I enter through the kitchen door and be sure my boots are clean before I head for the stairs. Halfway there, a movement makes me jump, but it is only a calico cat.
“Pandora?” I say. “Or Enigma?”
The cat fixes me with a baleful look, and I smile. “Hello, Pandora.”
She ignores me as I continue through the house. I am familiar to her. Even if I were not, well, cats are not dogs. Dogs will raise the roof if a stranger nears the house. Cats will let a stranger stay a fortnight undisturbed, so long as their food bowl is kept full.
I head up to the locked room, which I open easily. Then I hesitate.
As much as I long to run and leap into the future, there is a moment where I must take stock of the situation. I am about to leap into the twenty-first century. Am I ready? Mentally, yes, but on a more practical level, do I have everything I’ll need for the journey?
My clothing is not correct, but I plan to borrow some of Bronwyn Thorne’s. While she is half a head taller than me, she is a sturdy woman and I am a plump one. I should be able to find a suitable outfit until I can buy my own.
As for money, I have fifty pounds. I don’t know how much that might be worth in the future, but it seems enough to make a start of it. I also have my notebook. I am never without my notebook and two pens with two bottles of ink, because when a writer is struck by an idea, she is certain to find her pen nib broken or ink gone dry. I carry both book and writing implements in a fashionable little pouch I designed myself, where they rest along with my knife. A second pocket knife lies against my thigh, in yet another original design. One can never have too many weapons.
I should have loved to bring my sword, but I fear they are quite out of fashion in Victorian England. I wonder if it is different in the twenty-first century? One can only hope. Although, I suppose, any world that requires such weaponry also implies a great deal of danger, which would be . . . I know I ought to say “distressing” but the word that keeps coming to mind is “exhilarating.”
No matter. I am ready, with both pen and blade, which is all one really needs in the world.
I lift my chin and march into what is clearly an office. When I glimpse a notebook on the desk, I must steel against the temptation to read it. I have a purpose, and it is—for once—far more exciting than reading.
I am Miranda Hasting, also known as Randall Dash, to the literary world. All right. “Literary” world may be an exaggeration, given the snide remarks I’ve had the misfortune to read in reference to my novels, but they sell well enough that my fifty pounds was pocket change, left lying in my drawer at home.
So, let me try that again.
I am Miranda Hasting, aka Randall Dash, writer of adventurous tales of lady pirates with quick swords and quicker tongues, and I am about to dive into the deepest well of creative inspiration.
The future awaits.
I stride into the room, head high as I ready myself for the machine . . .
There is no machine.
I stop and look about. There is nothing in the room resembling a machine.
That must be a metaphor. Not an actual “machine” but a device that opens the door into another world. With that, I know exactly where to find it.
My gaze turns to a shelf stuffed with books. Doors into other worlds, indeed. I take three steps, diverting past an awkwardly placed chest and—
I smack into the foot of a bed. Which would be far more embarrassing had there been a bed there a moment ago.
There was no bed in this room. And now there is.
I have done it. I have crossed into the future.
The future!
I take a deep breath and, heart tripping, feet bouncing, I pivot, taking in the wonders of the . . .
Well, that’s disappointing.
There’s no other way to put it. I might say devastating, but I am too optimistic to make that drastic a determination yet. I am standing in a room that is just a room. A rather dull room, even.
It’s a small bed chamber, so I must presume that in the future, either two-year-old Amelia Thorne has moved out of the nursery or this room has been set aside for guests. I hope it is the latter. The girl I know is as cherished by her parents as my sisters and I had been by ours, and the nursery Amelia shares with her baby sister is a perfect doll house. This room is . . . I turn, wrinkling my nose. Drab. That is the best word for it. Not unpleasant or even uncomfortable, but simply drab. A guest room then.
What is truly disappointing is certainly not that the room is dull but that it is all so very ordinary.
I have tried to imagine the future, ever since I learned my sister could travel there. To do so, I conducted a mind experiment based on the past. The twenty-first century is approximately a hundred and fifty years from my time. So I must cast my mind back a hundred and fifty years, considering all the ways the world has changed, and I should expect it to change at least that amount for the future.
Yet, when I look around this room, I see nothing unexpected. There’s a fireplace that has not yet been converted to a coal-burning hearth. There are oil lamps and candles. Whatever became of that marvel known as gas lighting? Did it make houses explode, as people swore it would? Then my gaze stops on one particular item: a basin discretely tucked half under the bed.
I stare at it in horror. Not all the things I had been so certain would be improved within the next century, personal sanitation sat near the top of the list. I’d dreamed of deep bathing tubs with steaming hot water that flows like magic and the end—surely the end—of the horrors of the water closet. But no, in the future they are still using bed-chamber pots? Tell me it is not so.
I roll my shoulders and straighten. No matter. There must be a reason why people of the future relieve themselves in chamber pots at night. And why they haven’t converted every hearth to coal. And why they are not yet using gas lighting. All will be explained, and I am certain there are marvels I cannot imagine yet to come. Rosalind and August would hardly travel to this time if it did not hold delights. I simply must discover them for myself, starting with leaving this room.
I open the door, which looks exactly like the door in my world, right down to the lock.
Enough of that. It is a house. People do not tear them down and rebuild when fashions change. I have stayed in everything from a modern London flat to one that belonged back in Elizabethan times, right down to the decor.
I march to the top of the stairs and—
A clatter from below. A clatter, and then an oath.
I go still and listen. A muttering sounds after the oath, and while it’s too low to recognize it as more than a man’s voice, I know it is not William Thorne. He does curse, but the muttering is distinctly not his style. Also, William is in London with his family.
So who is downstairs?
In my time, the Thornes employ a shockingly small amount of staff for their social station. They are private people, which I can understand. I am often mistaken for being exceedingly outspoken and talkative, but when I am at home, I very much enjoy the quiet, closing my door even against Portia. Only when I am alone can I truly relax and be myself, and the Thornes have fashioned a cocoon where they do employ others—as they should, given their wealth—but they do not have the army of staff one might expect.
If I am correct, they have a housekeeper, a part-time nanny and a stableboy. What would they employ in the future? Perhaps their twenty-first century housekeeper is male. I should like to think such a thing is possible—the dream of a world where I would not need to write adventure tales under a man’s name and Portia would not need to sneak into medical lectures dressed as a boy.