Chapter 18 Re #2
I think of women arriving through servants’ doors. Kitty counting pulses. Mrs. Davies walking in through the front. Charlotte’s chamber filled with air because I demanded a window be opened.
For months, I have been asking whether I am stranded here or meant here.
Maybe meant is too simple. Too tidy.
But useful?
Useful I can do.
* * *
That night, after Carlton House, James takes me to the conservatory at Ashbourne House.
“If this is where you reveal a tragic collection of carnivorous plants, I must warn you I am emotionally full.”
“No plants will threaten you.”
“Disappointing.”
The glass panes are dark with rain. Candlelight reflects in black squares, making the room feel suspended outside time.
Ferns and orange trees scent the air. Somewhere beyond the door, the house murmurs around us—Beatrice laughing, Mrs. Finch directing dinner, Kitty arguing with a footman about whether assistants outrank errand boys.
James stops beneath an orange tree and turns to me.
There is a ring in his hand.
Not enormous. Not ostentatious. Gold, with a deep blue stone that catches the candlelight like trapped twilight.
“This belonged to my mother,” he says.
My breath catches.
“James.”
“I should have given you this when I asked. I should have done many things better.”
“You rode all night and proposed in a carriage with a criminal witness. Honestly, the baroque incompetence has charm.”
His mouth curves, but his eyes stay serious. “May I?”
I hold out my hand.
He slides the ring onto my finger. It is slightly loose. Perfectly imperfect.
“Emma Hart,” he says softly.
“James.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
This kiss is not stolen from fear.
It is not interrupted by duty, scandal, or an inconvenient fiancée with a secret pregnancy. It is slow at first, almost reverent, his hands warm at my waist, mine sliding up the front of his coat because apparently I have learned nothing from repeated proximity incidents.
He draws back. “Tell me if you wish me to stop.”
My whole body answers before my mouth does.
“I do not wish you to stop.”
The words change the room.
He kisses me again, deeper now, and the world narrows to rain on glass and his hands asking before they take. There is nothing careless in him. Nothing assumed. Every touch is a question, and every answer I give makes him tremble.
I have been handled by this century. Dressed, judged, threatened, claimed, nearly bartered into safety.
This is different.
This is chosen.
When he lifts me carefully onto the cushioned bench beneath the orange tree, he pauses again, because of course he does. Honorable man. Infuriating man. Mine.
“Emma.”
“If you ask me one more time whether I am certain, I may expire from respect.”
His laugh breaks against my throat.
“Are you certain?”
I take his face in my hands. “Yes.”
So he believes me.
At last.
* * *
Later, wrapped in his coat and the quiet after rain, I rest my head against his shoulder and watch candlelight tremble on the glass.
“We need a plan,” I say.
He presses a kiss to my hair. “For the wedding?”
“For everything. My practice. Your estates. Kitty’s training. Beatrice’s inevitable campaign to reorganize society by breakfast.”
“Ambitious.”
“You proposed to a time-displaced medical menace. Ambition is implied.”
His arm tightens around me. “The dower house at Ashbourne Park could be converted. Rooms for patients. A stillroom for preparations. Quarters for women who must stay.”
I lift my head. “You have thought about this.”
“I have thought about you building a life here since before I had any right to imagine I might be part of it.”
Oh.
That is just cruelly romantic.
“Careful,” I say. “I may start expecting competence from you.”
“A terrible precedent.”
For the first time in months, the future opens without looking like a trap.
It looks like work.
It looks like a house with clean linens and women coming through the front door.
It looks like James beside me, not saving me, not owning me, but choosing the same impossible path.
I am almost asleep when Mrs. Finch knocks.
James swears under his breath, which is deeply educational.
“Forgive me, Your Grace,” Mrs. Finch says through the door with the tone of a woman forgiving absolutely no one. “A note has arrived for Miss Hart. The messenger would not wait.”
James helps me sit. I fix my gown with as much dignity as a woman can manage while wearing a duke’s coat and several questionable decisions.
Mrs. Finch enters, eyes taking in everything and commenting on nothing because she is a professional. She hands me a folded paper.
My name is written on the outside.
Not Hartford.
Hart.
My fingers go cold.
James sees it. “Emma?”
I break the seal.
There are only two lines.
You are not the first person to fall through time.
If you want to know why you survived, come alone tomorrow. —M.W.
The conservatory seems to tilt.
For one impossible second, I smell ozone instead of orange blossoms.
The lab.
The Array.
My mother’s face behind bending light.
James takes the note from my shaking hand and reads it.
When he looks back at me, all the warmth has gone from his face.
“Who is M.W.?”
I cannot breathe.
“I have no idea.”
Which is the first terrifying part.
The second is worse.
Someone knows what I am.