Things don't go as planned when Dixon and Josh eavesdrop on a meeting of Patriots.

Josh and Dickson debate who has the stronger motive for wanting Sarabeth dead - her mother or Bayard Nowell, the man who's obsessed with her. Then Josh learns more about the locals.

Mr. Nowell demonstrates the hold that he has over a relatively submissive Jane Cordwright as Josh watches.

Josh, emboldened as much by Charles Dixon's confidence in him as the fact that Dixon has given him the Merrythought, follows Jane Cordwright into town, where she slips into the house of Bayard Nowell and makes her report.

Josh Kirkland and Charles Dickson have an interesting conversation as they follow Jane Cordwright to what turns out to be a painful encounter.

Josh Kirkland learns the usual routine from Charles Dickson and - 21st century slacker though he may be - realizes that it makes no sense for Sarabeth and her champions to repeat the same process each time she returns, but Sarabeth turns out to be highly resistant to change.

Josh - having accepted that he and Charles Dickson really are back the eighteenth century - discovers why the beautiful Sarabeth thinks Mr. Nowell is so dreadful.

A series of bizarre events - together with his entry into a typical eighteenth-century village full of life and vitality - forces Josh Kirkland to believe what Charles Dickson and Sarabeth Cordwright have been telling him: that he is indeed in 1772 Pennsylvania, four years before the start of the American Revolution and that he has agreed - however unwittingly - to help Sarabeth solve her mystery.

Charles Dickson explains to Josh Kirkland that he's back in 1772 and that they are both trapped in Sarabeth's time. Josh pretends to play along, but thinks Dickson and "Sarabeth" are way too intense when it comes to their game. He runs away through the autumn woods, certain that he has escaped. The problem is that escape throws him into a series of troubling encounters, even what seems to be murder. It would all be more alarming except that he's pretty sure what has been happening is just part of "the game." Whatever it is, he's had enough. His only goal now is to return to the History Center, collect his Prius, and get on with his plans for the day. The only problem is that nothing is where he thinks it is, and he can't get signal on his BlackBerry to summon assistance.

Josh finds himself increasingly amazed at what he is seeing and presses the docent whose game it is, the girl "playing" Sarabeth, to explain how the effects are achieved, particularly the appearance of the Sarabeth doppelganger acting scenes as the docent, Josh and Charles Dickson watch. The docent, totally focused on her game, just ignores him. As for Dickson, he seems determined to make the other two as uncomfortable as possible with his unpleasant attitude and unsettling interpretation of the scene unfolding before them.

Josh is amazed at the degree of historical detail visible as he follows Sarabeth Cordwright, the 18th-century "murder victim," who leads him across a busy dirt road and along a dirt path leading toward the river, anxious to show him a scene in the game. When their passage is interrupted by the abrupt appearance of Charles Dickson, a disreputably dressed young man with an obvious grudge against the docent playing Sarabeth, Josh assumes he's either a disgruntled boy friend or a business associate whose animosity relates to a professional wrong.

Josh totally approves of the approach the gorgeous young docent takes to bring history alive. He's so crazy about it, in fact, that he abandons what he's supposed to be doing and follows her to what he thinks is at least the chance of an assignation as he helps her "solve" the mystery surrounding the circumstances of her character's murder. He assumes it's all just a game and her focus on it no more than an interesting facet of her appealing personality. 

Josh Kirkland, barely 25, is privileged in every sense of the word on the day that he awakes in the comfortable bedroom he's once again inhabiting in his parents' sprawling home. Indulged, even lazy, he only grudgingly agrees to do a favor for his godmother that lands him at a local History Center, where he'll find his world turned upside down when he becomes fascinated by two young women, one very much grounded in this world, the other the subject of a mysteriously arresting painting above the mantel of the 18th-century Bateman House in which he's to work.