And so it goes, launching into a heated discussion of the nature of time travel. I join in a bit, but my mind keeps circling back to what they’ve said about the butterfly effect and chaos theory.
There are no answers here. Oh, I could try to get answers. I’ve already affected William’s own timeline. I can check the archives and see whether anything has changed.
I did check once, when I feared I’d never get back to William. I learned that he died an old man in his nineties and never married.
If I check again, will that have changed? Even if it has, does that prove this is one uninterrupted timeline? I’m not sure it does. Maybe only my timeline changes, the effects I’ve wrought appearing in the archives in my own time, but not in the future one of his. Yes, it makes my head hurt just thinking about that.
But even if I could prove, beyond a doubt, that it is a single timeline, does that also prove that me hiring a girl in nineteenth-century England will have unforeseeable—and disastrous—effects on the modern day? Of course not.
These answers do not exist for me to find. I need to make choices on my own. To decide for myself what I believe and what I’m going to do about it.
Despite my busy day, William is careful not to keep me out too long. By dinner, we’re back in Thorne Manor, and then it’s a quiet evening and off to bed early. Which would be lovely if my racing brain would actually let me sleep. It’s not just my brain. Little Melvina is restless too, kicking and squirming, as if she senses my disquiet.
This is, of course, all her fault. Yes, I’m already shoving blame onto my poor unborn child’s shoulders. The fault, I think, lies with impending motherhood. Or maybe just hormones. All I know is that five months ago, I enjoyed a glorious newlywed summer with William, unhampered by thoughts of what havoc my existence might wreak on history. We spent most of our time holed up in Thorne Manor—on one side of the stitch or the other—and we interacted with the outside world no more than we needed to do to establish our story as a newly wedded couple.
But then I returned to Toronto, and as my belly grew, I began to think more and more of myself as a mother, and with that came an additional sense of responsibility. It didn’t help that I was teaching Victorian history, constantly reminded of the impact people and their actions have had on our past.
Lying in bed that night, my brain ping-pongs from one side of this debate to the other.
One minute, I decide I’m overthinking it. Making too much fuss out of nothing. Hubris, even, to think that my actions could impact history.
Then the next minute, I’m a fretting ball of nerves, setting guidelines and rules for myself, treating William’s world like a museum I’m visiting. Stay on the paths. Do not touch the exhibits. Do not cross the ropes. Remember that I am a guest in their world, there to observe and . . .
And do nothing that might actually make a difference, even a difference for the better? If I do that, am I not like a wealthy visitor to the V&A, walking right past the donation boxes to take advantage of the free admission?
William has money. No, he’d correct me—we have money. His family had been in dire straits when his mother passed on. He’d barely been able to keep Thorne Manor, which had always been the family’s holiday house, with their primary residence in London. William had taken what little capital he still owned and invested in . . . well, he invested in me. In my words. In what he remembered me talking about when we’d been teenagers, all the advances of the twentieth century.
William figured out what industries would become most important, what new inventions were likely to succeed, and while he made a few ill-timed choices, his instincts and his intelligence were enough to make him a wealthy man, all his family’s debts repaid with a cash flow that would be the envy of his peers.
Ask William what he does with this fortune, and he’ll joke that he uses it very wisely—to allow him to hole up in his beloved moors, with his beloved horses, playing the reclusive eccentric and never needing to set foot in London except by choice. That’s true, but he also uses it for good. To help where he can in High Thornesbury.
How do I follow his example—which I desperately want to do—without interfering in history? Or, in worrying about interfering, will I do less good than I could?
These are the thoughts that have me tossing and turning. I wake with a few ideas for other ways to help Mary, but it doesn’t solve the problem long term. That I still need to figure out for myself.
The next day passes in a whirlwind of activity. Mary comes, and while I make suggestions for her future, I can tell none of them are what she wants. I offer to help set her up in a proper dress shop, but there isn’t enough of a market for it in High Thornesbury, and she doesn’t want to move away. I offer to hire her to sew our baby clothes and a new post-pregnancy wardrobe for me, which is great, but what comes after that?
She listens to my suggestions and tells me they’re very good and she’ll pay them proper consideration. But I hear the hesitation in her words. I see her disappointment, too. It’s not as if she’s asked for something outrageous. Just a modest position that we’ll need filled anyway. My reluctance must feel like rejection, no matter how much I assure her it is no reflection on her.
After my dress fitting, Mary takes the gown into another room to make alterations. Once the dress is done, it’s time to get ready. Mary helps with that, as she did the night of my private ball with William. I might argue that I don’t need a maid, but for an evening out, Victorian style demands at least one extra pair of hands. As Mary helps, she temporarily forgets her disappointment, and begins chattering away, sharing all the local gossip.
It takes nearly two hours to get ready. First come all the layers of dress, made that much more difficult by my belly. I’m thankful I’m only six months along. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to find formal dress if I were in my eighth month. I suppose the answer there is that if I were in my eighth month, I wouldn’t be going to a ball. I have a feeling I should enjoy this side of the stitch as much as I can over the holidays, because not long into the new year, I’ll want to be in the twenty-first century, where no one will blink at me going out in public with a basketball under my shirt.
Once I’m dressed, it’s time for primping—the makeup and the hair and the jewelry. Tonight I wear the Thorne jewels. The necklace is a huge sapphire pendant circled with diamonds, more diamonds hanging from it. Even the chain is encrusted in diamonds. The ring is gold inlaid with a large sapphire flanked by diamonds. And the bracelet, not surprisingly, is more diamonds and more sapphires.
A fortune in jewels, passed from generation to generation, a symbol of continuity and former wealth, a reminder that the Thornes are a very old and very close-knit family. When his parents’ debt had been at its worst, William had been on the brink of doing the unthinkable: selling a piece of the set. That’s when he concocted the desperate ploy of using what little capital he had left to invest in the future I’d described. Now I hold the jewels in trust for the next generation.
When I’m finally dressed and ready, I look in the mirror and my breath catches, as it did the first time I saw myself in a proper ballgown. There’s a fantasy fulfilled here, one featured in a thousand historical-romance novels, our intrepid young heroine dressing for the ball where she will meet the man of her dreams.