Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
For two days I’d tried to keep my head down, didn’t even scream when I found the snake curled up on the bookshelf and Philippe laughing.
Betsy, my sweet roommate, had been walking by when she’d heard me gasp.
She strode in, took one look at the brat, then marched over to where I was frozen in place, snatched up the snake and tossed it through the open window, shaking her finger at Philippe, who pretended to be innocent.
We all knew better. This was the kind of kid who grew up to be a serial killer or ivy league jerk who assaulted women because “no” was simply a challenge.
The summons had come an hour after the last guest departed. Not a request—a command delivered by Mrs. Browne with the same expression one might wear while announcing a funeral.
Now I sat in the widow’s drawing room, the same silk cushions and crystal that had witnessed tonight’s disaster catching lamplight like they were mocking me.
The air was close despite the tall windows, and the scent of beeswax couldn’t quite mask something sharper underneath. It was the smell of fear.
Widow Delacroix sat near the window, curtains drawn against the night. She wasn’t looking at me yet. Just studying her hands—pale against the dark fabric of her emerald evening gown, each ring catching the light as she turned them slowly.
Mrs. Browne stood near the door like a sentinel.
“Sit.” The widow gestured to the chair directly across from her without raising her eyes.
I sat. My hands were still shaking from the dinner, so I folded them in my lap and pressed my palms together hard enough to hurt.
The dinner. The disaster.
I’d tried so hard to be invisible. To move through the crowded dining room like air, serving wine and clearing plates while Port Royal officials and wealthy planters talked and laughed and ignored the servants entirely.
As part of my punishment, I’d been required to serve, a slap in the face to a governess, but as I wasn’t really one, I wasn’t offended. So there.
For a while, it had worked.
Then, a man wearing a velvet burgundy coat, Mr. Pemberton, called me over to refill his glass. I’d been careful. But when I’d stepped back, his hand had found my hip.
“Pretty thing,” he’d slurred, the wine making his words thick. “New acquisition, madame?”
The widow’s smile had been all teeth. “My governess, Mr. Pemberton. Not for sale.”
“Pity.” His hand had slid lower.
I’d frozen. Completely. My mind went blank, my body locked in place. It was Brodie who’d moved—positioning himself between us with the wine decanter, murmuring something about vintage and quality that drew Pemberton’s attention away for just long enough.
Then came the “accident.”
Wine spreading across Mr. Pemberton’s lap in a dark stain, Brodie’s stammered apologies, the widow’s expression going cold as a winter storm.
The rest of the evening had been a blur of hushed conversations and pointed looks while Brodie was dismissed to the kitchens and I’d finished serving alone, hyper-aware of every eye on me.
Now the widow finally looked up.
“You were fortunate tonight, Miss Carter.”
“Madame, I—”
“I wasn’t asking for an explanation.” Her voice stayed soft, steel beneath silk.
“Mr. MacLeod’s … intervention saved you from considerable embarrassment.
And me a considerable inconvenience. Mr. Pemberton may be a drunk and a fool, but he is also a member of the Port Royal council. Losing his goodwill would be costly.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” She stood, silk skirts whispering as she moved to the window. She pushed open the curtains, revealing darkness and the distant sound of the sea. “I wonder.”
My pulse picked up. We were on dangerous ground.
“You interest me, Miss Carter.” She spoke to the glass, to her own reflection, not to me.
“You claim to be from Philadelphia, yet you know nothing of the proper forms of address. You say you were educated at a young ladies’ seminary, yet you cannot dance a proper pavane.
Your references drowned with the ship, yet somehow you survived without injury while experienced sailors perished. ”
Each word landed like a stone.
“And tonight, when that man touched you, you froze. Not the shocked stillness of a refined woman unused to such treatment. Something else. Something…” She turned then, amber eyes finding mine. “Something unusual.”
The word hung between us, sharp-edged and dangerous.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, because what else could I say? Sorry, I’m from three hundred years in the future, and your world terrifies me?
“You don’t fit, Miss Carter.” She moved closer, and I fought the urge to lean back.
“Your mannerisms are wrong. Your speech patterns are odd. You flinch at things that shouldn’t surprise someone from your claimed background, and you don’t react to things that should alarm you.
You’re like a puzzle with several pieces missing—or perhaps several pieces that belong to an entirely different puzzle. ”
My throat went tight.
“But here is what I find most interesting.” She perched on the edge of the small table beside my chair, close enough that I could smell her perfume—something floral and cloying that made my stomach turn.
“You survived that shipwreck. You appeared in my gardens like something washed up from the sea.”
Cold spread through my chest.
“I had to make certain adjustments with Duncan,” she continued, her tone conversational as if discussing the weather. “He’d become unreliable. But he told me you were seen near the old gardens.”
“I was weeding as instructed.”
“Weeding.” Her smile was terrible. “Yes, but not near the old garden. The gate we keep locked. The place I’ve instructed all my servants to avoid. Did you know that Duncan was last seen near that garden? And isn’t it interesting that you were found close to that very same location?”
My hands were fists now, nails digging into my palms.
“I collect beautiful things,” she said softly.
“Art. Rare plants. People who catch my eye. But I also collect knowledge. Secrets. And I’ve learned over the years that some servants—the ones who become …
difficult—have a way of finding other purposes.
The old garden has always been quite useful in that regard. ”
The way she said other purposes made my skin crawl.
“I don’t understand.”
“I think you understand a great deal more than you’re saying.” She stood, moving back to her chair with the grace of a queen reclaiming her throne. “But I’m not summoning you here to interrogate you about the garden. I’m here to offer you an opportunity.”
Worse. Whatever came next would be so much worse.
“Mr. MacLeod,” she said, watching my face like a hawk watches a mouse.
“He is of interest to me. Not in the way you might think—I have no need for such complications. But he is proving to be a problem. Tonight’s incident with Mr. Pemberton.
His protection of you grows more obvious by the day. His inability to remember his place.”
“He was just—”
“He was just protecting you,” she finished. “Yes. I’m aware. The question is why. He’s been here for merely a month. You’ve known each other for barely longer. Yet he risks his own position, his own future, to shield you from consequences you’ve earned.”
She leaned forward slightly.
“I need to know what he’s planning. Whether he intends to run, to cause trouble, or to organize the other servants and slaves.
There was an uprising on another plantation.
You heard the talk at dinner. The slaves killed their master and mistress and then fled to the mountains.
I will not have any dissension here. Men like Mr. MacLeod are dangerous—they remember what freedom feels like.
They make others remember too. And I will not have that. ”
Understanding hit me like a fist to the stomach.
“You want me to spy on him.”
“I want you to get close to him.” Her smile returned. “Continue your sneaking around the stables. Your shared glances across the courtyard. Whatever is growing between you—let it grow. And tell me everything he says. Everything he plans.”
“No.”
The word was out before I could stop it.
Her expression didn’t change, but something shifted behind those amber eyes. “No?”
“I won’t—I can’t—” The words tangled in my throat.
“You can, and you will.” Her voice went flat.
“Or I will reassign you to the fields. And we both know you wouldn’t survive a week in the cane fields, Miss Carter.
The sun alone would kill you within days.
But perhaps that would solve the puzzle of you, wouldn’t it?
No more questions about your strange mannerisms or your impossible survival.
Just another servant who couldn’t withstand the work.
” Then she smiled. “Or perhaps I’ll give you a choice … the fields or a brothel.”
The threat settled between us, heavy and final.
No way in hell. “And if I agree?”
“Then you continue in your comfortable position as governess. You keep your small room, your regular meals, your relatively easy duties. You earn my protection rather than my displeasure.” She stood.
“And perhaps—if your information proves valuable enough—I might even answer some of your questions. About Duncan. About the old garden. About what really happened the night you arrived.”
She knew. Not everything,but she knew something was wrong with my story. With me.
“I need time to think.”
“You have until morning.” She moved to ring the small bell on her table.
“Mrs. Browne will escort you to your room. I suggest you consider carefully, Miss Carter. Some choices, once made, cannot be unmade. And some servants who refuse my generosity find themselves facing consequences far worse than field work.”
Mrs. Browne appeared in the doorway.
“One more thing,” the widow said as I stood. “Whatever you decide—stay away from Mr. MacLeod tonight. No garden visits. No quiet conversations. Consider it a test of your ability to follow instructions.”
The walk back to my tiny room was endless. Mrs. Browne said nothing, just guided me through the darkened corridors with a hand on my elbow. When we reached my door, she paused.
“She means what she says.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “About the field work. About the consequences.”
“I know.”
“Then be smart, girl. Do what she asks. It’s the only way to survive here.”
She left me alone in the small room that had become my cage.
The window was open, letting in the night air—salt and jasmine and something darker beneath.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. A storm building over the ocean, heavy clouds blocking the stars.
From here, I couldn’t see the kitchen gardens where two nights ago I’d broken down crying and Brodie had sat beside me in silence until I could breathe again.
Thank you. For tonight.
That’s what I’d said. And the look on his face—like I’d broken something inside him just by speaking.
Now the widow wanted me to use that. To turn whatever fragile connection we’d built, the feelings I had for him, into a weapon to be used against him.
My choice was impossible. Betray Brodie, or face working in the fields, which would likely kill me. Or worse, end up in a brothel servicing pirates and sailors. I shuddered. Feed information to the widow, or refuse and watch her destroy us both, anyway.
But there was a third option. The one I’d been avoiding since I’d seen the gate half-hidden behind vines and jasmine.
The old garden.
The widow knew something about it. About servants finding “other purposes” there. She’d known that I’d been found near it.
If the magic still worked. If I could find my way back to that gate. If I could reach the stones before anyone stopped me—
I could leave.
Go back to my own time, where children didn’t hang from trees and people weren’t property and no one asked me to betray the only person who’d shown me genuine kindness in this nightmare.
It would mean leaving him. The first man I’d cared for in a long time.
Sure, I’d dated, but there hadn’t been anyone serious in over three years. Not until Brodie.
If I were able to travel through time. He’d be trapped, left here with the widow’s anger and suspicion focused on him. Why could I travel through time, but obviously the widow couldn’t. Could Brodie? Might he want to come with me to my own time?
He had risked everything for me, even when I was stupid enough to put him in danger by not following the ways of this time.
The night air grew heavier. The storm was coming closer, I could feel it in the pressure change, in the way the wind picked up and sent the curtains billowing inward.
Through the open window, beyond the fields and gardens, hidden behind vines and warnings and the widow’s careful instructions to stay away was the old garden gate.
Margaret would be patrolling soon, checking that I was obeying orders. Making sure I wasn’t seeking out Brodie for one of those “quiet conversations” the widow had forbidden.
Morning would come. The widow would want my answer.
Lightning flickered on the horizon, illuminating the path below for just an instant before darkness swallowed it again.
I looked at that path—at the gardens, at the gate somewhere beyond—and began calculating how long I had before Margaret’s footsteps reached my door.