In the next moment they were sitting in darkness. “What’s going on?” Zoë asked, blinking rapidly. Even if it hadn’t been so dark, she wouldn’t have been able to see anything as the bright light had nearly blinded her.
“Sssssh,” Amy said. “Listen. I think I hear sheep.”
“My foot is wet,” Faith said.
“I think I know where we are,” Amy whispered. “In fact, I think I know a lot of things that I didn’t know ten minutes ago.”
Gradually, the darkness receded and they saw that they were sitting on straw in a horse stall in a barn. A man wearing a dirty white jacket that reached to below his waist, tight trousers, and some sort of gaiters to his knees was staring down at them. His weathered face was nearly covered by a floppy leather hat, and he was holding an old-fashioned pitchfork. “What ye be doin’ in there, Miss Amy?” the man said. “And who be your friends?”
Amy grinned. “This is Faith and this is Zoë. They’ve come from America to help me.”
“Ah, more of your friends,” he said, chuckling at some inner joke. “I brought you three bushels of beans. Think that will be enough?”
“Maybe,” Amy said as she stood up, and walked to the far side of the barn with the man.
Faith and Zoë didn’t move. They sat on the straw and looked at each other. They were wearing long cotton dresses that were high-waisted and low in the front.
Faith, with her ample breasts, was nearly spilling out over the top. She put her hand to her hair and found that it was again pulled back into a bun. She couldn’t help feeling deflated. She’d like having the long, loose hair of her younger days.
“Your hair’s still red if that’s what you were wondering,” Zoë said as she stood up, then tried to take a deep breath. “I think there’s a corset under this thing.”
Faith blinked at Zoë. “You’re pretty.” Zoë’s face was free of makeup and her beautiful skin was rosy with youth.
“Yeah, well…” Zoë said, turning pink with a blush. She lifted the long dress to see her little leather slippers. “So where do you think our clothes are?”
Faith shrugged as she stood up. “I don’t know, but Amy still has her ribbon.”
Zoë looked at Amy, chatting with the man as though she’d known him all her life, and in her hair was the little braid and ribbon she’d had this morning.
Amy came back to them, the man behind her. He looked the two women up and down.
“He won’t like this,” he said, looking at the two women. “Ye know what he said about the last lot you took on.”
“Yes, Jonathan,” Amy said tiredly, “I know quite well what he’ll say, but these women are different.” When the man started to say something else, she said, “Don’t worry, I’ll make him something great for dinner and he’ll survive. Go on, now, and see if Helen needs anything more in the kitchen. And get me some tarragon from the garden.”
She waited until he’d left the barn, then she turned to the women.
“Look, I know you two have a thousand questions, but I don’t have the answers, at least not yet anyway. I can’t explain it, but I know this place, and I know that the dreams I had were true. It’s 1797, and he bought me from a tavern from a man posing as my father.
“Since then I’ve…” Amy waved her hand. “I’ve more or less managed this place.” She glanced toward the barn door. “They need me inside. If I don’t oversee the kitchen they’ll…I don’t know what they’ll do. Can you two look around for a while and I’ll see you later?”
Zoë and Faith looked at her for a moment. “Sure,” Faith said. “We’ll be fine. Won’t we, Zoë?”
It took Amy less than a second before she was running out the door.
Zoë looked at Faith. “Look at this place! Look at us! Am I asleep or dead? Or have I just fallen into a Jane Austen novel?”
“Don’t ask me,” she managed to say. “This is Amy’s dream, not mine.” She stepped around a pile of horse manure and left the barn, Zoë close on her heels.
Part Two
Twelve
Zoë followed Amy into the house, but Faith didn’t go. She didn’t know if she’d just been transported into the past or if she was on the set of a BBC production, but she didn’t care. What she wanted to do was look at everything, and she wanted to do it by herself, with no one bothering her.
She could tell that she was at the back of a large house. It looked to be only a few years old, and it was in a style that Faith had always loved: Georgian. Everything was symmetrical. The windows were huge and she knew the rooms inside would be large and beautifully proportioned.
The big area behind the house was graveled and there was an old wagon to one side. There were two men dressed like the man in the barn, and a woman wearing a long brown dress, a cloth bonnet on her head. They were all stealing curious looks at Faith, but none of them said anything.