Chapter 12
TWELVE
We’d intended to slip out to the rose garden after we had done the performance, but when we got to the last part of the long drive leading to Trevarron House, William pulled me aside, into the trees.
‘What are you doing?’ I hissed.
‘Actually, I was going to say – before we go in, I think we should try the portal. Now.’ He looked at me intently. ‘We are not expected at the party for another hour. No one has seen us yet. Let us at least try. As much as we can.’
‘But I thought we agreed that it’d be best to try when the party was in full swing?
There’ll be people around now.’ We had walked from St Nantes to the manor house.
There wasn’t much other choice, other than to find a couple of horses at late notice.
And, as William had reminded me, I was not a skilled horsewoman.
I peeked out from behind the fir tree we were standing by, but there was nobody else around.
Still, I thought that would probably change imminently.
‘Listen, it is important for both of us to try this time portal again, surely. As much as we can, while we are here. I know what it is like at Trevarron before a party. It will be busy. The staff will have a hundred tasks to do. The lord and lady will no doubt be getting ready in their quarters. Suppliers are bringing in food and drink. No one is taking the air in the gardens right now,’ William said, quietly.
‘Perhaps you’re right.’ I looked out again; the drive and the front of the house was still quiet. ‘All right. Let’s go, and then if we get found there, we still have a reason to be on the grounds. We were early, and we thought we would take a walk around the famous gardens.’ I shrugged.
I felt this was the right thing to be doing – to try and return home – but I knew that I was, to some degree, deliberately misleading William in promising that I’d help him get back to 1755.
I understood his desire to help his sister, Edith – I felt the same horror knowing what her fate had been.
But I also knew that William couldn’t go back: if he did, he’d be arrested and possibly hanged.
Even if he managed to travel back to a point in time before his disappearance and try to affect events from then – to stop Simon Favisham marrying Edith – there would be two of him, and I had no idea how that would work.
Evelyn had said in her notes that she didn’t believe there could be two versions of the same person alive in one time. It was a quantum physics nightmare.
What I did need to do was return to my own time, and, as far as I could see, the best option now was for William to come with me. However, I hadn’t broached that subject yet, and I knew I was running out of time.
‘Yes. Perfect.’ William shot me an unexpected grin. ‘Come on. Look like you’re marvelling at everything, but also, like you’re supposed to be here.’
‘We are supposed to be here,’ I teased him, gently. He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
I was unsure how to be around William. Since we’d spent the night together at the gamekeeper’s hut, we hadn’t been intimate with each other at all.
Not a kiss, not a hug, not a sweet word.
It had been just less than a week. William was keeping to himself, and, though he was going along with the plan to appear at the Trevarrons’ party, he didn’t seem to want to have much else to do with me.
At the cottage, I slept in the little room under the eaves, and William slept on the floor in the sitting room.
I didn’t quite know how to bridge the gap of connection between us, but for now I was letting him have his space.
With all the connection between us, it felt odd to be so separate. But, at the same time, I had to remember that we still hardly knew each other. We’d been thrust together in extremely unusual circumstances and that had brought us together, along with a deep passion and chemistry.
It was stressful, walking to Trevarron House and knowing that we were going to attempt to travel through time, but there was something about being in William’s company that made me feel brave. He made me feel as brave as he was. With William, I felt protected.
We passed the kitchen garden. There were two maids pottering there, but neither of them looked up. We pressed on to the rose garden.
I had seen the rose garden at Trevarron House in two different times, and seeing it in another era felt weird. It was as though I was looking at an image that had been wallpapered over many, many times, and I could see the layers sticking out from under each other.
The rose garden at Trevarron House was a large square feature garden, surrounded by finely constructed cast-iron railings.
You entered through one of four gates at the north, south, east and west sides of the garden, and the pathways from north to south and the one from east to west met the middle of the square, where there was a large stone trough.
The garden itself was therefore divided into four lawned areas, all of which were bordered with a variety of English roses, with a sprinkling of roses sourced from other parts of the world.
In each square, there was something of interest: an arbour, a cast-iron love seat, a sculpture of a Greek goddess pouring water from a shell, a wildflower garden boasting creamy white stocks, tall violet foxgloves, blood-red poppies and rosy pink hollyhocks.
There was a wooden pergola, covered with climbing roses, which covered the central pathway.
The first time I’d seen the rose garden, it had been derelict.
The cast-iron gates were rusted. The large stone trough at its centre was overgrown with ivy and vines as well as the roses.
Even then, in the twenty-first century, you could see the ornate letter T in the centre of a circle which emblazoned every gate and every panel of the garden railings.
Lines of iron emanated from the circle as if it was the sun.
T for Trevarron. I had climbed the railings in panic, trying to get away from the dog that was chasing me.
When I had first seen the rose garden in 1755, I’d been amazed at how beautiful it was.
Gone were the rust and the weeds and the mulch of hundreds of winters.
Then, the garden was rich and resplendent, heady with the scent of roses.
The trough in the centre had revealed itself to be a water feature, with a trickling fountain in the shape of a mermaid at its centre.
The last time I was here, I’d been trying to get William to follow me through the portal. He was being chased by the police who wrongly thought that he had attacked Lord Simon Favisham, the appalling excuse for a human that had been trying to force William’s sister, Edith, to marry him.
In fact, Simon and William had fought, and Simon had stabbed William. The wound had been very serious, and I’d thought that the only way I could save William – as well as getting him away from the police – was to bring him with me, through the portal, back to the twenty-first century.
But, it hadn’t really worked out that way.
Now, in 1867, the rose garden was still beautiful, but it had changed. There were still roses, but the arbour was gone, as was the love seat. The lawns were still well cared for and the present owners had planted a lavender garden in one of the sections.
The pergola was also gone, and that meant that the whole garden felt more exposed and open to the sky than before.
However, the stone trough and the fountain were still there in the middle, and there were new additions.
Whereas before the pathway through the garden had been made of plain stone, now, some of the stones had text engraved in them.
I paused and read them as we walked through.
buster, 1840-1848.
may he rest in peace.
bluebell, 1829-1839.
chasing rabbits in heaven.
clover, 1850-1851.
taken too soon.
‘I think these are pets,’ I said, reading as we walked through. ‘Look. There are at least ten of them.’
‘Lord Albert loves his dogs, it would seem.’ William shrugged. He walked ahead of me and looked down at another stone on the other side of the fountain. ‘Huh,’ he said, looking confused.
I caught up with William and knelt down to read the stone he stood by.
mary elizabeth favisham trevarron
1852-1865
blessed child
‘Oh, no.’ I held my hand to my mouth. ‘This wasn’t a pet.’
‘It looks that way.’ William nodded solemnly. ‘Presumably a child of the family.’
‘But why would you bury your child alongside your pets?’ I looked up at him in deep consternation. ‘Isn’t that… in quite poor taste? And she died just a couple of years ago.’
‘It certainly seems that way, yes.’ He made a face. ‘When I was lord we had a small pet graveyard, under the trees. I wouldn’t have interred the dogs in the rose garden. And certainly not… a human, alongside them.’ He met my expression with similar distaste.
‘Well, I suppose that tells us something about the current Trevarron family, although I’m not sure what,’ I said. ‘Anyway. Let’s do what we came here to do.’
‘So, this thing works on an eclipse, but it’s not an eclipse now?’ William said in a low voice.
‘Yes. It does. And no, it isn’t. But Evelyn said in her book that she thought two people could sort of… make it happen. By concentrating,’ I said. ‘It sounds stupid when I say it out loud.’
‘It’s not stupid. Though I doubt we can just concentrate our way into another time.’ William frowned. ‘I have to return to my own time. I must rescue Edith.’ He took my hands in his. ‘Tell me that you understand.’
I opened my mouth; the words sat heavy on my tongue, but I had to speak them aloud.
‘William… I don’t—’
I broke off as a woman’s voice rang out from behind me. ‘Excuse me, should you be in here?’
I turned around to see a smartly dressed maid looking us both up and down with a doubtful look on her face. ‘Because if you’re here for the party, the entrance is through the main house.’
‘Of course. Thank you. We were just admiring your beautiful rose garden,’ I simpered, taking William’s hand. ‘We will make our way there now.’