“Good point. Thanks.”
This time the maid’s smile was tinged with relief. “I know you’ve been ill, but if you say such things, folks’ll think you’re a bit daft.”
Kendra refrained from admitting that she was feeling a bit daft, simply nodding instead and picking up the abandoned hairbrush as she wandered to the window. It was small and not all that clean, but it offered a sweeping view of the English landscape that rolled gently into the distance, seamed with hedges and dotted with thick copses. An early morning mist clung to the ground, offering its own enchantment. In normal circumstances, she would’ve enjoyed the view.
These were not normal circumstances.
After brushing her hair, she turned to the washbasin, using the water already in the bowl. It felt icy cold against her skin. Did delusions feel this real? She stared at her reflection in the pitted mirror. She was paler than normal, making her eyes, below the blunt cut bangs, appear even darker. She didn’t like the fragile look of the woman before her, the shimmer of panic twining with fear in her gaze. Show no weakness.
Behind her, Rose scurried around the room, quickly making the beds. “Did you come with one of the ladies, or did Mrs. Danbury ’ire you for the party?”
“Duke . . . I mean, the Duke wanted me to stay,” Kendra said carefully. Since there was nothing else she could do with her hair except let it swing straight and silky to her jaw, she set down the brush and picked up the jar filled with white powder. Sniffing, she realized it was baking soda. She wet her finger, dipped it into the white powder and then scrubbed her finger against her teeth.
“’Is Grace ’imself ’ired you?”
From the girl’s thunderstruck expression, Kendra deduced that wasn’t normal. Yet Rose recovered quickly, shrugging as she donned her heavy apron, tying it behind her back, “Ah, well. The Duke’s known for ’is peculiarities. Oh.” She glanced back at Kendra as she headed for the door. “I didn’t mean no insult, miss.”
Was it possible to be insulted by a hallucination? “Right now, Rose, being called peculiar,” she managed to say truthfully, “is the least of my worries.”
The human mind can handle only so much stress. It’s why men, women, and children eventually resume their daily business in war zones, shopping while bombs dropped. So it didn’t surprise Kendra when the terror and sheer disbelief shrank and transformed into sort of a surreal amazement as she followed her new roommate down the backstairs to the servant’s hall. Still, she was grateful that she wasn’t required to make small talk as Rose chattered excitedly about the house party. Kendra didn’t bother to follow the thread of conversation, but she made the appropriate noises to encourage the girl. Better to have Rose talk, she figured, than to start asking questions. Besides, the one-sided conversation freed Kendra up to concentrate on the problem at hand, which, as she saw it, was one of three possibilities: someone was playing an elaborate hoax on her, she’d had a complete psychological break, or she’d actually been sucked back in time or into another dimension, à la string theory.
She’d almost ruled out the first possibility. Not only couldn’t she come up with the who—CIA? MI5? KGB?—but she couldn’t decide on the why. Why would anyone go to the trouble? Why, for Christ’s sake, would anyone do it? The conspiracy of people involved and the implementation of such precise details made the whole idea preposterous.
The second possibility, some form of psychosis, sent a shudder through her. The mission she’d given herself—to dispense justice on Sir Jeremy Greene—had been stressful, certainly, and had, in many ways, gone against her own moral code. Had her mind snapped in response? Could she be sitting in some psychiatric ward, her body confined to a straitjacket, while her mind conjured up this alternative reality?
Even as she considered that horrible prospect, everything inside her rebelled. If she’d had some sort of psychotic break, could her mind actually fill in the minutiae that she was seeing now? The young maids busily sweeping the carpets—with whisk brooms, for the love of God—and polishing the heavy furniture in the hallways. Or the footmen in their embroidered, deep blue uniforms and white powdered wigs, carrying in kindling for the fireplaces. She’d concede hallucinating about this period given the costume party, but could she cull from her imagination the sights, the sounds, the smells—lemon, linseed oil, and beeswax—that she was experiencing now?
“What’s a tweeny?” she asked abruptly, cutting Rose off midsentence.
“Pardon?”
“What is a tweeny?”
“Oh. I told you—I’m a tweeny.”