“He’d been cast as Mr. Knightley in a new production ofEmma,” she told Brandon. “When he learned I wrote my dissertation on how Jane Austen’s writing influenced nineteenth-century domestic trends, he started picking my brain for insight into Jane Austen’s world. He wanted my business card and I gave it to him. I didn’t expect to ever hear from him,but two days later he contacted me, offering a chance to be the historical consultant on the film.”
The job of the historical consultant was to read the script, looking for historical missteps or anything that didn’t belong in an 1815 setting. She would be expected to work with the crew to make recommendations on details like what sort of card games the characters should play, what the chime of a clock would sound like, and the proper way to hold a teapot.
“I suggested that while I knew Jane Austen quite well, surely there were others somewhere in the United Kingdom that were more fluent in such details.”
Brandon nodded. “I confess, I always thought hiring an American seemed a bit odd since the British are sticklers for excruciating accuracy in everything relating to Jane Austen.”
“It should have been my first clue,” Alice admitted. “The costume and set designers rarely needed my help. There wasn’t much for me to do on the set. I later learned that historical consultants usually only show up for specific scenes or to work with the set and costume designers ahead of production. Sebastian wanted me on the set all the time. Every day. In theory I was supposed to be on hand to advise Sebastian and the other actors on historically accurate mannerisms and behavior. In actuality I drank coffee and scrolled on my cell phone.”
She and Sebastian began dating the day after she arrived in London. There was an immense amount of downtime on a production set, and Sebastian consistently asked her to join him. He once pulled her down onto his lap to flirt, causing a seam to split on his trousers. It took an hour for the seamstress to arrive on the set and mend the tear before filming could begin again. After that morning, the director and everyone else on the set began looking at her askance, but Sebastian always defended her.
“Professor Chadwick is nonnegotiable,” she overheard him saying to the assistant director, who’d been trying to get her ousted from the set. To her shame, she found the way Sebastian defended her to be flattering. He even called his agent to revise Sebastian’s contract to make her his personal consultant.
“At first it was wonderful,” she said to Brandon. “Sebastian was the most gallant, funny, and gleefully joyous person I’d ever met. It was like standing next to a meteorite: fast and dazzling and fun. Except sometimes he just seemed . . . off. Sometimes he couldn’t concentrate, and his mood would swing from euphoria to anxiety. After a few months I never knew which Sebastian Bell would show up on set.”
One morning she rapped on his trailer door and entered, catching him in the act of sweeping something off the dinette table. He sniffled and brushed at his nose.
Alice had no experience with drugs, but she didn’t need to be an expert to recognize the trace of white powder on his nose as cocaine.
She had known Sebastian had addiction issues in his past. His rehab stint a few years earlier had been widely covered in gossip magazines, but he’d told her he was clean and sober ever since. Yet here he was, twitchy, wiping powder from his nose.
“Don’t tell anyone,” Sebastian urged. “It’s not a big deal, okay?”
She didn’t know what to do. A more sophisticated person might understand all the implications of cocaine addiction and the paranoia it could cause. They were in love and she wanted to protect him, but did that mean keeping his secret or revealing it to someone who could help control it?
The cast and crew all stayed at the same hotel, and one night Sebastian had some sort of overdose. He stripped off his clothes and headed to the pool. She ran after him, trying to drag him back toward his room, which triggered a huge fight.The assistant director overheard and came to her aid. They got Sebastian into bed while she called a doctor, and the assistant director called Sebastian’s agent.
The next day, Sebastian’s agent reframed the incident so thatshelured Sebastian to the pool.Sheshowed up in his room to tempt him. The hideous Graham obtained a restraining order and called the police to arrest her when she showed up on the set. Then the movie company fired her and rumors started flying throughout the set.
Alice turned to her brother Adam for help. Adam wasn’t a lawyer, nor was he familiar with the British legal system, but Colonel Adam Chadwick in full dress uniform was intimidating no matter where he was. Adam could stare through a person with those glassy blue eyes and make soldiers wilt. Normally Adam was busy negotiating Pentagon contracts with the Saudis or NASA, but he dropped everything the moment she reached out to him for help. He arrived in London with a lawyer in tow and ordered her to stand up and fight for herself. He demanded that Sebastian and his slimy agent sign equally binding nondisclosure agreements to protect Alice’s reputation.
It worked. She never saw Sebastian again, and she escaped England with her reputation intact, although she had been informed that her name would be stricken from the movie credits and she had nothing to show for five months in England.
And now it was all coming out. Graham Garfield was ruthless in protecting his client from bad publicity. She was certain Graham was the one who originally started rumors that she was a stalker, and that she’d thrown herself at Sebastian.
And the worst part of it was, shehadthrown herself at Sebastian. Even after his erratic behavior became concerning, she overlooked it because she was flattered to have attracted such an amazing man.
“I feel like this is my fault,” she whispered to Brandon. “I was so blind. All the signs were there and I looked right past them. I only saw the parts of Sebastian I wanted to see.”
“Why didn’t the nondisclosure agreement stop this from happening?” Brandon asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, although she couldn’t blame her brother. Adam had flown halfway across the world, hired the best solicitor money could buy, and somehow strong-armed the tabloids into silence—at least for a while. Even the English solicitor acknowledged that Adam had negotiated a surprisingly tight NDA, but warned her it could be difficult to enforce. Unless Alice could produce a smoking gun proving that Graham or Sebastian were the source of the photo, a lawsuit would take years and the outcome uncertain. It wasn’t worth it.
Brandon’s sigh was both sad and comforting. “There will always be times when we must walk through shadows, but it is in these dark moments that we find our strength. Keep moving forward, and soon the light will break through the clouds.”
“I don’t think I can ever recover from this. I’ll probably be fired from the college. Everything I’ve worked for is collapsing, and tenure seems impossible.”
“I’ve got something that might help with that,” Brandon said, reaching into his satchel to retrieve a slim manila folder, then offering it to her like it was the crown jewels.
“What is it?”
“Proof of the date the Roost was built. I think you’ll be pleased.”
Her gaze locked with his. Brandon wouldn’t tease about this. He knew how important it was for her to find proof that the Roost was somehow connected to the mysterious Saint Helga and her 1672 departure for Virginia.
She held her breath and flipped the file open. Inside was a single page with charts, cross sections of tree rings, andmathematical formulas, but her eye was drawn to the single line highlighted in yellow.
Construction on Reid’s Roost began in 1661.
