Annie Lockwood is a precocious, romantic girl. She spends her time reading Victorian novels and inventing dramas in her mind. At the beginning of the story she is dating a mechanic named Sean. Determined to persuade him to become more passionate about her interests, she convinces him to come with her to witness the demolition of the old Stratton Mansion. Annie loves that old building for its elegance and unspoken history, so she walks through it one last time before the demolition experts come through. Suddenly she feels someone grab her ankles, and she's transported through time back to 1895.
Annie runs into Hiram Stratton Jr., in whose family house she had just been wandering. Hiram is astonished by Annie's sudden appearance and her bizarre clothes. Her legs are showing under her dress! Whether through circumstance or fate, Annie and Hiram strike up a beautiful romantically tense friendship. Hiram invites her to move in with his family since she has no where else to go. Annie meets the family: father, stepmother, sister, and Harriett, a family friend who has secretly fallen for Strat.
The next few chapters depict the fallout after Annie's disappearance from the perspectives of the various characters. People in her home time are desperate to find her, but there's no trace of where's she is now. In 1895 Harriett becomes increasingly jealous of Annie for her ease of affection with Strat. Annie on the other hand is having the time of her life. She adores the dresses she gets the wear and the fancy parties and all the attention.
Then one of the servants is killed, Matthew. As Annie pokes around his death, she learns a very disturbing secret. Harriett has a chaperone named Aunt Ada who is not concerned with the best interest of her charge. Apparently she has been plotting with a friend of Strat's named Clarence Rowwel to convince Harriett to marry Clarence and steal all her money between the two of them. Matthew was in the wrong place at the wrong time and overheard their scheme, so they murdered him.
When Annie learns this, she's completely unprepared to deal with the fallout. She's been aiding their plot unknowingly this whole time by distracting Strat with her romantic advances so that Harriett has all but given up on ever marrying him. Finally Harriett agrees to marry Clarence. In a strange twist Strat actually marries another woman -- Florinda Stratton. This woman has some keen perceptive skills and soon catches on to the drama of Harriett's unhappy situation. She confronts Rowwel with her findings, only to shoot him in the head after he attempts to throw Harriett off a tower. He was planning to frame her death as a suicide so that he and Ada could collect her money.
In the end all is resolved, however. Ada is sent to justice. With Clarence dead, the mystery is resolved. Strat and Florinda live happily ever after. When all is said and done Annie is whisked back by fate to her own time. Or so one may suppose because her final destination is unclear.
