Barbara Erskine 3-Book Collection: Lady of Hay, Time’s Legacy, Sands of Time. Barbara Erskine

lit the grill and put two pizzas under it. ‘Where it is possible to substantiate things, apparently they are usually uncannily accurate. I’m going to check as much as I can. Is there any whisky left?’

      ‘I’ll get it. Have you any books on costume? What is a – what was it, a pelisson, for instance?’

      She shrugged. ‘A pelisse is a kind of cloak I think.’ She took some tomatoes out of the fridge and began to slice them as Nick reappeared with the whisky bottle and a dictionary. Moments later he looked up. ‘Pelisse is here. You’re right. But no pelisson. Perhaps I misheard. Are you going up to the library tomorrow?’

      She nodded. ‘I’m going to check everything, Nick. Absolutely everything.’

      He leant against the worktop watching her, relieved that she seemed calmer and more like herself. Her face was beginning to look less pinched. ‘I wonder if Matilda really existed?’ he said at last. ‘And you read about her somewhere. Either that or she’s a fictional heroine or was in a TV film or a comic or a strip cartoon when you were a child, or perhaps a film you saw when you were about two years old and have completely forgotten with your conscious mind.’

      ‘And all my wealth of detail is pure Cecil B. De Mille?’ She laughed, ruefully. ‘All your theories have been put forward before. Mainly by sceptics like me!’

      ‘Well, if it isn’t any of those what is it?’ He stared down at the glass in his hands. ‘Have you considered the fact that Bennet could be right, Jo? That reincarnation could exist?’

      She shook her head thoughtfully. ‘No, I can’t believe that. There must be a perfectly good explanation which does not strain one’s credulity that much, and I intend to try and find it. Perhaps Matilda is my alter ego. The woman I would have liked to have been. Have you thought of that?’

      He set down his glass and put his arms around her waist. ‘I hope not. All those swords and guts and things. No, you told me the premises you’d be working on in your article, Jo, and that tape hasn’t made me change my mind about a thing you said. It’s all fantasy, you’re right. Whose, I’m not sure. But that is all it is. It’s none the less dangerous for that, but there is nothing supernatural about what happened to you.’

      She released herself with a frown and reached to lower the gas. ‘All the same, I’m not starting to write the article, Nick. Not without asking a great many more questions. It wouldn’t be fair to anyone.’ She reached down two plates and put them to warm. ‘Here, let me make a salad to go with these. Neither Bennet nor Walton was a fake, Nick. I was wrong to think it. They didn’t ask any leading questions. Bennet didn’t influence my “dream” in any way. If he had I’d have heard on the tape. Look, if there is any period of history I would say that I should like to identify with at all it would be the Regency. If he’d been a fraud he would have found that out in two minutes.’ She poured vinegar and oil into a jar and reached for the pepper mill. ‘I dare say I could have re-enacted a dozen Georgette Heyer novels. I read everything of hers I could lay my hands on when I was a teenager. But he didn’t ask. He didn’t guide me at all. Here, give this a shake. Instead I find myself in medieval Wales. With people talking Welsh all round me, for God’s sake!’

      Nick shook up the dressing and poured it over the salad. ‘If it was Welsh,’ he said quietly, ‘God knows what it was you said. If you had jumped up and down shouting Cymru am byth I might have been able to substantiate it!’

      ‘Where did you learn that?’ she laughed.

      ‘Rugger. I don’t mess about when I go to Twickenham you know, it’s very educational.’ He touched her cheek lightly. ‘Good to see you laughing. It’s not like our Jo to get upset.’

      She pushed a plate at him. ‘As Dr Bennet pointed out, it’s not every day that “our Jo” witnesses a full-dress massacre, even in a nightmare,’ she retorted.

      They ate in the living room. ‘Bach to eat by,’ said Nick, putting his plate down and riffling through the stack of records. ‘To restore the equilibrium.’

      She did not argue. It meant they didn’t have to talk; it meant she needn’t even think. She let the music sweep over her, leaving her food almost untouched as she lay back on the sofa, her feet up, and closed her eyes.

      When she opened them again the sky was dark outside the French windows onto the balcony. The music had finished and the room was silent. Nick was sitting watching her in the light of the single desk lamp.

      ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ she asked indignantly. ‘What time is it?’

      ‘Eleven. Time you were in bed. You look exhausted.’

      ‘Don’t dictate, Nick. It’s time you went, for that matter,’ she said sharply.

      ‘Wouldn’t you like me to stay?’

      She pushed herself up on her elbow. ‘No. You and I are finished, remember? You have to go back to your cosy love nest with the talented Miss Curzon. What was it you said on the phone, “working late” – she won’t believe it, you know, if you stay away all night!’

      ‘I don’t much care what she believes at the moment, Jo. I am more concerned about you,’ Nick said. He stood up and turned on the main light. ‘I don’t think you should be alone tonight.’

      ‘In case I have nightmares?’

      ‘Yes, in case you have nightmares. This has shaken you up more than you realise, and I think someone should be here. I’ll sleep here on the sofa if the idea of me in your bed offends you, but I’m going to stay!’

      She stood up furiously. ‘Like hell you are!’ Then abruptly her shoulders slumped. ‘Oh God, Nick, you’re right. I do want you to stay. I want you to hold me.’

      He put his arms round her gently and caressed her hair. ‘The trouble with you, Jo, is that when you’re nice, you’re very, very nice, but –’

      ‘I know, I know. And when I’m horrid you hate and detest me. And I’m usually horrid.’ She forced herself to smile. ‘Well, tonight I’m being nice. But it is only for one night, Nick. Everything will be back to normal tomorrow.’

      In bed they lay for a long time in silence. Then Nick raised himself on one elbow and looked down at her in the faint light which filtered through the blind from the street lamp in the mews.

      ‘Jo,’ he said softly. ‘You haven’t told me yet about Richard.’

      She stiffened. ‘Richard?’

      ‘Your lover in that castle. He was your lover, wasn’t he?’

      Restlessly she moved her head sideways so he could not see her face. ‘I don’t know. It wasn’t me, Nick! He left the castle. He wasn’t there at the end. I don’t know what happened next. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know.’ Agitated, she tried to push him away, but he caught her wrist, forcing it back against the pillow so that she had to face him.

      ‘You’re planning to see Bennet again, aren’t you?’

      She shook her head violently. ‘No, of course I’m not.’

      ‘Are you sure?’

      Something in his voice made her stare up into his face, trying to see the expression in his eyes.

      ‘For God’s sake don’t do it. It’s dangerous. Far more dangerous than you or Bennet realise. Your life could be in danger, Jo.’ His voice was harsh.

      She smiled. ‘Now that is melodramatic. Are you suggesting I could be locked in the past forever?’ She reached up and tugged his hair playfully. ‘You idiot, it doesn’t work that way. People always wake up in the end.’

      ‘Do they?’ He lay back on the pillow. ‘Just make sure you’ve got your facts right, Jo. I know it’s your proud boast that you always do, but just this once you could be wrong.’