The metallic taste of Thames water filled my mouth as consciousness crashed into me like a freight train, dragging me from dreams of gaslight and silk into a nightmare of harsh fluorescent glare.
My eyes flew open to blinding white light that felt like needles stabbing straight into my brain. Everything was wrong—completely, impossibly wrong. Where were the heavy burgundy velvet curtains that my lady's maid Marie drew across my bedroom windows each morning? Where was the familiar scent of lavender sachets tucked into my linens, or the soft tick of the grandfather clock that had stood in the corner of my room since childhood?
Instead, there was this awful chemical smell burning my nostrils, and strange beeping sounds coming from medical equipment I couldn't begin to understand. The bed beneath me felt wrong too—hard where it should have been soft, covered in rough cotton instead of the silk sheets I'd gone to sleep in.
I tried to sit up, but my body felt like it belonged to someone else. Weak. Unfamiliar. The silk nightgown I'd worn to bed was gone, replaced by some sort of shapeless cotton garment that scratched against my skin like burlap.
Panic clawed at my throat as I forced myself to focus on my surroundings. White walls. Bizarre contraptions with glowing numbers that made no sense. And overhead, the strangest lighting I'd ever seen—bright as full daylight but cold and artificial, nothing like the warm glow of gas lamps or even the electric bulbs Father had recently installed in the main house.
Even the air in this place felt wrong—recycled and artificial, nothing like the coal-tinged fog and horse leather that used to drift through London's streets.
This wasn't my bedroom. This wasn't my house. This wasn't anywhere I'd ever been before.
"You're awake."
The voice came from somewhere near what looked like a window, though I couldn't see outside from where I lay. Deep and masculine, with an accent that was almost familiar but not quite right. Like someone trying to speak properly but missing some essential element of refinement.
I turned my head toward the sound, and the sight that greeted me made my breath catch in my throat.
The man stepping out of the shadows had the face of my bloodline. There was no mistaking it—I'd stared at those same features in family portraits my entire life. The strong jawline that every Ashworth man had carried for generations, the aristocratic nose that spoke of centuries of careful breeding, and most unmistakably, those steel-gray eyes that were like looking into a mirror.
But everything else about him was completely wrong.
His clothes were cheap—I could spot inferior tailoring from across a room, and this man's jacket looked like something a shopkeeper might wear on his day off. His shoes were scuffed leather that no proper valet would have allowed past the front door. The sight of an Ashworth dressed like a common tradesman made something savage and protective twist in my chest.
Worse than any of that was the way he carried himself, slouched and defeated, like a man who'd forgotten what it meant to command respect.
No Ashworth had ever looked so... hollow.
"Who are you?" I demanded, though something deep in my bones already whispered the answer I didn't want to hear.
He moved closer, and I could see the details that confirmed my worst fears. Mid-thirties, with dark hair that needed a proper barber and several days' worth of stubble on his jaw. Those familiar gray eyes held a weariness that made my chest tight with something between rage and grief.
"Marcus Ashworth," he said, and the way he said our family name made me want to weep. Like it was just another word, instead of a legacy that had shaped the course of British commerce for three generations. "The police called me when they found no identification on you. Emergency contacts led them to the last registered Ashworth address."
He paused, studying my face with growing concern. "You've been unconscious for three days. They pulled you from the Thames."
The Thames. Fragments of memory flickered through my mind like broken glass—the sound of rushing water, the sensation of falling, the terrible cold that had seemed to seep into my very bones. But before that...
Father's study, warm with lamplight and the smell of his pipe tobacco. The contracts spread across his mahogany desk, each one representing another piece of our expanding empire. "You understand, Evangeline," he'd said, his voice heavy with the weight of legacy and expectation, "everything we've built will be yours to protect and grow. The Ashworth name will endure long after we're gone, but only if you're strong enough to carry it."
The memory hit me like a physical blow. Father. The study. The night I'd signed the final contracts that would secure our family's dominance in international trade for decades to come. That had been... when? Last week? Yesterday?
"What year is it?" The question escaped before I could stop it.
Marcus's eyebrows drew together with deeper concern. "2024." He studied my face carefully. "Look, I know head injuries can scramble things up, but the doctors said to expect some confusion..."
The number echoed in my head like the tolling of a funeral bell. Over a century. Over a hundred years since I'd stood in Father's study, since I'd been Evangeline Ashworth, the woman the business papers called the Iron Rose of London society. Since I'd spent my days building an empire that would make the Ashworth name synonymous with power and prestige across three continents.
"The company," I whispered, my voice barely audible over the sound of my heart hammering against my ribs. "Ashworth Industries. What happened to it?"
The change in Marcus was immediate and devastating. His spine went rigid, and something dangerous flickered in those steel-colored eyes—not the controlled menace of power that Father had wielded so skillfully, but the wild desperation of an animal backed into a corner.
"How do you know that name?" The question came out sharp, suspicious. "Our family's business dealings aren't exactly public knowledge anymore."
I studied his face, cataloging the ways he was both utterly familiar and completely foreign. The bone structure was pure Ashworth, but softer somehow, as if generations of easy living had worn away the sharp edges that had made our family formidable. His hands, clenched at his sides, showed calluses that spoke of actual manual labor—something no Ashworth of my acquaintance had ever lowered themselves to perform.
But those eyes... those were my eyes, my father's eyes, my grandfather's eyes. Even dimmed by whatever trials this man had endured, they still held a spark of the steel that had built our fortune.
"Tell me," I said, letting my voice carry the tone of absolute command that had once made Cabinet ministers stop mid-sentence to listen.
Something in my voice made his spine straighten automatically, like muscle memory of authority he'd never learned but somehow recognized. He stared at me for a long moment, then seemed to crumble inward.
"Ashworth Industries collapsed in the 1960s." Each word seemed to cost him effort. "Bad investments, worse management. My grandfather lost everything—the London offices, the international shipping contracts, the family estate, even the art collection."
The shipping fleet. I'd spent two years negotiating those contracts, working eighteen-hour days to secure routes that would give us dominance in the Atlantic trade. I'd personally inspected every vessel, fought for every port agreement, built relationships with dock masters from Liverpool to New York.
The art collection. Paintings that had been in our family for generations, including the Gainsborough portrait of my great-grandmother that had hung in the main hall since before I was born.
"We've been..." Marcus swallowed hard, and I could see the shame eating at him like acid. "Getting by ever since."
Getting by. The words hit me like a slap across the face.
Everything I'd built—the extensive network of trading partners, the carefully cultivated political connections, the international investments that were supposed to secure our family's future for generations—all of it reduced to this broken man talking about "getting by" like some common shopkeeper's family.
"And you?" I asked, though every instinct screamed that I didn't want to hear the answer.
Marcus let out a laugh that could have curdled milk. "I run a small construction company. Was running it, anyway. We're three months behind on everything—loan payments, supplier bills, employee wages." His shoulders sagged as he spoke. "The bank's foreclosing in three weeks."
He looked up at me with those achingly familiar eyes. "Three weeks to find a miracle, or the Ashworth name dies with me. Guess the family curse finally caught up with me too."
Curse. As if the systematic destruction of everything I'd sacrificed my youth to build was some sort of supernatural inevitability instead of the predictable result of weak leadership and catastrophically poor decision-making.
The rage that filled me was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. Not the controlled anger I'd learned to wield like a weapon in business negotiations, but something primal and burning that threatened to consume everything in its path.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the way the room spun slightly as blood rushed to my head. My bare feet touched cold linoleum—another sensation that felt wrong in a world that seemed determined to assault my senses with its strangeness.
"No."
"What?"
"I said no." I gripped the metal rail of the bed until my knuckles went white, using it to anchor myself as the full weight of what I was facing crashed over me. "Whatever pathetic existence you've been living, whatever defeatist mentality has infected this family line—it ends now."
Marcus stared at me like I'd sprouted a second head. The expression of confusion and growing alarm on his face might have been amusing under different circumstances.
"Miss, I don't know what the head trauma has done, but the doctors said to expect some confusion. You need to take this slowly—"
"My name," I said, cutting through his protest with the voice that had once silenced rooms full of men twice my age, "is Evangeline Ashworth. And I'm going to save this family."
The words rang out with absolute certainty, carrying the weight of every lesson Father had taught me, every contract I'd negotiated, every impossible challenge I'd turned into victory through sheer force of will.
Behind me, the heart monitor started beeping faster. Marcus leaned forward, genuine worry replacing confusion on his weathered features.
"Look, trauma can cause personality changes, false memories. Even if you researched our family history before the accident, you can't just—"
"Three weeks," I interrupted, my mind already racing through possibilities and calculating resources. "You said the bank forecloses in three weeks?"
"Three weeks," he confirmed quietly, and the defeat in his voice made that cold fury in my chest burn hotter.
Three weeks. In my time, I'd turned around failing companies in less, but that was when I understood the rules of the game, when I had access to resources and connections built over years of careful cultivation. This was an entirely different world, with technologies I couldn't comprehend and business practices I'd need to learn from scratch.
But the fundamentals never changed. Money was money. Power was power. And the kind of weakness I saw in Marcus Ashworth's defeated posture was exactly the sort of thing that strong-willed people could exploit.
I would need to learn everything—and learn it fast. The strange technologies that seemed to govern every aspect of life in this era. The current state of markets and regulations. The legal frameworks that controlled business operations. I'd need resources I didn't have and connections that were literally over a century out of date.
Most critically, I'd need this shattered descendant to trust me. This man who'd never learned what the Ashworth name really meant, who'd allowed our family legacy to become synonymous with failure instead of the force of nature it had once been.
I looked him straight in the eye, letting him see the steel that had made grown men step aside in boardrooms from London to New York. The steel that had built an empire from nothing more than intelligence, determination, and the absolute refusal to accept defeat.
"Then we'd better get started."
The words hung in the air between us like a battle standard raised against impossible odds. Marcus's steel-colored eyes—so achingly familiar, yet so foreign—widened as something he'd probably never seen before flickered to life in their depths.
Hope.
For a long moment, we stared at each other across the sterile expanse of that hospital room. Him, this broken remnant of what should have been a proud lineage. Me, a woman displaced by over a century, facing the wreckage of everything I'd worked to build.
But I was still an Ashworth. And Ashworths didn't surrender.
Whatever had happened to bring me to this strange time, whatever impossible circumstances had led to this moment, I would find a way to turn them to my advantage. The family name would rise again, even if I had to drag it up from the ashes of a hundred years of failure with my bare hands.
Marcus opened his mouth as if to argue, then seemed to think better of it. Instead, he studied my face with those familiar gray eyes, and I could see him trying to reconcile the defeated resignation he'd lived with for years against the absolute certainty in my voice.
Something about the way I said our family name seemed to affect him deeply—like hearing a war cry from someone born to lead armies he'd never be worthy to join.
"Who are you really?" he asked finally, the question barely audible.
I smiled then, feeling more like myself than I had since awakening in this sterile nightmare. "I'm the woman who's going to remind the world why the Ashworth name used to mean something. And you, Marcus Ashworth, are going to help me do it."
Outside the window, I could hear the sounds of a London that bore little resemblance to the city I'd known and loved—the hum of engines instead of horse hooves, the electronic beeping of traffic signals instead of the calls of street vendors. But the Thames still flowed past those windows, carrying the same determination and persistence that had made this city the heart of an empire.
The Ashworth legacy would flow just as surely toward its destiny. I would make certain of that.
End of Chapter 1