Chapter Eleven

Kate knew it was a dream but it all felt so real, from the cold metal of the doorknob in her hand to the pavement beneath her feet. It felt as though she was standing on solid ground. Then she glanced down and saw only dizzying turquoise space that went on and on, the sky mirrored beneath her in endless depths. The inverted sky was clear as a summer afternoon, while the world around and above her was shadowed by dusk. She was standing outside her bookstore.

There was only one thing to do.

Kate turned the knob and stepped inside her store. The oak floor was lustrously golden, while the rest of the space was dimmed and hazy. The only light seemed, in fact, to come from the floor. A sheet of gold.

Kate stood within the doorway and looked at the figures waiting inside. She blinked and glanced behind her, but the door was closed. Something wasn’t right. She should leave. But she was curious now.

In the center of the luminescent ground was a man, waltzing in slow circles around and around, his arms framing an invisible partner. He hummed gently to himself, supported by the soft padding and sliding of the soles of his shoes as he went through the steps. A frown of concentration puckered his brow. He was good-looking in a clean-cut, pleasant way. He was wearing a cutaway tailored coat over a waist-length satin waistcoat and dark breeches. The outfit looked as though it had come straight from the late seventeen-eighties.

Behind the dancer, a teenager in Elizabethan garb was sitting on her counter. His chin was propped on his fists and he was staring moodily at his dangling feet.

Kate caught sight of the third and final member of the patch-work party. He lounged tall and handsome against a bookshelf. Shadows half obscured him, when suddenly he glanced up and met her eyes directly. His frank stare and haughty expression sent a jab of shock down her spine. A well-cut dark coat hugged his shoulders, while pale-colored trousers reflected what little light there was in the dim room. She recognized the kind of top boots country gentlemen wore in the eighteen-hundreds from the covers of her historical novels.

They were being sported in her bookstore like the average Nike sneaker.

What was this? Reunion of the time travelers?

“Who are you?” she stammered into the stillness.

The boy raised his eyes. He smiled slowly. “It is my lady, O, it is my love!” His voice was rich honey, pure velvet, and satin. “O, that she knew she were!”

“What are you doing here?” Kate fumbled behind her for the door, which seemed to melt beneath her grasp. His words seemed familiar.

“She speaks yet she says nothing, what of that?” The boy shook his head, teasingly. “O speak again, bright angel!”

The eighteenth-century dancer continued turning in slow, steady circles, unfaltering. He glanced at her furtively.

“Stop speaking in riddles and rhymes. Give me a straight answer and tell me how you got in here! I’m this close to calling the cops and having you kicked out.” Kate scowled at the familiar strangers.

“Can I go forward when my heart is here?” The boy sighed.

“And what’s with you?” Kate fumed at the man watching from the corner. “What are you staring at? Trying to figure out how to break into the cash?”

He chuckled quietly and crossed his arms. “Your conjecture is totally wrong, I assure you. My mind was more agreeably engaged. I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow.”

“You can’t be trying to flirt with me?” Kate’s thoughts were reeling.

On the dancer’s second solitary turn around the room, he smiled at her sweetly. “A dance would honor me greatly, madame.” He paused in front of her and held out his gloved hand in invitation.

“No, I’m not going to dance. I can’t dance.” But before she knew what she was doing, her hand was in his, her feet falling into the pattern more naturally and easily than they had ever done before. She wasn’t a dancer, but suddenly she was spinning around the room like she had never done anything else.

“Ah, I have found true love.” Her partner declared softly.

Kate snorted. “Kind of jumping the gun, aren’t we?”

“Stony limits cannot hold love out.” The youth remarked. “And what love can do that dares love attempt.”

“Come Darcy,” her partner called over his shoulder as he spun her gracefully, “dance with us!”

The man leaning against the shelf shook his head. “You are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room.”

“Darcy?” Kate repeated disbelievingly. Had the characters come to life? “Mr. Darcy?” She looked more closely at the boy perched on her counter. She should have recognized the iambic pentameter. “Romeo?” She fixed her attention on her dancing partner. “Who are you?” She demanded.

“It has flown my mind while in the presence of so delightful a countenance.”

“Do you have to be so charming?” she groaned. “Charming?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Prince Charming?”

“At your service.” He bowed his head and spun her in yet another dizzying circle.

Suddenly, the door chimed and a customer entered the store. What was a customer doing in this collection of living, breathing, flirting fictional heroes? She shook off Prince Charming’s hold and ran forward. She didn’t get far, but instead bounced back off an invisible wall that separated her from the woman.

“Ouch!” She stumbled back.

Kate pressed her palms flat against the cold surface. It stretched on and on, separating Kate, Romeo, Mr. Darcy, and Prince Charming from the rest of the world. She was locked in with her books. Kate stared at the woman as she walked the slender alley between the glass divider and the open doorway.

Fear clenched in her gut. “Let me out!” Kate gasped wildly and beat her hands against the wall. “This isn’t right!” The customer walked the length of the store, staying near the open door, and apparently completely unaware of anything else.

Kate could feel the romantic heroes ghosting toward her, closer and closer. Mr. Darcy brushed dry, papery fingertips across her cheekbone. Romeo wrapped a possessive arm around her waist and Prince Charming reached for her hand, smiling.

“In vain I have struggled,” Darcy whispered to her. “It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” He seemed completely sure of himself, calm, and matter of fact as though there could be no doubt of her answer.

Did she have a choice?

“You know the slipper fits.” Prince Charming pressed.

“Why can’t she see us?” Kate asked.

“We have night’s cloak to hide us from her sight,” Romeo explained.

“What do you want from me?” Kate leaned her forehead against the cold, transparent partition.

“The exchange of thy love’s faithful vow for mine,” Romeo said.

The other two men nodded in solemn agreement.

“My life were better ended by their hate, then death prorogued, wanting of thy love.”

“Midnight will never come,” Prince Charming told her. “There are no obligations. Stay with us. You’re safe here. You belong here.”

“I’ll still stay,” Romeo murmured in her ear, “to have thee forget, forgetting any other home but this.”

“I don’t belong here!” Kate shook her head wearily, knowing it was futile.

“Stay,” they breathed as one. “Stay with us. Love us.”

“O blessed, blessed night!” Romeo fluttered a kiss against her neck. “I am afeard. Being in night, all this is but a dream, too flattering-sweet to be substantial.”

Kate caught at that. “It isn’t substantial! You have to believe me. This really is just a dream! I’ll wake and everything—”

Prince Charming pressed a hand against her mouth, stifling her words. “It is more real than anything you’ve ever experienced,” he told her gently as he lowered his hand again.

Tears pricked at her eyes as she stared at the blinding sunshine cascading through the door. She thought she caught a glimpse of a shape, momentarily silhouetted against the light. Could they help her? Could they rescue her from the heroes of her dreams? But it was only fleeting, and it might have been anything. “I don’t want this.”

“Of course you do,” Mr. Darcy said simply.

“We are all you have ever desired.” Prince Charming smiled.

“We are perfection,” Romeo added.

Slowly they stepped together, blending, creating a single man. His features were blurred, undistinguishable, but stunningly, heartbreakingly beautiful. They were right. He was what she had always wanted.

“I will protect you, save you, love you.” His voice hummed with the strength of a bass trio, richly layered and resonant. “You will have everything you ever wanted here. After all,” his voice changed pitch, echoed eerily, like a chord hitting the wrong note, “love is but a dream within a dream.”

Kate faced him fully now, her eyes suddenly dry. “No. That’s wrong.” She could feel her strength of will returning, her confidence building. “None of you ever said that. That’s a line by Edgar Allen Poe, and love isn’t a dream within a dream.” Kate awoke with a start. She clutched the sheets to her chest, gulped and finished the quote aloud in the silence of her empty bedroom, “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”