Another steel carriage raced past them with terrific sound, again with no horses to drag it. Even if Jane was to entertain the idea that she had moved through time, how had she managed it? What mechanism had she employed to achieve this mind-and-flesh-bending feat? Was it Mrs. Sinclair’s doing? But that required a reality more ridiculous than the others combined. That a bedraggled person from Cheapside who smelled of cabbages was in fact a mighty sorceress? That the demented scribbles she’d left on Jane’s page were a . . . spell? That she had conjured from her cabbage hearth an opening into time itself and sent Jane through it?
As they walked down the road, Jane studied the sights around her and searched for logical explanations. A third steel carriage sped past her. She could source a reason for this. She mistook a horseless carriage for what was simply a train, powered by steam. Jane and her father had ridden a Murdoch locomotive over fifty yards of track in London when she was twenty. The steam that billowed from the train’s chimney in meaty gray puffs astounded her and she had demanded the driver explain how it worked. The bemused man told Papa his daughter was impertinent and that was no question for a woman, so her father had borrowed a book about locomotion from the circulating library for Jane and she taught herself the concepts. The mysterious animation of the carriage she was now looking at could be put down to simple steam combustion. Indeed, no steam billowed from this carriage, but she supposed this was a French version or some alternative design.
She could explain Bath’s altered appearance, too. Perhaps some renovations with steel and glass had occurred, which she missed while she walked the woods and groves. They must have overhauled everything quickly since she was in Stall Street yesterday, but as Bath always strained to have everything first, she did not put it past the local gentry to throw up fashionable new edifices in a day.
As she looked around for another item to logically explain her situation, a roaring rumble of wind screamed overhead. She looked to the sky. The sound came from a bird whose coat comprised not feathers, but gleaming white steel. Its length stretched as long as the twenty-four-apartment block of Sydney House. The bird shot through the sky, thousands of feet in the air. It was the second of the species she had observed that morning. Yes, this was where the endeavor came a tad unstuck. No logical explanation existed for a gargantuan steel bird, one thousand times the height of an ostrich, to be hurtling through the sky.
And then Jane slapped her head as she realized a logical explanation did exist for everything. Of course! She herself was insane. Jane, in her humiliation and final condemnation to spinsterhood, had become senile. Like the woman who stood on Stall Street and composed love poems for a shilling, who wore a gravy-stained shawl and a saucepan for a bonnet, Jane too had retreated from the bleakness of her spinsterhood into the warm blanket of madness. She did not doubt that heartbreak was a force powerful enough to fling one into lunacy. She saw now that she had imagined the whole thing—the trip to London, Mrs. Sinclair, dancing with the obnoxious man. It was all a ruse of her own mind to counter against loneliness.
Now that she had identified her psychosis, what was she to do? How was she to behave? The fashionable treatment for hysterical ladies was to offer them a trip to the seaside, and then, after bundling them into a carriage that locked on the outside, to deposit them not at Brighton or Lyme, but Bedlam instead. Jane felt happy to forgo such a glamorous fate for herself. She resolved instead to act as normal as possible and draw as little attention to her madness as she could. She would pretend all was well and go along with whatever her new friend Sofia said. Hopefully Sofia was not part of the hallucination, but just to be safe, Jane would politely decline any offers to visit Brighton.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting to get back, then,” Sofia said. “To your own time?”
“Indeed,” Jane said with a careful nod. “I did not consider that.”
“You need to go back so you can write your books.”
Jane was still so preoccupied with navigating her recent descent into madness that she almost missed what Sofia said. She stopped walking. “My books?” she said.
“Yes, your books. The ones by Jane Austen?”
Jane opened her mouth but said nothing.
“Come with me.” Sofia continued along the path and Jane followed her. “Did you know I’m starring in an adaptation of one of them?”
“One of what, I beg pardon?” Jane asked.
“One of your books. Northanger Abbey.”
Jane shook her head. “I do apologize. Again, I do not follow your meaning.”
They arrived at a white-stone cottage with a thatched roof. Sofia unlocked the door and showed Jane inside. It was a cozy, comfortable home that made Jane smile. It reminded her of the rectory in Hampshire where she grew up. She did not recognize some of the furniture pieces, made of glass and steel, but the parlor contained a fireplace and a wonderful bookshelf, which took up an entire wall.
“I’m not here by choice,” Sofia said, flinging her giant reticule onto the windowsill. “This is my brother’s house. But it will do for now.” She disappeared into another room, then returned carrying a stack of books under her arm. She laid the books out on the table one by one. “The producer gave them to me as a gift when I signed on to do the film. I’d prefer
