to the heart of the matter. “And the year is...?”
At her question, the gentleman’s leery look now turned downright suspicious. “What kind of foolish prank is this? The year is 1884, of course.”
Susannah went cold all over. The year he’d just given her matched that on the circus handbill. She’d had her suspicions...but even so, hearing them confirmed—hearing the man say that it was 1884—left her feeling as if a rug had been yanked out from under her.
Eyeing Kane, who was still a bit unsteady on his legs, the bewhiskered gentleman muttered something about the downfall of civilization being caused by an overindulgence in alcohol before hurrying on his way.
It took her a moment before she could speak. “Did you hear that?” she whispered to Kane.
“Yeah, he thought I was drunk,” Kane replied irritably.
“The part before that. About the year being...1884.”
Kane nodded, grimacing as he did so. His head was hurting like hell. “I heard what he said. The old guy clearly isn’t playing with a full deck. Surely you’re not buying what he said, are you?”
“It would certainly explain a lot.”
“Oh yeah, right,” Kane noted mockingly.
“What if we have somehow traveled back in time?”
“It’s too ridiculous to even consider. Come on.” Grabbing her hand, Kane led her toward a larger thoroughfare with more foot traffic. “I’ll prove it to you.”
Everyone was dressed in period clothing suitable for the late 1800s. The crowd was mostly male. The gaslight from the streetlamps lacked the harshness of the piercing orange lights used in so many cities these days. All of Susannah’s senses were bombarded with proof of the time—the strong smell of horse manure mixed with human perspiration, the dull clip-clop sound of horses maneuvering buggies down the busy thoroughfare. The street itself wasn’t asphalt or blacktop but appeared to be softer, perhaps dirt or sand. Even the sidewalk beneath her feet was different—constructed of red bricks.
Everyone was wearing hats. Except Kane and her. While Susannah had been taking stock of the people, she realized Kane was approaching everyone walking by, asking them what year it was.
Recognizing the disapproving and suspicious looks being cast their way, Susannah tugged on her hand—the one Kane was holding in a cast-iron grip—bringing his attention back to her. “What are you going to do, keep asking until you hear an answer you like, or until they call the police?” she demanded in an undertone.
“Since when has asking a simple question been illegal?” Kane countered.
“Stop this,” she hissed, yanking her hand free of his grasp. “You’re embarrassing me.”
“We may have fallen through a time hole and you’re worried about being embarrassed?” he asked in disbelief.
Pulling him around the corner and out of the flow of foot traffic, she said, “I’m worried about being put in an asylum, the way you’re behaving! Trust me, they don’t treat people very nicely in Bellevue, or the local equivalent, in this day and age. So try not to make a spectacle of yourself, okay? We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.” Tucking her hand in his arm, she led him back the way they’d come, deliberately walking at a slow and leisurely pace. Besides, with the long skirt of her heavy velvet dress, she could only travel at two speeds—slow and slower.
“This is all your fault,” Kane muttered, his head still throbbing. As they passed the infamous lamppost, he glared at it, before turning to glare at her. “Something must have happened when we stepped in that damn blue light. I told you not to go into that room!”
“No one held a gun to your head and made you come after me,” she retorted. “Listen, it’s useless to toss around accusations at this point. We have to go back into that room.”
He headed for the brick front steps of the house where they’d seen the blue light upstairs. “Fine. The sooner the better.”
“Wait a second. How are we going to get back inside?”
“By opening the door.” He did so before she could protest.
A servant hurried across the hall to greet them. “May I help you, sir?”
“We left something here earlier,” Kane explained. “Nothing to worry about. We’ll only be a minute.”
Luckily, another servant carrying a full tray of food required the first servant’s assistance in the crowded front parlor, thereby momentarily giving Kane and Susannah the free access to the stairway they required.
As Susannah quietly passed the doorway leading to the crowded parlor, she only now realized that while the party was still going on, the mood was definitely more somber than festive. Then her attention was focused on catching up with Kane, who was already halfway up the staircase.
Once they were safely on the third floor, she turned to him and said in dismay, “There’s no blue light here anymore!”
“Don’t panic. Try and remember exactly what we did. Maybe if we reenact everything exactly, we’ll end up back where we started, in our own time.”
Susannah nodded. It sounded as logical a suggestion as any she could come up with. “I got to the top of the staircase here and saw the blue light coming from the room. Then I moved from the landing over to this doorway. It was almost as if I was being drawn forward. There was this same flickering candlelight, but the brightest light—that strange blue light that isn’t here anymore—was coming from the rocking chair over there by the second door. I reached out to touch it, but it disappeared as I stepped through this second doorway.” As she softly spoke the words, she went through the motions she was describing. Then she stepped over the threshold, with Kane right on her heels, almost tripping on the hem of her red velvet dress.
“Did it work?” he demanded. “Are we back in our own time now?”
Peering out the third-story window, Susannah said, “I don’t think so. Hey, did you know that there’s a mirror up here aimed at the front porch? From the angle it’s set at, you can see who’s at the door.”
“Would you stop gushing over the furnishings,” Kane exclaimed irritably, “and do something useful instead.”
“I never gush,” Susannah haughtily informed him before another thought struck her. “I remember something else. For one second, I’m sure I saw a face in that strange blue light. The face of that woman in the portrait. Elsbeth.”
“Look, I’m willing to acknowledge the possibility of time travel here, but I draw the line at ghosts,” Kane stated emphatically.
Help!
Susannah’s eyes widened. “Did you hear that?” she whispered.
“Hear what?”
Help me!
Susannah’s breath caught, at both the painful urgency of the woman’s voice and the realization that she was hearing it inside her head. Could it be...Elsbeth? Was she communicating
