Page 1 of A Spark in Time (A Knights Through Time Romance #21)

The champagne pyramid wobbled dangerously as Bebe Merriweather snatched her fourth—or was it fifth?—glass from the precarious arrangement. The bubbles burned her throat, tasting of rebellion and the kind of bad decisions that would make tomorrow’s society pages.

She’d been engaged to Alistair Winthrop IV for exactly six days, four hours, and thirty-seven minutes. Not that she was counting. Tonight was their official engagement party, and a part of her was curious to see what type of ring he’d picked out for her.

“Darling, you’re positively glowing!” Mrs. Van Der Berg materialized at her elbow like a bad rash, clutching Bebe’s bare arm with fingers that left red marks on her porcelain skin. The woman reeked of gin and Guerlain—the heavy, cloying kind that stuck to the back of your throat like guilt.

“Such a catch, that Alistair. Fourth of his name, you know. His grandmother was a Stuyvesant.”

“How thrilling.” Bebe’s smile could have cut glass.

“Tell me, does the fourth Alistair have any qualities that don’t involve dead relatives or trust funds?

Can he Charleston? Does he read anything besides stock reports?

Has he ever had an original thought that wasn’t about polo ponies or portfolio management? ”

Mrs. Van Der Berg’s laugh died in her throat. “Well, I... that is...” She drifted away in search of easier prey, leaving Bebe alone with her champagne and her mounting panic.

The Merriweathers Everwilde estate glittered tonight with a guest list that read like the Social Register itself, two hundred names chosen less for affection than for influence.

Everwilde’s ballroom was a study in opulence, carefully curated to impress.

Every surface gleamed with gilt, every corner overflowed with hothouse orchids, and the chandelier—imported from Venice at obscene expense—scattered prismatic light across two hundred of New York’s most practiced socialites.

The jazz band struck up “Ain’t She Sweet,” but even Whiteman’s orchestra couldn’t inject life into this gilded theatre of manners.

Seven months ago, I graduated from Miss Porter’s, Bebe thought, watching her mother hold court near the French doors. Full of dreams about seeing the world, writing novels, maybe learning to fly an airplane like Amelia Earhart. Instead, I’m being buried alive in taffeta and tradition.

“Stop brooding, darling. You’ll get wrinkles.”

Her brother Charlie appeared with two fresh champagne glasses, his own engagement to the perfectly proper Catherine Rhinelander having been announced last month. At twenty-one, he’d already resigned himself to his fate with the cheerfulness of someone who’d never wanted much from life, anyway.

“I’m not brooding,” Bebe lied, accepting the glass. “I’m plotting my escape.”

“To where? Every eligible man from here to Boston, along with a few from England, are right here, in this very room.” Charlie adjusted his white bow tie, looking every inch the Yale man their father had paid good money for him to become.

“Besides, Alistair’s not so bad. He’s handsome, rich, and Mother approves. That’s the holy trinity of marriage material.”

“He has the personality of wallpaper paste.”

“Expensive wallpaper paste,” Charlie corrected. “And anyway, personality is overrated. Catherine barely speaks, and I find it restful.”

Bebe studied her brother—really looked at him for the first time in months. When had he become so... diminished? The boy who used to steal Father’s roadster for midnight drives to Coney Island had been replaced by this perfectly pressed automaton.

“Do you ever wonder what would happen if we just... left?” she asked quietly. “Caught a steamer to Paris? Disappeared into the night?”

Charlie’s expression softened, and for just a moment, she saw her real brother underneath the Yale polish. “Every damn day,” he admitted. Then, the mask slipped back into place.

“But we’re Merriweathers. We don’t get to disappear. We get to be spectacular and miserable in equal measure.”

Before she could respond, the orchestra stopped mid-song with a discordant squawk. The crowd turned toward the makeshift stage where Alistair now stood, looking like an advertisement for everything hollow about the American aristocracy.

“Oh no,” Bebe muttered. “What fresh hell is this?”

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Alistair’s voice boomed with the confidence of someone who’d never been denied anything, who’d never had to work for anything, who thought the world existed solely for his benefit.

His dark hair gleamed under the lights, slicked back with enough pomade to grease a Model T.

“As you all know, tonight we celebrate my engagement to the incomparable Bebe Merriweather!”

Polite applause rippled through the crowd. Bebe’s mother, three sheets to the wind on sidecars, raised her glass in a wobbly salute. Her diamonds—the famous Merriweather diamonds that had supposedly belonged to Marie Antoinette—caught the light like elegant shackles.

“However,” Alistair continued, producing a velvet box from his jacket with a magician’s flourish, “I realize my initial proposal was rather... inadequate. No ring, and all that rot, but I was smitten and couldn’t wait a moment longer to lock this treasure away.”

Inadequate? Bebe’s mind reeled. You mean when you cornered me at the yacht club after three martinis and basically told me resistance was futile?

“So tonight, before all of you, I want to do this properly.” He dropped to one knee, his trouser crease still perfect. “With a ring worthy of my soon-to-be bride.”

The box opened.

The crowd gasped in unison, a sound like silk tearing.

The diamond inside was wrong. That was Bebe’s first thought—not beautiful, not impressive, but wrong .

It was the size of a robin’s egg, pale blue like frozen tears, and it didn’t just catch the light—it devoured it, twisted it, spat it back out in ways that made her teeth ache.

Looking at it was like staring into something ancient and hungry, patient enough to wait not just for her, but for every woman who would come after.

“This,” Alistair announced with the pride of a big game hunter displaying a trophy, “is Helen’s Tear.

Retrieved from the Antikythera shipwreck off the coast of Greece.

The dealer in Cairo swore it once belonged to Helen of Troy herself—three thousand years old and cursed to bring tragedy to any woman who wears it. ”

Nervous laughter rippled through the crowd.

“But we’re modern people,” Alistair continued, his smile sharp as the crystal glasses. “We don’t believe in curses, do we? We believe in diamonds and dynasties. So, Beatrice “Bebe” Merriweather, before all these witnesses, will you—again—consent to be my wife?”

The room held its breath.

Bebe looked at the ring—that impossible, wrong, beautiful thing—then at Alistair’s expectant face. Behind him, she could see her mother’s expression: a mixture of pride and threat. The Van Der Bergs nearly quivered out of their pearls. The photographer from the Times had his camera ready.

She thought about her secret journal, hidden in her room. About the list she’d written last night.

Things I Want Before I Die:

To swim naked in the Mediterranean

To kiss someone who makes my knees knock

To matter for more than my face and father’s fortune

To walk the streets of Cairo again, only this time without Mother and her guidebooks

To stand under Rome’s arches and feel history press close

To be free

Her chest ached at number three. To matter. Not as Mrs. Alistair Winthrop IV, not as her mother’s diamond-draped prize, but as herself . The girl who scribbled stories by candlelight. The girl who once believed the world was waiting for her to explore every ancient place.

The ring pulsed in its velvet box like a frozen heart.

“Bebe?” Alistair’s voice held a note of warning now. “Darling?”

She could run. Right now … she could gather her beaded skirts and run through the French doors, into the garden, into the night.

But where would she go? She had no money of her own, no skills beyond speaking several languages and playing adequate tennis. She was trained for nothing but this—to be beautiful, to be married, to be displayed.

“Yes,” she heard herself say, the word falling from her lips like a stone into deep water. “Of course, yes.”

The room erupted. Champagne corks popped like artillery. The orchestra launched into “Always.” And Alistair took her hand—her cold, trembling hand—and slid the enormous ring onto her finger.

The metal burned with cold, and for one impossible moment, Bebe could have sworn she heard something—distant voices crying out, waves crashing against ancient shores, the sound of women weeping across centuries.

Too much bubbly, obviously.

Then the moment passed, and she was swept into embraces and congratulations, the diamond heavy on her hand like a beautiful prison, like a door waiting to be opened, like fate itself come calling.

Charlie caught her eye across the room and raised his glass in a mock toast. His expression said everything.

Welcome to the club, sister. Population: the quietly damned.

But the ring...

The ring whispered of other possibilities, other worlds, other choices.

It whispered of escape.