Page 16 of Watch For Me By Candlelight

‘Okay. Not helpful, but thanks. Are you sure you’re all right? Headache better?’

‘Much better,’ Jenna said, a little defensively.

‘Good. I’m going to head upstairs and then I’m going in my garden. I’ll take that bicycle through and have a go at it in peace. Nobody’ll stop to ask me questions if I’m hiding in the garden.’

‘Sure.’ Jenna examined a fingernail. ‘Stay out there. Makes no difference to me. I can lock up and pop the keys through the door. To be honest, the end of the day here can’t come bloody soon enough for me. You can go off and get covered in bike oil and crap if you want to, I’ll be fine.’

‘Very generous,’ Kate replied sarcastically. What she really wanted to say, of course, was no, you can’t try to lock up ten minutes early and do you really feel that guilty about coming in late?

But some battles you just have to lose to win the war and this, she thought, was one of them.

* * *

Kate spent a good few hours in her back garden working on the bicycle.

By around seven, she had undercoated it and completed the first layer of white on the box. She’d pumped up the tyres and sorted out the chain and the brakes, and was covered in oil and splattered with paint. And she was ready for a glass of wine.

She headed up her back staircase and rinsed out one of the glasses she and Chris had used last night. It was still a little annoying that he’d had to head back to London, and they’d only had the briefest of telephone conversations whilst he was running from the tube station to the office for some “damage limitation”, as he called it.

It was so frustrating. It had turned into a beautiful evening and they might have enjoyed a walk along the river tonight. Instead, Chris was back in his end-of-terrace house in Chiswick, close to the Thames, and Kate was gazing idly out of the window at the River Hartsford. A solitary car remained in the museum car park, and she suspected someone had decided to have a walk anyway. Oh, well. Wine called to her and she’d done enough walking for one day, even if some of it had been illegally skulking around the Hall grounds.

Kate decided she might as well take the wine downstairs and enjoy the evening in her garden. She could admire the ice-cream bicycle if nothing else. It was coming along very well and she was sure it would look fabulous at the Living History Weekend. Yes, she was feeling quite self-satisfied as she poured a glass of white wine and sipped it appreciatively.

The wine was cold and the evening was warm. All she could hear was the odd bee buzzing around and the manic quacking of her ducks out front; but even they gave up after a while. The scent of roses and lavender was strong. Her little garden was slightly weedy but full of flowers. Golden marigolds nestled amongst alstroemeria and freesias, and it was summer in Suffolk. What on earth could have been more perfect?

Kate settled down in a battered old wicker chair and put her feet up on a plant pot. If she closed her eyes, she could just relax and—

That clock was chiming again. The one from the Hall. Kate opened her eyes. She had to sort that out, once and for all.

She went to stand up; and realised she couldn’t actually do it . . .

* * *

Her leg, the one that was injured when she’d fallen over on the ice-skates, was in some sort of splint. It was sticking out in front of her, her toes poking out from beneath a ruffled pink cotton skirt, trimmed with rose-pink embroidery. She’d abandoned the traditional bustle. What was the point? She was sitting down all day and it wasn’t exactly comfortable.

Ice-skates? Splint? Oh, no, what was happening here? It couldn’t be . . . but how could she doubt her own eyes? She touched the skirts spread out around her and they felt real enough. And her leg hurt every time she so much as wiggled her toes. Kate was torn between swearing loudly and dealing with a huge sense of fear that she had somehow dropped through time again. Why hadn’t she checked out the historical stuff before settling down with her wine? It might have helped her makes sense of her experiences at least.

Kate moved slightly in the wicker chair, panicking whole-heartedly, and it wobbled underneath her. She had wheels. Interesting. And rather terrifying. In fact, the whole thing was terrifying. Why did this keep happening to her?

‘You made your way down here again, I see.’

She squinted against the setting sun. A tall figure was silhouetted there. Golden light was dappling his light brown hair and throwing the sun-lightened streaks into stark relief.

She looked past him and saw faint tracks on the dusty lane where, quite possibly, a wheelchair had trundled along. It was odd, but the main thing she thought was, gosh, just as well we live in such a flat area. The Hall, she knew, was at the end of that track. It was more or less the same way she’d walked this afternoon.

‘I’ve come from the Hall,’ she said, trying not to make it sound too much like a question.

‘I know you have,’ said Blacksmith Will — for indeed it was that man who now squatted down in front of her and took hold of her hands. ‘And I’ve told you, Cat, you should be more careful.’

Kate looked at the offending foot and frowned. ‘Because of this?’

‘No.’ He squeezed her hands and it felt very real; and very nice. ‘Because you don’t know who’s watching and because you’ll make your hands all rough pushing yourself around. You’re a lady and you should have soft hands.’ He kneaded the pad of her thumb with his. ‘I don’t want you getting callouses from wheeling yourself down here. If you want my help, you send someone to get me and I’ll come to you.’ He grinned. ‘I just hope my special privileges last a little longer. They’re still quite grateful to me for looking after you when you fell, but it won’t last forever. I want you to get better, but at the same time, I don’t really want you to go home.’

‘But I am home,’ she said, confused. She was sitting in her own garden, wasn’t she?

‘Not properly, you’re not. Seems to me you’re just visiting and we might not have a lot of time together.’

It was a strange statement and could have had more meaning than he realised. If Kate wasn’t home, then where did she live? She tried to wiggle her toes again. They felt weird.