Through time II ; Flames of time

Meeting her

*Lily*

The light is wrong.

That is the first thing I register, surfacing from a sleep that never quite settled into rest. Not the grey wash of a London morning through cheap blinds, not the amber glow of the streetlamp outside my flat. This light is soft and yellow and it moves. It flickers, just slightly, against the low ceiling above me.

Gas. I am in a room lit by gas.

I sit up too fast and the borrowed dress pulls across my shoulders, stiff where someone else“s sweat dried into the seams long before I ever touched the fabric. The cellar room at Thorne Manor assembles itself around me in the dimness: the narrow cot, the washstand with its chipped basin, the single high window that shows nothing but a rectangle of pale morning sky. My rucksack sits in the corner where I left it last night, a black nylon anachronism in a room that belongs to 1882.

I press the heels of my hands against my eyes and breathe out slowly. The air tastes of coal smoke and old stone. Somewhere above me, the house is waking up.

The dress takes three attempts to fasten correctly. My fingers keep reaching for a zip that is not there, finding instead a row of tiny buttons that run up the back and require a contortionist“s flexibility. I manage most of them. The last two I leave undone because my arms simply will not bend that way, and I tell myself no one will notice beneath the apron I am supposed to wear.

I am Mary. Kitchen maid. I have to remember that.

The corridor outside my room is narrow and unlit, the floorboards worn smooth by a century of footsteps that have not happened yet. I follow it toward the sound of voices, one hand trailing the wall for balance. The plaster is cold and slightly damp beneath my fingers. My trainers are still in my rucksack, replaced by a pair of borrowed boots that pinch at the toes and make a sound I am not used to when I walk. A heavier sound. A sound that belongs to this century.

The kitchen is already alive with movement when I find it. Two women who clearly do not recognise me pause their work to look at me, and I remember that I am supposed to be new here, that Leo arranged my presence in this household as carefully as he arranged everything else. A fortnight of preparation, he said. I wonder what story he told them.

“You“ll be Mary, then.“ The older of the two women wipes her hands on her apron and gestures toward a pile of potatoes waiting beside the sink. “Mrs Hatch said to expect you. I'm Cook.“

“Yes,“ I say. “Mary. That’s me.“

She nods, already turning back to whatever is simmering on the stove. The younger woman, a girl really, with red hair escaping its pins, gives me a quick smile and returns to scrubbing a pot. I pick up a potato and a knife and I begin to peel, and the rhythm of it is almost soothing, a small domestic task that does not require me to think about where I am or why.

The conversation resumes without me, low and easy, the kind of talk that fills a kitchen when people have worked together long enough to forget they are being overheard.

“…says the dress will be ready by the end of the month. Silk from Paris, if you can believe it.“

“I can believe it. He’ll spare no expense for her, not the Duke.“

“Have you seen the ring? Mrs Hatch says it was his mother’s. A sapphire the size of a thumbnail.“

The potato in my hand is suddenly very interesting. I pare away a long strip of skin and let it drop into the basin.

“She’s a sweet thing, Lady Evelyn,“ Cook says, and there is something almost defensive in her tone. “Pretty as a picture and not a bit of airs about her. He’s a lucky man.“

“Lucky,“ the red-haired girl echoes, and I cannot tell if she means it. “She is too.”

I keep my head down and my hands moving. The knife is blunt. It catches on a knot in the potato and I have to work it free, and the small resistance gives me something to focus on that is not the name ringing in my head. Evelyn. The girl Leo is supposed to marry, the girl whose ring is a sapphire the size of a thumbnail, the girl who has done nothing wrong except exist in the wrong century and love the wrong man.

Or the right man, depending on your perspective. From where I am standing, in a kitchen that smells of boiling laundry and fresh bread, I am the one who does not belong.

The morning passes in a blur of small tasks. I peel vegetables. I scrub a pot. I carry a tray of tea things to a room I am directed to and then retreat before anyone sees me. The house is vast, a warren of corridors and staircases that all look the same, and twice I take a wrong turn and have to double back. The gas lamps on the walls hiss softly to themselves. The windows show a grey sky and bare trees and a gravel drive that curves away toward iron gates I cannot see.

I am carrying a pile of folded linens down the main corridor when I hear his voice.

“Mary.“

I stop. The linens are warm from the press and they smell of starch, and I hold them against my chest like a shield as I turn.

Leo stands at the end of the corridor, and for a moment I forget to breathe. He is dressed in a dark coat and a waistcoat the colour of charcoal, his hair swept back from his face, and he looks exactly as he did the first time I saw him in my flat in 2026, except that now he belongs to this room, this house, this century. The bandage on his left hand is fresh. He is watching me with an expression I cannot read.

“I need to speak with you,“ he says. “If you would follow me.“

His voice is careful. Formal. The voice of a man addressing a servant, because that is what I am supposed to be, and I remember just in time to lower my eyes and murmur something that might be agreement.

He leads me through the house to a room I have not seen before. It is large and high-ceilinged, furnished with chairs upholstered in faded rose and a fireplace that is not lit. The curtains are drawn back to admit the thin morning light, and standing beside the window, her hands clasped in front of her, is a girl.

She looks younger than I expected. Nineteen, Leo told me, but she looks younger still, with fair hair arranged in careful curls and a dress the colour of new cream. Her face is open and unguarded, the face of someone who has never had reason to hide anything. A woman hower nearby, probably a spinster aunt serving as chaperone. When Evelyn sees Leo, her expression transforms into something so purely happy that I feel my stomach drop.

“Leopold,“ she says, and the name sounds different in her mouth than it does in mine. Lighter. “I was hoping I would find you before lunch.“

“Evelyn.“ He crosses to her and takes her hand, and the gesture is automatic, practiced. “I trust you slept well.“

“Well enough. Though I confess I find the country air a little too quiet after London.“ She turns her smile toward me, curious but not unkind. “And who is this?“

“Mary,“ Leo says. “The new kitchen maid. She arrived yesterday.“

“How lovely.“ Evelyn steps forward, and I see the ring on her left hand for the first time. It is exactly as Cook described: a sapphire set in gold, large enough to catch the light from the window and throw it back in fragments of blue. She extends her hand to me, not to shake but simply to be seen. “You must be quite settled by now, I hope. The servants here are very kind.“

I curtsy. I have never curtsied in my life, and I am fairly certain I do it wrong, but Evelyn does not seem to notice. She is already turning back to Leo, her hand resting on his arm with the easy intimacy of someone who has every right to touch him.

“I was thinking,“ she says, “that we might take a walk after lunch. The grounds are so lovely this time of year, and we have so much to discuss. The flowers for the church, the seating arrangements, the date for the engagement dinner…“

She keeps talking. I hear the words as though from a great distance: flowers, church, seating, dinner, wedding. Each one lands with the weight of a small stone dropped into still water. Leo listens with his head inclined toward her, his expression attentive and composed, and I watch his hands. His right hand is still. His left, the bandaged one, hangs at his side, and I see the fingers curl slightly, just once, before he uncurls them again.

“Of course,“ he says. “Whatever you wish.“

Evelyn beams. “You are too good to me.“

She says it with such sincerity that I have to look away. The room is full of objects I could study: the pattern on the rug, the brass candlesticks on the mantel, the painting above the fireplace that shows a landscape I do not recognise. I fix my gaze on the painting and I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, and I remind myself that I knew this. I knew he was engaged. He told me yesterday, and I stayed anyway because the alternative was letting the world come apart at the seams.

Knowing a thing and standing three feet away from it are not the same.