Nothing But Time (11 page)

Why did she wear it that way?  Why did she walk and talk and move like she did?  They were questions he wanted answers to
though he couldn’t say why
.  She roused a curiosity in him, an intrigue that he had
n’t
felt in a very long time.  But
Harrowby
knew in his position as master of this house, that he couldn’t continue fraternizing with the help.  It would cause talk and gossip among the staff and bring speculation down upon
Kate
that could make
her
life very uncomfortable here and if he had understood her well enough, she had nowhere else to go.

Therefore,
he should leave her alone,
the earl
told himself once again.  Let her lose herself into the bowels of this mausoleum of a house and he wouldn’t have to see her again.  It was what he should do, what he
knew
he should do, but still…

“
Miss Kallastad?”
A pause.  “
Kate
?”

“Yes, Brand?”
S
he stopped and looked at him over her shoulder, her cat-like green
eyes
reflecting the sunlight from the windows as she stared at him in that disconcertingly direct fashion she had.

A
thousand questions sw
am
through his mind.  Things he wanted to ask.  Answers he desperately wanted to know.  He wanted to know her.  It was inappropriate given his role as her employer.  Wrong
,
given the expectations that were facing him.

Shaking himself back into the role of earl,
Harrowby
simply said,
“It was nice talking to you, as well.”

Kate flashed him a rueful smile and left
,
shaking her head
…
.

…as if,
she knew those were not the words he wanted to say.

A week later

After another week, Kate was finally feeling as if she had her new position firmly under control.  She took her duties seriously
,
completing her work so industriously that Hendricks had finally
given her a nod of satisfaction. 
Kate felt the gesture as the greatest praise of her life.  She was
also
making friends among the staff
, Marta in particular. 

Sunday
rolled around again and Kate rarely saw
Brand again in all that time
–
usually from a distance and only a time or two in passing.  They didn’t speak again
, but all the girls explained that that was simply how it was supposed to be.  They were meant to be unseen unless called upon to perform a duty.  Brand did not call upon her or anyone else.

Rumors abounded though.  There was speculation regarding Harrowby’s abilities to command the earldom as it should be
.  S
olicitors and estate managers spent hours at a time locked in the earl’s office with him. 
To Kate it all sounded like the typical workplace chatter, gossiping about the state of the business and the boss.  She tried not to take part in it but couldn’t stop herself from occasionally defending the earl
, saying that she was sure that Harrowby was just being shown the ropes and would do fine.
 

He would, too.  She’d seen it in his eyes, that fortitude against failure.  She recognized it because she’d seen that same look in the mirror every morning on her own face.  Kate liked that about him.  Even disliking his ‘job’ so to speak, he was still determined to do it well.

While the others went off to church
that Sunday morning
, Kate lingered around the house wondering if Brand might se
ek
her out again
.  She’
d
been insanely hoping all week for some sign from him that he liked her as much as she’d liked him.  That he was as irresistibly drawn as
she was
. 
But as she had been for days,
Kate
was disappointed.

Her morning remained quietly uninterrupted.

It was for the best,
Kate
supposed.  It wasn’t good in any time
period
to have the hots for your boss.  She should be thanking Brand for maintaining a distance between them
…
but she wasn’t.  She wanted to see him again, talk to him.  Kate wagered the earl was a pretty interesting guy once you got to know him.

Shaking her head, Kate
left the service entrance of the mansion
turning back to look up at the old place.  It was really very stunning, she thought.  She could feel the ancient romance of the
mansion
just weeping out of the mortar.  She stroked an ivy leaf between her fingers. 
That age and authenticity was something that homeowners in Edina tried to duplicate
when creating
a new house that looked like an English country manor but this was the real deal.

When asked at the dinner table, one of the older footmen had told Kate that
Christopher Wren had designed
the original portion of the house
and
it had been
built in the late 1600
s during the time of William and Mary.  It had been added to several times since then, the
E
arls of Harrowby had always done their utmost to maintain the original styling of the building.  Ramble House
was
aptly named since those additions spread so freely from the center.

Tuning
away from the red brick building, Kate took in the view that had so caught her attention that first day. 
Summertime in southern England set the rolling hills and trees into a landscape from a storybook. 
For all the
structured formality in the front
of Ramble House with its pristine lawns, reflecting pool and neat gravel drive, the rear gardens and lawns looked like Mother Nature had
been set willfully free
.  With its willows, flowering scrubs and rolling lawns, it was a fairytale wilderness.  However, those almost two hundred acres, she found out to her dismay, had been carefully thought out by some landscape architect a hundred years before. 

Well, he’d done a good job whoever he was, Kate admitted as she wandered down the terrace steps to a balustrade that marked a steep decline in the lawns and more fully overlooked the vista there
which included a lovely and surprisingly man-made lake
and beyond the slow, sl
eepy wind
of the Thames
. 

It was a
warm summer morning, perfect for Kate to stretch her legs.
  Taking a path to the right, she strode along, her shoes crunching against the gravel until she was lost within the enchanted wood.

***

An hour later,
Kate
emerged from the
paths onto the lawns once more.  T
hough she
was still on the rear side
of
Ramble House
, t
he mansion was a fair distance off now, perched high on the slope, the sun beginning to fa
ll lower in the sky behind it.
She was on the far side of the lake
now
and closer to the river
.  To her left, a small arched bridge allowed a shorter return
over a narrow
ed neck in
the lake
, but Kate turned to the right to take the longer route back.

It had been a nice walk.  The silence of the wood had been soothing allowing Kate some time to think on things that the business of her day and constant company of her roommates had pushed to the rear of her mind.  She thought again of home; her parents, her ambitions.  She missed it still, perhaps more than ever.  As hard as she worked here, there was little to challenge Kate beyond the physical.  She
had grown up with high expectations from her parents and, while at one point those expectations seemed a terrible burden to bear, she had come to appreciate being held to a high
er
standard.  She’d learned to strive to do more, be more.

Now there wasn’t a goal to aim for and Kate felt
drained by the possibility that this might be it for her.  And, if that were the case, what could she do to feel as if she served s
ome real purpose in the world? 
Kate knew she couldn’t be aimlessly content, not because a person couldn’t be happy that way but because she wasn’t raised that way. 

Whether her parents had done her a favor or disse
rvice could be debated.  In 2012
– no.  In 1876 – maybe so.

If only they had known!  Kate chuckled
aloud
with a shake of her head.

She continued to stroll
the perimeter of the large
lake
enjoying the silence and
warm
breeze of
summer
as it wove through her loose hair
,
sans
bonnet or binding
.  Occasionally, she stooped to pick up a couple
of
rocks and toss them into the water breaking the smooth surface with the expanding
ripples each stone produced. 
She watched the ripples wave outward until they melted away all the while thinking about how time was lapsing just as quickly.

A month.

Logically, it was difficult to believe
that she’d been here so long when
it also seemed as if she’d been here forever.  She was melding into the life she found here as if she knew her future was here. 
S
he’d almost lost the will to hope.

  Was everyone back in 201
2
as unaware as
David
claimed or were her parents frantic over her disappearance?  She certainly wished for the latter.  Nothing would give her greater pain tha
n
causing such anguish for the people who loved her.  Still she missed them terribly.

Kate gave a little snort.  Funny how, when she could see them any time she wanted, she didn’t think about missing them often, but now that she was a lifetime away, the longing to see them dug its talons deeply into her.  She swore that the moment she got back to her own time,
if
she ever did,
she would hop the next flight back home and make sure they
all
knew how much she loved them.

But she wasn’t going back, the more realistic part of her mind argued. 
David’s
idea of
fashioning new cables
wasn’t working, the parts in this time simply weren’t viable for
it
. 
He
wasn’t going to
be able to do it
.  She needed
to face that undeniable fact.

And even if he did
get it working
, right now he didn’t even know where to find her.  She would need to write him a letter – at this, Kate chuckled again – it had been a decade at least since she had actually put pen to paper to write a letter to someone.

But she should write… just in case. 

Her chuckle became a snort.  Who was she kidding?  She had spent two weeks watching failure after failure build up on
David
’s workbench
and he hadn’t even yet begun to think about recreating the metal panels the siphon needed to be attached to
.  Was there really any point fantasizing about what might be? 
She’d always been one to accept what was given to her and work with it.  That part of her was saying that the
nineteenth
century was where she was and where she was going to stay.  Kate needed to learn
to live with that now.

Her
reality was that she was a working class woman in Victorian England with few prospects for a better future
…
unless she was inclined some day to take after the other girls and seek out a husband to support her through the winter of her life.  It was a concept that rubbed Kate’s independent streak the wrong way.  She couldn’t think about what she had lost.  Would not!  She refused to dwell in the past and wallow in her misery.

Kate
refused to admit that doing so terrified her and broke her heart for the loss of all that once was.
  It was a bad habit she had, that denial.  It was one thing she’d never been able to confront openly in her life – disappointment. 
It was easy to say she was a realist, to
be
one when everything went her way.  Disappointment was rare. 
She’d gotten into the habit when she failed at something or things didn’t go her way to just push it aside as if it never happened.

Logic told her that if she couldn’t
reject
the truth of where and when she was, that there was no reason to deny her fears and misgivings. 

They were human
feelings. 

Natural.  Understandable.

No
, her mind argued
irrationally.  I
n this
case,
d
enial was working out pretty good for her so far.