Roland Mitchell Timeline and Summary

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• While doing some research on the nineteenth-century poet Randolph Henry Ash at the London Library, Roland comes across two drafts of a letter to an unnamed woman.
• After doing some digging, Roland decides that the unnamed woman may have been the nineteenth-century poet Christabel LaMotte.
• On the advice of Fergus Wolff, Roland visits Maud Bailey at the University of Lincoln in hopes of learning more about Christabel LaMotte.
• Maud invites Roland to stay in Lincoln overnight so that he can get some more work done the next day.
• The next morning, Maud and Roland drive out to Croysant le Wold, the rural village that lies next to Seal Court, where Christabel LaMotte spent the last 20+ years of her life.
• As he walks around the village with Maud, Roland sees someone struggling with their wheelchair at the top of a steep hill. Roland helps her, and the woman introduces herself as Joan Bailey, of Seal Court.
• Lady Joan Bailey introduces Roland and Maud to her husband, Sir George Bailey, and invites them back to Seal Court for tea.
• At Seal Court, Roland and Maud tell Sir George and Lady Joan about their interests in Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte, and the Baileys offer to show them the room where Christabel once lived.
• In Christabel's old room, Roland and Maud discover the Ash-LaMotte correspondence.
• Sir George and Lady Joan agree to read out two of the letters—the first and the last—but Sir George tells Roland and Maud that he wants to seek advice before letting them see any more.
• Back in London, Roland visits Beatrice Nest and asks permission to go through some of Ellen Ash's journals. There, he finds evidence that Ellen Ash had read Christabel LaMotte's epic poem The Fairy Melusine, and admired it.
• Although we readers don't know exactlyhow much time has passed since Roland and Maud's visit to Seal Court, it seems to have been a few weeks at least. It was autumn, and not yet jacket weather, when they visited Croysant le Wold, and now winter is coming on.
• Eventually, Roland receives a letter from Lady Joan Bailey, inviting both him and Maud to come back to Seal Court to read the Ash-LaMotte correspondence. Lady Joan offers to put Roland up for a week and suggests that they come in January.
• In January, Roland and Maud return to Seal Court to read the Ash-LaMotte correspondence. While there, Roland gets his first hint that there may be real electricity between him and Maud.
• The stay at Seal Court also convinces Roland that Christabel LaMotte may have accompanied Randolph Henry Ash on an expedition to North Yorkshire in the summer of 1859.
• Roland doesn't see Maud again until April, when the two of them get together to visit the cottage where Christabel LaMotte and Blanche Glover once lived. Neither of them has heard from Sir George and Lady Joan Bailey since visiting Seal Court in January.
• Sometime later—we don't know exactly how long—Maud decides to visit Beatrice Nest in London.
• Roland meets up with Maud a couple of days after she visits Beatrice Nest, and the two of them decide to go to North Yorkshire together. Their plan is to follow the same route that Randolph Henry Ash took during his own expedition to the north, in hopes of finding some evidence that Christabel LaMotte was there with him, too.
• Roland and Maud spend five days in North Yorkshire, visiting Filey, Flamborough, Robin Hood's Bay, Whitby, and Boggle Hole. When they leave, they're convinced that Christabel LaMotte did travel there with Randolph Henry Ash.
• Later that summer—again, we don't know exactly when—everything hits the fan.
• Mortimer Cropper catches wind of Roland and Maud's discovery, Sir George Bailey becomes convinced that Roland and Maud are trying to cheat him, Sir George's solicitor contacts James Blackadder, and, suddenly, the Ash-LaMotte correspondence becomes a very public affair.
• Roland and Maud decide to do what any responsible adults would do: they run away to Brittany, just as Christabel LaMotte did 100+ years before them.
• In Brittany, Roland and Maud meet with Ariane Le Minier, who gives them photocopies of Sabine de Kercoz's journal. Reading them, Roland and Maud discover that Christabel LaMotte was pregnant when she fled to Brittany.
• Roland and Maud stay in Brittany together for three weeks. When James Blackadder, Leonora Stern, and Mortimer Cropper all turn up in Brittany, too, Roland and Maud make a quick exit back to England.
• Back in England, Roland stays in Maud's apartment. It's now October, and Roland has been hiding from the world for weeks.
• After Maud gets a phone call from Euan MacIntyre, she and Roland meet Euan, Val, and Toby Byng for supper. There, Euan shares his theory that Maud may be the rightful owner of the Ash-LaMotte correspondence.
• Right after they have supper with Euan, Val, and Toby, Maud gets a phone call from Beatrice Nest, who tells her that Mortimer Cropper is planning to rob Randolph Henry Ash's grave.
• Roland and Maud head to London, and Roland spends a night alone in the apartment that he once shared with Val.
• There, in a pile of unopened letters, Roland finds job offers from universities in Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Hong Kong.
• On top of that, Roland is suddenly hit with a burst of poetic inspiration. As he takes a walk in his landlady's forbidden garden, he suddenly feels poems coming to him "like rain" (26.51).
• Soon, Roland joins Maud, Beatrice Nest, James Blackadder, Leonora Stern, Euan MacIntyre, and Val at a "conference" in Beatrice's home, where Roland and Maud explain what they've been up to, and the group decides how to thwart Mortimer Cropper's plan to rob R. H. Ash's grave.
• When the time comes to confront Mortimer Cropper, Roland is right in the thick of things, and he helps to prevent Cropper from getting away with the "treasure" from R. H. Ash's grave.
• Back at the Rowan Tree Inn, Roland listens with the others as Maud reads Christabel LaMotte's final letter to Randolph Henry Ash out loud.
• Then, Roland and Maud find a room, confess their feelings for each other, and spend their first night together as lovers.