The next time Petra opened her eyes she saw Kyle, leaning over her, his gaze warm and concerned. Her heart lifted. I’m home, the nightmare has ended. “Kyle,” she breathed.

“My lady?”

Her elation crashed. Looking around, Petra saw a room of stone walls draped in tapestries and ornately carved bed posts draped in gossamer. A silver candelabrum with unlit candles sat on a bedside table.

Kyle wore a simple white tunic and tan breeches. A young woman behind him wore a blue gown and a white apron, and a man standing in a corner wore a dark, unreadable expression. How long had she slept? She tried to rise, but her head thundered. She slipped back down among the pillows.

Gypsies, music, healing, the Otherworld, rosemary and mug-wort, Emory, the sword. She was still trapped and, now, friendless. Tears of disappointment and loss came to her eyes. With her thumb, she felt Emory’s ring.

We both know I do not live. That’s what he’d said. Did that mean that he couldn’t die? No. The shock on his face, the sudden stillness in his eyes, that horrible, ragged noise from his lips, and the blood gushing from his belly—his death had looked more real than anything she had seen in the movies, much more gruesome than her mother’s slow fading.

Petra turned away from Kyle’s gaze to look out the window at rolling acres of lawn, distant farmland, and a thick wood. “Where am I?”

“Pennington Place, my lady.” Despite the Harry Potter accent, he even sounded like Kyle.

Petra clutched at the quilt and pulled it to her shoulders like a shield. “How did I come here?”

“My man Fritz found you by the front gate. You have suffered a head wound.”

Petra clung to that. “A head wound. Yes.”

The man with the frown and massive eyebrows left his corner and stepped closer. “If you would tell us your family, we will send word of your safety.

Safety? She’d seen her only friend in this time warp run through with a sword. She’d been kidnapped, bagged and beaten. No, she wasn’t safe. She rubbed the knot on her head, feeling its size and wondering if it would turn purple. “I remember little.”

“You do not recall who brought you to our gate?” Suspicion tinged the man’s nasal voice. He had a beak like a buzzard. Perhaps anyone doomed to spend a lifetime with such a nose would be cranky.

A line from the book of Alice in Wonderland sprung to Petra’s lips and she had to bite it back. One would never undertake a journey without a porpoise. Who had said that? The Caterpillar? The Cheshire Cat? That was what she needed, Petra decided, a mythical mentor.

Petra turned to Kyle, who, if not mythical, was at least familiar. “Have we met?”

Kyle smiled and shook his head. “I do not believe so. I would have remembered such good fortune.”

She smiled because he was so Kyle. Even if he wasn’t. “You look familiar, like someone I know from somewhere else.”

“What is your name, my lady?” the Buzzard Man in the corner asked. His question, though reasonable, sounded like an accusation.

“Petra Baron.” She struggled to sit up and ended by bracing herself on her elbows.

The Kyle look-a-like stepped closer to the bed. “I am Garret Falstaff and this is Lord Chambers.” He motioned to the man behind him, but didn’t introduce the young woman, who was probably a maid. “You are safe here at Pennington Place.”

Petra watched a parade of maids fill a copper tub with a scalding, lavender-scented water. Mary, the tiny blond maid in charge of the brigade, scuttled between the bedroom and presumably the kitchen with brimming buckets.

“T’won’t be but a minute now, miss,” Mary huffed as she poured a final bucket into the copper tub. After dismissing the other girls, Mary pulled up a sleeve, exposed her forearm, and dipped her elbow in the steaming water. “Very good, miss.” Mary placed her hands on her hips and gave Petra an encouraging smile.

When Petra didn’t budge, Mary scowled and spoke slowly, encouragingly, as if Petra was a child. “Would you like me to undo your gown, miss?”

The dress had a row of tiny buttons parading down her back, but it also had a side zipper, making the buttons unnecessary. But Mary wouldn’t know that.

“Um, no, I can manage.” When Mary didn’t budge, Petra slid a cautious glance at her and then unzipped the side of her dress.

“Coo?” the maid whispered, clearly fascinated. She stepped closer to inspect the zipper.

Mary circled Petra, and Petra rotated.

“You can go now,” Petra said, trying to sound dismissive yet polite.

Mary’s mouth dropped open, and she blinked hard. “But your bath --”

Petra cleared her throat. “I can handle it,” she said, while stepping out of the dress.

When Mary remained motionless, Petra continued, “I like to bathe alone.”

Mary’s eyes widened to the point of bulging.

“It’s how it’s done in my country,” Petra said. “We bathe privately.” She spoke clearly, loudly, using the voice she used on her dog and her stepsister when she didn’t want an argument.

Mary closed her mouth and blinked back tears.

Petra, unmoved and growing impatient, turned her back on the girl and stepped out of her dress. “I really don’t see the problem.”

Mary’s watery eyes had turned so huge she reminded Petra of a frog. “Gor, miss, is that your—”

Petra looked down at her bra and matching panties, both pink lace.

Mary choked, “But where are your-” she waved her hand toward Petra’s midriff. Petra remembered once reading that the women of the earlier centuries wore pounds of undergarments. Her panties and bra although modest compared by Victoria’s Secret standards, had to be shocking to poor Mary.

Mary shook her head, gathering Petra’s dress from the floor. Then she stopped, frozen, as if in shock. “Your toes, miss. They’re purple.”

Petra didn’t know how to explain Picasso Pinky’s Salon.

“With flowers on them,” Mary finished.

“Yes,” Petra said.

“Did an artist paint —”

“Sort of.”

Mary backed toward the door, Petra’s dress a bundle in her arms.

“Where are you taking my dress?” Petra asked, panic in her voice.

Mary looked at the dress as if she’d forgotten its existence. “Why, to the washer woman, of course.”

“But—”

To launder the dress without a drycleaners would take hours. The dress was dirty, but without it, what would she wear? She could hardly walk around in her underwear. Scandalizing Mary the maid was one thing but an entire village? She had a sudden image of Lady Godiva on a horse. When was Lady Godiva’s time and what had become of her? Had they stoned her for her nudity? Made her wear a scarlet A attached to her ta-tas?

Mary gave her a tremulous smile. “My Lord has sent Jenny to retrieve some of the mistress’ gowns for you.”

“Won’t the mistress mind?”

“She would have dreadfully,” Mary said, her voice thick with emotion, “but she’s passed away five long months ago and no longer has a say.”

“And they kept her clothes?”

“Of course. What else would they have done?” Mary gave the tub of water a baleful glance. “Your water will be getting cold, miss.”

“I’ll get in after you’ve gone,” she told Mary.

Mary looked doubtful. “I will come back?”

Petra folded her arms as a stiff breeze blew in through the window. “Not until I’m out.”

“But your hair, miss?”

“I can do my hair,” Petra said. It seemed odd to be standing near naked in front of an open window, but from their height she supposed only birds could see in. No airplanes, or helicopters, probably not even hot air balloons.

Mary’s lip trembled.

“Fine,” Petra said with a scowl. “You can do my hair.”

Mary sniffed hard.

“Please go,” Petra finally urged.

Mary didn’t budge. “But what if you --”

Petra turned her back on her, listening for the door. She peeked and saw Mary give a despondent little shrug and then trundle out the door. At last the door snapped shut with a defiant click.

She was not only dirty, but also bruised and achy. Pulling her hair over the edge, she sank into the water up to her chin and closed her eyes. She tried to let go of everything, all her fears and concerns, but the scene in the gypsy camp kept replaying in her mind. She felt guilty soaking in the tub, being catered to by servants when people in the gypsy camp had been hunted down and maybe even killed.

Emory said the gentry led the hunts. Had Kyle, no, he’d called himself Garret, ordered the raid on the gypsies? What had happened to the children and babies? What about the sick boy who needed healing? How many besides Emory had died?

Emory. One tear rolled down her cheek and then another. Worried she’d break down, she tried to think of her biggest problem—how to get home?

But thinking of home didn’t stop her tears.

She splashed her face with water. She was in England, home was in California. Even if she’d been in the right century, crossing an ocean and a continent, without cash, credit cards or passport would be difficult. But crossing four hundred years—impossible.

And yet not impossible, assuming she’d already done it once. Her mother used to say that if you did something once you could do it twice. Which wasn’t really true. Some things you could only do once, as her mother’s death had proved.

Which raised an interesting question. Had Petra died? Was this her afterlife? Her Otherworld? She wiggled her toes in the water, and the purple flowers made her feel a little better. She felt real, still herself. She didn’t feel dead. Placing a hand over her heart, she felt its steady, reassuring thump.

She contemplated the tiny red prick on her finger. She bled and breathed; her heart beat. So, assuming she was still alive and had somehow fallen into a time warp—why this time? Why now?

If she had to time travel, why couldn’t she have gone back to when her mother was alive, when she and her parents lived in the yellow house with the red roses, when going to the zoo and seeing the tiger roar was the most terrifying experience of her life? When building a sand castle at the beach and watching the tide demolish her work was her biggest disappointment?

And why was she here? Was that more relevant than how?

The kids in the Chronicles of Narnia were always finding ways in and out of Narnia—a wardrobe, the blast of a horn, a storm. Had she really gotten out of the twenty-first century through the wrong curtain of a fortuneteller’s tent? Maybe she’s missed the warning: Beware, enter at your own risk; fortunetelling maybe hazardous to your life plans.

“There are no coincidences,” Laurel liked to say. Just like she said, “The Baron and McGee family was meant to be.” As if in some great design, Petra’s mother’s death and Zoe’s father’s abandonment were lodged into their life maps, as inescapable and unavoidable as the setting sun.

Petra sat up and tried to shake off her funk when the door creaked open.

“Just me, miss.” Mary poked her head through the door. “I brought ye some gowns.” Mary flushed pink. “And if ye don’t be minding, some under-things.”

Standing in the center of the room, grasping a bedpost, Petra gasped as Mary gave a final tug on the corset. Then, before Petra had time to feel shocked, Mary deftly patted Petra’s boobs into the chemise. Petra hadn’t even the time to complain before Mary had moved on to the buttons. Petra closed her mouth, the grumble dying under the realization that she could hardly breathe, let alone complain. No wonder women on the covers of romance novels were always fainting into Fabio’s arms. Either they couldn’t breathe, or they were dying of embarrassment because their boobs were about to pop out. Petra blinked, one of the few movements she could manage, and said, “I won’t be able to sit or lift a spoon.”

Mary gave the laces on the brown velvet gown a tug and then stood back with a satisfied smile. “Gor, miss, you look lovely.”

Mary held up a hand mirror for Petra to see. What had been left of her makeup had disintegrated in the bath, but the steam had left her skin pink and moist. Her eyes sparkled blue, her lips red, and her hair had been swept into a thick twisty knot at her neck. She didn’t recognize herself. She looked like one of the fainters from the romance novels.

Mary frowned, a tiny crease appearing between her eyebrows. She appeared to be on the verge of spouting a lecture. Petra recognized in Mary the tell-tale signals her stepmother always used just before a rant -- lowered eyebrows, clenched fists, tightened jaw. Petra wondered if scolding, primping and manhandling boobs was standard seventeenth century maid practice.

“Miss,” Mary began, looking flustered, “to catch my lord’s eye—”

Petra tried taking a deep breath. “Catch his eye?”

Mary sucked in her lower lip and began violently brushing Petra’s gown. “You mustn’t smack your lips or gnaw on bones. Remember to keep your fingers clean.”

Etiquette lessons from the maid?

“Don’t speak of politics,” Mary continued.

As if she knew anything of the time. “Or, let me guess -- religion.”

Mary stopped brushing, straightened and looked Petra in the eye. “They are the same.” Mary placed her hands on her hips. “This is a beautiful dress, and I’ve made you just as lovely, miss.” She sucked in a deep breath. “Don’t be spoiling this.”

“Spoiling what?”

Mary cocked her head. “Why are you here, then? If not to secure Lord Garret?”

“Secure Lord Garret?” Petra felt herself flush, heat and indignation rising. “Is he insecure?”

“Hush!” Mary hissed when a knock sounded at the door. “A footman, to escort you to the dining hall,” Mary explained. “Keep your serviette in your lap.”

Which might be easier if you knew what a serviette was.

If Mary thought Petra was there to “secure” Garret, who else might think the same thing? “Tell me again who will be at dinner.”

“It’s just you, Lord Garret, and Master Chambers.”

Petra remembered Chambers with the frowning eyebrows. He radiated dislike and distrust. If he’d been a dog, the hairs on the back of his neck would have pointed upward. She wondered what role he played here. Mary had referred to him as master, so he wasn’t a servant. “Where’s Lord Garret’s father?”

“In the city,” Mary said and then added under her breath, “That’s why we must hurry.” She gave Petra’s back a little push.

Petra discovered that, despite the corset, she could walk and breathe at the same time.

Chambers and Garret stood when she entered the hall. Late afternoon sun slanted through two-story glass beveled windows and sparkled on the heavy pewter candlesticks on the table. Goblets, spoons and a knife that looked more appropriate for killing deer sat beside china plates.

A child in a blue tunic appeared at Petra’s elbow, bearing a bowl of murky water. Petra flashed a look at Garret and Lord Chambers for direction, but Garret appeared to be looking at something outside a window. Lord Chambers frowned at her.

The child pressed the bowl closer to Petra, and she took a guess and dipped her hands into the water. That must have been the right thing to do, because the child then produced a small hand-cloth from his back pocket.

After the men washed their hands, they remained standing and Petra, who had sat, bounced back up to her feet.

Lord Garrett nodded, and Chambers bowed his head. “The Lord is our rock, and our fortress, and our deliverer; in Him will we trust.”

Garret had his head bowed and eyes closed, but Petra studied him from under her lashes. His resemblance to Kyle was spooky: height, sturdy build, blond hair, blue eyes, thin lips. Kyle had tan skin from his hours on the lacrosse field and she supposed Garret had his from hours outside doing… what? Hunting? Riding? Fishing? She didn’t know what a young seventeenth century earl-to-be did. Kyle and Garret were not the same person; she couldn’t forget that.

Petra tuned back into the grace.

“The Lord is our shield, and the horn of salvation, our high tower, and refuge, the Savior from violence.”

Unless, of course, you happen to be a gypsy. Petra’s heart twisted. Did Lord Garrett/Kyle had anything to do with the gypsy hunt? If he did, she wouldn’t stay in his house.

Chambers droned on. By the time the food was finally served, she was hungry, but between a tight corset, Chambers’ frown, and fending off Garret’s questions, she found it increasingly difficult to chew and swallow.

“Perhaps you were on horseback and thrown from the saddle,” Garret guessed. “That would explain the head injury.”

“But where are her companions?” Chambers countered, speaking over her head as if she wasn’t there. He narrowed his eyes. “The Romas. This is surely their doing.”

Garret considered his forkful of pork and nodded.

Anger flashed through Petra. Did these men, the same who prayed for a really long time, order a hunt on the gypsies? How could Chambers go on and on and on about God’s goodness and yet condone the raid? Treating people like pests? Hiring exterminators?

She took a bite of something steamy and brown and it tasted like sawdust. She remembered to use her napkin/serviette before speaking. “You can’t blame the gypsies,” Petra said, putting her napkin/serviette back into her lap.

“You said yourself you have no memory,” Chambers said, looking at her from over the top of his goblet.

Petra rubbed her forehead where it had begun to throb. A tiny pulse beat in her temple. She wasn’t used to lying. She had no idea what the Renaissance people knew of amnesia, for all she knew those suffering memory loss were thrown into an asylum and spent the remainder of their lives trying to remember who might care enough to rescue them.

“A highwayman,” she stammered, recalling a poem that she had memorized in eighth grade. “I think I remember a highwayman and moonlight.” She tore into a roll and breathed in its yeasty smell. “A moor and an inn.”

“But the moors are far to the north.” Garret, fork poised mid-air, looked baffled.

It’d been silly to think that just because Kyle looked like Garret that they were somehow connected, that he would know how to help her home. What I need is a fairy godmother, a wizard or a good witch. Too bad I don’t believe in any of those things.

“It had to be the gypsies.” Chambers frowned at his plate. “They kidnapped her from somewhere and brought her here.”

“No,” Petra said too loudly. She swallowed a lump of bread and it lodged in her throat.

Chambers studied her, eyes calculating.

“At least, I don’t think so.” Petra stirred the beans on her plate wishing they would turn into chicken nuggets. The limp beans weren’t the green kind she knew; they were yellow and looked like worms. If she was going to have a magical moment why couldn’t she be someplace that served Ben and Jerry’s? If she had wished to be transported to another time and place, she wouldn’t have picked this time or this place.

Unless she could have stayed with Emory. He had been the one good thing about her trip to Elizabethan England. By the time the pie arrived she was so angry and depressed she only picked at the berries and longed for ice-cream.

A footman came into the room and bowed before the table.

“Yes, Francis?” Garret said, tapping his lips with a square of linen.

“Sir, pray forgive the interruption, but the tapestry artisan has arrived. I took the liberty of having her sent to the first parlor.”

“She?” Garret threw down his napkin, his eyes lit.

“Yes, Miss Carl, sir. It seems her father has been detained abroad.”

“Excellent!” He turned to Chambers and Petra with outstretched hands. “Shall we?”

Pennington Place reminded Petra of Hogwarts. The first parlor had soaring ceilings and a fireplace with a mantel higher than her head. One wall had a flank of cut-glass windows, another had been lined with bookshelves, and another was blank.

Petra hung in the doorway, not knowing how to respond to Anne, who stood near the blank wall. A rolled tapestry lay near her feet like a colorful log.

Two footmen stood on either side of the tapestry. Anne, dressed in a modest gray gown, bowed her head at Garret, but when she saw Petra, her eyes widened in surprise. Petra held her gaze until Anne looked away.

What should she say to someone who’d drugged her? Petra wanted to forgive Anne simply because she had been friends with Emory. Did Anne know Emory had died? Petra watched Anne greet Garret and quote him the cost of her tapestry. Other than nervous energy, Anne seemed fine.

After moving chairs and tables to make room, the two footmen rolled the tapestry out over the carpet. Riotous colored flowers, coral and sapphire skies, silvery angels – the Satan tapestry. Petra gasped.

Garret leaned toward Anne. “Your work, it’s extraordinary.”

Anne accepted the compliment with stiff shoulders, but stepped back. He followed at her heels like a sniffing beagle. “My father will purchase it, I’ve no doubt.”

Chambers cleared his throat. “Maybe he’d like to see some of her others before he decides.”

“Your father, is he not here?” Anne’s face flushed as she shot Chambers a hostile glance.

Garret looked at his shoes. “No, he’s away.”

Anne’s mouth dropped open with a sound as if the air had been knocked from her lungs.

“Tis of no matter. I’m confident my father will be pleased.” Garret stood straighter. “I will purchase it.”

“Are you sure?” Petra bit her tongue, assuming she shouldn’t have spoken.

Chambers studying the tapestry became an unexpected ally. “I agree with Miss Petra.”

Garret looked from Petra to Chambers as if they’d grown horns. “It’s dazzling!” He shot Anne a warm glance. “It’s poetry.”

“Dante’s Inferno, maybe,” Petra muttered.

“What’s that?” Garret asked.

Chambers paced the edge of the tapestry. “It’s the story of the fall of Satan!”

The color seeped from Garret’s face as confusion replaced his enthusiasm. “Ah, so it is,” he said slowly. “So it is.” Garret straightened and he looked at Anne. “When will your father return?”

Anne met his gaze with open hostility. “I do not know. He has gone abroad to purchase dye.”

Petra remembered a second man in Anne’s cottage. She’d assumed him to be her father. Maybe he wasn’t. Or maybe he was and Anne was lying.

“Do you have other tapestries?” Garret asked.

Anne nodded.

“Then you must bring me another. Monday hence?”

“Perhaps it would be best to wait for the Earl’s return,” Chambers suggested.

“Nonsense. This room and this estate will soon be mine. I can purchase a tapestry,” Garret said, his chest puffing out. “If I should so desire.” The words sounded loaded and his eyes locked with Anne’s.

Petra felt a current running between them like a live wire.

“Yes, my Lord.” Anne ducked her head, but not before Petra saw a spark of defiance.

Garret rocked back on his heels. “Monday then, at the same time.”

Anne’s shoulders drooped as she watched the two footmen roll up her tapestry.

Petra had thought that she’d undress herself, but one look in the mirror at the army of buttons and the tiny tool that Mary used changed her mind. “Do you know how I got to Pennington Place?” Petra asked as Mary crouched behind her. She suspected Mary didn’t believe her tale of memory loss.

Mary sighed, pushed back a lock of hair from her forehead and straightened. “According to Fitz t’was the thick of night, he answered the bell and found you dead to the world at the gatehouse door. A bag of jewels and a note had been tucked in your cape.”

“A note?”

Mary raised the heavy brocade dress over Petra’s head.

“It said to take good care of you until your father arrived,” Mary said, lifting an eyebrow. “But aren’t you the least bit wondering about your jewels?” She motioned for Petra to turn around.

“Oh, of course, the jewels,” Petra said, taking a deep breath, her first since her corset encounter. “Did Garret just keep them?”

“He’s keeping you, isn’t he?” Mary shrugged.

Petra squirmed. The transaction made her feel more like Frosty at the kennel than Petra at the Marriot. Of course, Frosty had to stay in a kennel surrounded by a choir of barking, whining dogs. She wasn’t forced to stay in a cage, but she had to wear a corset, and that was sort of the same thing.

Mary flung a cottony nightgown over Petra’s head. While Petra put her arms in the sleeves, she asked, “And Garret?”

“My Lord Garret --” Mary tugged the nightgown into place.

The nightgown, a soft shimmery and see-through affair, was a hundred times more comfortable than the dress. “Lord Garret wasn’t suspicious?”

Mary smile