Damn you, Emily! Can’t you at least give me this one piece of information
.
How did you fall?
But it was useless. Poor Drew, who loved Emily so totally. It must be hell to watch her turn into a stranger.
“Let’s approach it from a different direction,” said Drew. “You remember so many things – tales about America, like that expedition to explore the French territories. I had heard of it, but know few details. I doubt Charles even knows that much, so where did you learn about it? And the war. You can’t have gotten all your information from the newspapers because you know facts I’ve never read. Try to recall how you learned things. Books? Newspapers? Was there a neighbor who taught you? Though I can’t imagine who. Even Sir Harold isn’t
that
informed.”
“I suppose I must read widely,” she suggested desperately, keeping her face turned toward the fire so he couldn’t see her consternation at his questions. Drew might be an idle aristocrat, but he had a formidable intelligence. Now that he’d turned it on her, she was in big trouble. Why hadn’t she guarded her tongue more closely?
Because you didn’t want to.
And it was true. Talking to him, even verbally sparring with him, was too stimulating.
“That won’t wash,” he insisted, pulling her out of her thoughts. “Charles might occasionally leave the
Times
on his desk, but much of your information can only be found in publications like
The Edinburgh Review
or
Cobbett’s Weekly Political Review
, neither of which he reads. His interests are neither literary nor political.”
“But yours are,” she said softly, grasping the chance to deflect him. “Why then are you friends?”
“Friendships arise from many causes. It is not necessary to share every interest in order to feel comfortable with someone. Think, Emily,” he urged, refusing to follow her lead. “Even without a memory, you should know by now that I am insatiably curious. Where did you learn so much? And why did you hide it from me?”
“How can I answer such questions when I remember nothing?” she countered.
“Think! Have you been leading a double life all these years? I’ve often seen you reading Elizabeth’s novels since your accident. Yet you used to deride novels as works of the devil – quoting your mother, no doubt, but very convincingly. You took charge of your own recovery, forcing me to find all manner of herbs – some of which are nearly impossible to get – and provide foods that should have harmed you. Yet you have always fainted at even the mention of blood.”
He moved behind her, resting his hands on her shoulders. His virility beat against her, scrambling her wits until she couldn’t think. “Why, Emily? Why have you hidden so much? You knew that I would welcome an intellectual challenge. Yet you continued to play the hen-witted fool. Why?”
“How should I know?” His touch was making her weak. He leaned over the chair back, his breath hot on her neck. She fought the urge to lose herself in his arms. There was no safety there now.
“How did you come to fall, Emily? Who pushed you? Was Fay there? Did she try to kill you, my love?”
He wasn’t angry or even loud. The words beat against her ears, burrowing into her head to search out truth. The heat from his hands ignited fires all over her body, raising the insidious desire to just once have him look at Cherlynn Cardington and know her. She broke from his grasp, fleeing to the window in a futile attempt to escape that mesmerizing voice.
“Think,” he urged, following her to again grasp her shoulders from behind. “You were standing by the fireplace. I caught your eye and let you see how much I cared. Perhaps I made you careless, but after today I don’t believe it. Ten minutes later, you fell. Who did it, Emily? Who pushed you?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t even know if she
was
pushed.” Cherlynn froze in shock, both hands over her mouth.
“What?” Drew whirled her around to face him.
“I – nothing. My head is so fuzzy, I don’t know what I’m saying these days.” She tried to pull away, but his hands tightened.
“No, Emily! No more evasions. I want the truth.”
“Truth?” She laughed humorlessly. “Are you ready for the truth?”
He nodded.
“Very well, my lord. There is nothing wrong with my memory. I recall none of Emily’s past because I am not Lady Emily Fairfield. She shoved me into a fireplace, abducted my essence, and installed it in her body without even the courtesy of telling me who she was or what she wanted. If she were here right now, I’d wring her neck.”
Drew released his hold and staggered back to his chair. “You are mad.”
“Not in the least. She died four days after your betrothal ball. I read about it when I was researching the Broadbanks history while trying to learn more about the—” Her throat froze, stopping her words. No matter how hard she tried, she could not mention the curse. Shaking her head, she resumed her seat near the fire. “She had died of the injuries she suffered during your ball. Lady Travis was quite scandalized that you announced your betrothal clad in bloodstained clothes, by the way – at least that’s what she wrote to Lady Debenham. Anyway, Emily had haunted the great hall ever since. She shoved me into that same fireplace while I was touring Broadbanks on June 15, 1998. I woke up in her body.”
Drew cringed into the wingback chair, staring at the woman sitting calmly in its mate. She looked the same, her ebony hair glinting in the shafts of late-afternoon sunlight that filtered through the leaded windows, her blue eyes as bottomless as usual, her slender body crying to be caressed. Yet her movements were jerky. Her voice had assumed an unfamiliar rhythm. And her words made no sense at all.
“W-who are you?” he stammered.
She sighed. “I was born Cherlynn Andrews. Until recently I lived in the United States. But at the time of my accident, I was the Marchioness of Broadbanks.”
“You are married?” His face turned stark white.
“No. I bought the title at Christie’s for ten pounds.”
“Preposterous! No Broadbanks would ever sink so low.”
She opened her mouth, but no words emerged. “Damn!” she muttered to herself. “I can’t talk.”
“What?”
“I wish Emily had at least told me the rules of this game she’s playing. Obviously, there are topics I am not permitted to mention. The words refuse to form. I suppose disclosing them would break some cosmic regulation I don’t understand.” She shrugged.
“You belong in Bedlam.”
“It must sound like that. In fact, I did not fully accept it myself for quite a while. I have no idea what happened, except that I woke up in Emily’s body fully four days before she died. The obvious conclusion is that she stepped aside early so that I could save her life. The only reason she would have for doing so is that she plans to return. In fact, I expected to be gone as soon as the fever broke. When she didn’t come back, I figured that she also wanted me to take care of Fay for her – Grace knows about your arrangement, by the way. Since Emily believes I can do this, there must be something that will prevent Fay from making your life miserable once you jilt her. I just haven’t found it yet. Emily must love you very much to have waited all these years to save you.”
He recoiled in shock. “That blow to the head did more damage than I had supposed.”
She glared, but it was a reasonable conclusion. “Skepticism is inevitable. Let’s see what I can come up with to convince you.” She paced the library for several minutes deep in thought. Fortunately, Emily’s afternoon gown had a full skirt so she didn’t need to shorten her stride. “Frederick is lucky he sailed for England when he did. Shortly after he left, the United States declared war, in part because of impressments and England’s intransigence over trade.”
“Impossible. We repealed the Orders in Council in April, and the treaty negotiations are nearly complete.”
“Nice try, but too little, too late. Americans didn’t have that much patience. Still don’t, for that matter. In your time, they were brash from the newness of freedom. In mine, they’re a world power used to controlling their own destiny. But enough of that. Let’s see . . . 1812 . . . On July 27, Wellington won a victory at Salamanca, capturing two French eagles. Word of both events should reach London this week.”
His face turned even whiter. He glanced at the newspaper, but it was on the floor, its folds obscuring the headlines.
“What’s wrong?”
“You can’t have seen the paper. I was in the hall when it arrived and have been reading it ever since.”
“And?”
He held it up. The report of Salamanca was on the first page. His head shook. “You look so normal.”
“How would you expect a time traveler to look? Like some alien monster with three heads and a tail? I just wish Emily had left me with a few of her own thoughts. Research doesn’t begin to cover everything I need to know to live in this period.”
He pounced on the admission. “If Emily brought you back here without warning, why had you researched this period?”
“I write novels set in Regency England. I need to make the stories believable.”
“Coming here must be the ultimate research tool,” he growled. “Have you enjoyed dipping into our lives?”
She didn’t miss the spark of anger. It was inevitable. Emily had perpetrated an enormous hoax on him with this escapade. Drew was not a man to enjoy being a victim, however loving the motives. But her own emotions were also close to the surface. Scorn on top of everything else was too much.
“I didn’t ask to be wafted back nearly two hundred years,” she spat furiously. “And I sure as hell could have done without Lady Clifford or that bloody quack! God, what I wouldn’t give for an aspirin right now! Or my computer. Or a Twinkie!” She strode around the library, arms waving in frustration.
“What—”
“Never mind. I doubt they will allow me to explain.” She cast her eyes to the heavens, fighting to regain her composure. “Look, I’m sorry you got stuck in the middle of this mess. I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier. Since Emily pushed me into the fireplace, perhaps she was giving me a clue after all. Someone may have deliberately pushed her at the ball. In one of Lady Clifford’s tirades over my clumsiness, she mentioned that Fay had stalked away from the scene because I made such a cake of myself. So she might have tried to get rid of a rival. As you pointed out, she knew that you had planned to marry Emily.”
Drew stared at her wordlessly. His head was spinning, but despite all logic, he believed her. Shy, hen-witted Emily had managed to reach into the future and bring back a woman who could save them both. But he was having trouble sorting out his thoughts. He had just gotten used to the idea that Emily was intelligent, and now he discovered that she wasn’t Emily after all. His head shook.
“Sit down,” he said wearily. “Can we start at the beginning? I haven’t quite taken all this in yet.”
She smiled with understanding, resting her hand briefly on his shoulder before resuming her own seat.
“My name is Cherlynn Andrews Cardington,” she began.
“I thought you said you weren’t married.”
“I’m divorced. It’s quite common in my time,” she added as he flinched. “Believe me, I’m much better off without the creep.”
His head was again shaking.
“Drew, my own life really isn’t relevant to this discussion.”
“But I’d like to know.” Curiosity was pushing all else aside. Or perhaps he needed extra time to assimilate her claims. “Tell me a little about yourself.”
She shrugged. “I was born in 1972 in Virginia – only a couple of miles from Frederick’s farm if I understand his descriptions. The area has completely changed since he lived there, of course. I never got along with my family, so wasn’t much disturbed when the last of them died. I already had degrees in English literature and European history and had moved on to my own life.”
“Degrees?”
“College degrees. From the University of Virginia. Awards for finishing a course of study, like you probably got from Oxford.”
“Women in college.” His head was spinning.
She laughed. “Women have full equality in my day. They vote, get equal educations, serve as judges, senators, governors, doctors, soldiers, sailors, and everything else. They work construction crews, run corporations, and fly the space shuttle. England’s prime minister during most of my youth was a woman. Anyway, I worked for a Congressional committee until I met Willard and stupidly married the jerk. What a disaster!”
“Did he beat you?”
“Not physically. But my breeding didn’t match his – something you should understand. America doesn’t have the kind of class system England still does, but you’d never know it in some circles. His parents hated me on sight. He married me anyway in a burst of rebellion, but regretted it the moment they cut off his allowance. We toughed it out for a while, but after my miscarriage, I gave up and walked out on him. The divorce decree came through just before I left for London.”
“Where you bought a title.” Pain ripped his chest at the thought of something so precious being offered up like the cheapest bauble.
“That was an accident,” she said with a shrug. “And it is one of those topics I can’t find the words to explain. Perhaps when this is over, I’ll be able to tell you about it. It was after I came into possession of the title that I visited Broadbanks Hall – though I would have done that anyway. It’s one of the best Regency houses in the country; you did a marvelous job of redecorating.”
“Oh, God!” he moaned softly.
“I shouldn’t have said that, I suppose.”
“It’s just so hard to take in.”
“I know. It took me weeks to accept it – though I was out of my mind for much of that time. At any rate, I toured the house. When I got to the great hall, Emily attacked. I guess I was the first one she found who could help her.”
“Does she want to be a marchioness that badly?”
“No, Drew. I believe it was you she wanted to save more than herself. At least that’s the impression I’ve gotten from Grace.”
“Where is she now?” he asked suddenly.
She shrugged. “Who knows? Perhaps she’s occupying my body. Her lack of medical knowledge wouldn’t matter since everyone else knows how to keep it alive. Or she may be watching me – she needs to know when to return. If she had let me know a little more, perhaps I wouldn’t have blown my cover so badly. But at least I’ve nearly finished. You won’t be marrying Fay.”