CHAPTER EIGHT #2
He reached for me. His hot fingers caught a loose strand of my hair and tucked it behind my ear, his thumb grazing the cheekbone below my eye.
Revulsion crawled across my skin.
“You would find life more comfortable at our plantation,” Warren whispered. “If you learned how to be agreeable to the right people.”
I slapped his hand away.
The crack echoed through the kitchen like a pistol shot.
Warren froze. The flush upon his face deepened to an ugly purple.
“I am an indentured servant to Monsieur Lebon,” I said. My voice shook, but I kept my chin raised. “I am not property to be handled by guests. Touch me again, and I will scream loudly enough to wake Madame Lebon and every servant in this house.”
His jaw clenched. He raised his right hand as if to strike me.
A violent, freezing draft swept through the kitchen.
The embers in the hearth sputtered and turned pale blue. The temperature plummeted, changing our breath into white plumes. The lamp flame thrashed inside its glass, casting long shadows across the stone floor.
Warren stumbled backward, his teeth beginning to chatter.
A tall, slender figure stood within the courtyard doorway.
Adrian Fairhaven had returned.
He wore no coat, only his snow-white shirt and dark waistcoat. His raven hair gleamed in the blue light. His dark eyes were fixed upon Warren with an ancient stillness that froze the blood in my veins.
“The hour is late, Mr. Dewey,” Adrian said. His low voice echoed from the stone walls like wind moving over river ice. “Gentlemen of refined taste do not corner women in dark kitchens.”
Warren backed away, his face turning gray. His hands shook so violently that he nearly knocked the empty glass from the table.
“Fairhaven, I was merely asking for water.”
“Go to your bedchamber.”
Adrian took one silent step forward.
The floorboards did not creak beneath his boots. Needles of frost crept across the pine worktable and curled around Dinah's mending needle.
Warren fled without another word, his riding boots scrambling against the flagstones as he retreated toward the main house.
Silence settled over the kitchen.
Dinah stood beside the hearth, staring at the beautiful creature in her doorway with naked terror.
Adrian did not look at her. His endless eyes searched my face.
“You have a fierce spirit, Elin Andersdotter,” he said in flawless Swedish. A faint, melancholy smile touched his lips. “It is a pity you waste it protecting people who would trade you for a handful of silver.”
“You expect gratitude because you frightened away a drunken man?” I answered in Swedish.
His smile deepened.
“No. Gratitude is a debt, and you have reason enough to fear debts.”
He turned and disappeared into the darkness of the courtyard, leaving behind the bitter scent of frozen earth and crushed gardenias.
The kitchen slowly warmed.
Dinah snatched my hands and examined my face as if Warren might have left some injury she could not see.
“Go to your room,” she said. “Bolt the door.”
“You believe a bolt will stop them?”
“No.” Her fingers tightened around mine. “But sometimes doing a useless thing is better than standing still.”
I left her beside the dying hearth and began climbing the servants' staircase.
At the second landing, the air changed.
It did not become cold. It grew sweet.
The fragrance of gardenias gathered around me until each breath tasted of white petals left too long in water.
Octavia Fairhaven sat upon the sill of the narrow landing window, though I had heard no footsteps and could not imagine how she had reached it before me.
Moonlight poured through her cream nightdress, making her appear almost translucent.
She held my tin cup in one gloved hand.
I had left it hidden behind the kitchen pitcher.
“My cousin admires you,” she said.
“Your cousin frightens me.”
“The two conditions are not incompatible.”
I moved toward the wall, leaving as much space between us as the narrow staircase allowed.
Octavia turned the cup slowly. “Warren Dewey offered to purchase your contract.”
“I heard him.”
“He would not have freed you. Men like Warren confuse possession with generosity.”
“And the Fairhavens do not?”
Her pink mouth curved.
“We are more honest about the distinction.”
She rose from the sill. The lace hem of her nightdress did not stir against the floorboards.
“Three years remain,” she said. “One hundred and fifty-seven Sundays marked upon your wall. A very long time for a young woman who crosses out each week as though she were tunneling from a prison.”
My skin prickled.
“Adrian told you.”
“Adrian does not need to tell me what you desire.”
She extended the tin cup toward me.
Inside it lay a silver coin stamped with a crowned head I did not recognize.
“We could purchase your remaining term tomorrow,” Octavia said. “We could place money in your hand, secure passage from Richmond, and carry you as far as Goteborg before winter.”
For one treacherous heartbeat, I saw Lake M?laren beneath a gray Swedish sky. I saw my mother's narrow kitchen and my father's hands wrapped around a wooden bowl. I remembered hunger sharp enough to make sleep impossible. I remembered the morning they had agreed to send me away.
I also remembered the first full plate Dinah had placed before me in Virginia and how ashamed I had been to eat every crumb.
“My parents sold my service.”
“Because poverty makes merchants of loving people.”
Her answer was too gentle.
“What would you want from me?”
“Nothing tonight.”
“And tomorrow?”
Octavia tipped the cup. The coin slid into her palm without making a sound.
“When the time comes, we would ask you to remember that we offered you a door.”
“A door to what?”
“Freedom.”
“Nathaniel Vale believed your family offered help as well.”
For the first time, something shifted behind her beautiful face.
Not anger. Recognition.
“Nathaniel believed many promises had been broken,” she said. “He was correct.”
She closed my fingers around the coin. It was warm, though her glove was cold.
“Keep it. Not as payment. As proof that escape can have weight.”
I opened my hand and let the coin fall between us.
It struck the stair.
No sound followed.
The silver passed through the wooden tread as though sinking into black water and vanished.
Octavia's smile returned.
“You are more difficult than Warren promised.”
“Warren has never known me.”
“Neither do you.”
She stepped past me. Gardenia perfume dragged behind her like a veil.
At the foot of the staircase, she paused and looked back.
“Your five-year contract is not the oldest agreement binding someone in this house, Elin Andersdotter. It is merely the only one written in ordinary ink.”
Then the corridor was empty.
I climbed to my garret and fastened the useless bolt.
For the first time since coming to Virginia, I did not mark another Sunday from my contract.
I sat awake until dawn, wondering what the Lebons had promised, what the Fairhavens had come to collect—and why both families appeared to believe Cécile belonged somewhere within the debt