Chapter 12
WHEN A LONGCASE CLOCK STRIKES THE HOUR, ITS CLANG IS DEEP and low, filling every nook and cranny of whatever house it lives in.
With its first chime, Annabel’s eyes fluttered open, then closed again.
She was still floating in a dreamworld, and the pull of the pillow was strong.
The second and third chimes, mixed with the sound of chattering birds, coaxed her closer to consciousness.
Between the fifth and sixth, muffled voices sounded outside the window, probably the gardener, who’d apparently brought reinforcements.
On a Sunday? she thought. By the ninth, she was fully awake, each clang reverberating in every nerve of her body.
On the tenth chime, she pushed herself to sitting as the gentle whirring of the clock downstairs reset itself, time winding up for the next round.
But because the ticktock of a clock so resembles the beating of a human heart, Annabel didn’t register how strange it was, the chime of a clock that no longer kept the time.
It seemed natural to the life of the house.
She dangled her legs off the side of the bed. There would be no leaping out of it this morning, but slow, deliberate movements that might not jar her head too quickly, still sloshing with champagne and claret. She stood, steadying herself on a bedpost.
That’s when she heard, drifting up from below, the crunch of something underfoot—she remembered the broken pitcher of flowers—then a quiet humming and the unmistakable whoosh of a broom on the flagstone floor.
She looked for her sweater on the back of the door but, not finding it, walked to the top of the stairs in her chemise and bare feet and peered over the banister, expecting Billy or, less likely, Cassie.
Instead, Annabel saw what appeared to be a pear-plump woman on her hands and knees, in a long gray skirt with an apron tied at her back and a white cap on her head, sweeping up shards with a small hand broom, no more than a tied bundle of sticks and straw, and a primitive dustpan.
She was where the humming was coming from.
Annabel held the banister as she crept down the stairs, hesitating on the last rounded tread, where the mahogany under her hand, glowing of new wood and fresh polish, curled into its scroll. She gripped it tightly.
“Good morning?” she said to the woman.
The woman looked up with a pleasing round face and warm smile. “Ah, mornin’, miss.”
Annabel looked around the foyer, trying to get her bearings.
It was the same foyer as yesterday, but somehow all wrong for how right it was.
The plaster walls looked freshly painted, not a crack or a water stain anywhere, as pure as a blank page.
Her gaze turned naturally to the ceiling, whose delicate moldings were intact.
The chandelier, its fresh gilding catching the morning light, had real candles on all six arms. She looked for the light switch Bunty had showed her to the side of the door, but it wasn’t there, or anywhere at all.
“Watch yer bare feet, miss. I’ll ’ave this up in the blink of an eye.”
Annabel supposed she might still be dreaming, or maybe still drunk. She stepped down to the stone tiles, smooth and even under her feet, and turned her full attention to the woman, kneeling and sweeping with a cheery demeanor and red apple cheeks.
“I’m sorry. And you are . . . ?”
The woman blew a lock of hair that had slipped out of her cap and onto her forehead. “Mary, miss. Lady Gidding-Wedmore sent me, who’s got servants to spare.”
Annabel circled the scroll, still clinging to it. “As a sort of Regency Society . . . joke?”
“Don’t think so, miss. She wasn’t laughin’ when she gave me my instructions, and my ’usband, James. Wot drove you to the ball last night.”
“James. Right.”
“And the ball the night before.” She squinched her eyes in a double wink. “’Tis the season!”
Annabel nodded, but she didn’t know why.
She stepped lightly to the front door and prepared to tug on it, but it opened easily.
Misty morning sun poured in, same as yesterday, and somehow reassuring.
But when she stepped out past the portico and turned back, she saw the deep purple blooms of the young wisteria gently caressing its columns.
The white stucco was flawless; the sashed windows, perfect; the gravel drive had not a weed or a pothole in sight.
Annabel put a hand on her forehead. There had to be some logical explanation.
She stepped back inside, where Mary swept the last shards into the dustpan.
“Why are you really here?” said Annabel.
“Well, I’m not one to talk, but I mighta over’eard Lady Gidding-Wedmore say that yer sister told ’er last night you ’ad no ’elp at Kidlington. Well, that won’t do at all! She wouldn’t ’ear of it!”
Mary stood with the dustpan full of shards, dead flowers in her apron pocket, and the remains of a hand-painted porcelain vase in her hand. “There we are, then. Right as rain.”
“May I?” Annabel’s voice quivered as she reached for a broken porcelain piece.
“Careful o’ the sharp edges.”
Annabel turned it in her hand. The vase—far from a simple glass pitcher—had been gold-rimmed at the top, beaded at the bottom, with flowers painted on one side.
“Lovely piece, it was,” said Mary. “Jonquils, rose, columbine, forget-me-nots. All the best flowers, right there!”
“It’s b-b-beautiful,” Annabel said looking up. “But this isn’t the vase Bunty left.”
“Hm, ’aven’t ’eard of a Bunty.”
“Are you sure?”
“We’ve a ‘Bunny’ not far from ’ere.”
Annabel looked down at the tragic vase. “Maybe Sotheby’s left it?
“Don’t know a Sotheby neither.”
“Well, I feel terrible,” said Annabel. “We broke it. Last night. In the dark.”
“Musta been the wind blew it off,” said Mary.
“Oh, no, it was—”
“The wind,” said Mary with a wink. “There’s a whole cupboard full of ’em. No one’ll miss it.” She glanced at the clock. “Will ya look at the time? Why, it’s ’alf-mornin’ already!”
Annabel tiptoed gingerly to face the clock, unsure whether it was friend or foe. She stared up into its old moon face, but the face wasn’t old at all. Even its mahogany case looked fresh and rested, its ticking seconds strong as a young heart.
“Clock man oughta be around later. I passed him on the way.”
“We have a clock man?” Annabel said.
“Everyone ’as a clock man!” Mary scrunched up her nose in a kind of smile, all crooked teeth. “And don’t ya worry. I’ll fetch more flowers from the garden.”
Annabel turned to her. “The garden. Out back?” She couldn’t remember seeing any flowers at all that weren’t tangled in a jumble of weeds and vines and gasping for water.
“Garden’s poppin’, miss! Just beggin’ to be picked. Shame to let a bloom go to waste, that’s wot I say.”
“All right, then.” Annabel’s voice had reached a piercing trill. “Thank you. Mary.”
She watched the woman toddle off toward the kitchen in her worn-out brogans with no laces, not sure whether to be sad or glad to see her go.
She looked like a refugee from the Regency Society, a player who’d lost her way, or maybe she was part of some elaborate hazing ritual for newcomers that included an overnight home makeover, though that stretched the imagination.
They took historical accuracy seriously, the coterie she’d met the last two nights, but were they really capable of a stunt like this?
It was baffling, all of it, but “Mary” seemed so real, so tethering. Annabel almost missed her.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tapped her temples. “Think, Annabel, think.”
When she opened them, the drawing room beckoned, terrified though she was to look in.
But there, bathed in morning sun streaming in through spotless windows, sat the Hepplewhite suite—rosewood table, shield-back armchairs, and two sister settees—brand spanking new, the center and showpiece of the room.
Gone were the shabby-chic couches, the entertainment center, the coffee table, and in their stead, a harmony of color and texture in silk, damask, chintz—side chairs, armchairs, a chaise longue—in intimate arrangements with just the right side table as complement, as if every variety of exhaustion and amusement required a different sort of resting place.
But the Hepplewhites were the star of the bunch.
She walked in and sat cautiously on the nearest settee, ran her hand across its sumptuous striped silk.
“What is happening?” she said to herself.
“Make a right sweet family, don’t they?” said Mary, peering in from the foyer with a bucket of steaming water in each hand.
“Mmm,” said Annabel, more mewling than speaking.
“’Twas the talk o’ the town, them ’epplewhites, when they was delivered last month. Includin’ the long dinin’ table and matchin’ chairs. A pretty penny, they is, eh?”
Annabel stood and turned, clenching her hands. “Mary. If you don’t mind me asking, who lives here?”
“Why you do, silly. You and yer sister. Lady Gidding-Wedmore says you’ve taken Kidlington ’ouse for the summer. With yer cousin, Mr. Doofus.”
“Mr. Doofus. Right . . .”
“The talk o’ the town this mornin’, Mr. Doofus is, my James says. Ahh, wot ’e did for Reverend Tudor, savin’ ’is life and all.” She cinched a shoulder to indicate her load. “Makin’ a bath for ’im, right now.”
Mary started for the stairs with her buckets splashing.
“Mary,” said Annabel, not sure how to ask what she most and least wanted to know. “I don’t really understand . . . the time.”
Mary stopped on the second stair. “Why, the clock just told us, miss. It’s ten in the mornin’, a ripe good start to the day. I’ve got coffee and tea on in the kitchen, and’ll ’ave breakfast in no time.”
“Thank you. But I meant more . . . the year?” Annabel’s voice was quavering.
Mary tilted her head, as if Annabel was joking. “Funny, you are, so early in the mornin’. Why, everyone knows. It is the year of our Lord, 1815.”
***