Chapter 3
“Victoria? Queen Victoria? They’ve got the queen here?” I smile and look around. This is taking fancy dress party to a new level. And congratulations to whoever did casting for this party, because this woman is the spitting image of the queen, and the man is the spitting image of Karim.
“Respect. Your. Monarch,” the man says through gritted teeth, looking like he would throttle me a little if we weren’t in a crowded room.
“The act is getting to be a bit much.” But he’s committed to his role, I guess.
“Don’t speak to Her Royal Highness in that manner,” says another imperious man, this one white and much older than the first man who annoyed me.
Three other men step forward, in sharp red jackets with gleaming medals over pressed black pants, and semi-ridiculous fuzzy, tall hats like they wear outside Buckingham palace.
They’re all armed like we’re about to go to war.
But war where they only use swords. They put their hands on those fake weapons and look at me with a frightening focus in their eyes.
Actors a little too committed to their role.
And those weapons look a little too real.
This feels like an immersive dinner gone way too intense.
I will be writing a review for this company when I get my phone back, taking off one star for a little too much realism.
“Forsyth. Abdul.” Victoria gives the men who told me to behave a hard look. “She is our guest from India. We cannot expect her to understand royal protocol.” Then she faces me. “Come, walk with me.”
Before I can accept the invitation (although that’s generous since it sounded more like a command than anything else), she starts walking around the large room we’re in.
Whose furniture might be different, and in different places, than before my fall.
Mainly, the table where we had dinner has been removed to make space for a dance floor.
I rub my head, wondering if this is part of a concussion. Maybe I’m remembering the room wrong because of my fall.
But being around this woman does seem like a better option than all the suffocating masculinity behind me. I hurry behind her since she’s already started the walk without me.
“Which family are you with? Cooch Behar? Maratha? Baroda?” she asks.
Wow. I haven’t heard those names come from someone else’s mouth in casual conversation before. Or even at a conference like this with historians of all different time periods together. They have really stepped it up this year.
But only for the last event, apparently.
“Yeah. I’m in the Cooch Behar family.” This roleplay aspect of the costume party is kind of fun.
“I know the daughters, so you must be a niece. But didn’t the family leave early? Suniti Devi said something about wanting to get back to India to handle some issue with her women’s school.”
“You know about Suniti Devi and her school? You do better research for your roles than the historians I interact with.”
“Pardon me?” She looks confused now, and someone please give these people an acting award already. Their refusal to break character, even when maybe they should have to give me medical attention, should be studied by actors everywhere.
“You’re all very committed to the job.”
“Oh. I do think there is a little being lost in translation. And your strange accent. Why don’t you have a dance with the young Marquess of Basildon and he can tell you more about England? Leopold.” The actress grabs an attractive tanned man walking toward us.
A really attractive man. Too attractive for me to not have noticed him at the convention before tonight’s party. There weren’t enough books around to distract me from noticing him. He must be an actor as well, then.
His black hair is thick, falling haphazardly across his tanned forehead and around his ears, and then playing with the nape of his neck.
Warm brown eyes twinkle at me charmingly as he takes my hand and raises it to his lips that are surrounded by a beard, not breaking eye contact with me, with an arm that fills out his fine black jacket with what looks like hard muscle.
He stands again and smooths his hand down his pleated white shirt and dark waistcoat.
And, for the sake of historical accuracy, it should be noted his clothes are impeccable reproductions, down to his white bowtie. Because as a historian, that should have been the first thing I noticed.
It wasn’t, though.
“Basildon, may I present… actually, I didn’t get your name.” The actress playing Victoria looks at me expectantly.
“Meera. My name’s Meera Chopra.”
“Of the Cooch Behar family. Must be one of the nieces. And this is Leopold Clifford-Alston, Marquess of Basildon, Baron Chelmsford. He’s half-Indian, so you have that in common.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you.” Great, his voice is just as suggestive of sex as his face and body. A body that’s currently bowing over my hand.
“You…” I clear my throat. “You as well.”
Silence fills the space between us. I look around but can’t see any of the academics I’ve attended panels with during the past week.
Or any of the presenters. Or any of the organizers.
And all of the lights in here have dimmed and turned into candles too.
And again, an entire table seems to have been moved while I was outside.
What is going on?
“May I have this dance?” Leopold asks.
“Sure.” The angry men the actress playing Victoria saved me from earlier are looking my way, still glowering. I’ll say yes to anything that takes me away from them.
I take the gloved hand in front of me, shivering in relief that I’m not getting direct skin contact.
It’s been a year since my last relationship and I’m usually surrounded by much older, married colleagues, so even the slight physical contact with someone potentially eligible might have made me combust with all the lust.
Only one problem, though. “I don’t really know how to dance. Well, not these dances. I can sway to a beat, but this looks more complicated than my repertoire.”
“Ah. Not a problem. It is a waltz and I have been forced to learn the steps under penalty of no pudding. And nothing can stop me in the pursuit of pudding. I shall take care of you.” He winks at me, apparently reading my mind about the glove barrier and determined to make me combust despite it, a challenge I didn’t even know I was throwing out there.
I clear my throat. “I appreciate that.”
We’re silent the first few minutes of the dance.
I’m concentrating on not stepping on his feet or bumping into anyone else and enjoying the wall of muscle under my hand.
Which makes concentrating on the first two tasks more difficult.
I have no idea why he’s so quiet. Probably mad to have an amateur foisted on him.
He does keep looking around, probably scouting for the next woman to dance with. One who knows her way around a waltz.
“I hear India is lovely this time of year,” Leopold, Marquess of Posh-Sounding-Place, says. In a pretty posh accent, actually. It’s all too fancy. I’m going to start thinking of him as Leo.
“It’s monsooning right now,” I say before remembering it was just polite small talk.
“Right. I’ve never actually been or that’s probably something I would know. You have a curious accent, though. Doesn’t sound like anyone else in the Indian delegations that come here.”
“Because I’m from America.”
“The former colonies? How did you end up there?” He’s focused on me now, no longer looking for greener pastures.
“The former colonies? That’s cute.” Did these actors have to prove they had at least a master’s degree in the history of the Victorian era before they could be here?
Are they just that committed to a one-night gig?
If I ever need period actors, I’m calling the conference organizer to see who they are.
“It wasn’t cute when we were fighting and dying in the mud over there.”
“You were fighting there?” I look him over, from his shiny black shoes to his impeccably tied ascot necktie. Also, it was well before his time, if the actors are pretending to be in the Victorian era. Late Victorian era by the looks of the costumes I’m seeing.
“No. I want to say someone in the family did fight over there. A great-great-uncle who was a second son and drew the genetic short straw, so he ended up with an Army commission and got shot in some field in Massachusetts. Don’t worry; he survived.
” He tilts his head with an easy grace. “Why are you there?”
“I was born there.”
“How was a member of the Cooch Behar family born in America?”
I look around yet again. This is really weird.
“Are there multiple events here tonight? To be honest, I might be in the wrong place. I hit my head earlier, and everything is…off.” As nice as this conference is, they didn’t even spring for coffee.
I can’t see them spending this much for actors to entertain us on the last night.
“This is one of Queen Victoria’s homes. The only events here are the ones she hosts. Like this ball at the end of her birthday celebrations,” Leo says carefully, like he’s confronting a wild animal with a hungry look in their eyes and he’s the only meat within a mile radius.
And while he is an appealing piece of meat, I may have bigger problems on my hands.
“No.” I stop dancing. “This doesn’t make any sense.” I break of out of his arms. “If you’ll excuse me, I…I think I need to leave.” Or at least find my phone and call Luis. Because panic is starting to set in at how confused I am.
I turn abruptly and walk out of the ballroom. Relying on my very probably concussed brain, I go down hallways and look through doors, trying to find the coat check.
“Where are you going?” Leo asks me from behind. Following me. Why is he following me? Can’t he take a hint?
“I’m trying to leave.” But I don’t know my way around. This is a giant house with more rooms than I have books, and the party was only in a few of them. I can’t even take the time to appreciate the historic furniture, because nothing is right, damn it!
“Right. And I do support you in your endeavors. It is only that the front door is in the opposite direction,” Lord So-Helpful says. “Here, if you give me your arm, I can lead us out of this labyrinth.”
That sounds better than me being forever lost in a house museum, a warning for docents to give visitors in the future.
Although as places to be trapped in goes, a palace isn’t that bad.
Still, the whole situation is less than ideal, and the way he’s treating me, like I’m a small child who’s lost in a mall on a back-to-school shopping trip, is grating. “Sure. Let’s do that.”
Much more efficiently than I was doing it, Leo leads me to the front door. I’m about to thank him so he knows I’m fine and he can leave me alone, but I get distracted when I realize there’s no coat room.
“Where’s our coats? My purse?” I look around the giant foyer, my stomach dropping when I don’t see it.
A white plaster cast Victoria and Albert sculpture, the figures dressed in medieval garb, looks down at me.
Mocking me. Because I don’t remember that there this evening.
In fact, it should be in the Victoria and Albert Museum, where I saw it two weeks ago when I was playing tourist in London.
And there should be a small table and racks set up for coats in its place, which was there at the beginning of the party.
I drop Leo’s arm and push through the massive front doors.
Outside is no more helpful than the interior.
Our shuttle is gone and replaced by some horses and carriages along the drive.
Which is no longer a paved road. I can’t see any of the bright lights of the town that was just past the trees when I got to this party.
The vague feeling of panic intensifies as the evidence mounts that something is very wrong.
“None of this is right,” I whisper to myself, for the hundredth time tonight. “What’s the date today?” I ask desperately.
Time travel isn’t real. But what other explanation is there for all the strange things happening here? It’s either time travel, a concussion, or a really elaborate Punk’d prank.
And that show hasn’t been on the air since 2007.
He looks at me like he’s worried about me, but answers, “It is May 25, 1895.”