Dexter had heard various tour guides say these exact words hundreds of times, but it was only now that it hit him that the art forging scoundrel had been one of Ariana’s family. He always considered Tilly to be an innocent bystander in the unfortunate Alexander lineage, but now he realized she’d played her part.
“A scoundrel who committed heinous crimes?” Ariana asked. “The one in 1889 is horrid as well. Drunk all the time and the servants are fearful of him. Why are they so awful? Wouldn’t he be Christian’s great-grandson? Christian’s a bit annoying but he’s not bad, not deep down. Why are his descendents so terrible?”
“We’ve never been able to trace a proper family tree or pin down any actual history on your lot after 1814 up until the mid twentieth century. I always theorized it was because your mum was actively changing things that might have happened before she ended up there. Maybe your brother never ended up with the title,” Dexter said.
Emma took her arm to keep her upright. He instantly wished he could take the words back when Ariana swayed on her feet. Here she was not knowing what had become of everyone in her family and he was thoughtlessly insinuating they might no longer exist in her time.
“I have to go back. I must go right now.” She jerked her arm free from Emma’s grasp and looked around wildly. “But where? I always use the house.”
Emma grabbed her arm again as if she might disappear at that moment. “Do you think there’s still a portal in the shopping center?”
“She uses a spell,” Dexter said. “An unreliable one, too.”
“It’s never been unreliable before,” Ariana argued. “And it doesn’t matter if I get back within minutes or days of when I left. I still have to go back and find them.”
“Let’s get in the car,” Emma suggested, looking around as more people pulled into the parking lot. She raked her fingers through her hair. “We must look quite mad.”
They moved as one mass of terrified limbs, crumbling into their respective seats in the car. Dexter noticed as soon as Ariana sat, she began to tremble violently. A glance in the rearview mirror showed Emma looking as if she’d be sick. He caught her eye and tried to look reassuring, but when he saw his own reflection he looked as green as she did, his smile like a grimace.
“What is going on?” Emma finally wailed, breaking their tense silence. “How is this possible?”
“Something changed,” he said stupidly. It was all he had.
“But how does one building become another building overnight?”
Ariana turned and shook her head. “It wasn’t overnight, though, was it? It was two hundred years or more.”
“We need to see if there’s a record, a new record of the most recent earl,” Dexter said. The very thought of doing research, a possible answer to this impossible situation they were in, soothed him a little.
“You do that all you want,” Ariana said. She had stopped trembling and stuck her leg out of the car door. “I’m going back to as close as I can get to when I left and find my parents. I’ll go by the wall. That’s the same, you said so yourself.”
“But there are houses on the other side and this lot is getting busier by the second,” Emma argued. “And you shouldn’t be racing off without any information.” She scowled. “That’s probably how this whole mess started.”
“Exactly!” Ariana cried. “This is my doing. It has to be. So I have to fix it.”
“How can you fix something when you have no idea what it is or how it’s been broken?”
“I have to do something.”
“She’s right,” Dexter said, stunning them both. “You should go back. As far back as you can, to ensure the house is still standing at that time. And then stay put. Tell your parents everything. Every damn thing. I don’t care if they skin you alive.” He paused, weighing his options. Hating those options. “I’ll go with you.”
“No,” both Emma and Ariana shouted at the same time.
“You can’t,” Emma continued, hugging herself. He could see the absolute terror in her eyes. He felt quite the same.
“No, you can’t,” Ariana said. “I don’t need you to. Didn’t you tell me only a little while ago I needed to act like an adult? And what if I can’t get you back to this time?” She smirked at what must have been a very alarming face he pulled.
“We’ll go with you to the wall and keep a lookout,” Emma said, giving him a look that dared him to keep on with his nonsensical idea to try and time travel again.
Dexter sighed. He felt like the worst coward, the worst cousin, the worst person in the world letting Tilly’s teenage daughter go off on her own to God only knew what. He opened his mouth to give one last argument but Ariana’s steely glare stopped him. She might have only been seventeen but she’d always been clever, if not wise. And seventeen in her time was as good as an adult. But yet…
He opened his mouth again, trying to think of an authoritative way to tell her to quit arguing.
“If you go back with me and you get trapped, what will become of Emma and Dahlia?”
“And the baby,” Emma whispered from the back seat.
Ariana heard her and her eyes widened. “You’re with child? But that’s wonderful.” Her diamond hard glare softened somewhat. “If you risked never seeing your unborn child, my mother would murder you.”
“That’s settled then,” Emma said. “You couldn’t possibly make me search every historical text and old graveyard trying to find evidence of your murder in the nineteenth century, could you?”
“He couldn’t,” Ariana said, stepping out of the car.
Dexter’s eyes filled with tears and he and Emma scrambled after her. They wound their way through the
