Chapter 3

We took the stairs that Lance and I used during his weekend party to get to the third floor; passing by the ugly lemon yellow sofa and the magical mirror that hung behind it.  Memories of being transported back in time through that mirror flashed through my head.  I shook them out. It would do me no good to allow my mind to be sidetracked.  I was there to find that magic box and I needed to be alert in order to do it.  When I finally did find it, I fully intended to leave Lance a note about the fact that he neglected to give its exact location.

We decided to split up.  I took the first half of the floor and she took the back half.  If we were in need of the other’s assistance to move a piece of furniture, we were to call out.

Admittedly, I’d searched the back part of the floor on my own on more than one occasion.  Instinct told me that the box was hidden there.  Unlike the front part of the floor, it was used for storage and was cluttered with furniture, trunks and miscellaneous items to the extent that it was practically impossible to maneuver around them.  I’d intended to begin my search there again, but, when Nora offered to give me a reprieve, I gladly accepted.  Besides, even though I put a good deal of stock on my instincts, there was always the possibility of them being wrong.  The box could very well be hidden beneath the floorboards of one of the rooms that had once been occupied by the servants.  In fact, a few only recently  housed the very same servants when Lance brought them to the future with him on his quest to find me.

I bypassed the room that Lance took me to during his party.  The memories of the fantastic orgasms he’d given me while fooling around were still too strong.  I knew that I’d get no searching done if I entered that room.  So, I went to the one across the hall.

The room was small, but well furnished.  In fact, its furnishings resembled those of the room that Lance and I had become lovers in.  As I moved throughout the front wing of the house, I soon discovered that all of the servants’ rooms were basically furnished the same.  I supposed that this was an effort to eliminate any signs of favoritism.  I wondered if that was Vivian’s doing or the work of a more compassionate female to follow. Since I’d never ventured into the servant’s quarters while I was back in time, I had no idea.

I wondered which room Jasmine – my lady’s maid while I was back in time- occupied.  It felt strange to know that she’d walked those halls and slept in one of those rooms.  Somehow, knowing that the butler, Radcliff, had also done so didn’t feel as odd.  Perhaps it was because I’d first met him in my own time as he was one of the servants that Lance brought to the future with him.

The beds were made of cast iron frames, but, since they were narrow beds, they were light enough for me to move on my own. 

When I pulled one away from the wall so that I could investigate the floorboards beneath it, I was surprised to find a bedpan.  This was the case with all of the beds when I moved them.  It was as if the rooms were waiting for their occupants to return, thus remaining fully equipped for the event.  It was then that I realized that the servants may not have been slaves, but they were still treated as lesser humans and denied the use of a water closet.  So, the Northrups may not have believed in slavery, but they apparently also based equality on station in life and skin color. 

I could consider the fact that, at the time, water closets were a new concept, but, then, I’d also have to consider the fact that the Northrups were extremely wealthy.  New or not, they would have installed a water closet for their servants no matter the cost had they thought them deserving of one.

I found the fact that my husband was clearly prejudiced disturbing.  I only calmed down after I vowed to myself to make sure that he saw the error of his ways once we were reunited.

“Did you have any luck?” Nora asked from the doorway of the room that I was inspecting.  “How big is this place, anyway?”

I shrugged.  “I forget the square footage.  It’s in the thousands.  I know that much.”

“It’s like a mini castle without the turret and the moat,” she mused. “The wings branch off into all directions. It’s easy to get lost if you’re not careful.”

“I believe the term is mansion,” I said with a smile.

“Ooo.  My friend owns a mansion,” she teased. “Aren’t we posh?”

I laughed at her teasing. “Help me put this bed back, will you.  After the fourth one, they started to get heavy.”

“Was this entire floor used for servants when you were back in time?” she asked.

“I never came up here, so I don’t really know,” I replied. “I expect so, but I can’t be sure.”

She set her end of the bed down and sat on it.  “Did they have many slaves?”

“They weren’t slaves,”  I corrected her.

“It was before the civil war, right?” she asked.  “Isn’t that when you went back?  Before the war?”

“The other plantations had slaves.  Lance’s family employed free blacks,” I explained.

“African Americans,” Nora corrected me.

“Yes, although most of who they employed didn’t come from Africa.  They were from Jamaica,” I said.

“I’ve often wondered why we’re forced to say African American to be politically correct when not all black people are from Africa.  If I was from Jamaica, I think I’d take offense,” Nora mused.  “We’re called white and don’t take offense by it.  In fact, I think I’d take greater offense if I was referred to by a false nationality such as Irish American when I was of Polish or Russian descent or something like that.  It’s the same as calling a Jamaican born an African American because of his skin color.”

“It’s too political for me to get caught up in,” I warned.  “The world is too unstable to even state such an opinion as that these days.  You’re bound to offend someone with it.”

“I know.  That’s awful, isn’t it?” she asked.

I nodded.  “Society’s gotten better in some ways and worse in other ways.”

“Is it much different from back then?” she asked with genuine curiosity.

I thought for a moment.  “It is.”

“Better or worse?” she asked.

“Since I’m more familiar with today’s customs, I found it to be stifling and limited.  The clothes that women were forced to wear were nothing short of tortuous.  Especially those damned corsets.  It’s a wonder I didn’t return with a few broken bones in my ribcage.  Now I know why women were always fainting back then.”

“Your boobs are perky and your waist is naturally slender.  You could have gotten away without a corset, I think,” Nora said.

“My breasts were a bit too large for the fashion, I’m afraid,” I admitted.  “It took several tries to get the corset laced correctly so that they didn’t pop up like balloons under my chin.”

Nora threw her head back in laughter.  “That must have been quite the sight.”

“Lance had to fix the darned thing for me,” I chuckled.

I closed my eyes as I remembered how he’d loosened the top lacing of my corset to free the pressure on my breasts, only to pull them totally free so that he could suckle me into an orgasm before diving beneath my skirts and pleasuring me some more.  My body was covered with goosebumps and my knees actually felt weak from the thought until I realized that it wasn’t Lance at all who’d done that.  It was Jason.

I quickly pushed the thought from my mind, but not before Nora picked up on the shift in me.

“What’s going on?” she asked.  “This isn’t the first time I’ve watched you start out remembering something wonderful only to jolt out of the thought like a monster crept into it.”

“I’m not ready to talk about it,” I said in a soft voice.

“Maybe if you did, you’d be able to move past it,” she offered.  “I’m your best friend. We’re as close as sisters.  Or, at least I’d like to think we are.  It bothers me to see you suffer, but I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s wrong.”

I sat on the bed next to her and picked at my fingernails while I debated on what to do.  She was right.  We were as close as sisters, if not more so.  I’d always told her everything.  Maybe, if I confided in her about Jason and what he did to me, it wouldn’t plague me as much.

“Lance has a younger brother,” I began.

“Yes,” she said.  “The one who was in line for his inheritance if you didn’t go back with him and get married.  Right?”

“That’s the one,” I said with a nod. “Anyway, I was there for weeks without him making an appearance.  There were rumors that he was on the plantation, but he never showed himself to me.  Or, so the family thought.

“Lance and his brother Jason are a few years apart but, for some crazy reason, they look like identical twins.  In fact, they look so much alike that the only way to tell who is who is by the slight difference in their hair. Jason’s has natural highlights that Lance doesn’t have, but you’d have to have them standing side by side to notice that.  The real way to tell is by the small birthmark behind Lance’s ear that Jason doesn’t have.

“Since no one told me that Jason looked like Lance and Jason hadn’t attended any family dinners or events after I’d arrived for me to see for myself, I had no idea that he was sneaking into my room at night for sex under the guise of being Lance.”

Nora gasped and threw her hands over her mouth, but said nothing.

“Apparently, I hold magic just like Lance does.  I didn’t know this, of course,” I lamented.  “Anyway, when you have sex, the person’s energy field – they call it shine- that holds the magic weakens enough to syphon the magic from it.  That’s what Jason was doing with me each night.  He was syphoning my magic from me through sex.”

“Where was Lance?” Nora asked.

I sighed.  “Lance and I only fooled around before he took me back in time with him.   He told me that he wanted to wait for our wedding night before we actually did it.  So, while I was thinking that he’d changed his mind and was coming to me each night, he was being the gentleman by staying away.”

“Yikes,” Nora said.

“It gets worse,” I told her.  “Lance used all of his magic to find me and transport me.  I didn’t know that he’d come back here to see the lawyers.  I imagine that took the last of it.  He’d planned on replenishing his supply by taking some of mine on our wedding night.  Of course, Jason saw to that, now didn’t he?”

“So, now neither of you have magic?” she asked with concern. 

I shook my head.  “That’s why Anton brought me back instead of Lance.”

Her brows knit together.  “How is he supposed to reunite with you without it?”

I pushed a curl that had worked its way free of my ponytail out of my face.  “I guess his supply will eventually replenish.  If I understand it correctly, it’s naturally available to us and we simply absorb it over time.”  My face distorted in anger.  “Taking it from someone who isn’t your spouse or without their permission is considered a crime, but far be it for Jason to have to pay for his.  His family is too powerful for that.”

“That’s wrong,” she bellowed.

“I’ll tell you what else is wrong,” I continued with fervor.  “Jason isn’t even Lance’s full brother.  His father is Lance’s uncle.”

Her eyes grew wide and her brows raised high. “Oh what a tangled web.”

“Lance’s uncle is his father’s identical twin.  I guess that’s how Jason managed to look so much like him,” I offered.  “Like most of what’s been shoved in front of me to absorb, it’s still not clear,”  I said.

“It is a bit difficult to follow,” she admitted.  “Give me a minute to get straight on this.  Jason is Lance’s half- brother who looks just like him.  Jason’s father is Lance’s father’s identical twin which means that mommy dearest was hopping from bed to bed?”

I vigorously nodded.  “Not only was she hopping from bed to bed, but she was syphoning Lance’s fathers magic from him and then his uncle was taking it from her.”

“Was Lance’s father aware of any of this?” she asked.

I shook my head.

I thought back on how I’d seen Vivian tied to the bedpost while Bart vigorously took her and shuddered.  How could she possibly have enjoyed that?  Then, I guiltily remembered the few times that Jason did it with me when I thought that he was Lance.  I’d found the naughtiness of it arousing.  Did I look like Vivian while tied to the bed? I must have.  Had he taken me as vigorously?  I suspected so. 

“It’s amazing when you think that the man making love to you is the man that you love, how differently the actions of sex are perceived,” I thought aloud.

“I don’t follow,” Nora said.

Realizing that I’d spoken aloud, I looked away. “Nothing.  I was just thinking about how I discovered that Vivian was having an affair with Bart.  That’s all.”

“You discovered it?” she gasped.  “That figures, my investigator friend.”  She chuckled.  “So, until then, no one had a clue?”

I shook my head and gave a wan smile.

“Wow.  I’ll bet that put you low on their popularity list,” she said.

“It got me, literally, kicked out of the house,” I replied.

“Seriously?” she squealed. “Lance let that happen?”

“Not only did he let it happen, but he let me leave without him,” I offered.

“Now, that’s messed up,” she complained.

I shrugged.  “I thought so too until my parents explained things to me.  If he’d gone with me, I’d probably be dead right now.”

“Shit!” she bellowed.  “No wonder you came back.”

“That’s why they faked my death,” I continued. “Now, he not only has to get his magic back, but he needs to figure out how to be with me without anyone suspecting that I’m still alive.”

“But, you’re married now,” she said with confusion. “Shouldn’t the threat to your life be over now?”

“You’d think,” I said with a huff.  “Unfortunately, the people back then are just as crazy as the people today.  There’s a woman named Lilith who wants Lance for herself.  She tried to poison me before the wedding.”

“Oh, Esma! That’s horrible!” she exclaimed. “No wonder you don’t want to talk about it.  What a nightmare.”

“It’s surprising all that can be accomplished without modern chemistry,” I said with a wry smile.

“Shit!”  she bellowed.

“She put some type of poison in my bath salts.  If my lady’s maid hadn’t come and pulled me out when she did, I’d have died in the bathtub,” I reminisced.  “It took me a while to convince Lance that it was poison and not just a reaction to this really bad tea that his mother forced on me because they searched the kitchen and found nothing suspicious.  No one suspected the bath salts.”

She leaned forward.  “How did you find out that it was the salts?”

“She basically let the cat out of the bag by eluding to it at a dinner party,” I said.  “Since her family also belongs to this secret magical society, it didn’t take much to figure it out.”

“Always the investigator,” she said with a grin of pride.

“And thankful for it or I doubt I’d be here,” I insisted.

The sound of footsteps in the hall caught our attention.  We froze and looked at each other, questioningly.  

Since we were the only ones who were supposed to be in the house, we were naturally concerned about who it might be.  Was it a thief come to rob the place? It had been sitting idle for several weeks since Lance left and who knows how long before he arrived.  It would have been a breeze to rob it then. Leave it to our luck for the thief to come while we were there.

I put my finger to my lips as my eyes searched for a weapon to protect us with.  Nora’s did the same.

The footsteps were almost upon us and we could find nothing suitable.  Out of sheer desperation, I grabbed the bedpan from beneath the bed.  Bellowing like a Viking warrior, I raced out of the room with the bedpan held in the position to strike.  Nora had grabbed a bedside lantern and was hot on my heels while making the same Viking cry. 

Our cries bounced off the walls and echoed back to us as we stood in stunned silence.  There was no one in the hall to defend ourselves against.

Tiptoeing as quietly as we could, we searched each room for the intruder.  Our bedpan and lantern were held at the ready. 

We found no one.

Nora’s eyes grew wider with fear at finding no one than when she thought that she’d have to battle an intruder.  “Ghosts?”

I quickly shook my head.  “I’m more tempted to think that it is residual from some type of time travel.  This floor was quite busy at one time and the servants did travel with Lance.  Maybe even with others.”

My explanation had the effect that I wanted and she instantly calmed down.  I headed back to the room that the bedpan belonged to while I recalled the figure that I thought I saw downstairs.  I still didn’t know if it was a human or a ghost, so I said nothing to my dear friend.