Enjoy this next themed story for Time Travel August!

By FoxFaceStories

Adrian misses his best friend, who mysteriously vanished over a year ago. His questions are answered when Adrian is willed a vast English estate out of the blue, and given a letter written well over a century ago by an Edwardian gentry woman . . . who was once his friend in modern times. It seems Adrian’s friend did indeed vanish - back into the past, and as a fertile woman at that!

A Truly Edwardian Brood

Adrian drove up to the old country estate. It dated back several centuries, and had been refurbished a number of times, but it was undeniably a grand construction from another era. Its gardens were immense in size, and the building itself had an eastern, central, and western wing, not to mention a separate area for servant living, a stable, and adjacent farmlands from which it drew money.

“I’ve inherited all of this?” the young man said aloud. He was only twenty two years old, blonde-haired and rather serious. He had been working as a programmer until recently, but the news that he had been randomly willed this enormous estate had changed everything for the young Englishman. He had been dour and downcast for exactly a year now, ever since his best friend Connor had vanished out of the blue. The two had been the closest of friends since they were toddlers, and had been working at the same company together, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, Connor had just . . . vanished. The amusing, witty, devil-may-care man who balanced his own serious nature and brought out the light within himself was just gone without a trace. In fact, just before news that he had inherited this exorbitant estate arrived, Adrian had been conducting yet another online search for clues. Perhaps now, with the hundreds of millions of pounds that would apparently be transferred to him once he fulfilled the conditions of the will, he could leverage the resources necessary to find his best friend. 

He drove right up to the immense doors of the palatial estate. It was known as Petticore Manor, and according to his research on the web, it had not had a proper owner since the early 1900s, otherwise known as the Edwardian era. He got out of his car and knocked on the door, and to his surprise a butler-like figure opened it rather promptly.

“I trust you are our new master, Adrian Carter?”

“Um, that’s me,” he said.

“Come on in. I am Henry Smiles, the head butler of Petticore Manor. It is a wondrous pleasure to meet you, sir. Please, let me get your coat.”

He did so, which gave Adrian time to look around the entrance hall of the estate, with its magnificent curving stairs, the impressive Edwardian visiting room off to the side, and even what appeared to be several servants' entrances tucked away. 

“This is incredible,” Adrian said. “I’ve never seen a place like this.”

“Preserved since 1975, Mister Adrian, with a rich stipend to ensure that a continual staff remained to fulfil the esteemed Mrs Constance Petticore’s will. That’s her right up there.”

Adrian looked up at a very large portrait photograph upon the wall, and an oil painting beside it that clearly presented the same woman. She was a striking individual with dark brunette hair in a pompadour style, and adorned in a white Edwardian dress that flowed down to trail just lightly upon the floor. It was made from soft fabrics and had that traditional S-shape bend, one that forced her lovely hips back while projecting her lovely bust forward. One could tell that she was a buxom woman despite the preservation of her modesty that the dress provided, but the slight overhang of her thin overgarments made her pleasing shape clear. There was something familiar about her beautiful features, her face specifically. Her eyebrows were thick yet contoured, her nose a regal aquiline shape that reminded Adrian of his friend Connor. This woman could have been his ancestor. The oil painting showed another side of the same woman, though it was clear she was older, perhaps in her late thirties, as despite still being shown to be beautiful, she was surrounded by children in period fashion; the boys in suits, the girls in little gowns, and she was smiling radiantly as she wrapped her arms around them. Her husband stood behind her, one hand upon her shoulder, his gaze stoic but proud.

“Remarkable woman, isn’t she?” the butler Smiles said. 

Adrian almost jumped, but quickly snapped back to reality. “She’s the one who willed me the estate? But . . . the portrait says that photograph was taken in 1907! And these other photographs up the wall, the ones with her and her children, they go back to before World War II as well! That doesn’t make any sense, unless she died in my lifetime. But that would make her over a hundred years old!”

The butler nodded slowly, then directed Adrian to the visiting room. “This is what confused us all, and yet letters were passed down to ensure this moment happened. A very important letter is upon the table for you now, Mr Carter. I have not read its contents, but it is in Mrs Petticore’s own hand. She somehow knew you would come to exist, and left it for you to read it upon this exact date. Reading it is the only stipulation of her will, and upon doing so, the estate shall be yours. I’ll give you some time. If you need anything, I shall be out in the hall.”

The butler withdrew, leaving a very confused Adrian by himself in a comfortable and quite old-fashioned space, one that definitely had not been updated in decades. In truth, it looked like it hadn’t changed since before WWII, if not earlier. He took a seat upon a rather comfortable chair with a white and green leaf pattern upon it, then picked up the letter. It had the red seal of the Petticore estate upon it, and had clearly never been broken.

“How is this possible?” Adrian asked.

There was only one way to find out. He broke the seal. Within was a letter, written in a flowing cursive hand that took a little bit of time to adjust to. As he read it, Adrian’s eyes widened, taking in the astonishing and impossible revelation contained within.

***

My Dearest Adrian,

I am so sorry to have disappeared on you. From your perspective, it has been a year to the very day since I no doubt mysteriously vanished from your life, and from existence entirely. I can still recall that we had come together to watch a splendid game of football together the night before I was sent away. You remarked something to the effect that we would be watching the World Cup in our eighties one day, and I told you that I promised that to be the case, and then proceeded to make a number of ribald comments on the hilarity of all the scurrilous actions I might get up to by the time I reached the status of an octogenarian. 

Alas, I must give you my deepest apologies, for we shall never watch another game again. At least not in this life, it seems. I know this will be hard for you to believe, perhaps impossible, but I did not die when I disappeared, nor did I simply slip away like a thief in the night, or any other somesuch tale. Instead, I slipped through a crack of time while exploring the very land you now find yourself upon. You remember what I last told you, do you not? That I was going to “have some fun trespassing upon gentry land.” Well, what a strange twist of fate I unknowingly brought upon myself! I entered from the north-west of the estate, amused by the idea of seeing a place like this close up. There is a crossing between two oak trees there, beneath which the land dips. I crawled through that space, intending to enter Petticore Manor in secret.

Instead, I fell through time. I emerged out the other side of those limbs as a woman, Adrian. Yes, I tell you the truth now; I was suddenly a woman, one in a fine dress and an absurd hairstyle piled atop my head, and a bewildered mind as I tried to take in this impossible to change.

I had entered through that space in time as Connor Hanks, and I had emerged from it as Lady Constance Petticore, a member of the English nobility and a married woman at that. Please, try to believe me. Know that I did everything I could to get back to you, my friend, back to a world which contained the internet and all manner of digital wonders. A world that allowed me to view shockingly graphic and violent moving pictures such as we watched together, though I admit I still haven’t forgotten the time you spoiled The Sixth Sense for me. Sadly, nothing I tried worked. I was unable to pass back through the door of time. I was stuck as Lady Constance Petticore, twenty-two years old and newly married to my Richard. 

I will confess, I had to fake a strange illness a number of times to explain my lax memory at first. Everyone from my husband to my servants now knew me as Lady Constance, and my own shock made it difficult to adapt at first. I know what you are thinking; this sounds like a dreadful nightmare. In truth, it felt like that in those first few weeks. You and I once helped one another pick up pretty women at The Oakley Bar, now thanks to a pair of crossed oaks, I now was a pretty woman, one already married at that! Furthermore, I discovered that the year was 1902, at the very beginning of what would become known as the Edwardian Period. Man had yet to take his first flight. The automobile was only just beginning to catch on. The Balkans were a wrestling ground of infighting and sectarianism that left all the Great Powers on the edge of war. Women could not yet vote in England, nor could they be expected to hold occupations after marriage. And, as will become clear in its importance, contraception in a truly successful form did not yet exist. It was like stepping into another world, Adrian. Not only was I dealing with becoming a woman, and a rather beautiful one if I may say so myself, but I had travelled over a hundred years back in time. 

But I had to adjust.

I did adjust.

Please, be proud of me, Adrian. You were always the more serious, the more introspective of us, the one most likely to succeed. I was always the comedian, the rulesbreaker, the man of witticisms who joked self-deprecatingly when Sarah Hellas turned me down at the Prom. Do you remember that? The embarrassment! I always knew that I could rely on you to get me out of trouble, a state of affairs I now find to be profoundly unfair. When I realised I could not change back, nor go back, I knew I had to adapt and change. I had to accept that I was now an Edwardian woman bound to a husband, a Lady of my own grand estate with affairs to keep in order, and that I also had other duties to perform. Do you remember the conversation we once had at The Oakley about what we would do if we found ourselves female all of a sudden? We both made crude remarks as to exploring the pleasure of the womanly form.

Well, I will tell you this, my friend, I have done just that. Many, many times, though rarely on my own. You see, in becoming Constant Petticore, I also gained a healthy appetite for my husband. It was rather humiliating at first, but as I write this now, I have known my flesh against his an unfathomable number of times across the years, and I could not imagine nor wish for a reality where I could not experience it.

Yes, my friend, I adapted. I will not lie and say I became a serious woman; in fact, my husband rather delights in my witticisms and daring nature. He calls it ‘feisty,’ and he appreciates it in the bedroom more than anything else. It was how I fell pregnant with my first child - Roger - only a few months after I accepted that I wasn’t going back. Let me tell you, Adrian, I never expected to grow a child within my belly! Nor did I expect to come to appreciate its beauty, though I really wish our sensibilities were more like your modern times, where a pregnant woman can be out and about and proud of her form, instead of sealed away in her home for the final months. At least it is a good home, though can you believe I had to turn down opium as a painkiller! I also had to hire on some damned midwives, because the sexist doctors of this age have some truly backward ideas! Certainly, it helped my first birth.

Yes, you read that right, my dear friend. My first birth. For in truth, I have turned out to be a remarkably healthy and almost miraculously fertile woman. I fell pregnant the very next year, just three months after I had given birth to my dear Roger, and in 1904 I gave birth upon Christmas Eve to my darling Ada and Abigail. Twins, Adrian, can you believe it? Who would ever have thought me fit to be a parent, let alone a doting mother? And yet, for all that it was the expectation in that first decade of the twentieth century for women of high standing to have a nursemaid, I found I couldn’t let anyone else dare feed my children. As you will not from some of the photographs of my female self, I was not lacking for breasts! By God, how much of a quiet relief it is to be able to write down such things in private, and now they will go to someone who will not care about scandal nor ‘sexual aberration,’ as some militant individuals of this age obsess over.

This became my life, Adrian. My Richard became my anchor. I never thought in my wildest imagination that I could fall in love with a man, but after the twins arrived into the world, I began to truly see my Lord Husband as more than just the man to whom I was married, but instead a loving partner who doted on me as much as I doted on my children. He adored my wit and humour, and defended me more than once when other members of the landed gentry referred to me as outspoken, particularly when I showed my support for the rights of the suffragettes. And while he could be a stoic individual, in private he was full of passion, attending to my desires and showing such depth of love that my breast burned for him.

I apologise. I did not intend for this letter to become so stimulating and inappropriate. How strange this must be for you, to know I have written such words, when I made repeated bawdy and sexual commentary regularly, often while intoxicated in your apartment. Perhaps I should make no apologies then, and write this simply and plain: I have come to adore sex as a woman, and whenever my husband was present with me, the pair of us did away with any expectation of sleeping in separate quarters. We made love passionately each night, and the results of our physical affection were clear to all. Perhaps you have seen the remarkable oil painting of myself with my Edwardian brood?

Sixteen children in all.

Yes, I have given birth twelve times and come to raise sixteen remarkable children. Twelve times! You cannot imagine the pain, nor the wonders of bearing life and holding your newborn in your arms, knowing that all the agony of labor was worth it. And they are all growing to adulthood, my friend. Each and everyone of them, surviving the rigours of the poor medicine of this era with as much aid as I can muster. Thank God I was a medical student, yes? And thank God even further that I know my history, for when the Edwardian era passed, and I was pregnant with twins once more, I knew exactly when the eve of the Great War was upon us in all its horrors. Roger was not old enough to go, thank the heavens, but he was eager nevertheless. My husband, on the other hand, my beloved Richard, was still young enough to serve. I begged him not to go, but I could not persuade him. All I could do was provide him with a little medical aid that would prevent any contraction of the Spanish Flu. The day I heard he was shot in the war was the darkest of my life, and the day he returned upon an injured knee, never to be fully restored in mobility, was among the brightest. 

Sixteen children, Adrian. I am quite the mother of quite the brood, wouldn’t you say? Some of them will no doubt live very closely to the point of your birth. I am proud of each of them, and thanks to foreknowledge of the future, you can imagine that I know exactly where to place some bets and raise the capital necessary to keep the Manor in good hands and continually prosperous. Enough so that my children have been able to leave the manor and find good matches themselves, and adapt wonderfully to a world that has, at the time of writing this letter, now seen two World Wars come to a close. My own Roger served as an officer, and Harry in the RAF during the Battle of Britain. Thomas was in North Africa, serving under Montgomery. Yes, the Montgomery. You can imagine how having three boys at war would age me terribly. It did not matter that I had thirteen other children to attend to as a busy mother; each of my children was part of my soul, and I could not bear to lose them. I survived the panic thanks to my own ability to conjure comedy in even the darkest moments, and keep my family laughing. Neither young man perished, and my other boys had leave to study. I could have hugged Winston Churchill for that. God knows that I cried tears during the great King’s speech on the spirit of Britain as we approached war. Remember how I mocked that film? I did all those impersonations of Colin Firth? I take it all back now, for that moment pierced my heart, Adrian. It truly did, as surely as the speech assuring us the Second World War was over, and the letters telling me my boys were coming home.

I am an older woman now, and while I imagine I still have decades left, the time has come to write this letter. With the success of my own business endeavours, and the great successes of my many, many children (sixteen! Can you yet believe it, Adrian?), I have decided to do something radical. I know I will never see you again, my dear and close friend, still the closest male friend I ever had, though I have had wonderful female ones in my own womanly years. But I can bequeath you my entire estate and a great deal of my fortune. I can give you my thanks for being my friend, and the opportunity to still have some connection to me. You may share this letter, if you wish, with my grandchildren and great grandchildren. No doubt they have questions, but Petticore Manor is entirely yours. Do with it what you will, but I hope you will find a home within it, and know that I never truly vanished from your life. I just took a long way around in returning to you, in whatever form I could. I have had a truly remarkable life Adrian, and my only regret is not being able to see you again. But believe me when I tell you that it has been a life full of love, and nothing of it was wasted. I have been happy, and I wish you happiness too.

With much love and great tenderness for years of friendship had and years of friendship lost,

Lady Constance Petticore, also known as Connor Hanks

***

Adrian lowered the letter, his mouth agape. Tears fell from his eyes. It was too much, and yet . . . he knew it to be true. The cadence of the voice had greatly changed, but everything that had been referenced was true, and in his heart of hearts he knew this was his friend. Adrian placed the letter slowly back into the formerly sealed envelope, then rested back in his seat. He would call for Smiles the butler soon, and organise his new estate and legalise his ownership of it. There would be so much to do, and so much to find out about the life of his dearest friend and all she went through, including her entire Edwardian brood, which grew so many and plentiful that they went beyond the years of that era itself! 

For now, however, Adrian simply took a deep breath and stared up at the ceiling, his eyes looking through it and beyond it to the heavens beyond.

“Thank you, my friend,” he whispered.

The End