Page 3 of A Spark in Time (A Knights Through Time Romance #21)

T he conservatory had always been Bebe’s sanctuary, even as a child.

While the rest of the Merriweather estate screamed its wealth to anyone within viewing distance, the glass-walled greenhouse whispered secrets.

Her father had built it for her mother as a wedding gift—back when he still believed expensive gestures could substitute for affection—and filled it with orchids from around the world.

Now, twenty years later, the orchids bloomed in impossible colors while their marriage had withered to dust.

Bebe pushed through the French doors at quarter past four in the morning, still in her silver beaded dress, the ring pulling her forward like a fish on a hook.

The storm that had been building all night pressed against the glass walls, turning the conservatory into a box of humid air and barely contained violence.

She hadn’t changed her shoes after all—the silver T-strap heels still gleamed, utterly impractical and perfectly in character. If she was going to fall apart, at least she’d do it looking like herself.

The champagne fog hadn’t quite lifted—her head floated, heavy and light all at once, while her heart beat too fast. Each time she drifted toward sleep, the diamond seemed to chill against her skin, icy threads creeping up her arm until she jolted awake with a gasp.

The ring wanted something. Needed something. Needed her.

Or it’s a piece of jewelry, you’ve had entirely too much to drink, or you’re losing your mind, she thought, but even she didn’t believe that anymore.

The orchids trembled in the air, their faces turned toward her like an audience awaiting a performance.

Purple Cattleyas from Brazil, ghost-white Dendrobiums from Australia, blood-red Vandas from Singapore—her mother’s collection from back when she still cared about something beautiful that wasn’t her own reflection.

Thunder crashed directly overhead, and the lights flickered. The estate’s generator, Alistair had bragged earlier, was the finest money could buy.

Everything in his world is the finest money can buy. Including me.

She found herself at the potting table, where their gardener, old Mr. Hennessy, kept his tools.

Everything neat and orderly, except for a single rake propped carelessly against the table’s edge—probably left by the new under-gardener, the one who spent more time flirting with the kitchen maids than tending plants.

Lightning flashed, and in that split second of brilliant illumination, she saw him.

Alistair stood in the doorway, still in his evening clothes but disheveled now, his perfect hair mussed by the wind. He looked younger, almost vulnerable, and for a moment Bebe remembered why she’d said yes that first time. He could be charming when he wanted something.

The problem was, once he had it, he stopped wanting it.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” He stepped into the conservatory, closing the door behind him. The sound was final, like a trap springing shut.

“The ring,” she said simply. “It’s?—”

“Cold. I know.” He moved closer, and she could smell brandy on his breath, see the slight unsteadiness in his gait. “The dealer in Cairo warned me. Said it did that sometimes. Responded to storms, to strong emotions, to...” he paused, his eyes glittering, “to women who weren’t meant to wear it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Helen of Troy wore it when she chose Paris over Menelaus. Cleopatra wore it when she chose death over submission to Rome. Marie Antoinette wore it right before the Revolution.” He reached out, fingers hovering over the stone. “Every woman who’s worn it has made the wrong choice.”

“Or the right one, depending on your perspective.”

His hand dropped. “Is that what you think? That those women chose correctly? Helen started a war. Cleopatra destroyed an empire. Marie lost her head.”

“They chose themselves over what men wanted them to choose.”

“And look how that ended.” His voice turned hard, the brandy bringing out something ugly that was always there, just usually better hidden.

“This is why women shouldn’t be educated. You read too much, think too much. It makes you difficult.”

“God forbid I might be difficult. Education only frightens men who fear comparison.”

“Do you know what I gave up for you?” He grabbed her wrist, not hard enough to hurt but firm enough to establish ownership. “I could have married Dorothy Astor. Or Patricia Vanderbilt. Girls who understood their place, who would have been grateful?—”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Because you’re the most beautiful.” The words were matter-of-fact, like he was discussing a horse or a painting.

“The Merriweather face, those eyes, that figure. Our children will be perfect. Our portraits will hang in the Met someday. We’ll be remembered as the couple that defined this age.”

“Is that all I am to you? A breeding mare with good bloodlines?”

“That’s all any of us are.” He pulled her closer, and she could see something desperate in his eyes, something that might have been human if it hadn’t been so possessive.

“But I could make you happy, Bebe. Give you anything you want. Jewels, trips to Europe, a house in Paris if you like. Anything except?—”

“Freedom.”

“Freedom is an illusion. No one is free. I’m not free—I have obligations to my family, my name, my fortune. Your brother isn’t free. Your mother isn’t free. We’re all in cages, Bebe. At least ours will be golden.”

Thunder crashed again, so loud the glass panes rattled. The lights cut out completely, plunging them into darkness lit only by the almost constant lightning.

“Let go, Alistair.”

“Why? So you can run? Where would you go?” His grip tightened. “You have no money of your own. No skills. No connections that aren’t tied to your family name. You’re nothing without us.”

She jerked her arm free with a violence that surprised them both, stumbling backward. Her hand hit the potting table, looking for balance, and found the rake instead.

“Careful—” Alistair started forward.

The rake’s tines, rusty from the humid greenhouse air, bit into her palm. She cried out, more from surprise than pain, pulling her hand back instinctively.

Blood welled from three small punctures—not much, just dots of crimson across her palm like a fortune teller’s bad news.

“Bebe, you’re bleeding?—”

She looked at her hand, at the blood pooling in her lifeline, and then at the ring.

The blood touched the stone.

The world exploded.

Not metaphorically. Not poetically. The ring ignited with a light so brilliant it made the lightning outside look like candleflame.

The conservatory windows didn’t just break—they disintegrated, becoming dust and memory.

The orchids, so carefully cultivated, burst into impossible bloom, their colors bleeding into the air like watercolors in rain.

Her body was pulled in a thousand directions all at once, coming apart at the seams. Every bit of her being vibrated at a frequency that shouldn’t exist, couldn’t exist. She could feel time itself bending around her, past and present and future colliding in a single point of impossible brilliance.

Through the chaos, she heard things that couldn’t possibly be there.

Waves crashing against ancient shores

Women crying in languages that predated Christ

The clash of bronze swords and wooden shields

Someone calling her name in ancient Greek

She saw Alistair’s face, mouth open in shock or horror, reaching out for her. But he was moving so slowly, like film run at the wrong speed. A single frame stretched into eternity.

Choose, a voice whispered, though it wasn’t quite a voice. It was the ring, or something speaking through the ring, or perhaps time itself demanding an answer. Choose, as she chose. As they all chose. Love or duty. Freedom or safety. The known or the unknown.

Choose.

And Bebe, standing at the crossroads of impossibility in the middle of a maelstrom, her blood feeding an ancient hunger, answered.

I choose anything but this.

The light consumed her. She dissolved. Every memory, dream, and fear scattered like beads from a broken necklace. The last coherent thought she had was absurdly practical.

I hope I didn’t get blood on my favorite dress.

Then the world went white, and Bebe Merriweather—eighteen years old, engaged to be married, a prisoner of propriety—ceased to exist in 1926.

The conservatory collapsed behind her absence, three thousand pounds of glass and iron crashing down like the end of the world. The orchids, exposed to the storm, died in seconds. The rain poured in, washing away the blood, the broken glass, any trace of what had happened except...

Except Alistair, standing in the ruins, his hand still outstretched, rain soaking through his evening jacket. He stood there until dawn, until the servants found him, until his mother arrived with smelling salts and sharp questions.

He would tell them that beautiful, impulsive Bebe had run away. Been kidnapped. The story would change depending on who asked and how much brandy he’d had. But he would never tell anyone about the light, about the way she’d simply ceased to be, about the last thing he’d seen before she disappeared.

Her smile.

Triumphant and terrified and absolutely, utterly free.

The society pages would run the story for weeks. Search parties would be organized. Rewards would be offered. Mediums would claim to contact her spirit. But Bebe Merriweather was gone, leaving only questions, a ruined conservatory, and a fortune in shattered glass.

The ring, of course, went with her.

It had waited three thousand years for a girl desperate enough to pay its price.

And now, in a place where time meant something different, where bronze was the height of technology and gods still walked close enough to touch, Bebe Merriweather was about to learn what that price actually was.

For now, there was only the storm, the ruins, and Alistair Winthrop IV, standing in the rain, wondering if perhaps—just perhaps—the curse had been real after all.

He would spend the rest of his life wondering.

It would be a very long life, and a very empty one.

The ring at least had kept that promise.