“I knew she was no actress!” the shorter man remarked to his confederate, as though he’d just won a wager. “If she’d whistled like that inside the theatre, she’d catch a canvas drop on her head before she knewed what hit ’er. Just like the old days in His Majesty’s navy, eh, Turpin? They whistles and you unfurl the sails.”
“I must say as I do miss that life,” Turpin sighed wistfully. “Bein’ cooped up in a dark theatre don’t compare to the open sea, do it, Mr. Twist.”
“No, it don’t indeed,” agreed Twist, rubbing his tobacco-stained thumb and forefinger together. “Maggoty hardtack and stinkin’ wages a convict would take as an insult,” he added, mocking Turpin’s elegiac tone. “To be sure, those were the days.”
C.J. hurried away from the Theatre Royal, pausing to glance at a copy of The Bath Herald and Register being hawked by a ragamuffin no older than nine or ten, but she failed to catch the date printed at the top of the broadsheet. Paper was dear, so the few large pages were covered margin to margin with print so fine it was nearly impossible to read without spectacles. “Pay, pay, or go away,” the boy scolded in a childish singsong. The church bells tolled three times, their reverberation lingering in the spring air like a perfumed angel.
A warm and glorious scent prompted C.J. to follow her nose toward its source. The smell of fresh baking led her not far from the Abbey to a bow-windowed stone building in the North Parade Passage, which, C.J. recalled from her twenty-first-century travels to Bath, was billed as the oldest house in the city.
Sally Lunn’s refreshment house was doing a brisk business for mid-afternoon, and C.J. could not suppress her craving for one of the eponymous famed rolls, a slightly sweet giant brioche, ordinarily served hot with butter. What a lovely treat they would make for her “aunt” Euphoria. She patiently waited her turn, amused at how the elegantly attired ladies and gentlemen elbowed and jostled their way to the counter, clamoring for the bread like a bunch of starved peasants or—closer to her own experiences—like the Sunday-morning crowd at Zabar’s appetizing counter.
C.J. found herself admiring to the point of covetousness the gown of one of the young ladies, a fashionable light blue sarcenet. Gazing about her as she waited her turn, C.J. was rather surprised to see so many women, not all of them in the bloom of youth, attired in so much white. The Directoire neoclassical, or Grecian, look, so popular in 1800 and 1801, did little to conceal any imperfections in one’s figure. Some of the gowns were alarmingly sheer even for evening wear, but many ladies were attired thusly in mid-afternoon.
“May I help you, miss?” A cheery voice from the other side of Sally Lunn’s counter politely inquired if C.J. required assistance with her purchases.
“Oh yes, thank you. A half dozen of the Sally Lunns, please.”
The rosy-cheeked, strawberry blond shopgirl was only too eager to help. C.J. marveled at how the girl managed to maintain such a sweet disposition amid the crowd of patrons jockeying for position each time a freshly baked tray of buns was brought up from the ovens.
“Over here, Lucy,” a man’s voice called, brandishing a note as though bidding at an auction.
“At your service, Mr. Churchill, as soon as I help the young miss.”
C.J. thrust her hand into her reticule, and finding no money, of course, was struck by the horrifying realization that she could not pay Lucy for her purchases.
The shopgirl was about to hand over the wrapped parcel of warm rolls when she noticed C.J.’s ashen expression. “Something the matter, miss?”
A long arm, clad in a deep cranberry-colored sleeve, reached past C.J.’s face. “Here you go, Lucy,” spoke a quiet baritone voice. “For Miss Welles’s cakes.”
C.J. turned around to see the Earl of Darlington completing the financial transaction on her behalf. He must have offered Lucy a generous gratuity for her services, for she reddened and bobbed up and down a number of times, profusely thanking the handsome aristocrat.
Lord Darlington took the package of warm rolls and proffered his arm to C.J. “Miss Welles, allow me to express my pleasure at seeing you again. I trust the past two days have found you in tolerably good health?”
“Then two days, and not one, have passed since the day we met?” replied C.J., puzzling it all out.
“Today is Wednesday, Miss Welles. You missed Mrs. Siddons’s Lady Macbeth last night.” C.J. frowned. Her expression did not pass undetected by her companion. “But I tread upon rocky terrain. Forgive my momentary lapse; I had quite forgotten my aunt’s directives regarding your attendance with me at such a performance.”
“Wednesday,” C.J. repeated. Had she been trapped in the void between centuries for two 1801 days? Was it truly possible, then, that from the time of her inexplicable departure from the Bedford Street Playhouse all the way through every event in 1801—her homeless state, her incarceration and subsequent trial, her weeks under Lady Wickham’s brutal thumb, and the brief time she had spent in Lady Dalrymple’s protection—only twenty-four hours or so had elapsed in the modern era?
“I suppose my lengthy journey from London has addled my wits a bit, and I am more fatigued than I had anticipated,” C.J. hastily added, remembering Lady Dalrymple’s revised version of her history and desperately hoping to conceal her mystified bewilderment from her admirer.
Darlington gazed down at her with a hopeful gleam. “And if I am not pressing my luck too far, tomorrow evening is the date I had fixed to expect to see you at the Assembly Ball in the Upper Rooms.”
C.J. smiled gratefully. “I have been out of sorts since my arrival in Bath,” she added truthfully. “My little escapade at Sally Lunn’s is a fine example of my muddled mind. You saved me from dreadful embarrassment,” she confessed. “I had thought to bring my aunt a treat, but discovered, right in the
