“Of course, my lady. And Miss Lancaster’s maid? I’ll direct her to the blue room to unpack the Miss’s things.” Hoskins glanced around looking for the obviously missing items.
“Um. We seem to have misplaced Miss Lancaster’s maid and luggage. Perhaps Polly could stand in for the time being and something should be arranged for Miss Lancaster to retire into tonight. I’m sure everything will be sorted out by tomorrow.”
“As you wish, my lady,” Hoskins bowed again before turning to carry out his instructions.
“Come with me, Miss Lancaster,” Lady Harrison said as she linked arms with Grace and pulled her down the hallway. “We need to have a little talk without you interfering, my dears. We’ll see you in the morning,” Lady Harrison called with a grin over her shoulder to the men still standing in the entrance way before shutting the drawing room door behind her.
“It seems to me, Miss Lancaster, that we have a mystery to solve, don’t you think?” Lady Harrison spoke as soon as they both were seated on the floral sofa.
Grace ran her hand along the upholstery. The gold thread shimmered in the candle light, the silky fabric rustled under her hand. She didn’t want to talk to this lady, all she wanted to do was go back to her hotel room, crawl into bed and go to sleep. She was sure if she could just wake up from this crazy dream, everything would be OK.
“Miss Lancaster?”
“Yes.” Grace finally looked up into Lady Harrison’s eyes. “I don’t know what’s happening. Everything is not as it should be. You’re not as you should be. I need to find my boss and my crew. Something is not right.”
“You’re right. Things are not right. Something has happened to you, something that is unexplainable. But, we need to figure out what it is; otherwise I fear my husband will throw you into Bedlam. So, let us start at the beginning. What is the last ‘normal’ occurrence you remember?”
For a moment Grace couldn’t breathe; her throat closed at the word Bedlam. Did they still have such a place? “I remember having a few drinks during my break, I remember the lights going out and I remember hitting my head quite hard on the back of a table, I remember your brother rescuing me from all the eyes of guests who were outraged at seeing more than they should’ve when I was trying to get up. I remember taking your brother into the alcove and kissing him, I remember that nosy old lady and your brother telling her we were going to be married, I remember the library and you and your husband and some old lady who thinks she’s the Duchess of Kensington but isn’t.”
“I didn’t know you hit your head.” Lady Harrison ignored everything else Grace had said, except that.
“Yeah, I don’t really remember why I was under there to begin with, maybe I dropped something? But I do remember cracking my head on it.”
“How did the lights go out?”
“What do you mean, how did they go out? There must have been a power cut.”
“A power cut? What is that? I’m not familiar with the term.”
“You know, the electricity went out. There was no electricity going through the power lines.”
“No. I still don’t know what you mean. What is electricity?”
Grace refused to accept the conclusion her brain was rapidly coming to: that this was not 2014. Grace pulled her cell phone from her handbag and held it out to Lady Harrison to test her theory. “Have you ever seen one of these?”
“What is that?” Victoria said as she held out her hand as though she was reaching for a snake. “May I have a look?”
Grace handed it over reluctantly, unsure what Lady Harrison would do. She gingerly held the phone in her hand and turned it over and over, peering at it so closely her nose was almost touching the screen.
“Here, let me show you.” Grace couldn’t stand the tension any longer. She reached over and turned it on.
Chaos erupted.
Lady Harrison screamed, dropped the phone and jumped onto the sofa. Hoskins ran in welding a fire poker, looking for an attacker. Grace managed to scoop the phone into her bag before anyone noticed and calmly informed Hoskins that it was only a mouse that ran across the floor and under Lady Harrison’s seat. Hoskins cast a suspicious look at Grace, not quite trusting the newcomer, but Lady Harrison had calmed down enough to come down from her perch and with an anxious look at Grace, she apologised to Hoskins for frightening him so.
“I’m not quite sure why I acted like a frightened young miss; the poor little mouse caught me unawares. Have Mrs Walters bring one of the cats up from the kitchen tomorrow morning, will you, Hoskins?”
“Of course, my lady,” he said with a bow and left the room with the fire poker still clenched in his fist.
Once he had shut the door, Lady Harrison once again arranged herself on the sofa and smoothed her skirt. “First things first, tell me what that thing was?”
“So you really haven’t ever seen one?” Her heart sank. This was not good
“No. Never. Could you tell me what it is? I would love to know. I’m fascinated by phenomena that can’t be logically explained.”
This at least Grace could answer. “It’s a cellular telephone but it’s commonly known as a ‘cell phone’. Where I come from we use it to communicate with our friends, family and people at work. We can look things up on the internet and I can even send a tweet.”
“Pardon?”
“Oh, too much information? Sorry. Umm, let me think.” Grace rubbed her forehead and tried to come up with an easy way to explain the phone. “OK, I will try to explain it without confusing you too much. Keep in mind that I’m not exactly sure how this all works either, at home you just go to a store, buy a phone, charge it up and use it.”
“Are you telling me that everyone has one of these ‘cell phones’?”
“Well, most people do, yes. Everyone I know does, but I am sure that not everyone has one. There are some places that still can’t pick up any signal.”
“Signal?”
“In certain places around the country, around the world even, there are towers that send out signals the cell phones pick up. If you happen to be too far away from a tower, you can’t pick up the signal and then your phone won’t work. Here I’ll show you.” Grace pulled the phone back out of her bag to show Lady Harrison the signal bars. “See these lines? When I’m close enough to a tower I have four bars, but see how they are not filled in? That is because there is no tower.”
Grace’s voice broke on the last word. Tears and panic clogged her throat, but she managed to ask a very important question. “What year is it?”
“1814,” Lady Harrison said with confidence.
“This can’t be happening.” Grace laid her head in her hands.
Lady Harrison moved closer to her on the settee and gently rubbed her back for a moment before asking, “What year did you come from?”
Grace raised her head and looked her square in the face. “How did you know?”
“Tell me, who in 1814 would be carrying a cell phone in their reticule and have a job organising parties? So, what year did you come from?”
Part laugh, part sob caught in her throat as she answered, “2013. The lights went out at midnight, and when they came back on, everything was different. What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know.” Lady Harrison paused before adding, “This may be the wrong time to ask, but you aren’t still wearing the same fashions in 2013 as we are now, are you?”
Grace burst out laughing in spite of her predicament and she felt the tension leave her body. “No. We are definitely