To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2)

by Connie Willis

I opened the carpetbag, took out the boater, shut the bag and carried it back into the circle. I set the bag down and put the boater on at a jaunty angle that would have made Lord Peter proud. “Ned,” Verity said, stepping back, her greenish-brown eyes wide. “Harriet,” I said, and pulled her back into the already shining net. And kissed her for a hundred and sixty-nine years.

Swoon.

A Grand Design we couldn’t see because we were part of it. A Grand Design we only got occasional, fleeting glimpses of. A Grand Design involving the entire course of history and all of time and space that, for some unfathomable reason, chose to work out its designs with cats and croquet mallets and penwipers, to say nothing of the dog. And a hideous piece of Victorian artwork. And us.

“I just ran into Lady Schrapnell. She’s decided what this cathedral needs is—” “A wedding?” I said. “No, a christening. So they can use the Purbeck marble baptismal font.” “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to,” I said. “I could sic Lady Schrapnell on Carruthers and Warder, and you could make a run for it to someplace safe. Like the Battle of Waterloo.”