Chapter 5 #2
The people in the kitchen—they weren’t all African. Two were, yes, but the others looked European. Irish, English maybe, or Scottish, based on their coloring. All of them working together, all wearing similar rough clothing.
Indentured servants.
The phrase rose up from a half-forgotten lecture.
In the early colonial period, before the full entrenchment of race-based slavery, plantations used all kinds of forced labor.
Indentured servants from Europe working alongside enslaved Africans.
The system that had existed before it shifted, before it became what most people thought of when they heard the word “plantation.”
Oh God. A system from the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Could it be?
The floor seemed to tilt beneath me.
“Steady now.” Mrs. Browne’s grip tightened, holding me upright. “The shock’s catching up with ye, I reckon. Nearly drowning will do that. Come on—just a bit farther to your room.”
She moved me along as I tried to take slow breaths. Four in, hold for four, and four out. My dad’s technique for when anxiety hit.
It wasn’t working.
“Ye’ll share quarters with Betsy, the upstairs maid,” Mrs. Browne was saying, her voice seeming to come from very far away.
“It’s a small room, but clean. Meals are in the servants’ hall at dawn and after the family’s supper is cleared.
Ye’ll take breakfast with Phillippe starting tomorrow. Today ye’re excused to recover.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice. My legs moved automatically, following Mrs. Browne up the narrow servants’ stairs and down a dim corridor.
We climbed to the third floor and emerged into a hallway lined with doors. Mrs. Browne opened one near the end, revealing a small room with two narrow beds, a single window, and a battered chest of drawers.
“There.” She gestured me inside. “Rest a bit. I’ll have Betsy bring ye some water and food. And I’ll see about finding ye some things to wear until we can arrange for a few things.”
I looked down at the rough linen dress, now stained with grass and dirt from sitting on the ground. The same dress I’d put on in the costume room during the tour. How long ago had that been? Hours? Minutes? It felt like years.
“Thank you,” I managed.
“Don’t thank me yet. Our mistress is particular about her household.” Mrs. Browne’s expression became serious.
“A word of advice, if ye’ll take it. Keep your head down, do your work well, and don’t ask questions about things that don’t concern ye. The mistress values discretion above all else. And given what ye’ve been through, she’ll expect ye to be grateful for the position.”
Her tone carried a warning I didn’t fully understand.
“I understand,” I said, though I didn’t have a clue.
Mrs. Browne nodded and left, closing the door behind her with a soft click.
I stood in the middle of the small room, alone for the first time since—since I’d touched that stone. Since the world had fractured apart.
The bed behind me had a mattress stuffed with straw that crackled when I sat on the edge. The walls were roughly plastered, water-stained in one corner. The basin on the chest of drawers was chipped, the ceramic old and worn.
Not props. Not a set. Not a reenactment.
I moved to the window, pushing aside the rough cloth that served as a curtain.
The view looked out over the kitchen gardens and, beyond them, the fields of sugarcane.
Workers moved between the rows, small figures in the distance.
Beyond that, I could just see a sliver of the ocean—gray-blue and endless, with whitecaps that might have been left over from last night’s storm.
A storm I didn’t remember. We’d had perfect weather since arriving in Jamaica.
The storm that supposedly sank my ship. While I sent up a quick prayer for Millicent, it made things a bit easier since there wasn’t anyone alive from the ship to say I wasn’t who I claimed to be.
Everything in the room looked authentic. Everything felt solid.
The old woman’s voice echoed again in my memory. Doors open both ways.
I closed my eyes, fighting against the truth that was trying to force its way in.
Time travel didn’t exist. It was impossible. Against every law of physics I’d ever learned. People didn’t just touch stones and fall through centuries. Except I had.
If they could travel through time, half the single women in the world would be hunting for their own Jamie Fraser in the past or another swoony book boyfriend.
The certainty hit me like a physical blow. Not a gentle realization but a sudden, brutal understanding that I couldn’t fight anymore.
I’d somehow traveled through time. But to when exactly? Everything I knew—friends, family, phones, planes, modern medicine, women’s rights, antibiotics, literally everything—was gone. Wouldn’t exist for hundreds of years.
And everyone here thought I was Millicent Carter, a governess, the apparently only survivor of a shipwreck.
The walls pressed inward. I sank onto the bed, pressing both hands against the straw mattress to remind myself it was solid.
A knock at the door made me straighten.
“Miss?” A girl’s voice, young and tentative. “Mrs. Browne sent me with water and something to eat.”
I forced myself to stand, to smooth the dress, to open the door.
A girl who looked about fourteen stood in the hallway, holding a pitcher. A lock of red hair had escaped from beneath a blue head wrap. She had a face full of freckles that reminded me painfully of my own reflection.
“I’m Betsy,” she said, bobbing an awkward curtsy. “We’ll be sharing the room. I’m glad ye made it through the wreck. Mrs. Browne said it was a miracle.” She crossed herself. “It must have been terrible.”
“Right. Yes. Thank you. It was.” I stepped aside to let her in.
She set the pitcher on the chest of drawers, then hesitated.
“Mrs. Browne says ye might not remember much, what with the shock and all. I brought some bread and cheese too, if ye’re hungry.”
She produced a napkin-wrapped bundle from her apron pocket. The bread was dark and dense, the cheese hard and sharp-smelling. It didn’t look anything like the food I was used to.
My stomach growled.
“That’s very kind,” I said, taking the bundle. “Thank you, Betsy.”
She smiled, looking relieved. “Ye sound different than I expected. Not like the last governess. She was from London, all proper-like.”
The last governess. There had been someone before me. Someone who’d left.
“What happened to her?” I asked carefully.
Betsy busied herself straightening things that didn’t need straightening.
“She only lasted a month. The mistress’s son can be... difficult. Philippe is ten, and he’s used to getting his way. The last governess lost her nerve.”
She lowered her voice. “Some say she left because she saw things in the mistress’s collection. Things that frightened her.”
That prickle of unease again. “Collection?”
“The mistress collects beautiful things. Plants and paintings and...” Betsy trailed off, suddenly busy with the blanket on her bed. “Well. Ye’ll see soon enough, I suppose.”
Before I could ask more, she straightened and moved toward the door. “I’ve got to get back to my duties. Rest now, miss. Ye’ll meet the mistress and young Philippe at supper.”
“Betsy?”
She stopped, cocking her head. “Aye?”
“Um … I think I hit my head… when the ship went down. What is the date today?”
Her eyes went wide, but after a moment she answered me. “It’s the thirteenth of September.”
The same day. My birthday. Talk about a birthday present.
I took a deep breath. “Yes, of course … and the year?”
This time she crossed herself as she straightened, then opened the door as she looked over her shoulder at me. “1693. I’ve got to get back to my duties. Rest now, miss.”
She left before I could protest.
1693.
I stood alone in the small room, shaking, holding my bundle of bread and cheese, trying to process everything that had just happened.
Somehow, I’d fallen hundreds of years through time to 1693.
But how? Why?
Everyone believed I’d survived a shipwreck. I’d been given a job, a room, a place in this household based on a lie I hadn’t even told. They thought I was Millicent Carter from Philadelphia, here to teach a difficult ten-year-old boy.
But I wasn’t Millicent Carter. I was Madison Carter from Virginia, and I had no idea how to be a governess in 1693.
I moved back to the window, looking out at the gardens and fields beyond. Somewhere out there was the clearing with the stone. The carved stone that had brought me here.
Surely, it could send me back.
Hope sparked in my chest, fragile but fierce.
I just had to get back to the garden. Find the stone. Figure out how to reverse whatever had happened.
But not today. Not while everyone was watching the lone survivor, likely gossiping about me already.
I’d play along. Learn what I needed to know to survive here. And when any interest in me died down, I’d find time to slip away, find the stone and pray it would take me home.
Jenna and Marcus must be frantic. Patricia probably had search parties out looking for me. Or—the thought made my stomach clench—maybe no time had passed at all in my world. Maybe I’d blink back into existence right where I’d left, and they’d never even know I’d been gone.
I tore off a piece of bread, forcing myself to chew and swallow. It was coarse and dense, nothing like the soft sandwich bread I was used to. But it tasted substantial. Earthy.
Outside, the bell rang—the same deep tone I’d heard when I first arrived. Calling workers from the fields, marking some division of the day I didn’t yet understand.
Somewhere in the house below, I heard voices. A woman’s laugh, bright and artificial. The clink of glass and silver. The widow’s household going about its daily business.
I washed down the bread and cheese with water from the pitcher—lukewarm but delicious. My body felt heavy, exhausted by the shock and the heat and the impossible truth of where I was. When I was.
The bed called to me. I lay back on the straw mattress, staring at the water-stained plaster ceiling. The rough blanket was scratchy against my hands.
Supper. Betsy had said I’d meet the mistress and Philippe at supper.
Which meant I had a few hours to figure out how to convince an entire household that I was a governess when I had no idea what that actually entailed in 1693.
I closed my eyes, trying to remember everything I’d ever read about colonial period education. Latin and French for boys, needlework and music for girls, religious instruction, penmanship, arithmetic...
My eyes snapped open. The sun was rising, light shining in through the window.
I must have slept through the night. Through the open window, I heard footsteps on the floor below—heavier than the servants, more purposeful.
A woman’s voice, clear and commanding, speaking in French.
Then Mrs. Browne’s response, respectful but strained.
“Oui, Madame. She’s still sleeping, but I can fetch her if—”
“Do so. I wish to see this governess who survived when everyone else drowned. Bring her to the breakfast room. Immediately.”
The footsteps retreated. Then came the sound I’d been dreading—Mrs. Browne climbing the servants’ stairs, coming to collect me.
I sat up, heart hammering.
No more time to plan. No more time to prepare.
The widow wanted to see me now.