Page 115 of The Girl Out of Time
Shock and gratefulness and a strange kind of happiness boiled inside Emmeline. So Louisa had been right—Theo made Lord Grey back off. And he would’ve sacrificed himself for her at the time when she’d been so horrible, when she didn’t even deserve him?
“But he didn’t want the pendant back,” Theo continued saying to Maria, eyebrows drawing into a frown. “He said Wescott could have it. Now it makes sense.”
Maria nodded. “Edward wanted it to be over. As do I. I believe I’m quite done with that chapter.”
“But you …” Emmeline went to her. “I don’t understand whatI’msupposed to do. Can’t I fix it? Can’t I go find you in the past and bring you back—”
“I’ve lived my life.” Maria took her hands in reassurance. “And I have some regrets, yes—that I left Edward instead of trying to fight for him, against the society, against the world. But I’ve also lived a fun, exciting life; the kind I never imagined before the day you sent me into the past. You don’t need to try to give me another life, Miss Marshall. I’ve had one, and I used it to the best of my abilities.”
“What about your father? Your family?”
“Someone always loses,” Maria said. “I’ve shed many tears for them, and I’m sure they’ve shed many for me. But they’ll move on. Time will help them.”
Emmeline frowned at Maria’s blasé attitude, then scolded herself for it. Was she any better? She left her family, too. She begged at that time unknown forces to let her go somewhere else, anywhere else, away from her family.
“You’ll never get a perfect life,” Maria said. “One without any mistakes made, any hurt caused or received. Even if you try to cheat to achieve it.”
Maria couldn’t have known everything about Emmeline’s past, but the words still struck her straight into the core. She’d been annoyed at her family, but at the time, all she could see was that frustration—over her dad trying to govern her life, her mother trying to make her into a perfect lady, her brothers being the real menaces and getting away with it. Like her, her family had flaws, too. And yet, she loved them to no end, and all she wanted was to see them again and tell them that.
Which reminded her of another problem, and her stomach squeezed. “You never had any powers, did you?”
“They say I’m rather good at cards,” Maria mused. “But powers like yours—no. Everything in that book, Lady Scarlet’s jumping from time to time—it was based only on what had happened to me, spiced up with a bit of imagination.”
“Then you can’t tell me how to control them. How to even gain them back!”
Maria shook her head. “Only you can figure that out.”
“But how? I’ve tried everything. Bad emotions, good emotions, focusing on objects connected to places or people … Sometimes one thing works, and the other time, it doesn’t.”
“When I go off the path sometimes,” Maria said, “when I lose sight of my goal when I’m writing, I try to think back. So much can get lost in the middle, but two things are the most important for me to know: the beginning and the end.”
“I already know how I got here.” Emmeline scrunched up her nose. “So I have to find the end? But how? Life isn’t predictable.”
“You’ll figure it out.” Maria patted her shoulder.
“But if you can’t travel in time,” Theo said, “How were you able to write those puzzles? Send us to Plymouth, when Bonaparte only arrived there on theBellerophonafter Emmeline had already sent you to the past?”
“Oh, right.” Maria turned back and picked up a small beaded purse from the chaise lounge. “I believe this is yours.”
Emmeline accepted it with numbed fingers. The purse she’d lost at the castle ruins, the one Louisa had lent her. It looked older, weathered, a few of the beads fallen off, and silk scuffed at the sides. The purse that had gone thirty years into the past and came back to her.Incredible.
“I found it on the night of the masquerade ball. In it was a folded newspaper article about theBellerophonand Bonaparte, and a pamphlet about the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum. I only needed to add a few other things I knew myself, and the puzzles were born.”
“Of course,” Emmeline breathed. “Youweren’t obsessed with Bonaparte. Louisa is!”
Maria gave her an amused grin. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind … I’m not as spry as I used to be, but I still have a ball to attend. I heard there were waltzes scheduled tonight. Always wanted to try one.” She smiled, spread her fan, and sauntered through the door.
Silence descended on the room, heavy with swirling thoughts. In another time, Emmeline would rattle off her predictions to Theo, like that daywhen they were returning from another masquerade ball, buzzing from the excitement and surprise of the experience, and she weaved in the plot threads in her head, and he followed.
But it was all over now. The threads have been knitted together, and they have been torn apart.
“I need to return to the ball,” she said. “Sebastian and Louisa will be worried about me.”
Theo nodded. “I should go. I …” He looked down the hallway, where Maria had left, then back at Emmeline—but instead of the despair she’d expected in his eyes, there was determination. “I have something important to do.”
Chapter 29
By the time he made it back to Wescott’s residence, Theo’s emotions were broiling. He paused in the foyer, deliberating. His heart urged him to confront Wescott now, while Maria Grey’s words were still fresh in his mind. He only had one life. Was he going to throw it away because someone else had decided it for him?
