Chapter 9
A soft humming drew him from sleep, and his head jolted on his writing desk. He removed his spectacles and rubbed at his eyes. It was the fourth day in a row that he’d fallen asleep while working and he was starting to get a crick in his neck. With a heavy sigh, he proceeded to get dressed and washed for whatever the day would bring.
Progress had been slow on figuring out the mechanisms of the time-travelling device. Most of their hours were spent in near silence as they read through Albert’s notes. It was as if they were too unnerved to speak with one another. Despite their act of murder lying like a heavy boulder between them, he could tell that Eva’s mind was elsewhere. There was no doubt she was preoccupied with being in a different century. He often spotted her studying the rooms and food in a peculiar manner. Sometimes, he would catch her hazel eyes observing him, as if taking mental notes on his actions, the way he was dressed, and how he ate. One night, she was eating without a knife in hand and was quick to correct her mannerism in a way that mimicked his. At that moment, an odd sense of relief unfurled in his chest. Like him, Evaline Quinn was observant, and by God, that was a trait they needed to make it through this mess alive.
His curiosity rose when he entered the kitchen and saw her slender figure pumping water from the sink’s well. She was dressed in his clothing: a pair of dark-grey trousers and a light-blue shirt. Her hair was gathered in a messy chignon at the base of her neck. Loose curls bounced against her freckled ivory skin with every movement as she gently sang about being dust in the wind.
He leaned against the kitchen door frame and listened. She could sing. Her voice was charming with an air of golden confidence. It delicately caressed the high notes and grew breathy for the longer, deeper notes. He wondered if she was musically trained.
“That is a terribly grim song for such a sunny day,” he said after the song ended.
She flinched. The bowl of water in the sink spilled over. With a hand on her chest, she turned to face him. “Henry, what the hell? Don’t creep up like that.”
“What are you doing in my kitchen, Miss Quinn?”
“Making breakfast.” She gestured to the food on the counter. “Also, please don’t call me that. Eva is perfectly fine.”
It was an odd thing calling a stranger by their first name, no less a woman with whom he was little acquainted. Hell, there were times when he did not even address his sister by her first name in public because it was too intimate.
“Eva,” he said, testing the short sweetness of the word on his lips. It was dangerously refreshing.
That made her smile. “Do you take offence when I call you ‘Henry’?” she asked.
“No, I don’t,” he said.
Not many people addressed him by his Christian name, and it felt strangely good to hear it.
“Good, because I wasn’t about to call you ‘Mr. Asheford’.”
“I suppose it was silly of me to assume that you would abide by formalities.” He approached the counter. “Now, Eva, what have you prepared for breakfast?”
“A classic. Eggs and toast,” she said.
At the dining table, they ate in silence save the crashing of the waves at the base of the cliff. A draft of warm sea air wafted in from the open window. Eva finished her food first and nursed a cup of coffee. Her leg continued to bounce up and down.
“I fixed your pan, by the way,” she said. “The handle was loose.”
He looked up. “Ah, thank you.”
“And you have a metal pot that’s a bit banged up. I tried setting the shape back, but I think I need to mend it with the help of fire.” She looked at the clock on the wall. “And I noticed that your clock is wrong. I’m pretty sure it’s not 3:43 in the morning. I can fix that for you too if you have the correct time somewhere.”
He was silent for a beat as he studied her, then lowered his knife and fork to his plate and dug out his pocket watch from his waistcoat. “This should have the accurate time.”
He set the watch on the table and she fixed her eyes on it.
“That’s charming,” she said.
“Hmm,” he said, resuming his eating.
“The initials on the back, A.C. … Albert Corbyn … this belonged to your grandfather?”
“It did.”
A tense pause ensued.
“The chain has snapped,” she said, touching the end of the broken chain. She popped open the metal casing. “And the glass is … shattered.”
He frowned. “I was mugged by a child thief in London. The boy ripped the watch from my palm. I suppose I need to take it to a watchmaker.”
A sly look entered her eyes and she covered her curling lips with a hand.
“Do you find humour in my misfortune?” he said.
“You were mugged by a child thief.”
He tilted his head. “I was.”
“Well, if that is not the most Dickensian thing I’ve heard.”
He snorted. “Good God, will you continue to reference fiction to describe the reality of my life?”
“Fiction is all I know about the reality of your life.”
He narrowed his eyes. Why did that surprise him? She was from the future and that meant books, stories, photographs and detailed accounts had been passed down. It was no different than him reading about the French Revolution or the Civil War. Still, he wondered what she knew.
“If you have the rest of the chain, I can try to fix it for you,” she said. “Although, I won’t be able to do much about the glass.”
“Thank you but it isn’t necessary.”
“Please.”
“Why?” he said bluntly. “Did you not want to spend the time reading through my grandfather’s papers instead?”
A blush tinged her cheeks and she brought in her lower lip between her teeth. She set the watch back onto the table as her expression hardened like the weighty metal fork in his hand.
Then he understood. She was distracting herself with things to fix as a way of ignoring the hardships of their entangled lives. It was a familiar behaviour because he did the same with books and, once upon a time, with laudanum.
“I guess that is more important,” she said quietly. “Are you done eating? Let me clear the table so we can get started.”
He nodded and shifted in his chair. He was uncomfortable with the idea of letting her do the cleaning, so he helped out. Once the table was cleared and washed, Henry set the pile of notebooks in the middle, balanced his spectacles on the tip of his nose and began reading.
Just as he got to a section about the device’s energy source – which was a complex equation involving the dust of fallen meteorites that not even Henry could understand – Eva sat down and exhaled a long, heavy sigh.
He observed her from above the rim of his spectacles.
Hunched over the desk, she had her nose shoved into the notebook. In the soft sunlight, her hair appeared like golden wisps of feathers. Her cheeks were flushed pink. Her lips were in a firm, straight line.
She was visibly flustered. Had he said something to upset her? It didn’t matter, there was work to be done. He frowned and continued reading.
As had become their routine, they sat in silence, the ticking watch between them. She made another noise of disapproval. He looked up. Her leg was bouncing as she twirled a stray curl of hair around her finger.
“I can’t—” She abruptly stood. “Are you warm? Because I’m warm. Do you mind if I open another window?”
“Not at all,” he said.
He leaned back and watched her with a curious gaze. Yes, something was indeed bothering her.
She went to the window. With a muffled groan, she fumbled with the latch.
“Turn the latch to the right and lift,” he said.
“I am.”
“It requires a bit of strength. I am afraid the frame has rusted from the salty air.”
She growled. “What’s up with the damn windows in this country? I can never…” She pushed harder with her palm. “I can never get them to open.”
He went to her and lifted the window with one strong push.
She straightened. A wary expression touched her face. He waited for her to say something, but she turned and marched back to the table.
“Have I said or done something to offend you?” he said.
She didn’t respond.
He tilted his head. “Eva?”
Two fiery circles burned on her cheeks. She tapped her finger repeatedly against the open page of the notebook, declared that she needed fresh air and promptly left the house.
Henry wandered over to the page she had been reading. It was a diagram of the device with descriptions of the components. There was nothing in the text that he assumed would outrightly upset someone.
Then it hit him. He ran a finger over the ink.
The writing was heavily angled, slightly smudged, and at times, bled into splatters of ink.
Ah.
Her need to fix things was not for distraction. It was a need to make herself useful since she was struggling to read the handwriting.
The sun had barely reached the highest point in the sky when Henry scurried out the front door. He halted by the edge of the forest. There she was curled up against a tree, her body shaking with the force of the most heart-wrenching sobs.
“Eva?” he said.
She glanced up with harrowing, red-rimmed eyes that gleamed like polished hazel wood, reminding him of the night they first met.
A glimmer of fear writhed in his stomach. Would she lash out at him again? But then he remembered how she came to him in his moment of panic days ago. Despite his annoyance by her efforts to calm him, he had allowed himself to accept the help and he’d be lying if he did not admit how effective her method had been. Was it not courtesy to do the same for her?
“Can’t you let me have this moment alone?” Her voice was thick with emotion.
“What is the matter?”
“Go away, please.”
“Is it the handwriting?” he pushed on.
“For God’s sake.” She wiped her wet cheeks. “Please, go away.”
“If my grandfather’s writing is too difficult to read, just tell me,” he said. “I can understand since I too have trouble at times.” That wasn’t necessarily the truth but if it made her feel better, so be it.
With a sniff, she pulled herself to her feet. She stared at a swirling leaf in the wind, and her mouth opened and closed silently.
“It’s all right,” he said softly. “I can do all the reading—”
“Do you know how embarrassing it is not to understand a word of that writing?”
“It isn’t any different than reading a book in a foreign language.”
“It is different.” She sniffed. “Those words are in English, Henry, my first language. I should be able to read it fine.”
“You cannot fault yourself for not understanding the written script.”
Her gaze narrowed. “It isn’t only the script; it’s the words, the complicated sentences. I don’t understand Albert’s way of thinking.” She covered her mouth to stifle another sob. “For the first time in my life, Henry, I can’t understand how I’m supposed to fix something.”
“You do not have to fix this alone. I am here to help you.”
“Help.” The word sounded bitter on her tongue.
He licked his dry lips. “Look, Eva, it has only been two days since we began our work. We’ve already discovered that the device is most likely broken from the strain of carrying two people across the threshold of time.” He brushed a hand through his hair. “All we need are a few more days of reading before we can establish a plan.”
“And what if there is no plan?” she shrieked. “What if we’re in deeper shit than we believe ourselves to be?”
That was something he had not allowed himself to believe. He did not want to consider that she may be stuck here for an indefinite amount of time. There had to be an answer.
“I’ll figure it out,” he said.
Even if that meant more sleepless nights obsessing over his grandfather’s research and ignoring the looming threat from his father.
“But I don’t want you to figure it out on your own,” she said.
“We don’t exactly have a choice, do we?”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand.”
“Eva, please,” he said. “If we are to be partners in crime, you must let me help you.”
She had gone pale. Her lips twisted as she brought her hand to her mouth, and spinning around, she let out a sob.
Heart pounding in his chest, he followed her through the thicket. If she would not talk to him, he would keep trying to break through, no matter how angry she became.
“Are you acting like an insolent child because you have lost control?” he said.
She halted in her tracks and turned. “Control? You think I’m controlling?”
“I think you grieve the freedom of the independence you have lost.”
In her tensely pointed stare, Henry saw that he had hit the nail on the head. Of course, he had been forceful in retrieving that information; calling her an insolent child was not befitting of his character. He did not mean those words. She was anything but controlling. But he wanted her to face the truth – just like she had forced him to face his.
“Damn you,” she said.
“If I am to be damned, I would like to know on what grounds.”
“For being annoyingly right.”
He blinked.
“Goddammit,” she blurted out. “Fine, I may as well say it. I don’t know what it’s like to have to rely on someone or to throw my blind trust into a stranger’s hands, hoping that things will turn out okay.”
He was the only person she could rely on. It was a daunting thought. Despite his best efforts to be a good man, he struggled to sometimes maintain that trust, but he did not want to come up short. Not with Evaline Quinn. Even though she was a stranger, he wanted to right the wrongs of his father.
He went to her and laid a hand on her shoulder. “We will fix this,” he said. “Together.”
She slowly looked up. “Do you promise?”
“I do.”
“You have to say the words.”
He nearly cracked a smile. How many times had he said the exact same sentence to others?
“I promise that we will fix this together,” he said.
As they assessed one another, a nervous sensation took hold of Henry. He dipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out the photograph of Eva with whom he presumed to be her father.
“I found this in Josiah’s pocket,” he said.
“How?” she exclaimed and took hold of the photograph. “How did he have this?”
He did not have an answer for that and remained quiet.
Eva’s breaths quickened and she placed a hand over her mouth to stifle a cry. Her large, tearful eyes regarded him. “Thank you,” she said with a fresh slew of tears. “Thank you, Henry. Thank you.”
To his surprise, her hand gripped his shirt and somehow, she fell into his arms.
What the devil?
The weight of her head on his chest was oddly comforting but he did not quite know what to do with his hands or his arms, so he placed an awkward hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t be weird, it’s just a hug to show my gratitude,” she said.
“I am not being weird.”
“You are.”
“Am not.”
A few seconds of silence crawled by. Each more painfully awkward than the last.
Surely, she could hear the loud thumping of his heart. The blasted thing practically punched at his ribcage with every beat.
Then came a muffled laugh. She raised her head from his chest and a coolness seeped in between them. “Am I being scandalous by hugging a lord? Wait, are you a lord? Because we never talked about your title.”
“I am not a lord,” he stated, feeling a smile tug his lips. “And yes, it is beyond scandalous to embrace a stranger who is not your husband.”
“Hmm. It’s a good thing no one is around to see this.”
“Yes, good thing.”
He became aware that her arms were still wrapped around his waist. The heat of her skin radiated through the thin material of his shirt. Then the lilacs came. His chest heaved with unease as he gazed into her eyes. At such proximity, he saw they were more complex than mere hazel. They were brown with warm tones of green around the iris, reminding him of moss on tree bark.
A memory flashed in his mind of a sunny summer day; he and his brother, Rhys, running in the fields of long grass. The grand, twisted oaks on either side painted the scenery in lush greens and rich browns. A goldfinch fluttered by…
His heart skipped a beat. It was expected of him to pull away now. The embrace had gone on seconds too long, but even so, he could not bring himself to leave her warmth. The sensation of being this close to another human was enough to make him feel whole again and he had the suspicion she longed for the same. But not in a romantic way. No, in the platonic sense. Yes, definitely platonic. If anything, they would become friends, nothing more.
Twigs snapped behind them.
Eva’s eyes glided past him and widened in fear. She jolted away from him.
A chill took him. Slowly, he turned and saw a pair of cool, cornflower-blue eyes staring back from between the trees.
“My brother with a woman in men’s trousers?”
Lottie’s high voice cut through the beating of his racing heart. Childish amusement flashed across his sister’s face as her hand gripped her bug-catching net. Next to her, a timid William stood awkwardly, assessing Eva as he silently questioned her unusual demeanour.
Henry froze. Words evaded him. What he would do to be swallowed by the ground right now.
“Have you forgotten me, brother?” Lottie said.
“You were expected in two weeks’ time,” Henry replied.
“Come now, are those your first words to a beloved sister you have not seen in eight months?” Lottie feigned a dramatic gasp. “Despite it being on point for your character, I cannot help but feel rather pained by the revelation.”
“Sir, I tried my best to keep her away,” William said.
“You knew of this?” Lottie gasped. “Do my ears deceive me or did you both have an elaborate plan to keep me away? Is it because you did not want me interrupting a lover’s affair?”
“I beg you to show some modesty,” Henry snapped.
“No, I am quite cross with you both. Quite cross, indeed,” Lottie said. “Perhaps our lovely guest will be more willing to explain the situation to me.” With her bug net in hand, she approached Eva. “Hello, what is your name?”
Wide-eyed, Eva stared at Henry.
He pressed his lips into a thin line. They had not discussed the possibility of what to do should this scenario happen.
“Surely, you are not a mute.” Lottie leaned in toward Eva’s face. “I heard you speaking with my brother quite fine.”
“Sister, please—”
“My name is Jane,” Eva spoke up. “Jane Edwards. Miss Edwards, if you so please.”
“Goodness,” Lottie said, “And is that an American accent I hear?”
“Y-yes,” Eva lied.
Lottie’s inquisitive eyes were on Henry at once. “My brother always liked exotic beauties from foreign lands.”
She was antagonizing him on purpose.
“Good God, sister. Will you please go to the house so I can explain in privacy?” Henry said.
There was no rational explanation to be found, but at least if she were to leave, it would buy him a few minutes to think of a plan. Not that you are very good at making plans of late.
Lottie made a sound of dismay. “You will explain why I caught you with an unknown woman at Bondieux House, in what I presume to be your trousers? There isn’t much to explain; you’re courting an exotic beauty from another land beneath all our noses. Not that I disapprove. I am quite pleased that you have finally found love, but I only wish you would tell me the truth.”
“Perhaps, sister, you could refrain from entertaining such romantic notions. Now do as I say and go to the house before I ship you back to Paris this very instant,” Henry said sternly.
“That threat can only work for so long, brother.”
“Which is why I intend to make use of it while I can,” Henry said. “William, will you please escort my sister to the house while I have a moment with Miss Edwards?”
“Yes, sir.” William tugged at Lottie’s arm. “Let’s go, Lottie. Do as your brother says.”
Lottie swatted William’s helping hand away, hiked up her skirts and hurried past them toward the house. William gave Henry an apologetic look before chasing after Lottie. As soon as they were alone again, Eva gaped at him.
“You didn’t tell me you had a little sister,” she said.
“Yes, well, we didn’t quite get to that part.”
“Jesus, Henry,” she said, throwing her hands in the air. “What are we going to do?”
“I do not know.”
“Does she know about time travel?” Eva whispered the last couple of words.
“I do not know,” he repeated.
“She thinks we’re lovers. Maybe we can play with that angle.”
He grimaced. “And disgrace your reputation?”
“My reputation?” she said. “Do you think I care about that if it means they won’t have to know about this mess? I sincerely don’t care if they think I’m some whore.”
His mouth tightened. It shocked him to hear those words and he wondered whether, in her world, she also did not care aboutthose things.Regardless, he was not about to taint both of their names with the rumour of folly on his property.
“No. I will not allow it,” he said.
“Henry, please, I don’t care about my reputation. It’s just sex.”
He blinked. She was begging to play his whore? “I care,” he said curtly.
“Then what is the alternative because, quite frankly, as an unmarried woman in this century, I don’t think I have many options!”
Suddenly he remembered what they had left on the kitchen table: an endless pile of notes about the time-travelling device.
“Eva,” he said.
“Too late, Henry, it’s settled,” she said, walking toward the house. “I will play your stupid whore. We can pretend that I’ll soon be leaving—”
“No, Eva, wait,” he said firmly.
With a huff, she spun around and crossed her arms. “What?”
“We left everything on the kitchen table, did we not?”
Her eyes widened. “Oh … oh, shit.”
They sprinted toward the house. Eva opened the door and halted in the entrance, forcing Henry to run into her. He laid a hand on Eva’s hip to keep her from falling over and she instinctively grabbed hold of his wrist. Despite the intimate collision, they both focused on Lottie who was holding a sheet of paper. The sunlight fell on the black-ink illustrations of the time-travelling device.
Lottie looked up. “As I thought,” she said. “She is a creature of the stars.”
Just like that, the sickening feeling of fear returned in his gut.