“Could we not find out from the later journals exactly what happened?”
“No. The rest are stored down in the Dim chamber. They won’t have changed, no matter if there has been a shift. I just happened to leave these up here the other day. Stupid.”
“Nah,” she said, nudging me. “How could you know? And anyway, since time is moving at the same pace there and here now, won’t young Johnny still be on the boat?”
I did a quick calculation of the dates. “Maybe. But he’s probably close by now.”
“Well,” she said, pulling me to my feet. “Nothing for it but to soldier on, is there? Let’s go.”
“You know,” I told Phoebe as we squeezed through the fake broom closet and down a flight of hidden stairs to the manor’s vast cellar, “I can think of one thing that scares me way more than shifts in the timeline.”
Phoebe quirked a pierced, russet eyebrow. “What?”
“Corsets.”
Most people claim if they could travel back in time, they’d take out people like Hitler or John Wilkes Booth.
And sure, I’d join those crusades any day. But my personal list for time-travel assassination includes, in no particular order:
Hungarian aristocrat Countess Elizabeth Báthory (1560?1614). Obsessed with staying young, this “first female vampire” exsanguinated hundreds of peasant girls, then drank and bathed in their blood, all to keep her own skin looking dewy fresh.
Marie Delphine LaLaurie (1775?1849). Notorious for throwing lavish dinner parties in her French Quarter home, the New Orleans socialite secretly carried out macabre medical experiments on the dozens of helpless slaves chained in her attic.
And finally, there was the dude—?for surely it was a man—?who originally invented the corset. I thought hell surely had a very special room for that guy.
The manor’s dank undercroft lay buried deep inside the granite mountain. Mighty brick pillars marched off into the shadows, bearing the house upon their shoulders. If even one of them crumbled while we were down here . . .
My mouth dried up. Stop it. This place has stood for nearly four hundred years. It’s fine. You’re fine.
I even believed it. In theory.
But no matter how many times I wove through the narrow, deliberately labyrinthine path, no matter how often I passed the towering heaps of dusty, spider-infested clutter, my chest would start to cave in. The historian in me longed to dig, to discover the undoubted treasures buried within the piles of castoffs built up over the centuries.
The claustrophobic in me ran. Every. Time.
I shoved past Phoebe and bolted down the path. As I burst through the Watch Room door, the positive-air barrier blasted my hair back in a powerful stream that kept out every speck of dirt.
I bent double, heaving for breath.
“Again?” I heard Collum mutter. But he hurried over, voice gentle as he patted my back. “It’s all right, Hope. You got this, lass. Slow down. Count like your mum taught you. In . . . two, three. Out . . . two, three. There you are. Good as new.”
My lungs began to re-inflate. Spots receded from the edge of my vision and I blinked down at the sight of Collum’s sock-covered feet. His grandmother’s order no doubt. No mud-crusted work boots would ever set foot on Moira’s immaculate white-tiled floor.
“You’ve got a hole in the left one.”
The hand on my back stilled. “That so, is it?”
With a final inhale, I straightened to grin up at him. “Pretty big one, too. Your toe’s sticking out.”
Collum “Everything in Life Is So Serious” MacPherson tried to glare, but I saw his lips twitch. “That’s the thanks I get, then? I help you and you ridicule my clothing?”
“Just your sock,” Phoebe put in helpfully. “But if you like, I can think up plenty about that clatty old flannel shirt you wear every other day.”
“This I get from someone whose hair’s the color of a bloody dino—”
“Enough!” Moira’s single clap echoed off the tile walls. “If you’re going to act like bairns, then I’ll treat you as such. Collum.” She held out an imperious hand. “Give me that sock. I’ll darn it for ye while the girls are changing.”
“Gram,” he started to protest, but Moira marched over to him, glaring up from her four-foot-eleven-inch height.
“You may be a foot taller and outweigh me again by half—”
“Don’t know about that,” Phoebe whispered.
Moira wheeled, smirking as she patted her admittedly ample rump. “I wouldn’t be talking out o’ turn, girl-o,” she said. “Just so ye know, I was as spritely as yourself when I was a lass.”
Phoebe’s eyes widened as she gave her grandmother’s round figure a quick once-over. She raced to the mirror, twisting to see her backside.
“Oh, gads.” My friend shook her head sadly. “You’re right, Gram. It’s going to be enormous.”
“More to love,” Doug—?wisely never turning from his spot at the computer terminal—?called out.
Slipping inside one of the wide, curtained changing booths to strip down to gym shorts and tee, I listened to the playful bickering.
This, I thought. This is family. Real family.
Oh, my parents loved me. I never doubted it. But our house had been more academic than homey. My world revolved around study and learning. There had never been much . . . any . . . room in my mother’s ironclad schedule for play.
As I stepped out and over to the triple dressing mirror, Moira’s gaze met mine in the glass. The dear laugh lines radiating from her eyes deepened as we exchanged a grin. She’d seen it in me from the start, I think. My loneliness. The desperation to belong. I had to look away, my throat going suddenly tight. Not with claustrophobia, this time. But with the overwhelming realization that I was finally home.
Chapter 11
AS WITH THE CAPABLE WAY SHE DID EVERYTHING, Moira attacked the issue of preparing our historically accurate costumes.
“All right, lamb,” she said, after lacing up the despised whalebone and canvas contraption. “Hold tight to the pole and suck in.”
Gripping the metallic pole installed for just this purpose, I felt the corset curve my spine and rearrange my organs as Moira yanked ruthlessly on the laces.
“Can’t . . . breathe . . .” I wheezed. “Lungs . . . in . . . throat . . .”
“Now, now,” Moira replied, neatly tying off the torture device. “That just means it fits proper. All the women of this era had the hourglass figure. Ye’d stick out like a banged thumb without it.” She gave me a satisfied pat on the shoulder. “Aw, ye’ll be fine, lamb. Women wore corsets for centuries and very few died of it.”
“Only a few, huh?” I rasped. “That’s comforting. Killed by corset. Yeah, that would be my luck.”
“Your turn, darlin’ girl.” Moira had an unmistakable glint in her eye as she crooked a finger at Phoebe. “Let’s just see how small we can get that wee waist of yours, aye?”
“Um, Gram.” Phoebe paled. “I—?I’m right sorry about—”