Time Squared

Lesley Krueger

Description

'A richly atmospheric portrait of women s agency and the timelessness of love, Time Squared explores the enduring roles of rights, responsibility, and devotion throughout history The game will change when you remember who you are Robin and Eleanor meet in 1811 at the British estate of Eleanor s rich aunt Clara. Robin is about to leave to fight in the Napoleonic Wars, and her aunt rules out a marriage between them. Everyone Eleanor knows, including Robin, believe they ve always lived in these times. But Eleanor has strange glimpses of other eras, dreams that aren t dreams but memories of other lives. And their time jumps start as their romance deepens. Robin fights in the Boer War, the First and Second World Wars, in Vietnam and Iraq. Meanwhile, Eleanor struggles to figure out what s going on, finally understanding that she and Robin are being manipulated through time. Who is doing this, and why? Arriving in modern times, Eleanor

Informations

• Publié par: Ecw Press
• Date de parution: 28 septembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781773058061
• Langue: English

Extrait

Time Squared A Novel
Lesley Krueger




Contents Dedication Epigraph 1951: Middleford, Connecticut 0 1811: Middleford, Yorkshire 1 2 3 1840: Yorkshire and Kent 4 5 6 1857: London 7 8 1900: Middleford, Yorkshire 9 10 11 October 1914: Middleford, Yorkshire 12 13 May 1915: Sussex, England 14 15 1940: Preston Hall, Kent 16 17 18 1951: Middleford, Connecticut 19 1665: London 20 1589: London 21 61 AD: Londinium 22 1951: Middleford, Connecticut 23 1969: New York City 24 2010: Paris (New York) San Francisco 25 26 2019: Toronto 27 About the Author Copyright


Dedication
For Susan Renouf


Epigraph
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you . . .
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself; (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
—Walt Whitman


1951 Middleford, Connecticut


0
They said the war would be over soon, but they always said that. Not that it was officially a war. A police action, the president said, although the newspapers didn’t agree. The Korean War, they called it.
Eleanor was watching the CBS evening news to get the latest updates. General MacArthur was eagle-eying the North Koreans across the mountains, or at least from his hotel in Japan, where he waggled his cigar at the cameras. Millions of communist Chinese soldiers were marching in, thick red arrows on a map tracing their route. It sounded less threatening in print than it looked on her aunt’s new television set. They called it black and white, but to Eleanor the picture looked black and blue, the world bruised with crisis. More nuclear tests in the Pacific, too. A mushroom cloud bloomed on the television screen, newsreel footage Eleanor had seen before of the beautiful man-made apocalypse.
She got up to turn off the set. It wasn’t just the news; she had a headache. Yet what was going on in the world left her terrified. North Korea invading South Korea, communism fighting capitalism, nuclear weapons always a threat. And her fiancé was in the thick of it, when Eleanor longed for peace and stability after the Second World War. She’d been a child in London during the Blitz, tugged into air-raid shelters, her ears ringing with sirens and wails, learning far too much about fear before she was twelve years old.
She’d also been an adult during the Blitz, and that wasn’t a metaphorical description of a girl who had experienced war. It was the impossible literal truth.
Visions. Eleanor had been having visions lately, some of them brief glimpses of other lives, some long vivid dreams, months going by in a night; all of her dreams, no matter how long, complete immersions in different times when she was herself but life was unimaginably different. She had no idea why this was happening, feeling pushed around by a cosmic mystery. She also had a question: Was this the real time she lived in, or was it just another dream?
“You don’t have a headache, do you?”
Eleanor turned to find her Aunt Clara coming in from town, taking off her gloves, her enviable coat: a fawn-coloured creation she’d stitched together with salvaged mink for the collar and cuffs. Eleanor hadn’t heard the front door close, leaving her no time to prepare for her aunt’s worried frown. She’d tried to explain a little of what was going on—a very little—but that had been enough to frighten Aunt Clara. There was mention of psychologists (psychiatrist being too big a word), perhaps the doctor to wrestle down the headaches.
Since they didn’t have the money at the moment for, let’s say, specialized care, in silent mutual agreement they’d retreated to a diagnosis of migraine and a bottle of Dr. Blyth’s little pills.
“I’ve never had a megrim in my life,” her aunt said. “Migraines, as they insist on calling them here. But I’m aware they take many different forms. Lights and colour, all of that.”
“You have no idea,” Eleanor replied.


1811 Middleford, Yorkshire


1
Eleanor had been dozing, she supposed, and woke cozed against her aunt in the morning room of Goodwood House. A brief moment of disorientation, when she was aware she’d been dreaming but couldn’t remember more than an anxious sense she had to get to a party. A woman was urging her to hurry, hurry. They had to get started.
Some girls lingered on their dreams and fancies, thinking it romantic to show the world a poetic face. But Eleanor pushed them away, believing herself to be a practical young lady, perhaps more willful than she ought to be, but happy with the life she’d been given.
“You’re back, are you?” Aunt Clara asked.
“I don’t know why I dozed,” Eleanor said, elbows on her aunt’s lap. “I slept very well last night. I always do.”
Eleanor lived with Mrs. Crosby at Goodwood, her aunt’s estate in Yorkshire. She was an orphan and her rich aunt’s ward, her mother having died shortly after she was born and her father when she was fifteen. Dr. Crosby had been the well-loved clergyman of Middleford parish, and his death had been deeply painful to Eleanor. But she’d always been close to her aunt, and after her father died, she had only to move across the park from the parsonage to find a new home. Eleanor had lived in Middleford all her life, and both loved and chafed at its rural sleepiness.
Yet Middleford was abuzz lately, with the Mowbrays expecting guests. Two brothers: the eldest heir to an estate in Kent, the younger remarkably handsome. Ladies had started calculating their daughters’ chances even before they’d learned that Edward Denholm would inherit an estate worth ten thousand pounds a year. Meanwhile his brother, Captain Robert Denholm, had come back a hero from the war against Napoleon. Or if he hadn’t, he was very likely to prove a hero when he went.
“Of course,” her aunt said, “you wouldn’t be so bored if the weather didn’t keep away visitors.”
Eleanor rolled her eyes. “The Denholms can stay away, as far as I’m concerned.”
“When they’re actually both rather handsome, my dear?”
“I’m afraid our friends are going to be disappointed. I remember Edward Denholm as thinking too well of himself, while his brother was rather lazy.”
“They weren’t much more than children when you knew them, Eleanor.”
“Well, here’s a question for you, Aunt. Do people change? Or do we remain much the same as we age, even if our circumstances alter?”
Her prevailing question. Eleanor was conscious of not quite fitting into Middleford society. She owed a great deal to the education her father had given her, especially since he’d left her nothing else. But it meant she was usually called clever, and among the ladies of the parish, that wasn’t so much a description as a complaint. Eleanor was passionately fond of her native county and loved to ride and take long walks. But she was often seen with a book in her hand, and some of the ladies went as far as to call her satirical: a criticism she might have avoided if she hadn’t been so pretty.
Eleanor knew she ought to change, teaching herself not to be so impatient. Yet she was happy not to fit in, privately bored by many of the young ladies she’d known all her life and not caring to attract the local heirs: this despite her aunt’s wish that she marry well, and soon. Self-respect was a factor. Eleanor refused to make herself ridiculous to be popular.
“You’ll have ample opportunity to decide,” Mrs. Crosby said. “At least about the Denholms. Lady Anne Mowbray tells me they’re staying for a month.”
Goodwood House was Mrs. Crosby’s principal residence, and one of the prevailing questions among Middleford ladies was whether she’d leave it to her niece.
Mrs. Crosby’s first husband had left her the pleasant but modest estate in Kent where Eleanor had met the Denholm family. Her second husband had left her Goodwood House. They’d never had children, and Eleanor’s father would have inherited the estate if he hadn’t died a year before his brother. Since there wasn’t any entail, nor any other close male relatives, the elder Mr. Crosby had left it entirely to his wife. Despite believing Eleanor to be clever, the parish agreed she ought to inherit Goodwood from her aunt. Eleanor was the last of the local Crosbys. More to the point, she was likely to marry a Middleford son, and whatever reservations they might have had about the girl, the estate was an excellent catch.
Muddying the waters was Mrs. Crosby’s daughter from her first marriage. Henrietta lived in the East Indies with her husband, Mr. Whittaker. No one had any idea what Mr. Whittaker had been promised when taking Hetty off her mother’s hands, although Middleford took hope from the fact she was likely to succumb to the rigours of life on a tea plantation before she could claim the estate, this despite a series of cheerful letters detailing her excellent health.
It was a dark and heavy morning as they sat by the fire, the solid rain keeping Eleanor indoors. After their talk, Mrs. Crosby turned back to her accounts, while Eleanor reopened her book. Poetry. The Lady of the Lake . Reading its rhythmic lines, she might have been sailing a skiff across a choppy pond, especially when rain gusted against the window, rattling the pane.
It wasn’t rain. Hoofbeats pounded toward the door, horses coming to a stop outside.
“Who could be calling in weather like this?” she asked, looking up.
“I would think the young gentlemen,” her aunt replied. “Arriving early.”
Mrs. Crosby closed her accounts and looked at Eleanor complacently. “You’ve put yourself together well this morning. But then, you always do.