👉 Continue your journey in Charlotte’s world by reading Chapter One below.

Chapter One - Roots Beneath the Ashes

Tidewater Virginia — Early Spring 1774

The morning air was crisp, laced with the damp scent of freshly turned earth and the sweet bite of curing tobacco, mingled with a faint trace of salt carried upriver from the Chesapeake Bay. Dawn spread slowly over Montgomery Hall, its light gilding the rooftops and casting long, elegant shadows across the manicured gardens and the endless rows of tobacco — the lifeblood of the Montgomery legacy.

Charlotte Montgomery stood on the wide stone veranda; her hands lightly clasped as she gazed across the land her family had shaped for generations. At twenty-one, Charlotte had the quiet bearing of a woman raised in grace — but not untouched by doubt. Her chestnut hair was always pinned neatly behind her shoulders, her eyes a thoughtful shade of green that often gave away more than her words. She was not the kind to demand attention, yet the room always seemed still when she entered. It was a view steeped in memory and expectation — fields she had run through barefoot as a girl, now tilled by hand not her own. The familiar breeze stirred the hem of her skirts, carrying with it a tang of salt and something harder to name. Even here, surrounded by beauty and order, something in her chest tightened — a flicker of unease that no morning sun could warm away.

Montgomery Hall stood tall and symmetrical behind her — a gleaming white mansion nestled between rivers and hills. Its whitewashed brick façade gleamed in the sunlight, the deep green shutters casting crisp shadows beneath a red clay roof crowned with a proud cupola that flew the banner of the King. Two wings flanked the central structure, joined by breezy colonnades. A grand portico, upheld by Doric columns, overlooked a circular carriage path lined with sculpted hedges and brick gateposts bearing the Montgomery crest.

All around, the estate unfurled in graceful abundance — tight-trimmed lawns leading to groves, orchards, and, at the edges of the horizon, the vast rolling tobacco fields that fed the family's fortune. Nearly two thousand acres of rich Tidewater soil — and with it, the legacy of one of Virginia’s most prominent Loyalist families.

It was the land — and tobacco — that had built their wealth.

With its broad rivers and fertile deltas, Tidewater Virginia had become a kingdom of planters - and tobacco was its gold. It paid for fine horses, French wine, Cambridge tutors, London gowns, and gilded mirrors that reflected chandeliers from Williamsburg to Philadelphia.

Colonel Charles Montgomery had returned from war with the scars of battle and the favor of the Crown. He had fought under His Majesty’s banner during the French and Indian War, earning both a commission and grants of land that stretched as far as the eye could see. For his loyalty and service, he was rewarded with position, honor, and prosperity.

Montgomery Hall was not merely a home. It was a monument — a testament to what steadfast loyalty could earn in a world still ruled by kings.

From the distant fields, Charlotte heard the creak of wagon wheels and the soft rhythm of hooves. The planting season was beginning again, and every hand — free and enslaved — had a role to play.

Samuel’s voice carried on the breeze, firm but fair, calling orders to the workers tending to the first new rows of tobacco. Samuel had overseen the field laborers for years — a man born into bondage yet carrying himself with the quiet authority of one born free. Her father trusted him not just with labor but with the management of the fields themselves — a rare dignity in a land where men like him were often treated like tools, not minds.

Closer to the house, Ruth’s familiar humming floated through the open kitchen windows. Ruth had served the Montgomery family for decades, first as a young house girl, now as the respected keeper of the household’s rhythms. Though by law she was enslaved, in spirit, she was something more — caretaker, guide, and quiet guardian of all that stirred beneath Montgomery Hall’s grand halls. She had rocked Charlotte through childhood fevers and wept in silence after Colonel Montgomery’s long absences at court. She was family — though the laws of Virginia would never name her so.

Meg’s laughter rang faintly from the side gardens — a light, carefree sound. At just fifteen, Margaret "Meg" Montgomery was a whirlwind of energy and sunshine, bustling between the kitchens, the orchards, and the drawing rooms with baskets of apples or bolts of cloth trailing behind her. She was the youngest — too young for political conversations, too young to understand how close the world was to tilting beneath them. But not too young to see. Or to remember.

Inside the house, her brother William would already be reviewing plantation ledgers in their father's study — ever the responsible heir, scribbling figures with the precision their father had instilled in him since boyhood. At twenty-four, William had grown into the role with somber resolve, though Charlotte sometimes wondered if he ever longed for a life beyond tobacco quotas and Crown obligations.

Nathaniel, by contrast, could rarely be kept indoors. Just seventeen, he was all restless energy and flickering tempers — too old to be dismissed as a boy, too young to be taken seriously by men like their father. His questions were sharper lately, and his silences were more frequent.

Their mother, Eleanor, held to tradition with quiet authority — a woman who hosted teas with perfect grace, spoke French with Charleston merchants, and never permitted her grief to reach the surface. Since the Colonel’s return from Williamsburg, she had been more guarded than usual, her tones clipped, her gaze lingering too long at the window.

Charlotte tucked these thoughts away.

Inside, she could hear the low clink of teacups and the hushed tones of Eleanor's conversation with a visiting neighbor. They spoke of dresses, officers, and loyalty — words worn like polished jewelry at gatherings and assemblies.

Safe words. Loyalist words. Words tethered to a distant King — and an even more distant Parliament that had begun, it was whispered, to see the colonies less as subjects and more as dependents to be taxed and tamed.

Charlotte turned her gaze northward toward the line of misty trees where the river bent out of sight — and beyond that, toward Boston. Boston, where crates of tea had floated like wreckage in the harbor. Boston, where anger had begun to find a voice.

Virginia had not yet risen to violence, but something unspoken stirred beneath the civility of its courtrooms and drawing rooms — a quiet, coiling tension.

Though her father was just inside the house, she could almost hear his voice in her mind — cautious, commanding, unwavering. He would say that liberty, like fire, should be respected, not toyed with.

Once, she had not worried about such distant matters. Once, her world had been bound by the gentle hills of home, the steady presence of her father’s voice, the warmth of candlelight and chamber music.

She remembered being a girl, barefoot in the orchard, her father lifting her onto his shoulders as he pointed across York River.

"Your brothers may inherit the land, Charlotte," he said, “but it is you who must guard what cannot be passed in a will — our name, our legacy, our blood. Hold it with love — and never with fear."

At the time, she hadn’t understood. She was beginning to now.

Movement caught her eye near the garden wall. Nathaniel — her youngest brother — was slipping away from the kitchen path with a mischievous glint in his eye. No doubt plotting another escapade with Samuel's younger apprentices.

She smiled despite herself. Then the smile faded.

The world was shifting beneath their feet — and not even Montgomery Hall, with all its grandeur, could hold it back forever.

That evening, a letter arrived from Williamsburg — hand-delivered, unmarked, addressed in a sharp hand only her father recognized.

Colonel Montgomery took it in silence and read it alone in his study, the candlelight casting shadows across his desk.

"By His Majesty’s Order: Major Alastair Beckett, recently of His Majesty’s Intelligence Corps, is hereby assigned to observe and report upon the state of loyalty among the Tidewater gentry… His presence is confidential until necessity demands otherwise."

The colonel exhaled slowly and folded the letter twice before tucking it into a locked drawer. A single thought lingered as he stared out toward the distant fields:

The Crown no longer trusts even its own.