There was a knock on the door.

It’s Mrs. Mering, I thought, looking for her shoe. Or spirits. Or the Colonel, whom she made get up.

But there was no light under the door, and the knock, repeated, was too soft. It’s Terence, I thought, wanting Cyril now that I’ve done all the work.

But in case it wasn’t, I lit the lamp, put on the dressing gown, and flung the coverlet over Cyril to cover him up and then went and opened the door.

It was Verity. In her nightgown.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered at her. “This is the Victorian era.”

“I know,” she whispered back, sidling past me into the room. “But I’ve got to talk to you before I go report to Mr. Dunworthy.”

“But what if someone comes in?” I said, looking at her white nightgown. It was a very modest sort of nightgown, with long sleeves and a high, buttoned-up neck, but I didn’t think that would impress Terence. Or the butler. Or Mrs. Mering.

“No one will come in,” she said, and sat down on the bed. “Everyone’s gone to bed. And the walls in these Victorian houses are too thick to hear through.”

“Terence has already been here” I said. “And Baine.”

“What did he want?”

“To tell me he hadn’t been able to salvage the luggage. Terence wanted me to sneak Cyril up from the stables.”

At the mention of his name, Cyril emerged from the covers, blinking sleepily.

“Hullo, Cyril, Verity said, petting him on the head. He lay his head on her lap.

“What if Terence comes back to check on him?” I said.

“I’ll hide,” she said calmly. “You have no idea how glad I was to see you, Ned.” She smiled up at me. “When we got back from Madame Iritosky’s, Princess Arjumand still wasn’t here, and when I went to report back last night, Mrs. Mering caught me on my way out to the gazebo. I managed to convince her I’d seen a spirit and was chasing it, and then she insisted on getting everyone up and searching the entire grounds, so I couldn’t go through and I didn’t have any idea what had happened.”

It really was too bad. The naiad was sitting on my bed in her nightgown, her Pre-Raphaelite auburn hair streaming down her back. She was here, smiling up at me, and I was going to have to ruin it all. Still, the sooner I got it over with, the better.

“And then this morning,” she was saying, “I had to accompany Tossie to a meeting at the church, and—”

“I brought the cat through,” I said. “It was in my luggage. Mr. Dunworthy must have told me I had it, but I was too time-lagged to hear him. I had it all along.”

“I know,” she said.

“What?” I said, wondering if I was experiencing Difficulty in Distinguishing Sounds again.

“I know. I reported back this afternoon and Mr. Dunworthy told me.”

“But—” I said, trying to take this in. If she’d been back to 2057, then that radiant smile—

“I should have guessed when I saw you at Iffley,” she said. “Sending historians on holiday isn’t Mr. Dunworthy’s style, especially not with Lady Schrapnell breathing down his neck and the consecration in only two weeks.”

“I didn’t know I had it till after I saw you at Iffley,” I said. “I was looking for a tin-opener. I know you said to keep Terence away from Muchings End, but I thought it was more important to get the cat returned. The plan was for us to stop at an inn in Streatley, and I’d sneak her back during the night, but Terence insisted on rowing down, and then the cat started meowing, and Cyril started sniffing at it, and he fell in, and then the boat capsized and… you know the rest,” I finished lamely. “I hope I did the right thing.”

She bit her lip, looking worried.

“What? You don’t think I should have brought her back?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought I should get her back here before there were any other consequences.”

“I know,” she said, looking genuinely distressed. “The thing is, you weren’t supposed to have brought her through in the first place.”

“What?” I said.

“When Mr. Dunworthy found out about the Coventry slippage, he called off the drop.”

“But—” I said. “I wasn’t supposed to bring Princess Arjumand through? But I thought you said the Coventry slippage was unrelated, that it was due to a crisis point.”

“It was, but while they were checking it, T.J. compared the slippage patterns to Fujisaki’s research, and they decided the lack of slippage surrounding the original drop meant it was a nonsignificant event.”

“But that’s impossible. Animate creatures can’t be nonsignificant.”

“Exactly,” she said grimly. “They think Princess Arjumand was nonanimate. They think she was intended to drown.”

This was making no sense. “But even if she drowned, her body would still interact with the continuum. It wouldn’t just disappear.”

“That’s what Fujisaki’s research was about. She’d be reduced to her component parts, and the complexity of their separate interactions would drop exponentially.”

Meaning her poor body would drift down the Thames, decomposing into carbon and calcium and interacting with nothing but the river water and hungry fishes. Ashes to ashes. Dust to nonsignificance.

“Which would make it possible,” Verity said, “for her to be removed from her space-time location without any historical effect. Which meant she shouldn’t be sent back from the future at all.”

“So you didn’t cause an incongruity by taking her through the net,” I said. “But I did, by bringing her back.”

She nodded. “When you didn’t come, I was afraid they might have sent Finch or someone after you to tell you to drown Princess Arjumand.”

“No!” I said. “No one’s drowning anyone.”

She rewarded me with one of her devastating smiles.

“If she’s a nonsignificant event, we’ll take her back to the future,” I said firmly. “We’re not going to drown her. But that doesn’t make any sense,” I said, thinking of something. “Her drowning, if that’s what would have happened, would have had consequences, the same consequences her disappearance had: everyone looking for her, your going to Oxford, Tossie’s meeting Terence.”

“That’s what I tried to tell Mr. Dunworthy,” she said. “But T.J. said Fujisaki said those would have been short-term consequences without historical repercussions.”

“In other words, they would have gotten over the cat,” I said, “if I hadn’t walked in with her.”

“And you wouldn’t have walked in with her, if I hadn’t interfered in the first place,” she said ruefully.

“But you couldn’t let it drown,” I said.

“No,” she said, “I couldn’t. And what’s done is done, and I’ve got to tell Mr. Dunworthy and find out what we do next.”

“What about the diary?” I said. “If there were references to her after the seventh, that would prove she hadn’t drowned. Couldn’t the forensics expert look for her name?”

Verity looked unhappy. “She did. The configuration of letters, actually — two very long words beginning with capital letters — but the only references are in the days immediately following, and she hasn’t been able to translate them yet. Mr. Dunworthy says they may only be references to her being missing, or to her having drowned.”

She stood up. “I’d better go report in. After you realized you had Princess Arjumand, what happened? When did Terence and Professor Peddick find out you had her?”

“They didn’t,” I said. “I kept her hidden till we got here. In a carpetbag. Terence thinks she was on the shore when we—” “Landed” wasn’t quite the right word. “—arrived.”

“And nobody else saw her?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “She got away twice. Once in the woods and once at Abingdon.”

“She escaped from the carpetbag?”

“No, I said. “I let her out.”

“You let her out?”

“I thought she was tame,” I said.

“Tame?” she said, amused. “A cat?” She looked at Cyril. “Didn’t you fill him in?” she said to him. She looked at me. “But you didn’t see her interacting with anyone else?”