When one door is shut, another opens.
– Miguel d e Cervantes
The sharp rapping sound awakened her.
Amelia struggled to consciousness, wondering who would be up in the tower at this time of night. The moon was still obscured by clouds, the night still dark.
Someone was trying to get into the tower room.
Perhaps John. Maybe he was having trouble sleeping as well, and wanted to escape to the past, to his study filled with letters, journals, pressed flowers, and sketches. She understood the older man and his fascination with history.
"Let me in!" whispered a voice.
Strange. She didn't recognize it. Amelia got up from her chair. Her back ached, and she wondered at that. The leather seat had grown cold and hard as she'd slept in it. Well, it was nothing like a bed.
She found the doorknob in the dark, then turned it. The door stuck.
How odd.
She tried again. Pulled harder.
"Open this door!" a female voice demanded.
"I will; give me a minute-"
With one last yank, the door yielded. It felt as if the wood were swollen within the frame, and that was strange because it was a door that normally opened without any trouble at all.
The clouds parted, and a thin, cool moonlight slipped through the window, illuminating a scene Amelia knew she would remember throughout eternity.
Jane Stanton stood in the doorway-Amelia recognized the girl from the engagement portrait she'd seen. And this was no simpering chit who couldn't cope with what life handed her. This was no coy miss who simply gave up. She was furious.
"I suppose this is your way of saying you're not coming with me!"
Amelia couldn't answer as shock assailed her, a peculiar roaring in her head, a weakening in her limbs. She steadied herself, a hand grasping the rough stones in the tower wall. How could it feel the same? How could it look the same?
But it didn't. John had put in carpeting. This stone floor was bare; she could feel it through her shoes.
Shoes. No. Slippers. I was wearing slippers.
She didn't have her nightgown on, either, but a wool dress that itched against her skin. All she could see of herself was her hands, and they were broad and square, with freckles on the backs.
She'd never freckled in her life.
"Where am I?" she whispered, then looked at Jane as she started to tremble.
"Stop it! Come back right now, Emma! I won't have you going off in one of those trances like your aunt. Now. you agreed to help me and you shall. Come."
Jane grabbed her hand and started away from the tower room. Though her hand was small, it was surprisingly strong and warm. Vital. Alive.
Alive. No, no, Jane is dead, she hung herself…
Terrified, Amelia pulled her hand away, but Jane grabbed it again and dragged her further down the stairs.
"Stop it," she hissed. "If you get us caught, I'll make your life a living hell, I swear it!"
Alive. Jane Stanton is alive. I have to be dreaming. This has to be a dream. I've just gone a little mad…
She almost missed the bottom step, and the sharp pain that shot up her shin was no dream; this was no dream, this was real, and she had no idea where Jane was leading her, or why, or how she'd come to this place…
For it was Lindsey House, but not the Lindsey House she'd come to love. This was a strange, dark manor house, and she knew with a sharp instinct honed purely by survival that she'd never been to this house before.
A light, misty rain had started to fall as the two women approached the great front door.
"Quiet! Someone may still be about." Jane let go of her hand, then grasped her upper arm with steady fingers. This woman knew exactly what she wanted and how to go about getting it.
"Here." She handed Amelia a cloak and she put it on gratefully. The weather was bitterly cold and damp, and even the wool dress didn't offer her much in the way of protection.
Then they were outside, running across the grounds, dashing and slipping over the wet grass, away from the dark, silent house. Amelia had no idea where they were headed, but as she moved she suffered yet another shock. Her body didn't feel like hers-it was shorter and considerably plumper. Sturdy. Unfamiliar. Strange.
She'd always been thin as a child. Wiry. Miserable because she'd been one of the tallest in her class, almost always the last ever asked to dance. Now she was eye level with Jane-and Jane was not a tall woman.
Was she running away to marry Jonathan? Was that where they were going? As she followed Jane further away from the manor house, Amelia thought furiously, tried to remember every detail of the story John Lindsey had told her.
She couldn't think. The shock was too great. Her breath came in great gasps; her lungs hurt from the cold spring air. She stumbled, and Jane jerked her upright.
"Come on, Emma! Once they know we've gone, we haven't got a chance."
She was a tough one, Amelia thought. Tough and strong and smart. She was a survivor; that was the first thing she'd thought upon meeting her.
What has happened?
She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. One after the other. Breathing through her nose because it warmed the cold night air. Trying not to let the cloak whip open and the frigid wind crawl up her legs.
They reached the main road, and Amelia was struck by how absolutely black the night was. Even when she and Hugh had taken evening walks with the dogs, they'd come back to see the windows of Lindsey House ablaze with light. Not now. Everything was black, except what little was silvered by the new moon.
She stopped, and Jane was yanked back by the force of her strength.
New moon. No. Not new, the moon was full…
The truth began to close in all around her. She couldn't shut her mind off to the final possibility, the only possibility, the reality of what had happened to her. She'd fallen down the hole, like Alice after the White Rabbit, only this was real, this was real…
"Emma! The carriage!"
And there it was, at the end of the dirt road. The road she and Hugh had just walked this evening, three of the house dogs at their heels, Charlie in her arms because his legs were too stiff, Hugh's arm around her…
Tears blurred her vision, but her legs kept moving because she didn't know what else to do.
She assisted Jane into the carriage, then climbed in after her. There was nothing for her here at this Lindsey House, more than two hundred years in the past. She'd been flung back in time, and who knew if she'd ever see anyone or anything familiar again?
The horses started up, and the carriage bounced around horribly. Amelia gritted her teeth, then gave up on that idea when a bone-jarring jounce almost caused her to bite off her tongue. Though she and John were both fascinated and passionate about history, neither had ever romanticized it, and she longed for the safe confines of the Range Rover.
"It won't be much farther now," Jane whispered. She sounded so very pleased with herself.
"Until what?"
"Oh, Emma, don't go off like that again! Jonathan's mother would have let your aunt go had she not been so terribly accurate with those visions." She sighed, then sat back on the seat. The small lantern on the one side of the carriage illuminated her animated face. ' 'I must confess, I'd love to see what the future has in store for Robert and me-"
"Robert?" Her tongue suddenly felt thick, her head filled with cotton wool. "Robert? I thought you loved Jonathan-"
The look on Jane's face stopped her cold.