Special thanks to my French-speaking friend, Patricia, who inspired, critiqued and generally put up with the creation of a French maid's English dialogue... my simultaneous apologies and thanks.

Chapter 2: The Stupide Imbécile

(French Translations at end)

Once the cabin door was shut, Eleni turned away from me angrily.

"This was not supposed to 'ave 'appened!"

She stalked towards a chest in the corner of the cramped cabin room.

"Stupide imbécile!"

Flinging the lid open, she began to curse in French to herself as she dug through its contents.

"Stupide!" I overheard her say, followed by snatches of phrases that sounded like, "wrong," and "disaster!"

Finally she turned to me.

She had a knife in her hand.

"You are not supposed to be 'ere!"

I felt the door at my back, and fumbled to put my hand on the iron latch, not letting my eyes leave her or her knife.

"Arrêtez!" She commanded, holding the blade up. "Now, Mademoiselle, you will tell me who you really are!"

I stared at her.

"Tell me!" Her eyes flashed warningly at me. "Or – or, I will make you tell me!"

Her voice trembled.

I tilted my head, studying her.

She stuck her chin out at me in a show of fierce determination, but her knife-hand was shaking.

I decided to risk her bluff.

"Well, go on. Make me."

"Oui! I will!" She stood even straighter, "Who are you?"

"Well, I'm not this Lady Stanhope," I surprised myself with my own calm, faced with a knife as I was, and went on, "But you already know that, don't you?"

"Of course I know that!" She snapped. "I knew at once!"

I frowned as the implications of her admittance sank in.

So she had known I wasn't Lady Stanhope.

She'd known, even when the other man, Lieutenant Scarfield, had not.

The strangest of ideas began to form in my mind. That, for all her show, this woman knew more about what was going on than I did.

Her eyes widened a little as I stepped away from the door.

"If you knew I'm not Lady Stanhope…" I said, "Then you also know how I got here. You know what happened."

After a long moment, she nodded.

"But who are you?" She repeated.

"I really don't think that matters," I shook my head. "I think what matters is getting me the hell back!"

She looked at me, as though shrewdly weighing me up, her eyes darting over my face, apparently thinking fast in the silence. Finally, she seemed to have made her mind up that I posed no actual threat, and groaned out loud in frustration.

"Ah, mon dieu, but this is a mess!"

She threw up her hands, half-turning away in disgust.

"Mind telling me then," I said carefully, "Who I have to blame for this mess?"

She glared at me before sticking her chin out again in another show of anger.

"My lady is a stupide imbécile!"

"Lady Stanhope?"

"She made a mistake!"

"A mistake?"

A 'mistake' didn't seem like a good enough word to describe the crazy situation I appeared to be in, and the French maid was in complete agreement.

"Oui, more than a mistake!" Eleni snorted. "An enormous stupid calamity!"

I nodded, in what I hoped was a sympathetic way, to get her to say more. "What did she do?"

"Peuh! It was a - it was a magic love spell!"

I gaped in disbelief.

She scowled at my expression, before waving the knife threateningly between us.

"And don't start to tell me you don't believe in magic, mademoiselle! It was magic, but it did not work the way it was supposed to!"

I stuffed down the latent hysteria starting to rise at her incredible statement, and kept her talking.

"So, this…" I gestured down to the body I was in, "Happened because a –"

I nearly shook my head at the ridiculous words, except Eleni's glare stalled me.

"– A magic love spell went wrong?"

"Oui!" She huffed. "Stupide woman, she uses 'er own magic, even when I tell 'er no, and it all goes wrong!"

"But if this wasn't – what was supposed to happen… then what was your lady trying to do?"

The French maid looked at me shrewdly, a look which made me uneasy, before rolling her eyes melodramatically and declaring:

"Trying to be with de l'amour de sa vie, of course!"

I stared. "Um - ?"

She groaned as though in pain.

"I tried to tell her, no, madam, not good – but who listens to a maid?"

"De l'amour –" I was still lagging behind. "Her – her lover?"

"Oui," Eleni paced back and forth near the chest, knife still in hand. "She tried to cast a spell, did she not? Her uncle, peuh!"

She mock-spat on the ground.

"'E is the Mayor of St Martin, and 'e sends letters to us in Port Royal, telling 'er no, you are my niece, you cannot stay in the 'ouse alone anymore! Now that 'er parents 'ave died, this uncle says she must leave and come back to St Martin, before the seas become too dangerous to travel, and she is stranded forever. But my lady says no, and I am knowing it is wrong, but when does she ever consider me?"

A look of rage was swiftly covered when she realised I was still staring hard at her.

"And what happened after that?"

"And then…" her tone softens. "The 'andsome Lieutenant John Scarfield comes, all of a sudden, to take 'er back to St Martin. And, mon Dieu, my lady won't stop crying, for days as we sail!"

She scowled.

"And as if it is not already enough, to be sailing about, with these wicked Spanish devils killing everyone they can!"

"So –" I tried to get my head around it all. "Your lady. She tried to – to throw herself into the sea? Because she didn't want to live with her uncle?"

The maid's expression grew even darker, and I watched as her grip on the knife tightened again.

"Non! She was just an imbécile! The love spell says, you must give a sacrifice to make the magic work, and so I –" Eleni stumbled a little, "Excusez-moi, she, she thinks it means that – that she must give 'er life, and so, and so, stupide English, she throws 'erself into the sea before I can stop 'er!"

Something about the story didn't seem to fit, and yet I couldn't put my finger on what it was.

"So how did you know… that I wasn't Lady Stanhope?"

"Peuh!" The maid scoffed. "I knew the moment I saw you laid on the deck, you are someone else! I saw it –" She waved at my face, "Clearly. Others see my lady, but I see your real face. Anyone used to magic can see you."

It was suddenly very hard to breathe again.

I squeezed the folds of the still-sodden dress I wore, and felt a wave of hot and cold wash over me. I wished this was just a dream. A crazy dream, brought on by falling asleep in front of the TV, or eating too much cheese before bed, or just plain having too much on my mind. But it was not.

There was too much tactile sensation for it to be a dream. The itchy blanket, the musty smell of sweat and stale sea air in the chilly cabin, the grey afternoon light streaming in through the tiny window, the heaviness of the wet dress dragging down my skin…

This was too real, and too uncomfortable, to be a dream.

I choked back a hysterical sob in my throat, squeezing more of the dress in my fists, and tried to take a deep breath in spite of the stiff corset.

Ignoring me, Eleni slumped on the bed, her back to me.

"Mon Dieu! I thought she drowned," she sighed. "I was so sure, she was dead!"

She turned and looked at me.

"But instead, she 'as swapped 'er soul for another's! I do not know 'ow she did it!" She shook her head. "But now, there is nothing to be done!"

I felt all the blood drain from my face as a sudden thought, a terrible thought, came to me.

"So she's – she's in my body…?"

The thought of an English lady, from what seemed to be the 1700s, walking around in my body, in the future, was almost comical… except it was my body. My life. My family, my friends… and I wanted to be back there.

I swallowed as Eleni stared back at me mutely, the stony expression on her face confirming it.

"Can you reverse it?" I asked, making a supreme effort to keep my voice steady. I was not going to give into hysteria. Not yet.

The maid considered my words.

The silence stretched long in the cabin between us.

She stared down at the knife in her hands.

"Non." Her face closed down completely as she looked at me. "There is no reversal possible. I do not know of any magic that can 'elp you. 'Er soul is likely now in your body."

"You mean…" my brain threatened to shut down, but I refused to accept that. "I can't go back."

Eleni looked away.

"I'm afraid not," she said softly. "You are in my lady's body now until you die."

FRENCH TRANSLATIONS:

Stupide imbécile - Stupid idiot

Arrêtez - Stop

De l'amour de sa vie - the love of her life

Mon dieu - my God