Maybe it was this cowardly other self inside me, but there was a little thrill of
fear that ran through me at her words. I reminded myself that Lady de Grey had “disappeared” off the face of the earth and her remains had never been found. Someone had not wished her well. Could it be her little sister-in-law who thought a promise was going to be broken?
All I could think of was that I wanted to see Jamie. I needed to tell him that I loved him, that I didn’t hate him and that we belonged together. I wanted to warn him; I wanted to—
“Where is my husband?” I asked Ellen. “And do we have any guests?” Visions of Jennie Churchill and the Duchess of Devonshire danced through my head. What about Consuelo Vanderbilt? How about the king?
From Ellen’s sharp intake of breath, I took it there were no guests. She looked shocked. Story of my life, I thought. I’m always shocking someone.
“No one will come here after what has happened.”
I wanted to ask her what had happened but at the look in her eyes, I held back. Or maybe it was Catherine keeping me from asking. There was more to this Ellen than I thought. Why was I to procure her a husband? Wasn’t that her brother’s job? But then from what I’d read, Lady de Grey could have chosen a husband for her based on who was the best in bed, since she seemed to have gone to bed with all of the men.
I put my hand to my forehead and did my best about-to-die act. “I am sorry, Ellen, but I seem to have forgotten so much lately. And you know how angry Tavey has been at me. If you’ll just tell me where he is, I’ll talk to him about your husband.”
Ellen squinted her eyes at me. “He is where he always is at this time of day. You know where he is.”
“Yes, of course I do. I’ll just go and see him.”
With a great deal of effort, I managed to get off the chaise and head for the door, but Ellen’s horror stopped me. “You do not mean to wear that, do you?”
“Whatever was I thinking of?” I asked as lightly as I could. “Where are my jeans and sweats?”
Ellen did not laugh; in fact she didn’t seem to laugh about much of anything.
“I will call your maid,” she said as she left the room and I was glad for that because I had no idea what the maid’s name was.
The maid came in, didn’t ask me a single question about what I was to put on, then began to undress and dress me without a word exchanged between us. I could get used to this, I thought as I extended my arm and let her put me into a scrumptious little dress of pale green cotton.
Being relieved of the necessity of dressing myself, I had time to think about my objective. I had no idea how long I would be here. After all it wasn’t as though I were actually here; I was just temporarily visiting this woman’s body. I could be pulled back by Milly’s chauvinistic hypnotist at any second. What I needed to do was make contact with my soul mate, erase centuries of hate, then go home and find the real Jamie.
If I didn’t accomplish this feat, I’d spend all of my life alone and the next and the next and not find Jamie until the next.
After I was dressed I went in search of the bathroom, hoping this wasn’t one of those houses with enameled pots under the bed, but I found a nice little room with a modern flush toilet, then spent some minutes trying to rearrange my clothing, which was no easy task considering how much there was of it.
All in all it was some time before I was on my way and by this time all I could think of was food. Having stayed in country house hotels in England I knew that meals were at set times, and if you missed them, you were out of luck.
I spent an hour exploring that house. It was huge and complicated and there were rich treasures beyond belief. On the walls: Renoir, Rubens, Gainsborough, lots of John Singer Sargent. Rugs the perfect size for each room, so no doubt they had commissioned someone in India to make them. Each piece of furniture was a work of art.
What I liked about the house was that it was used. This was no museum. Invitations had been stuck into the frame of a fifteenth-century portrait. New silk brocade upholstery was next to a chair with the leather falling off it. Boots and coats and walking sticks were flung about in a jumble that would have taken six decorators days to duplicate. This is what Ralph Lauren is trying to achieve, I thought, yet never quite makes it.
By the time I left the house to see the garden I was weak with hunger, as I’d had nothing to eat for hours and that corset was cutting off the blood going to my feet. No wonder Edwardian women didn’t run marathons, I thought as I began the slow process of walking through the gardens.
They were divine, manicured to look as though they just happened to grow the way they were. In the house I caught sight of servants, but they vanished as soon as they saw me coming, but in the garden it was different. Here there were several men with wheelbarrows and huge clipping shears. They wore heavy trousers and shirts rolled up to their elbows to show off their strong forearms.
I love blue-collar men. I know that shows my origins, and I know that now that I’m a writer and therefore an “intellectual” (except to the reviewers, of course) I’m supposed to like men wearing suits. But maybe I’m paranoid or maybe it’s just my rich fantasy life, but I keep thinking, If I were stranded on a desert island would I want to be there with the world’s best lawyer or with a building contractor? I like men who are useful.
And, well, okay, I also like muscles. Not those stringy muscles of the long-distance runner or the artificial ones made in a gym. I like a man with heavy forearms created from using a screwdriver most of his life. Seeing a man drive twenty-penny nails with one whack can make me weak-kneed. A shirtless man with a fifty-pound bag of cement over one shoulder climbing a ladder can make me so dizzy with desire I have to sit down.
In the house the servants had acted as though I had a contagious disease, but from the way these well-built men in the garden were smiling at me and pulling their forelocks as I walked by made me think I knew how Lady de Grey got her bad reputation. I hope I—she—didn’t have an affair with a gardener. Daria would be very disappointed in me. Everyone knows that the hero must be titled. If all the dukes in romances had actually lived, we would all be titled. Barbara Cartland alone could populate a small country with her dukes.
But I couldn’t help looking at these men as they went about their work in the garden. Not one of them was handsome, but several of them filled out their rough clothes rather well. As I walked, I began to like having a waist that felt as though it could not possibly be more than four inches in diameter. And Lady de Grey did have a nice bosom. All in all, she was a bit scrawny and no wonder, since she didn’t seem to eat, but her figure appeared to be rather fashionable.
I hoped that these thoughts might bring her out of hiding so I could find out some information about her life, but she stayed down very small and I could feel her fear.
The garden was glorious, acres of plants, all of them seeming to be in bloom. I walked along the paths, moving from long grassy avenues with riots of flowers on either side, to quiet glades, to ponds with lily pads growing in them. There were statues and hedges and trees and flowering shrubs. As I walked I was beginning to think of stories I wanted to set in this garden. A poor but titled heroine who married an old man to save her unappreciative family from poverty, then in this garden she met a man, a beautiful man, but they couldn’t marry because—
I broke off because coming toward me was the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen. Not that sunken-cheeked overly perfect look of an American model, but a look of repressed passion. Looking at him was like standing at the foot of an active volcano: You know what it’s capable of doing but will it do it now? As you walk up to the side of the volcano, your heart pounds faster the farther you get from safety.