Chapter 14
LIKE SO MANY ENGLISH VILLAGES WITH OCCASIONAL AMBITIONS to be a town, Wakefield sat among open downs and planted fields, with a cobbled high street spanning one end to the other.
Content but not overreaching, it was a palimpsest of its long history as a small-market-but-not-quite-coaching-town.
Its inhabitants, most of whom knew each other by sight, included farmers, laborers, clergy families, landowners, and the shopkeepers who kept them furnished, outfitted, and fed.
If on a Sunday the town slept, on a Monday it hummed with new life.
That morning, Mary had helped Annabel and Cassie into their sprigged walking-out dresses and straw hats adorned with ribbons and flowers, with matching slippers and reticules; for Billy, she’d laid out a handsome coat, waistcoat, and breeches.
So bedecked, they boarded the brougham to Wakefield in desperate search of a way back to their world.
Annabel was the least desperate among them, but she’d made a pledge to her sister and intended to honor it.
She reminded herself that she’d enjoyed two of Mary’s bounteous breakfasts, gotten to feel the gauzy muslin of a real morning dress against her skin, had a long chat with the gardener about the order in which flowers would bloom through the summer season, and had a nice talk with James as he brushed the horses with patient strokes.
She’d held an actual copy of Pride and Prejudice in her own hands and read the first chapter, though she knew nearly every word by heart.
Best of all, she’d danced twice with Henry Leighton D’Evercy, a Darcy if she’d ever met one, whom she’d remember as proof of the ideal man for the rest of her days.
It was more than she could have hoped for in this wonderland of her imagination sprung to real life.
Now, her sisterly duty called, and the finding of a writing desk.
James left them on Wakefield Green, in the middle of town, with a good view from the top of the high street all the way to the assembly rooms at the far end.
Billy looked dumbstruck and Cassie spooked, but Annabel was secretly charmed.
The convivial hubbub of the handsome town mesmerized her—the horses and carriages, coachmen, shoppers and shopkeepers, delivery men, cavorting children, scolding mothers, a river of pretty gowns, smart coats, and all manner of ladies’ hats decorated with flowers, fruit, and feathers, bobbing up and down the high street.
Some strolled, arm in arm, peering and pointing in windows, sometimes gawking, sometimes going in or coming out with the occasional beribboned parcel, all burbling away.
They stood beneath the oak in the middle of the green. Annabel looked up to see its once gnarled, arthritic arms now muscular and thriving, as if reaching for the future. What a marvel it was, the difference two hundred years can make—all that growing still to do.
Cassie, meanwhile, was barely holding it together. She breathed in through her nostrils and out her open mouth. “I really don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
“It is. Totally wild.” Billy rearranged his hat to have a better line of sight from under its brim. “Like, if I could take a picture, I’d take a picture, but if I could take a picture, we wouldn’t be here.”
“Maybe take a picture with your eyes?” Annabel said, trying to help.
Cassie glowered at her. “Annabel. We need a plan here. We have to stay focused. We have one goal.”
“Right. Find a desk. Okay. Well, I guess we have to ask around. But we need to stay in character, as long as we’re here.”
“Don’t say, ‘as long as we’re here.’ Say, ‘two days, max.’ That’s how long I can do this.”
“I’m just saying we can’t let on what’s happening. We have to play it very close to our chest.”
“Okay, so, like, where do you—does one—even find a writing desk?” asked Billy. “And what do we say about why we want one so bad? You know, if anyone asks.”
“Duh, Annabel wants to be a writer—”
“Oh god no, you can’t say that,” said Annabel. “Women can’t say out loud they want to be a writer.”
“Why not?” said Cassie.
“It’s just not done, not yet.”
“Once again, so wrong.”
“Think, Annabel, think,” she said to herself, pressing on her temples. “I know! We want to write letters. Back home.”
“To Bloomingdale’s,” Cassie reminded her.
“Bloomingdale’s, right. Everyone needs a writing desk. To write letters on.”
“God, I don’t think I’ve ever written an actual letter in my whole life.” Billy took off his hat to free his hair. “Do I really have to wear this thing? It bugs me.”
“If I have to wear this fucking bonnet, you can wear your stupid hat.”
“Guys, guys,” Annabel said. “One goal, remember?”
“She’s right,” said Billy. “Us beefing doesn’t help anything.”
Annabel looked toward the assembly rooms, irresistibly drawn to the white stucco glimmering in the mellow morning sun. “Wait here, okay? I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” Cassie asked, a rising panic.
“I just have to see it. That’s where the first ball was.”
“I’m going with you,” said Cassie.
Billy tugged lightly on Cassie’s sleeve. “Would you stay here with me? Just till, you know, I get a feel for the vibe?”
“It’s the same vibe as last night!” said Cassie. “Just real.”
“Yeah, a little too real, okay? I just need a minute. Please?”
Cassie looked between them, unhappy with the options. She let out an aggravated sigh and splayed the fingers on one hand. “Five minutes, Annabel. Five.”
“Five minutes. I promise.”
Billy watched Annabel’s retreating form, waiting for her to be out of earshot. He rubbed the back of his head.
“Okay, I’m worried about this whole desk situation. I mean, Annabel’s never seen a sci-fi movie.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So I don’t think it can be just any desk. It has to be that desk, right?”
“I guess.”
“Okay, so, Annabel thinks it’s not a Hepplewhite, but that Sotheby’s guy, the dude knew his stuff. Better than Annabel. I’m just saying.”
“So it has to be a Hepplewhite. That Hepplewhite.”
“I mean, unless we’re messing with the whole history timeline by being the ones who get the desk now, when it wasn’t us who put the desk there to start with except if we’re in some kind of weird time loop where we keep coming back so we can find the portal so we can do it all over again.”
“Stop talking!” Cassie was breathing fast again. “You had me at Hepplewhite.”
She looked down at the satin reticule dangling from her wrist. “What’s this for, anyway? I don’t have my phone, my cuticle oil, flossing picks, lip gloss! What’s a girl supposed to put in this thing?”
Billy pulled a delicate embroidered handkerchief from his pocket. “Mary gave me this. But you can have it. It smells good.”
Cassie took the kerchief and smelled it. “Lavender . . .” She started to tear up. “I love lavender.”
“Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. I’m not good with crying.”
She dabbed at her eyes. “I’m not crying. I don’t cry.”
“Okay, good.”
“Hello there! Mr. Doofus!”
They turned to see Reverend Tudor waving his hat from across the way, jolly as ever.
Billy waved back with his hat. “Top o’ the morning, Reverend Tudor!”
Cassie rolled her eyes. “It’s not a fucking Lucky Charms commercial, Billy. It’s our life!”
“Only until we find the desk. Probably.”
“This is not making me feel better,” said Cassie. “Could we just not talk, for like a minute?”
Billy nodded. Cassie looked around, seeing everything Annabel had, but with a wide-eyed look of horror.
“I’m getting Annabel,” she said, stuffing the kerchief into her purse. “Just stay right here. Don’t fall into a vortex or anything, okay?”
As Cassie scuttled away, Billy looked back at Reverend Tudor, now demonstrating the choking maneuver for two companions. Feeling his own rising anxiety, an unfamiliar feeling, at that, he began whistling, a classic rock tune.
“Mr. Doofus?”
Billy turned to see Fanny and Althea standing arm in arm in pretty pastel dresses and matching bonnets.
He smoothed his hair and shifted from one leg to another, trying to think what to say and hoping he wouldn’t blow it.
Fanny saw his distress and, apparently finding his shyness charming, tried to put him at ease.
“I daresay, lovely morning, isn’t it?”
Billy looked up at the blue sky and the leafy canopy above his head. “Huh. I daresay, yes, it is a lovely morning! I actually needed that. Thanks for pointing it out.”
“How do you find Wakefield, Mr. Doofus?” Althea asked.
Billy pointed with his hat toward James, who stood with the waiting carriage, tending to the horses. “Actually, um, James, the driver? He found it for us.”
Althea giggled. Fanny stifled a smile.
“Mother will be so pleased to know that James has been of use to you and your cousins.”
“Oh yes. And Mary too. She’s so nice,” he said, a nervous hand through his hair, struggling to make conversation. “Amazing, those cardamom buns.”
“They are, aren’t they?” said Fanny, tickled.
“Will you thank her for us, your mother?”
“Why don’t you thank her yourself? When you come to dinner Saturday.”
“Dinner?”
“I’ve only just this morning sent an invitation by post. I do hope you’ll accept. And the Misses Blake, of course; are they with you?”
Billy looked toward the assembly rooms. “Actually, they’re—we’re—kind of looking for a writing desk.”
“A writing desk?” said Althea. “Whatever for?”
“It turns out, well, that we’re—who knew?—big letter writers.”
Fanny laughed, disarmed.
Billy knew she wasn’t laughing at him and was grateful. “I’m not very good at it, personally. Letter writing.”
Fanny considered him. “Yet one learns so much about what one is capable of when one is outside one’s usual environs. Doesn’t one?”
Billy was disarmed too. Fanny was lovely standing there in her pale lemon dress on the green grass in the morning light. There was something calming in the way she was confident but kind.
“I guess one does find things like that. And these are very unusual environs, as it turns out.” Billy laughed nervously. “Very, very unusual.”