A rip through time, p.3
A Rip Through Time, page 3
When I first woke, I’d been in a third-floor guest room. Gray and his sister also have their bedrooms on that level. The second floor is home to the dining room, drawing room, and library. I’m not sure what’s on the main level—the doors are locked and I can’t easily find anything to pick them.
I conduct an otherwise thorough survey of the house, and I find nothing to suggest I’m not actually in the nineteenth century. Moreover, while I see many things I’d expect, I also see things that I don’t expect, but on reflection, they fit. Like gas lighting and coal stoves. Ask me to imagine this period, and I’d conjure up candles and wood fireplaces. I’m not sure I’ve ever given much thought to what came between candles and electricity or wood and oil furnaces, but gas and coal make sense.
Also, the decorating is … I don’t want to say “ghastly.” That oversells it. Slightly. There’s too much of everything—from paintings to bric-a-brac to furniture—and Victorians obviously never met a bright color they didn’t want for their sitting room. I’m saved from eye trauma by the gas lighting, which combines with the heavy drapes to keep the garish colors muted. I imagine the day when Victorians will get electric light, suddenly see their rooms in their full glory, and run screaming, retinas scarred. Again, it’s not what I expected, but when I see it, my gut says, “Yes, this is Victorian.”
I poke about the house, and I track down Alice to subtly ask about the residents. Gray and his widowed sister live alone. The staff consists of Mrs. Wallace, Catriona, and Alice, plus a part-time gardener named Mr. Tull and a stable hand named Simon.
Between the staff and the elegant home, the family seems to be what I’d consider upper middle class. Oh, and Gray’s not actually a doctor. Well, yes, technically he is—I found diplomas for a bachelor’s degree in medicine plus a master of surgery from the Royal College. But rather than keeping people alive, he takes care of them after they’re dead. He’s an undertaker, which seems to be an inherited family business.
I spend that night investigating, while my internal defense lawyer challenges everything. Finally, it isn’t my profession or my mother’s that allows me to accept what has happened to me. It’s Nan’s. She’s an amateur folklorist who grew up in a family where they’d put out cream for the fairies. If asked whether she believed in such things herself, she’d say, “I don’t not believe.” She’d heard too many stories to slam that door shut. Real fairies? Maybe not. But she did allow for the possibility of concepts beyond the conventional realm of science, like ghosts and telekinesis … and time travel.
In the end, I cannot dismiss the words of that fictional saint of detectives.
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Something happened in that lane. Two women were strangled a hundred and fifty years apart. On the same night. In the same spot. I don’t think I heard and saw an echo of the attack on Catriona. I think I saw the attack itself—through a rip in time. I heard her cries. I came running. And when I was attacked in the same manner, time tangled, and I fell into her.
Is Catriona in my body, lying in a twenty-first-century hospital bed? If I get back to where we switched places, can I reverse this?
I will get back there. Right now, though, there’s no escaping. During the day I played “confused and befuddled head-injury victim.” Which also gave me an excuse for staying in my bed, recuperating as I worked out my situation. Otherwise, I suspect, Mrs. Wallace would have put me to work as soon as I woke.
Once I’ve accepted time travel as the answer, I head straight to the front door before realizing I have no idea where I am and how to get back to that lane. My brain insists that isn’t a problem. Just pull out my phone and let the GPS guide me back to the Grassmarket. Yeah …
While the front door is locked, it doesn’t require a key to open from the inside, so it’s not as if I’m trapped. I’ll acquire more data before venturing out.
Mrs. Wallace has already declared I’ll resume my duties tomorrow. That’s fine. It’s the only way I’ll get the information I need to return to the lane where I passed through time. Playing housemaid is a necessary evil if I want to avoid being tossed into a lunatic asylum for my odd behavior.
Here, I have food and shelter and a job that can’t be all that difficult. Everyone expects me to be “a little off” after my injury. I’ll be as sweet and demure as any Victorian maiden, as quiet as they’ll expect from a servant girl, while I figure things out.
I have a mission, one with three simple steps:
Find my way back.
Get to Nan’s side before it’s too late.
Give the police everything I know to stop a killer.
* * *
It feels like the middle of the night when Mrs. Wallace bangs her fist on my door. I reach for my phone to check the time and my hand smacks down on an empty nightstand.
“It’s almost five,” she says as she sticks her head in. “Are you going to lay about until dawn?”
“Sorry,” I say, my voice thankfully muffled as I rephrase that. “Apologies, ma’am. I seem to have misplaced my alarm clock.”
Her broad face scrunches up. “Your what?”
“My…” I cough. “My, um…” How do Victorians wake up, if they haven’t invented alarm clocks? “Apologies, ma’am,” I repeat. “’Twill not happen again.”
Her eyes narrow, as if I’m being sarcastic. She shakes it off and says, “Get your lazy bones out of that bed. I’ll expect you dressed and downstairs in a quarter hour, or you’ll not be getting any tea.”
She smacks the door closed. I groan. It’s been clear from our brief interactions that Mrs. Wallace is not a Catriona fan. I don’t know whether it’s a personality clash or simply a product of the times, where women have so little power that they wield it against one another with unnecessary vigor.
Unnecessary vigor? I smile to myself. Even my internal dialogue is starting to sound positively Victorian. That’s the trick, really. Stilted speech. Five-dollar words—thanks to Dad, I know plenty of those. And for God’s sake, do not mention things before they were invented. Of course, the problem is that I don’t know when they were invented. For the thousandth time in two days, I find myself reaching for my phone to look it up. I’ve been able to do that since I was a kid, and now I feel lost without that easy access to a virtual universe of data.
You’re a detective, figure it out.
Yep, think before I speak. Err on the side of caution. I’m a maid. No one will expect me to say much. At least I’ve retained Catriona’s voice and accent. That will help. Otherwise each word should be uttered with care and forethought until I’m certain I’m not referring to an object twenty years before its time.
I do know one thing that hasn’t been invented. Central heating. As I discovered last night, while the house is mostly heated by coal, there are still a couple of wood-burning fireplaces. In my room, there’s a small coal one—a brazier—which I’m sure will do a lovely job once I figure out how to use it.
So my room is freezing, despite me closing the window. There’s no shortage of blankets, thank God, but once I throw back the covers, it’s like stepping into a walk-in freezer. I reach for my bedside lamp … only to remember it’s oil. My shaking fingers struggle to light it.
My room has gas lighting, but Mrs. Wallace caught me using it yesterday and gave me hell. Apparently, having gas lighting and being allowed to use it are two different things, at least if you’re a mere housemaid.
My quarters are the size of a college dorm room, with a narrow bed and tiny window. A dorm or a prison cell. It’s a private room, though, with a locking door, and from what I’ve seen of servants’ rooms in movies, I struck gold here.
I pull on my uniform easily enough. I practiced yesterday, so I wouldn’t take an hour getting ready this morning. The damned corset isn’t even the worst of it. There’s layer upon layer of clothing.
I might have been cursing those layers yesterday, but this morning I happily tug them on. At least they’ll keep me warm. Maybe that’s the point.
Next come my morning “ablutions.” I think that’s the word, anyway. It sounds properly old-fashioned.
I have an old college friend who adores historical-romance novels, and I take every opportunity to remind her that those dashing dukes would have had yellow teeth and stunk of BO. Judging by Gray and his staff, that’s not true, and I don’t know whether Victorian hygiene levels are higher than I expected or they’re just higher in a doctor’s home.
Dental hygiene is not as dire as I feared. Catriona has a bristled brush in her toiletries and a powder that I use to brush with while hoping I haven’t mistaken its purpose and will drop dead of arsenic poisoning. Of course, having no idea what’s even in Victorian tooth powder, I might still drop dead of it, but at least my teeth will be clean.
I finish getting ready with a bristle hairbrush, soap, and clean water. It’d be even better if that water weren’t ice cold but at least it wakes me up.
I’m still washing my face when the downstairs clock strikes the quarter hour.
Shit!
I mean, drat. Er, no, pretty sure that isn’t historically accurate either. In fact, I have the very strong impression that demure young housemaids do not use profanity, at least not out loud.
I race into the hall, only to hear a squeak of surprise and turn to see Alice blinking at me. Okay, apparently demure young housemaids do not tear down halls either. I bend a quick curtsy in apology, and her eyes widen in shock.
Right, housemaids wouldn’t curtsy to other maids. That’s for the master and mistress of the house. Or is curtsying even a thing in 1869?
I wave to Alice, who lifts her fingers hesitantly.
Do people not wave in Victorian Scotland? Goddamn it, this isn’t going to be half as easy as I thought. It isn’t just modern speech and modern references I need to avoid. It’s modern gestures, modern customs, modern everything.
And the longer I fret about that, the later I’ll be for starting work. I suspect Mrs. Wallace wasn’t joking about missing breakfast. I only need to suffer through a day to two “in service” before I’ll have what I need to get home.
I take the stairs down four flights to the basement kitchen. It’s a small room, blazing hot and as clean as a surgery, with a horror movie’s worth of hanging knives. The smell—fresh bread, hot tea, roast ham—gets my stomach rumbling, and I hurry for the door into the “servants’ hall,” where we eat.
“Do you expect to be served your tea, Miss Catriona?”
That’s when I see the tray on the counter. A steaming teapot. Slices of fresh-baked bread, tiny silver and glass bowls of butter and pickled something. There’s also an empty plate for the ham and poached eggs cooking on the stove.
I head for the tray as my stomach growls in appreciation. I’ll say this much for nineteenth-century Scotland, the food has been better than I expected.
I’m reaching for the breakfast tray when Mrs. Wallace says, “I’m not done with that yet. Drink your tea and give me time to finish his eggs.”
His eggs.
This is Gray’s breakfast.
“Apologies, ma’am,” I say, and resist the urge to curtsy. “And where might my morning meal be?”
I follow her gaze to a cup of tea and a chunk of unbuttered fresh bread. I glance from her to the meager meal, hoping I’m misunderstanding.
Nope. Well, at least it’s not stale bread and water.
I devour the food, trying very hard not to wolf it down like a starving beast. Crossing a hundred and fifty years takes a lot out of a person, and that chunk of bread only whets my appetite.
Once it’s gone, I turn to Mrs. Wallace, feeling like Oliver Twist, holding out my plate.
“Please, ma’am, might I have another slice?”
“And let Dr. Gray’s breakfast go cold? You’ll get your meal after the master has had his.” I must look relieved, because she waves at my empty bread plate. “Did you think I’d stopped feeding you? I run a proper household. You’ll need a full belly if you’re going to get through your chores. The mistress comes home in two days, and you’ve been slacking, Miss Catriona.”
“I was unconscious.”
“Not since yesterday.” She scoops the poached eggs into tiny silver cups. “Now get your lazy self off and start working.”
I head toward what I hope is a room in need of cleaning.
She clears her throat. “Are you forgetting something?”
When I glance over, her gaze goes to the meal tray. I glance from it to her. “You want me to take this to Dr. Gray.”
“No, I’d like it to fly up to him on pixie wings, but as you’re the only one here, I suppose you’ll have to do.”
I fix on my most contrite look, lashes lowered. “Apologies, ma’am. I know I’m being a trial. My mind is still a wee bit fuzzy after my accident.”
“Oh, is that how you’re going to play this?” She raises her voice to a falsetto. “I’m a wee bit fuzzy, ma’am. If I could just have an extra day or two to rest…”
She shoves the tray into my hands. “Be glad you still have a position at all, after getting yourself into that mess.”
“Getting myself strangled?”
“You were skulking about the Old Town. What did you expect?”
The Old Town. If I remember correctly, in this era, that was the slums. So what was a housemaid from a prosperous household doing there?
Mrs. Wallace continues, “Now take that tray to the master before it’s cold, and as soon as he’s done with you, get yourself back here, and I might have breakfast for you.”
FIVE
As I take the tray up the stairs, one smell rises above the others. Is that…? I inhale. Wafting from the teapot is the distinct smell of coffee. Drool tickles the corners of my mouth.
They have coffee in 1869? I don’t mind tea, but right now, that coffee smells more tantalizing than the entire breakfast combined. I twist the tray so I can inhale the fumes directly as I wonder whether Gray would miss a few sips.
I imagine Mrs. Wallace coming around the corner to see me drinking straight out of the master’s coffeepot. Maybe if I’m the one to collect it, there will be some left.
Yep, my first day as a housemaid, and I’m already reduced to stealing the dregs of my master’s coffee.
Also, “master”? Is that really what he’s called? I suppose it’s the alternative when we can’t refer to him as “His Lordship” or whatever. Still, I hope to hell I’m not expected to call him “master.”
Gray’s bedroom is on the third floor. That’s three flights of stairs up. I continue climbing as I remind myself I’m in need of a good workout. Maybe I can go out for a run on my break. As I think that, my long skirts catch my knees, and I look down. Nope, no jogging in this outfit.
I crest the stairs and …
Shit. Which door is his?
A chair scrapes against the floor, and I exhale.
I can do this. Detective, remember? Follow the clues.
As I prepare to enter the room, I try to remember whether I’ve seen or read this scene: a housemaid bringing breakfast to her employer. It’s familiar, but the details are lost to memory. Information I never expected to use, oddly enough.
I think I’m supposed to knock first. Either way, that seems safe. I pause to pull on my best speaking-to-the-lord face. Demure. That’s the key. I’m a Victorian housemaid. Keep my gaze down and my expression meek. Be seen but not heard. Or is that for children? Close enough.
I rap on the door. After a moment, there’s a grunt that I think means “Come in.” I ease the door partway open, and a low table appears just to my left. I set the tray on it and murmur “Your breakfast, sir” and then begin my retreat.
“Where the devil are you going?”
I open the door to see Gray at a desk. He isn’t fully dressed. He’s decent, at least by twenty-first-century standards. Button-down shirt, mostly fastened. The Victorian equivalent of boxers—undergarments that reach to his knees. If they’re crotchless drawers, like mine, that particular part is well hidden by his shirt. Long socks cover most of the remaining skin. Well, one sock. The other is on the floor.
If he wasn’t at his desk, pen in hand, I’d think I’d interrupted him in the midst of dressing. From the looks of things, it’s an idea that interrupted him, and he stopped halfway through to scribble it down.
“Well,” he says, the word spoken with an impatient snap. “I’m obviously in need of your services, Catriona.”
I freeze. Now, this is a scene I have definitely read in books. The pretty young maid, forced to “tend” to the lord of the manor.
Oh, hell no. You even hint at that, Dr. Gray, and I’ll take my chances on the street.
He looks from me to the darkened fireplace and then back at me. “Well?”
“Oh! You want me to light the fire.”
“No, Miss Catriona. I want you to warm the room with your sunny disposition. Yes, I want you to start the fire. Preferably before I freeze to death.”
Well, if you’re cold, maybe you could finish getting dressed. Or light your own damn fire.
That’s exactly what I’d say if a superior officer expected me to light a fire while he lounged half naked. Well, no, I’d tell him to get his pants on before I reported his ass. But Gray employs me to do exactly this. I need to treat it as good practice for going undercover. Bite my tongue, swallow my attitude, and act a part.
“I realize this is your first day back to work,” he says. “I am making allowances for that. But I will expect my fire lit before I rise tomorrow.”
“What time is that, sir?”
His dark eyes narrow. “The same as always. Five thirty.”
