The somberly clad dowager attired in a full-skirted ensemble more befitting to the late eighteenth century nodded curtly, closed her parasol, and allowed the younger man to escort her inside.
The Pump Room?!
How had this happened? Minutes earlier—or so C.J. thought—she had walked off the set of By a Lady into the darkened backstage area of a Greenwich Village theatre in New York City in the United States of America, which, if the Orchard Street theatre poster had proclaimed the proper date, was only twenty-five years old!
C.J. stood in the middle of the flagstone square as a tide of humanity swept past her very much confounded person. A watercress-laden cart built like a giant wheelbarrow rumbled by, pulled by two small boys who paid no heed to pedestrian traffic. Jumping back to avoid being trampled by the pair of ragamuffins, C.J. backed into the bow-shaped window of Pelham’s Bookstore, just opposite a corner of Bath Abbey.
Bath Abbey?!
She turned back to look at the Abbey, which was indeed the church she had glimpsed from the Orchard Street theatre. Across the square, several fashionably dressed men and women strolled in and out of the Pump Room, the women wearing voluminous bonnets or wielding delicate parasols to shield their fair complexions from the sun. Momentarily seized by vanity, C.J. glanced about her to see if any other ladies sported fringed coquelicot shawls like the one she had been given by Milena, the By a Lady costume designer, who’d insisted that Austen herself wore one in 1798. None did. Oddly enough, she felt hopelessly out of date amid the scantily clad women in their revealing white Directoire gowns. If she had worn a frock like that under the bright stage lights—particularly the backlighting—the entire audience would have been able to tell how much she’d eaten for breakfast and whether she’d had a bikini wax.
It fleetingly occurred to C.J. that she had stumbled onto a film set. Boy, those people at Miramax work fast, she thought. But no camera equipment was in sight, and no one was dressed in a fashion other than that which seemed appropriate for 1801. This seemed much too lengthy for one of those conscious dreams. Had she hit her head when she left the stage in New York? She could not be going mad. She looked down at her feet to see if her delicate kidskin pumps had metamorphosed into a pair of ruby slippers.
No one seemed to take notice of her. Could they see her as she could see them? C.J. rubbed her rear end, which felt slightly bruised where she had bumped into the lead framing of the bookstore windowpanes. Well, she could certainly feel pain.
At first, the thunderstruck revelation that she might actually be in Bath, England, in the year 1801 felt like a fantasy come to fruition. This acknowledgment was almost immediately followed by a pang of anxiety that zigzagged like lightning through her body upon the sudden realization that she had absolutely nothing with her, save the clothes on her back and what was in the small reticule dangling from her wrist. She slid open the drawstring, hoping to locate some cash, then realized that it would have been useless had she indeed discovered dollars, the coin of an as yet infant realm. Imagine finding a penny or a five-dollar bill bearing the likeness of a man who would not achieve immortality for several decades to come! A small tortoiseshell comb and a white linen handkerchief edged in lace were all that she found inside the prop purse, and they had been placed there back in a twenty-first-century New York City dressing room.
Full of wonder, C.J. left the square to further explore her surroundings. Bath Abbey looked much the same to her as it had when she’d visited it in the twenty-first century, its unusual fan vaulting still reminding her of the wings of giant swans or, if you spent too much time staring up at them, a kaleidoscope. But instead of the weather-worn, honey-colored stone buildings she’d recalled, C.J. was fairly blinded by the gleaming whiteness of the eighteenth-century façades, made even more resplendent in the glaring sunlight. So this is what Bath looked like in its heyday! Now she began to understand why the spa city—the playground of the aristocracy—was considered one of the brightest jewels in the Georgian crown.
She journeyed through the town, keeping the river Avon at her right elbow; and with an uncanny sense of memory she found Great Pulteney Street, as long as three football fields and the widest thoroughfare she’d seen thus far. Stepping off the curb to cross the avenue, C.J. suddenly became overwhelmed; and when a wobbly and uneven stone caused her to lose her footing, she stumbled to the pavement. A rush of thunder filled her ears, and glancing up she saw four black chargers pulling a shiny burgundy-colored carriage about to bear down upon her prostrate frame. An attempt to scramble to her feet resulted in another minor catastrophe as she became tangled in the hem of her narrow skirt, sending her back to the ground. Never before had C.J. felt so terrified.
The enormous coachman on the box bellowed out a warning, tugging on his team’s reins to restrain their flight. C.J. caught a glimpse of his deep green, two-tiered Inverness cloak and high black hat before flattening her body against the road and rolling away from the thundering hooves.
The spectacle raised quite an alarm among the onlookers. A rail-thin lady in an overdecorated bonnet gasped in fright and clutched the arm of her companion, an elderly gentleman of ruddy complexion who still favored the cockaded tricorn, now some twenty years out of fashion. “Oh, I do hope the young miss is all right,” she murmured, eyes closed, fearing the worst.
Still dazed, C.J. lifted her head and wiggled her legs, thus verifying their ability to function. After a moment or
