Chapter Thirty
Thirty
Henry could hardly breathe.
She was remembering. But was it just for a moment? Would those recollections fade into the mist again?
He had truly given up on this mad theory of reincarnation. Rose differed from Charlotte in so many ways, and he loved her. When she’d asked him to live with her in Chicago, he’d been overcome with happiness.
“We went on walks after dinner,” she said, and looked down at the starflowers in her hand.
Her whole body was shaking. “Kennicott thought these were too plain.” Kennicott had been the head gardener and landscape designer, and Henry knew he had never mentioned him.
“But you liked them because they looked like stars, and they glowed at night in the moonlight—” Her voice squeaked tight.
“Yes!” Henry raised her free hand, pressed it fervently to his lips, and cradled it with both hands against his chest.
“And I had him plant those roses, the Early Cinnamons…oh, Goddess, they smell just like my favorite perfume now!”
“Yes. I noticed. Like roses and incense.” Henry laughed, but it was edged with a sob.
“On our first anniversary, we were in the secret garden, right over there…” She inclined her head in that direction.
There had been a tall hedge on one border of the knot garden, and between it and the stone wall was the pocket-sized secret garden with the arbor of white roses, a place only they and the gardeners knew.
“You gave me that Venus statue! It was a surprise! Right over there!”
“Yes!” He drew nearer and held her face between his palms. He was definitely weeping now. He didn’t care. He kissed her cheek, her brow.
“And the way you kissed me…”
He pulled her in and crushed his mouth to hers. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he pressed himself against her—he couldn’t get close enough. There was nothing except her, and him, together, the way they always would be.
She pulled back to say, “I think I missed you the whole time!” Her voice trembled. Maybe everyone felt that way, when they finally met their soulmate. But for her, for them, it was doubly true.
Ungraciously, he rubbed his nose with his shirtsleeve. Then he searched her face. “What else do you remember?”
“So many things.” She looked around them in wonder. “Being here made me remember…But how did I forget?”
“You forgot because you are Rose now,” he said gently. “I know it was long ago for you, and a whole other life.”
“Hold on,” Rose said and dug in her purse. She pulled out her phone and tapped on the screen. “It’s nine twenty-nine. The moon is rising.”
Henry looked toward the east. “I don’t see it yet, but the trees would block it.”
“I want to see it,” she said.
“I would have no objection to watching the moon rise with you, but it is rather damp,” Henry said. It had begun to rain in earnest. “We cannot have you catching a chill.”
“No! Everly Park. I want to go back.”
Not long ago, Henry’s heart would’ve soared at such a declaration. Now, it felt wrong.
“Your life in Chicago—”
“Not to live there! Just for an hour or two.” She clutched his arm. “I want to see everything exactly the way it was, so all the memories come back to me.”
Henry would’ve felt the same way, in her extraordinary circumstances. And she’d seemed very certain about the full moon timing.
Still, he shook his head. “It is very dangerous, my love, and I do not want it to make you ill.”
“I don’t care if I faint afterward. I know I can do this!”
He sighed. “I, too, would like to pay a brief visit to the past, if only to leave a note explaining that I have left. A note in my own hand would go a very long way to allaying any suspicions of foul play.”
“I need to find a dry place, for the candles,” Rose said.
“And for you as well. The folly near the Great Court,” he suggested, pointing. It was only a short distance away. The round stone structure with pillars was meant to resemble a classical temple, though with its small size, no more than two people could occupy it at once.
“Perfect!”
As they hurried toward it, Henry reflected that this was the greatest night of his life. He had not been religious since he had been a boy, but now he offered up a silent prayer of gratitude to the universe itself.
It was dry inside the folly, but the light from Rose’s phone illuminated large cracks in the stone floor that had been smoothly paved in his time.
They knelt and Rose took out the astrolabe and the other accoutrements for her spell from the suitcases, with all the ceremony of a child taking out her toys to play.
She set up and lit the pink and black candles.
The moonstone in the astrolabe glowed with heavenly fire.
They held hands and both gripped an edge of the astrolabe. Rose spoke the words of the incantation from memory. But no—there was a new phrase, about lovers and coming home.
The nothingness that followed, the whirling abeyance, was slightly less alarming than before.
Then birdsong reached his ears. He opened his eyes and looked out the open doorway at the grounds and house, now in daylight.
“I know we did it,” Rose murmured, “because I feel like I’m going to faint again.” She was holding her head in her hands.
Henry, dizzy himself, quickly extinguished the small candles she might need again later. The stone floor no longer had cracks. He moved over to sit in front of her, laying a hand on her shoulder.
“How can I help?” he murmured, already wondering if this had been a mistake.
“Just give me a minute.” She took a couple of deep breaths and let them out, then nodded and looked up at him. “I’m fine. The world’s stopped spinning.”
“Well, I hope not,” he said with a small smile, reassured by the color in her cheeks. He packed the astrolabe and her other items carefully away, and with their suitcases, they stepped outside. It was cool and cloudy, as it had been when he left, but it had not been raining.
Pointing across the Great Court, he told Rose, “That is my boxing instructor with his luggage, and the carriage that will take him to London.”
Rose let out a squeal. “It’s 1818!” She broke into a trot, her long-handled suitcase bumping behind her.
“Wait!” Henry took long strides to catch up and took her by the arm. “You nearly fainted. You should not be cavorting like a spring lamb.”
As they reached the courtyard, Quentin Dunton was striding toward them and squinting. He called out, “Is that you, Leighton-Lyons? I forgot to give you my card with my new address.”
“Yes, yes, very good,” Henry replied as they reached him. “Rose, this is Mr. Quentin Dunton, the famed prizefighter from Boston. Dunton, this is Miss Rose Novak, from Chicago. But never mind that. There is no Chicago.”
Dunton blinked as though wondering if one of his blows had landed too hard and addled Henry’s brains. At least Rose’s dress—like many of her dresses, actually—would not cause too much confusion. Its tailoring was foreign, but it reached her ankles.
Dunton said to her, “Very nice to meet you, ma’am.”
Rose beamed. “It’s nice to meet you, too!”
Henry considered how the man’s instruction had proved invaluable. Here was an opportunity to pay him more handsomely than previously arranged.
“Dunton, may I trouble you to come back into the house for a short while? There is something else I meant to give to you, too.” Some heirloom or other, he supposed.
“No trouble at all,” Dunton said.
Rose practically skipped rather than walked, telling Dunton, “You did a great job of teaching Henry how to fight! He beat up a big tough guy.”
Dunton’s eyebrows shot up. “Here on the grounds?”
Henry realized that to any sensible person, and Dunton was certainly one, it would appear that in the past hour, Henry had given a man on his property a sound thrashing, gone for a refreshing swim in his pond with his clothes on, discovered a wild-haired buxom female in the possession of strange luggage doing the same, and had persuaded her to come with him to his house.
“You know how these matters are,” Henry said vaguely. Then they were all distracted by the clatter of a second carriage drawing up to the first.
Henry sighed. “Damnation. Who is this?” He wanted to take care of his business and reminisce with Rose, not deal with uninvited guests.
Then a bald man with spectacles burst out of the carriage in a rush and dashed toward the entrance, making Henry’s spirits soar again.
“My solicitor!” He strode toward him, waving. “Kirchhoff!”
“What’s a solicitor?” Rose asked, trailing after him.
“Lawyer,” Dunton translated.
Upon seeing Henry advance on him, Kirchhoff paled. “Your Grace, I must express my most abject apologies for my tardy arrival. In my own meager defense, I—”
“Not at all,” Henry said quickly. It occurred to him that Kirchhoff had never once been late before. He clapped the man on the shoulder, giving him a start. “I daresay you are perfectly on time. But do you have your notary seal?”
“I—yes, always, Your Grace,” Kirchhoff said, brandishing his attaché case.
“Excellent!”
When they stepped into the foyer, Rose gasped and clutched her heart. “Look at it! I remember so much.” She stared up at the pictures on the walls. “I remember everything!” Belatedly, she noticed Dunton and Kirchhoff were both staring at her, and she breathlessly added, “I used to live here.”
Dunton raised an eyebrow. “You were a maid?”
Rose laughed and dashed down the hallway with abandon. In her yellow dress she was like a beam of pure sunlight, heedless of the disapproving portraits of his illustrious forebears, bringing joy to this grand, grieving house once again.
Then his butler, Brady, turned the corner, and she ran smack into him.
“Goodness gracious! Sorry!” she exclaimed. Although Henry no longer had any wish for Rose to be anything but modern, he could not help but be charmed by another one of her lapses into old-fashioned speech. Walter Wilke emerged around the corner, looking like a perplexed bear.