CHAPTER TWO
They walked on.
“So,” she said, because she physically could not do otherwise, “are we going to continue walking in ominous silence, or do we eventually introduce ourselves like normal people?” He did not look at her immediately.
“I was under the impression,” he said, “that you were not inclined toward normal explanations.”
“Well, I’d settle for normal introductions.”
That got his attention. He turned his head, not fully facing her, but enough to acknowledge her as a person rather than an anomaly.
“Captain Duncan Alexander Clifton Carlton,” he said.
Ceci blinked.
“That is… an aggressive amount of name.”
“My family has always been thorough.”
“I can see that.”
A beat passed.
“And you?” he asked.
“Cecily”
She stopped.
The hesitation was brief, but Duncan caught it. He seemed built for noticing, which was deeply inconvenient for a woman currently held together by damp wool and lies.
“Wright,” she finished.
The name felt wrong in her mouth.
It always did now.
A familiar tightness moved through her chest, small and unwelcome.
“But it’s Ceci,” she said a little too quickly. “Most people call me Ceci.”
“Most people?” he repeated.
She shrugged, aiming for casual. “The ones I like.”
“And the others?”
“Don’t get invited to use my name.”
One corner of his mouth considered movement, then thought better of it.
“Miss Wright,” he said.
She exhaled sharply.
“Ceci.”
He glanced at her again.
“Miss Wright,” he repeated, not unkindly, but not yielding either.
Ceci looked straight ahead.
“Okay, well, now I don’t like you.”
“I shall endeavor to recover.”
“You should. You have a lot of ground to make up.”
A few steps later, before she could stop herself. “It’s Bishop.”
The slight turn of his head told her he heard it.
“Pardon?”
She lifted her chin. “My name. It’s Bishop. Cecily Bishop.”
A beat stretched between them.
“And Wright?”
She kept her eyes on the path.
“Was a mistake.”
She had kept Wright longer than she should have.
At first, it had been practical. The name was already on her university email, her conference badges, the articles where she had been second author, and grateful enough for the line to pretend second was not sometimes another word for invisible.
Changing it felt like work, and work had already taken up most of the space in her life.
Later, it became stronger than that. Wright had been the name on the mortgage papers, the joint checking account, the return address labels they bought in bulk because he liked buying things in bulk.
It was the name engraved on the casserole dish someone gave them for a wedding gift, still sitting in the back of a cabinet after he moved out because neither of them wanted to be the person who claimed it.
The last night in that house, she had eaten cereal for dinner while standing at the kitchen counter because the table had looked too formal for one person.
His chair was gone. Not empty. Gone. He had taken the set of chairs his mother liked and left the table, which was worse.
Ceci had stood there in sock feet, spoon in hand, and realized the room felt larger without him in it, but kinder.
That had been the part she never knew how to explain. Relief and loneliness had arrived together, and neither had been polite enough to leave first.
“Miss Bishop,” he said.
The name settled over her with unexpected mercy.
“Better,” she said.
They walked on. The silence returned, but this time more comfortably. After a minute, Duncan broke the silence.
“You corrected yourself,” he said.
She exhaled. “Yes.”
“Most people don’t,” he said.
“That’s because most people don’t have a reason to.”
“And you do.”
It isn’t a question.
Ceci considered lying.
It would be easy. A deflection. A joke. Something light enough to move them along. Instead, she said, “I did.”
Past tense.
He heard that.
“Understood.”
That was it. No follow-up. No prying. Relief came anyway, unwanted and immediate.
“Thank you,” she said, before she could stop herself.
“For what?”
“For not making it a whole thing.”
“I find,” he said, “that people will tell you what matters when they are ready.”
Ceci glanced at him.
“That sounds suspiciously like wisdom.”
“It is experience.”
“From your many years of being Captain Duncan Alexander Carlton?”
He did not look at her. “You left out a Clifton.”
“Tragic oversight.”
“Indeed.”
She huffed a quiet laugh, then sobered as the trees began to thin. The land opened ahead of them, and New Hawarden Castle rose into view.
Ceci stopped.
The reaction was immediate. Physical. Her body forgot everything else for a second.
“Oh.”
The word slipped out of her without permission.
The house, if house was still the right word, stood in layered stone and symmetry, all angles and towers and windows that caught what little light the morning offered.
It looked less like something built than something that had always been there, as if the land decided to become architecture.
“It’s gorgeous,” she said.
Beside her, Duncan paused.
“Yes,” he said after a moment. “It can be.”
She turned her head at that.
Can be?
Before she could ask, he was moving again.
Ceci followed.
As they approached the drive, details began to resolve. Gravel. Trimmed hedges. A low stone wall marking the edge of the property.
The car.
It sat just off to the side of the entrance, dark green and gleaming faintly despite the damp air. The shape was familiar in the broadest sense, but wrong in the specifics. The lines were too curved. The proportions off. The entire thing felt like a memory of a car rather than a modern one.
Ceci slowed.
“That’s yours?” she asked.
“It is.”
“It’s…” She searched for the right word. “Beautiful.”
He glanced at her. “You sound surprised.”
“I am. It looks like something that belongs in a museum.”
His brow lifted. “It belongs on the road.”
“Do you actually drive it?”
“Yes.”
“Like… regularly?”
He turned his head just enough to look at her properly.
“How else would one use it?”
Ceci pressed her lips together.
“Right,” she said. “Naturally.”
He studied her for a second longer than necessary.
“You have a motorcar?”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
“Subaru.”
He repeated it, as if testing the shape of it. “Soob. A. Rue.”
“Japanese.”
That earned her a look.
“A Japanese motorcar,” he said.
“Yes.”
“In America?”
“Yes.”
He considered this.
“I see.”
“You don’t.”
“No,” he admits. “I do not.”
She exhaled a small laugh. “Fair.”
They reached the front of the house. The door opened before Duncan could reach for the handle.
A woman stepped out with purpose. Mid-fifties, perhaps, broad-shouldered, her gray hair pinned back with precision that suggested both habit and authority.
Her eyes went first to Duncan, then immediately to Ceci.
They widened.
“Oh, good Lord,” she said. “What have you brought home?”
Ceci laughed before she could stop herself. The woman’s gaze sharpened. “At least she’s breathing.”
“Margaret,” Duncan said, “Miss Bishop has had an unfortunate morning.”
Margaret ignored him completely.
She came straight to Ceci and looked her over with a brisk efficiency that managed not to feel invasive.
“You’re soaked through,” she said. “And freezing.”
“I’m okay.”
Margaret gave her a look that dismissed that entirely.
“No, you are not.”
Ceci opened her mouth, then closed it again. Margaret nodded once, satisfied with her own assessment. “Inside.”
It wasn’t a suggestion.
Ceci glanced at Duncan.
“Is everyone here like this?” she murmured.
“More or less,” he said.
“Good to know.”
Inside, the air enveloped her.
Warmer. Still. Holding.
Ceci stepped into the entrance hall and stopped.
The marble, the polished wood, the oil portraits with their ancestral disapproval, all of it should have made the house feel like a museum.
Instead, it felt occupied. A newspaper lay folded on a side table.
A pair of gloves waited beside it. A walking stick leaned against the wall.
Nothing had been arranged for visitors. Everything seemed to be waiting for someone to return.
Her chest tightened.
This was real.
Margaret was already halfway up the stairs.
“Come along, dear.”
Ceci followed.
Ginger tried to follow.
“No,” Margaret said without turning. The dog stopped on the first stair with one paw lifted, deeply offended by the limits of human authority. Duncan looked at her. “Stay.”
Ginger sat, but only after making it clear that obedience had been her idea. Ceci glanced back once from the landing. The dog was still watching her, ears low, tail sweeping once across the polished floor. For some reason, that helped. When she looked at Duncan, she noticed he hadn’t moved.
He stood where they left him, one hand resting lightly on the banister post, watching her. Assessing her. Like he’s still deciding what she was.
Their eyes met.
He inclined his head.
Go on.
She did.
At the top of the stairs, the hallway stretched long and quiet, lined with thick rugs and doors that looked like they’d been closing out secrets for generations. Margaret opened one and gestured for her to enter.
“This will do,” she said. The room was large but warm. Floral curtains. A carved bed. A wardrobe that looked older than the concept of central heating. A dressing table with a silver-backed brush sat neatly in place.
“It was Miss Grace’s,” Margaret added. “She doesn’t come home much now.”
Her tone thinned at the edge, just enough for Ceci to hear the sadness under the practicality. Ceci tilted her head. “Miss Grace?”
Margaret glanced at her. “Captain Duncan’s cousin.”
“Ah.” Ceci nodded. “That tracks.”
No, actually. None of this tracked. She filed the name away anyway. Grace. Absent. Important enough to keep a room exactly as she left it. Margaret crossed to the wardrobe and began pulling things out.
“Let’s see what might suit.”
Ceci leaned lightly against the bedpost, watching.
“You’ve done this before,” she said. Margaret didn’t look up. “People have been arriving in worse states than yours for as long as there have been houses to arrive at.”
“That’s comforting.”
“It’s meant to be.”
Margaret turned, holding out a green wool jumper and a pair of corduroy trousers.
“These should do for now.”
Ceci took them.
They were soft. Heavy. Real.
“Bathroom’s through there,” Margaret said, nodding toward an adjoining door. “There are towels. I’ll have your things collected.”
“Thank you.”
Margaret nodded once and left, closing the door behind her. The silence that followed was immediate. Ceci stood in the middle of the room, the borrowed clothes in her hands.
She waited.
For something to break. For something to reveal itself. For the illusion to drop.
Nothing happened.
Slowly, she sat the clothes on the bed. Then she moved. Straight to the window.
The grounds stretched out below, damp and quiet. The car. The drive. The trees. No people. No movement. No sign of anything familiar. Her heart started to climb again.
“No,” she whispered.
She pulled her phone from her pocket.
No signal. Battery lower.
And when the screen lit.
31 Oct 1938.
Her stomach dropped hard enough she had to sit.
“That’s not,” she said aloud. “That’s not possible.”
The room didn’t argue. It just existed. What scared her most was not the wrong date. It was the awful suspicion that no one in her ordinary life would know she was missing yet, and no one would feel the absence quickly enough to act on it.
A knock sounded at the door.
Ceci jerked upright.
“Miss Bishop?”
Duncan. The universe had apparently chosen consistency as its newest form of attack. She looked around, then shoved the phone under the cushion of the chaise.
“Yes?”
The door opened just enough for him to step inside. He had removed his gloves. Without them, his hands looked… more human. More dangerous. More capable.
“I wanted to ensure you had what you needed,” he said.
She stared at him.
“You thought I might steal something?”
“That had not occurred to me.”
“So reassuring.”
His expression caught for half a second before he smoothed it away. He glanced at the untouched clothes.
“You haven’t changed.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Because I think I’ve lost my mind.
Because your world is wrong.
Because I think I’m in 1938, and if I say that out loud, everything breaks.
“I’m trying not to panic,” she said instead.
He considered that.
“That seems reasonable.”
She let out a short, incredulous breath. “That’s your response?”
“Would you prefer another?”
“Yes, actually. Something along the lines of ‘everything is fine, you’re definitely not losing your grip on reality.’”
“I cannot offer that.”
She huffed.
“At least you’re honest.”
“I find it useful.”
She studied him.
“Do you ever get the feeling something is wrong,” she asked, “before you can explain it?”
“Yes.”
The word was immediate.
She waited.
“You learn to recognize it,” he said. “After a while, danger has a texture. People go carefully. The air changes. The ordinary begins to feel staged.” He looked at her directly.
Her fingers tightened in the fabric of the jumper.
“And this feels like that?” she asked.
He looked at her.
“Very much so.”
Silence.
Then, “You should change,” he said. “You’re cold.”
“Bossy.”
“Practical.”
She almost smiled.
He moved toward the door, then paused.
“I’ll be downstairs,” he said. “Margaret will send tea.”
“Captain Duncan.”
He turned.
“What do you think is happening?”
A beat.
“I think,” he said, “that you were either very unlucky this morning…”
“And the other option?”
Now he looked at her fully.
“I think you’ve stepped into something,” he said.
“Something what?”
He held her gaze.
“Unfinished.”
Then he left.
Ceci stood alone in the quiet room. Her eyes drifted to the chaise. To the cushion. To the phone hidden beneath it. Then to the door he just walked through.
“Great,” she muttered.
Because here was the problem: He didn’t look like a man humoring her. He looked like a man who believed something was wrong. And that made everything worse.