In Bed With Lord Byron

a bad fall,’ said the man with the sideburns.
    Two pairs of hands reached out and lifted me to my feet.
    ‘Good sir, what year is it?’ I cried, then started at my voice – the speaking vial seemed to have gripped my tongue and twisted it into the century’s idiom. 1
    ‘Eighteen thirteen, of course. I fear the fall has hurt your head. Come into the house and we can give you some brandy.’
    ‘No – no. I need to . . . I need to find . . .’ I looked about wildly. Where the hell had the time machine gone? I looked left, I looked right. I looked up. Nothing but street
and sky. It had completely vanished.
    Shit.
    What if it had exploded on the way?
    What if I was stuck in 1813 for the rest of my life?
    I’d never see Anthony ever again.
    The man with the sideburns pressed a hand to my elbow. The pressure seemed slightly threatening, and suddenly I felt a flicker of fear. I recalled one of those BBC TV costume dramas, scenes that
had been set in a nineteenth-century madhouse, where women were tied up in filthy strait-jackets and slapped about and fed stale bread. If I carried on like this, they were going to think I’d
escaped from an asylum.
    ‘I’m sorry.’ I smiled demurely, touching my forehead. ‘I was just a little shocked. I, er . . .’ I turned, looked at the row of houses. One was lit up, with
silhouettes moving around a room. ‘I was on my way to a, er, party, and I tripped, so . . .’
    ‘Well, Keats and I are also attending Hobhouse’s party,’ said the man with the sideburns. ‘May we escort you? My name is John Murray; this is my dear friend, John
Keats.’
    John Murray! Keats! Oh wow, oh wow. I felt the cold ball of fear in my heart thaw a little. Keats – my favourite poet. Murray – famous, glamorous publisher of Byron, Sir Walter Scott
and Jane Austen. Both extremely cool guys. The nineteenth-century equivalent of going to an event sandwiched between David Furnish and Elton John.
    I saw John Murray hesitating and realised he was awaiting an introduction.
    ‘I’m Lady Lucy,’ I said. ‘Lady Lucy, um, Lyon.’ Immediately I winced – Lady Lucy Lyon. I sounded like a character in a nursery rhyme.
    ‘It is an honour,’ he said, bowing.
    I glanced down at my ballgown, fearing it might be torn, but to my relief it was intact, if slightly crumpled and a tad muddy about the hem.
    Inside the house, I half expected the doorman, who looked me up and down doubtfully, to say ‘Sorry, you’re not on the list.’ But getting in was fine; it was the bit where a
maid came up and asked to take our coats that got a bit icky. John Murray frowned when I said I’d left my coat behind. Then he started asking where my carriage was. Sod the carriage, I
thought. What I wanted to know was where my bloody time machine was.
    ‘You must have left your coat in your carriage, or perhaps at home, wherever that is,’ Murray said. He had great big bushy grey eyebrows, which clearly had aspirations to become
hedgerows. Now they were raised high on his forehead, and I saw a flicker of suspicion in his eyes . . . or was it just my paranoia?
    ‘Murray!’ A young woman came up to him, cooing hellos.
    I waited for Murray to introduce me but he didn’t. Was he ignoring me? Maybe he thought my lack of coat and carriage signalled I was a woman of the night. Or whatever they called them in
this century. I felt a dribble of sweat run down my back. If only I’d thought; if only I’d done more research.
    I decided I needed a stiff drink. As I wove through the crowds, I suffered another panic attack. Out on the street, the silhouettes at the party had looked like cardboard cut-outs; somehow I
hadn’t quite believed they were real. But now, as I pushed through them, I could feel the warmth of their breath; skin, cotton and silk brushing by. This was real; it was oh-so-real. I wanted
to run away and scream at the sky. I wanted Pringles, I wanted
Big Brother
, I wanted a copy of
Marie Claire
, I wanted a drink . . .
    A waiter came past with a tray.
    ‘D’you have any Bacardi Breezers?’ I tested him.
    He looked blank. I flashed him a quick smile and picked up a goblet of white wine from his tray.
    As I sipped my drink, I became horribly aware that people were looking at me. I wondered if they all knew I’d gatecrashed. Then I saw two ladies sweeping their eyes over my dress and
sniggering. I looked down, fearing it had a hole or something. Then I twigged.
    I hadn’t really thought too hard when