“Say something,” Mr. MacDougall bellowed. “Tell us what you saw.”
“I saw…” My voice died as the magnitude of what I’d done settled over me. I’d been foolish and now that weakness was going to ruin everything, just as it had at Chadwick Hollow. Pressure pulsed at my temples. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Even if I kept my job, I couldn’t live with the whispers or the furtive looks branding me a monster. That’s what would happen if I told them. Instead, I shut my eyes and swallowed that old pain. “I saw nothing, sir.”
The shine of hope died in Mrs. Crossey’s eyes.
Beneath our feet, the floor trembled and the walls rattled. I recognized the sound. Horses and coaches, teams of them, descending on the castle.
The royal family was home.
I seized the excuse and shot from my seat. “There’s still so much to do. I have to get back to the kitchen. Please understand.”
By the time Mrs. Crossey called out, I was already out the door, and I didn’t look back.
CHAPTER THREE
As I stormed out of Mr. MacDougall’s room, I knew I’d sealed my fate. A kitchen girl couldn’t defy Mr. MacDougall without consequences.
It was still better than the alternative.
Those old pangs of shame and regret ripped through me. I could see those girls again, huddled around me. Repulsion in their eyes. Their spiteful words slicing my nine-year-old self to shreds.
I’d only wanted to impress them by telling them what I’d seen when I picked up little Dottie’s rag doll in the play yard. A mother setting up a picnic on a grassy hill beside a pond. A father rowing on the water. A child basking in the loving glow of that happy moment under a clear blue sky.
A vision had never before manifested so clearly, or with so many details. I’d been so utterly charmed by it, I was sure it would charm them, too. At least I’d hoped so. Being new to the school, I’d wanted desperately to win their favor.
But any chance of that died when I told little Dottie what I’d seen. Instead of welcoming the memory, it had stirred something dark in the girl. Something that crumpled her expression and sent rivers of tears streaming down her face. Instantly, the others had rallied to protect her from me, not understanding my intent or not caring.
Dottie had told them there was no earthly way I should have known about that day and that it was pure cruelty to rekindle it when her parents had died not a fortnight later, both of them, from fever. When she called me a devil, the rest of the girls had taken up the taunt.
I’d stood there, watching their faces contort as they spewed those savage words at me until Headmistress Trindle appeared and dragged me away. She’d taken me to her office and tried to console me, but when I told her about Dottie’s memory, she looked at me as horrified as the rest. “Never speak of such things again,” she begged. “It’s for your own good.”
I’d followed her advice from that day on—until today.
I wanted to blame Mrs. Crossey for tricking me, but I knew the fault was mine. I was weak and that’s why I had to leave. Before it got worse.
~ ~ ~
The royal retinue of horses and carriages had converged on the State Entrance Tower, so I set my course for the East Terrace, keeping my head down and my feet moving. A determined pace would keep questions at bay about why I was out of uniform and what a bulging carpet bag was doing under my arm.
At least I hoped it would.
I didn’t want to explain myself or why I was leaving. I didn’t want to think about any of it. Not now. Maybe never.
I hurried along the narrow stairwell connecting the maids’ quarters to the ground floor. Through dim corridors. Past the mending room and the butler’s pantry, and finally to a heavy door that opened to a small lilac patch.
Darkening clouds threatened rain, but I pressed on, my gaze on the path ahead, threading through the manicured rose bushes and shrubs with my sights set on a gate well away from the commotion.
A familiar disturbance filled the air as I neared the fountain at the center of the terrace garden.
I lifted my finger and welcomed the soft landing of six tiny feet.
“What took you so long?” I whispered so a pair of gardeners pruning a nearby shrub wouldn’t overhear.
My dragonfly danced forward and back, making her needle-like body and wings shimmer in the scant sunlight. Her movements spoke to me as clearly as any words. They told me her moods, her thoughts, her complaints. I sensed them now as I always did through our silent communication. She wasn’t happy.
“Yes, I’m leaving.” I looked away. “But you can come, too.”
Did she think I would leave her?
She was my only friend. From the moment she landed on my knee as I sat beneath the oak tree behind Chadwick Hollow plotting my escape—I was twelve then and convinced I could fend for myself. But this remarkable dragonfly had turned her wide violet eyes up to me, and in that moment, I knew she was urging me to stay. Telling me, in her way, that if I was patient, a better path would come. And she was right, for I didn’t know it then, but the headmistress was already grooming me for a life of service.
My little visitor had come to me every few months or so back then. While I walked along the stream that meandered behind the school or sat among the grove of old trees. If the visits had been more frequent, I might have given her a proper name. But dragonfly seemed to fit and so it has remained.
My dragonfly.
When I first learned I was to leave Chadwick Hollow for Windsor Castle, my heart broke as much at the prospect of losing her as losing the only home I’d known.
