CHAPTER THREE
Hawarden Castle (New), (Castell Penarlag, Newydd)
Hawarden, Flintshire, Wales
The door clicked shut behind him.
Ceci didn’t move. For a few seconds, she just stood there, listening to the quiet he left behind, as if the room might rearrange itself now that he’s gone.
It didn’t.
The same bed. The same wardrobe. The same faint scent of wood polish and something floral she couldn’t place.
The same problem. She turned her head toward the chaise. The cushion. The phone.
Her body felt heavier than it should as she crossed the room, not slow exactly, but deliberate, like she was approaching something that might bite.
She lifted the cushion.
The phone was still there. It had survived the impossible intact.
“Okay,” she said under her breath. “Okay.”
She picked it up.
She unlocked the screen.
The battery icon blinked lower than she remembered. That felt wrong, too, like it was draining faster than it should. Then her eyes caught on the date.
She frowned.
That’s. No. She closed the screen.
Opened it again.
The date hadn’t changed.
31 Oct 1938.
“That’s not possible,” she said. Her phone shouldn’t know that. Even if everything else were real, even if she were actually standing in 1938, the phone would still show the last time it had synced yesterday at the Ruins. It would still say 2023.
It wouldn’t just… update.
It shouldn’t have changed without signals, satellites, or a mechanism she had no name for.
A slow, cold feeling moved through her chest.
“This isn’t just me,” she whispered. Because if her mind were breaking, the phone would still behave like a phone. This had moved beyond panic and into evidence. She stood there, holding the phone.
There was no one to call, even if calling had been possible.
No mother. No father. No husband waiting to hear her voice and know at once that something had gone wrong.
Her life back home was full of names and obligations and people who liked her very well.
Liking did not mean anyone would notice the shape of her absence.
If she vanished for a night, the world would not tear itself open looking.
That thought hurt more than the date on the phone.
She thought, suddenly, of her office.
Not the office as she described it to other people, with its carefully arranged books and William Morris prints and the small lamp that made the institutional furniture look less like punishment.
The real office. The one where she ate lunch at her computer four days out of five, fork in one hand, mouse in the other, scrolling through emails with the blank efficiency of a woman who had mistaken being needed for being known.
There was always someone asking for something.
A database problem. A citation question.
A meeting agenda. A student who needed help finding precedent studies before studio, a faculty member who had discovered urgency fifteen minutes before a deadline and expected the library to become a miracle on command.
Her inbox filled all day with proof that she was useful.
None of it proved anyone would choose her when nothing was being asked of her.
Most afternoons, she ate whatever she had brought from home without tasting it, one eye on the clock, one hand reaching automatically for the next message.
Sometimes she would hear laughter in the hallway and feel a brief, stupid lift in her chest before it passed her door.
No one was excluding her. That would have been easier to resent. They were simply going somewhere else.
The thought made the room tilt more sharply than the wrong year had. A person could build an entire life around competence and still have no one who knew what she ate for lunch.
Think, she told herself. Do not spiral. Possibility one: the phone was malfunctioning.
Unlikely.
Possibility two: she was hallucinating.
Possible. Possible enough to be a problem.
Possibility three:
She cut that one off before it could fully form.
“No,” she said.
She turned sharply and headed for the bed. If this was a hallucination, it should break under pressure. Under detail. Under scrutiny.
That’s how this worked.
Right?
From the foot of the bed, she picked up the wool jumper. The wool was heavier than she expected. It dragged against her damp skin, then settled, warm and close. Real.
The corduroys next. Stiff at first, then softened as they slid into place. They fit better than they should. Close enough to be uncomfortable in a different way. She looked down at herself.
The colors are wrong.
The colors weren’t wrong individually. It was the combination that felt wrong. She looked like she belonged in the room.
Her boots sat at the edge of the rug. Modern.
Scuffed leather. Thick soles. Familiar. One thing at a time.
The bathroom. She pushed the door open. It was large.
Bright. Cold in that way older rooms are, where warmth had to be actively created instead of assumed.
Clawfoot tub. Marble floor. A radiator in the corner that looked functional, not decorative.
No outlets. Her eyes scanned the walls automatically.
Nothing.
No switches except a single porcelain one by the door. She crossed to the sink. Two taps. Separate. She turned one. Water ran. Clear. Immediate. Real.
She gripped the edge of the basin and leaned in, staring at her reflection. She looked like herself. Pale. Freckles standing out more than usual. Hair was still damp and wild around her shoulders.
Green eyes wide.
Too wide.
“Okay,” she said to the mirror. “Let’s prove it.”
She turned.
Cabinet.
She opened it.
Labels in fonts she recognized from museum exhibits and period films, and they looked original rather than stylized. She picked one up. Vick’s VapoRub. The label was wrong.
Not wrong.
Older.
Different logo. Different typography. She flipped it. No expiration date. The past, apparently, had no interest in helping her orient herself. Her pulse ticked up. She set it down carefully.
Next bottle.
Brown glass. Paper label. Dr. Thomas’ Ague Elixir. She didn’t know what that was. That felt significant. She put it back. Stepped back. Looked again. Everything in this room was consistent with a time not her own. She pressed her lips together.
“This is very well done,” she said to no one. Because that was still the easier answer.
An elaborate setup.
A prank.
A production.
The quiet pressed in again. She exhaled sharply, grabbed her phone, and turned it back on.
Nothing changed.
“No,” she said again, more forcefully this time. She turned and paced in the small room. Her brain started reaching for explanations again, faster now.
Coma.
Injury.
Dream.
Drugged.
Reality show.
That one stuck for a second.
“That’s actually not impossible,” she muttered.
It would explain the details. The commitment.
The complete lack of anyone breaking character.
Except. She stopped. If this were a show.
Where were the cameras? Where were the crew?
Where was anything that didn’t belong? She looked around again.
Really looked. There was nothing here that shouldn’t be here.
The thought she’d been avoiding finally pushed forward. What if it’s real? Her breath caught.
“No,” she said.
But it didn’t sound like a denial anymore. It sounded like a plea. A knock at the door made her jump.
“Miss Bishop?”
Duncan.
She closed her eyes.
Pull yourself together.
“Just a minute,” she called. She splashed water on her face, wiped it away with a towel, and forced her breathing to slow. Then she opened the bedroom door. He stood exactly where she expected him to be. Straight-backed. Controlled. Watching.
“You’ve changed,” he said.
“Yes.”
A beat.
“You look,” He stopped.
She raised an eyebrow. “Like I belong here?”
His gaze sharpened. “That is not what I was going to say.”
“No?” she said lightly. “Pity.”
Silence stretched.
Then:
“May I come in?”
It was the first time he asked.
“Yes.”
He stepped inside.
The room felt smaller with him in it, though the walls had not moved. Her secrecy had company now. His eyes moved. The bed. The wardrobe. The bathroom door. Then back to her.
“You’re steadier,” he said.
“I’m faking it.”
“That is also a form of steadiness.”
She huffed a small laugh. Then, before she could talk herself out of it, “Captain Duncan,” she said, “what year is it?”
The question was simple. The way she asked it was not..
“1938,” he said.
No hesitation.
No confusion.
No humor.
Just fact.
Her stomach dropped anyway.
Because hearing it out loud, from someone else, made it worse.
“Right,” she said.
Too quickly. Too lightly.
He didn’t move.
“Why do you ask?”
She looked at him. Really looked this time.
At the control. The intelligence. The way he tracked every shift in her face. If she said it. If she told him. Everything would change. Possibly for the worse. Definitely for the stranger.
“I don’t think I should answer that yet,” she said.
He lifted that eyebrow again. “No?”
“No.”
A beat.
Then, softer, “not until I’m sure I’m not completely out of my mind.”
His eyes narrowed for half a second, then cleared. Recognition, perhaps, though not agreement. But not dismissal either.
“That seems… prudent,” he said.
She nodded once.
“Good. I’m glad we’re aligned.”
They stood there for a moment. Two people. In a room that shouldn’t exist. In a year that shouldn’t be happening. Finally, he said, “Tea is being brought up.”
“Thank God.”
“Yes,” he said. “Quite.”