Chapter 9
NINE
I thought it was risky to fall asleep in the gamekeeper’s hut, but William murmured that he doubted we’d be disturbed – it was just used in the daytimes for the men that shot game, not someone’s house. Then, he fell asleep suddenly and deeply in my arms.
I didn’t have the heart to wake him; he’d been through so much, and he probably hadn’t slept for days.
He was also injured, and he needed the rest, even though I felt tense about being disturbed at any moment.
He seemed very sure of himself – not a surprise for a lord – but I supposed that at least, if someone did turn up, then I’d have William there if I needed protection.
And, at least if we stayed here a little longer, we wouldn’t have to walk back to the cottage through the fields in the pitch dark.
William slept like a drowned man, but I was restive.
I got up and tiptoed over to the small, rough table, reaching into the pocket of my dress that William had thrown onto the floor and taking out Evelyn’s journal.
I pulled out one of the chairs carefully, so as not to wake William, and wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.
I lit one of the oil lamps and set it next to me on the table.
It was cold in the gamekeeper’s shack, and part of me wanted to go back to bed and snuggle in, next to William.
But I knew I wouldn’t sleep; I was too wired.
We hadn’t really talked. But we had reconnected, at least a little, and for that I was grateful.
I crouched down and lit some kindling in the small fireplace and fed it some of the dry wood that was stacked in a neat pile next to it.
We hadn’t been disturbed by the owner of the little shack, but a pang of guilt attacked me as I wondered what he would think when he found the place had been used.
I resolved to make sure to ask Nancy to help me the next day – perhaps bring up clean bedding, and some firewood and food to leave as thanks.
I opened the book and turned the pages. I had read all of it, but some of Evelyn’s writing was difficult to make out, some was written in Latin, and some I didn’t understand at all.
There was a lot that needed a second or third read, and, since I’d found myself not back in my own time again, I resolved to study the book and try to glean some more wisdom from it that I might have previously overlooked.
Evelyn seemed to favour lists, and there was one list of points that I’d read quickly and passed over before. However, now, I read it again with a renewed interest.
It read:
Rules of the lines of energy: Being a collection of wisdom I have collated from my adventures, by Evelyn Willcock, pellar, of Yew Tree Cottage, St Nantes, 1698
Two versions of the same person cannot exist in the same timeline.
This is an unproved thought on my part, but I have tested the idea by trying to travel to Trevarron and my own cottage at the same year without success.
The timelines will not align. Yet, I have had success in determining my entrance and egress from other specific years through particular means.
This may mean that two versions of me, or anyone else, cannot exist in one time and place for some reason.
Living in a building that sits directly on a line of energy seems to bestow people with a talent for moving through time.
So far, I have observed that residents of Trevarron House, my cottage and Cullen’s farm have moved through time.
Drawing a straight line on a map between these properties – and onwards – reveals other places of interest along a Mystic Line that follows maps I have found elsewhere.
The portals open at the time of eclipses. A solar eclipse seems to take us back to the past in the location we are already in. A lunar eclipse is a wild card and can take you anywhere at any time.
I have observed that it is possible to travel between times at other special moments of the year, most notably the solstices and equinoxes, if one is somewhere on the lines of energy. But, a high degree of concentration is required, and only for those that have resided on the lines for many years.
It may also be possible to time travel at other times, given the right concentration.
As a single person I have found that I cannot produce enough power to make the leap at more mundane times of the year.
I wonder, if there were more than one person, whether the combined effort would be enough to force through.
Staying too long in the past seems to create negative situations and have perilous effects on one’s health.
Conversely, I have observed that the pellars of my family have lived long, healthy lives. That may be as a result of living on a line of energy, or the fact that they are pellars and as such able to know the treatments and herbs that aid them.
I looked up and stared meditatively into the fire. The flames were spreading, warming the wood and biting into it with an orange tongue.
As a single person I have found that I cannot produce enough power to make the leap at more mundane times of the year. I wonder, if there were more than one person, whether the combined effort would be enough to force through.
That was definitely a new piece of information. The idea that the efforts of more than one person could force the portal open was something I’d never considered before.
I looked over at the sleeping William.
He was here, now. Lord William De Vere Trevarron had time travelled along with me.
What if, with our combined focus, we could force open the time portal and I could return to the twenty-first century? Or, return William to his own time?
The thought of William returning to 1755 and me to my time made my heart twist and my throat choke.
I’d just found him again; I didn’t want to lose him.
Selfishly, I wondered if I would be able to persuade him to come to the modern time with me.
I’d tried to pull him through with me, thinking I was going back to the twenty-first century, before.
I had thought that I was saving his life by asking him to come with me. But we had both ended up here.
I watched him as he slept; watched his muscular chest rise and fall rhythmically, his long dark eyelashes soft against his cheek.
Could I bear to lose William again? I didn’t know.
I yearned to go home. Being in Aunt Bill’s cottage with Nancy, in completely the wrong time, was a unique kind of torture. It was the home of my heart, but my aunt hadn’t been born yet.
Every moment I was at the cottage, I expected Aunt Bill to walk through a door, whistling under her breath, or look up from the sofa as I walked in. I missed her comfortable, reassuring hugs. I missed her sharp, no-nonsense way of seeing the world.
My heart longed for home. But it also longed to envelop William in love and never let him go.
William stirred and opened his eyes sleepily.
‘What time is it?’ he murmured.
‘Late. I don’t know,’ I went over to him and sat on the side of the bed. ‘Go back to sleep.’
‘I can’t sleep without you.’ He pulled me in next to him.
‘You were doing a very good job just then,’ I observed, archly. ‘What about all the nights we were apart? Your whole life, you’ve never slept without me?’
‘I never did.’ He opened one eye blearily. ‘Sleepless, all these years. Why I look so old. The lack of you made me haggard.’
‘You poor thing.’ I snuggled in next to him. ‘You’re very far from haggard, and you know it.’
‘Pah. I am held together by ale and bandages.’ He sighed sleepily against me. ‘Goodness knows why a beauty like you entertains a scarred, battle-worn oaf like me.’
‘You’re right, I should be going,’ I replied, but he growled and pulled me back into bed.
‘Shhh. Do not break my heart, my terrible queen. It is the truth. I have never slept as well as I do with you beside me.’ He pulled me to him so that I lay along the length of his hard, muscled body. He was so much bigger than me that it was like being held by a grizzly bear.
‘I have hardly slept with you. Just a handful of nights,’ I protested.
‘Yes. Which is all the more torture for me,’ he murmured into my shoulder, nuzzling me with his dark beard.
‘Knowing that you are laying in another bed than mine, your body naked, sprawling provocatively. I am jealous of the sheets that cover you. I am jealous of the air that caresses your skin when I cannot.’
I felt him harden against me, and felt his large, strong hand cup my breast. Instinctively, I nestled my bottom back against him. He growled again, and kissed the nape of my neck.
‘Why do I desire you so?’ he whispered, as he kissed me.
I could feel myself growing wet for him again. It seemed that the slightest touch or whisper from William rendered me totally helpless. I felt myself falling, willingly, into the fugue of desire that his presence inspired.
‘I don’t know. I want you in just the same way,’ I whispered in reply. I touched his bandages gently. ‘Did I hurt you? When we… before?’
‘No. You could never hurt me.’ His voice rumbled in his chest. ‘Well… physically, you cannot hurt me. You can maim my heart and possess my mind and my soul, however, it would seem.’ He half chuckled. ‘Truly, I am serious.’
‘I know that you are.’ I snuggled into his neck.
‘I am still angry,’ he murmured, as he kissed my collarbone. ‘Not with you. But with the world. This incomprehensible, awful world that we find ourselves in.’
I turned to him, stroking his beard, his chest.
‘Time has bent for us already,’ I murmured. ‘It’ll bend again, no doubt. The world and all its awfulness can wait. Just a little.’
William kissed me, then, softly, and I felt time slipping away from me. But this was a loss that, for once, I was willing to release.