Wrong Place. Wrong Time. Right Viscount.

Chapter 3

Elle slowly came to in a soft, warm bed. She stretched and flopped over, burying herself deep into the pillows. She inhaled deeply, the sheets smelling pleasantly of lavender. The Savoy? Had she made it there? She couldn”t remember getting a car, or the drive back into the city, or checking in, couldn’t remember making her way out of the—

She jolted upright as the memories came flooding back: running through the woods, the strange house and stranger occupants…

”And being told I…time traveled?” She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, rubbing hard until she saw stars. ”This can”t be real. This cannot be fucking real.”

”I”m afraid it is.”

Elle gasped and snapped her eyes to the doorway. The woman from the night before—Jocelyn—quietly closed the door behind her.

”No. No, you”re crazy. This is insanity,” Elle said, throwing her legs over the side of the bed. She frowned when she realized she”d been dressed in a plain, white nightgown that reached her ankles. Am I six years old? While this would give further credence to the fact that she was, in fact, in a different time, she refused to accept it. No, this woman is just some psycho who has a weird fixation with Jane Austen. That”s all. She leapt off the bed and began searching the room for her clothes, keeping Jocelyn in her sights from the corner of her eye.

”I know it sounds that way.”

”Where are my clothes?” Elle demanded.

”Believe me, I couldn”t accept it at first either,” Jocelyn said loud enough to force Elle to listen. Elle froze as the words sank in, and straightened from searching under the bed for her clothes or bag. She turned to face the woman.

”What, exactly, does that mean?” she asked slowly.

”It means,” Jocelyn exhaled roughly, “that I”m the same as you. I”m not from…here.” Jocelyn eased forward towards the small fireplace on the other side of the room, slowly again, as if Elle were a wolf snared in a trap, as if she expected an attack at any moment. The room was large, with a big four-poster bed, a desk, a standing wardrobe, a small table with a basin of what Elle would assume was water, and a nice sitting area in front of the fire. Elle studied the room, the furnishings, and was again struck by how not-of-this-century everything was. No, no, no. This cannot be real. NO.

Elle eyed Jocelyn warily. Jocelyn sat in one of the chairs before the fire and gestured for Elle to take the other. Elle’s entire body was tense, her heart thundering, but she crossed the space and slowly lowered herself into the second chair. She needed more information, or at the very least, to figure out if this woman was put-the-lotion-on-the-skin kind of crazy or just harmlessly eccentric. So, she squared her shoulders and took a deep breath.

”Let”s pretend for five seconds that I believe you…Explain exactly what the hell is going on.”

Just then there was a soft knock on the door and the young woman from last night entered with a tray of what looked like tea. The British version of course, not the sweet, iced version that Elle would kill for right about then. She sat the tray down and turned to Jocelyn.

”Anything else, mam?”

”No, that”ll be all. Thank you, Lottie.” Lottie inclined her head, gave Elle a brief, quizzical look, and left the room. After the door closed, Jocelyn filled their cups. ”Tea?” she asked with a gentle smile.

Elle figured why the hell not and took a cup. She took a sip and scrunched her nose. It wasn”t bad, exactly, but it wasn”t her, well, cup of tea.

Jocelyn smiled. ”You”re American, aren’t you?”

”What gave me away? The accent or the lack of love for British tea?”

Jocelyn chuckled. ”Bit of both. I lived in Oklahoma until I was sixteen. Then moved to England when my mother got remarried.” She took a sip of her own tea and then let out a long breath. ”Believe me when I say that I understand how ridiculous this all sounds. It took me weeks to even begin to accept it. I can”t explain it all, save the very unsatisfying answer of magic or fate, but I assure you that it”s all true.”

”How…how did you come to be here then?”

“The same way as you, I would imagine. You were in the woods, weren’t you?” Elle nodded, her pulse jumping. “And suddenly it felt like energy pressing in on you from all sides, and you got too hot and too cold at once and felt like you might vomit?” Elle sat her tea back down, the cup clanging loudly on the saucer, her palms sweating. There was no way Jocelyn could know exactly how Elle had felt unless…

Elle licked her lips, her mouth feeling dry as sandpaper.

Unless it was…true.

“But how…?” Elle stopped herself from finishing the question, knowing Jocelyn didn’t have the answer. She shook her head, trying to keep her breathing even. Open mind, open mind, open mind, she chanted to herself. She believed in aliens and ghosts and Nessie—time travel wasn’t completely outside the realm of possibilities…but shit, this was harder to swallow than the idea of Big Foot running around or vampires existing.

“Why were you in the woods alone?” Jocelyn asked gently.

Elle blew out a long breath. “Bastard cheating fiancé and a traffic jam blocking the road to escape. I thought I could cut through the trees to the road on the other side. Apparently, I was very much mistaken.” Jocelyn gave her a sympathetic smile.

“I’m sorry to hear about your fiancé.”

Elle shrugged. She was still feeling weirdly fine about it. Still pissed, but not broken. And that’s probably a huge red flag. Not wanting to talk about Ashton, Elle asked, “What about you? Why were you in the woods?”

Jocelyn”s expression turned bleak for a moment, as if the memory wasn”t a good one, and Elle tensed.

”I was running too,” she said, her voice quiet but strong. She absently ran her fingers over a faint scar at her throat and Elle”s stomach clenched. Had someone cut her there? ” I was eighteen. I managed to get away and the only place to run was those woods. I ran and ran until that strange feeling settled over me. When I came to, it was storming like mad, the rain coming down so hard I could barely see and the lightning striking so close I could smell the burnt air. I screamed when a tree limb came down not ten feet from me. And he heard it.”

”He?”

Jocelyn”s face lit up as she smiled. ”My husband, Callum. One of his stallions had broken free from the stable, and he was out rounding him up, despite the storm. He heard my screams over the din somehow, and came riding in to rescue me. It was like a romance novel, I swear, the kind with Fabio on the cover that I used to hide from my mother. Do they still make those?” she asked with a smile, scrunching her nose a bit.

Despite everything, Elle huffed out a laugh, thinking of her own collection of books with shirtless men on the covers. ”Oh, you have no idea.”

”Anyway, Callum saved me, in so many ways. He helped me come to terms with what had happened.”

”You told him the truth?” Elle asked, shocked. “He…didn’t think you were a witch or something? Try to burn you at the stake or shove you in an asylum?”

Jocelyn smiled. ”Callum”s family has always had a healthy appreciation for folklore and superstition. This was his mother”s ancestral home and there had long been stories associated with those woods. Stories of people appearing out of thin air. I was hesitant to tell him the truth at first, but I couldn’t stop myself. I fell in love with him the second I saw him, as ridiculous as that sounds, so I had to tell him. It took me a little while, but eventually I told him everything, and by some miracle, he believed me. He helped me hide the truth, construct believable lies about my past and adjust to this life.”

Elle tried to imagine showing up in the past with no one to help her, trying to navigate everything without Jocelyn here explaining things. She could handle almost anything, but that? She wasn’t so sure.

”How long have you been here?”

”Almost twenty years.”

”And,” Elle couldn”t believe she was about to ask this, ”when did you come from? Do the years work the same here as they do there—er, then?” Her head hurt trying to figure out what she was trying to say and she rubbed her temples. “I mean, if 20 years pass here, did 20 years pass there? Or then?”

”Based on you coming from 2020, I believe so. I left in 2000, so that seems to track.”

Elle nodded slowly and let out a long exhale.

”I know it”s a lot to take in and I”m sure you”ll need time to deal with it all, but we”re here to help you. It”s why I insisted we remain in this house, so we could be here should anyone else ever come through like I did.”

”Have there been others? Before me?”

Jocelyn nodded. ”Two. A young man, not long after I arrived, and an older woman just a few years back.”

”And what happened to them?” Did they believe you? How long did it take them? Did they go crazy?

”The young man, Renaldo, he”s a ship captain now. He adjusted exceptionally well—this life was much better than his other one. He thought it was a gift from God, a new start.”

”And the woman?”

She gazed away, shaking her head. ”She was injured when she came through. She’d gotten lost in the woods and taken a bad fall. Some kind of internal bleeding, I think. There was nothing we could have done, not in this time. Probably not even then, either.” Elle felt a pang for the woman. She couldn’t imagine being scared and hurt and alone, wandering in those woods and then suddenly finding herself back in time. Not that she fully believed any of this yet, that she’d actually traveled back in time, but…

“We made her as comfortable as we could. She said she didn’t have any family back home, that she’d always been afraid of dying alone, so at the very least we made sure that didn’t happen.” Jocelyn gave her a sad smile and Elle knew immediately that Jocelyn was one of those rare, actually good people.

Elle rubbed her neck, trying to wade through everything, balking at the thought of having to figure out life in another time…She froze. Wait.

”Why did you stay here? Why did this Renaldo guy? I know you found your husband and this life was apparently better than Renaldo’s other one, but still…” At Jocelyn”s look, Elle”s blood went cold. No. Don”t say what you”re about to say.

”I”m afraid it”s a one way ticket.”