Page 44 of The Beautiful Ones

“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 Göteborg before winter.”

For one treacherous heartbeat, I saw Lake Mälaren 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.”