1
MAY 21, 1727
MIDDLEBURG PLANTATION
HUGER, SOUTH CAROLINA
My bare toes dug into the hardpacked earth as I beat the rug on the back line, watching the dust melt away into the setting sunlight. It moved through the drooping Spanish moss on the ancient oak trees overhead, making me long for my troubles to fade away so easily. My arms burned from my task, and yet the anxious thoughts did not disappear, nor did the work calm my fearful heart.
No matter how hard I tried to forget, the reality of my life was still with me—or rather, the reality of mylives. I didn’t know what to call my existence or why it happened to me. When I went to sleep tonight in South Carolina in 1727, I would wake up in Paris, France, in 1927 tomorrow. And when I went to sleep in Paris, I would wake up in South Carolina again the next day—with no time passing while I was gone. I had two identical bodies, but one conscious mind that moved between them. And I had been going back and forth since I could remember. Perhaps from the very beginning of my strange life.
My breath came hard as sweat beaded on my brow.
If only I could release the secrets my heart kept hidden, just asI released the months of dust and dirt from the rugs. Everything about my life was one secret built upon another. A fortress of mysteries too high to breach.
Some were the secrets I kept, and others were the secrets kept from me.
“Caroline!” Grandfather’s stern voice drifted through the oak trees and magnolias on our small tobacco plantation. The Cooper River sparkled in the distance, but the fields of ripening tobacco, and the indentured servants who worked there, were hidden from my view.
“I’m here,” I called to Grandfather, just around the corner and out of sight from the back porch of our simple two-story plantation home. I lifted the apron from the front of my homespun gown and wiped my brow as I made my way over roots and rocks toward him.
Grandfather stood on the porch of our white clapboard house, his arms crossed in disapproval as he waited for me. Middleburg Plantation was a prominent property, and my grandfather, Josias Reed, was well respected. He’d come from England, by way of Massachusetts, to South Carolina. He was pleased with the home he had built, but the future of his pride and joy was uncertain, as I was his only heir.
“What have you been doing?” he asked as I slowed my steps.
“Beating the rugs.”
His gaze fell to my bare feet and then lifted to the dust covering my face as his disapproval deepened. “We have servants to do the menial tasks, Caroline. The mistress of the plantation should be tending to the indoor work.”
“I like beat—”
“Our guests have arrived,” he interrupted. “You should have been prepared by now. Governor Shepherd is an important man, and he will not look kindly upon his oldest son marrying a hoyden.”
“His son?” I frowned, confused. “I am not marrying the governor’s son.”
“What do you think this meeting is for?” he asked, his frustration mounting. “Really, Caroline. Your naiveté will be your undoing.”
“I’ve heard he’s old and lazy,” I protested.
Grandfather took a step forward and lowered his voice, no doubt worried that the governor and his son might hear. “Elijah Shepherd will inherit five thousand acres of the best rice plantation in America one day.” He shook his head with disappointment. “I could make nothing of your fickle mother before she ran off with that worthless sea merchant. But I will make something of you.”
I had heard this threat my whole life. My mother, Anne Reed, had been a hoyden, as well. A motherless child with a penchant for recklessness and rebellion. She’d run off with the first man who had shown interest in her.
She’d only been thirteen.
A year later, she’d left me on my grandfather’s doorstep. Her recklessness had led to Grandfather’s poor opinion of me, so I vowed to never be wild and thoughtless like her. I was twenty years old—seven years older than her when she ran off—and I had done nothing to earn his poor regard. Yet, he let me know I couldstillturn out like her if I didn’t follow his plan for my life.
“I do not want to marry Elijah Shepherd,” I said, trying to appeal to his compassion, though I’d not witnessed it often. “I do not love him.”
“Love.” He said the word with such disdain it made me wonder if he’d ever been in love. He’d never spoken of my grandmother and rarely spoke of my mother, unless he was comparing my inadequacies to hers. The only things I knew were the rumors I’d overheard the servants whispering.
Witchcraft. Adultery. Abandonment. Betrayal.
“If I can secure a marriage between you and Elijah,” he said, “and we can join our plantations, we will be the richest planters in South Carolina. I will not have you thwart my plans.” He opened the back door. “Come. Nanny will help you dress for supper.”
I had no choice but to slip up the back stairs to my room. Thehouse was long and narrow, with three rooms on the main floor and three above. Grandfather slept in one room on the far end of the upstairs, and I had the middle room. The room on the opposite end had belonged to my mother but had been locked my whole life. I walked by the closed door now, a reminder of all the secrets kept from me. Twice, I’d tried to break into that room to see what Grandfather was hiding, but both times I had been discovered and thoroughly disciplined with the rod.
Nanny was waiting for me when I entered my room, my best muslin gown in her arthritic hands. She had been with me my whole life, coming to Middleburg when my mother was an infant. She’d been old when I was young and was almost too old to be of service now. But I would not hear of her being displaced. She was one of the only connections I had to my mother, though she told me little more than Grandfather.
