Page 28 of Echoes of the Sea (Storm Tide #2)

Kip was more than capable of linking together an impressive chain of profanities. He was tempted to do exactly that as he walked toward the old-timey tool shed, but he suspected it would be even more shocking to anyone nearby than his tattoos were.

“A door through time.”

Time travel was the realm of fantasy. To even be thinking about it in terms of reality was ridiculous. But it was the only thing that made everything he’d seen and experienced add up.

A tourist attraction with no facilities.

A low-paid summer job attracting the best actors in existence.

A young couple with an infant in a house that would never pass even a casual safety inspection.

Panic at the sight of Kip’s tattoos.

Mick’s wandering the island unsupervised.

No one knowing who Kip was, let alone Malcolm Winthrop.

Amelia strictly bound by the terms of a will that, in modern day, would never be enforceable.

It wouldn’t make sense in the “now” that he knew. But in 1803? Yeah, probably.

He stood in the middle of the stone work shed, not really seeing his surroundings. 1803. It was impossible. But it also sort of felt ... true.

A shadow blocked most of the light from the open doorway behind him.

“Did you sort it out yet?” Smudge asked.

Kip tried to roll the tension out of his shoulders. “Sort what out?”

Smudge stepped inside. He stopped next to the workbench and leaned against it, watching Kip. He didn’t say anything, didn’t answer the question. He looked very much as though he could stand there all day and wait.

He had told Kip he believed in the Tides of Time. He’d said he knew someone who had traveled over them. Of all the people Kip might share his suspicions with, Smudge seemed a good option. He’d known him for only an hour. But, then, there was no one nearby he had known for very long.

In the end, Kip lost his nerve. “Did you get an assignment from Miss Archibald?”

“Her said, for now, I’m to help you.”

“What skills do you have?” Kip asked.

Smudge shrugged. “I can do most anything.”

Hesitantly, Kip asked, “Plumbing?”

Smudge shook his head. “Can’t say I’ve heard of that.”

“Electrical wiring?”

“Not that either.”

Without quite as much hesitation, but with a bit of panic he couldn’t entirely hide, Kip pressed on. “Phone? Internet? Touch-entry keypad?”

A look Kip could only describe as empathy crossed Smudge’s expression. “How far have you traveled, Kipling Summerfield?”

Kip ran a hand over his forehead and rubbed at a temple. He was starting to get a headache. Did 1803 even have aspirin? Probably not. “I don’t know.”

“Time behaves strangely on these waters.” Smudge knew. He knew.

“Can you prove to me it’s 1803?” Kip asked.

“If all you’ve seen hasn’t proven it to you, I suspect you might be too thick for sorting it out.”

“It’s not a matter of being stupid,” Kip said. “It just doesn’t make any sense. I think I would have noticed if I’d gone through time. Surely something would have said, ‘News flash. It’s two hundred years ago.’”

“That you didn’t notice isn’t a flattering reflection on your intellect.”

It wasn’t that he hadn’t noticed. There’d just been an explanation.

A historical site would be restored to what it would have been like in history, though perhaps without quite as much over-the-top effort.

And a place that was meant to have historical reenactors would have people who seemed to be from a different time.

But some things were too different for a reenactment.

His British accent wasn’t actually terrible, but it would seem off to people from over two hundred years ago.

The British accent had changed in that time.

RP English hadn’t even been a thing in 1803.

He had learned that from dialect coaches.

And absolutely no one reacted with terror to the sight of a tattoo anymore.

But Amelia and Jane had honestly looked horrified.

“I am in deep waters.” Kip turned enough to lean back against the workbench as well, standing next to Smudge. “Now what am I supposed to do?” he muttered, though he didn’t know if he was actually asking the question or just expressing his hopelessness.

Smudge answered anyway. “My grandmother said her cried for a couple of weeks.”

“Crying isn’t really my thing.”

Smudge looked at him out of the corner of his eye. “You are gonna have to learn to speak more like a person of now.”

“Like a Miss-Archibald person of now, or like an everyone--in-the-village person of now? Because those are two very different things.”

Smudge offered a small smile. “You’d likely do better mimicking she.”

That was probably true.

“If I really am in 1803, how do I get back to my time?”

Smudge shook his head. “Don’t know that you can. The tides can’t be controlled or manipulated. Even if you managed to get back in the water when the right type of storm was raging, there’s no telling when the tides would take you.”

Kip might end up in a time he understood even less than this one. “Then I’m trapped here. I’m trapped now. ”

Smudge stood up straight once more and turned to look at him. “May I make a suggestion?”

“Please do.”

Smudge held his gaze, confident as anything.

It was something those portraying servants or people of the working class were generally not scripted to do in The Beau.

Mick had said that Amelia couldn’t be friends with Jane because servants weren’t friends with those who employed them. But Smudge was something different.

“Keep on as you have been,” Smudge said.

“You’re finding a place in this corner of this time.

Us is isolated enough here that you’re unlikely to find yourself in a great deal of trouble over things you get wrong.

Once you’ve sorted out how to manage in this unfamiliar time, you can decide where you mean to go, even if you can’t control when . ”

“Are you going to tell the village? They obviously know about the tides.”

“Maybe not just yet,” Smudge said. “Them knows, and most aren’t overly suspicious of people claiming to have come here that way. But them’d have a heap of questions, and until you have a heap of answers, it might be simpler to keep mum.”

“What about Miss Archibald? Do I tell her?”

Smudge’s expression turned into that of a person who couldn’t decide what to say or what to think on a matter.

Ought Kip to tell Amelia? Would she even believe him?