Was she running away to marry Jonathan? Was that where they were going? As she followed Jane further away from the manor house, Amelia thought furiously, tried to remember every detail of the story John Lindsey had told her.

She couldn't think. The shock was too great. Her breath came in great gasps; her lungs hurt from the cold spring air. She stumbled, and Jane jerked her upright.

"Come on, Emma! Once they know we've gone, we haven't got a chance."

She was a tough one, Amelia thought. Tough and strong and smart. She was a survivor; that was the first thing she'd thought upon meeting her.

What has happened?

She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. One after the other. Breathing through her nose because it warmed the cold night air. Trying not to let the cloak whip open and the frigid wind crawl up her legs.

They reached the main road, and Amelia was struck by how absolutely black the night was. Even when she and Hugh had taken evening walks with the dogs, they'd come back to see the windows of Lindsey House ablaze with light. Not now. Everything was black, except what little was silvered by the new moon.

She stopped, and Jane was yanked back by the force of her strength.

New moon. No. Not new, the moon was full…

The truth began to close in all around her. She couldn't shut her mind off to the final possibility, the only possibility, the reality of what had happened to her. She'd fallen down the hole, like Alice after the White Rabbit, only this was real, this was real…

"Emma! The carriage!"

And there it was, at the end of the dirt road. The road she and Hugh had just walked this evening, three of the house dogs at their heels, Charlie in her arms because his legs were too stiff, Hugh's arm around her…

Tears blurred her vision, but her legs kept moving because she didn't know what else to do.

She assisted Jane into the carriage, then climbed in after her. There was nothing for her here at this Lindsey House, more than two hundred years in the past. She'd been flung back in time, and who knew if she'd ever see anyone or anything familiar again?

The horses started up, and the carriage bounced around horribly. Amelia gritted her teeth, then gave up on that idea when a bone-jarring jounce almost caused her to bite off her tongue. Though she and John were both fascinated and passionate about history, neither had ever romanticized it, and she longed for the safe confines of the Range Rover.

"It won't be much farther now," Jane whispered. She sounded so very pleased with herself.

"Until what?"

"Oh, Emma, don't go off like that again! Jonathan's mother would have let your aunt go had she not been so terribly accurate with those visions." She sighed, then sat back on the seat. The small lantern on the one side of the carriage illuminated her animated face. ' 'I must confess, I'd love to see what the future has in store for Robert and me-"

"Robert?" Her tongue suddenly felt thick, her head filled with cotton wool. "Robert? I thought you loved Jonathan-"

The look on Jane's face stopped her cold.

"Jonathan? Jonathan? To marry him and live that carefully planned out, boring life in that huge old house? Oh, no, not for me! I want more than that, I told him-"

"Does he know about-"

"Robert?" Jane laughed, then glanced out the carriage window, eager to see where they were in their journey. "No." Her expression grew thoughtful. "Even though I didn't want to be Jonathan's wife, I couldn't bear to hurt him. He thought we were betrothed, and I let him continue to think it until tonight. Tomorrow, once he realizes I'm gone, he'll find another girl, much more suitable than I am."

Amelia was quiet, thinking of the letters. Of that last letter. Those passionate words. Jonathan had loved this Jane Stanton, no matter how hard-hearted and cold she seemed to Amelia now.

She ventured a guess. Perhaps this Emma, this woman whose body she'd appropriated, would have known both men.

"I think you're tossing away a good man."

Jane gave her an incredulous look that instantly told her she'd overstepped her station in life. The girl had an incredibly expressive face; it registered her emotions quite clearly.

Once again, Amelia found herself an American misunderstanding British customs. Obviously, this Emma was a maid. Jane's maid. Amelia, in the first shock of tearing through time, had overlooked the plainness of the wool dress she was wearing. But now, seeing the way Jane related to her, there could be no doubt concerning her station in this life. She couldn't meet her mistress's expression and glanced away, embarrassed.

"I'll thank you not to trouble me with your opinion on this matter."

"As you wish."

But now a sense of foreboding grew, a sense that their carriage was racing toward a more sinister future than either of them could anticipate. Amelia stared out the carriage window at the dark forest flashing by; she swayed in rhythm with the drumming of the horse's hooves. It was almost hypnotic, what that sound did to a body.

Something was very wrong. Jonathan had never alluded to what had happened to Jane, what had driven the woman he'd loved to take her own life, but Amelia had a horrible feeling that she was going to watch Jane's life unfold in front of her as if it were some sort of program on television.

What was it Hugh had said to her that day in the garden? / believe we are our own destiny. Through who we are, the choices we make day by day.

She had the strangest foreboding that Jane was about to make a choice that could possibly cost her her young life.

Was this Robert a murderer? Would he make it look as if Jane had committed suicide? And why was there never a mention of a maid named Emma in all the work she'd gone through, the letters, various correspondence, the journal, the estate records? She didn't remember an Emma; it was as if the servant had never existed.

But now you don't exist, except in her body. And perhaps in time your consciousness will fade, to be replaced by this woman's…

She didn't know what to think.

The rain was coming down harder now, lashing the carriage, pounding on its roof, causing the driver to whip the reins down on the horses' rumps, urging them faster. Amelia tried to rid her mind of the thought of the carriage overturning; the idea of a broken bone or worse in the eighteenth century didn't bear thinking about.

She closed her eyes, trying to shut everything out.

"Do you have the sight?"

It took her a moment to realize that Jane was speaking to her. She had to be referring to Emma's aunt.

"Can I see the future, do you mean?"

"Yes."

"No. I've never had a vision in my life." But I get feelings, and I have very bad feelings about this night, Jane, about what's going to happen to you-and to Jonathan.

She thought of all the novels she'd read about time travel, how she'd lazed afternoons away speculating what she would do if she were ever able to leap through time. Now that she was actually doing it, there were two things she was sure of. One, that a person was never ready for such an experience. And, two, that it wasn't as terrific as might be expected. Time travel was as romanticized as the past.

"Do you wish you could? See into the future, I mean."

"No." And Amelia realized what she said was true- she knew the future now, and felt the impossible burden of knowing what was to come and being unable to stop or alter it in any way. For you couldn't alter the future, you couldn't make people's choices for them, of that she was sure.

And even as headstrong and fiery as Jane was, she'd come to like her in a strange way. She didn't want to see her die. The portrait artist who had captured Jane on canvas hadn't captured her spirit, her strength, her determination. If someone could have shown her how to channel all that energy before tonight, if someone had taught her how to make decisions more carefully…