“Yes,” I interrupted.
“It’s my fault,” said Lady Catherine in a dull voice. “It’s on my head. My poor little girl.”
“It is not your fault,” I said. “Anne’s malady seems physical in a number of ways. Who is to say it’s related?”
She stopped walking and glared at me.
I looked away. “I suppose I’m saying this because… I am not the only person who is repeating the day.”
“Ah,” she said, sighing. “That’s unfortunate, then. I don’t know what the effect will be on them if you put an end to it.”
“How did you put an end to it?”
“Well, I tried a number of things.”
“I’ve obviously tried all sorts of things,” I said. “I have destroyed the pocket watch only twenty ways—”
“Yes, that doesn’t work,” she said with a shrug. “What I did, eventually, was to tuck it into Lewis’s pocket that morning and let him go off and drown to death with the watch in his pocket.” Her face twisted. “I kissed him goodbye that day, but I had no real hope it would work.”
“But it did?”
“Well, I woke and it was that day again. So, I thought it hadn’t. But Anne was behaving the way she had before, and she seemed to have no memory of anything. And Lewis would not be deterred, you know? It was as though, even if I tried to convince him otherwise, he would only stick to the original way the day had been shaped, as if it were fate. And then, he died, everything went as it had on the first time through, and… I woke up the morning after, and he was gone.”
I furrowed my brow, thinking that through. “So, the watch needs to be on a dead man? But I personally have died a number of times while having the watch on me—”
“Oh, yes, that doesn’t work,” she said. “It can’t be you.”
“Perhaps it needs to be someone who is supposed to die today?” I shook my head. “But no one died, not that I know of.”
She tilted her head to one side. “I’m ever so sorry. I suppose this watch just latched itself onto you somehow. It lingered at the bottom of the lake for years, you know. And then one day, I found it.”
“Yes, you said something about that,” I said.
“One day, it was just sitting out, on a table in the sitting room. I saw it and snatched it up in horror. Then I had touched it, you know, so I worried that I should start reliving the day. However, that didn’t happen. So, I began trying to get rid of it, to bury it, to melt it down, to smash it… nothing worked. Eventually, I shut it up in a trunk in the depths of the attic, somewhere out of everyone’s way.”
“And then it found a way to present itself to me,” I said. “I wonder if I drew it to me in some way. You wished for the day to repeat, and perhaps I wished…” But I could not quite make that work. I had not wished for this at all.
“I don’t think it’s quite so tidy,” she said with a shrug. “As I said, I think it’s simply malevolent.” She held out her hand. “I shall take it from you, if you like. I don’t think it will make any difference, but we could see if it does.”
I shoved it back into my pocket. “No, not yet. I need to speak to Elizabeth.”
“That Bennet girl?” Lady Catherine made a face as if something smelled bad. “Well, that’s horrific, Fitzwilliam. I can’t imagine anything more dire. How long have the two of you been gallivanting about, living this day together?”
I shrugged.
“So, you think you’ll marry her, then. And not Anne, when she has suffered so much already and when you could take care of her, just as she needs? Your mother promised—”
“Aunt Catherine,” I said firmly.
“Well, you’re selfish, that’s what you are, Fitzwilliam.”
“I am not,” I said. “I actually take responsibility rather seriously, madam. But there is more to love than responsibility, you see. There is a bit of vulnerability to it, too. I could rescue Anne, yes, but she could never rescue me.” I closed my hand around the watch, gripping it tightly, and then I quit the hallway, leaving my aunt behind.
I walked past everyone to leave the house entirely.
I had to get back to Elizabeth.
elizabeth
