Tomorrow's Crimes ll Moriarty the Patriot

The Face She Must Wear

The morning of Adelaide's eighteenth birthday arrived with the weight of an executioner's blade. She woke not to Martha's gentle ministrations, but to the sound of at least three housemaids colliding in the hallway, their frantic apologies mixing with the crash of what was undoubtedly her mother's second-best tea service. The noise felt distant, unreal – like everything else in this version of 1876 that had somehow become her prison.

Adelaide pressed her face into the silk-cased pillow, surrendering to a fleeting moment of weakness before the day began. Three months. She had been trapped here for three long months, ever since... a day she didn't dare to recall. One moment, she was immersed in her work as a journalist; the next, she was thrust into a world where she was expected to debut into Victorian society as the youngest daughter of the Duke of Blackwood. How amusing.

She missed everything about her real life with an intensity that physically hurt. The simple freedom of wearing jeans and running shoes. The satisfaction of breaking a story that exposed corruption. Even the mundane moments – scrolling through Twitter while waiting for the Tube, grabbing coffee with her colleagues, complaining about London rent prices over WhatsApp with her sister. Now her biggest technological advancement was indoor plumbing, and even that was considered somewhat suspect by certain members of society.

"Oh dear," Martha's voice carried through the door. "Mrs. Potter will have someone's head for that." A pause, then: "No, Sarah, don't cry. Here – help me with these linens while they clean up. Lady Adelaide needs her chambers spotless for the preparations."

Adelaide blinked back tears that she couldn't afford to shed. Her makeup would need to be perfect today – everything would need to be perfect. The irony wasn't lost on her that she now inhabited the body of a duke's daughter, when just three months ago she'd been investigating corporate corruption in sensible boots and a press pass. The real Adelaide Blackwood – wherever her consciousness had gone when the accident occurred – had never filed an exposé or stayed up for three days straight chasing a lead. That Adelaide had been groomed since birth for this moment, trained in every nuance of Victorian society.

Sometimes, she wondered if she was experiencing a mental breakdown, if she had simply fallen asleep at her desk after one too many Red Bulls, trapped in some elaborate stress dream. But dreams didn't last three months. They didn't come with the bone-deep exhaustion of wearing a corset all day or the constant mental gymnastics required to avoid being sent to an asylum.

Just yesterday, she'd nearly slipped up during tea with Lady Rutherford, catching herself just before commenting on the parallels between Victorian social media (gossip columns and calling cards) and modern Twitter. The old lady had given her an odd look, but thankfully attributed Adelaide's strange expression to a bit of indigestion rather than pure madness.

Instead of investigating corporate malfeasance, she now found herself maintaining a façade that felt increasingly like a full-time undercover assignment. The weight of it pressed against her chest with each breath. One wrong word, one unexplainable slip, and she could end up in Bethlem faster than she could say "YOLO." She had witnessed enough of Victorian attitudes toward mental health to know precisely what happened to young ladies who claimed to be from the future.

Which left her here, staring into a mirror that reflected a face both familiar and foreign, burdened by the weight of two identities. The family needed Adelaide Blackwood to be perfect—the epitome of power, influence, and the standing of the dukedom. The world expected her to embody demureness, accomplishment, and an utterly unremarkable propriety.

But God, it was exhausting. Every conversation was a minefield. She couldn't discuss politics (her opinions on women's rights alone would cause multiple fainting fits), couldn't reveal her actual education level (Oxford journalism degree? More like finishing school and watercolors), couldn't even walk at her natural pace (unladylike to rush). The constant performance reminded her of her first undercover assignment at the paper, except instead of pretending to be a corporate intern for a week, she had to pretend to be a completely different person from a completely different century. Indefinitely.