Introduction

If you’re new to my A Stitch in Time stories—or if it’s been a while since you’ve read one—here’s a little introduction to get you up to speed. Otherwise, if you’re ready to go, just skip to chapter one, and dive in!

There’s a time stitch in Thorne Manor, hereditary summer home to the Thornes of North Yorkshire. As far as we know, Bronwyn Dale was the first to pass through, traveling from the twenty-first century to the nineteenth, where she met William Thorne when they were both children. Later, as a widow, she returned to find William still there. They’re now married with two daughters. They live in Thorne Manor and divide their time between the modern world and the Victorian one.

Before Bronwyn returned to Thorne Manor, Rosalind—the wife of William’s best friend, August Courtenay—accidentally went through the time stitch into the modern world, where she was trapped for four years, separated from August and their young son, Edmund.

Rosalind returned home last fall and reunited with her family, including her youngest sister, Miranda. Miranda Hastings is secretly a novelist, a teller of adventure tales and a bit of an adventurer herself, which meant Rosalind was definitely not telling her about the time stitch.

In Rosalind’s holiday novella, Snowstorms & Sleigh Bells, Miranda discovered the locked door . . . along with a few oddities that suggested her sister was keeping a secret. In that story, we also saw the ghost of a legendary local pirate-turned-Robin-Hood. Miranda has the Second Sight, and while she can see ghosts, this particular phantom has only appeared in an echo of his death, his spirit long gone.

1

Imagine that a locked door stands between you and the greatest adventure imaginable. It is not the sort of lock one might find on a safe containing such treasure but a mere interior door lock, easily opened with a hairpin.

What lies on the other side? A passage from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first.

Is any lock supposed to keep me from that?

The “time stitch”—as I have heard my eldest sister, Rosalind, call it—is located in Thorne Manor, home to William and Bronwyn Thorne, friends of Rosalind and her husband. From what I understand, Bronwyn is from the twenty-first century, where my sister was trapped for four years, having only returned to us last year. All this, of course, I learned only from listening to conversations I was not supposed to hear, as I endeavored to discover the secret of that locked door.

When I first figured out what lay behind it, it took all my willpower not to run to the house, burst in on the Thornes and dash through the passage right in front of them. I impatiently bided my time until they were in London, with Thorne Manor left empty. Then I set off.

I reach my destination around midday. Thorne Manor sits atop a hill overlooking the Yorkshire moors. Or, I should say, it perches there, a massive stone block of a house looking down on the village of High Thornesbury. Such a stern and forbidding abode should look as if it is watching the town with a judgmental eye, but the dark rectangles of windows seem more to watch over it, glaring into the moors at any who dare trespass.