“You aren’t dead,” Laura said, patiently, and then hesitated. “Well, not in so many words.”
Alaric frowned at her, his hands cupping the mug of tea she had given him. It was good simply to know what to do with his hands. “I don’t understand any of this,” he said.
“No one understands it,” Laura said, reaching out to touch his hand.
“Where exactly am I?”
“With me.” Her voice was gentle. “Isn’t that enough?”
He stretched out his fingers beneath her hand, gazing down at the place where she touched him. “I can nearly feel that, you know. I can very nearly feel you.”
Laura blinked, her smile a slow, sensual caress that sent a thrill through his basest regions. Desire battled with unease as he savored the simple comfort of sitting across a table from her. “Why can I feel you, when I could barely graze your skin before?”
Laura picked up her shoulder, and dropped it. “Because it’s just past midnight,” she said. “And it’s nearly All Hallows Eve.”
“Is it midnight?” he said, pricking up his ears to listen. “I didn’t hear the clocks chime.”
“That’s because no one’s wound them in many a year,” Laura said.
He started up, knocking his knees against the underside of the table. “My guests!” he said, with a self-conscious grimace, though he didn’t understand his sudden solicitude. “I’ve left Ellen to take care of them alone!”
Laura’s expression darkened, though she recovered quickly, pressing her hand harder upon his. “Alaric, they’ve long gone home. There is no one here but the two of us.”
“What is it?” he asked. “Did I say something to offend you?”
“Ellen,” she said softly, gazing solemnly into his eyes. “You do have a lady. Are you married to her?”
He cleared his throat, and took a sip of tea. His throat was suddenly dry as the Sahara. “No, not yet.”
“But you want to marry her.”
“Not precisely, no. But I should marry her. I should have married her years ago.”
Laura nodded, smiling to herself, that same strange little indecipherable smile she wore when telling him how many years had passed in the time it took for him to descend a flight of stairs into the kitchen. “Alaric, that is precisely what you do. And I don’t want you to.” Her eyes glimmered with tears as she looked at him. “I want you to marry me.”
A fierce joy flooded through him, followed by an anvil crashing down, settling somewhere in the region of his bowels. “What do you mean, it’s what I do?” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “Why do I have the distinct impression that you understand much more of the situation than I do, much more than you have led me to believe? I thought we were both struggling in the same darkness.”
“We are,” Laura said. “But I have a torch.” She reached into the pocket of the trousers she was wearing. Trousers. He had never seen a woman wearing them before, except in bawdy pictures of sapphists. She was no sapphist, he knew, and though distinctly masculine, the trousers only seemed to heighten her femininity. She could wear a paper bag, for all he cared, and she would still be the loveliest woman he had ever seen.
He watched curiously as Laura pulled out what looked like a trio of playing cards.
She laid the cards one by one on the table, like a gypsy fortune-teller at an autumn fete.
Alaric didn’t need to look at them to know they were no ordinary cards. They filled him with a sense of dread. He looked at them, and saw fragments of his own life, the one he was living, and the one to come. The cards knew all. They saw him well. They were a mirror in which he might decipher something other than his face. He didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to see what Laura saw.
He pushed his chair violently back, and sprang to his feet. “Stop talking in bloody riddles!” he growled, pacing the breadth of the kitchen. He felt the silt of dry leaves giving way beneath his feet. He sensed Stonecross crumbling in on him. Stonecross. His house. The house of his forefathers, as far back as memory.
And now? Whose house was it?
He turned to Laura, who sat watching him. He tried not to dwell on her lips, red as blood, or the thicket of her hair, curling every which way. He ignored the way everything inside of him seemed to magnetize in her direction, like she was his one true polarity.
“If you are real,” he said slowly, “and I am here with you, in some other … reality, in another time, as you claim, then why is my house in ruins? Why have I no descendants?”
“You died childless,” Laura told him quietly.
He nodded, his stomach a knot inside of him, tightening. “And how did you come to be here?”
She smiled briefly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
He stood, staring at her. “I don’t think I have a choice but to believe you, so please. Just tell me the bloody truth.”
She considered for a moment, as if weighing her thoughts on an invisible scale. “Stonecross Hall is mine. It has always been mine, since before I was born. I’ve spent my whole life dreaming of it, waiting for it, as it has waited for me. It is my birthright.”
Alaric frowned. He had no idea what she was saying. “I don’t understand. How is it your birthright?”
She stood then, and crossed to where he stood. She placed her hands on either side of his face, and he could feel the thrumming of her blood, the pulse in her wrists as they cradled his cheeks. “Because you love me, Alaric,” she said. “Because you have loved me over and over again, in every moment of time, and always will.”
Laura kissed him then, and he felt the full force of her lips on his. Somewhere, he thought he heard a chime sound, but then it faded beneath the rushing of his blood, like a riptide coursing through him. He put his arms around her, and gathered her close. She was not quite solid. There was the sense that part of her was absorbed into him. She gasped, and he was afraid he had hurt her, but she pulled him closer. He picked her up, her feet dangling en pointe. He felt her lips graze his jaw, nibbling at the sensitive place below his earlobe. The shock of Laura’s body on his, the way he felt as though they were within each other, was the most intimate sensation he had ever experienced in his life. Never had he been closer to anyone. And yet, he wanted more. He wanted to be deeper, closer. He wanted her body to swallow him whole.
“Stonecross is mine because you gave it to me, Alaric,” she whispered. “You left it to me in your will, because you knew I would come back to you, again and again. Time isn’t what we think it is. It’s something so much more. It’s infinite. This moment is endless. We will be here like this forever, even after we are both dead and gone.”
He pressed her closer, as if to drag her back from that terrible moment. As if he could shield her from death itself.
Then he pulled away from her, and it was painful. He looked searchingly into her deep and glittering eyes. Her lip rouge was little more than a pinkish stain. He had kissed it all away, and could taste it, like sugared roses beneath his tongue. He set her down so that she could sit on the table. He didn’t let her go as he sat back down in one of the battered old chairs in front of her. He never wanted to let her go. He clasped his hands around either side of her, still holding her close. Laura held him in the embrace of her thighs, and he pressed his face against her breast, inhaling the scent of her, the thin silk of her blouse cool against his cheek.
“But I do die,” he said, looking up at her. “Before you are born. I marry … another.” He needn’t name who his wife was to be. “It’s already happened.”
Laura nodded, a pained expression clouding her face. “It doesn’t have to stay that way,” she said.
“How can we change it?”
She lowered her gaze. “I don’t know.” She groped along the tabletop, and brought the trio of cards forth into the light. “But I drew these. They are part of my craft. They know what we cannot. And they tell me it is possible.”
She held the cards up one by one. “This card is the Past,” she said. “The Lovers reversed. It means that things are not as they should be. That you are with the wrong one. That we are not where we are meant to be, because we are apart.”
She held up the second card. “This card is the Present. Fortune’s Wheel. It’s turning, Alaric. It’s always turning, like Time. It isn’t static. What has been doesn’t need to stay the same. The present can be changed if we let it. If we help it.”
She held up the third and final card. “This card is the Future. Death. It doesn’t always portend a literal death, especially in the Future spot, because death is the inevitable future of all things. It means change. It means the death of all that has been. It means rebirth. And I believe it has to do with us. With the lovers Fate has separated by mistake, spinning forever on the wheel of time, never brave enough to leap off.”
“How do you know what they mean?” he asked, scorn edging into his voice. “Or if they mean anything at all. They’re nothing more than playing cards. I had a governess when I was a child who liked to pretend at reading such a deck.”
Laura shook her head solemnly. “How can you ask me that, after all you have seen? I just … know. The cards tell me. I don’t choose them randomly; the cards choose the reader. It’s not a parlor trick, Alaric. Remember the mirror? A lot of girls play that game. But how many of them do you suppose actually summon their future lovers?”
Her voice was hypnotic. Alaric felt drawn ever deeper under her thrall. He wanted to believe what she was saying was true. He wanted nothing more than to clasp her hand and leap with her into the unknowable void, no matter if they landed on their feet somewhere, or simply drifted forever in the blackness.
As if reading his thoughts, Laura clasped his hands in hers. He felt a surge pass between them, and the room, which had been growing … thin, somehow, started to shift back to where it belonged. The Stonecross in which Alaric lived was pushing back through, like an arm sliding into a sleeve, the hand slipping out at the other end. And then he was back, in Laura’s time. His Stonecross had receded. Alaric’s flesh shivered and the hair on his head stood up. He felt stronger. He felt solid. He felt as though she was anchoring him to her world.
“Alaric, do you trust me?” Laura gazed deep into his eyes, her expression solemn.
“Yes,” he said, with no hesitation.
“I know we haven’t been able to control moving in and out of time—well, before now, you couldn’t even do it—but I think if we do it together, we can go into either world. Did you see the way the room flickered, and then came back when we touched? It’s trying to take you away from me, but I didn’t let it. Now I want you to let it take you—and try to bring me with you.”
“I will try. Though I have no idea how to do as you ask.”
“Think of Stonecross,” she said. “Your Stonecross.”
Alaric did as she instructed. A cool sheen of sweat had broken out on his brow, and Laura, too, gleamed in the lamplight. He could smell her, a fresh surge of her unique scent wafting from the folds of her clothing. He closed his eyes as she did, and concentrated, holding her hands. He thought of the way the library smelled like leather and dust, and old, dead cigars. He thought of the feel of the carpet in his room beneath his feet, the room that was Laura’s now. Because he had given it to her. Because he wanted everything that was his to be hers.
He felt a peculiar lurch in his insides, as though he was in a carriage that had come to a too abrupt stop. He felt thrown sideways. It was the most terrifying sensation of his life. He felt as though he was being suspended in a void of utter and complete nothingness, without a body to house him. Was this what it was like for Laura when she came to him, or was it different for someone gifted like she was in the arts of the uncanny? He didn’t know. All he knew was that he felt like he was dying, and that there would be absolutely nothing to catch him when he finally fell into the abyss.
And then something righted him again. Alaric’s body came back to him, a sudden rush of molecules. The relief was so palpable, it registered as pain. He felt Laura’s arms about him, and he swayed, grasping onto her as though he was drowning, and she was the only handhold he could find. Thank God—he was alive! He was not about to be sucked away. He wanted, in that moment, nothing so much as to live. And never to experience such a tearing away, body from soul, again.
“It’s alright, love,” she said, stroking his face lightly. “Open your eyes.” And he did, blinking as she came into view, her large brown eyes filled with emotion. He pulled her close, clinging to her as he gazed around.
They were standing together in the warm kitchen, his warm kitchen. He recognized it, though he hadn’t spent time there since he was a boy, pestering the cook for a sweet. Though redolent of all the leftover dishes from dinner, it still retained its own particular smell, as familiar to him as the scent of his own skin. Houses were no different than people. They were singular. He would know the smell of his home the way he would know the smell of Laura’s perfume: instantly, and with some part of him that he couldn’t name. He looked about in relief at the amazing restoration of the most humble room in his home. A kettle was singing discordantly, and the stove glowed dully with banking coals. The pots hung where they should, their bright copper bellies gleaming as if in greeting.
Behind him, he heard a startled cry.
They weren’t alone. One of the scullery maids who had been busy scrubbing up the last of the pots and pans and miscellaneous crockery dropped a platter when she saw them. She didn’t look alarmed beyond a commonplace startling, and so she must not have actually seen them appear as if from nothing.
“Beg pardon sir, madam,” she said, with a curtsy. “I didn’t see you there. You just come out of nowheres, like a pair o’ ghosts!”
Laura pressed a hand to her lips, stifling a laugh, and the girl gave her a funny look out of the corner of her eye, taking in her outlandish garb and cropped hair.
Alaric drew himself up with as much restrained hauteur as he could muster, given the fact that he was holding the hand of a lady while in a state of dishevelment—and in the kitchens, no less. But he couldn’t maintain it. Instead, he threw his head back and laughed like he hadn’t laughed since he was a child and propriety hadn’t yet got hold of him.
It was absurd and wonderful to be alive, to be holding this woman by the hand. Even time itself couldn’t keep them apart. There had never been lovers like them since the history of love began.
Still holding Laura’s hand, he bowed gallantly to the baffled maid, and pulled his lover away.
“Won’t they wonder where you’ve gone?” Laura asked breathlessly, as they sneaked their way along the corridors, ducking occasionally into a deserted room to avoid stray houseguests who had gone to use the lavatory, or to keep an assignation of their own. Laura would have liked to have a better look at them, but Alaric pulled her impatiently along. He hadn’t let go of her hand for a single moment since they had crossed the invisible border between their worlds, and Laura didn’t complain. Though she felt more solid, more anchored in Alaric’s Stonecross than she ever had before, she wasn’t altogether certain what would happen if he let her go, and she didn’t want to find out.
She heard sounds of laughter and music wafting up from the rooms below. “I thought the party wasn’t until tomorrow night,” she said.
“It isn’t. Not the main event, at any rate.” Alaric pushed the final door at the end of a long corridor open, and peeked cautiously in before pulling Laura in with him. “And these are not even all of the expected guests. My sister has yet to arrive, for instance. Lizzie is always late. For everything. Even,” he said, with a smile that was half exasperation and half adoration, “her own wedding. She kept us all waiting at the church for over an hour while she had her hair redressed.”
“You have a sister?” Laura asked softly.
Alaric nodded. “This is her bedchamber,” he said. “One of the few unoccupied at the moment. We keep it for her, for when she comes. She likes to sleep in her old bed when she is away from her own.”
Laura gazed about, taking in the rich furnishings and polished furniture. She had seen the room in a wholly different state: musty, filled with dust and rotted silk, the windowpanes broken and the plaster crumbled over everything. Now it was as lovely as a dream, all rose-colored satin and lovely little landscape paintings. A fire was laid in the grate, and Alaric, letting go of her hand without thinking, bent to light it.
Laura’s heart lurched, expecting no doubt to be torn back to her own time, as she had so many times before.
But no such thing happened. She didn’t so much as fluctuate. She was as real here as she was in 1926. Perhaps more so, she thought. Because he is here … That was it, wasn’t it? He was her anchor. If Laura could just hold on to him, she could stay. And perhaps, they could help each other go back and forth. Could they? She didn’t know. But it would be a grand adventure to try it out. Laura didn’t much care which time she landed in, as long as he was there with her. For now, she was where she wanted to be—and when. She would hold on to Alaric, and he would pin her in place like a butterfly behind glass.
She watched him as he oversaw the fire, lighting a spill to carry the flame to the sconces that housed fresh tapers. The warm light spilled across the room, dispelling the deepest shadows, unravelling the copper strands that streaked Alaric’s mane of hair. She hadn’t known many men who didn’t shear their hair nearly to the scalp in the back, though in her time they wore whips of longer hair in the front, slicked back with brilliantine.
She found there was something so … primal about the sight of an impeccably dressed gentleman who wore his hair thick and long. It was as though he knew he was, deep down, little more than a barely civilized animal who might at any moment forget his manners.
Laura could only hope.
He rose from his knees, though she rather liked the sight of him there, and turned to look at her, his eyes full of a fire that was no reflection. Heat flooded her at the sight of his slightly wilted shirt, the buttons gleaming in the candlelight, begging to be undone. His frock coat seemed to billow about him like the raiment of a king. He stood regarding her, his eyes sliding over her body. She wore a new blouse—such a thin, transparent thing—silk the same color as her skin. It would tear so easily in his hands. She could tell he liked the way her breasts strained at the yoke, the collar unbuttoned far enough that if she bent over, she would expose nearly every inch of her bosom. She longed to take his hands and place them over the wild drum of her heartbeat. She wanted to wrap her legs around him and breathe every breath he took as if it was her own.
She could see by the way his eyes flickered over her, and how his hands moved restlessly at his sides, that he felt the same way. Alaric’s chest rose and fell. His throat pulsed above the sedate collar with its dark cravat. He looked like the hero of a nineteenth-century novel, tortured by passion and filled with pent-up longing for things he could never ask of a lady.
He wanted her. She could almost taste how much.
She was damned glad she wasn’t a lady.
“Alaric,” she said, in a low, husky voice hardly her own. “Don’t you think it’s time you undressed me?”