“What’s the matter, my dear? Not hungry?”

Lois glanced down in dismay at her golden plate filled with a roast meat that she had been informed was swan swimming in a sauce with a French name she couldn’t remember because it sounded no different to the sauces of all the other dishes she had been presented that evening as well as countless other evenings.

Her smile fixed on the sweating red-faced General sitting across the banquet table—whose yellow teeth and eye-watering breath even across the enormous table did nothing to correct the stereotype of the Brits’ bad teeth—out of the corner of her mouth, she muttered, “It’s the sixth dish so far and there are several more to come.” She touched her corseted torso. “I can’t eat any more, Lex.”

He hissed back, “Alexander.”

Lois didn’t move a muscle. Four years. Four long years she had been stuck in Regency England with a Lex she barely knew. In a country that, despite a shared language, was an ocean and nearly two hundred years apart from her home and therefore as foreign as Mongolia. The past, as an English writer—she couldn’t remember who, she was a Journalism not an English major—once wrote, was a foreign country and they did things differently there.

Lex on the other hand had no trouble adapting to their alien circumstances; he embraced it in a way that blew Lois’s mind. At least once a day, the same thought flitted through her mind: Clark, I should have believed you. Lex wasn’t just a very wealthy businessman; he was a violent megalomaniac who had bent an inexplicable cosmic event to his will. She had thought him charming, of course, but charming in a way that could make her feel sensuous and special, not dangerously charismatic in a way that could manipulate not only an old sick king into breaking hundreds of years of divine filial succession and handing over the monarchy to him but also the British parliament.

Her knowledge of England in the early nineteenth century before she arrived was limited. From school she only knew about King George in his role as the villain in the American Revolution. More recently, she had watched the movie, The Madness of King George, at the cinema about him. The movie had been funny and tragic, portraying the Regency Crisis of the late 1780s when the King had first become ill and his son had tried to wrest control. His illness was a “madness” which caused a kind of hallucinatory psychosis and his pee to turn blue. The movie revealed at the end that he had likely suffered from a disease called Porphyria which meant nothing to her.

The movie set in the 1780s was little help to her when she had been stranded in 1818. Even the fashions had moved on—the powdered wigs of the movie were virtually non-existent now. By now the King was old, ill, and incapable of carrying out his duties, so his son was acting Prince Regent. Within no time at all, Lex had against all odds wormed his way into the heart of the King and convinced Parliament that the King was still compos mentis enough to make key decisions and that he believed the Prince Regent wasn’t fit to take over. Only two years after they arrived, the old King died and in accordance with his newly written will, the Prince Regent was cast aside and Parliament pronounced Lex to be King Alexander. In a time of revolutions and the dwindling influence of monarchies across Europe, this achievement was all the more extraordinary. Silenced, all of her strengths as a 1990s professional woman decimated, floundering in shock, Lois had watched by his side gobsmacked, unable to stop it.

In four years, she had learned more about the era and England than she could have ever have possibly learned from a history book or a movie, but knowing (smelling) that the River Thames was basically a sewer, that dentistry included pulling out teeth from the poor to give to the rich, and that false eyelashes were made from the skins of mice were facts that had no use in getting her home. The Prince Regent had been a fan of Jane Austen, so Lois had read all her books which she found in the Marine Pavillion library (Clark, she had mused, might have been impressed that she was reading first editions). The romance of those novels did not match Lois’s current miserable experience. The world of the royal court was not that of Elizabeth Bennett; wit was not a weapon she could use: Lex was a tyrant not Mr Darcy.

Again and again, Lex had told her to accept what had happened to them, to relish their

his

power and privilege. Not only had they survived a plane crash, but they had also crashed through time itself. It was no accident that this had happened at the precise moment he had proposed to her, he said: the Fates had been so sure that they should be together, they had whisked them to a place where they could rule, be the most powerful couple, be given the most lavish wedding with a whole nation cheering on their romance. “You were always meant to be a queen,” he repeated ad nauseum until the words were just white noise to her.

She ran her gaze around the ornate Banqueting Room. She had lost count of the number of banquets she had attended at Buckingham Palace and here at the Marine Pavillion, the place where it had all started. This room was smaller than the Banqueting Hall at Buckingham Palace but no less impressive. The partying prince that Lex had usurped had loved all things Chinese and Indian: floor-to-ceiling paintings of Chinese figures framed in red and gold were evenly placed around the room; golden stands held lamps shaped as lotus flowers; and the whole palace was dotted with dragons on embroideries and paintings, with bronze statues curled around bannisters, columns and four poster beds. In her own century, she imagined that the tapestries would be worn, the colours of the paintings faded, the sheen of the statues dulled (if she ever got home, England had dropped to the bottom of her travel bucket list). But now these paintings were still fresh and vibrant; Lois could almost smell the cold of the oriental mountains, the sweetness of the lotuses, the sharp white paint on the faces of the Chinese women. They made her heart ache with the reminder of a world, a universe, outside of her prison with Lex.

She lifted her eyes: above her in the hollow of the dome that on the outside resembled the Taj Mahal, a dragon dangled a giant chandelier, as precarious as the sword of Damocles. She was ashamed that there had been times she wished the dragon would lose its grip and put an end to the whole debacle. The high collar of her dress rubbed against her neck. It was not like she was ever going home. She was imprisoned with a man who worshipped power above all else and loved her only as a jewel to possess and show off. In this time that had never heard of a suffragette she may be a queen in name, but she was as powerless as a pauper. Not even Superman could save her from this disaster.

The scrape of Lex’s gold throne against the parquet floor drew back her attention. As the king stood, so did everyone else, their ivory-encrusted cutlery clanging against plates as they hurried not to be the last one standing.

“My dearest lords and ladies, the Queen is not feeling well and desires to return to her chambers.”

“Uh…uh,” she stuttered, breaking out into an embarrassed smile, still sitting, taken aback by his sudden gesture, her choice once again taken away from her. She didn’t want to eat anything more, but she also didn’t want to be alone in her room. At least here the noise of conversation could distract her. But Lex wasn’t going to allow her to do anything that would bring any negative attention and would give her no time to choose between isolation or over-eating whilst wearing a corset. Courts, they had discovered, were bitchy, gossipy trenches; the Queen not sampling every dish at a banquet would quickly make it into the pamphlets, become fodder for the cartoonists, and Lex controlled what information made it outside the palaces with an iron fist.

Collectively, the guests bowed as they waited for her to stand. They couldn’t see the dark glint in his eye glowering down as he held out his hand to her. Everything in her screamed to resist but after four years, she knew better. Contradict him and she would be publicly humiliated by him, declared insane and incompetent for public engagements; she would be even more alone. He held her fingers spitefully tight as he helped her to standing. She bowed to the table and with her head held high swept out of the room.

Lex didn’t leave her alone long. She was removing her earrings when he came storming into her bedroom (at least he wasn’t interested in performing all the rites of marriage, so they kept separate bedrooms).

“You will eat what I say you eat, do you understand?”

“Lex,” she started, her chin jutted out, the fire she barely remembered from her old life still firing a tiny spark in her belly, but it soon went out. She dropped her hands to her sides and let her chin drop to her chest.

“Oh, Lois, Lois, my poor sweet queen.”

She winced internally at his change of tone, its faux softness more abrasive than his anger. It was when he was calm that he left the deepest bruises, hidden from sight.

“Look at you, you’re exhausted. These feasts, they’re not for someone as delicate, sweet and flawless as you.”

She stood still as he stroked one cheek and deposited a soft kiss on the other.

“I’m an ogre, and I’m sorry.”

Sorry had never meant less in her whole life. She braced, awaiting the inevitable.

***


The following twenty-four hours were a blur for Wells. He caught only a few hours of fitful sleep. Interviews with the enthusiastic locals informed him that the Queen would be taking a public walk along the promenade at one o’clock, whilst the King held meetings with the town council. The streets would be lined with people desperate to see the beautiful consort of the King who had single-handedly transferred the monarchy from the House of Hanover to the House of Luthor, saving the country from the folly of installing the reckless Prince Regent as king after the death of mad King George III.

Wells learned that after only two years on the throne, Lex, or King Alexander as he was known, was proving a popular and impactful figure in parliament: the term ‘Alexander the Great’ was doing the rounds. For around two hundred years, the King of the United Kingdom had been a Head of State with no constitutional powers, yet Lex Luthor had already convinced parliament to roll back several constitutional limitations on the monarchy.

His first intervention was to convince parliament to reduce taxes.

“Dear God, they don’t see what’s happening. He’s a dictator-in-waiting. By stealth, he’s going to re-install the monarchy as sole ruler. He’s going to dismantle democracy. And he’s going to do it by charming the nation. I have to speak to Lois Lane.”

Crowds thronged in front of the Marine Pavillion, the mini replica of the Taj Mahal incongruent against the wooden buildings; Queen Lois was quite the draw. He squeezed through to the front. A line of red-coated soldiers held back the crowd. He approached one at the end of the line who had the least to do.

“Please, I have a message for Lois Lane.”

“'ho?”

“Er, the Queen?”

“Lois Luthor you mean?”

“Indeed.”

“What kind of message?”

“I... er... come from her hometown, I have news about her family.”

The soldier frowned at him. “The Luthors don’t 'ave no family,” he barked. “Where you been 'iding, fella? They fell from the sky in a giant metal bird.” He pointed to what looked like a mini crater in the area the public gardens should be. “Landed right there. If anything should tell you this country needs a monarchy with Divine Right, that should.”

Wells swallowed the bile that rose up. His machine had collided with something mid-air. It must have been a plane. A plane with Lois Lane and Lex Luthor on it. This was all his fault. Lex Luthor was the King of the United Kingdom, and the safe future he had worked so hard to secure must surely now be in tatters; no good could come from Lex Luthor disrupting the British monarchy and government.

“Can you just, please, get this note to her? I promise, I mean her no harm.”

The soldier looked at the folded note then into Wells’s face. Wells had always been told he had a friendly, unthreatening face, one bordering on befuddlement. He didn’t mind; it had suited him countless times to be assumed bumbling and harmless. He matched his kindly eyes with what he hoped was an innocent smile.

The soldier softened. “Queen Lois 'as been good to us; she always thanks us for our protection when she visits Brighton. She always seems a little sad, a bit of good news might cheer 'er up.”

Wells sighed with relief. “Thank you, thank you.” The soldier disappeared inside the Pavillion; with Wells’s knowledge of the British Empire’s expansion over the next few decades, the soldier’s red woollen jacket was disquietly stark against the white domes of the Indian-inspired Pavillion.

He waited with the crowd who was growing impatient for their queen who unbeknownst to them was really a reporter from the late twentieth century. An American, no less, from the newly independent colonies. He had no idea from which year the Lois Lane he was about to meet originated. Would she know him? Did she know Superman’s true identity? Had they met before Lex Luthor’s death? He should remember but the timelines were tangled; he had thought he would never need to keep such complexities clear in his mind any longer.

Before long, the soldier returned and beckoned Wells in. Wells removed his hat as he entered the palace.

The soldier directed him to stop in a windowless corridor decorated in red carpet, red walls, and covered in Asian-themed motifs. Light flooded from the end where two straight sets of stairs, their bannisters resembling bamboo, curled halfway up to meet, hold hands, and double-backed to form one staircase that rose to the next floor. The risers were daintily carved in uniform symmetrical patterns, in what looked to Wells like wicker, letting light through the stairs. Their strict lacey delicacy was complemented by the prints of flowing blue flowers which hugged the walls, undulating up the stairs on a wallpaper of cherry-blossom pink. An exotic tree of light.

Soldiers lining the corridor snapped to attention, their muskets pointing to the ceiling. Silence descended as a figure walked down the staircase.

Lois Lane did not look like Lois Lane. Instead of a blocky one-colour suit, she was smothered in a riot of cream crinoline. Two women held up her hooped skirt as she walked stiffly down careful not to trip as she couldn’t see her feet nor the steps over the skirt. Not that she could look down for she carefully balanced a tower of ostrich feathers on her head. She looked like a doll over-dressed by a zealous child.

Wells watched transfixed as the soldier signalled him forward. Lois waited at the bottom of the stairs, smoothing out her skirt and keeping her chin jutting forward to prevent the hat over-tipping forwards. Lois looked at him expectedly. And without recognition.

“Name?” hissed the soldier.

Wells stepped forward and bobbed a little bow.

“Um, Herbert George Wells, at your service, your Majesty.”

Lois wanted to cock her head at the strange little man wearing a plain black suit, but she was using all her neck muscles to keep the hat straight. She had received a note simply saying, “I know.” In his hands he held a bowler hat. Bowler hats, she was sure, hadn’t been invented yet. Her heart pounded against her restricted ribs. Like her, he wasn’t from here. The name. It rang bells but that might just be her ears ringing from the weight of the dress, one that Lex had selected, and she had no choice but to wear. She wanted to throw it all off and run to the stranger, grab his hands and scream, “Are you here to rescue me?”

“If I might be permitted, Miss Lane, I would desire a private audience.” He looked her straight in the eye. Something told him that it would not be in Lois’s best interest for anyone else to listen in to their conversation. Maybe it was the line of muskets behind him and the wild look of fear in her eyes.

A tall gentleman with a weasel-shaped nose and a beady eye appeared from nowhere and whispered in Lois’s ear.

“We have time,” she said brushing him away.

The man bowed and stepped back but he didn’t seem pleased. “As you wish,” he muttered.



A/N I promise that Clark will be making an appearance soon!
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