Chapter 28
“It can’t be.” Emmeline brought a clenched fist up to her mouth. “You can’t be here. I—I sent you somewhere, I was supposed to find you …”
“And find me you did,” Maria said, her tone gentle and perfectly amicable, while Emmeline expected Maria to lunge at her and shake the living daylights out of her for daring to ruin her life.
“How can you be here?” Theo asked. “And why were you pretending to be a character from a novel?”
“I wasn’t pretending,” Maria said. “But let’s start from the beginning, shall we? Sit, please.” She resumed her place on the chaise lounge while Emmeline and Theo sat on the sofa opposite of her.
“I was so confused when I showed up in the past,” Maria started.
“You sent me to nearly thirty years ago, you know. I thought I was dreaming, but I wouldn’t wake up.
Finally, I had to accept reality. I won’t bore you with how I got to that.
What matters is that I had to find means to survive—not easy for a young woman used to having her servants take care of everything.
I found out I was terrible at sewing and that my cooking could poison even the hardiest stomachs.
But I was good at one thing.” She leaned in. “Writing.”
Emmeline’s eyebrows shot up. “Lady Scarlet—”
“Is me, but I’m also the one who wrote her.”
“You’re the author,” Theo said. “Miranda Stormcliffe.”
“Correct.”
Emmeline gaped. The fear of Maria Grey accusing her of ruining her life transformed into admiration, and she barely contained herself to not drop to her knees and beg Maria—Miranda—to tell her everything. Instead, she only choked out a “How?”
“I always thought it was a nice name. Much more dramatic than Maria.”
“Yes, but, how are you … how did you …”
Maria smiled. “The strange, unexplained displacement that happened to me helped with the imagination quite a lot. I’d always enjoyed reading, too, so I suppose it was bound to happen. I do have to thank you for it. I doubt my own escape attempt would’ve been as half as successful.”
“So you’re not angry at me?”
“I have not been for a long time.”
“The story,” Theo said. “The Visitor in Scarlet. Emmeline said the events we witnessed when we traveled back happened exactly like in the book. The masquerade ball, the fire, a search for a treasure—”
“Oh, yes, that was all real, and I saw you there.” Maria winked at him.
With that, the questions poured out of Emmeline. “Then where did you hide the pendant? Do you know how de Villiers—I mean, the Duke of Redbridge—finally got it? Why did you let him take it?”
Maria laughed. “I said it was all real, not that everything happened the way you think. For one, no lover of mine dramatically fell to his death on the night of the fire. He’s very much alive, still.
” Her eyes took on a dreamy look. “My Edward. I met him soon after I landed in the past, at a country ball. I stole a dress from a seamstress, just for the night, and snuck in. Didn’t know who he was, and he didn’t know me—perfectly romantic, wouldn’t you say? ”
Emmeline felt her lips spread in a smile.
“I didn’t mind having a … protector, and he liked having someone to talk to.”
“Did you marry him?”
“Oh, dear.” Maria scoffed. “He was already married. That it was a miserable marriage is perhaps not a good enough excuse for some.”
Theo looked at Emmeline, but she kept her gaze on Maria.
“You can judge us. But I loved him, and he loved me. For years, I thought it could go on forever, that somehow, we’d manage.
He did his duty. His wife gave him children, and even though he didn’t care for her, he loved them.
I stayed on the periphery—always there when he needed me.
His family was one life, and I was another. ”
An invisible steel fist gripped Emmeline’s chest, eating its way to her heart. Was that what awaited her if she couldn’t give Theo up? They had to part—but what if time weakened their resolve? Would she become the woman in the shadows—his solace and his pain?
“It’s not like a much better fate was waiting for me here,” Maria said. “And between having to marry a man who doesn’t want me, and not being able to marry a man who does, I’d always go for the latter.”
“What happened then?” Emmeline asked in a small voice.
“Edward had quite the adventurous spirit in those days, even if it was confined mostly to fantasies. One day, he’d caught rumors of a lost treasure left by smugglers or something the like.
He enthused me—it didn’t take much, I’ll admit—and a good friend of his with it.
A friend who would not remain one for a lot longer. ”
“De Villiers,” Emmeline whispered.
Maria nodded. “I didn’t know it at first because Edward and his friend—de Villiers, let’s say—discussed some details privately, but it turned out de Villiers was in financial trouble, and Edward approached him with the idea, thinking we could split the profit and that would help de Villiers.
If you’d known him back then, you’d see how Edward could absolutely sell you an idea.
Not that he’d do anything in malice, of course.
Just sheer enthusiasm. So de Villiers joined the hunt, and even invested a substantial amount in it. ”
“And you found Starry Night.”
“It was just a necklace.” Maria scoffed at herself.
“A single piece of jewelry, and not that valuable, either. None of the experts we took it to recognized the material, and without it being confirmed as something precious, or at least something with an established history, our treasure was useless. And it couldn’t even be split. ”
Maria stood and turned to the fireplace, idly stirring the dying coals. “De Villiers was furious. He challenged Edward to a duel. I asked him not to do it, but men are men. It ended as horrible as one might expect.”
“Death?” Theo asked.
“No. But Edward wounded de Villiers in a … rather unfortunate spot, to adhere to the sensibilities.” Maria grimaced. “And so, from two best friends, two mortal enemies were born.”
“The duel.” Emmeline shot up. “The Duke of Redbridge was in a duel—so you’d heard, right?” She looked at Theo, who nodded. “Perhaps they weren’t referring to what happened at the masquerade ball in the castle, but to this duel!”
“Oh, he was, all right.” Maria turned back to them. “But the Duke of Redbridge isn’t de Villiers. He’s Edward.”
Emmeline’s hands fell to her side. “What? No, that doesn’t—he—” But as she thought about it, no good argument presented itself. Yes, the duke had a small scar on his neck, which could correspond to the nick Theo gave him with the rapier, but it could also be from anything else.
“You’re the mistress of the Duke of Redbridge?” Theo asked.
“Was,” Maria said. “Some time after the dispute, I left. Not because of it, although it didn’t help. I couldn’t do it anymore. His children were growing up. Daniel was … four or five? I never met him in person before you sent me to the previous century, you know,” she said to Emmeline.
Oh, God. Daniel. Maria used to be engaged to him.
“But I still knew. It was strange, but besides that, it felt wrong, hopeless. He could never truly be with me, and the longer I stayed, the more we’d both suffer. So I put an end to it, to us, and left. Came to London. Continued writing my books.”
Emmeline sat back down, hiding her face in her hands. Among all the confusion came a bit of relief. She’d liked the duke when she’d first met him. Perhaps he’d made some questionable decisions in the past, but she was glad he wasn’t the villain. “But if the duke isn’t de Villiers, who is?”
A corner of Maria’s mouth quirked up.
“Wescott,” Theo said.
Emmeline whipped her head to him.
“Wescott wanted the pendant. I wrote to him when I came to England last summer,” Theo explained, avoiding her eyes by looking somewhere between her and Maria.
“I expected him to summon me to London immediately, but instead, he told me to spy on the duke and steal his pendant. It never made sense to me until now.”
“You stole it?” Emmeline asked.
“The night when you went to look for it.” A slight blush painted his cheeks.
Of course. They’d conveniently discussed the pendant—and its location—just hours before. But knowing the leash Wescott held Theo on, she couldn’t be angry at him.
“I attempted to return it to the duke.” Theo gave a side glance to Emmeline. “At the wedding. I thought I could bargain. Offer my crimes to him in exchange for letting you go.”
Shock and gratefulness and a strange kind of happiness boiled inside Emmeline. So Louisa had been right—Theo made Lord Grey back off. And he would’ve sacrificed himself for her at the time when she’d been so horrible, when she didn’t even deserve him?
“But he didn’t want the pendant back,” Theo continued saying to Maria, eyebrows drawing into a frown. “He said Wescott could have it. Now it makes sense.”
Maria nodded. “Edward wanted it to be over. As do I. I believe I’m quite done with that chapter.”
“But you …” Emmeline went to her. “I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do. Can’t I fix it? Can’t I go find you in the past and bring you back—”
“I’ve lived my life.” Maria took her hands in reassurance.
“And I have some regrets, yes—that I left Edward instead of trying to fight for him, against the society, against the world. But I’ve also lived a fun, exciting life; the kind I never imagined before the day you sent me into the past. You don’t need to try to give me another life, Miss Marshall.
I’ve had one, and I used it to the best of my abilities. ”
“What about your father? Your family?”
“Someone always loses,” Maria said. “I’ve shed many tears for them, and I’m sure they’ve shed many for me. But they’ll move on. Time will help them.”
Emmeline frowned at Maria’s blasé attitude, then scolded herself for it. Was she any better? She left her family, too. She begged at that time unknown forces to let her go somewhere else, anywhere else, away from her family.
“You’ll never get a perfect life,” Maria said. “One without any mistakes made, any hurt caused or received. Even if you try to cheat to achieve it.”
Maria couldn’t have known everything about Emmeline’s past, but the words still struck her straight into the core.
She’d been annoyed at her family, but at the time, all she could see was that frustration—over her dad trying to govern her life, her mother trying to make her into a perfect lady, her brothers being the real menaces and getting away with it.
Like her, her family had flaws, too. And yet, she loved them to no end, and all she wanted was to see them again and tell them that.
Which reminded her of another problem, and her stomach squeezed. “You never had any powers, did you?”
“They say I’m rather good at cards,” Maria mused. “But powers like yours—no. Everything in that book, Lady Scarlet’s jumping from time to time—it was based only on what had happened to me, spiced up with a bit of imagination.”
“Then you can’t tell me how to control them. How to even gain them back!”
Maria shook her head. “Only you can figure that out.”
“But how? I’ve tried everything. Bad emotions, good emotions, focusing on objects connected to places or people … Sometimes one thing works, and the other time, it doesn’t.”
“When I go off the path sometimes,” Maria said, “when I lose sight of my goal when I’m writing, I try to think back. So much can get lost in the middle, but two things are the most important for me to know: the beginning and the end.”
“I already know how I got here.” Emmeline scrunched up her nose. “So I have to find the end? But how? Life isn’t predictable.”
“You’ll figure it out.” Maria patted her shoulder.
“But if you can’t travel in time,” Theo said, “How were you able to write those puzzles? Send us to Plymouth, when Bonaparte only arrived there on the Bellerophon after Emmeline had already sent you to the past?”
“Oh, right.” Maria turned back and picked up a small beaded purse from the chaise lounge. “I believe this is yours.”
Emmeline accepted it with numbed fingers. The purse she’d lost at the castle ruins, the one Louisa had lent her. It looked older, weathered, a few of the beads fallen off, and silk scuffed at the sides. The purse that had gone thirty years into the past and came back to her. Incredible.
“I found it on the night of the masquerade ball. In it was a folded newspaper article about the Bellerophon and Bonaparte, and a pamphlet about the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum. I only needed to add a few other things I knew myself, and the puzzles were born.”
“Of course,” Emmeline breathed. “You weren’t obsessed with Bonaparte. Louisa is!”
Maria gave her an amused grin. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind … I’m not as spry as I used to be, but I still have a ball to attend. I heard there were waltzes scheduled tonight. Always wanted to try one.” She smiled, spread her fan, and sauntered through the door.
Silence descended on the room, heavy with swirling thoughts.
In another time, Emmeline would rattle off her predictions to Theo, like that day when they were returning from another masquerade ball, buzzing from the excitement and surprise of the experience, and she weaved in the plot threads in her head, and he followed.
But it was all over now. The threads have been knitted together, and they have been torn apart.
“I need to return to the ball,” she said. “Sebastian and Louisa will be worried about me.”
Theo nodded. “I should go. I …” He looked down the hallway, where Maria had left, then back at Emmeline—but instead of the despair she’d expected in his eyes, there was determination. “I have something important to do.”