CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ceci
Margaret came in with fresh tea at exactly the wrong moment, which was to say the only possible one.
She set the tray down with her usual controlled efficiency, then looked at the untouched cups, the calling card in Sabrina’s hand, Archie’s stillness, Duncan by the hearth, and Ceci with both palms flat against the table.
No one spoke.
Margaret’s gaze moved once around the room.
“Shall I leave this here,” she said, “or am I meant to pretend I haven’t noticed everyone looking like a will has been read badly?”
Archie gave a short, startled breath that almost became a laugh.
Duncan looked at Ceci.
She understood the question before he asked it. Another person. Another impossible explanation. Another face that might change once she heard it.
Then Duncan said, “Margaret should stay.”
Sabrina’s eyes lifted. Archie went still in a different way.
Margaret looked at Duncan. “Should I?”
“Yes,” he said. “If Miss Bishop permits it.”
The courtesy nearly undid her. The fact that he asked her, while making it clear that Margaret mattered.
Ceci curled her fingers against the table. “Yes. She should stay.”
Margaret did not sit. She folded her hands in front of her apron and waited.
The tea sat between them, untouched. Sabrina had taken off one glove and was tapping Matthias Voss’s folded calling card against the table with slow, exact impatience.
Archie had gone quiet in a way that changed him, all charm set aside, his gaze fixed on the card.
Duncan stood by the hearth, one hand resting on the mantel, watching the room as though it had run out of safe answers.
He was right.
“All right,” Ceci said.
Sabrina tilted her head. “That sounds ominous.”
“I don’t think this is going to improve anybody’s evening.”
Archie rested one hand on the back of the chair before him. “That has rarely stopped a thing from being worth hearing.”
Duncan said nothing.
Ceci looked at him first because she had to. If she was going to break the arrangement they had built, she needed to see whether he was going to stop her.
He didn’t.
His face changed only enough. So, she turned back to the others.
“The reason I noticed Voss,” she said, “is that I’ve spent years studying rooms like that after the fact.
The letters, the diaries, the invitations, the social records people leave behind when they think no one important will ever read them.
I know the names that recur. I know the hostesses, the patrons, the men who make themselves useful, and the women who make them seem fashionable. ”
Sabrina leaned one hip against the table. “Yes. That part we understand.”
“No,” Ceci said. “You understand the version I’ve let you have.”
That stilled the room.
Archie set down his cup. Sabrina stopped tapping the card. Margaret’s expression did not alter, but Ceci felt her attention sharpen from the side of the table.
Only Duncan looked unsurprised, and that was about to become its own problem.
Ceci drew in a breath.
“I’m an American librarian from the year 2023,” she said.
Nothing moved.
Then Sabrina blinked once and said, very clearly, “I beg your pardon.”
“I came to Wales to do research in my own time. Gladstone’s Library, correspondence, social networks, influence.” Ceci kept her voice steady because stopping now would be fatal. “I went up to the ruins in the rain. I sat down for a minute. Then I woke up here.”
Sabrina stared at her.
Archie still had not moved.
Margaret looked at Duncan. “And you knew?”
Duncan crossed from the hearth to the table with quiet deliberation. He took Ceci’s phone from his pocket and set it on the wood between them.
“Yes,” he said.
Sabrina looked from the phone to Duncan so quickly that it was almost funny.
“How long?”
“Since the day she became the Hawarden archivist.”
Sabrina made a low sound that was not quite outrage and not quite admiration.
Archie laughed first, a short, incredulous breath of it.
“I knew I was being excluded from something indecent,” he said.
“That is hardly the word,” Duncan replied.
“No,” Archie said, eyes on Ceci now. “It is somehow worse.”
Sabrina picked up the phone before anyone could stop her. The screen lit beneath her fingers, and she went very still.
“Oh.”
That one word did more work than three hours of discourse could have.
Ceci watched Sabrina’s quick mind try to classify what she was holding and fail.
“It’s like a film screen,” Sabrina said.
“Yes.”
“And you’re telling me this object comes from eighty-five years in the future?”
“Yes.”
Sabrina looked up.
That was the moment Ceci expected laughter or dismissal or anger. Instead, Sabrina said, “Well. That is abominably unfair.”
Archie made the sound of someone trying not to laugh in church.
Ceci stared at her. “What?”
Sabrina set the phone down with exaggerated care. “If you had begun with that, I’d have had a much better week.”
Against all reason, Ceci laughed.
It broke the tension just enough for Archie to step into it.
“You are taking this very well,” he said.
Sabrina rounded on him. “I am taking it efficiently.”
Margaret reached for the teapot.
Everyone looked at her.
She poured Ceci’s cup first.
“The beginning will go better if she has tea,” Margaret said.
For some reason, that was the moment Ceci’s throat tightened.
Archie finally rose from his chair and came closer to the table. He rested both hands on the back of the chair opposite Ceci and looked at her with the full force of his attention.
“Say it again,” he said.
Ceci’s smile faded.
“I’m from 2023,” she said. “I don’t know how I got here. I only know that I did.”
Archie looked at Duncan. “And you believed her?”
“I believed the evidence in front of me,” Duncan said.
Archie glanced down at the phone. “This?”
“This, and the rest.”
He should have laughed, perhaps. Or recoiled. Or demanded a more civilized explanation than time travel. Instead, he ran one hand over his mouth and said, in the tone of a man arriving at a particularly indecently elegant theorem, “Well. That does explain the archives.”
Ceci let out a breath that felt like relief.
Margaret set down the teapot. “And the trousers.”
Archie looked at her.
Margaret looked back. “I did wonder.”
Sabrina made a delighted sound. “Margaret, you are wasted on domestic service.”
“I am aware.”
Duncan’s mouth shifted despite himself.
Sabrina pointed at him with one gloved finger. “Dax. You have been carrying this around alone?”
“Yes.”
“That is psychotic behavior.”
“It was necessary.”
“It was selfish,” Archie said.
Duncan’s gaze shifted to him. “Possibly.”
The honesty of it quieted the room.
Sabrina folded her arms. “You should have told us.”
“I told you now,” Ceci said.
Sabrina turned back to her at once, all the irritation gone out of her face.
“Yes,” she said more softly. “You did.”
Ceci looked from one to the other and felt, with sudden sharp force, how tired she was of being alone in it.
“I didn’t tell you earlier because it sounds insane,” she said. “And because I had no way of proving it except this and my own certainty, and that didn’t seem like enough.”
“It still sounds insane,” Sabrina said. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
Archie laughed then, and this time Duncan had to fight a smile of his own. The room loosened by a fraction. Ceci found herself smiling too, helplessly.
“Thank you. That helps.”
“It shouldn’t,” Sabrina said. “But I’m glad.”
Archie moved around the chair and sat down across from her. He had gone more serious now, though the ease was still there at the corners of him.
“So,” he said, “the reason you knew that room felt wrong was that you know the historical record?”
“Yes.”
“And Voss?”
“He should have left traces,” Ceci said at once. “Somewhere. If he was that close to Mosley, if he was shaping how the movement presented itself, he should exist in the paper trail. I should have seen him.”
Archie nodded. “Which is why you went pale?”
“Yes.”
Sabrina looked at the phone again, then back at Ceci.
“And you think?”
Ceci hesitated.
This was the part that still felt unsteady under her feet.
“I think history is being pushed,” she said. “I don’t know how. I don’t know by whom. But it felt wrong before. Too polished. Too efficient. And then I saw him and the feeling got worse.”
Archie was watching her with the bright, concentrated look he wore when an idea had become dangerous enough to matter.
“You think he doesn’t belong.”
“Yes.”
Sabrina’s eyes narrowed. “That is a different claim from saying he is what you are.”
“I know,” Ceci said. “I’m not ready to say that yet.”
Duncan spoke then, and the room quieted around him.
“But we are obliged to consider it.”
No one answered right away.
The idea was too large.
Too absurd.
Archie leaned back in his chair and laughed once, softly and without humor.
“Well,” he said, “that was not where I expected the evening to go.”
“It rarely is,” Margaret said, and poured more tea.
Ceci put one hand over her eyes for a second and laughed too, the sound thin at first, then steadier as it left her. When she lowered her hand, Duncan was watching her with the same grave attention he had given the card.
His expression held belief with consequence behind it.
That steadied her more than the laughter had.
Sabrina picked up the calling card again.
“If we are entertaining the possibility of two impossible people in Wales at once,” she said, “then I’d like the courtesy of a clearer strategy.”
Archie looked at her. “That may be the most useful thing said in this house all week.”
“Do be quiet.”
He smiled.
Sabrina ignored him and turned to Ceci. “What do you need from us?”
Ceci swallowed.
“I need you to believe that I’m not being dramatic,” she said. “And that if I say something feels wrong, I’m not guessing.”
Archie answered first.
“I believe that now.”
Sabrina nodded. “So do I.”
Margaret looked at Ceci over the tea tray. “I believed you were in trouble when Captain Duncan brought you in soaked through and shivering. This is only a more specific version.”
Ceci laughed, then nearly cried, then did neither because Margaret handed her the cup.
Duncan said nothing, which suited the fact that he had believed it first.
Then Archie added, more carefully, “I also think you should have told us sooner.”
That one found its mark.
Ceci looked at him. “Yes.”
“And I understand why you didn’t,” he said.
Sabrina reached across the table and took Ceci’s left hand.
“You are forgiven for being incomprehensible,” she said. “But only because I’m fond of you and because the alternative is intolerably dull.”
Ceci laughed again, genuinely this time.
Duncan looked down at the table for a moment as if collecting himself before speaking.
“Then we proceed with full knowledge,” he said. “No more half-truths between us.”
Sabrina raised one brow. “That sounds optimistic.”
“It is a directive.”
“It sounds optimistic anyway.”
Archie took a sip of now-cold tea and said, “I should like it recorded that today I learned the woman I kissed in the gallery is from the future.”
Silence.
Then Sabrina turned to him. “You did what?”
Ceci closed her eyes.
Duncan did not move at all.
Margaret picked up the empty tray.
“I’ll bring something stronger than tea,” she said.
Archie smiled into the disaster of it.
“Well,” he said, “there goes the last of restraint.”
For one beat, no one spoke.
Then Sabrina laughed so hard she had to put down the card.