Chapter 2 Welcome to 1817
I am not dead.
I mean, I might be dead in the philosophical sense—because nothing says afterlife like iron bars and the smell of horse—but my lungs are still doing their extremely underappreciated job.
I pry my eyes open and immediately regret it. My head throbs like someone is tapping a tiny hammer against my skull, and my stomach feels hollow in a way that is less “I skipped breakfast” and more “I have been violently relocated across…whatever that was.”
There is a man standing just outside the bars, his face half-lit by a lantern. He looks exactly like the kind of person who would say “vagrant” with disappointment.
“She’s awake,” he says to someone behind him.
“About time,” another voice replies. “I’ve no desire to haul a corpse to the river.”
My mouth is so dry my tongue feels like felt. I swallow anyway. “Hi,” I croak, because I apparently cannot stop myself from being polite even during abduction.
The lantern-holder jolts as if the dead have started giving customer feedback.
He leans closer, squinting. “What are you, then?”
“A person,” I say. It comes out raspier than I intend. “An…injured person. I need—”
“You need a bath and a sermon,” he interrupts, taking in my jeans like I am a moral crisis. “Women have no business in breeches.”
My brain catches on the word and refuses to let go. “Breeches,” I repeat faintly.
He looks offended by my ignorance. “And a cap.” He taps the edge of my hoodie like it has insulted his ancestors. “What is that contrivance?”
I glance down at myself. Hoodie. Jeans. Sneakers that cost me a day’s wages at my last summer job. All of it suddenly feels like a costume I forgot to take off.
I sit up too fast, and the world tilts. Straw. Rough boards. Damp stone. A low ceiling and iron bars. Past the bars, a corridor with uneven flagstones. The air is heavy with smoke, sweat, stale ale, and something sour that makes my eyes water.
This is not a lab.
This is not a dream.
“Where am I?” I ask, and I hate how small my voice sounds.
The man snorts. “The watch-house, where else? You were found on the street in that state, raving and flailing like a fish. Indecent, too.”
Indecent. Because pants.
My fingers fumble for my phone on instinct. It’s in my pocket. Thank God. I pull it out like it’s a talisman.
The screen is black.
I press the button. Nothing.
I press it again, harder, because apparently I believe in bullying electronics into submission.
Still nothing.
My breath snags. “I need to call my mother.”
The man stares. “Call her?”
“Yes. Call. Like—” I wave the phone. “This. I need—”
He barks a laugh, then glances down the corridor as if to share the joke with an invisible audience. “She speaks to it. Mad as a March hare.”
My stomach drops. “No, I’m not— I just—there was an accident. A…machine. I was with my mom and—”
“Hush.” He raps the bars with his baton. The sound snaps sharp in the damp air. “We’ll have no more nonsense. You’ll speak to the constable in the morning. If you’re lucky, you’ll be sent to Bridewell. If you’re not—”
He lets the threat hang there like a noose.
I taste bile.
“I’m not a criminal,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady, trying to make my face look like someone who has rights. “I’m— I’m just lost.”
“Lost,” he repeats, like that is an insult. He lifts the lantern, casting harsh light over me. “You’ve no shift under your coat, no cap, no proper stays. You wear trousers.”
I open my mouth, then close it again because explaining feminism to a watchman feels like a way to die twice.
“What’s your name?” he demands.
“Emma,” I say. “Emma Hart.”
“Hart,” he repeats, mangling it into something harder. “Any family?”
Yes. My mother. My mother who just watched me vanish into a tear in the universe and is probably screaming right now in a building full of protocols that did not include “retrieve your daughter from the nineteenth century.”
My eyes burn. I blink rapidly.
“No,” I lie, because the truth is too big to fit between bars. “Not here.”
He makes a sound of disgust. “Of course not.”
He turns away, lantern swinging. The light recedes, and the corridor becomes shadow again.
“Sleep if you can,” he calls back, as if he’s doing me a favor. “You’ll be dealt with in the morning.”
The door at the end of the corridor shuts. A bolt slides into place.
And I am alone.
For about three seconds.
Then a voice whispers from the straw. “Don’t do that.”
I turn my head. In the thin gray light from a filthy window, a girl sits up—fifteen, maybe, all sharp angles and sharper eyes.
She jerks her chin at the dead phone in my hand. “Talking to bricks. They’ll think you’re touched.”
“I’m not,” I whisper, though my voice wobbles.
“Name?” she asks.
“Emma.”
“Kitty.” Her gaze flicks over my jeans, my hoodie, my shoes, the general disaster of me. “Where’s your purse?”
“Gone,” I say.
“Of course.” She leans closer. “Listen. In the morning, you say you’ve got kin. Someone with coin. Otherwise they’ll send you to a workhouse. And don’t say you’re French.”
“I’m not.”
“Good. Say American.” She studies my clothes again. “What city you from?”
The lie catches on the way out. “Boston.”
Kitty’s eyes widen just a fraction. “America,” she breathes, as if it’s a spell.
“Yeah,” I whisper, and hate that my voice shakes. “What city is this?”
She blinks at me. “London.”
The word hits hard. “What year?” I ask, and it comes out naked.
Kitty hesitates, reading my face. “War’s over. Bonaparte’s finished. That battle—Waterloo—was two summers past.”
Waterloo.
My stomach drops. The lab, the Array, my mother’s horrified face behind bending air—my mind scrambles for anything solid and finds only straw and iron.
Around us, the other women shift in the dark: a low laugh, a cough, the stink of gin and unwashed bodies. No one cares that my universe has just broken in half.
My stomach growls, loud and humiliating.
Kitty digs into her skirt and produces a hard crust of bread. “Eat. You faint tomorrow, they’ll drag you like a sack.”
I take it with shaking hands. It tastes like dust and survival.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
She shrugs, pretending she does not care. “Don’t make a habit of it.”
Sleep comes in fragments—thin, cold, and haunted, my mother’s horrified face waiting behind my eyelids.
Morning leaks into the watch-house in a gray smear. The watchman hauls us out and lines us up before a constable at a scarred desk. Kitty stays at my elbow, eyes sharp.
Two women go before me—one reeking of gin and perfume, one with fingers that never stop moving. They give false names. The constable waves them off, bored.
Then his gaze lands on my jeans and sticks there. His face reddens. “Good God.”
“Good morning,” I say, because my mouth has no survival instinct.
The constable clears his throat. “Name.”
“Emma Hart.”
His eyes flick down to my jeans again, scandalized. “From?”
“America,” I say. “Boston.”
“And what brings you to Mayfair dressed as you are?”
“I was robbed,” I say quickly. “I hit my head.”
He taps his pen against the desk. “Any family in London?”
Kitty’s warning burns in my skull. I nod. “Yes. A relation.”
“Name?”
My mind goes blank.
Before the silence can swallow me, the outer door of the watch-house opens again.
Footsteps enter, slower and heavier than the constable’s pacing. The room seems to…shift. Even the watchman straightens, baton lowering.
The constable stands abruptly, as if yanked by invisible strings.
I turn.
He fills the doorway in a dark coat and an immaculate cravat, a footman at his shoulder holding a folded cloak. He wears gloves. Of course he does.
His gaze lands on me—sharp, assessing—and then flicks to my jeans with brief disbelief. I become painfully aware of every filthy inch of myself.
The constable clears his throat. “Your Grace—the Duke of Ashbourne.”
Your Grace.
Oh.
Kitty makes a tiny sound beside me that might be awe and might be fear.
The man’s eyes flick to the constable. “I was informed there was a disturbance near Ashbourne House,” he says, voice controlled. “A woman found in an unusual state.”
The constable gestures helplessly at me, as if I am a mess he did not order. “This is the woman, Your Grace. Claims to be from America.”
The man’s gaze returns to me. It is not cruel. It is not kind. It is simply…measuring.
“America,” he repeats, and I can hear skepticism wrapped in politeness. “May I ask your name?”
I lift my chin because apparently my survival instinct has decided now is the time for pride. “Emma Hart.”
His eyes narrow slightly, as if filing the information. “Miss Hart.”
He says it like it has weight.
“You were found near my neighbor’s mews,” he continues. “Lady Hartford’s maid claims you were wandering, speaking nonsense, and frightening the horses.”
“I didn’t mean to frighten anyone,” I say, because that feels like a safe place to start.
His gaze drops again to my jeans, then back to my face. “Your attire is…unconventional.”
“Thank you,” I say automatically. Then, because my mouth is a traitor, I add, “It has pockets.”
The constable makes a strangled sound. The watchman looks like he’s witnessing blasphemy.
The man—Your Grace—stares at me for a long beat. Then, very faintly, one corner of his mouth shifts before it smooths away.
“Miss Hart,” he says again, voice even, “do you have family in London?”
My mind blanks. The words lodge somewhere behind my teeth. All I have are Kitty’s warning and a lie that won’t form fast enough.
The duke studies me for a beat, then turns to the constable as if I have already answered.
“There will be a fine,” he says. “I will pay it. She is an addled relation from the Americas—newly arrived, clearly unwell.”
The constable blinks, caught between offense and obedience. “Your Grace, it is a matter of—of indecency and vagrancy—”
“She is neither,” the duke says, without raising his voice.
Relation. From the Americas. Addled. Unwell.
It’s a lie delivered with such authority it feels like truth.
My chest tightens with an emotion I’m not ready to name. Relief, yes. Also humiliation. Also fear, because I am now officially someone’s “addled relation.”