She moved to stand behind Rachel’s chair, her perfumed presence suddenly overwhelming. “Oh, but I do mean to suggest exactly that.”
“You’re insane,” she said weakly, but her voice lacked conviction even to her own ears.
“Am I?” Isolde moved to the narrow window, her silhouette framed against the gray afternoon light. “Tell me, my dear, have you ever heard the name Lady Morwenna of Hallowhall?”
Rachel blinked, caught off guard by the shift. “No. Should I have?”
“She was my great-great-grandmother’s cousin. Lived about... oh, two hundred years past.” Isolde’s fingers traced the stone window frame absently.
“Family legend says she was the strangest woman anyone had ever met. Wild red hair, eyes the color of spring grass, and a habit of saying the most peculiar things.”
“What kind of things?” Rachel found herself asking despite her better judgment.
“Things like...” Isolde paused, as if searching her memory. “‘Where I come from, we have machines that can keep milk fresh for weeks.’ Or ‘If I had my car, I could be in London by supper.’” She turned back to face Rachel, whose heart had started doing uncomfortable acrobatics in her chest. “Car. That was the word she used. Never could explain what it meant, though she claimed it was a... what did she call it... horseless carriage?”
The blood drained from Rachel’s face so quickly she felt dizzy. “That’s... That’s just coincidence. People have always dreamed of impossible things.”
“Have they?” Isolde’s dark eyes glittered with something between curiosity and triumph.
“Then perhaps you can explain why she also spoke of ‘plastic wrapping’ for food storage? Or ‘electricity’ for lighting homes? Or how she knew that childbirth fever could be prevented by washing hands with soap—a full century before anyone else considered such madness?”
Each word hit Rachel like a physical blow. Her modern vocabulary, her casual references to things that didn’t exist yet—had she been that careless? That obvious?
“I don’t understand what any of this has to do with me,” she said, but her voice came out strangled.
“Don’t you?” Isolde began moving closer, each step deliberate and predatory. “Because Lady Morwenna had another peculiar habit. She was always talking about a cookbook. A special cookbook that she’d... acquired... during a thunderstorm. A cookbook that vanished the night she first appeared at Hallowhall, babbling about lightning and strange places.”
Rachel’s mouth went completely dry. “That’s impossible.”
“Is it?” Isolde was close enough now that Rachel could see the intelligence burning in her dark eyes, the careful way she was cataloguing every expression. “Tell me, have you perhaps had any encounters with unusual cookbooks lately? Maybe one you purchased from a mysterious seller? One that might have been present during a recent... weather event?”
The question hung in the air like smoke from a funeral pyre. She could feel Tristan’s gaze boring into her, could see the exact moment when the pieces began clicking into place for him as well.
“How?” she whispered, abandoning all pretense along with any hope of maintaining her cover story. “How could you possibly know?”
Tristan shot to his feet so abruptly his chair scraped against the stone floor like fingernails on slate. “Bloody hell, you cannot be serious. You truly mean to say that she—” He gestured helplessly at Rachel, his face cycling through disbelief, shock, and something that might have been wonder or terror. “That she has traveled through time itself?”
“Sit down, brother,” Isolde said mildly, though her eyes never left Rachel’s face. “You look as though you might faint, and that would be terribly undignified for a knight of your reputation.”
“But this is madness!” Tristan remained standing, running his hands through his dark hair in agitation. “People cannot simply... step through time like walking from one chamber to the next. ’Tis not possible.”
“Isn’t it?” Rachel found her voice, though it sounded thin and strange to her own ears. “Because I’m sitting here, aren’t I? In your solar, in 1475, wearing a borrowed gown and trying to speak Middle English from what I learned from Netflix shows. So maybe your definition of ‘possible’ needs some updating.”
Tristan stared at her for a long moment, searching her face as if seeing her for the first time. “Netflix,” he repeated slowly. “Another of your impossible words.”
“It’s...” She gestured helplessly. “It’s complicated. It’s from my time. My real time.”
“Which is?” Isolde prompted gently.
“Two thousand and twenty-five,” Rachel whispered, the numbers falling into the silence like stones into still water.
The solar fell utterly quiet except for the crackling of the fire and Rachel’s rapid heartbeat. She watched Tristan sink slowly back into his chair, his face pale with shock.
“Five hundred and fifty years,” he said faintly. “You have traveled five hundred and fifty years into the past.”
“Give or take,” she managed, surprised by how relief flooded through her at finally telling the truth. “I was making dinner in my apartment in Kansas—that’s in America, which hasn’t been discovered yet—and there was this storm, and I cut myself, bled on the cookbook, and next thing I knew I was face-down in your garden.”
“The cookbook,” Isolde said immediately, leaning forward with predatory intensity. “Where is it now?”
