Peggy laughed, embarrassed. “I haven’t, have I? It’s kind of you to be willing to see me. And I can assure you that ladies of stature in the United States are not up to their elbows in wash water. Paid servants do the coarser sort of work.”

“But so much more expensively,” said Lady Ashworth. “They expect their wages in cash. We don’t use much money here. It’s all seasonal. The French and English buyers come to town, we sell our cotton or tobacco, and then we pay all the tradesmen for the year. We don’t carry money with us or keep it around the house. I don’t think we’d keep many free servants with such a policy.”

Peggy sighed inwardly. For Lady Ashworth’s heartfire told such a different story. She watered her own plants because the slaves deliberately overwatered the most expensive imports, killing them by degrees. Some imaginary shortage of cash had nothing to do with keeping free servants, for the well-to-do families always had money in the bank. And as for abolition, Lady Ashworth loathed the word as much as any other slaveholder. For that matter, she loathed Peggy herself. But she recognized that some limitation on slavery would have to be achieved in order to placate public opinion in Europe and the United States, and all that Lady Ashworth ever intended to allow Lap-Rip to accomplish was the banning of slavery in certain regions of the Crown Colonies where the land and the economy made slavery unprofitable anyway. Lady Ashworth had always had success in convincing Northerners that she was quite radical on slavery, and expected to do as well with Peggy.

But Peggy was determined not to be treated with such contempt. It was a simple matter to find in Lady Ashworth’s heartfire some of her more recent mistreatment of her slaves. “Perhaps instead of wielding the watering can,” said Peggy, “you might show your commitment to abolition by bringing back the two slaves you have standing stripped in chains without water to drink in the hot sun of the dockyard.”

Lady Ashworth’s face showed nothing, but Peggy saw the rage and fear leap up within her. “Why, Miz Larner, I do believe you have been doing some research.”

“The names and owners of the slaves are posted for all to see,” said Peggy.

“Few of our Northern visitors pry into our domestic affairs by visiting our disciplinary park.”

Too late did Peggy realize that the guards at the disciplinary yard—hardly a “park”—would never have let her inside. Not without a letter of introduction. And Lady Ashworth would inquire who it was who provided a Northern radical like Peggy with such an entree. When she found that there was no such letter and Peggy had made no such visit, she would think—what? That Peggy was secretly a torch? Perhaps. But more likely she would think that one of the household Blacks had talked to Peggy. There would be punishments for the only two Blacks that Peggy had had contact with: Doe and Lion. Peggy looked into the futures she had just created and saw Lady Ashworth hearing Doe’s confession, knowing perfectly well that the old woman was lying in order to protect Lion.