“If you go back you might want to remain there,” Nora said. “You have nothing to pull you back to the present time.”
“I have a book contract and due dates and a desk covered with bills that need to be paid,” I said, joking.
But Nora didn’t laugh. “You must not do this. You must promise me. It is dangerous.”
“But there’s a possibility that she’s a ghost!”
“Ghosts are very unhappy spirits and you are not the one to deal with them,” she said sternly.
Thirty-nine years old and I started whining. “But I saw a talk show on TV and lots of people have done it. It’s ordinary. In California—”
“You are not ordinary,” she said with quite a bit of spirit. “What has happened to you in the past is not ordinary.”
She took a breath and calmed herself, and secretly I was a bit glad she’d lost her cool. “Hayden,” she said, “I know you do not believe me when I tell you these things about karma and curses, but they are true. You must let nature take its course.”
“I’m to wait three lifetimes until I get to see Jamie, is that it? I’m to spend this life and the next and the next alone without him?” There are times when sanity plays no part in one’s life and this was one of them. I was like a child begging its mother for a piece of candy. I want Jamie and I want him now! is what I was demanding of her.
“Come in tomorrow and we’ll talk. I’ll explain things more fully to you then. Until then just rest and”—she paused—“and stop eating.”
At that I stuck my tongue out at the telephone and hung up. There should be rules to govern psychics; they would be allowed to look in some areas of your life but not in others. Eating habits would be definitely off limits.
Ill manners aside, I didn’t feel any better than I had before I talked to her. However, I did decide she was right about the eating. I decided to make myself a salad. I took down my largest serving bowl, then cleaned out the refrigerator, adding high-calorie Chinese sesame noodles to the bowl along with enough lettuce to feed a couple of rabbits. Nuts and tiny pieces of fried bread added to flavor, then I smothered it all with half a bottle of dressing.
If I didn’t do something to break this mood soon I was going to have a bit of a weight problem I thought as I dug in and went back to the TV.
I think everything would have been all right, that is, I would have obeyed Nora, except for two things happening. One was that I tripped over a book and the other was that Milly called.
I can assure you that if you are near me, tripping over a book is a given. I own thousands, and I mean that literally, thousands of books. They are everywhere: on shelves, tables, on the floor, under tables. Everywhere. For the most part, people are horrified by the number of books scattered around me. Except for Daria. When Daria comes to visit, I have to straighten up or she’ll spend all her time rummaging through my books and pay no attention to me.
So, anyway, tripping over a book that caught on my bathrobe was nothing unusual. But when I picked it up I saw that it was a book I’d bought years before in a town in Wales that, in an effort to bring in tourists, gave itself the title of Most Bookstores in the World. I’m sure that slogan would draw tourists in America, right?
The book was an 1898 copy of Debrett’s Peerage.
So far I hadn’t been able to find out too many details about Lady de Grey’s husband and his family—or her family for that matter—because the title had become extinct. But in 1898 it was still active.
Eagerly, I tore through the book to find the family title. Sometimes Debrett’s told how people died; they frequently gave dates that other books didn’t. Maybe in here I’d learn some truly useful information.
What I found was not what I’d expected. What I found just about knocked the wind out of me.
Right there in black and white, on page 645 was something that shocked me. But it was shocking only to me.
Lady de Grey’s husband’s full name was Adam Tavistock, Lord de Grey.
8
What happened after that was all Milly’s fault. She, along with ninety-nine percent of all romance writers, lives somewhere in Texas. I say “somewhere” because I figure life is too short to try to comprehend Texas. When I want to go to Texas for some romance writers’ get-together I call my publicist and she sends me a ticket. I get on a plane and land somewhere in Texas. There are only two cities in the state: one called Houston and one called Dallas. One city has a mall called the Galleria and one doesn’t.
Basically, I’m not sure where Milly lives. It’s outside the city that does not have the mall, which I’m sure is why I met her in the first place. Otherwise I would have been shopping.
Nora said that in a past life Milly was and was not my mother. I can believe it. On our passports, I’m older than Milly but she is what Nora calls an “old soul.” She lives alone and writes the sweetest, gentlest romances you can imagine. Her heroines are noble and good and live on farms and enter pies in the county fair, as opposed to my heroines who ride black stallions and wave swords around.
I called Milly and started telling her what was going on in my life. My two friends, Daria and Milly, are so different. Daria has a lightning-quick brain and the attention span of a three-year-old. To make her laugh you have to be genuinely original, with a fast and perfect delivery. Anything less bores her. Daria keeps you on your toes.
Milly’s more the let’s-make-cookies-and-talk-about-it type. So that night after I found out that my “soul mate” had the same name as all the divine men I’ve written books about, Milly suggested I come visit her in her Texas city.
A few days later I went to Milly’s house. That’s when she told me she’d invited a few friends to dinner. I must say I was a bit hurt by this because I wanted Milly’s undivided attention to listen to my problems about my life and my book. I’m ashamed to say that Milly’s limitless kindness always brings out my most selfish side. Unfortunately, shame doesn’t stop selfishness (I’d learned that on Oprah).
However, I did cheer up a bit when Milly told me that she’d invited to dinner a man who does past life regressions.
Have you ever done something in your life that you know is wrong before you do it yet you still can’t stop yourself?
I hadn’t told Milly all of my story; in fact I’d told her very little in the few days it had taken to arrange my trip to visit her. I’d sort of, well, left out the part about Nora. It was one thing to visit a psychic in private and hear all about soul mates and love that is actually hate, but it’s another to say the words out loud in the light of day.
I’d sort of skirted the issue and told Milly a story about Jamie, then researching and finding this man named Tavistock, then seeing a past life regressionist on TV. I could have told the true story to Daria because she’s more into entertainment than truth, but Milly believes anything anyone tells her.
But now I was going to be spending the evening with a hypnotist and there was no Nora around to tell me not to do this thing that I wanted to do so much. If I saw Jamie—I mean, Adam—I could warn him about…I don’t know what I’d warn him about because I knew little more than the date of their deaths, but I knew that I’d love him. If I saw Jamie I would love him, not hate him as people said Hortense hated her husband.
While Milly and I waited for the man to arrive, I could hardly keep my mind on what she was talking about, which was contracts and money, of course, what all writers talk about. I kept looking at the door and thinking I heard the bell.
When he and three women finally did arrive, I was beside myself with excitement and had to work to stay calm enough to eat dinner. I thought the meal would take forever and by the time we left the table I was ready to scream.
For the sake of brevity I’m going to forgo writing how I think New Yorkers and Texans are the same people but with different accents—it’s why they hate each other.
Nora once told me that in order to be hypnotized all one had to do was want to go under. By the time Milly’s regression
ist got started I desperately wanted to see Jamie.
As I stretched out on the Victorian chaise in Milly’s living room, the man, wearing jeans and cowboy boots, said, “Is there a special life you’d like to look at?” His eyes were twinkling in that way that let me know he knew something he’d sworn not to tell but couldn’t resist letting me know he knew. Sweet, well-meaning, trusting Milly sometimes had a big mouth.
“There is…” I took a breath and bucked up my courage. “There is a man I want to see.”
“Ah…,” he said in that smug, all-knowing, all-hateable way men have. They are all convinced that all a woman really wants in life is a man. I guess we women could prove them wrong by running the world without them, but then we’d be a world full of fat, hairy women and who wants to look at that?
I kept my mouth shut as I lay back on the chaise and thought how much I wanted to see him. I wanted to see Jamie. I wanted to see the real Tavistock.
As the man’s voice lulled me into another world, I thought, I want to see…I want to see…Tally.
9
It was a delicious feeling, leaving my body behind and just floating. I’d read a lot about out-of-body experiences and they’d never really appealed to me before, but this did. No worries, no pain, no anger, just sort of drifting along.
I was pulled up short when suddenly there was a bright light and I found myself in a bedroom that looked like something out of one of my books. Or maybe out of one of my dreams of heaven. It was English country decorating at its best: a four-poster bed dripping mossy green silk, walls covered with hand-painted Chinese wallpaper, and furniture that was new antiques—new where I was but old now.
I looked down because I seemed to be hovering up in a corner of the room and I had no body. I was just sort of energy. And I figured the less I thought of that the better. Think of it as a movie, I thought. You’re not crazy, you’re watching a movie.
There were three people in the room, all of them with their backs to me. One was a maid dressed in a pretty little black dress with a white apron. She was silently and efficiently helping a woman standing in front of a long mirror into an Edwardian morning gown, something a lady put on before she put on the other six or so gowns she would wear that day.
To my right was a girl, about fifteen or so, her long chestnut hair hanging down her back, and wearing a cute little dress designed for a child of no more than about six. Truthfully, it was refreshing to see a teenager in something other than black leather and heels.
I wanted to absorb all that I could see. I wanted to soak it up, like getting into a tub filled with hot water and sweet-smelling oil.
But as I was looking at everything, trying to memorize it to use in my next book, the woman in front of the mirror turned and looked straight at me. I didn’t think she could see me, because I didn’t seem to be able to see myself, but she sure felt something.
I held my breath as she looked toward me and I looked at her. Can you imagine what you’d feel if you could see yourself in another time period? Wouldn’t you be overwhelmed with curiosity?
I was.
In the books I’d read about the Marlborough House set, I’d read that Lady de Grey was a great beauty. But what that meant was that she was a beauty compared to the other society women. What about some shop girl who would have made it in a big way if the Edwardians had had high-fashion modeling and movie starlets?
All in all, I was disappointed with “myself.” As a child I hated my looks. I am blonde to the point of being colorless and much to my mother’s very vocal ill temper, I started wearing makeup at about age twelve. Just a bit at first but I gradually increased the amount until I would rather have been seen naked than without three shades of eye shadow, dark pencil, and lots of mascara. Now, I could see that “my” lashes had been darkened and there was a bit of color to this woman’s lips but to my eyes her face was still too pale. Cindy Crawford had no worries.
Oh well, I thought, it wasn’t any of my business. I was an observer and nothing else.
“Catherine?” I heard the girl say, “are you all right?”
“Yes,” the woman who was maybe me whispered, but she kept looking toward where I was and I knew she felt me very strongly.
Where is Jamie? I wondered, because he was the one I really wanted to see. It was all well and good getting to see myself but now I wished she’d leave the room and go see him.
But no one looked as though she was going to move. The maid was staring at Catherine—I thought her name was Hortense—the girl was also looking at her, and Catherine was looking at me, but I couldn’t be seen.
Then, suddenly, several things began to happen at once. A few other people seemed to enter my head at the same time. First of all I could hear Milly’s Texas hypnotist calling me to return.
“She’s really under deep,” I heard him say. “Hayden? Hayden? Can you hear me? Milly, why don’t you call her to come back?”
I heard Milly’s sweet voice entreating me to return, but there was something else in it that let me know that she wanted me to do whatever made me happy. If it had been Daria calling me I would have been back in that Texas living room in a flash. Daria would have said, “Where are your pages!?” and if that didn’t work, she would have said, “Hayden, how about a new contract?” and then, for sure, I would have returned.
But instead, I heard Milly’s voice and I felt no urgency to return. I had come to see Jamie and I meant to see him.
At the same time that I began to hear Milly and the Texan, I felt the oddest little pulling from the blonde woman, who was staring at me. I felt that this woman was asking me to help her. She seemed to be telling me that she needed me.
And there was something else. It took me a while to figure out the emotion I was feeling, but she was afraid of something—or someone.
Not this, I thought. Not someone needing help and being afraid. The combination is something I can’t resist. For all that I try to keep my image of being strong and crusty, I am a sucker for the underdog. How many new, frightened authors have I taken under my wing, then gently kicked their behinds until they were asking for more money and more publicity from their publishing houses? (Daria got extremely annoyed with me once when I did this to one of her authors, so now I only do it to authors from other houses—much to the delight of my dear publisher, William Warren.)
Anyway, I could feel that this woman needed me, so I sort of allowed myself to drift toward her. After all, wouldn’t it be great for my books for me to see what was inside the head of a real, live Edwardian woman?
I drifted and she pulled and I felt Milly’s voice growing weaker.
And then it happened!
As best I can describe it, my mind merged with hers, and for those first seconds, it was heavenly. I wonder if this is how Nora feels, I thought as I looked into the woman’s mind and felt all the rules and more rules that she had floating about in there. She had rules governing dress and deportment, names of rank and people, lots of information that means nothing to us today. Everything that was in the woman’s head was very proper, which made me smile rather smugly.
But then I again sensed that fear. The woman was afraid of something but I had no idea what.
I had every intention of leaving her mind. Honest, I did. But one second I was myself even though—if this can be imagined—I was inside the head of another woman, and the next second the woman had retreated. She was still there, I could feel her, but now I was in the forefront. It was as though the captain of the ship had stepped aside and allowed the first mate to pilot the boat.
“No!” I managed to say, the word coming out of the woman’s mouth, then I closed “her” eyes as I did my best to will myself out of her mind. I called to Milly with my mind, but she wasn’t there. I had no more idea how to get out than I did about how I got in in the first place.
All I knew for sure was that I was in trouble.
When I opened my eyes I was standing in front of a mirror wearing a peach-colored dress so cov
ered with froufrou it looked as though it had lost a duel between drunken cake decorators.
And instantly, I knew what had killed Lady de Grey. There was such a pain in my midsection that I could not breathe. With my eyes rolling back into my head, I grabbed my stomach and felt my knees give way under me.
“My lady!” I heard someone gasp just before everything went black before my eyes.
They woke me by putting under my nose a tiny bottle of some acrid stuff that could only be smelling salts. Now, I thought, if I were a true heroine I’d leap up and give everyone a lecture on the advances in modern medicine. But then, just what would a Harvard-educated 1994 doctor do to revive a lady who had just fainted from a too-tight corset? Biopsy something?
Anyway, I woke up, but due to the middle of me being squeezed until I had a waist that an ant would envy, I didn’t leap up and disclaim anyone. In fact, well, it was rather nice having the two women and the avuncular gray-haired man hovering over me. Living alone as I do, when I’m ill all the TLC I get is from the delivery boy at the local grocery when he brings me a bag filled with oranges and tissues. So this solicitude was rather nice.
“There now,” the man said in a tone that only a doctor could get away with. There are some things that even a century can’t change. “I think you’ll be all right now. You ladies do like to tighten your stays.” He turned to the maid. “Next time see that you leave room for her to breathe.”
The maid murmured a “Yes, sir,” but I could see it was only to pacify him. And to think that men think there was a time when women did actually obey them.
“Are you all right?” the young girl on my other side asked as she leaned over me, holding my hand and looking at me as though concerned I might die.