Page 2 of A Spark in Time (A Knights Through Time Romance #21)

T he party finally died around three in the morning, leaving the Merriweather estate littered with champagne flutes and cigarette butts like casualties of war.

Bebe sat next to her mother’s vanity, still dressed in her silver beaded dress, watching Cecilia Merriweather perform her nightly ritual of cold cream and gin.

“You nearly ruined everything with that hesitation,” her mother said, not looking up from her reflection as she smoothed Pond’s across her cheeks in a nightly ritual she’d performed thousands of times.

“Three seconds, Beatrice. You hesitated for three full seconds before saying yes. The Astors noticed. The Vanderbilts noticed. That gossip columnist from Town Topics definitely noticed.”

“I said yes, didn’t I?” Bebe’s hand throbbed where the ring sat, heavier than physics should allow. She’d tried to remove it in the bathroom earlier, but it wouldn’t budge. Not stuck, exactly—more like it had decided to stay.

“Saying yes isn’t enough. You have to sell it.

” Cecilia finally turned, studying her daughter with the calculating gaze of a horse trader evaluating bloodstock.

At forty-two, she was still beautiful in that preserved way—like a flower pressed between dictionary pages, all the color leached out but the form intact.

“Do you know what I sacrificed for this family? What I gave up so you could have the luxury of sulking at your own engagement party?”

“Mother—”

“I was in love once.” The words fell into the room like stones into still water. Cecilia reached for her hidden gin—everyone knew about the hidden gin, but they all pretended not to—and poured three fingers, neat.

“Not with your father, God rest his soul. With a painter named Julian. He had nothing but talent, and beautiful hands, and a way of looking at me like I was the only real thing in a world of watercolors.”

Bebe had never heard this story. Her mother, the ice queen of Long Island society, in love with a bohemian?

“We were going to run away to Montmartre. Can you imagine? Me, living in some garrett, mending stockings while he painted?” Her mother laughed, but it was the sound of glass breaking.

“I was packed. Had my trunk sent ahead to the dock. Was literally walking out the door when my father told me he’d cut me off entirely.

Not just the money—though God knows that mattered—but everything.

My name, my family, my entire existence. I’d be dead to them.”

“So you stayed.”

“So I stayed.” Cecilia took a long pull of gin.

“Married your father two months later. He was... suitable. Kind enough, rich enough, boring enough not to notice when I cried myself to sleep for the first year.” She met Bebe’s eyes in the mirror.

“Julian sent me paintings for a while. Beautiful things—my face in every one, hidden in landscapes and still lifes like a secret. I burned them all when I found out I was pregnant with Charlie.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you need to understand that love is a luxury we can’t afford.” Cecilia turned back to her mirror, applying her night cream with violent efficiency.

“You think you want freedom, adventure, passion. What you actually want is not to end up like me—bitter and pickled in gin, counting diamonds instead of dreams.”

“Then why condemn me to the same fate?”

“Because the alternative is worse.” Her mother’s voice went as hard as the diamonds at her throat.

“Without money, without position, a woman is nothing in this world. Less than nothing. I’ve seen girls who ran off for love end up selling themselves on the Bowery when love wasn’t enough to pay the rent.

At least this way, you’ll suffer in silk. ”

“Mother—”

“The secret,” Cecilia continued, as if Bebe hadn’t spoken, “is to make your own arrangements. After you give Alistair his heir and spare, of course. Find yourself a nice artist or musician—they’re always grateful and rarely demanding.

Take trips to ‘recuperate your health’ in Switzerland or Italy.

Build a life inside the cage. It’s not freedom, but it’s. .. sustainable.”

She pulled out a cigarette from her secret stash—Turkish, expensive, absolutely forbidden for ladies—and lit it with steady hands. “Your grandmother did it. I did it. You’ll do it, too.”

“What if I don’t want to?” Bebe stood, the beads on her dress chiming like funeral bells. “What if I want something more?”

“Then you’re a fool.” Cecilia blew smoke toward the ceiling, watching it curl like dreams dissolving into mist. “But you’re my fool, so I’ll give you one piece of real advice. That ring Alistair gave you? There’s something wrong with it.”

Bebe’s blood chilled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’ve been around enough jewelry to know when something’s off. That stone...” Cecilia shuddered. “It looks at you. Sounds mad, I know, but I swear it was watching me during dinner. Like it was waiting for something.”

“Alistair said the dealer told him it was cursed. He laughed,” Bebe said quietly. “Especially when the man told him every woman who wore it met tragedy.”

“Men always think tragedy means death.” Cecilia stubbed out her cigarette with unnecessary force. “But for women, tragedy is living when you want to die. It’s smiling at breakfast while your soul rots. It’s teaching your daughter to accept the same chains you wear.”

She stood, swaying slightly—more gin than she’d admitted to.

“If I were you, I’d lose that ring. Accidentally. In the Hudson, perhaps.”

“Alistair would just buy another.”

“Then lose yourself.” Her mother’s mask slipped for just a moment, revealing something raw and desperate underneath. “Before it’s too late. Before you have children to anchor you. Before you forget you ever wanted anything more than this.”

“You’re drunk.”

“ In vino veritas , darling.” Cecilia moved toward her bedroom door, then paused. “That painter—Julian—he sent me one last letter, years later. Said he’d never painted anything worth a damn after I left. Said all his colors turned gray.”

She laughed, brittle as winter leaves. “Isn’t that romantic? Two lives ruined for the price of respectability. Your father got his heir, society got its show, and Julian and I got to grow old wondering what if.”

She left, closing the door with the quiet finality of a coffin lid.

Bebe stood alone in her mother’s dressing room, surrounded by crystal perfume bottles and silver brushes—all the beautiful tools of a beautiful prison. The ring on her finger pulsed with its own cold light, casting blue shadows on the silk wallpaper.

She walked to her own room, her feet knowing the path even in darkness—seventeen steps down the hall, turn right, fourteen more steps.

Her sanctuary, or what passed for one. The walls were papered in French toile, scenes of shepherdesses and their swains frozen in eternal, insipid courtship.

Her writing desk sat by the window, the one place that felt truly hers.

From the secret compartment behind her false bottom drawer, she pulled out her journal and a flask of bootleg gin—Charlie’s gift, bless him. The gin burned, but it was better than feeling nothing.

She opened to a fresh page and began to write.

September 15th, 1926, 3:13 AM (I can’t sleep. The ring won’t let me.)

Mother told me about Julian tonight. In all my eighteen years, I’ve never seen her admit to wanting anything beyond the next society luncheon. Now I know why she looks at Father’s portrait with such emptiness. She didn’t lose him—she lost the one before him. The one that mattered.

The ring feels heavier tonight. When I close my eyes, I swear I can hear something—like voices calling from very far away.

Or very long ago. Alistair said it belonged to Helen of Troy or the woman that inspired her tale.

The face that launched a thousand ships.

The woman who started a war by choosing love over duty.

Maybe that’s why it feels so wrong on my hand. Helen chose. She ran away with Paris, consequences be damned. I said yes to Alistair in front of two hundred witnesses. I chose the cage.

List of things that are apparently impossible:

Removing this ring (I’ve tried soap, oil, and ice)

Feeling anything but dread about my wedding

Forgetting the look on Mother’s face when she talked about burning those paintings

Sleeping while wearing frozen starlight on my finger

Charlie knocked earlier, drunk as a lord.

Said he saw me hesitate. Said he was proud of me for that three seconds of rebellion.

“Most honest thing anyone’s done in this mausoleum in years,” he said.

Then he cried. My brother, who hasn’t cried since Father’s funeral, sobbed like a child about Catherine’s empty eyes and his empty future.

We’re all ghosts here. We just haven’t stopped moving yet.

Thunder rumbled outside, which was odd—the sky had been clear an hour ago. The ring grew colder, and Bebe could swear she felt it pulling, like a compass needle finding north. But pulling toward what?

She walked to the window, looking out at the manicured gardens below. Everything perfect, everything placed, everything dead. Even the roses were bred for appearance over scent. Beautiful corpses in the soil.

Lightning flashed in the distance, and in that moment of illumination, she saw something impossible—the gardens were different. Older. Wilder. For just a heartbeat, she saw olive trees where the topiary should be, heard the distant sound of waves though they were miles from the ocean.

Then darkness returned, and with it, the familiar gardens.

But the ring...

The ring remembered something else. Somewhere else.

When else.

She pressed her forehead against the cool glass, the ring pulsing in time with her heartbeat. “What are you?” she whispered. “What do you want from me?”

Thunder answered, closer now. The storm was coming.

And somehow, Bebe knew that when it arrived, everything would change.

She just didn’t know whether that terrified or thrilled her more.

Probably both, she thought, and poured another finger of gin.

Outside, the first drops of rain began to fall, each one sounding like a clock counting down to something inevitable.

Something that had been waiting three thousand years to happen.

Something that started with a girl who chose love over duty, and might end with a girl who chose duty over dreams.

Unless...

Unless the ring had other plans.

Bebe touched the cold stone and felt it pulse in response, eager and patient and inexorable as fate.

Soon, it whispered without words.

Very soon.