ed Henry and Verity Kindle are time travelers, working for Oxford's history research department. The program has been commandeered by wealthy heiress Lady Schrapnell, who is employing historians to research Coventry cathedral, which was bombed by the Nazis in 1940, never rebuilt, and had its site turned into a mini-mall in 2018. She has begun a project to reconstruct the cathedral on Oxford grounds. Verity Brown, while on assignment in 1888 to investigate the life of Lady Scrapnell's ancestor Tossie Mering, rescues a cat from drowning, and set in motion of series of events that threatens to unravel the course of history. Ned Henry is sent back in time with the cat, to try to restore the timeline. At stake is the outcome of World War II and all of its subsequent affects on the future.