Lowe's words were caught halfway between utter disbelief and utter dissent as he fixed on the fake stewardess from the Titanic shop.

"But how did you...How had I...How might've we..."

He had only a second to take in her disheveled mess of sun-kissed champagne hair, and sorrel-green eyes wide and horror-struck for the man she never remembered taking to bed with her either.

And Lowe had no time to stop the punishing pillow she snatched with her determined hands.

"You jerk!"

The pillow came down in smashing fury against his gob-smacked face.

"Did you kidnap me?" she declared, as she went on pillow-clubbing him. "You sick creepy psychopathical pervert!"

"Ms. Amberflaw, please, will you give me a chance! You've every right to have it in for me, I know, but I can explain!"

Though surely, not if he couldn't breathe.

Because the way she tackled him to the bed, Lowe might've had better luck fending off a Tasmanian devil.

"You like 'em when they don't fight back huh? You like being in control? How's it feel to know you just picked the wrong girl? Does this turn you on now?" she demanded, smothering his head between cushion and bed.

"Mm! Mmm! MmmmMmmmm!" was all she heard in response.

Muffling protests against his own pillow, Lowe's hands flailed to get a grip on the murderous madling on top of him.

But Kora dug her elbows deeper into the pillow.

"Don't fight it," she warned him. "Because the harder you fight it, the harder it is to breathe. In the end, it's just like falling asleep, isn't it? Like one big, bad, beautiful nightmare."

An unending nightmare indeed!

And would it never be over?

From the star-crossed moment he met her, to the point he threw her over a cliff, would he ever escape this nightmarish raving calenture?

Even so, Lowe had rowed against angrier tides, and laid anchor heavier than the hellish bit of damsel on top of him now. Because the only thing keeping him from turning this situation around was that he couldn't very well do it in any gentlemanly way.

But there was nothing genteel about the way her body staked her claim of his, her thighs straddling atop his hips in forceful dominance.

And so, propriety be damned, Lowe let himself have war with her.

Finally getting his hands on the bearish Miss and reversing their position, caging her wrists flat onto the bed to hold her fast beneath him.

"Have you lost the plot?" Lowe demanded breathily.

Her sandy hair scattered in waves across his white pillows, as she struggled to overtake him. Catching the eye in a rather fantastical play in the morning sunlight. Like that tale he'd heard as a child...The bit about the mermaid who fell in love with a prince and gave up her voice to be with him on land.

Only this was no fairy tale they were caught up in.

And she was no bloomin' princess either.

"Bleeding Christ!" Lowe battled to tame her without losing an eye. "Get ahold of yourself, Ms. Amberflaw, for the love of-"

But the rabid Valkyrie of a woman writhed her way out from under him, rolling out of bed to reclaim the upper hand of their match.

Lowe scrambled out of bed to head her off first, his progress hindered once more by all the fluff and nonsense Mrs. Potts had thrown on the bed for him.

Giving Kora enough time to grab the oil lamp from his bedside table, and turn it into a sword en garde against him.

"Let me go," she warned him. "Or else."

"Go where, Ms. Amberflaw?" Lowe tried to reason with her. "You don't fully understand where you are."

"Then where am I?" she demanded. "Why did you bring me here?"

"Because I had no choice."

"What does that even mean?"

"I know pretty well how it looks, but God as my witness, it's nothing like you're imagining it."

"Oh, so I just fell into your bed then?"

"Or thus and such," Lowe couldn't completely disagree. "Give or take a few, that is, but it appears that was roughly the way of it."

Her eyes widened.

"That is," Lowe quickly backtracked. "I can't rightly tell how we've gone to bed together, but my word as my honor, it was in the strictest definition of it, as in sound asleep side by side to each other-rather intimately, I suppose-but not so intimately as to be intimate, and that is all."

"Oh yeah? I'm sure that's exactly how it happened," she called his bluff. "You're gonna have to come up with a better story than that."

"I'm telling you, the truth it is," Lowe insisted. "I will swear to that and my name. I never had it off with you."

"I don't even know your name."

"Lowe," he persisted. "My name is Lowe. I introduced myself to you only yesterday, don't you remember?"

But shaking her head, she appeared more lost than ever she was before.

"The man from your gift shop?" he reminded her. "Tried to sell me a clock, you did. 10 percent credit, mix and match, have a nice day? Those were your precise words."

But none of it appeared to make any sense to her.

"Sell you a clock? Why would I ever do that?"

"That answer is beyond me still, but dead set on it, you were."

"Wait, stop, you're just confusing me more."

"Well, drink to that, I will," Lowe agreed dryly. "As I seem to be on the same boat with you that I never paid for nor can ever put to shore. It was yesterday we met, Ms. Amberflaw. How can you have forgotten?"

"A clock?" she wondered dazedly, trying her hardest to put it all together. "Why a clock?"

"Dear God, so it is for you as it was for me?" Lowe realized. "That is, when I found myself wandering into your time, I couldn't fully remember how I befell there either. And now, just the same...you've fallen with me backward into mine."

"So," she challenged that unlikely event. "Rather than admit you falsely imprisoned me in your bedroom, you're really gonna stand here and argue that I 'time traveled' myself into it instead?"

"Allow me to prove the logic of it," he pursued his argument. "The oil lamp in your hand is the only lighting in my room. All of the house is lit by illuminating gas. I observed within your shop electric switch outlets. There are none the like here. So, I should imagine gas lighting is a relic in your time."

"Or maybe you're just cheap," Kora countered.

"Well, I should say so, or do I look like an Astor to you?" Lowe rebutted. "Electrification of the entire house is daylight robbery. A wee bet upmarket for my price."

"Well this story is a 'wee bet' out of mine too."

"I'll admit it sounds more H.G. Wells than actuality, and I don't like it anymore than you do, but it's our rope to slack now, and I won't rest until I've found the answer," Lowe pledged to her. "But we must learn to trust each other, Ms. Amberflaw. Because rest assured, whether in your day or in mine, ne'er a soul on earth is going to believe us."

"This isn't happening," Kora shook her head in denial. "I'm getting out of here, one way or another. So, I suggest you move."

"I suggest you don't try it."

"Then I suggest this might hurt."

But Lowe had already died twice in a matter of hours.

Dying was old news to him now.

"Go on then, if that be your heart's content," he dared her. "But kill me, and I can't promise you where we'll turn up. When we die, things go topsy-turvy. I've worked out that much in my mind. So unless you want to keep betting your lot on this endless loop, I suggest you collect yourself, Ms. Amberflaw. Until we've sorted this all out, nothing will come of us offing the other. So, for the time being, I think it best that you put that lamp down now."

And no sooner had Lowe spoken those words did he get his wish.

Ducking just in time as the lamp came hurling for his head, smashing into the wall just behind him.

"Heavens! What the devil was that noise?" Mr. Evans's voice approached Lowe's door from outside. "I suspect you're right, Mrs. Potts! It sounds as if a thief has broken into the house!"

And with the bed caught in the middle between them, Kora looked at Lowe, and Lowe looked at Kora.

Sizing each other up in one last contest.

Before racing each other to the door to be the one who opened it first.

Kora betting on being rescued from her deranged captor, and Lowe hoping that the bloody Cavendish didn't indeed find another woman pouncing upon him in his bedroom.

And in the nick of time, just as Mr. Evans reached the door, Lowe caught Kora in his arms before she could turn the knob.

And winning against the fierce momentum of tangling up with each other, Lowe came out on top this time, caging her between him and the wall behind her.

Knock, knock, knock.

"Mr. Lowe?" Mr. Evans inquired hesitantly from behind the door. "Was that you in there?"

"Keep silent, please, I beg you," Lowe whispered to Kora, his body so accidently near that his face was only inches from hers. "If they find us together here, there won't be a coming back from it."

"Pardon me, Mr. Evans," Mr. Cavendish joined in the hallway. "Am I mistaken in believing I heard a woman's voice just now in there?"

"A woman?" Evans asked surprised. "In his boudoir?"

"Why, of course not. Naturally, you've misheard," Mrs. Potts chuckled nervously. "If that's truly our Mr. Lowe in there-alive and well, so it appears-then he's got quite a range on him, doesn't he?"

"Mr. Lowe?" Mr. Evans knocked again. "Was that you, my good fellow? That shriek sounded rather girlish. Are you alright? "

And Kora knew then that she had the high ground, as time was running out for Lowe.

"Aren't you going to answer it?" she dared him. "You can't keep me locked in here forever."

"You may leave if you damn well please, as mark my words, I'd'e gladly be done with you," Lowe informed her. "But not now. Give me a moment to send them away first, and then you may go quietly on your own, if that's how you like it."

"Why would I help the guy who kidnapped me?"

"For God's sake!" Lowe whispered his objection. "I never bloody-"

Knock, knock, knock.

"Mr. Lowe?" Mr. Evans tried again. "Do come out. We would all be very thankful to rest easy upon seeing you alive after all."

"Choose very carefully, Ms. Amberflaw. Because you'll soon wish we were a complement," Lowe quickly switched to bargaining with her. "After all, this isn't 2022 anymore. It's a different world now. Different rules. And you're goin' to need me more than you want to admit. I know I've no right to ask you to stay for the time being, but you have my word that I will take you back anywhere you wish, if you put your faith in me this once. Wait patiently in here until I come back, and I'll find a way to fix everything."

And no matter how crazy it was, or how much she couldn't understand it, Kora knew he was right.

Whatever ill-fated destiny had swept them up, Lowe had become its plaything as much as she.

But if Lowe hadn't actually kidnapped her, then what exactly had happened to them the night before she woke up to him?

If she had really somehow found a way to travel backwards in time to 1912, shouldn't she remember all of it?

But whether or not she could actually trust someone like Lowe, she had run out of time to decide.

"This has gone on long enough," Mr. Cavendish decided. "If you have nothing to hide, Mr. Lowe, I demand an explanation for you locking yourself away like this, or I'll be forced to confirm the worst of you."

"What we mean, my good fellow," Mr. Evans stepped willfully in front of Cavendish, blocking his view of the bedroom door. "is that you must understand how thrown off we are. It's been some weeks now since anyone has heard from you-"

"10 years for my dear chaste cousin!" Mr. Cavendish corrected him. "So, forgive me if my coming here is rather impolitic, but with a lady's reputation at stake, the situation is indeed direful. And so I require an answer from you immediately, Mr. Lowe. If you won't come out and face me, you leave me no alternative but to come in there after you. Are you or are you not keeping amorous congress with another woman in your bed chamber?"

"Heavens to Betsy!" Mrs. Potts gasped. "Is the whole world gone higgledy-piggledy this morning?"

"Please allow me, Mr. Cavendish," Mr. Evans offered, saving the impertinent fool from making a bigger fool out of himself. "Mr. Lowe, I hope you will forgive us for the intrusion, but in light of certain news, and in the interest of your wellbeing, I'm afraid we must come in."

But just as Mr. Evans reached for the knob, the door pulled open, and Lowe threw himself into the hallway with them, slamming the door quickly shut behind him.

"Alright?" Lowe greeted them all, straightening himself up and catching his breath. "Forgive me, I was only just awakening."

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" Mrs. Potts whispered fiercely, dumbstruck to find him among the living after all. "What's this all about, Mr. Lowe?"

She could've very well pummeled him that instant.

"Dead to the world, indeed you are!"

"This is going to sound mad," Lowe duly warned them. "But would anyone be so kind as to tell me what year it is?"

"I beg your pardon?" Mr. Evans's brow arched, caught off guard.

"The exact date, that is," Lowe clarified. "I'm afraid I've lost track of it."

"Good gracious, Mr. Lowe, " Mrs. Potts spoke, deeply concerned for him. "It is Monday, naturally."

Lowe nodded assuredly.

"Monday. Right. Of course."

Then not so assuredly.

"Monday of what, if you will?"

It was Mr. Evans then who took his turn at looking concerned.

"Why, the 26th of February, 1912, Mr. Lowe," he answered. "You must surely remember?"

"February?" Lowe asked, perplexed. "It is only February?"

April 15th was the last date he remembered.

Had that dreaded day not even come yet?

Did that mean he had done away with Titanic and April as he'd known it before...or simply diverted its timeline?

"I say, Mr. Lowe, you're giving us quite the scare. Are you unwell?" Mr. Evans questioned him. "You don't seem like yourself. Here we were, believing you to be dead, and now you say you were merely asleep here the whole time?"

"Well, you can hardly call it a plot twist," Mr. Cavendish declared. "And I must say, I'm rather disillusioned by these old party tricks."

He noted the officer's bedraggled dark hair, and the hem of Lowe's dress shirt lying untucked over the fly of his trousers. "I see you have indeed risen to the occasion. You may as well drag that whore in there out of hiding. You've been long found out."

"Mr. Cavendish," Mrs. Potts objected. "What a vile thing to suggest here right in front of Mr. Lowe's employer. Have you no shame!"

"I'm no fool. I know it was a slut's filthy lecherous cries I heard in there," Mr. Cavendish wouldn't back down. "10 years is a rather prolonged engagement for a man, wouldn't you say?"

And desperate to save her Mr. Lowe from any disastrous rumor that Mr. Cavendish would take out that house, the goodly-intended Mrs. Potts quickly spoke up.

"I assure you that your assumptions about Mr. Lowe's character are unfounded," she swore. "In fact, to prove it to you, he'll go ahead and show you his room himself. Won't you, Mr. Lowe?"

Lowe's eyes bowled over, aghast. "Won't I, Mrs. Potts?"

He hoped the housekeeper would catch the hint that he absolutely could not, by any means or circumstance.

But it was too late.

Mr. Cavendish gloated victoriously. "What a brilliant idea."

"Right, what a lovely quip," Lowe chuckled it off. "Ah, that Mrs. Potts. She'd kill a man with her sense of humor, wouldn't she?"

Lowe shot the housekeeper a hard look, and Mrs. Potts's eyes narrowed back into his, as the realization suddenly dawned on her.

"Why, after all, wouldn't you be able to show him your room, Mr. Lowe?" she asked suspiciously.

"Precisely," Cavendish seconded that. "If you have nothing to hide, this will settle the matter."

"Well, I..."

Lowe looked to Mr. Evans for rescue, but the poor Mr. Evans was clueless as to how to undo the noose around Lowe's neck.

"That is, the reason being...Well, what you ought to know first is that I.."

And then without warning, Lowe felt his bedroom door snatch open from behind him.

And it was the worst possible time for that door to open.

Lowe let out a slow, long breath, closing his eyes and accepting that today might very well be the day he was murdered thrice.

"I'm all finished changing your bed now, Mr. Lowe," Kora informed him, as she walked out of his room, carrying a whicker basket of his discarded bedcovers with her. Her hair done up quite presentably under her white bonnet again, and apron tied neatly at her waist. "Is there anything else you'd like me to do for you, sir?"

Mr. Cavendish stood jaw-dropped and stupid.

Scanning the room of his long-time nemesis for the secret paramour he had suspected hiding in it.

With none to find.

No illicit love nest there, but a room as orderly and spotless as Mr. Lowe always kept his quarters.

Lowe's bed neatly dressed and smoothed under his freshly fluffed pillows.

And glancing back at the fair-haired "Jezebel" walking out of Lowe's boudoir, Mr. Cavendish could hardly believe that Mr. Harold Godfrey Lowe had outsmarted him yet again.

"A housemaid?" he demanded, astonished.

"Well, she's certainly dressed like one," Mrs. Potts remarked sassily, side-eyeing Lowe with a double tone that only he could understand the true meaning of. "At last, you have your proof, Mr. Cavendish. Will you not be satisfied now?"

And though she certainly planned to give Lowe a piece of her mind for it later, Mrs. Potts would much rather sink with him than deny his story now.

"Come along now," she said to Kora. "I do believe after all this excitement, Mr. Lowe and Mr. Evans would very much be liking a brandy now in the drawing room. I will show you the way."

Kora glanced at Lowe questionably, who let her have a nod of encouragement, ever so slightly. As if to say, 'Go on now.'

And she narrowed her eyes back at him, ever so slightly. As if to say, 'You owe me.'

Then she turned away to follow Mrs. Potts down the great staircase.

'But how can he afford a housemaid on a young officer's salary alone?' Cavendish pondered to himself suspiciously. 'If he is always at sea, why trouble himself with taking on more help at home?'

Could a housemaid really be all she was?

Mr. Cavendish was inclined to think not.

For who could ever trust the moral code of a sailor?

Even so, he'd lost this round, and was forced to fold against the evidence and accept his defeat.

"Might we call it," Lowe couldn't help remarking to his rival. "A plot twist, Mr. Cavendish?"

And the gentleman burned in insurmountable rage for the cunningly resourceful Welshman, though silently, as that was the gentlemanly way of doing things.

"It seems I underestimated your character," the apology felt like forcing a brick out of Cavendish's throat. "Please forgive me for the intrusion, Mr. Lowe."

Though the slight inflection of Lowe's name at the end of his statement warned the officer that this was far from over.

Mr. Cavendish was only withdrawing now to sound the alarm for more 'reinforcements'.

And bowing out humbly, Cavendish turned with his walking stick and marched down the corridor to make his hasty exit.

"Once you've gathered your wits about you," Mr. Evans said to the officer. "I'd like a word with you, Mr. Lowe, if you don't mind."

Turning fast down the hallway, Mr. Evans showed himself out.

And the moment Lowe was left alone, he fell back against his bedroom door, crushed under the burden of his misadventure.

What have I done?