Isabel Timeline and Summary

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• Isabel's family is split up when her father is sold to a different owner than she, her mother, and Ruth.
• Mary Finch dies. Because the claims that Mary freed Isabel and Ruth in her will can't be proven, the sisters are sold to the Lockton family in New York.
• Isabel meets Curzon, the slave of Bellingham, the chief Patriot officer; he tells her that delivering information to him from her Loyalist family could possibly buy her freedom.
• After becoming aware that Lockton is hiding a large amount of money in a chest to bribe the rebel armies, Isabel tells Curzon of his plot. When the authorities arrive to search for the money, though, they find nothing, since Lockton has already hidden it elsewhere.
• Isabel discovers that Lockton and his Loyalist friends are plotting to kill General George Washington. She makes Colonel Regan aware of this information. When word that the plot is uncovered reaches Lockton, he flees New York, and the assassin is hanged—no one, though, comes to help Isabel and Ruth.
• Paranoid about Ruth's epilepsy and possible demon possession, Madam Lockton sells her. Isabel is understandably enraged by this and gets thrown in jail. Her sentence is to be branded on the face with the letter I for insolence.
• After six days of feverish disorientation, Isabel wakes up at Lady Seymour's house, who has been caring for her since her punishment. She was originally left for dead in the stocks, but Curzon came to Lady Seymour and informed her of Isabel's poor condition.
• At Lady Seymour's order, Isabel returns to serve Madam. 
• When Isabel gets wind of a rumor that the British Lord Dunmore will free any slave who joins the Loyalist cause, she goes to the docks to try to get British commanders to hire her. They refuse her help, though, because Loyalists own her.
• Lockton farms out Isabel to Lady Seymour's service. When fire strikes New York City, Isabel rescues Lady Seymour—and her husband's picture—from the blaze.
• When Fort Washington is captured, Isabel learns that Curzon, who has enlisted in the Patriot army, is among the prisoners.
• She begins bringing leftovers from the Locktons' meals to the prison, and eventually, she starts carrying messages for their captain, who is out on parole. 
• Madam gets wind that she's spending way too much time hanging around the prison, but Isabel decides to disobey her orders in order to protect Curzon and keep him alive.
• A man at the local bookshop gives Isabel a copy of Common Sense, and as she reads its message of freedom, she begins to feel empowered to see her own liberty. 
• A friend of Madam's sees Isabel giving a message to one of the rebel commanders. Rather than betray the commander, though, Isabel throws his message into the fire. Madam reveals that Ruth was not sold, but instead sent to the Lockton estate in Charleston. 
• Locked in the potato bin during a ball honoring Queen Charlotte's birthday, Isabel decides to escape. She steals a pass from Lockton's office and fills it out, declaring herself a free slave and changing her name to Isabel Gardener.
• While it's probably smart for Isabel to make a run for it at this point, she instead goes to the prison and gets Curzon out by pretending he's a dead body she's moving to the stack outside the prison.
• Curzon and Isabel escape across the river to New Jersey… and the adventure continues in the next book.