What if a sword-wielding, outspoken time traveler found herself stuck in Regency England?
***
Clara Eaton has a secret: she's a member of an elite time-travelling society, concealed in the heart of London.
Clara has spent the last six years learnin...
"The sphere of domestic life is the sphere in which female exertion is chiefly occupied. A young lady's tender sensibilities are simply more suited to embroidery than sword-fighting."
-Andrew Hamilton in 'A Treatise on the Duties of the Female Sex' (1797)
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The punching bag split with a sickening crack.
Clara watched as rice spilled out of the wound, falling like drops of blood to the floor. The bag crumpled in on itself, shrivelling into a prune, and it was only then that her fingers gave a painful throb. She swore under her breath, holding them up to the light spilling through the rose window. The knuckles were raw and splitting.
Damn.
She'd have to put antiseptic on the wound when she got home. Unless Emma had used all of it again, Clara thought uncharitably, which meant that she would have to kick her younger sister's ass. A shame. She didn't really fancy beating anyone up the night before her final exams, but alas; these things had to be done.
She unwound the black fabric wrapped around her hand, being careful to avoid her bloodied knuckles. Just as she was loosening the final knot, applause echoed through the training room. Clara spun around, scrambling instinctively for a throwing knife, and then relaxed as she took in the young man standing in the doorway.
"Christ, Jack." She scowled. "Do you want a knife to the shoulder?"
"Just the shoulder?" Jack Ogilvy raised an eyebrow in amusement. "I hope you can do better than that, Eaton."
He leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest. An anchor tattoo flashed on his forearm — the result of a lost bet, after Jack failed to hotwire a boat on the Thames as fast as Clara had — and Jack scratched at it absently. His sandy hair was slick with sweat; he must have been training, too.
"If I wanted to kill you," Clara said, chucking her hand wraps into her rucksack, "you'd be dead by now. Trust me."
Jack winked. "So violent. I love it."
They fell into step, navigating through the twisting underground corridors. It was eerie to be in the Headquarters at night, Clara thought; it was a hub of activity during the day, with people scurrying down the hallways, speaking into earpieces and carting Victorian dresses and togas behind them. And there were always first-year students getting sick in the toilets from their first jump. Always. But was the thing about time travel: you had to have a strong stomach for it.
Not that Clara ever got sick as a first-year.
She would have never lived it down.
Clara skirted around a coatrack. The difficulty, she thought, about being the child of the two most famous time travellers in the world was that people were always watching you. Had been watching since she joined the training programme eight years ago, really. She'd worked twice as hard as every other student to prove that she deserved it, pushing herself until her body was bruised and her brain felt like it might explode. She'd made the A-team in her first year, and even though Clara's parents had reassured her they would love her equally if she was on the B-team or C-team, she could tell they were secretly relieved.
