytime close to when we’d left, then we wouldn’t have to worry about cold November nights for months.
As tired as I was, I couldn’t seem to get comfortable, and rolled onto one side and then the other, trying to find a position that would allow me to go to sleep. One part of the problem might have been the amulet hanging from my neck; just as I’d promised Jeremiah, I’d placed it there as I got ready for bed, figuring that was probably the safest spot for it to be. I never slept in my jewelry — well, except for a couple of notable times in college when I’d gotten wasted at a friend’s party and face-planted fully clothed in bed once I got back to my house — and having the heavy bronze pendant lying against my neck felt strange, alien.
Eventually, though, I drifted off, but even then, my sleep was anything except peaceful. My dreams didn’t seem to have any real plot to them as they often did, and instead seemed to be bits and pieces of scenes that didn’t make any sense — a sleek black car that looked like something out of an old black and white movie, a tall dark-haired man with his back to me.
A dim room filled with people wearing black robes that covered their faces, the only illumination a couple of flickering candles.
After that last one, I woke up all the way, staring into the darkness, glad of the dancing flames in the potbellied stove across the room. For one moment, my brain thought it might have found some sort of common thread in all those disparate images, but just as quickly, that sensation of coherence vanished, and I was left with nothing at all, only vague memories that faded even as I tried to grasp hold of them.
Well, they were just dreams. They didn’t have to make sense.
At least, that was what I tried to tell myself as I rolled over in bed.
Thankfully, sleep came quickly that time.