Harriet threw back the bed sheets and blankets to allow Agatha to swing her legs over the side of the bed. Agatha sat there for a moment allowing the swimming sensation in her head to pass.

Harriet was pleased to see Agatha sitting on the edge of the bed. It was while she waited for Agatha to stand, that Harriet couldn't help but stare at what Agatha was wearing.

"What is it?" Agatha finally said after she stood up.

Harriet was amazed that woman's fashion could be so daring in the future. "Your skirt!" she said finally.

"What about it?" asked Agatha, looking down at herself.

"Well, whatever year you came from..." Harriet began to say.

"1926." Agatha replied.

"Well, in 1926," continued Harriet. "Showing that much leg below the knee may be acceptable. But in 1895 showing so much as an ankle will brand you a fallen woman! You are going to have to change."

So, after a trip to Harriets wardrobe and with Agatha now suitably looking like a late 1800's woman completed with a full-length skirt, she followed Harriet out of her bedroom and along a dark corridor. Harriet took Agatha down an equally dark staircase which led to a flight of steps to the basement.

"I've seen pictures of HG Wells," said Agatha, holding an oil-filled lamp as they descended the basement steps. "He was defiantly a man. Herbert George Wells!"

Harriet stopped abruptly on the steps, she held up her lamp and shone it towards Agatha to illuminate her face.

"He is my father." then continued as she her journeyed down to the basement. "Maybe things are different for women in 1926, but in 1895 we are not treated seriously. I needed financial support with my experiments so I asked father to speak on my behalf. He would take his instructions and learn his lines from me and with my inventions go and partition whatever government office had the most money."

"He learned his lines, you make him out to be an actor." said Agatha.

"He is," answered Harriet. "Although not in this country anymore. I was six when mother died in the Crimean War. After her funeral, father took us both off to America to start a new life. He soon picked up work in some of the smaller theatres in New York City, and soon we were starting to make a living. Then the war came."

"The Civil War?" confirmed Agatha.

"Correct, times were tougher over there than here. So, we packed our bags again and came back to England."

"Where is your father now?" Agatha enquired.

"Oh! I suppose traveling around Europe with some theatre company. I do miss him."

With the oil lamp casting a silhouette across Harriet's face, Agatha missed the single tear that rolled down Harriet's cheek.

"You just said your mother died in the Crimean War?" asked Agatha.

"Yes, she was a nurse. One of the first to go across with Florence Nightingale. It was during the Siege of Sevastopol that a Russian cannon ball ripped through the make-shift field hospital where my mother was attending to some of the wounded. There were a lot of unstable chemicals in the tent and the explosion caused by the cannon ball, killed everyone in a sixty-foot radius."

"I'm sorry," said Agatha as reached out into the dark for Harriet's arm.

"That's why I trained as a nurse, and also why I left the practice to experiment with time travel. I want to go back in time and join my mother in her last hours."

Agatha and Harriet continued in silence as they walked down the last remaining few steps. Once in the basement, Harriet left Agatha standing while she went off into the shadows. Agatha couldn't answer Harriet regarding her time travelling and neither was she going to attempt to change her mind. After all, who was she to decide a person's destiny.

To be continued...
© Alice White