Table of Contents

Title Page and Synopsis

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Also by Amanda DeWees

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Books by Amanda DeWees

Copyright Notice

Copyright © 2014 Amanda DeWees

Synopsis: In this spooky, sparkling mix of gothic mystery and romantic comedy, spirited Victorian actress Sybil Ingram vies for a Hudson Valley haunted house with hot-tempered musician Roderick Brooke—and locks horns with a mysterious, powerful rival.

The ability to lie persuasively is one of the greatest gifts a woman can possess in this life. Some critics, principally men, will argue that deception in women is inherently evil; but having spent the last fifteen years of my life in the theater, I can attest that lying not only is sometimes expedient but can save one’s career. And as I was to learn in the coming weeks, lying can even save someone’s life… or destroy it.

On that rainy morning in January 1873, the deception upon which I was about to embark seemed harmless enough. Certainly it was well meant—although we all know the sinister fate of good intentions. But its consequences would reach across an ocean and into the lives of more people than I could have imagined.

This possibility, however, was far from my thoughts when I rapped at the office door of Gerhardt Atherton, my mentor and the manager of the theatrical troupe that had been both home and family to me for many years.

Atherton never answered his door in a normal fashion. His decades in the theater had colored his everyday speech, so one’s knock was never greeted with a response as straightforward as “Who is it?” or even “Enter!” The greeting I received, uttered in syllables as round and rich as a series of Christmas puddings, was “Hark! What questing summons is this?”

I turned the knob and opened the door. Atherton was alone, fortunately. He was seated at his desk, and the clutter on its surface nearly hid the expanse of his straining waistcoat. Nearly, but not entirely. Atherton seemed to be the rare individual who did not experience romantic ardor; instead, his passion was reserved for the theater and the table, and his stoutness was evidence of his fondness for the latter. His face must once have been handsome but was now merely genial, cushioned as it was on a double chin, and his black hair no doubt received assistance from art now that nature had decided to bestow her favors on younger men.

“Have you a moment, Atherton?” I asked.

“For you, my fair Sybil, a moment is never sufficient,” he said gallantly, heaving himself to his feet. “By all means, grace this humble apartment with the effulgence of your presence for as long as you desire.”

A moment was also never sufficient, I should have recalled, for conversation with Atherton. I entered the office, shut the door firmly behind me, and turned the key in the lock. I wanted no risk of anyone walking in on this discussion.

Atherton’s office was furnished with framed posters and playbills from past productions, massive oil paintings of Edmund Kean and John Philip Kemble, and even a mannequin dressed in Atherton’s own costume from a long-ago performance as Orlando. Bottle-green curtains kept out the chill, and thick oriental rugs in jewel colors muffled one’s footsteps. The room was warmed by a fireplace, and occasionally a raindrop would fall into the fire with a hiss like a critical audience. It was a cozy room, comfortable to the point of indolence. On more than one occasion I had entered to find Atherton dozing peacefully in his leather armchair.

I seated myself before his desk, and Atherton resumed his own chair with an expression of relief. “I am worried,” I announced. “How are our takings this week? Should we go over the ledgers?”

He made a dismissive gesture with one plump, beringed hand. “My dear Gloriana, such plebeian pursuits drag down the soul from the aerie of art to the sordid level of commerce. You should not sully your starlike orbs with such matters. Nor could I bear to betake myself to so dismal a task when my eyes could be feasting on the sight of the fairylike creature that is Sybil Ingram, the reigning goddess of the London theater scene!”

I ignored the compliment. Atherton scattered them as freely as birdseed, and what he called plebeian pursuits were rapidly becoming the most pressing issue in my life. Over the years I had taken on more and more responsibility for the running of the troupe, so that now I was something of a co-manager with Atherton. “I suppose the books wouldn’t tell me anything new, at that,” I said. “It’s impossible not to realize how badly we are faring since we returned from the American tour. We are limping from one week’s earnings to the next.”

He hesitated, then said with unusual gravity, “I am no stranger to this grievous knowledge, fair Sybil. It has wrapped me in a shroud of melancholy this fortnight and more.”

Surprised though I was by this admission, I was also relieved that I would not have to convince him that we were nearing a crisis. “And have you thought of a solution?”

A further pause, which disquieted me. Atherton was usually more forthcoming. Indeed, the usual difficulty in conversation with him was to find a moment when he was not speaking. “Have you any such felicitous thoughts, fair nymph?” he asked instead of answering me.

Since we had known each other so long—nearly half of my life—I could be blunt. “The costs of renting and maintaining this theater are ruining us, especially with the roof repairs from last autumn. Our running expenses are so much higher than they used to be that I do not see how much longer we can continue in this fashion. It isn’t that I mind doing without my salary for a few weeks, but I would very much like to know that there is an end in sight for our belt-tightening.”

“My dear Sybil, your waist is sylphlike enough; there needs no further constriction.”

“Hence my concern,” I said. “Atherton, I fear we shall soon find ourselves in dire straits indeed unless… unless you will consider what I have to suggest.”

“And what salve or tincture, o fair one, do you propose that we apply to the predicament?” The words were wary, as if he sensed the magnitude of the proposal I was about to make.

I sat up very straight, lifted my chin, and fixed him with the look of determination that he had nicknamed Britannia Triumphant. “We should return to touring,” I said. “No, no, hear me out! Before we took the theater here in Drury Lane we did not have this inflated rent that is liable to be increased on a landlord’s whim. We required fewer and more modest sets and properties since we performed in smaller halls. We did not require this enormous staff. It was much more economical, and—”

I had almost said, “and much more enjoyable.” But this was one of the rare points on which Atherton and I disagreed. Instead I concluded, “Returning to the trouping life would be better for us all.”

“Ah,” he said. Clasping his hands behind his back, he walked pensively away from me. “My dear, as much delight as it would bring me to grant your every wish, I cannot see my way clear to doing so in this instance.”

“Why not?” I demanded.

“For a start, as much as I shrink from the sordid discussion of lucre, there is the question of our lease on this theater. Were we to break it, a penalty that is nothing short of draconian would come down on us like the wolf on the fold.”

So accustomed was I to being the more practical of us two that I blinked in shock. “I had forgotten about the lease.”

A beatific smile absolved me of blame. “Nymphs are not to be expected to wallow in the mire of commerce, fair maid. But do you not enjoy London? Here in the capital, with our own kind all around us, we are truly at home.”

“I know how you enjoy it. But it isn’t quite the same for an aging ingénue, Atherton. I am now twenty-eight years old—”

A discreet cough reproached me.

“Very well, nearly thirty. And my popularity is waning.”

“My fair Gloriana, your radiance is undimmed. You shine as gloriously as ever.”

“Don’t deny it, Atherton; we have both seen the crowds flock to new ingénues like Narcissa Holm while our audiences shrink. In a smaller house it wouldn’t matter so much, but in this London behemoth…” I shook my head helplessly. On tour we tended to play in modestly sized venues, and we had never had a difficulty filling seats. But it took far greater numbers to fill the vast theater in which we now performed, and empty places in the audience were conspicuous. “It is the nature of our business. There are always new talents with which we compete, and they are thick on the ground in London. Please, Atherton—is there no way we can return to touring?”

“I know you miss that vagabond life, my Sybil. Your discontentment has been well disguised, but I have felt it all the same.”

“I cannot help it,” I said, rising to walk over to a window and draw the curtain aside. The view was obscured by sleet, but I knew it by heart; it had remained the same, with only minute variations, for all the months since our last tour. The muddy cobbled street with its same line of lampposts, its same soot-grimed buildings, its same hansom cabs and street vendors and passersby—I had come almost to detest it, so weary was I of seeing it day in and day out. It reminded me too much, perhaps, of the life I had so gladly cast off to join the theater, and perhaps behind my present restlessness lay the feeling of sinking back into that swamp of futility and gloom.

Turning my back to the depressing view, I pleaded, “Don’t you remember how exciting it was? How can you not miss the adventure of it all? Moving from town to town before any one place could grow stale, always traveling on to whatever lay in store for us. Will you not at least consider the idea, Atherton?”

He bowed his head. “I am truly sorry, but I am tethered and cannot follow you, my will-o’-the-wisp, as I did in days of yore.”

“Oh, Atherton.” I sank back into my chair. “Is your rheumatism worse? I had hoped…”

“As had I, fair Gloriana. As had I.” His sigh seemed to come from the depths of the earth itself. “My doctor tells me my trouping days are o’er, alas. Enchained am I, like Prometheus to his rock; trapped like Ariel in the cloven pine.”

Silently we contemplated the sentence. Atherton’s rheumatism had grown more severe in the last six months, but I had not realized that it had become so serious as to confine him to London. So returning to the road was definitely out of the question. Even if Atherton agreed to remain in London while the rest of us toured, it would be a terrible load to take on all of the managing duties while performing as well. I was already doing as much as I felt I could without becoming slipshod or working myself to the point of exhaustion.

It began to look as if I would have to fall back on my other plan. I had hoped so much not to have to resort to it, but it seemed the theatrical life was closing its doors to me. It was time to broach the idea—as delicately as I could so that Atherton did not feel I was deserting him.

“In that case,” I said, “we must look for another solution. Atherton, I know that you will protest this, because you are the most loyal and gallant man I have ever known”—he waved this away—“but I beg you to consider it seriously. I truly think you must contemplate bringing some new ingénue into the troupe who will be a greater draw than I.”

He widened his eyes so much that his monocle popped out, a gesture of which he never tired. “Sweet shades of Thespis, my Sybil, but you have hit upon the very idea that I have been turning over! How fortunate that you broached the delicate subject yourself, for I have been cudgeling my brains for a way to do so.” Beaming, he resumed his chair and sat back with a little sigh of satisfaction. “How beautifully everything is arranging itself!”

Stunned, I wondered if I was understanding him correctly. “Do you mean that you…”

“I have been poised to make just such an arrangement, but I could not think of a way to tell you without wounding you. And my dear nymph, I could never bear to cause you pain.”

Unfortunately, this was just what his words were doing. How long had he been planning to replace me? “Who is it to be?” I asked numbly.

He beamed. “You mentioned her yourself. Miss Narcissa Holm, the remarkable young woman who is taking London by storm! Her manager, Treherne, approached me about bringing her into our company.”

It made sense: a seasoned troupe like ours had the strong supporting players, the properties and costumes, that Treherne had not been able to assemble when he presented his new young actress to London. Miss Holm herself had become the toast of town, but it was well known that her brilliance eclipsed the collection of awkward, green, ill-clad actors that Treherne had cobbled together.

But there was an obstacle to adding her to the company: me.

“At the time I told him it was out of the question, of course,” Atherton continued. We have known each other so long that at times it almost seems that we can read each other’s thoughts. “I would never relegate my resplendent Sybil to secondary roles, I said. But if you are prepared to step aside for a new ingénue…”

What roles would be left for me in such an arrangement, though? We already had Gertrude Fox, a magisterial actress in her forties, to fill the heavy roles; with my higher mezzo-soprano voice and more piquant facial features, I would be sadly out of place were I to try to fill her shoes. That left only miscellaneous roles—handmaidens, mothers—and it was nearly impossible to make a living with these. Most of the women who played these parts were married to actors and not in the position of supporting themselves by their work alone. And I confess that my pride stung at the prospect of going from leading roles to nameless ones.

“It seems,” I said, “that it is time for me to retire,” and the words summoned Atherton out of his chair to come pat my hand—evidently to ease my distress, although his distress seemed nearly equal to mine.

“Unspeak those fateful words, my dear!” he urged. “You cannot mean to deprive the theatrical world of its most glorious exponent. Fear not, I have made no promises to Treherne. And Miss Holm does not insist that you be removed.”

Not yet, perhaps. But there was no doubt in my mind that she’d soon find a reason to eject me from the troupe. Why would she take the risk that I would steal focus, divide the audience’s loyalties, and take the lion’s share of Atherton’s time and attention? It seemed I would be forced to take the other path that offered itself—to leave the life that I had loved for fifteen years. My heart ached at the prospect, but I hid my emotion behind a mask of briskness. “It would be best for the troupe,” I said, “and for you—and for me as well. It is time I moved on, Atherton.”

“My dear child, I cannot permit you to abandon your muse and your livelihood. How will you live? It is not… not practical,” he concluded, and the distaste with which he spoke this despised word nearly made me laugh despite the gravity of the discussion.

“Never let it be said that Sybil Ingram has no other irons in the fire,” I said grandly. He must not know how deeply he had wounded me or how wrenching this decision was. “Mr. Alcott Lammle has been proposing to me regularly by letter and telegram for the past five months. It’s high time I put the gentleman out of his misery and let him take me away from my life of toil to pamper me for the rest of my days.”

“Marriage?” Atherton exclaimed, staggering back with a hand to his breast, like Polonius stabbed through the arras. “By the girdle of Hippolyta, sweet nymph, you cannot be in earnest!”

Though conveyed in exaggerated terms, his surprise was natural. Early in my career I had learned, through both experience and observation, the dangers of allowing oneself to be ruled over by a man, so I had evaded all such domestic ties. So firm was my resolve that Atherton had taken to addressing me as Gloriana and the Virgin Queen, perhaps satirically, but I was pleased at the comparison to Good Queen Bess. She had shown solid good sense in refusing to submit to a husband, and to some degree I had modeled my own private life on hers. I had no wish to be under the control of any man, legally or otherwise.

Atherton was different. No contract bound me to him, whether marital or professional. Nor had he ever demanded any compensation for his goodness to me… but the same could not be said for the men who had, over the years, claimed to be in love with me. I had grown wary of all they brought to tempt me, whether honeyed words or extravagant gifts. Any gift from a suitor more substantial than sugared violets or a bottle of eau de cologne came, I knew, wrapped tightly in obligations and tied up in the bow of quid pro quo.

For that reason I had always been careful not to single out any of my gentleman followers or to encourage them to believe I would be receptive to any but the most innocuous of attentions. The wry thought occurred to me that if I had been less averse to making myself available to a patron, I might not now find myself being forced out of the theatrical world. But Alcott Lammle was a far cry from the theater hangers-on who thought to take an actress as a mistress—an idea I always firmly quashed, if necessary with the aid of a hatpin.

“I am quite in earnest,” I told him. “If you recall Mr. Lammle, you will remember that he is a far better prospect than most of my self-appointed swains.”

“Ah yes!” He snapped his fingers in triumphant recollection. “The American hotelier?”

Mr. Lammle would have been difficult to forget, if not for his own sake then for the extravagant parties and dinners he had hosted in my honor during our last American tour. His person was also memorable: a distinguished gentleman in his fifties, he had the athletic form and energetic bearing of a much younger man, and although his hair was iron gray, it was abundant, with no signs of impending baldness. (I have always been a keen admirer of male beauty, so I had observed this with relief.) He spoke with authority and vigor, as one accustomed to command, and his American accent was not so pronounced that it grated on my ear.

I had found him pleasant to converse with, though his conversational repertoire was limited somewhat by the life he had led as a self-made millionaire: first in construction, then as the owner and manager of two successful hotels, with a third in the planning stages. Until quite recently he had not had the leisure to partake much of the arts, so busy had he been with his business affairs, but now that his hotels were running smoothly, he had told me, he was able to delegate more of their responsibilities to others and enjoy himself. He had soon discovered a taste for theatrical entertainment, and having been present at one of my troupe’s performances in the vicinity he had immediately sought me out and presented himself as an admirer.

“I could do far worse than Alcott Lammle.” I directed the words to Atherton, but I was reassuring myself as much as him. “He is kind and intelligent and genuinely fond of me. And never to have to worry about money again will be no small relief.”

“To think,” said Atherton, clutching the corner of his desk as if to support himself under the weight of this astonishing idea, “of you leaving this most glorious of callings to become a mere—a mere wife. Shall your spirit not chafe at the constraints of the plebeian sphere to which it will now be fettered?”

“You think I shall expire from ennui, do you? Have some faith, Atherton. New York City should be a lively place to live. In any case, you know what they say about beggars.” Despite my resolve, bitterness had crept into my voice. I cleared my throat and resumed my bright smile. “Now, contact Treherne this very morning and tell him that you are prepared to discuss terms. Oh, but do give me time to wire Mr. Lammle first; it is the mannerly thing to do.”

“Sweet Sybil. Your generous spirit astounds and confounds me quite.” Atherton lifted my hand to his lips for a gentle salute, but then he remained silent, and this was so unusual that it filled me with concern.

“I sense an objection lurking in the wings,” I said. “Out with it, Atherton. What is the difficulty?”

Turning his substantial back to me, he clasped his hands beneath the tails of his coat and paced ponderously down the carpet. “If Treherne insists on examining our books, and he would be a fool not to, he will find certain… irregularities.”

In a flash of insight I realized why Atherton had been so reluctant to leave London. “You’re gambling again, aren’t you?” The only thing he loved as much as food and the theater was gambling. I had thought he had mastered the weakness, but the gaming houses of the city must have drawn him like a siren’s song.

He turned swiftly, holding up his hands as if to ward me off. “Be gentle in your wrath, fair goddess. I saw how desperate were our straits. I thought if perhaps I could build on the little sum we were reaping each week—”

I leapt to my feet. “Don’t try to make excuses, you great foolish oaf,” I practically shouted. “You had no business doing such a thing! That was not your money, it was ours. It belonged to every man Jack who works with us. How could you possibly—”

The face he raised to me was red with shame and anguish, and he reached out in supplication. “I know, Gloriana. I am far from insensible to the enormity of my actions! But to see our returns dwindling each week—knowing how many in our family must be fed and sheltered—”

There was no reasoning with him when he was like this. Flinging up my hands, I heaved a great sigh and dropped into my chair once more. “Never mind. It is done now.” Belatedly I remembered to lower my voice; the last thing I wanted was for anyone to overhear us. “And Treherne has learned of this? Is that the difficulty?” Atherton would certainly not be able to enter into a business partnership if he were known to have gambled with the weekly receipts.

“Not yet,” he said, in a voice remarkably small for such a large man. “But I fear it may not be possible to keep the truth from him forever.” He shook his head and gave a deep, tragic sigh. “If only there were someone who could shield me by taking the blame. Someone, perhaps, who is leaving the theatrical sphere, who would never feel the slightest repercussion… someone whose career I launched and whose success owes itself to me to some degree…”

This made twice in one morning that Atherton had struck me to the heart. The astonishment almost overcame the pain of it. Never had I thought he would take advantage so of my loyalty. “Please,” I said, “don’t ask that of me.”

His eyes were mournful and injured as they sought mine. “It isn’t so very great a favor to ask, is it, after all that we’ve meant to each other? I have been like a father to you, my dear, you’ve said so yourself. I shudder sometimes to think of what might have happened to you if I had not taken you under my wing. A slip of a lass of fifteen, eager to become an actress—untutored in the ways of the world—and with so many men about who might have taken advantage of your innocence…”

But it was Atherton who was taking advantage of me now. All these years I had believed him to be different from the men who had offered me their patronage, but the truth was that Atherton wanted to be repaid after all. Not with my body, but with my good name.

“I can’t,” I said with difficulty. “I’m sorry, Atherton, but the troupe has been my family. I could not bear it if they thought that I had betrayed them by gambling with their earnings.”

“Then you know the heavy burden that I would bear, Gloriana.” His voice was wheedling. “How can they ever trust me again if they should come to know of this? And Treherne and Miss Holm would certainly withdraw their offer. The troupe would founder without a strong leading lady. We might all end up destitute—penniless—without the means to feed ourselves.”

I was silent, struggling with myself. Observing this, he offered in a reassuring tone, “Naturally I would do my utmost to prevent the story from reaching anyone else’s ears. It would be held in the strictest confidence, only to reassure Treherne and Miss Holm that they can with confidence partner with me. I would bind them to secrecy.” He reached out to raise my chin so that I was forced to look at him. “You will be on another continent, far from the reach of any rumors. Will my daughter deny me my only request? For you have been a daughter to me all these years. And I believe I do not flatter myself when I say that I have been a good father to you.”

And so he had—until today. A sometimes foolish, impractical, and weak father, but one whom I loved, and who loved and protected me.

In a sense he was right. In my new life I would be far removed from the world of the theater. With an ocean between us, I would not feel the ramifications of such a story going public. The realization that I might never see my home country again after my marriage sent a dart of sudden dismay into me, but I could not think about that now. I owed Atherton so much… and I wanted all the members of my theater family to be done with the strain and uncertainty of the lean times we had endured.

“Very well,” I said. “If Treherne notices the missing money, you may tell him I was the culprit.”

My mentor beamed at me and enfolded me in his arms. “An angel in human form,” he proclaimed. “That is what you are, my Sybil, and no less, swooping down ex machina to rescue me and our family. From the first time I saw you, I knew you would bring me luck. Our years together have been golden ones, have they not?”

“We have had a lovely run together.” I drew away, fumbling in my reticule for my handkerchief. One of the inconvenient consequences of learning to weep onstage at will is that one weeps so much more readily offstage as well. “Tell Treherne that you are ready to open negotiations,” I said, applying the handkerchief to my eyes as I tried to compose myself. “We shall announce that I am leaving the theater. But, if you please, let us present it as a triumphant departure, not withdrawing defeated from the field. I am moving on to better things—a life of leisure after the years of toil.”

Atherton put his hand to his heart and bowed. “The career of my fair benefactress may be ending, but it shall not be sullied with suspicion. Your future happiness is all in all to me.”

Once I would have believed that. I rose, smoothing down my skirts as if I could smooth down my ruffled spirits, and reached out both my hands to take his. “I hope that your new leading lady is all you desire,” I said with an effort. “I know that you will do everything in your power to make her a success, as you have with me. I could not have asked for a better mentor all these years, Atherton.”

If this was not completely true… well, I did point out at the beginning of this account that lies are a part of my profession. As my old friend embraced me, raining blessings upon me as well as a few paternal tears, my mind was already racing ahead to all the preparations that lay before me.

All the lies.

Graves was the first I told of my news—my rehearsal, in a sense, for the performance I would give to the world at large.

Clara Graves had been my personal modiste and dresser for so many years that I forgot from time to time that her name was an assumed one. Like many in the theatrical world, myself included, she had found it expedient to use a name not her own. She was a tall, slender, straight-backed woman a few years my senior with thoughtful dark eyes and a great deal of curly dark hair that she restrained with a snood. She would have been quite attractive if her demeanor had not been so forbidding… which was deliberate, as she wished not to be subjected to the attentions of the theater Lotharios. In this, as in many other respects, she was an intelligent woman.

Otherwise our personalities could hardly have been more dissimilar. She preferred to observe before speaking and to speak only to the point, and her sense of humor was so dry that I did not always recognize when it was in use. Nevertheless, she had been a steadfast companion to me for many years, and her response would give me an idea of how plausible my story was.

I broke the news to her that evening in my dressing room as I prepared for the night’s performance. My dressing room was my favorite place in the world, second only to the stage itself. It was painted a delicate salmon pink and furnished with feminine touches like framed prints, a divan heaped with cushions, and an ornate gilt-edged mirror over the skirted dressing table. I paid Harris, the doorman, to keep it stocked plentifully with vases of fresh flowers, not only to please my eye but also to mask the less delightful odors of backstage, unwashed costumes and nervous actors being the most pungent. For similar reasons I favored a strong eau de cologne.

As much as I loved it, however, I would not be entirely sorry to leave my dressing room behind. It was time to move on.

“Graves,” I said, watching her in the mirror as I applied my rouge, “I am to be married.”

Her dark eyes grew large in her face. She was removing soil from the hem of my day dress, and the clothes brush stilled in her hand. “Married?” she exclaimed. “To whom?”

“To Alcott Lammle,” I said, making certain to speak brightly. “You remember, from when we played last year in New York?”

Graves digested this. “Will you be settling here in London?” she asked. She had a low, pleasant voice, one that with training might have made her successful on stage if her interests had lain in that direction. It was a voice that could sound very solemn indeed, as it did now.

Perhaps I should be showing more excitement, for it might prove infectious. “No, Graves, you don’t understand,” I told her, rising from the dressing table. I seized her around the waist and drew her into a waltz with every appearance of giddy delight. “I’m leaving the theater. No more work for me. I shall grow fat and lazy and contented, and be ‘that nice Mrs. Lammle,’ and Alcott can spoil me to his heart’s delight. I shall host society ladies at tea and throw the dullest dinner parties imaginable. And I shall revel in it!”

Even as I spoke, my heart began to lighten. To be free from the constant anxiety about money, about my future, about my troupe’s future—this would be a glorious reprieve. And I felt I would enjoy living in New York City. Raw and raucous though it had been, it had possessed an energy that made my blood hum. I knew I would never be bored there.

And despite the placid picture I had drawn for Graves, I could easily see myself becoming a successful society hostess whose dinners would be graced with so many fascinating people from around the globe that invitations to the Lammle house would be fiercely sought after. I could hear the neighborhood gossip now: “Were you at the Lammles’ on Saturday? She always gives such elegant parties. And if there is a lovelier creature in New York, I have yet to meet her! Her conversation has such brilliance. What a marvelous addition she has been to society!” Yes, it would be an exciting change.

But Graves’s expression did not brighten. “And the troupe?”

“Oh, they can find some other leading lady—Narcissa Holm might suffice.” Petty though it was, I could not resist giving the words a condescending twist. “The company will scarcely notice I’m gone,” I added, hoping that this would not prove true. The idea of being forgotten by the very people who had constituted my family for so long brought a pang to my heart. But the giddy bride-to-be I was impersonating would have no thought of anything but her new life.

“And what of me?” she asked quietly.

That brought me down to earth, and I stared at her in dismay. I doubted Narcissa Holm or her manager would wish to hire on my dressmaker. Without me, Graves had no place in the troupe. And as for accompanying me into my new life—“Graves,” I said, “I am sorry, but I cannot take you with me.”

“Cannot?”

“It is Alcott. He is quite determined that I leave all vestiges of my life in England behind once we are married.” He had been emphatic about this in his telegrams and letters, for it was evidently a point of pride with him that I should be decked out in an entirely American wardrobe. It had not mattered to me until this moment, when I realized that my marriage would bring unhappy consequences for one of the people closest to me. “He tells me that he has already hired a dressmaker who is quite in demand in New York,” I explained. “Truly, if it were my decision, naturally I’d want you with me. But I shall need to dress in the style of the American ladies of Alcott’s circle, and my dear, you’re far too original for such drab work!”

My feeble attempt to mollify her made her smile, though it was not the happiest of expressions. “I fear that leaves me at a loose end,” she said. “The fact is, the company won’t need to keep me on. I’ve always worked for you rather than the troupe. They did for themselves before I arrived, and without you to pay my wages they’ll not want the expense of a resident seamstress.”

I bit my lip, wishing I had anticipated this turn of events. If only I had thought to tell Atherton to make her continued employment a condition of the new arrangement. But Atherton had detained me less than an hour ago to say that the contract had already been signed. “You are right, of course. What shall you do?”

“I shall have to think of something,” she said.

Dressmakers as skilled as Graves could always find work, I knew, especially with a glowing reference from Sybil Ingram. And if she had difficulty finding a new position, she would certainly inform me, and I would find something for her… although I was not certain just how.

There were so many preparations to make for my departure and the journey ahead of me that I admit Graves’s predicament was not uppermost in my mind over the next few weeks. I had to book my passage on a steamship, settle my accounts, determine which of my belongings to dispose of and which to take with me. And with every step that committed me more to my future, the more optimistic I was about it.

All the things I had urged Atherton to remember were true: the thrill of moving from place to place, looking ahead to something new always rising on the horizon, the sense of adventure—these clamored for my attention, reminding me that even though I would not be in the company of my theater family, I was indeed setting out on an adventure, and one that held a great deal of promise. A new country for my home, a new role, a new companion in the great undertaking that is life.

Even giving away many of my possessions felt like freedom. Too many things weighed one down; they became just another burden. I would travel light. After all, Mr. Lammle would see to all my material comforts, and I required few mementoes of the past. I would keep playbills from some of my greatest successes, and some of the ensembles Graves had sewn for me—naturally I needed something to wear for the journey!—and cabinet card portraits of my closest friends. But I knew I would not need those aids to remember any of them.

Among those I was sorry to leave behind, however, I did not include Narcissa Holm.

I had fully expected to encounter the Holm creature, of course, but I had intended to do so under my own terms. I had planned our meeting to its last detail: she would be waiting in my dressing room during my final performance, which would give her plenty of time in which to observe all the signs of my long and successful career—the elegant furnishings, the bouquets from admirers, the notes from well-wishers in an abundant heap on my dressing table. The sound of applause would meet her ears again and again as she waited there for me. At last I would sweep in, exhilarated from a triumphant performance, and I would be gracious, quite gracious, for after all I could afford to be. I would be patient with her stammering and blushes, for had I not once been the eager neophyte myself? I would give her the benefit of my superior wisdom, offering some gentle advice about ways she could improve herself. And if she showed herself appreciative, I might extend an invitation to the closing party… but probably not, for I wanted only old and dear friends and colleagues around me on my final night.

However, the scene did not unfold as I had foreseen. I shall never know whether it was her idea or her manager’s, but our meeting showed a true actress’s sense of timing… and a serpent’s sense of cunning. It was on the night of my final theatrical performance, in Tom Taylor’s Joan of Arc.

On some nights, as any actor will attest, everything falls into place. The planets pause in their celestial dance, the ordinary world fades away, and the perfect audience finds the perfect performance. This was one of those nights. My emotion at bidding goodbye to the theater colored every word I spoke, lending an extra poignancy to my performance, and I could feel that each individual person in the audience was echoing my every laugh and sigh, unthinkingly following where I led them. And I, too, was swept away, so that the glare of the lime spotlight, the scratchiness of my costume, and the oppressive heat thrown off by the metal footlight reflectors and the overhead gas batten all receded from my awareness. I looked into the faces of my fellow actors and did not see the garish makeup and perspiration but the awe and excitement of those witnessing something magnificent. Their eyes offered confirmation of all that I felt: I was giving the crowning performance of my career.

At one point I gazed out over the sea of upturned faces in the pit and wondered if I was mad to be giving up this life. Nowhere else would I ever experience this astonishing feeling of having hundreds of people concentrate their attention on me, spellbound, entranced, adoring.

Hundreds of people, yes, but not the entire theater, for when I raised my gaze to the dress circle I encountered an exception. There sat Narcissa Holm, smiling as if congratulating herself that soon she would be in my place.

The gas chandelier illuminated her clearly, and I recognized her from the cabinet cards that were circulating. She was indisputably a beauty, with her black hair, fair complexion, and brilliant blue eyes. Not yet eighteen, she had all the vibrancy of youth. And there was something else: a hard ruthlessness behind her eyes that made me suspect that while she was mouthing the sweetest sentiments of amity behind them lurked a schemer ready to strike if a moment of weakness offered itself.

Perhaps I was the only one to have seen that calculating, predatory air, however, for audiences were hailing her as the most bewitching creature to have trod the boards “since the long-ago début of Miss Sybil Ingram, now well past the hour in which she was hailed a prodigy,” in the words of one of the more obnoxious newspaper reporters. Certainly her actions that night proved me right in finding her dangerous.

She waited until I was taking my curtain call—my crowning moment. The whole audience was on its feet cheering and shouting my name, filling me with the sense of love that nothing but an audience can give. I took bow after bow, and as flowers rained onto the stage and the audience poured out their devotion to me I felt tears on my cheeks and wondered again how I could ever bear to leave this life—and then the little baggage actually strolled onto the stage to join me, brightly illuminated by the spotlight, giving the impression that the crowd’s enthusiasm was for her sake as much as mine.

Why had no one stopped her? When I looked off into the wings I saw Clement Griffiths, my leading man, remonstrating with a well-dressed figure whom I guessed to be Treherne, but the stage manager was nowhere to be found. No doubt he had not imagined he would be needed to oversee my final bows, never imagining that they would be commandeered. I glared at the lad operating the lime follow-spot, and he hastily shifted its brilliant light from the usurper back to me.

The Holm creature bowed to me and offered a bouquet, which I had no choice but to take, with so many eyes watching us. Her smile was triumphant.

“Miss Ingram,” she cooed. “Such an honor. I have admired you all my life!”

A reference to my advanced age: what it lacked in subtlety it made up in accuracy. “I congratulate you, Miss Holm,” I said pleasantly. “Most young persons of my acquaintance do not develop a taste for the theater until they are weaned. But no doubt you are exceptional in that respect as in so many others.”

The contrast between us was marked. I was wearing the coarse shift in which Saint Joan was burnt at the stake, and my hair streamed down around my shoulders in dramatic disarray. My successor, of course, was dressed elegantly for a night at the theater, in a gown of royal blue silk with rose-pink trimming that naturally drew the eye. Gems flashed at her ears and throat—paste, no doubt, but they glittered as if they were genuine.

Her cheeks had taken on a pink tinge at my riposte, but as her eyes flicked over my ensemble she seemed to regain her courage. “How brave of you,” she gushed, “to make yourself so unattractive for a role. It must be simply nerve wracking to go onstage with nothing to fall back on.”

“Nothing besides talent, magnetism, and experience, do you mean? Yes, it must be most distressing to lack those attributes.” Taking her hand, I led her toward the footlights and addressed the audience.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” I began. After so many years of practice at projecting my voice, it took little effort to be heard even over the cheering and applause, and the audience quieted to listen. The orchestra conductor signaled the musicians to cease playing. “You have been so kind to me that I know you can extend that kindness to the young lady here with me. Miss Narcissa Holm will be doing her best to fill my shoes now that I am leaving the stage.” I gave her a reassuring smile. “Dear Miss Holm has confided to me that she is a little—well—nervous at the great responsibility of taking over for me. One can hardly blame her, can one? But I know that you all will reassure our timid flower and be patient with her as she learns her craft… no matter how long it takes her.” She tried to withdraw her hand from mine, but I squeezed it tight. It wouldn’t do to let shyness overcome the dear little thing. “Won’t you show her, ladies and gentlemen, how generous you can be? Do give our newcomer some encouragement!”

Generous they certainly were. As their cheering and clapping rose again, Miss Holm smiled uncertainly and dipped into a curtsey, not knowing whether she was being mocked. I released her hand and withdrew upstage a few paces so that she was for a few moments the center of attention. Then I lifted my bouquet high in farewell and waved expansively.

The sound redoubled, and when Miss Holm turned to peer suspiciously at me, I put my fingertips to my lips and blew her a kiss. “Good luck,” I whispered.

Her eyes narrowed. “I believe you mean—”

“Precisely what I say, my dear.”

Her gaze was poisonous, and I knew I had made an enemy. But an ocean would soon be between us, after all. With a final wave to my last audience, and with Miss Holm’s glare following me, I glided offstage.

To wish anyone in the theater luck, of course, was terribly unlucky. But a little ill fortune would not hurt Narcissa Holm when everything else in her path was lining up to usher her to success. My small victory had restored my spirits, and I was humming to myself as I threw open my dressing-room door.

Graves was already packing up the belongings I would take with me; a trunk stood open before her, and she was folding a garment that she set aside as I entered. “I could hear the cheering all the way back here,” she said as she helped me out of my costume. “I am glad your final performance was such a triumph.”

“Thank you, Graves. I shall never forget it.” Once in my dressing gown, I sat down at the vanity to remove my makeup and put my hair up. “My last night in the theater… and yours as well! You have found a new position, I trust?”

“In a sense, yes.”

She had busied herself with the gown I would wear to the party tonight, refusing to meet my eyes in the mirror, and finally I demanded, “Well?”

When she finally looked up, her cheeks were red. “I am following your example,” she said, in what I think she meant to be a lighthearted way. “I am getting married.”

“Graves!” I turned to stare at her. It is not flattering to her to say so, but I was astonished. Never had my modiste shown any inclination to marriage. Indeed, I had always had the idea that she had suffered a disappointment early in life from which she had never recovered. “This is very sudden, is it not?”

“It is sudden, yes,” she admitted. “But in the circumstances…”

“Who is your intended?” Curiosity is one of my failings, or perhaps it is a virtue, since one may learn so many useful things by exercising this impulse.

Perhaps she did not like my flurry of questions, for there was a strange reserve in her manner when she answered, “Mr. Atticus Blackwood, of Gravesend.”

Blackwood. A memory stirred of passing a handsome chestnut-haired man in the hallway. “The gentleman who called on you here a few weeks ago? You slyboots, Graves, I had no idea you were carrying on a courtship in my dressing room.”

“I wasn’t!”

“It’s quite all right—I don’t mind. Only…” I hesitated, unsure how to phrase the question so that it did not sound insulting. “Is he not the heir to a barony?”

She nodded, but she was once again avoiding my eye. “We knew each other as children, so it isn’t as strange as you might think.”

“Please don’t be offended, Graves. I’m merely surprised, that is all. I had no idea you had ever moved in aristocratic circles.” The chasm in social position that lay between her and her husband-to-be hinted that there was something afoot, but she did not elaborate. Clearly she had no wish to confide the details to me. That stung a little.

Then another disquieting idea swam to the surface of my mind. “Gravesend Hall, in Cornwall? But it is said… there are stories… good heavens, Graves, is it not under a curse? Now, don’t look at me like that. You know as well as I do that some places have a kind of evil miasma clinging to them. Heaven knows we have played in some halls that do.” Though one of the grandest and most distinguished homes in Cornwall, Gravesend had a reputation for misfortune, and disaster seemed to follow all who lived there. The idea of willingly going to live in such a place was abhorrent. “Aren’t you frightened?” I demanded.

“Not of the curse, no.” She seemed to have recovered her equanimity, and I rose to let her help me into my gown. It was one of my favorite Graves creations, a vivid magenta taffeta dinner dress with a great many swags and ruffles, and I was sorry that I would not be able to wear it after tonight. “I am more worried about keeping Mr. Blackwood’s friends from learning that I was in trade,” she said. “You are fortunate, Miss Ingram. It is no secret to Mr. Lammle’s set that you are an actress.”

My laugh was rueful. “That isn’t entirely a source of happiness, Graves. No doubt many of my husband’s acquaintance will be sitting in judgment on me for my scandalous past and resenting me for invading their respectable social sphere.”

“But you will have nothing to hide from them, at least.”

“That is true enough. And Mr. Lammle is a man who built himself up from nothing; he is no descendant of a long line of noblemen who can look down at my undistinguished heritage—not that your betrothed would ever do such a thing. We shall be on almost equal footing.” I smiled as I resumed my seat and took up my hairbrush, remembering the vigor and energy of his bearing, the enthusiasm with which he described his business ventures—gesturing so broadly on one occasion that he had knocked his wine glass into the lap of the woman seated next to him. Energy and enthusiasm were qualities I admired. “We shall also be fortunate in living in a completely new home, without any legacy of curses or blood vengeance,” I could not stop myself from adding. “Do try to influence your husband to settle somewhere other than Gravesend.”

“It is out of the question, I’m afraid.” Before I could press the matter, she asked, “Where will you and Mr. Lammle be making your home?”

“In the newest of his hotels,” I said in satisfaction, recalling the impressive structure. “It is a full seven stories high, and he has reserved the entire top floor for our private residence.”

“The seventh floor?” she echoed, looking up in consternation from the chemise that she was folding. “But you will spend all day going up and down stairs like a charwoman! I think it very mean of him to reserve the worst rooms for you.”

“Not at all—they are quite the best rooms, in fact. The building has three hydraulic elevators, and they will whisk us up and down in the blink of an eye. All of Alcott’s hotels are quite modern.” I could not help boasting, even though I had had nothing to do with the planning of the building apart from giving my preferences on some of the decorations. It was exciting to be linking my life with a man who was innovative and looking toward the future. “The view from the seventh floor is quite remarkable. He took me up to show me last summer, before construction was completed. One feels removed entirely from the annoyances of the ordinary world at such a height. It is what I would imagine Mount Olympus to be like.”

Graves smiled as she handed me my hand mirror so that I could examine my hair from the back. “I should think Mount Parnassus would be more appropriate for you.”

That made me laugh. “I don’t flatter myself that I deserve to reside there. In any case, I am abandoning the muses for a more domestic calling in the service of Hera.”

“I certainly hope Mr. Lammle will be a fitter husband to you than Zeus was to her,” she said dryly.

“Oh, I shall keep him in line.” I anticipated no difficulty in having my own way in our marriage. Mr. Lammle was a leader of men, to be sure, but a leader of women? Not of this woman, at any rate. In marrying him, I would insist on being a partner, not a chattel. Most important, I would never be subjected to my mother’s fate: an exhausting life of household drudgery and child rearing, often with a baby in her belly, and taking in laundry and sewing when money was scarce.

Not that my father’s life had been much easier: a clerk’s wages alone could not support our growing family, so his days were crowded with every other job of work he could find. When he returned home at night, sometimes he was so weary he could scarcely climb the stairs to our rooms. He and my mother must once have cared for each other, but by the time I was old enough to reflect upon such things, the warmest emotion each displayed toward the other was resignation.

Thank Hera—and Plutus—I would be spared that. With enough money, domestic life could be pleasant indeed.

But perhaps I should not be so complacent. Here I was chastising Graves for marrying incautiously, and in a sense I was being just as rash. I had not known Alcott Lammle long or deeply. And marriage was a tremendous risk for a woman. She forfeited all her property as well as her freedom. She had no recourse if her husband was a drunkard, or violent, or unchaste; she was shackled to him nonetheless. A husband could have his wife shut up in a lunatic asylum for the rest of her life if he wished.

I trusted my instincts, however, honed as they were by many years in a chancy and uncertain profession. Although Graves’s future filled me with unease, I felt no such twinge of apprehension when I looked forward to my life in New York with Alcott Lammle.

That, in fact, may have been the first instance in which my intuition failed me. Unfortunately, it would not be the last.

Sooner than I would have dreamed possible, it was the day of my departure. I arrived early at the train station, anticipating a crowd of well-wishers who would be anxious to exchange goodbyes and final embraces, but found that no one had yet arrived to see me off.

Graves had sent a note and a nosegay, even though she could not see me off in person—having already left for her new home with her new husband—but not so much as a crepe hair or whiff of cold cream was in evidence from the actors who had been my family. Well, actors were a notoriously tardy race, after all. I ascended into the railway carriage and made my way down the narrow corridor to an empty compartment. When I found one, I quickly stowed my valise, the only piece of hand luggage I was carrying. Then I returned to the platform to await my friends’ arrival.

Everywhere I looked I saw family members exchanging loving farewells. From time to time I heard people exclaiming, “It’s Sybil Ingram!” Being recognized always gave me a thrill of pleasure, but today I realized in a rush of bittersweet clarity that this might be the last time I would ever be recognized in such a fashion. I was leaving so much behind: not just the troupe and the applauding audiences, but a part of myself as well.

And I owed these things to Atherton, the man who had been a second father to me, who had brought me into the theatrical life. The same man who had forced me out of it.

At that moment I saw the man himself, dressed in a checked suit and puffing slightly as he made his way to me through the crowd of passengers and well-wishers. His round pink face, which I could never again think of as cherubic, wore an expression almost of anxiety.

“Is anything amiss?” I asked as soon as he came within reach of my voice.

His smile came and went as quickly as lightning. “Not at all, sweet nymph—do not let trouble furrow your alabaster brow.”

His manner was constrained as he handed me a bouquet of pansies. He avoided my eye, and one gloved hand fidgeted with his watch fob. The picture of guilt. Evidently his conscience had begun to trouble him.

Part of me felt a self-righteous satisfaction at this. But I was still fond of this man, weak and imperfect though he was, and I slipped my arm through his. “I am glad to see you,” I said. “Particularly since it seems you are to be the only one to see me off. Where is everyone?”

His laugh sounded forced. “Oh, you know how we denizens of the theater resist the tedious confines of the clock! No doubt they are merely late, as for every other train.”

“No doubt,” I said, but his manner filled me with unease. Had he asked the troupe not to see me off so that he might speak with me for the last time in private? Did he have some new scheme or deception to propose? The very thought made my heart weary. “Come,” I said, “it’s nearly time. See me to my carriage, and then I must send you on your way.”

He agreed with alacrity, and we made our way down the platform in silence for a time. The activity surrounding us had taken on the urgency of imminent departure, and conversation was not easy.

When Atherton had escorted me to my compartment, he stood for a moment turning his bowler had in his hands. “I hope that you are not feeling any doubts or second thoughts about your glorious new adventure,” he said with an attempt at heartiness. “You will be as radiant in your new life as a leader of society as you were upon the stage.”

“I shall certainly attempt to be so,” I said.

We stood in awkward silence until a piercing blast of the whistle and a shout of warning proclaimed it time for departure. Atherton bowed and made to leave, but I held my hand out. “Goodbye,” I said. Despite everything that had passed between us, there was a lump in my throat.

He looked at my hand and hesitated a moment. Then he took it and squeezed it briefly before letting it drop. “Goodbye, my Gloriana,” he said in a muffled voice, and then he hurried away down the corridor. Moments later I saw him reappear on the platform, where he watched me with a solemn face until the train drew out of the station.

How different I had imagined our parting would be. In the past I had envisioned that when we finally parted ways the scene would have a moving sentimentality, like one of the better melodramas, but with a dash of Shakespeare for grandeur.

As the rest of the company looked on, waiting their turn to embrace me and bearing bouquets and boxes of candy, tears would blur my eyes as I reached for his hands. “My dear Atherton,” I would exclaim, with a touching catch in my voice. “How can I leave you? You, who have guided me, aided me, cheered me, taught me—what shall I do without you?”

He would beam at me through a tear-misted monocle. “My child,” he would proclaim tenderly. “For you have been my child, ay, and I thy doting parent lo these many years. I have done nothing but in care of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter. When you depart from me, sorrow abides and happiness takes his leave.”

The words from the Bard would cause my lip to tremble. I would fling myself into his arms and press my cheek against his. “Fare thee well,” I would sob, also turning to Shakespeare to express myself. “I have known thee these twenty-nine years, come peascod-time, but an honester and truer-hearted man—well, fare thee well!”

But although Atherton did somewhat resemble Falstaff, Shakespeare’s portly figure of ridicule, I could no longer think of him as honest and true of heart. A small yet fierce spark of indignant pain burned in me at his betrayal. Yes, I had agreed to his scheme… but I still felt shocked and wounded that he had asked it of me. It left a bitter taste after all our years of friendship and closeness, tainting all my past memories, which once had been so delightful, with its sour corruption.

I blinked a rogue tear away and concentrated on the view as the train gathered speed. Despite the noise and soot, I had always loved traveling by rail—watching the scenery dart past, feeling always that I was moving forward to some new adventure—and as time passed, the turmoil of my thoughts subsided enough that I could cease contemplating my past and set my mind on the impending journey.

For safety and propriety I had found a companion for the ocean crossing: a self-described maiden lady of middle age whose advertisement had caught my eye. We had made arrangements by letter, so it was not until I arrived at the Liverpool port that Miss Augusta Tellington and I saw each other face to face. As I had anticipated, she was fearsomely respectable: wearing a high-necked dress of brown tweed, laced into stays so sturdy that they gave her an armored appearance, with her hair screwed into a tight chignon and a pince-nez through which she examined me minutely. Her mouth was a firm line, and she stood as straight as if in the presence of the queen.

The shock of seeing me seemed to shake her all the way to her ramrod-straight spine. Her narrowing of the eyes registered the gravest disapproval of golden hair, and a flare of her nostrils indicated that she found my nautical-themed ensemble of blue and white stripes with a sailor collar to be unacceptably frivolous.

“Miss Ingram?” she inquired, in dark tones that suggested an answer in the affirmative would be sealing my doom.

“Miss Tellington, I believe,” I said brightly, extending my hand. “I am delighted to be traveling with you.”

She shook my hand as warily as if it held a serpent, and her pince-nez flashed disapprovingly. “Sea crossings disagree with me,” she said. “I expect to be most unwell. Most likely I shall be confined to my bunk.” From her tone, one might have thought that anyone who did not suffer the same symptoms was prone to moral turpitude.

“In that case, I expect we shall not see a great deal of each other,” I said. “I never spend a great deal of time in my stateroom. It is so much more pleasant to walk about and observe one’s fellow passengers, I find.”

A dry sniff conveyed her disapproval of this behavior. “You must do as you see fit, Miss Ingram,” she said. “I always believe that a lady’s behavior at sea should be even more circumspect than on land, because of the atmosphere of unrestraint and a certain, well, laxness that one encounters on board ship.”

“I cannot say that I have observed such a phenomenon,” I said solemnly. “But since up to now I have always traveled with my fellow actors, perhaps I have actually been responsible for creating such an atmosphere and have thus been unaware of it.”

For a moment I thought I had gone too far and that she would break off our arrangement. But fortunately she only gave me a scathing look and said, “It appears that you have a sense of humor, Miss Ingram. I myself do not. I hope we shall not inconvenience each other too severely.”

“I share that hope,” I said, and meant it.

She would do nicely. Traveling with such a martinet would cast a more respectable light on me, and her seasickness might be wonderfully convenient if I needed a pretext to break away from a conversation. Best of all, she would be a marvelous character study. With that distinctive bearing and manner—

Except that I no longer had any reason to study people for their mannerisms. That part of my life was over. It would take me some time to become accustomed to the idea. Perhaps it was just as well that I had the ocean journey during which to finish shedding the persona that was Sybil Ingram.

Indeed, it was a challenging task, as I discovered over the course of the next few days. On more than one occasion during the journey I found myself being charming to a bachelor—a behavior that I had never had any reason to check in myself before, and one that I confess had become habitual, as I enjoy being admired. But now I should exert myself only to charm my husband… and the women of his circle, who would approve of me in direct disproportion to how delightful their husbands found me.

As I took my thrice-daily perambulations about the deck, bundled up against the stinging wind—and solitary, for Miss Tellington fulfilled her prophecy of being habitually ill in her bunk—I puzzled over the difficulty. When I hit upon the solution, it was so apt and yet so contrary that I was overcome with laughter and had to hold on to the rail until the convulsion passed, while other deck walkers passed me with wary curiosity in their eyes.

I had to create a new character: Mrs. Sybil Lammle.

During the rest of the voyage, I devoted myself to the task. Mrs. Lammle would be more dignified than Sybil Ingram. More reserved. Not so much as to be dull or stiff—that I could not sustain for a longer period than three hours at a time, and my husband would weary of such a wife. He had not decided to marry me because of my dignity or reserve. No, I must retain enough of my own vivacity to please him but attain more poise, more gravity—more of the mien of the wife of a successful man, someone who would be an asset to him. I would no longer be alone in my orbit, but would be a satellite to my husband.

I had known these things before, but somehow during the bustle of preparations and cutting the ties of my old life they had not seemed urgent or even completely real. But now, as I gripped the rail and stared down into the dull green waters curling back in froth at the sides of the ship as we made for the far shore, the full reality of what I had agreed to began to sink into my brain, and it was sobering. I had been independent for so long. Had I waited too long to marry? Was it unfair to Alcott Lammle to have agreed to be his wife when my past had not prepared me for such a life?

It was too late now to turn back, though, just as I had said to Atherton. All I could do was rise to the occasion and give my best performance—and do everything within my power to prevent my husband from regretting his choice.

Now I needed a recipe for this new creature, this Sybil Lammle. Begin with the wit of Shakespeare’s Beatrice, for Alcott would hate a dull-witted wife. Add the steadfast love of Desdemona and a generous measure of the integrity of Cordelia. A pinch of the intelligence and charm of Millamant, balanced by the ardor of Dryden’s Cleopatra. Garnish with the womanly strength of the Duchess of Malfi.

But I must not forget that this was a role I would never be able to shed, so it must retain as much of myself as would comfortably fit into my new life. Curious, gregarious, enthusiastic I could remain, in all probability… but what of my other qualities?

The question was one that I could not answer until I was with Alcott Lammle again. I would have to take my cues from him and learn what he wished for in his wife. It was unsettling, after so many years of charting my own destiny, to be reminded that from now on another hand would be at the tiller.

The closer we drew to our destination, the more impatient I became. It chafed my nerves to dawdle our way down the Hudson River in the wake of the smaller craft that kept ice from barring our passage. The scenery of snow-clad mountains and woods, though beautiful in its austere way, was so lonesome and wild that I was profoundly grateful to leave it behind. I had lived in cities all my life, and that wilderness unsettled me. Thank goodness, I would soon be comfortably ensconced in the gaiety and bustle of city life.

Did my vaunted trouper’s instinct give me a qualm when my thoughts ran thus? It did not. I felt no premonitory chill, no ominous shiver that might have warned me what was to come. Considering the situation in which I found myself less than a month later, I was to feel quite disappointed in my faculties of precognition—even betrayed. Simply put, they failed me.

Miss Tellington’s recovery was swift once we made port, or perhaps her eagerness to be back on land lent her strength. She emerged from the cabin to say brusquely, “I wish you happiness in your new life, Miss Ingram. Do not feel compelled to write,” before striding off to hire a hackney carriage.

As time wore on and I saw no sign of welcome from Alcott, I began to think I might have to do the same. For a full hour I waited, while porters procured hired coaches and bustled to and fro with other passengers’ trunks. Although there was a certain amount of entertainment in watching the cranes lift luggage from the ship in great rope nets, I was impatient to see my fiancé. I had written to him with the details of my journey and arrival; had my letter gone astray? Or did he expect me to hire a carriage? I was on the point of doing just that, or sending a messenger boy, when a masculine voice called, “Miss Ingram?” and I found a young man approaching me.

At first there was nothing familiar in his appearance, but when he reached me I saw “Lammle Arms” embroidered on the left breast of his maroon greatcoat. He was a porter from Alcott’s hotel. “This way, madam,” he said. “Do you have any trunks with you?”

“I had them sent on to the hotel,” I said, handing him my valise. “Was there some confusion over my arrival time?”

“Not exactly, madam.” He led the way, cutting expertly through the crowd, to where a new-looking carriage waited. It was painted the same rich maroon as my escort’s coat, and it too bore the legend “Lammle Arms,” painted on the carriage door in golden script. The driver wore a maroon greatcoat like the porter’s, and his high black hat featured a grosgrain band of the same shade. Alcott Lammle definitely had a sense of showmanship, and I admired his initiative in creating a distinctive look for his employees and holdings that would imprint itself on a passerby.

But it was unlike him to permit his employees to be so tardy. “Was there some kind of delay?” I asked as the porter opened the door and made to hand me up.

“Mr. Bascombe will explain, ma’am,” he said, and then shut the door behind me. The carriage jounced as he took his place next to the driver, the driver clucked to the horse, and then we were in motion.

I found myself seated opposite a man I had never seen before. He was thin, with a pasty complexion that suggested he spent most of his time indoors, and his dark hair was scraped straight back from his high forehead and sleek with macassar oil. So pronounced was his bone structure and so pale his skin that regarding his face rather put one in mind of looking at a skull.

“Miss Ingram,” he said, and his voice was surprisingly resonant—at least in comparison to the death rattle I had rather anticipated. “I apologize for my tardiness. I am Gareth Bascombe, Mr. Lammle’s lawyer. One of them, I should say.”

I shook his gloved hand briefly. Through the kid leather, his fingers felt bony and fleshless. This was not an auspicious figure to usher me to my betrothed husband; rather, I seemed to be in a modern version of Charon’s ferry ride to the underworld. I chided myself for being superstitious, but I could not shake off the conviction that this was not a good omen. “I had not expected to be greeted by a lawyer, I must admit. Is there a particular reason my fiancé dispatched you to fetch me?”

“The suggestion was mine.” It was difficult to gauge his age, but now that I had had a few minutes in which to observe him I estimated him to be in his forties. Younger than his employer, but his manner was the reserved one of an older man. “Mr. Lammle has experienced some dramatic recent setbacks, and I felt that it might be desirable to apprise you of these before you are reunited with him.”

Setbacks. A lawyerly euphemism with a sinister ring. “What do you mean?” I asked. “He cannot have been bankrupted, or he could not have sent this carriage for me.”

A thin smile did not make Mr. Bascombe look more cheerful. “As to that,” he said, “bankruptcy is not as sudden a process as you may think, Miss Ingram. But I shall unfold all to you in good time. How was your journey? Pleasant, I trust?”

“It was well enough. How is Mr. Lammle?”

“Your accommodations were comfortable? But of course you must have become accustomed to very spartan conditions during your touring days. The greater comfort afforded by Mr. Lammle’s largesse must be as different as day from night.”

“Quite,” I said, uninterested in trading barbs. “What setbacks did you speak of?”

But he was not a man to let himself be hurried, it seemed. “If you require nourishment, we can stop at Dorlon and Schaffer’s in the Fulton Market. The oysters there are justly famous.”

“When it comes to oysters, sir, you outdo them all.”

“Pardon me?”

“Your determination to keep dumb. Can we not dispense with the pourparlers? We have established that my journey was comfortable. I have no desire to stop anywhere for food, drink, or a game of piquet, and my patience is wearing thin. Please tell me what it is you have to say, or deliver me to my destination. Preferably both, and at once.”

The expression my words evoked was not one of good humor. It was just as well that Mr. Bascombe would not be part of my household, since it seemed we were not to become bosom friends—a fact that somehow did not bring a tear to my eye. He said in clipped syllables, “The news I have to impart is not pleasant. I wished to give you time to prepare your mind for a shock.”

The longer he extended this carriage ride, the more my extremities began to ache from the cold. I longed to be indoors by a fire, but far more urgently I was apprehensive about the news he kept dangling before me. “I am prepared,” I said, with what I thought was admirable patience. “Proceed.”

“Mr. Lammle has experienced business reversals.”

That was, indeed, unexpected. “He has said nothing of this to me.”

“The whole affair only happened this week. His business partner, Walter Mosley, vanished abruptly, along with most of the money from their bank account, the contents of the office safe, and what else we have not yet been able to determine. Naturally the creditors responded in fear, and most of Mr. Lammle’s property has liens against it.” He sat back against the cushions with an air almost resentful. “So your betrothed has, I fear, been abruptly transformed from a man of means to a scapegoat and possible bankrupt. It will take the courts months, if not years, to determine to what extent he was culpable… and whether he has anything left out of the wreckage.”

For some moments I could not speak. The sound of the horse’s hooves, the clatter of passing traffic, and the shouts of street vendors rushed in to fill the silence. “How dreadful,” I said at last. “Is there any chance that this Mosley will be apprehended and the money reclaimed?”

He was too fastidious to shrug, but his eyebrows eloquently expressed his bafflement. “Only fate knows the answer to that. So you see,” he said, and this time I was certain of the dislike in his voice, “your scheme to marry into wealth and leisure has come to naught. I expect that you shall be on the next ship back to England—and I shall be only too glad to make that come to pass.”

“I don’t think I have given you any reason to speak so rudely to me,” I snapped. “Why do you assume I shall desert Alcott? It seems to me that now more than ever is the time to stand by him.”

“Ah, I see. You believe that he may be able to rebuild his fortune.” He shook his head. “There is little likelihood of that. Mr. Lammle is not a young man, Miss Ingram, as you know, and this matter has taken a severe toll on him. In fact, when the news broke three days ago, he suffered a heart attack.”

I could have reached out and shaken him. “Why did you keep this from me?” I demanded. “That is far more serious than mere business reversals. Take me to him at once.”

But he remained calm and implacable and snide. “I don’t think that’s advisable,” he had the effrontery to say. “A further shock might be quite bad for him.”

“I am not a shock! I am his betrothed. He needs me, and my place is at his side. I shall look after him.”

A dry, papery laugh escaped Mr. Bascombe, like something he kept locked up in a bookcase full of legal documents. “You are not a trained nurse, Miss Ingram, unless I am gravely mistaken. You aren’t accustomed to the grueling work of tending to an invalid—possibly a permanent invalid. It is entirely possible that Mr. Lammle will never fully recover.” While I was trying to take in this thought, he continued unrelentingly, “Think of the long hours and backbreaking labor. Think of the boredom if nothing else. Your husband would not be able to squire you about in society.”

I did think about it. Granted, the picture he painted did not sound enjoyable. It was not at all what I had expected. But Alcott needed me. Surely I could put frivolous concerns aside and be the helpmeet and ministering angel he needed. I had played Florence Nightingale on stage, and there was a certain appeal to playing the role in real life as well: I would wear plain dresses and put my hair in a net and speak in soft, low tones, ones that would not jar an invalid’s ear. My husband’s friends would say how tender and compassionate I was, what a marvel of courage and patience. Alcott would gaze at me in adoration and profess in broken syllables how fortunate he was to have me to—

“With all this in mind,” said Bascombe, breaking in on my reverie, “I am prepared to make it worth your while to leave now, without causing Mr. Lammle any distress.”

This struck me dumb—a most unusual state for me—and he took advantage of my silence, continuing: “You do not have to see him at all. I will break the news to him very gently: you had a change of heart and regret deeply that you cannot be his after all, et cetera. Perhaps an old beau resurfaced, having been thought dead these many years. I have no doubt you can come up with a story that will cast you in a sympathetic light and make the news more palatable.” He produced a large envelope. “I think,” he said, “you will find this quite a generous compensation for your sacrifice. Cash is satisfactory, I hope? A check is more portable, of course, but I suspect ready money is always welcome to a woman in your position.”

The envelope was full of money. I did not count the bills, but there were a great many of them. “You believe you can buy me off,” I said.

The thin smile did not improve upon repeated exposure. “I am certain of it. This amount of money is more than you’ll ever see as a so-called actress.”

My lips tightened, but I kept my voice pleasant. “You underestimate me, Mr. Bascombe.”

“You think you deserve more? I’m sorry, but the offer is final.”

Once, years ago, I had played a melodrama heroine who had found herself in a similar situation. I remembered how I had drawn myself to my full height, raised my chin, and fixed the cad with a look of such scorn that it had made him squirm with shame.

Now I drew myself to my full height—that is, as much as I could while seated—and fixed him with my look of scorn. Unfortunately, this look did not cause Mr. Bascombe to quail. It was a pity I did not have an orchestra with me to lend melodic weight to my righteous indignation.

“Mr. Bascombe, you wrong me,” I told him in ringing tones. “I am no mercenary creature, no cold cipher whose heart is nothing more than a bank ledger. I am a woman of principle and honor. I scorn your offered lucre. Yes! I scorn it! And if you do not take me at once to Mr. Lammle,” I added, departing from the script, “I will remove myself from this equipage and find a horse-car or omnibus to do so. I believe I have enough pocket change to get me to the hotel.”

As a dramatic speech it was not, perhaps, the most eloquent. But it was sincere, and I think this fact finally penetrated the lawyer’s bony brain-case.

“Be reasonable,” he urged. “You have nothing to gain from him.”

“I am thinking not of myself but of my betrothed. Has it occurred to you that seeing me will lift his spirits and bring him consolation in his darkest hour? Perhaps even have a curative effect?” I pictured Alcott, wan, wasted, huddled in a Bath chair, from which he would rise on trembling limbs at the sight of me.

“Do not pin your hopes on such an absurd fancy,” Bascombe scoffed, as if he knew what scene was unfolding before my mind’s eye. “This is no melodrama, Miss Ingram. Love of you will not cure Mr. Lammle.”

“Are you a medical man, Mr. Bascombe? Then why should I take your word for it? Astonishing things happen every day, especially where love is concerned.” I fixed him with the Britannia Triumphant expression and folded my arms. “You have kept me from my fiancé for far too long already. Take me to him at once.”

My impressions of the next few hours are blurred.

The carriage drew up at the entrance of the Lammle Arms. Now that it was completed, it was imposing indeed, with its slate mansard roof, dormer windows, and towering seven-story height. The hotel had almost five hundred rooms and would accommodate nearly one thousand guests. I knew that building and furnishing it had cost a shocking amount of money, and now every instance of luxury and extravagance gave me a pang of worry on my bridegroom’s behalf. How much did he owe for this magnificent edifice?

Inside, all was luxury and elegance. Steam heat dissipated the winter chill that blew in through the doors with us. My feet sank into velvet carpets, and I remembered Alcott telling me that more than five acres of carpet had been required for the building. Staff clustered about us, ushering me to a lounge where I could neaten my appearance before seeing Alcott. A maid brought me hot water to wash my face and hands and then set about tidying my dress with a clothes brush. I removed my hat and smoothed my hair, applied rice powder to my nose, and dabbed my favorite eau de cologne on my wrists, reflecting that it was rather like preparing to go onstage.

When a woman who identified herself as Mr. Lammle’s housekeeper approached, I saw from the tightening of her lips that she did not approve of me. This was a new and unpleasant thought: did all those in my future husband’s employ share Bascombe’s low view of me? Did they all think me a strumpet and a fortune hunter? Joined by her and the lawyer, I ascended to my fiancé’s quarters, and the elevator journey was silent except for the noise of the machinery and the occasional dry cough from Bascombe. When the operator opened the doors we emerged into a small anteroom, where a butler opened the opposite door and bowed me through.

It was indeed like making an entrance onstage. This reception room was huge, and seemingly filled with people: some had the look of businessmen of varying degrees of probity, some of hotel staff; others had the heavy build and ruthless faces of thugs hired to look after the interests of parties whose own persons might not be persuasive enough. Still others might have been friends or associates or simply gawkers. Heads swiveled toward me when I entered, and the rumble of conversation faded.

The furnishings were as elegant as the rest of what I had seen. Venetian glass mirrors and gilded paneling adorned the walls, and chandeliers of crystal and polished brass shed light on the scene. Under the scrutiny of this crowd of people I held my head high, not letting my pace slow as I crossed the room and entered Alcott’s bedchamber.

This room, too, was full of people, and the noise was oppressive. How was an invalid supposed to recover in this atmosphere? The housekeeper announced loudly, “Miss Ingram is here, sir,” and again the conversation dropped and the crowd of people turned to stare at me as they fell aside to let me pass.

“Sybil, my dear. You are most welcome.” The voice, thin and shaky, did not sound like the Alcott Lammle I had known last summer. Nor did the exterior of the man in the bed accord with the suitor I remembered. The change was shocking. The man who had courted and feted me had been vigorous, energetic, happiest when in motion. He commanded attention, led in conversation, was confident and forceful and yet merry. It invigorated one to be near him, and his enthusiasm was so infectious that spending time with him always put me in good spirits.

The man propped up on pillows in the bed, however, was a stranger to me. His shirt and dressing gown were loose on him, as if his body was wasted, and his skin was no longer ruddy with health but pale, with a grayish cast. His hair was more white than gray, and the hand that lay against the silk counterpane was thin and weak. I remembered suddenly that he was, after all, nearly sixty. The difference between our ages had never seemed so stark. Before, I had thought of him as being in his prime, but now he seemed to be nearing old age.

“Alcott?” I whispered in shock.

With a wan smile, he took my hand. His grip was feeble where once it had been strong. “I know what you are thinking, my dear. I am much changed. But now that you are with me, my recovery will be swift. Come, kiss me.”

I stooped to touch my lips to his cheek. His skin was dry and hot, as if he had a fever. “I am so sorry to hear of your misfortune,” I said, blinking hard to squeeze back the tears that had sprung to my eyes. He would almost certainly find them embarrassing. “You must let me help you in any way I can. I have some savings—”

“Don’t speak of that, my dear. Business matters are too dry and complicated for my beautiful Sybil to trouble herself with. Be lovely, my Sybil, be sweet, and you shall be all that I need or desire in a wife.”

He was forced to stop speaking to catch his breath, which was just as well, considering how ill these words sat with me. I had no desire to become nothing more than an ornament. Might I not be intelligent as well? “Alcott, as your wife I will have your best interests at heart, and in that capacity I must tell you that I don’t think you should have so many people about while you are convalescing. You cannot rest in such conditions.”

“You needn’t fret, my dear. Many are here as witnesses.”

“Witnesses?” I repeated.

He gestured with the hand I was not holding, and a man with a ledger stepped forward. “I wish for us to be married at once,” Alcott said, in a ghost of his once decisive manner. “Whelan here is a justice of the peace. I had intended to give you a grand church wedding, Sybil, and so I shall, once I have recovered my health. But for now, this must suffice.”

I began to understand the lawyer’s desire to frighten or lure me away. This might be a rash step for Alcott to take under the circumstances. “I think you should know,” I said, “that Mr. Bascombe has the gravest doubts about the wisdom of your marrying me. Have you considered whether it is to your good to have the trouble and expense of keeping a wife, considering how unsettled your affairs are?”

An expression of vexation flitted over his face. “Sybil, my dear, I do not need you or Bascombe to do my thinking for me. I have prospered in business under my own brain power, and I should hope that you would trust me to know what is wisest for me to do.”

It was his judgment that had led him into partnership with a scoundrel, but I kept that thought to myself. Masculine pride, I knew, required delicate handling. “I did not mean to question your judgment, Alcott. If you are certain, that is enough. But I don’t believe that Mr. Bascombe feels the same way. I must tell you—and please attempt to stay calm—that he tried to pay me to desert you.”

To my astonishment, however, no anger showed on Alcott’s face. I had feared that he might do himself a harm by becoming enraged, but he merely gave a faint smile and patted my hand. “I imagine you simply misunderstood him, my dear. Bascombe is quite sound.”

“He seemed quite certain that marrying me would be a disastrous course for you to take.”

“Nonsense. Having you at my side will bring me back to health.” Indeed, energy was coming back to his voice, and his color seemed to be improving. “I know I shall soon be as strong as ever, and with you as my helpmeet I’ll prevail over all the obstacles that now plague me. But are you uncertain? Do you wish to go back on your word?”

“Of course not!” The words were automatic but no less sincere. For all his weakened and distressed state, this was still the man to whom I had pledged myself, and the pathos of his situation was a silent appeal to all that was nurturing within me.

“Good. Whelan, do your office, sir.”

And with bewildering speed we were wedded, without my husband having risen from his sickbed.

It was a strange, brief ceremony. I did not even have the opportunity to change my dress for one more suitable to the occasion. The housekeeper and, unbelievably, Mr. Bascombe, stood behind the justice of the peace, radiating disapproval in my direction. A doctor waited close at hand, ready to intervene with medical aid if necessary. But Alcott’s hold on my hand strengthened with every word of our vows, as if he took strength from my presence, as if my life force were flowing into him. Perhaps it was true in a way, for I found myself weary and a bit depressed when the vows were over and the brief scattering of applause and congratulations died away.

Some of the visitors came to shake my husband’s hand, but fewer approached me, and their manner was more speculative than festive. I was a curiosity, it seemed, and they had not yet decided what to make of me. I wondered what they would tell their wives about the new Mrs. Lammle. Judging from the knowing smirks I saw on some faces, I suspected that they harbored the all too common belief that actresses were little better than prostitutes. If their wives believed the same, my reception was likely to be cool indeed. I did not remember feeling that prejudice during any of the dinners and parties Alcott had hosted on my behalf last year, but a visitor is quite different from a wife, and people who had indulged my presence as a temporary guest might show a markedly different attitude to me now that I was a permanent addition to their set.

I was merely tired after my journey and the shock of the news, I decided. Not to mention hungry. When a maid brought my husband broth and sherry, I asked her if I might have something brought to me on a tray. It was far from the traditional wedding feast, but my spirits were improved after my meal of chops and tea. When the maid returned for the tray, she showed me to the adjoining bedchamber, where she said my things had been moved for me. “Mr. Lammle had rooms for you prepared on the floor below,” she explained, “for you to occupy before the wedding. But now that you’re married, they won’t be needed.”

What a pity that so much trouble and expense were going for naught. But then, the rooms could be let to someone else… if, indeed, they remained Alcott’s property. “What have you heard about Mr. Lammle’s affairs?” I asked her. “Do you know if the hotel will be seized?”

“Jane, it’s time you returned to the kitchen,” came an authoritative voice, and the maid gave a little start. The housekeeper—Mrs. Vise was her name, I recalled—had silently come up behind us. “I offer my felicitations, Mrs. Lammle,” she said as the maid scurried off with the tray, “but I must ask you not to engage my staff in conversation about matters beyond their station. It can only cause them distress and interfere with the performance of their duties.”

“I shall bear that in mind,” I said coolly. Being schooled by my housekeeper was not foremost among my ambitions as a bride. “Indeed, it seems something interfered with their carrying out their duties before I spoke to Jane, because the dress laid out for me on the bed is not one of mine.” There may have been the tiniest touch of smugness in my voice.

But I was not allowed to feel superior for long. “That is one of the new dresses Mr. Lammle had made up for you,” the housekeeper said. “You’ll find more in the wardrobe, and there are new unmentionables in the bureau drawers.”

I had forgotten about my new clothes. At Alcott’s request I had sent his American dressmaker my measurements, and she must have prepared these garments ahead of my arrival. I lifted the sleeve of the dress on the bed. It was an attractive enough blue merino wool with brown piping, but in comparison to the Graves creation I was currently wearing—a dashing tartan ensemble trimmed in black velvet, with jaunty chevrons on the skirt—it seemed sadly subdued. Did Alcott wish for me to cut a more demure figure among his circle, or did the dress merely reflect the taste of the seamstress? It was too trivial a matter to vex him with in his weakened state, but I found myself hoping that the American wardrobe would not fit and I would be forced to continue wearing the dresses I had brought with me a while longer.

“Is it also Mr. Lammle’s wish that I should wear a day dress to bed, or is this some American wedding custom?” I asked, tartly because of my disappointment.

Mrs. Vise eyed me for a moment. She was as thin as an iron file and just about as warm and friendly. She seemed made up of right angles and flinty disapproval. She would have been an admirable Boudicca on stage; all she needed was a spear, a breastplate, and someone’s head on a platter. “With Mr. Lammle in such poor health,” she said in a voice of exaggerated patience, as if she were speaking to an imbecile, “his valet and doctor will be attending him all through the night. Perhaps you are accustomed to receiving male visitors in your night attire, Miss Ingram—I beg pardon, Mrs. Lammle—but among respectable folk in New York it Isn’t Done.”

“Ah,” I said, feeling foolish at my lack of forethought. “I see. Yes, that is perfectly logical.” So there would be at least four of us present tonight. Not what I had envisioned for my wedding night.

My bridegroom’s thoughts must have been running in a similar direction, for when I emerged into his bedchamber, modestly dressed in the blue merino, with my hair still up, he smiled and gestured for the doctor, who was listening to his heart, to withdraw a bit. “My lovely Sybil,” said Alcott, holding out his hand to me, and I went swiftly to him to take it. He touched my hand to his lips and then drew me closer for a proper kiss.

Generally speaking, Alcott Lammle kissed very nicely. Indeed, I had made certain of this during the previous summer, well before I had decided to marry him. Conventional though my fellow actresses (and certainly actors) may have found me to be in matters of the flesh, I am not a fool. I would never have agreed to marry a man whose caresses I had not determined would be pleasant to me.

Tonight, though—and this was only natural, albeit disappointing—his kiss lacked something of its former vigor. Soon he released me and patted the bed so that I would seat myself there. “I shall soon have my strength back, my dear,” he said. His earlier flash of energy seemed to have spent itself, and the worrisome claylike cast of his skin was once again in evidence. “Then we shall have a proper wedding night. But tonight, I fear…”

“I understand perfectly,” I hastened to say. “You must reserve your energies. You Americans call it bundling, do you not? I shall not make any demands of you.”

“Hmm,” said the doctor, who seemed to feel no compunction about eavesdropping. “I’m not certain you should stay, Mrs. Lammle. Your presence may be, ah, disturbing to my patient.”

“Disturbing?” At first I was wounded, but then Alcott chuckled, and I took the doctor’s meaning. My husband confirmed it with his next words.

“Sybil, we must humor the good sawbones while my health is in its present state. He is quite right, you know—your very presence is enough to quicken one’s heartbeat. I’m sorry, but you cannot be my bedfellow tonight… in any capacity.”

“That is a sweet compliment to my charms, Alcott, but it doesn’t seem right that we should be apart tonight. May I not sit up with you? If I draw one of those nice winged armchairs up to the bed, I can watch over you comfortably and be ready to summon the doctor if you should need him, and we can talk if you are wakeful. Don’t worry, doctor,” I added as that gentleman opened his mouth to object, “I shall keep my conversation quite free of stimulation. The state of the barometer, perhaps, or the current theatrical productions. Nothing that would threaten to arouse my husband’s ardor.”

After some harrumphing, probably for form’s sake, the doctor gave his consent. I suspected that he was actually relieved to have me sitting vigil at his patient’s bedside so that he might visit other patients or at the very least relax his own watchfulness long enough to catch a few winks himself. This I did not begrudge him.

However, if Bascombe had been the man in question, I would have gleefully banged saucepan lids in his ears every quarter hour if it would have disturbed his rest. I was not done with the man. It surprised me that Alcott did not know how deceptive and conniving a creature was in his employ. My husband would not have reached his present level of success had he been so lax a judge of character… except that, in fact, it seemed that his former partner had been every bit as sly and untrustworthy as Mr. Bascombe, if present events were anything to go by. It was disloyal of me, but I could not help but feel my confidence in him somewhat shaken.

As the doctor dosed my bridegroom with some nasty-looking medicine and instructed his valet about his care for the night, I dragged the armchair up to the head of Alcott’s bed. It was quite capacious enough for me, even taking into account the sizable bustle of the blue woolen dress.

Now that I had the opportunity to look around, I could appreciate how elegantly Alcott had decorated our living quarters. His bedroom furnishings were elaborately carved of what I supposed was mahogany and upholstered in dark blue velvet. The walls were papered in blue and gold stripes but almost entirely covered by a great quantity of paintings in heavy gilt frames, primarily historical subjects by artists such as Edward Poynter and Frederic Leighton. I was pleased to see a reproduction of Mr. Leighton’s painting of the mermaid and fisherman, which had held a place in my heart ever since an admirer had told me that the beautiful sea creature resembled me. Said admirer, much to his frustration, had never seen me in a state of undress like that of the mermaid, but nevertheless I chose to accept the compliment as fact.

I had not yet enjoyed the nighttime view from our airy perch, and the doctor was still conversing with Alcott and his valet, so I went to the window and drew aside the heavy gold damask curtain to stand for a few moments gazing down at the city that was to be my new home.

Gaslight from streetlamps and other buildings’ windows provided enough illumination to show me a still-active scene even at this hour of the night. Carriages and pedestrians moved to and fro; restaurants and taverns and theaters would be full to capacity, welcome havens of warmth and comfort on this cold night; and even in the great darker patch that was the Central Park I saw lights along the pedestrian paths and the moving glow cast by carriage lanterns. From seven floors above the street the less attractive features of the landscape were invisible—the filthy snow piled along the streets, the pickpockets and loose women who plagued every city the world over. The great height rendered everything idyllic.

I could be happy here, as long as Alcott regained his health. When he was once again strong enough to be my companion in this new adventure, my life would be a splendid one.

“Mrs. Lammle,” came the doctor’s voice, in the tone of one who was repeating himself, and I responded belatedly to my new name, turning from the view at the window to find him buttoning his overcoat while Mrs. Vise held his bag for him. “I am taking my leave now,” he announced. “I’ll return in two hours to check on your husband’s condition. If he should need me before that time, send a messenger to this address.”

Scarcely glancing at the card he handed me, I whispered, “How is he? Is he progressing as well as you should like?”

The doctor took my elbow and drew me into the next room before answering. “He needs rest and quiet,” he told me in a low tone. “It is essential that he be protected from any anxiety over these business reverses. You know the matter to which I refer?”

“Yes, Mr. Bascombe told me. I was astonished at the crowd here today. Surely it is bad for him to have all these people fretting him.”

“Exactly. Insist upon quiet for him until his strength is better. Now that you are his wife you have the authority to keep all these petitioners from his door, and I advise you to do so. I have no doubt that they will be insistent, but you must stand firm. Let no one pass whom you suspect to be a distressing influence.”

“You may rely on me, doctor. Henceforth I shall be known as Cerberus.”

The fact that this small joke won a smile from him was encouraging. If he was susceptible to humor, he must be confident that his patient would recover, and that raised my hopes.

This confidence, however, was misplaced. When I woke at dawn and stretched my cramped limbs, my first thought was of my husband. But the sight of him sent a chill into my heart that was far colder than the morning air. Alcott’s eyes were fixed, staring into nothingness, his skin a sickly pallor. I lunged out of my chair to touch his hand, then his face. There was no animating pulse, no warmth. He was dead.

It was thrilling to be in a theater again. The rumble of excited conversation in the audience, the proscenium illuminated brilliantly by the gas jets of the footlights, the cheerful discord of the orchestra tuning up—the minutes before the play began were as thrilling as ever.

The difference was that this time I was in the audience.

Two weeks of solitary mourning for Alcott had threatened to wreck my sanity. I was not accustomed to being alone, and apparently it was the custom in American society for widows to be left to grieve in solitude for the early stages of mourning. Neighbors sent in their cards by way of Mrs. Vise, the butler having departed for a position elsewhere, but did not themselves visit. And I learned when I asked the housekeeper to have the carriage brought round that widows were not supposed to pay calls. Indeed, her expression was so scandalized that I was tempted to ask when etiquette decreed that I might remarry, just for the pleasure of watching the top of her head fly off and her eyes spin in their sockets.

Not that I had any intention of seeking out another husband. I grieved for the loss of the kind and interesting man I had had so little time to become acquainted with, even though, judging from the looks directed at me by the housekeeping staff, I gathered that I did not have the right to mourn, as his bride of only hours. Muttered remarks hinted that I was putting on a show of grief. I was a blameless Gertrude surrounded by Hamlets, all sniping under their breath about my trappings and suits of woe. “I truly do mourn him,” I wanted to say in my own defense. But to defend myself would only make me more suspicious in their eyes; women in these circumstances, I gathered, were expected to be stoic, their thoughts fixed on the hereafter, heroically calm.

I had never been skilled in being calm. And the days of forced inactivity and solitude broken only by the ministrations of the sour-faced servants left me desperate for human contact and mental stimulation. Thus, one Saturday afternoon I donned gloves, hat, and veil, and slipped out of the hotel to see a matinee.

It was child’s play to find an omnibus to take me to Union Square. At first I was aware of people staring at me, and I supposed a heavily veiled woman in deep mourning was probably not a frequent sight on this conveyance, but almost at once the pleasure of being out in the world again took over, and I had no thought for onlookers. I stared openly at the passing scenery, noting the new construction—and some destruction—that had taken place since my previous visit, relishing the snap of the chilly air, and was almost the first to disembark when we reached the theater that was my destination.

That afternoon’s entertainment was a musical extravaganza, widely advertised as a hit, and the crowd in the audience attested to its popularity. As I took a seat in the pit I raised my veil and gazed around eagerly. Even here on the wrong side of the proscenium, I was overjoyed to be back in my own world. The theater was newer and even finer than the one Atherton and I had leased in Drury Lane, and the brilliant light cast by the gas chandeliers allowed one to see every detail of the ornamentation quite clearly. It reminded me strongly of Nico’s Garden, which had sadly burnt the year before. Theaters were prone to fires, making them a chancy investment, although I had never managed to convince Atherton of this. Classical columns and caryatids adorned a space so vast that it could seat thousands. I knew how powerful an instrument was needed to fill such a space, and I mentally tipped my hat to the actors who took on this vocal challenge, just as I admired the actresses with enough confidence to show their legs in tights.

My fellow members of the audience were also brightly illuminated, and I caught sight of a woman in a box close by who seemed familiar. She was openly staring at me, and it was this that allowed me to identify her. She was the wife of one of Alcott’s business associates, and she had been staring at me with just such concentration during one of the dinners Alcott had given in my honor last summer. He told me later that she had been trying to determine if my golden hair was natural or a wig, and I had made him laugh when I showed him that I was in fact supplementing my natural curls with a hairpiece—but one fashioned from my own hair.

Now I smiled—remembering to use the saintly, sad smile of the widow—and nodded a greeting to her. To my surprise, she retracted her head like an offended turtle and turned her face away. The woman had actually cut me dead. I saw her speaking to the bearded man next to her, her husband, and he gave me a sharp look before likewise turning his face away with a haughty lift to his nose, as if I had left an unpleasant smell in his nostrils.

Probably I had committed a terrible faux pas by going to the theater while in mourning. But why then had they not made their way to me and told me this so that I could decide whether to withdraw? Ought I to have taken a box for greater privacy, despite my need to economize?

As I puzzled over this I heard my name whispered somewhere behind me. I was used to being recognized, so at first I thought it was a fan. But before I could offer an autograph, it continued, and I realized the tone was not the admiring one that I was accustomed to.

“That’s Sybil Ingram,” hissed the voice. “The foreign actress who married the hotel man and killed him.”

My head whipped around, but I could not tell who had spoken. The expressions I encountered ranged from blank to actively curious, but I saw no malice. I turned back toward the stage, but my enjoyment was ruined. Now I noticed others staring at me, whispering among themselves, pointing. In the merciless light of the gas chandeliers there was no escaping the scrutiny.

When the entertainment began, though it was loud and boisterous and colorful, I could not concentrate on it. At the first intermission I left my seat and made my way back to the hotel. Too agitated to wait for an omnibus or horse-car, I walked as swiftly as I could without attracting even more attention. I pulled the heavy veil down over my face, but even so I fancied that everyone I passed was staring at me, recognizing me—accusing me.

I had hoped when I returned to the Lammle Arms to be able to retreat to my quarters without attracting notice, but luck was against me. As I stepped out of the elevator, Mrs. Vise appeared in the doorway of the vestibule.

“Mrs. Lammle,” she said in accusing tones. “I had no idea where you were.”

“I had not thought my presence was so vital to the hotel’s operation,” I snapped, putting back my veil. The Venetian glass wall mirror showed that I was pink in the face, as much with agitation as with the pace I had set. “I had to get away. The silence was fraying my nerves.”

“You needn’t explain yourself to me, madam. But it would have saved me some anxious moments if I had known where you had gone.”

Anxious, about me? Under my astonished gaze her face seemed almost human. Offended, haughty, but also relieved that I had returned. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Next time I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you, madam.” As she took my hat and gloves, she added, “There is a letter for you.”

And so there was, on the silver tray in the alcove that to this point had received nothing but cards from the members of Alcott’s circle who wished to register their sympathy. I picked it up and examined it as I returned to my room. The handwriting was vaguely familiar, and when I opened it I found at the bottom the signature of Gertrude Fox, the heavy actress in our troupe. Pleased, I sat at my dressing table to read it, but within moments my pleasure was replaced by a dull horror.

“Sybil,” it began, “I can scarcely express my shock and disappointment upon learning what you have done…”

The secret was out; the lie had been published. I felt a wave of cold wash over me, and when it receded it left pinpricks in my hands and arms, as if I had had a great fright. As I forced myself to read on, my mouth went dry. Gertrude was writing to me against the objections of everyone else, who felt that I did not deserve to be spoken to. Almost worse than the discovery that everyone believed the lie—everyone I had lived and worked and laughed with for fifteen years—was her disappointed tone. “Why did you not come to us?” she wrote. “If you felt you were in such desperate straits, you could have made a clean breast of things and asked our help instead of betraying us by—”

I dropped the letter and put my head in my hands. The door to my old life was completely closed now. And after so short a time. The Holm girl must have wormed it out of Atherton almost at once…

No. The story had to have been known before that to give Gertrude’s letter time to reach me. Suddenly I remembered Atherton’s guilty behavior when he had seen me off at the station, especially when I had remarked upon the absence of all of my other friends. “No doubt they are merely late,” he had said. But that was balderdash. They had already known the scurrilous story about me. And Atherton must have come to the station to make absolutely certain that I left England before I learned of it, just in case I had decided to defend myself against the charge.

A kind of nausea rose in me. I was dead to all of the people I had been closest to. Except Atherton, to whom I was now merely a scapegoat in absentia, an inconvenient loose end. Too shocked even to cry, I was still sitting at my dressing table gazing sightlessly into the mirror when there was a knock, and the housekeeper’s voice came to me.

“Mr. Bascombe is here to see you, madam. I put him in the study.”

I had to clear my throat before I could speak. “Thank you, Mrs. Vise.” As slowly as an old woman, I rose from my seat and went to the door. “Will you bring us some tea, please?” I asked.

“Do you mean coffee, Mrs. Lammle?”

I was too distressed to care. “I mean the closest facsimile of tea that is available to you, Mrs. Vise. If you please.”

Bascombe had made himself at home in Alcott’s study, seating himself in Alcott’s chair and spreading papers all over the desk surface. Intent on examining the papers and making occasional notations with a steel-nib pen, he did not at first notice my presence. The study was a comfortable, masculine room that had a lived-in look even though Alcott had only moved into these quarters a few months ago. Evidently the furnishings had been with him a long time, for the mismatched leather-upholstered chairs were sagging and worn from use. The books on the shelves were well-read to the point that the gilt lettering on the spines had rubbed off, but they had been chosen for their utility rather than beauty. I felt a twinge of sadness for the man who had assembled this room.

Bascombe, too, had the look of one selected not for beauty but for usefulness. In the blank winter sunlight streaming through the windows his pale complexion was as eerie as ever, his sunken cheeks and bony forehead as macabre as I had remembered. The effect was somewhat diminished by spectacles, which tethered him to the realm of normality. Aside from those, he would have made an excellent vampire in a gothic melodrama.

Sensing my nearness, he looked up. “Ah, Miss Ingram. So you finally decided to grace me with your presence.”

As rude as ever. “Mrs. Lammle, please,” I corrected. “And if you had sent word that you intended to call, I would have known not to go out.”

“One does not expect a widow in deep mourning to be gallivanting about town.”

Gallivanting? Along with legal counsel I was also to receive schooling in etiquette, it appeared. “Did you come merely to chastise me, Mr. Bascombe, or did you have some news to impart?”

He nodded abstractedly, made a note on another document, and shuffled the papers together into a stack. “The bank has decided to permit you and the staff to stay here for another fortnight. I must determine what to do with you after that.”

I sat down in one of the leather chairs, a little abruptly. I had not expected the bank to make a decision so quickly. “And the rest of Alcott’s property?”

“Will be determined after a long wrangle in the courts, no doubt, as with every other possession of Mr. Lammle’s.” He shook his head disapprovingly. “The estate is a shambles. It may take years before decisions are made about the disposition of all his property, between the creditors and the actions of Mr. Mosley. And it may be that long before we learn whether there is any money remaining in the estate.”

“Years?” I echoed. “So I’ll not even know whether I am able to keep any of my savings until everything else is sorted?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Savings?”

“They aren’t extensive, but I have put a little away. I know, of course, that when I married Mr. Lammle the money became his. I suppose that means his creditors can seize it as well.”

With his elbows planted on the desk blotter, Bascombe knitted his long bony fingers together and regarded me with impatience. It was an unusual experience, and a disagreeable one, to find myself in the company of a man who actively disliked me. Usually men take to me or at the very least find me inoffensive. It was inconvenient that this man should be one of the exceptions.

“You are thinking of the laws of England, Miss… Mrs. Lammle. In New York, a woman now retains ownership of any property that is in her possession at the time of her marriage. Have you enough put by to return to England?”

That was a small stroke of luck, a few hundred pounds that were still mine. It was a relief to know that I had more money at my command than the few American coins in my reticule. But… “I can’t return,” I said dully.

“Can’t?” came the incredulous echo. “Mrs. Lammle, you must have some remaining connections in your home country that you can call upon now. It should be clear that New York is no place for you. You have inherited nothing but uncertainty. And there is the additional problem that you are likely to be shunned socially, with all of the rumors that are circulating about you.”

Unwillingly I recalled the hostile whisper at the theater, the way Alcott’s acquaintances had cut me. “People blame me for Alcott’s death,” I said. I wondered whether they thought it was deliberate murder or that I had unintentionally exhausted him with my wanton actress ways.

“I would not go so far as to say that, but with your arrival coming so soon after his financial downfall and so shortly before his death, there is a great deal of unpleasant speculation. Your name has been linked with Mosley’s, for example.”

“What? They think I was in league with that scoundrel?”

“It is one of the possibilities mooted about, yes. You must realize,” he said importantly, as if imparting a great revelation, “that as an actress you are morally suspect as a matter of course. Perhaps in England there is greater tolerance for women of your profession. Here, however, there will probably always be whispering about you.”

I stared at a brownish blotch on the sleeve of my black dress. All of the dresses Alcott had had made for me had been dyed black for mourning, but the haste of the job meant that the dye had not taken evenly. The slapdash results depressed me just as this conversation did. I wondered how long the rumors would continue. How long could I endure being a pariah?

But there was nothing for me to return to in England now that Atherton had served me up as scapegoat. Gertrude’s letter had proven that. Any future I might have built for myself there would be undermined by the widespread belief in my underhanded dealings. “I can’t go back to England,” I said again, my heart aching. “I have cut all ties there. It holds nothing for me now.”

The lawyer tapped his stack of documents. “New York holds nothing for you, either. Your late husband has left behind confusion and lawsuits and probably debt, and the likelihood that anything will come to you after the dust settles is too remote for you to pin your hopes on. Clearly the only sensible thing for you to do is to return to your home.”

My home? I no longer had a home. “And why should I believe you?” I asked. “You’ve proven that you can’t be trusted and that you dislike me. How am I to know whether you are telling me the truth or just attempting to be rid of me again?”

With the sigh of one much put upon, he thrust some papers at me. “Here, see for yourself. I am not lying about the shambles that is your husband’s estate. Even the will is years old, as best I can tell—for he did not even have the consideration to date it.”

The documents were bewildering to me, full of legal language that was a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, until I reached the will he had spoken of. This, at least, was in readable English. It said nothing of the Lammle Arms, which seemed to confirm Bascombe’s supposition that it was an old will… and then something caught my eye.

“What is this place called Brooke House? ‘To my wife I leave the property known as—’”

“That is nothing. Disregard it.” The reply was as swift and forceful as a slap, and I raised my eyes from the document to look thoughtfully at the lawyer.

“I most certainly will not. It clearly says here that Alcott leaves it to his wife. I am his wife. Therefore I seem to have a legacy—or at least the possibility of one.”

He reached out to snatch the papers back, but I held them out of his reach, and in his haste he knocked over an inkwell. It was the first time I had seen him less than dignified.

“It’s an estate in the Hudson Valley,” he said snappishly, mopping up spilled ink with his handkerchief and managing to get it all over his hand and sleeve. “I told you it was an old will. The wife he refers to isn’t you; it’s Margaret Lammle.”

Somehow I had never considered that Alcott might have been married before. He had never mentioned a wife to me. “How long ago did she die?” I asked. A man in Alcott’s position would not have involved himself in the scandal of a divorce, most likely.

Tossing the ink-stained handkerchief aside, he regarded his blackened fingers with distaste. “Nearly two years ago. They were married for about fifteen years.”

Fifteen years, and Alcott had not told me of her? “I see,” I said, feeling injured. “Why do you suppose he left her that particular property?”

“It was hers originally. She brought the house to the marriage and legally gave it to her husband as a gift so that he might borrow money against it to construct the first of his hotels.” I was still adjusting my mind to this revelation when he added, “It will be for a judge to decide whether it goes to the bank, to you, or to your stepson.”

“To—who did you say?”

“The first Mrs. Lammle’s son. Roderick is his name.”

Alcott had definitely never mentioned a child. What was I supposed to do about him? I was completely unprepared to be a stepmother. “Where is he now?” I said faintly.

“At Woodlow School for Boys. Since the death of his mother, Brooke House has been shut up.”

The poor little fellow. He must feel himself to be terribly alone. Had Alcott meant for him to live with us over the holidays, or to be exiled at his school? With his mother gone only two years, he was probably still feeling the loss of her most painfully.

Bascombe, however, did not seem interested in the plight of this unfortunate boy, except as far as the will went. “By rights Brooke House should go to him, of course.”

“But he could hardly stay there all alone. And in any case, that isn’t what the will says.” A daring hope was unfolding inside me. A judge just might decide that I could be the wife Alcott had left the house to. And if I was in residence at the house, even if the judgment went against me, it might be difficult and inconvenient to force me out of it. Even Bascombe, with his strange dislike of me, might find it too much trouble to journey there to forcibly evict me. And I could be very stubborn; I would not be easy to dislodge. “I think I should travel out to this Brooke House and have a look at it, since it may become my new home.”

He was shaking his head even before I finished speaking. “I most strenuously urge against it, Mrs. Lammle. The property is very isolated. The journey would be uncomfortable, and the house itself is in no fit state to stay there.”

“I’m certain that could be remedied. My husband’s secretary—Underhill, is it?—must know how to contact the former staff there. The house was shut up on Mrs. Lammle’s death, you said. Does that mean that she was in residence there until that point?”

His spectacles gleamed coldly at me. “For the most part,” he said in clipped syllables. “She came to town occasionally, but she much preferred the country. During her final illness Lammle urged her to come to him in the city, where she would receive better medical care, but she preferred to die in the house she loved.”

How sad for the poor lady, alone at her death—and in much of her life, too, with Alcott remaining in the city, pursuing his empire building. How lonely she must have been. How frightened, dying without her husband at her side. I found myself angry at Alcott on her behalf.

But Bascombe was eyeing me with undisguised irritation, reminding me that I must bring my mind to the matter at hand. If there had been servants in residence at Brooke House in the not too distant past, perhaps they could be persuaded to return. “It was not an illness contracted at the house?” I thought to ask. “There is no contamination?”

“None that I know of.” He said this grudgingly, as if he would rather have told me the place was riddled with typhoid and cholera.

“Then it should do nicely for me.”

“But it boasts none of the comforts of modern residences in the city. No gas, no steam heating—”

But I was new to these luxuries and had spent years traveling from one hostelry to the next. I was no spun-glass female who would go into hysterics at the prospect of using oil lamps and hot-water bottles. “If the first Mrs. Lammle could endure it, so can I.”

He stared at me as if I had lost my senses. “What exactly do you think you will do there, Miss—Mrs. Lammle? Brooke House is in the middle of nowhere. The property is bordered by farmland, forest, and the river. It is miles from the nearest village. You are clearly used to more stimulation, and I foresee nothing but misery for you in such a situation.”

That daunted me, I admit. I remembered the snowy scenery I had viewed from the steamship, how aloof it had looked. How isolated.

But there was always some kind of community, even in remote areas. There would be village gatherings and house parties. Perhaps my new neighbors would not share the prejudices and nasty assumptions of Alcott’s circle in the city.

And there was little Roderick to think of. If I was in residence at Brook House, he could stay with me between terms. Surely he would become attached to me—so much so that if the house were ruled his, he would insist upon my staying with him.

“I won’t lack for company,” I said triumphantly. “Roderick can spend his holidays with me.” Much depended, though, on how young he was. I did not have a great deal of confidence in my ability to tend to a very young child alone. “If he is at school, it must mean the lad is at least six or seven years old, mustn’t it? I do hope he’s no younger than that. It has been many years since I have looked after very young children.” It had been, in fact, a full fifteen years since I had seen my younger brothers and sisters. It saddened me that I had been denied any chance to know them now that they were older, for I remembered them primarily as gaping red mouths howling to be fed. But no doubt the maturity I had gained in the years since then would equip me to see more in little Roderick than a hungry maw.

When I realized that Bascombe had not yet responded, I looked up to find a most peculiar expression on his face. “Well?” I asked. “Do you know his age? The little fellow is no younger than six, is he?”

“No.” Bascombe cleared his throat and looked down at the papers that lay before him. “No, he is—at least seven, I feel certain.”

“Well, then. We shall get along quite handsomely together, I expect. He can show me how to play knucklebones and… er… catch frogs and the like. All the things that American little boys do.”

“Hmm,” said the lawyer. “And in the intervals while the—ah—little fellow is away at school? What shall you occupy yourself with then?”

“Good works,” I said pertly. “Knitting. Whist. It is none of your affair, Mr. Bascombe, how I occupy myself.” My spirits were reviving. This promised to be a fresh start. A new home, a new community where I could make a place for myself. I would be “that generous Mrs. Lammle” and host house parties for the other landowners that they would talk about for months afterward. I would be Lady Bountiful—surely there was some income attached to the property—and organize holiday fetes for the children. I would start a Sunday school and take soup to the poor and… in short, I would make myself beloved. Soon I would be so integral a part of life in that area that no one could imagine how they had ever done without me.

“Thank you for calling,” I said, rising to bring an end to the interview. “I don’t know what I would have done had you not told me about Brooke House. Now my problem is solved! I shall ask Mr. Underhill to see to the travel arrangements and whatnot. You may tell the bank that I shall have no trouble vacating the premises”—I was rather proud of myself for remembering this official phrase—“within a fortnight.”

Where my mood had improved, Bascombe’s had grown worse. He rose stiffly from the chair and shook my hand with the grim resignation of Charon turning away a passenger for presenting him with an insufficient fare. “Your optimism notwithstanding,” he said, “Brooke House is not a hospitable place to live. There are stories…”

“Oh?”

“Tales of monstrous bad luck and ill fortune. It is a house of sinister history, Mrs. Lammle. The locals will tell you that it is an unchancy place.”

This was so clearly an attempt to frighten me, and moreover a clumsy one, that I was hard pressed not to laugh. “I shall maintain a state of alert vigilance,” I informed him. “Is there anything else I should know? Any final warnings?”

If he heard the irreverence in my voice, he ignored it. He simply said, “Convey my apologies to Mrs. Dove.” Then, as I puzzled over this cryptic utterance, he made a perfunctory bow and left the room.

Mrs. Vise, timing her entrance for the greatest inconvenience, was just approaching with a tray of what my nostrils told me was decidedly not tea. Bascombe did not even give her a glance as he stalked past her to the foyer, passing so closely that he jostled the tray in her hands. The faint narrowing of her eyes showed her dislike, and out of that instant of shared antipathy an idea came to me.

“Mrs. Vise,” I said, “will you have some coffee with me?”

In her face curiosity fought with shock at this breach of propriety. Curiosity proved the victor. “If you wish, madam,” she said.

I led the way into the small sitting room that adjoined my bedchamber. She seated herself in a gingerly fashion on the very edge of a chair while I poured. “Apart from Mr. Bascombe,” I said, handing her her cup, “you have been more unpleasant to me than anyone else in this city. Yet I trust you, and I do not trust Mr. Bascombe. Why is that, do you think?”

She took a sip of her coffee and permitted herself to sit back half an inch. “He has something personal against you,” she told me. “Don’t ask me what, for I don’t know. And it may not be you as much as anyone Mr. Lammle married.”

Interesting. While I thought this over, she continued, “As for me… well, you know I have nothing to gain by buttering you up. But tearing you down would do me no good either.”

“Indeed,” I said. “In fact, we are on pretty even footing just now, aren’t we? Mr. Lammle’s death put us both out of a job, in a sense. That is, unless you have already found a new position.”

“Not yet.”

“Had you been with him long?”

“Only since the Arms opened.”

Not long enough, I hoped, to grow dependent on its modern conveniences. “How would you like to move out to the country to keep house for me?” I asked. “We shall have to vacate the hotel in a fortnight, and there is a property that may come to me if the courts interpret Mr. Lammle’s will favorably. Even if it ends up going to the bank, the decision will probably be delayed long enough to give us both time to get our feet under us and look about for something new.”

“Using what for money, if I might be so bold?”

Far from being offended, I admired her practicality. It boded well. “I have enough savings to see us through a year or two, depending upon our expenses. What do you say, Mrs. Vise? It would be quite a change from life in the city.”

She sniffed. “This city is a den of iniquity. Everywhere you look are thieves, reprobates, and fancy women—no offense meant.”

“I am not and never have been a fancy woman, Mrs. Vise. A simple, workaday Sybil am I.”

But my quip did not sit well with her. “Madam,” she said, “I’ll speak plain. My conscience would give me no peace if I knowingly went into service with a—a painted Jezebel.”

Well, I had wanted honesty. “I have a conscience too,” I told her. “And it would not let me sleep at night if I had agreed to marry Mr. Lammle while being unfit to be his bride.” Her intent expression did not relax, however, so I asked, “Are you worried about the rumors that I was somehow responsible for Mr. Lammle’s death?”

A quick, decisive shake of her head. “Foolish talk is all that is, and I’ve told the maids so when I hear them spreading such nonsense. You may be a foreigner and an actress, but you did your best to look after Mr. Lammle in the little time you had together.” A moment’s thought more, and she had made her decision. “I’ll go with you, madam.”

“Excellent,” I said in relief. “If you’ll be so good as to ask Mr. Underhill to come round, we can begin making plans.”

It will have been obvious that I omitted an important detail in describing the situation to the housekeeper: the possibility that the house would be left to my stepson, Roderick. But that would have needlessly complicated matters. Time enough to tell her about the other member of our household when the school term ended.

My first view of Brooke House, when we arrived nearly two weeks later, had all the unreality of a desert mirage.

Mrs. Vise and I made the last part of our journey by sleigh, since our new home was so remote that the roads were not clear enough for a carriage. It was nearing twilight, so that the snow-covered landscape had taken on a bluish tint. Dark woods loomed on one side of the road, and the trees were heavily cloaked in snow. Our driver, Tully, who had met us at the train station by prearrangement, wore a woolen muffler over his nose and mouth, making conversation difficult.

I had already forgotten the name of the station—Little This or New That. But with every moment, as we left it farther behind us, I felt greater unease. How would we fare in so remote a place? What would happen to us if we fell ill or ran out of firewood and coal and food?

I tried to reason myself out of these panicked thoughts. Mr. Underhill had informed me before our departure from the Lammle Arms that he had found someone willing to open the house for us. He had also arranged for the place to be fully provisioned. The cost had taken rather a large bite out of my savings, and this was one of the reasons I was so nervous. If I proved unable to make a home for myself at Brooke House, I would have less money with which to fund another.

Mrs. Vise was silent, perhaps communing with similarly pessimistic thoughts. The icy whisper of the runners on snow and the muffled drumming of the horses’ hooves were the only sounds. And then, with no warning, we rounded a curve in the road and saw Brooke House.

From the name and from what Mr. Underhill had told me of the Brooke family—distinguished gentry, originally from England, who had lived in the area since well before the colonies revolted—I had expected something fairly simple. A farmhouse, probably; unpretentious, sturdy, above all plain. What I had not expected to find was a medieval cathedral.

“Saints above,” said Mrs. Vise, next to me, and our driver gave a laugh that was audible even through the heavy scarf that covered his mouth.

“It does take some folk that way,” he said over his shoulder. “There’s nothing else like it in these parts, that’s sure.”

Brooke House was massive, built of great blocks of what I later learned was limestone; in the eerie radiance of twilight it was a pearlescent blue-gray like a stormy sky. Mullioned windows in arched stone casements were everywhere, including the gables, which were ornamented with lacy spires. Crenellations along the roof line added to the medieval effect. There was a square tower with more spires, as well as a round window reminiscent of a cathedral’s rose window.

Some of the windows were shuttered, but light glowed from behind the massive arched window next to the front door. As we drew up under the porte cochere and Tully jumped down to help us alight from the sleigh, I gazed about myself in unconcealed curiosity. A great iron lantern overhead cast enough light on the entranceway to show that, despite its attempt to appear medieval, this house was surprisingly new, unless I was much mistaken. At close quarters the stone facade was sharp, not blunted by the passage of generations, and scarcely touched by moss. The arched stone window housings were likewise still crisp of line and undarkened by time. Where had the Brookes lived before this extravagant fantasia had been erected?

My musings were interrupted by the opening of the great studded door. It too was set in an arched opening, and it would have seemed appropriate to be greeted by a woman in medieval garb and a conical hennin and veil. But the plump, red-faced woman who faced us was undeniably of the nineteenth century, even though the mob cap and pinner apron she wore over her plain dress were quaint in their way.

“I’m Mrs. Tully,” she said. “And this is Mariah.” A diminutive woman in her twenties curtseyed and reached for my cloak. “Welcome to Brooke House.”

“Thank you,” I said, untying the strings of my bonnet as I stared around me. I had expected her name to be Dove, but Bascombe must have been thinking of someone else.

The entrance hall had all the gloomy Gothic grandeur promised by the house’s exterior. The entrance hall was almost as large as a ballroom and reached the second story if not higher. Carved paneling of some dark wood extended up to the vaulted ceiling, which bore the elaborate carving of a cathedral vault. The staircase, of the same dark wood, could have accommodated five people walking abreast. To my right was a massive fireplace with an elaborately carved mantel and metal fire guard. Its light, and that of a many-branched oil lamp beside the door, did its best to dispel the gloom, but the top of the staircase at the first landing was sunken in shadow. The floor was a black and white parquet tile, nearly obscured with rugs of deep reds and blues.

Never before had I stayed in such impressive lodgings. Even the Lammle Arms, for all its grandeur, had lacked this sense of history and awe. But the small voice of practicality piped up in my mind to point out how expensive it would be to heat and light a place of this size. And already I was longing for the steam heat of the Lammle Arms, so quickly had I become accustomed to that luxury.

“Missus is a friend of Mrs. Lammle?” Mrs. Tully asked Mrs. Vise, taking her cloak.

“No, I am the housekeeper. You may call me Mrs. Vise.”

Mrs. Tully stared from her to me. “But I am the housekeeper. Didn’t Mr. Underhill tell you?”

“I took you for the cook,” said Mrs. Vise, and the barely concealed disdain in her voice brought a deeper red to Mrs. Tully’s already rosy features.

“Beg pardon, but I’m both,” she said. “Cook and housekeeper. Unless you don’t want me, Mrs. Lammle?”

Two expectant pairs of eyes turned toward me. Oh dear. I was not at all equipped for this kind of domestic diplomacy. In rented rooms and theatrical lodgings my obligations to the staff had been limited to wishing them good morning. Landladies and landlords took care of all the rest.

“Isn’t that a great deal for one person to do?” I asked weakly. “This seems quite a small staff for such a large house.”

“Before Mrs. Lammle took sick—beg pardon, the late Mrs. Lammle—she kept more servants on,” she told me. “She did enjoy entertaining. If you plan on throwing parties and that, you’ll want to bring on more staff.”

“Yes, I see what you mean. From day to day I shan’t need much.”

“Just so,” Mrs. Tully said. “And Mr. Roderick doesn’t keep a valet.”

I laughed at the idea of a schoolboy having a valet to see to his clothes. “I would imagine not,” I said. Strange how she called him Mister Roderick, as if he were an adult, instead of Master, as one would address a young boy. But perhaps that was one of the many differences between American speech and British. I had stubbed my toe on these differences in the past.

“So it’s clear you don’t need both Mrs. Vise and me,” Mrs. Tully said in triumph, and too late I realized my error. “She can go on back to the city if she likes.”

The look Mrs. Vise gave her was disdainful enough to curdle milk. “On the contrary,” she snapped. “If either of us is to go, it should be you, Mrs. Tully. Mrs. Lammle expressly hired me as her housekeeper. You were merely supposed to prepare the house for us. I imagine that Mrs. Lammle considers that you have overstayed your welcome.”

“Could you not, er, divide the duties of housekeeper?” I broke in. “Mrs. Tully, I would imagine that cooking the meals takes up a great deal of your time, so perhaps Mrs. Vise could relieve you of some of your other tasks.”

“And which one of us is to be in charge, madam?” Mrs. Vise asked.

“Er… well…”

“Meaning no disrespect to Mrs. Tully,” said Mrs. Vise stiffly, “I have no doubt that I am more up to date in my methods of keeping house. Mrs. Tully has not had my experience managing a modern domicile.”

Mrs. Tully planted her hands on her hips, glaring. “I’m sure that’s all very well, but I know Brooke House like my own child, all its ins and outs and quirks and crotchets. The good lord only knows how long it may take you to learn it.”

I had to make a decision before they came to blows. “Since Mrs. Tully knows her way around the kitchen, why don’t you see to that side of the household,” I offered. “And Mrs. Vise, you can be in charge of the living spaces. Will that suit?”

Mrs. Tully took a deep breath as if making an effort to keep her patience. The effect of this on her impressive bosom was reminiscent of a pouter pigeon puffing itself up. “And what’s to be done when both of us are giving Mariah instructions?” she asked darkly. “Which of us does she mind?”

“I’m certain the two of you know much more about how these things work than I do,” I said lamely. “Can you not try it this way and—and come to me if you need me to settle a dispute?”

The disapproving looks that met this suggestion convinced me that being mistress of a household was going to be more complicated, and more troublesome, than I had anticipated.

“Perhaps you could show me to my room,” I said hastily to Mrs. Tully.

“I’ve put you in the late Mrs. Lammle’s room,” she said, darting a smug look at Mrs. Vise. “If you’ll come this way.”

Mariah picked up my valise and followed as I mounted the great staircase behind the housekeeper—or, should I say, the second housekeeper. “Where is Mrs. Vise to stay?” I asked.

“I’ll find a place for her” was the dark reply, and, coward-like, I did not inquire further.

It was not until our little procession had crossed the threshold that the realization sank into me. “This must be where Mrs. Lammle died,” I said, gazing around me at the room that had been my predecessor’s. This chamber, too, carried out the medieval theme: the paper was a dark green with a gold quatrefoil design, which was echoed in the carved headboard and footboard of the bed. The curtains of green damask were closed against the chill evening air, but I had no doubt that the windows they concealed were narrow and arched. A brisk fire crackled on the hearth beneath a black marble mantelpiece, though, and when Mrs. Tully lit the lamps the room’s austerity was softened somewhat. It was not a friendly room, but it was a handsome one.

Mrs. Tully nodded. “Yes, she died in this room. And in such agonies, the poor lady.” She indicated a framed daguerreotype on the dressing table. It showed a younger version of Alcott Lammle standing beside a woman in the bell-skirted fashion of the fifties. Her face was sensitive but also spirited, I had decided, when Mrs. Tully’s voice broke in on my reflections.

“But you’ll not want to hear about that, missus. While Mariah unpacks your things, I’ll set out a little supper for you in the small parlor. With tea, if you like.”

“Tea!” I could have kissed her. “That would be marvelous.” Then I remembered the stoic figure I had left behind. “But first I’d be obliged if you showed Mrs. Vise to her quarters and made certain she has everything she needs.”

“As fast as my legs will carry me, missus.” But her pace was leisured as she left the room.

After changing my traveling dress to one more suited for the indoors, I looked around a bit in the vicinity of my room. A more thorough investigation of my new home would wait until the next morning, when I would have more light and more time. The great globed lamp at the landing, as well as the candles in sconces outside my door, permitted me to see partway down the long hall. A house this big would take a great deal of time to explore, and I resolved to ask Mrs. Tully or Mariah to take me over it and tell me more about its history.

My bedroom gave onto a small sitting room on one side; on the other was another bedroom, which I supposed had been Alcott’s. On the far side of that was a study. On the opposite side of the hall to this was another bedroom. Perhaps Roderick’s, although it contained none of the childhood paraphernalia I had expected. No rocking horse, no toy soldiers… well, no doubt he had outgrown these and they were stored away somewhere. I ventured inside just long enough to leave a wrapped gift on the bureau. Although I was curious to know more about my stepson, just now the prospect of supper and tea was more alluring.

The small parlor was the only room I had yet seen in Brooke House that could be described as cozy. It was hung in soft hues of rose and fawn, and the dark paneling was relieved by paintings in glowing colors. The spacious river vistas the paintings depicted, I realized, were local. These must be the works of some of the Hudson Valley school of artists. I was admiring one scene of sunlit verdant forest and imagining how much more inviting this part of the world would be in summer when I noticed the signature: Margaret Brooke Lammle. So my predecessor had been an artist—and a gifted one. I started to examine the signatures on the other paintings. Not all were by Mrs. Lammle, but I had counted four by the time Mariah arrived with a tray.

“I’ve finished your unpacking, missus,” she said in a soft voice. Her voice had a curious flat intonation, perhaps a local accent, that made her more difficult to understand than the Tullys. “And Mrs. Tully has settled Mrs. Vise.”

I smiled to myself at the double meaning of this. I could well imagine the sturdy Mrs. Tully “settling” slight Mrs. Vise with a well-placed blow or two. “Thank you, Mariah. Can you tell me, how old is Brooke House?”

She finished setting out my meal and pouring out my tea before she answered. The little table, sized for just one person, was drawn near the fireplace so that I could enjoy the pleasant warmth. With steam curling up from my teacup and from the savory dish of stew before me, I felt pampered indeed. “This one was built less than forty years ago, I do believe.”

“This one? How many are there?”

“Mrs. Tully knows more than me, missus. I can fetch her for you—”

“No, that’s not necessary. I can speak to her about it tomorrow.”

As I ate my supper I noted more about the room. There was a fine pianoforte, I was pleased to observe. Even though I played very little, it might come in handy if I had musically inclined visitors. I could sing far better than I played, and perhaps little Roderick could play enough to accompany me on some simple songs; how companionable that would be. There was also a large cushioned window seat that would be an inviting place to relax with a book. The curtains were closed, of course, but I looked forward to seeing the view during daylight.

After I finished my meal and rang for Mariah to clear the table, I started back to my room. I was pleasantly tired, and there was no reason not to retire early. My way took me into the great hall, where the lamp still burned—which was how I was able to observe my valise sitting next to the front door.

“Mariah?” I called. When she emerged from the small parlor, I did not even have to draw her attention to my bag; she noticed it at once and gave a little start. Of guilt, I supposed. “I thought you had taken my valise to my room,” I said.

I did not speak harshly, but the young woman turned a stricken face to me. “I did, missus!” she cried. “I swear I did. Please don’t be angry. I’ll see to it at once.” She scurried to retrieve the bag, and before I could tell her I wasn’t angry she was hurrying up the staircase to my room.

“Is anything amiss, madam?”

Now it was my turn to start. “Mrs. Vise, you startled me. No, I’m well.” It is only that one of the servants is hinting that I leave the house, I refrained from saying. Perhaps it was one of the Tullys. Or perhaps it was Mrs. Vise herself. She looked as composed as ever, standing beside me with her hands folded, but maybe she was already regretting her choice to come here with me. “Are you comfortable?”

“Quite comfortable enough, madam.”

Her mask of decorum was in place; it was impossible to tell what her feelings were. But I lacked the patience to draw out my housekeeper at this time of the evening. I bade her goodnight and returned to my room.

Mariah was still there. She had placed the valise on the bed and, curiously, seemed to be removing my jewel case from it. Had the person who moved my bag taken the trouble to repack it first? “All done, missus,” she said as she tucked the jewel case into the top drawer of the bureau.

“Thank you, Mariah. You may leave the bag there; I’ll put it away in a moment. Good night.” I seated myself at the dressing table. She bobbed a curtsey and withdrew, closing the door behind her, as I turned toward the mirror. As I began to remove my hairpins I heard the latch drop into place and the floorboards of the landing creak gently beneath her footsteps as she walked away.

The light of the lamp did not extend as high as the vaulted ceiling, and it made me strangely uneasy not to be able to see the upper reaches of my room. If something was perched there, looking down at me, I would not know it. The logical side of my mind said that nothing could be there aside from a spider or a bat, and Mrs. Tully probably took too much pride in her housekeeping to allow even those harmless intruders. But the other side of my mind, the intuitive portion honed by fifteen years of trouping, was uneasy.

The room was almost completely silent. Even the fire burned in a subdued way, with no spitting or popping. Faintly I could hear a whistle of wind around the window casement, but altogether there was so little to disturb the silence that any human presence would have been immediately obvious.

I mention this because when I next glanced into the mirror, the reflection showed that the valise was no longer sitting on the bed.

I whirled around, my heart leaping into my throat. The mirror had not lied; the bag was truly gone. Perhaps it had somehow fallen off the bed? But when I forced myself to walk across the room and look, the floor was bare.

There is no reason to be afraid, I told myself as my eyes darted around the room, seeking the bag in vain. After a moment’s hesitation I knelt down and peered under the bed. Nothing. I snatched at the wardrobe door and flung it open, but no valise did I see. It had disappeared.

My hand was reaching for the bell pull even before I was conscious of moving. “Mariah!” I called. “Mrs. Tully!”

I threw open the door of my room and hastened onto the landing, searching the hall in both directions for a retreating figure. If Mariah had somehow returned unseen to my room, I reasoned, or even lingered there when I thought she had gone, she might have removed the bag. Never mind that I would have heard her footsteps, heard the door open and close, seen movement out of the corner of my eye or in the mirror’s reflection. Perhaps she had wanted to frighten me. But she would have had only seconds to get away and hide the bag—

But it was not hidden. Disbelieving, I stared down at it where it rested beneath the landing light. I reached down to test that it was real, and when I picked it up its weight caught me by surprise. Setting it back on the floor, I knelt down and unfastened the catch.

The bag had been repacked with my belongings. On the top rested my jewel case.

I could not have imagined Mariah putting that away. I darted back into my room and pulled out the bureau drawer where I knew, I was positive she had put the case. But it was there no longer.

“Missus?” Mrs. Tully’s voice echoed in the hall below, and I half ran back onto the landing—

Where the valise no longer lay.

I swallowed hard. My hands had gone clammy. Taking two more steps forward, I saw the upturned faces of the two housekeepers and Mariah gazing at me from the hall below. I knew now that it could not have been one of them that had moved the bag.

But I had to give them some reason for calling them. I began, “I was wondering if—” and my stomach gave a sickening lurch when my eyes fell on the foot of the great staircase and I saw the bag sitting there. Even from where I stood I could see that the clasps had been fastened up again.

Mariah’s hands flew to her mouth to stifle a gasp when she saw the direction of my gaze. She knew something was wrong. I wondered distantly how many times she had taken my valise to my room and unpacked it tonight.

“Did one of you happen to remove that bag from my room?” I asked faintly. My voice was so detached it sounded as if it belonged to someone else.

“No, madam.”

“No, missus.”

Mariah shook her head urgently. Her face was pale.

My throat had gone dry, making it difficult to speak. “That is all,” I managed. “Sorry to have troubled you. Good night.”

The two older women looked at me sharply as if doubting my sanity. I could hardly blame them. The valise did not look haunted. It was the same shabby leather bag I had carried with me for the last three years, with the same water stain near the bottom. It was no figment of my imagination.

“Good night, madam,” said Mrs. Vise in an emotionless voice, and the three of them retreated the way they had come. Mariah tarried behind the other two, giving me an anguished look before following her elders into the dark end of the hall that led to the kitchen.

Slowly I descended the staircase. The silence had descended upon the great hall, too. The whisper of my dress hem against the stair carpet was as loud as a mountain avalanche. It was a charged silence, ominous, and it pressed against my ears with painful force. I was aware that my breath was coming more rapidly.

Four steps from the bottom of the staircase I had to stop to gather my courage. Grasping the banister, feeling the reassurance of its smooth polished wood under my hand, I closed my eyes for a moment and forced myself to breathe more slowly.

When I opened my eyes the valise had moved again. Now it was sitting by the front door where I had found it earlier.

With a muffled cry I picked up my skirts and ran toward it, flying down the last few stairs, my shoes striking echoes from the parquet floor as I hurtled across it. When I reached the door I snatched the valise up in both arms and braced my back against the wall, panting and staring all around me. I was alone in the hall—alone except for that force that watched and listened, that wanted me to leave the house.

“Please,” I whispered. I had not meant to speak, but the word forced itself from me, and then more words came tumbling after. “Please let me stay. I mean no harm. And I… I have nowhere else to go.”

Nothing happened that I could see. But gradually the tension in the air lessened somewhat. The silence was no longer actively hostile, merely watchful. I had not defeated my unseen adversary, but at least we seemed to have come to a truce of sorts.

Little by little my heartbeat slowed to something like its normal pace. Taking a deep breath, still clutching the valise to my chest, I took a step away from the wall. When nothing had happened by the time the echo died away, I took another. And another. Somehow it felt as though the staircase was my place of safety, if I could only make it there…

It was the longest walk of my life, and when I reached the staircase and set my foot on the first step I felt as exhausted as if I had been dragging myself for miles on my hands and knees. When I finally ascended to the top and reached my room, I let the valise fall from my numbed arms, and it landed on the floor with a commonplace thud.

The fire spat and crackled cheerfully. The mattress creaked gently beneath me when my knees gave way and I sat down abruptly on the bed.

So ended my first evening at Brooke House.

The next day started badly. My sleep was troubled by frightening dreams, and the bed, grand though it looked, was lumpy. Consequently, when I woke I did not feel rested.

I drew open the curtains and then flinched away from the glare of sunlight on snow. Waking in a city was less harsh on one’s eyes, I decided.

But the dazzling light illuminated more of my new quarters than I had yet seen. Now I noticed that the vaulted ceiling was elaborately carved and painted gold and white. It lightened the effect of the dark colors of the hangings somewhat. I also saw that there was a small but distinct lump in the middle of my bed, and I knelt on the floor so that I could lift the mattress and feel beneath it.

A sharp pain jabbed my ring finger, and I muttered an oath. I had a colorful selection of these, gleaned from various actors I had known, and although I tried to be ladylike in my speech sometimes one of these epithets would escape me. In a more gingerly fashion, I felt in the direction of the thing that had hurt me, and felt something covered in fabric. I drew it out and found that it was a doll.

Fashioned crudely of fabric and yarn, and stuffed with what felt like cotton wool, it was scarcely longer than my hand and made in the form of a woman with yellow hair. A sacklike gown made of white batiste was its only covering. Closed eyes and a mouth had been stitched in thread, and when I squeezed it cautiously I found that a long pin or needle concealed in its body was what I had stabbed myself with.

Perplexed, I wondered where it had come from and why it was hidden under the mattress. Did boys play with dolls? It seemed unlikely, at least with this doll. Was it placed here to be safe, or to be hidden? The strange little thing seemed rather forlorn with its skimpy dress and closed eyes. When someone knocked at my door I tucked it into a bureau drawer and decided it was not worth puzzling over any further.

Mrs. Vise was waiting at my door. “Would you like any assistance in dressing?” she asked after bidding me good morning. “Or would you like your breakfast on a tray?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to say that I would come downstairs for breakfast, but then I remembered that I wanted to talk to Mariah about the strange events of the night before. “Can you have Mariah bring it up? I’m sure you have more important things to do than to wait on me.”

“As it happens, Mariah has gone. Without even giving notice, if you please. If that is what these country people are like—”

“Gone?” I exclaimed, breaking into her peevish speech. “How do you mean, gone? Do you mean she… disappeared?” Wild thoughts filled my mind: the hostile entity in the hallway had forced her out into the snow, never to be seen again.

Mrs. Vise gave a disapproving sniff. “As good as. Mr. Tully drove her into town at first light. Mrs. Tully says it may be difficult to find a girl to replace her. Apparently few are willing to come all the way out here to the wilderness for work.”

“Wilderness seems rather strong, Mrs. Vise.” But I spoke absently, remembering Mariah’s wide, frightened eyes and pale face. She must have been too frightened to stay at Brooke House, and that made me wonder what else she might have seen or felt besides the wanderings of my valise.

In the cheerful light of morning it was difficult to completely recall the fear that I had felt the night before. It was still vivid enough in my mind, though, to instill in me a new respect for my surroundings. After my breakfast, as Mrs. Tully led me and Mrs. Vise on a tour through the house’s pantry, wine cellar, and other useful areas, I kept my ears and eyes open and tried to learn as much as I could about the history of Brooke House.

Almost the first thing I learned was that, as Mariah had started to tell me, this present version was only the latest in a succession of houses by that name. “They keep burning up or falling down,” was Mrs. Tully’s summation, given in matter-of-fact tones. “The first was burned during the Revolution. When it was rebuilt, it only lasted thirty or forty years before it collapsed. Earthquake, some said, although others claim it was just badly built.”

Mrs. Vise gave one of her disapproving sniffs as if to say that shoddy workmanship was exactly what she would have expected from country folk. I was beginning to learn how to read her.

Mrs. Tully gave her a sharp look as if interpreting the sniff the same way, but she let it pass. “The next house, let’s see, it lasted a good long while. But then the cholera broke out, and the family left. They stayed away for years. When they returned in the thirties, dry rot had set in, I think is what Mrs. Lammle said—pardon, missus, the late Mrs. Lammle—or maybe just rot. So her father built this house we’re standing in now.”

“Her father?” I repeated. “But Brooke was her married name, was it not?”

“Aye, her husband was a distant cousin. Second or third, I forget.” She was wheezing slightly now as we crested the top of the staircase leading up from the wine cellar, a gloomy cavern with unpleasantly damp walls. “The mistress was born a Brooke, and married she remained a Brooke.” She stopped to catch her breath, one hand patting herself on the bosom as if to reassure her heart.

“Perhaps we should move on to the linen closet,” said Mrs. Vise, but I was more interested in the history than in the sheets and tablecloths. I recalled Bascombe’s words of warning. Was it possible that he had not merely been inventing stories to dissuade me from coming here? If there was truth behind his admonitions, I wanted to know it.

“Would you say, Mrs. Tully, that Brooke House has bad luck?” I asked. “Or even that it’s cursed, perhaps?”

A low chuckle emerged from somewhere under her corset, and she shook her head as if to chide me for being mischievous. “Cursed,” she said scoffingly, resuming our progress down the corridor. “Mrs. Lammle, Brooke House has the worst luck of any house I’ve ever lived in, and that’s the honest truth. But I hold no truck with talk of curses and suchlike. ’Tisn’t natural.”

“Well, something about this place is certainly very unnatural,” I said, disappointed. Evidently I would have to seek elsewhere for answers.

She clucked her tongue. “Missus, I’m surprised at you. Such talk!”

“Mrs. Vise, you agree with me, don’t you?” I appealed. “So many peculiar happenings suggest something beyond the realm of normality, don’t they?”

The struggle in her face was something to see. It appeared from her expression that she actually agreed with Mrs. Tully but would have died before saying so. “I suppose there is a possibility, madam,” she said at last, grudgingly. “I’m a God-fearing woman, and I don’t believe it’s given to us to know the answers to everything.”

Mrs. Tully snorted. “Superstitious fiddle-faddle!”

Mrs. Vise bridled, and I drew the two of them to a halt before she could say something that would lead to open war. “Mrs. Tully,” I said gravely, “you and Mrs. Vise should know that I am what you would call superstitious. I have seen and heard things over the course of my life that cannot be explained by rational causes, and I firmly believe that there are forces at work in this world that are beyond our understanding.”

“Now, now,” said Mrs. Tully indulgently, “don’t work yourself into a pother, missus.”

“I am not in a pother,” I said with dignity. “But I know that—”

“But that’s just it, missus, you don’t know. Now, I’ve seen more of life than you.” To my indignation, she actually patted me on the arm as if to soothe me. “Wait until you’re a bit older and wiser, and then you’ll find that all your spooks and bogles can be explained away.”

I opened my lips to protest that I was not some foolish child whose head was full of ridiculous fancies, but I saw that she would not have believed me. To her I was a silly young thing with fantastical ideas. Even Mrs. Vise was notably silent, now thoroughly absorbed in examining the baseboards for dust—a convenient way to avoid meeting my eye. It seemed that even her desire to defend me against her rival was insufficient to convince her of the existence of a supernatural realm.

“Let us say no more about it, then, and see to the linen closet,” I said—and I’m afraid I said it very snappishly.

After the midday meal I decided that further exploration of the house could wait, even though there was a great deal I had not yet seen. I wanted to get a sense of the property upon which Brooke House stood… at least until the next attack of fire, earthquake, or dry rot. I made sure to find Mrs. Vise first and inform her of my plan. Out here in the wilderness, it made a great deal of sense to tell someone where I was going. If I lost my way or became injured, I wanted to know that a search party would come after me.

Perhaps that seems an overdramatic scenario. But I had never lived in the country—any country—and had nothing more than stories to go by. I did take the precaution of asking Mrs. Tully before my departure whether I needed to carry a firearm in case of wolves. The sound of her laughter still echoed in my ears.

I prepared well for my venture into the snowy wastes. I put on my warmest mourning dress and the boots that came up the highest on my legs, a darling pair made of white suede embroidered with pink and blue flowers, trimmed lavishly with gold leather. Even though they were unfit for mourning and the Louis heels were rather high for walking, I thought they would offer the most protection from the snow. My cloak and gloves followed, of course, then my mourning bonnet, and over all a warm woolen muffler.

From my first steps off the clean-swept back stoop, however, it was clear that I was completely out of my element. I sank into snow that rose almost to my knees. With difficulty I drew my feet out, one after the other, over and over, making my painfully slow way forward. The snow crept beneath my muffler and into my boots, and soon my feet were wet and aching with cold. My skirts were draggled with snow and weighted down. My hands were so cold that they began to lose sensation, but if I rubbed them together for warmth, I could not pick up my skirts to free them from the snow, bringing my progress to a halt.

I had never been more miserable.

I would have turned back except that Mrs. Tully had promised that the view from the hilltop behind the house was worth any amount of effort to see. But it was easy enough for her to say this, I reflected sulkily, while she was seated in a rocking chair next to the comforting heat of the kitchen range. As long as I had come this far, though, I would not turn back without reaching my destination.

Perhaps the view around me was splendid, but with my muffler wrapped closely around my face I saw only what was directly before me. Finally, however, my persistence was rewarded. I reached the crest of the hill and stopped, looking all around me.

It was as if the world was at my feet—which was the very opposite of how I felt. Below and surprisingly near was the river, a paler reflection of the vivid blue sky, dotted with small ice floes just as the sky was dotted with clouds. Across the river rose gently sloped hills and mountains, white with snow where they were nearest, shading to slate blue on the horizon. To my left, the bare branches of the woods were outlined in white snow and ice, creating a stark lacework. To my right, a sparser scattering of trees—an orchard, perhaps?—made a graceful picture on the smooth ground of snow. I could envision how lush that level surface might be when covered with tender green grass, how the trees would burst with leaves and fruit. But now all was buried under this smothering white coverlet.

What I cannot put into words is the vastness of it all. I felt that I had never seen so huge an expanse of sky before, and when I looked along the river and saw no end to it, and no end to the woods, I felt as tiny as an ant on a ballroom floor. This land was beautiful but alien. No sympathetic Nature was this, but a landscape quite uncaring of the puny human creature who crawled over its surface. I had never felt so alone. A few distant ships were the only sign of human presence other than myself, and I might shout and wave to them with all my strength without being seen or heard. How many miles lay between me and human contact, apart from that in Brooke House? I wished I were on one of those ships, traveling back toward civilization.

But there was no place for me there anymore. I did not belong anywhere.

If I were to die on this spot, I realized, the snow might cover me in mere hours, and I might never be found. The earth would take me to itself without any compassion or contrition, and the slow course of the seasons would continue undisturbed. There would be no sign that I had ever existed. I was insignificant.

It was that same feeling of insignificance, as much as anything else, that had led me to desert my family for the theater. On stage I was seen, as my parents had never seen me. I was adored. I was loved… or had been.

If only Atherton had not—

But I wrenched my mind away from that thought. I could not indulge in self-pity now. I had to turn my mind to the future, for only that way would I make a new place for myself. I would become a pillar of the community, I reminded myself. People would clamor for invitations to Brooke House when I made it a place of jollity and good company.

Turning, I looked back the way I had come. Brooke House was no less handsome in broad daylight. Its stone face was a patchwork of gray and buff, with the crenellations and spires standing out crisply against the brilliant sky. Such a solid building, and so large; I had only begun to explore the inside, and I suspected it would take me hours simply to walk through all of the rooms. Surely so substantial a structure would not collapse. Smoke rose from one of the chimneys, speaking so eloquently of comfort that I stumbled in my haste to return, plunging down the hillside in the direction from which I had come.

My body sagged with relief when I finally stepped inside the house again and shut the door behind me. My feet throbbed painfully as sensation returned to them, and my every step left a puddle. Too weary and dispirited even to climb the stairs to my room, I plumped down on the bottom step of the great staircase and pulled up my skirt and petticoats to examine my boots. The gilding was flaking off the leather, and the pink and blue dye of the embroidery was running. They were ruined.

I was contemplating them sadly when a sound like a pistol shot brought me to my feet, staring wildly around… and then simply staring.

A man stood in the doorway, a black silhouette against the wintry backdrop. Snow blew about him, and the wind stirred the capelet on his black coat. The sound that had startled me had been the front door slamming into the wall when this man had opened it. He must have used enough force to break through it.

“Where is she?” he roared in a voice that lifted the hair at the back of my neck. This man knew how to make an entrance. Then his gaze found me where I stood at the foot of the stairs, and I caught my breath.

Across the length of the entrance hall I was facing the most magnificent man I had ever seen. He was bareheaded, and his hair was a tumble of black curls. Longer than was the current fashion, it gave him something of the wild Romantic look of Shelley or Byron. His complexion was olive, with a flush across his high, wide cheekbones… whether from emotion or from the cold I did not know. A jaw of splendid determination, a finely modeled mouth that was compressed now in what looked like anger but could surely be tender as well. His eyes… oh, heavens, such eyes. Deep set under dark slashes of eyebrows, they had an intensity I had never before encountered.

Then he was moving toward me in powerful swift strides, with such anger in the set of his broad shoulders that I collected myself. Splendid though he was, I could not let this intruder go unchallenged.

“Who are you?” I demanded. “By what right do you storm into my house?”

“Your house?” That halted him. “Are you the woman who calls herself the Widow Lammle, then?”

“I do not call myself that, but I do have the sad privilege of being—”

“Spare me your pretended grief, if you please. So you are the actress.” He examined me with undisguised contempt. Now that he was nearer, I could see that his remarkable eyes were hazel—green and gray and amber, as luminous and changeable as the sea under starlight. Extraordinary. “Did no one mention to you the true heir to this house?” he demanded. “No one spoke to you of Roderick?”

“Why, yes, but he is at Woodlow School, or so I am told.”

“Woodlow is less than a day’s journey, even at this time of year. I had to come see the woman who is trying to steal my legacy.”

A terrible doubt struck like a blow in the pit of my stomach. “But—but you cannot mean to say that you are Roderick. My stepson is a mere child—”

He gave a humorless laugh. “It’s a good thing I’m not a child. Otherwise you might have been able to steal my property from me. What kind of woman are you that you would chisel a boy out of his childhood home?”

He had advanced so close that I backed up onto the stairs. “But that isn’t my intention at all,” I protested. “I thought that I could be a guardian to the little fellow, a companion. That we could share the house.” Closer still he moved, and I backed up another stair. He was nearly a head taller than I, and he was using that advantage to intimidate me. “How could Bascombe not have known—”

I stopped as the memory of the lawyer’s enigmatic expression came to me, the strange voice in which he had said, “He is at least seven, I feel certain.” At least! The blackguard, he had wanted this to happen—for me to be humiliated and rousted out of Brooke House by the fully grown and quite imposing man who was, impossibly, my stepson.

“Bascombe said that Alcott and Margaret were married fifteen years,” I recalled in triumph. “You are clearly older than that.”Although you aren’t acting like it, I added silently.

He folded his arms across his chest and glared. “Not that it is any of your business, but Lammle was my stepfather. I was a lad of thirteen when he and my mother were wed. My father’s name was Brooke, like this house—which is mine by rights.”

“I was told Roderick was at school,” I protested, but without my former conviction. “If you are not a student, how can that be true?”

“I’m one of the masters. Are you satisfied?”

Grudgingly, I nodded. Bascombe had succeeded in making a fool of me, and I resented being made a fool of, especially in front of this exasperating but magnetic man.

My capitulation seemed to improve his spirits. “So you thought you’d adopt me, eh? That we could live here together?” A quick smile came and went, revealing a dimple that vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “Well, after all, why not?” Before I could brace myself or cover my ears, he shouted, “Tully! Bring in my trunks and put them in my old room.”

I may have gaped at him. “You can’t mean to stay here.”

“I most certainly do. Why? Do you find my presence so offensive?”

“It’s—well, it’s hardly proper. You being a bachelor and I a widow…”

He raised a derisive eyebrow. “Do my ears deceive me, or is an actress actually schooling me in propriety?”

“Clearly someone needs to,” I snapped. “Just because we are related by a technicality does not make it respectable for us to live under the same roof. People will think…”

“Think what? That you’re warming my bed?”

“Don’t be coarse.” I hissed it in an undertone, for his shout had drawn an audience: Mrs. Tully and Mrs. Vise were now looking on from the door to the servants’ quarters. The fact that Mrs. Tully was smiling at him rather than running to my rescue was the final proof that the intruder was telling the truth about his identity. “Mr. Roderick” indeed.

“Your delicate sensibilities astonish me,” he said now. The intent gaze of his eyes was uncomfortable to hold for very long. “I should have thought that in the hurly-burly of theatrical life you would have made your way into quite a number of beds by the time you reached my stepfather’s.”

By that point I was too flustered to make a better retort than “You are most mistaken in me. Perhaps American actresses are loose women, but I am not.”

Observing my discomposure, he moved nearer. I refused to back up any farther, and he was so close to me now that I caught the scent of pine resin and smoke and snow on his clothes. “Come now, you mustn’t blame me.” His voice had dropped to an intimate murmur, silken and husky, and I cursed myself for the shiver that it brought to my skin. “When a man sees a fetching little baggage like you, his thoughts naturally turn toward how you would look wearing nothing but a shy smile.”

“I beg your pardon!”

“Don’t pretend the idea is entirely disagreeable to you. Why should we remain at daggers drawn until the judge issues a verdict?” Leaning even closer, he reached out to trace my cheek with a gloved forefinger, and I jerked my head away. “I ought not to brag, but I’ve been told I am a devilish fine bedfellow,” he said softly. “And you, my dear, are quite the most delectable morsel I have laid eyes on in years. I’ll wager that under that prim widow’s facade you’re deliciously wanton. Admit it, you’d relish a bit of a romp with—”

I drew my arm back and slapped him with all my strength.

There was a gasp from Mrs. Tully, but from Roderick Brooke the response was a smug grin. Straightening, he folded his arms over his chest and laughed. Belatedly I realized that he had been baiting me—that his outrageous advances were merely a tactic to frighten me out of the house. “You are disgusting,” I said with loathing. “If you had an ounce of the gentleman about you, you would leave here at once rather than stain my reputation.”

“Your reputation? And what of mine?” He was amused, the cad. “I’ll be thought to be in a liaison with a strumpet. That will not please my employers at Woodlow, I can tell you. Schoolmasters are held to a high moral standard—we are liable to be frowned upon for housing harlots.”

“You shall not succeed in making me lose my temper again, sir,” I informed him. “Call me all the vile names at your command, make your revolting insinuations, but you shall not budge me from this house. Here I am, and here I stay.”

Thinking it an excellent exit line, I turned on my heel and started up the stairs. The sound of mocking applause followed me, but although my lips tightened my pace did not falter. His voice rang out from behind me. “I shall consider that a challenge, Mrs. Lammle.”

When I looked back, he was standing with his feet braced wide apart, his hands on his hips, in every lineament the master of all he surveyed. But he was not the master of me—and perhaps not of this house either.

The servants were watching avidly. We had an audience. I asked sweetly, “It is to be war, then?”

His smile was as thin and dangerous as a knife blade, and a frisson tightened the nape of my neck. “Yes,” he said softly. “War.”

But I smiled back at him and tossed my head. A battle of wits was territory with which I was familiar. As I turned and resumed my progress up the stairs there was a new buoyancy to my footsteps… and my spirits.

Now I had an adversary to direct my energies against—and a tangible one, not the legal muddle or the mysterious presence of the night before. No longer was I confined to the purgatory of solitary waiting. She who has an enemy, after all, is never lonely.

The next day was Sunday, and I had Tully take me to church in the village—Lower Burlington was its name, I now recalled. It was time for me to meet my neighbors.

The previous night had passed uneventfully, for the most part. While I ate my solitary supper in the small parlor, faint sounds of laughter had reached my ears from the kitchen, where I gathered Mr. Brooke was taking his evening meal with the servants. From what I could hear, he was receiving a warm welcome. How uproarious a dining companion he must be—regaling them with ribald comments about me, no doubt.

I was lingering over the last cup of tea in the pot and watching the flames in the fireplace, relishing the sensation of being warm, when a heavy, swift tread sounded out in the corridor. The door flew open—but did not strike the wall this time, thank goodness—revealing the repugnant one himself.

“Ah, there it is,” he said, and as I was forming a rebuke for speaking of me in such a way, he strode past me to take a piece of sheet music from the rack of the pianoforte. “I’ll thank you not to tamper with my belongings again,” he said curtly.

For a second I could only stare. The music rack had been empty when I had sat down to my meal, I was almost certain. No—I was certain. “I never touched it,” I said. “Perhaps it was one of the servants.” I knew already that it couldn’t have been, but I wished to see what his response would be.

He glared at me. The firelight adored him; it clung lovingly to the planes of his cheekbones and etched the fine straight line of his nose in golden light. His curly black hair looked touched with fire. Even his shabby suit, a rusty black affair that must have been a decade old, could not tarnish his splendor. “The servants know better than to move my things,” he said balefully. “But you are just the sort of interfering minx who would try to make me lose my temper this way. So I ask you again to keep out of my room.”

That did strike a dart of guilt in me, for I had ventured into his room—just once—since his arrival. As soon as our first encounter had drawn to its invigorating conclusion, I had slipped into his bedchamber to remove the gift of pick-up sticks that I had left on the bureau the day before. “What is it you found?” I asked, rising for a look at the paper in his hand. The piece was “Home, Sweet Home,” in a simple arrangement suitable for a very young child.

I could not suppress my smile. “How brave of you,” I said warmly, “attempting to learn to play the piano at your age! I find it quite admirable for a man of mature years to try to add to his accomplishments.”

The look he directed at me would have made a lesser woman quail. “This is not what I came in search of,” he snapped. “If you should happen to find a Chopin nocturne—oh, never mind.” Tossing the music to the floor, he stalked out of the room.

The discarded music was a strangely forlorn sight against the rug. Tentatively I picked it up, and I was encouraged when there was no return of that terrible feeling of a hostile unseen presence resisting me. I replaced the music on the rack. “Never mind,” I whispered, with an odd sensation of offering comfort. “He is a stubborn one.”

My sleep that night was undisturbed by either vagrant luggage or distressing dreams. Perhaps the restless entity in the house would focus its attention on the newcomer now. I was quite curious as to what would happen.

Now, in the cutter with Tully, I tucked my hands deeper into my sealskin muff and tried not to shiver as the wind knifed against my face with the speed of our passage. The sleigh’s runners swished over the snow, the only sound besides the rhythmic thudding of the horses’ hooves and the occasional cry of a bird. The gray sky promised more snow, and I glared at it as if I could bully it into being fine.

Beside me, Tully did little to bring cheer to the scene. He was not overgenerous with conversation. My first few attempts to draw him out brought only curt responses.

When we neared the church we began to encounter others on the road: some in sleighs, but more on horseback, and more still on foot. The church itself was a cobblestone affair with a small spire and a graveyard surrounded by an iron fence. When I entered I found it was a single whitewashed room with a wooden pulpit at the far end raised above the level of the floor. The floor was of stone, and I was glad of the foot warmers placed in front of the pews.

I encountered many curious and interested stares, but even though I smiled and nodded to those who caught my eye, no one approached me. With a little sinking of my heart I remembered that in some communities newcomers were held at arm’s length for years, sometimes even decades. I hoped this did not prove to be the case here. But I was not just any newcomer, I reflected with some satisfaction. I had a way with people, and, to be quite honest, a comely face is a woman’s best ambassador… at least with men.

Another comely face was in evidence as soon as the pastor ascended the short curved staircase to the pulpit. He was a young man, far younger than I had expected, and startlingly attractive. His curly blond hair was incongruous next to his sober clerical attire, and he had the pinkly scrubbed features of a schoolboy, giving him a look of innocence. His smile radiated friendliness.

The same, however, could not be said of the congregation. I was not surprised to hear some whispering before the service began, since I was something new and interesting in their midst, but I was quite surprised when the service concluded that although plenty of people stared at me, they did so from a distance, hanging back and murmuring among themselves instead of approaching me. Even when I joined the line of congregants waiting to speak to the pastor and offered a “Good morning” to the woman ahead of me, she merely ducked her head in noncommittal acknowledgment. I tried to suppress an injured feeling.

“Reverend John Keith,” said the pastor when we shook hands. Seen up close, his eyes were a guileless blue. “Welcome to our church, Mrs. Lammle.”

I gave a self-conscious laugh. “You know who I am?”

“Oh, assuredly. Men are worse gossips than women, or didn’t you know that?”

“I had my suspicions.” Under the warmth of his friendly interest I was beginning to feel more at ease. In a lower tone I said, “Do you know whether gossip is painting me as a pariah? I can’t help but notice that everyone is rather standoffish.”

“That’s easily explained. The men are afraid of showing too much interest in you before their wives… and the wives do not dare to make any social overtures until their queen has passed judgment on you.”

“Their what?”

His smile was that of an impish schoolboy eyeing a pie on a windowsill. He could have been no older than five-and-twenty. “I speak in jest, of course. Mrs. Dove is not royalty in the literal sense. She rules in this part of the world as the arbiter of social standing.”

“Dove,” I exclaimed. “I have heard the name.”

“And no wonder, for her power is great.” His voice took on a mock solemnity as he intoned, “Fear her, oh, fear her, Mrs. Lammle! For though she may smile upon you and permit you to pass into the realm of the chosen, she may just as easily cast you out of the fold into the benighted waste of the damned. Figuratively speaking, of course.”

I blinked at him in dismay. I had assumed there was a social void here just waiting for me to fill it, but now I saw how naïve such an assumption was.

“You really ought not to be so flippant, brother,” said a feminine voice in a gently rebuking tone. “Mrs. Lammle will think it most inappropriate for a man of the cloth, and I do not blame her for it. I am Miss Arabel Keith.” She held out her hand to shake, and I found myself facing a lovely woman close to my own age with a cloud of dark hair and cornflower-blue eyes of a solemn gravity surprising in one relatively young. “John is really a most devout pastor, you must believe me, despite his sense of humor.”

“Please don’t worry, Miss Keith. I am learning a great deal from your brother about my new home. This Mrs. Dove, she isn’t present today?”

Miss Keith shook her head, and the faceted jet drops at her ears swung with the motion. I realized that she was dressed in black, which was curious considering her unmarried state and the fact that the pastor was not wearing a mourning band with his vestments. Who would she be mourning that her brother would not as well?

“She isn’t constant in her attendance,” Miss Keith said. “I think sometimes she is stricken with melancholy and wishes for solitude. She is too brave ever to speak of her bereavement, but she is a widow as well, you see.”

“Oh? And you?”

A becoming blush came to her cheeks. “It would be an honor to call myself that, but no. My sweetheart and I had not yet wed when he went off to fight. He died in a Confederate prison camp.”

“I am so sorry—I didn’t mean to distress you by speaking of it. Please forgive me.”

But she smiled at me through the tears that starred her eyelashes. “There is nothing to forgive,” she said. She looked even prettier in tears, and I could not help but wonder how many men since the death of her fiancé had longed to bring her heart out of the grave. “How are you liking Brooke House?”

“It is… unusual. I am beginning to find that it has had a most eventful history.”

“If history is an interest of yours, you should really talk more with John,” she said. “He is a scholar of local lore going back for centuries. In fact, why don’t you join us for dinner so that you may talk more together? Mrs. Washington always cooks enough Sunday dinner for guests. And your manservant can stable your horses in our barn and eat in the kitchen with her.”

“If it wouldn’t be an imposition…” It was only a token protest; I would enjoy spending more time with this interesting brother and sister, and the prospect of learning more about this strange new world of mine was intriguing.

“Then it is settled!” Linking her arm through mine, she paused to tell her brother, “Do not be very long, or Mrs. Washington will fuss,” before leading me past the graveyard to the unassuming brick house that stood on the far side of it. A vicarage, I wanted to call it, but Miss Keith—who quickly became Arabel, as I became Sybil to her—said it was called a manse.

The reverend was not long in joining us. Either he wished to spare the housekeeper’s feelings or he was eager for his dinner—or for more conversation. “I am interested in learning more of the history of this area,” I told him once we were all seated at the table in the plain but comfortable dining room of the manse. “According to Mrs. Tully, Brooke House seems to be a particularly eventful property. Is it true that the present house is the fourth in less than a century and a half?”

“It is indeed.” He placed a thick slab of roast beef on a plate and passed it to me. The fragrance of the gravy was savory and strong. “Does Mrs. Tully ascribe the ill luck to any particular one of the local legends? There are a number to choose from.”

“She didn’t mention any legends, but I should love to hear them.”

After serving Arabel, the minister filled his own plate and picked up knife and fork. “Many of them are quite colorful. For example, some claim that the Mahican Indians held a spring on the property to be sacred—rather as Saratoga Springs, farther north, was said to be. According to that story, when the first Brookes claimed the land and built their house there, they barred any of the natives from access to their holy site. In retribution, the Indians cursed the house, and ever since then it has been subject to fire and destruction.”

“How fascinating,” I said. The roast was excellent and the cider agreeable; with the addition of friendly companionship and intriguing stories, I felt more comfortable here than in my own house… or what would in time become my own house. “Is this widely believed?”

Arabel smiled. “There is no shortage of stories, and everyone seems to have their own favorite. Mrs. Dove is attached to the idea of the spring, I think, but there are others that are far more colorful. Brother, tell Sybil about the pirates.”

“Pirates?” I exclaimed. “Yes, do tell me.”

The minister smiled and took a sip of cider. “Arabel likes the more dashing name. Properly speaking they were American privateers. According to the lore, a number of these characters kept busy looting British ships toward the end of the last century. One account would have it that the privateers seized a great quantity of English gold and buried or stashed it somewhere on the Brooke family land—and that they left a corpse with it to serve as guard.”

Arabel shuddered. “How dreadful.”

“It’s only a story, now,” her brother said peacefully. “Privateers tended to be more boastful than truthful, by and large.”

“I like that version of the story,” I decided. “Perhaps I shall find the gold and reclaim it for my country. It would be only fitting.”

The minister raised his eyebrow at me, and I could not tell how much in earnest he was when he said, “I wouldn’t advise attempting it, Mrs. Lammle. We are doing our best to forget your heritage or at least overlook it, but you may find yourself less than popular among Lower Burlington folk if you remind us that you hail from a nation that was in league with the Rebels.”

Rebuked, I took refuge in a change of subject. “This Mrs. Dove, what is she like?”

“Oh, the loveliest thing,” said Arabel. “Utterly beautiful—one cannot take one’s eyes off her. Don’t you find her beautiful, brother?”

He paused with his fork halfway to his mouth to consider the question. “She is striking,” he said. “Unusual. And she has what I believe actors would call presence. Is that the term, Mrs. Lammle?”

I nodded, intrigued. Presence, or magnetism, was such an intangible quality and so unique to the individual who possessed it that it increased my interest in the woman who ruled local society. “That is a rare gift,” I said. “Happy the woman who can claim it. What does she look like? I am picturing a dark, regal woman with flashing eyes and a commanding voice.”

Arabel laughed. “Oh, no, quite the opposite. She is very like her name—like a soft, gentle dove.”

“But with something of steel underneath it all,” her brother added.

“She is said to be descended from one of the most distinguished New England families. She can be a bit—well—I don’t know how to say it exactly, but she is so grave and poised that sometimes she is almost intimidating, even though I know that is the last thing she means to be.”

A steely dove? This sounded like someone who might not warm to a newcomer, especially one whose fame might seem to pose a threat. Not that I wanted to unseat her from her throne, but she might not even be willing to allow me to share her spotlight. Uneasily I wondered what would happen if I did not meet this paragon’s approval. Could I still find a place here?

“Does she entertain a great deal?” I asked. Perhaps I could fill that role in our circle, if she was the hermit Arabel had implied.

“Not often, but when she does—oh, it is magnificent! Isn’t it, brother? Her musicales are talked about for months afterward, and it is rather a cachet to be asked to perform. She sings divinely, quite as well as Jenny Lind, I am told.”

“How charming for her. And she has lived here a long time, I imagine, to have cemented her place so firmly in the hearts of one and all.”

Mr. Keith gave me a covert smile as if to show that he caught the vein of tartness in my words, but Arabel’s reply showed that she was unaware of it. “No, in fact,” she said earnestly. “She did not purchase Willowwood until after the war’s end. But she became the first Mrs. Lammle’s dearest friend.”

“What sort of person was she?” I interrupted. “Margaret Lammle, I mean.”

“One of the most intelligent ladies I ever met,” Mr. Keith said promptly. “Yet it did not make her hard or cynical. She was a fine example of Christian charity, and I still miss seeing her of a Sunday morning.”

Arabel’s smile was tinged with sadness. “So do I. She was a very dear lady. So caring, and with a true intuition about how to help those around her. She was so kind when I—when anyone needed a sympathetic ear.” She seemed to pull her thoughts back from a troubling direction. “It was Margaret who helped Mrs. Dove feel at home among her new neighbors when she—Mrs. Dove—first arrived. Margaret took it on herself to sponsor Mrs. Dove in society and introduced her to all the most influential people.”

“And now Mrs. Dove is the most influential people,” the pastor finished. “So you see, Mrs. Lammle, you must woo her if you wish to attain any degree of prominence yourself.”

“Really, Mr. Keith, are you always able to read one’s mind so? It is a rather disconcerting quality for a reverend.”

He chuckled comfortably and reached for the cider to refill my glass. “I make no claim to supernatural ability, Mrs. Lammle. The simple truth is that one comes to know a great deal about human nature in my calling.”

“If only you did have supernatural abilities,” said Arabel, and the wistful note in her voice caught me by surprise. She was staring down at her plate and drawing patterns on it with her fork. “I would give anything if I could only speak once more to…”

He reached out to cover her hand with his. “Arabel,” he said in a low voice. “We’ve spoken about this. You know it would be far healthier for you to focus on the world of the living.”

To my consternation she pulled her hand away from his touch and pressed it to her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, pushing her chair back to rise. “I cannot help it. Excuse me, please—”

Before I could say anything she had run from the room. I heard the quick light sound of her footsteps darting up a staircase, then a door closing, and then nothing.

Mr. Keith shut his eyes briefly and took a moment to speak. “I apologize for my sister,” he said in a sober tone.

“That isn’t necessary. Is it her fiancé?”

He nodded without looking at me. “He was a prisoner at Andersonville for many months, so she was on tenterhooks for a long time awaiting news of his release. His death… changed something in Arabel. It was as if all of her convictions about life and death and the hereafter were overturned.”

“I can well imagine,” I said.

“She has become quite mystical in her interests. She lays out the cards for herself and performs little rituals with candles and mirrors and apple peelings, like children at All Hallows’ Eve. It breaks my heart that she somehow expects to make contact with him even now. She will not be reasoned out of it.” He sat back in his chair and sighed. All of the boyish mirth had left him, and for the first time I could see the gravity and compassion that I had not seen before.

“It must be very hard for you not to be able to bring her out of her grief,” I offered.

“I fear for her, Mrs. Lammle, I do. With all her hopes fixed on a phantom, she is unwilling or unable to find comfort in the only spirit who can ease her pain—the Holy Spirit.”

I tried to phrase my next question delicately, for it was one that might offend him. “You do not believe, then, that there are such things as ghosts, in the general sense?”

For the first time since Arabel had left the table, he gave me his full attention. “Why, there is no such thing, Mrs. Lammle. Haunts are the invention of children and unfortunates like my sister, who hope so desperately that they manage to convince themselves they believe.”

I smiled a little at his certainty. “I’m afraid this is a subject on which we don’t see eye to eye, then,” I said lightly.

The reproach in his face was almost amusing. “You disappoint me, Mrs. Lammle. I had thought you a woman of sense.”

“I most certainly am. But I have also seen and felt some extraordinary phenomena. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio—”

“Enough!” He flung up his hands in mock surrender. “Once you begin lobbing Shakespeare at me I am a beaten man. May I impose on your kindness to say goodbye to my sister before you leave? She would reproach herself so if she missed your departure.”

“Of course,” I said, rising at this prompt to draw my visit to a close. “Thank you for the meal, Mr. Keith. It was most pleasant—and instructive.”

“The pleasure was ours, Mrs. Lammle.” His manner was so cordial that I knew he was not ending our visit because he was bored by my company. Perhaps he had a busy afternoon ahead of him… or perhaps it would not be appropriate for a bachelor pastor to spend too much time alone with an unattached female guest without the sanctifying presence of his sister as chaperone. “I hope you’ll call again,” he added. “I know Arabel will enjoy spending as much time with you as you can spare, and you may find yourself lonely in Brooke House by yourself.”

It sounded as though the reverend did not realize that Roderick Brooke was in residence, and I reflected only a moment before deciding that that was probably for the best. “I shall always welcome the both of you at Brooke House,” I told him. “I am not accustomed to being so isolated, and company will be delightful.” Company that was not Roderick Brooke, I added silently.

Late that night I dreamed. It was one of those idyllic, cozy dreams that make one feel wrapped in comfort, and in it I was listening to someone playing a violin. The tune was a sweet, old-fashioned melody that made me feel peaceful and contented, and I felt that if I listened long enough it would convey some message to me—something of importance.

The unseen musician played on, and my mind strained after the meaning of the song. But just as it seemed within my grasp, I was awakened by a banging on my door.

“Stop that!” a voice roared. “Stop it at once!”

I came awake with disorienting abruptness. The remnants of the dream scattered, and my temper woke. There was no question who could be making that racket. The pictures on the walls jounced with each blow against the door.

“Stop what, you aggravating man?” I struck a light and held it to the candle on the nightstand, then threw back the bedclothes and padded across the room to open the door. Roderick Brooke was standing in the hallway with a lamp, wearing his dressing gown and an expression nothing short of ferocious. Completely inappropriate dress for a conversation with a lady. His nostrils were flared, and even his wild mop of curly hair seemed to be bristling with indignation. It was maddening to discover that being out of temper looked very well on him.

“Are you here to renew your disgusting proposition?” I inquired in icy tones. “If so, prepare for your hopes to be dashed.”

“Can you truly be so vain that you think—no, don’t try to divert me. You were playing the violin, and I won’t have it.” Pushing past me, he set his lamp on my bureau and began to search the room. “If necessary I’ll destroy the instrument.”

“Sadly, I don’t have a violin,” I told him, “nor do I know how to play one. You must have been dreaming. Why, now that I think of it, I was dreaming of violin music myself before you woke me so rudely, so you see that is probably what happened.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said in an ominous rumble, folding his arms across his chest—a chest that was largely bared by his dressing gown. Was he wearing nothing underneath it? The thought was strangely unsettling, which was no doubt his intent. It was absurd to think I would be flustered by the sight of a half-undressed man, even one whose broad chest bore fine dark hairs that somehow made him look utterly naked. After all, in some of the informal theaters where I had performed, nothing more than a clothesline, a sheet, and a pact of mutual courtesy had separated the men’s and women’s dressing areas.

This was nothing less than a renewed assault. The fact that he had now managed to make his way into my bedchamber in a state of undress reminded me that I was dealing with a man who lacked all respect for me—indeed, probably for all womankind.

“You will try any means, no matter how desperate, to induce me to leave this house,” I snapped. “You really are the most impossible man. These wild accusations will not budge me.”

“On the contrary,” he retorted, flinging open the door of the wardrobe, “you are trying to force me out of the house with your musical pranks.”

“That’s ridiculous. It would not have occurred to me that music would repel a man of any sensibility.”

“Don’t be coy, Mrs. Lammle.” His voice was rising again, along with his temper. “You knew perfectly well that it would be a sore spot for me. My Achilles’ heel, in fact.”

At that moment realization dawned. Perhaps it was something about the passionate intensity of his hooded gaze, the wild disorder of his curly hair, or the volume of his voice. “Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “You’re Roaring Brooke!”

Some years past, a brilliant and temperamental violin prodigy named Rory Brooke had taken the Continent by storm, and he had even received a great deal of publicity in England. A passionate performer in the Romantic school, he was quickly dubbed Roaring Brooke not only for his skill with the instrument, which was said almost to roar under his dexterous fingers, but also because of his infamous temper. Some scandal I could not quite recall had brought an end to his career, and he had dropped out of sight. And here he was before me—but he did not seem pleased to be recognized.

“Don’t call me that,” he said curtly. “That’s a part of my life I’ve done my best to forget—no thanks to you.”

“Truly, I didn’t know it was you until just now. Why did you stop playing? There were rumors…”

His laugh, loud and bitter, drowned out the rest of my words. “There were definitely rumors. I’m sure you have the juiciest ones at your fingertips.”

Try as I might, I could grasp only the haziest memory. “Something about a woman…?”

“Whenever a man does anything shocking the reason is always given as a woman. But in fact the explanation is much simpler and less scandalous than the gossip-mongers would have it.” He pushed the right sleeve of his dressing-gown up to show me a bandage of black silk wrapped tightly around his wrist. “An injury,” he said briefly. “Nothing more.”

I shook my head. A faint but nagging feeling of something important was trying to surface. “That wasn’t it. And why were you searching for music yesterday if you no longer play?”

His jaw tightened. The black stubble that shadowed his chin gave him a dangerous appearance, almost like a pirate. “If you must know,” he said, biting out the words, “I can still play the piano. Well enough, in fact, to serve as music master at Woodlow, which is why I carry sheet music with me. My days of playing the violin are over, though—as you must know, or else you wouldn’t have found a way to taunt me with that music tonight.”

“I did no such—”

“Enough. I am retiring now, and I must insist that you question me no more about my past.”

The injustice of the implication that I had been detaining him instead of vice versa made my voice sharpen. “And I must insist that you not barge into my bedroom again!”

“Oh, never fear, Mrs. Lammle; from now on your boudoir shall be sacrosanct.” He looked me up and down, and to my irritation his mouth quirked with suppressed laughter. “Especially as long as you deck yourself in raiment like that.”

I was wearing one of the dainty silk nightgowns with netted lace insertions that Alcott had purchased for my trousseau. However, since its value was more ornamental than practical, I was also wearing an old red flannel nightgown over it for warmth. Thick wool stockings protected my feet, and I had draped a woolen shawl over all. The effect was not alluring, nor was it intended to be.

“Had I known that you could be frightened away by mere clothing,” I said coldly, “I would have dressed in burlap and homespun to greet you.”

For some reason, his good humor seemed to have been restored. “It’s as I suspected all along,” he said with a smirk. “The glamour of the actress is but an illusion, and the reality is sadly prosaic. How crestfallen my stepfather must have been when you appeared in all your red-flannel glory on your wedding night.”

“As a matter of fact,” I said with great dignity, “I wore blue merino. Ours was an unconventional wedding night, not that it is any business of yours. Your stepfather was far too ill for the kind of debauch you seem to have in mind.”

Before I realized what he meant to do, he had stepped forward and reached out to wind one of my ringlets around his finger. He was disconcertingly close, so much so that he could drop his voice to a murmur that was infuriatingly intimate. “This settles one question, at least,” he said, and his voice was silky warm. “I had wondered if you put your hair in curl papers at night.”

His nearness was doing unaccountable things to my pulse. “How strange,” I said loftily, stepping back to detach my hair from his hold. “I had wondered the same thing about you. Good night, Mr. Brooke, and don’t disturb me again.”

I shut the door on him as he was making a mocking bow, and this time I turned the key in the lock.

The music was unlike any haunting in my experience. Moving objects, like my valise, I had encountered; I had played in a theater in which a mischievous spirit had caused havoc by moving props from one side of the stage to the other just before they were needed. But I had not met with ghostly nocturnes before. This seemed to rule out the privateer of legend as the haunt. Surely the spirit of a dashing pirate would have serenaded me and tried to usher Mr. Brooke out of the house instead of the other way around.

The Brooke House mystery was not to be quickly solved, it appeared. Fortunately, however, the house seemed to be content to let me remain within its walls, at least for the present. With that comforting knowledge I climbed back into bed, extinguished my candle, and fell asleep once more.

“Mrs. Tully, how did the first Mrs. Lammle die?” I asked.

I had asked the housekeeper to have a cup of tea with me, but instead she busied herself baking biscuits while we talked. She shook her head gloomily as she kneaded the dough. Her forearms were so big they reminded me of ham hocks, and I felt a pang of sympathy for the dough. “Some dreadful illness it was. Tore up her insides, poor lady. She said it felt like her innards was on fire.”

“It isn’t possible that she was… er… is there a reason she would not lie peacefully in her grave?”

“What on earth would make you ask that?”

“Well…” That morning, as I had mulled over the events of the night before, it had occurred to me that the house was trying to make contact with Mr. Brooke. First with the sheet music on the pianoforte, then with the actual music that he had heard playing. But instead of trying to make him flee, as had been the case with the moving of my valise and belongings, it seemed to have a different aim. Music was, in a sense, Rory Brooke’s language. It was—or had been—crucial to his life. The house seemed to have chosen a way to try to communicate with him that he would understand.

Except that he didn’t seem to understand it after all. Instead, he blamed me. What was the house trying to tell him? I wondered. Or, perhaps a more important question, what in the house was trying to talk to him?

It was a nuisance that Mrs. Tully was so skeptical. It made it less likely that I would learn anything useful from her. “Who was Mrs. Lammle’s doctor?” I asked.

A sharp look. “Why would you be needing to know? If you’re thinking that somehow I didn’t take proper care of Mrs. Margaret—”

“No, not at all! I just have a—a little personal complaint I wish to consult someone about, and I know that Mrs. Lammle would have received the best care available, so I thought to see her doctor. That is, if he is still in the area.” I doubted that he had been driven out of town for his failure to save one of the most important people in local society, but I ought not to assume.

“Dr. Carfax hasn’t gone anywhere. His rooms are on the High Street in the village.”

“Perhaps Mr. Tully would have time to take me there today, do you think?”

“Tully won’t have any means of driving you,” came a familiar voice from behind me, making me start and spill my tea. “You’ll have to ride into town with me if you want to go today. I have errands in the village.” Roderick Brooke moved to Mrs. Tully’s side and kissed her cheek, making her beam at him and pat his face with a floury hand. “I’m leaving in a quarter of an hour, so don’t be long,” he said to me before snatching up a biscuit from the pan that had already come out of the oven and striding out again.

His interrupted night did not seem to have had any ill effects on him. Indeed, when a quarter of an hour later he brought the cutter around to the front of the house and I climbed in beside him—with no assistance, I might add—I was struck again by what a fine figure of a man he was.

I had known a great many handsome men, of course, during my years in the theater. Some had turned my head, especially when I was a young girl, but over the years I felt that I had become less susceptible to a good-looking exterior. Too often it seemed not to guarantee a good character—generally the opposite, in fact. But sitting next to Roderick Brooke on the front seat of the cutter seemed to take me back to my fifteen-year-old self, whose pulse fluttered at the nearness of every dashing male.

It was the first time I had seen him in the full light of day, and I was struck afresh by the remarkable planes of his cheekbones, the compelling power of his deep-set eyes. In this light, they were almost a sea green, with depths equal to the ocean itself. And I liked the strong, clean line of his jaw. It suggested that he was decisive and stubborn—as I well knew—but not brutal.

Evidently I was too obvious in my inspection of him, for he said in a level voice, “You are staring, madam. Is there something about my face that puzzles you?”

“No, but I am curious why you don’t wear a hat, particularly when the weather is so cold.”

Surprisingly, that made him smile. It was a genuine one, not a sneer, and I observed how nicely his mouth was formed. Smiling suited him; it made him look younger, less forbidding. “Some have said that I am so hotheaded I have no need of a hat,” he said, and his husky voice was so unusually warm that I decided to seize on his good mood to bring up the subject at the top of my mind.

“I was thinking about last night,” I began, “and your hearing the violin music…”

At once his good humor vanished. The jaw I had been admiring tightened, and I remembered how formidable he could look. “I will find that violin you were playing. You may be sure of it.”

“I wish you’d stop pretending you believe I was the culprit. I think it’s time you accepted that there is a supernatural presence in Brooke House.”

He turned to stare at me. I hoped the horses knew their way, for he seemed to forget all about guiding them. “Supernatural?” he repeated incredulously. “That’s preposterous. You’ve gone soft in the head from appearing in too many gothic melodramas.”

“How typically rude—not to mention arrogant. You close your mind to the existence of anything beyond our earthly sphere and assume that you know the truth of things.”

“And how typically female to make so hasty an assumption. As a matter of fact, I am open to the possibility that the supernatural exists. But in every instance that I myself have witnessed, something ordinary and earthly is at work. I have yet to encounter anything that couldn’t be explained in that way.”

“Very well, then,” I said. “For the sake of argument, just suppose that I was not playing the music you heard last night. Imagine for a moment that I am telling the truth. How then would you explain it?”

He chewed this over for a moment. “I could have dreamt it,” he said, but he said it reluctantly. He knew it wasn’t true.

“What about the Tullys?” I asked. “Could it have been either of them?”

“Impossible. No, the only other possibility is that I was dreaming.”

“But suppose you weren’t. I don’t put this to you without good reason,” I added quickly, as his brow darkened. “On my first night at Brooke House, I experienced something mysterious and—well—frightening. It is clear to me that there is an entity in the house that is not human.”

He shook his head as if I were trying his patience. “Really, I think I would be aware of something in my own house.”

I let that claim of ownership stand unchallenged, being more interested in the topic at hand. “Or perhaps there are more than one, since what I encountered was hostile, whereas yours… that music for ‘Home, Sweet Home’ that was on the pianoforte. Did you recognize it? That particular copy, I mean.”

He sighed pointedly. “Yes, it was one of the first songs I learned to play during my childhood, and my name is written on it. Obviously Mrs. Tully found the music packed away in some old trunk and put it out for me.”

“If that’s the case, it was certainly very considerate of Mrs. Tully. I would not have thought she’d have the leisure to search through old trunks in hope of finding such a thing.”

This won me a look of scorn. “What are you suggesting? That a ghost was welcoming me home?”

“Well, why not? The music last night was something sweet and nostalgic, was it not? That was how it seemed to me in my dream, at least. If the spirit is your mother—”

“My mother!”

“Don’t shout like that, you’ll frighten the horses. And why shouldn’t it be? She died in the house, and—”

With a suddenness that made me clutch at the front of the sleigh to keep my seat, he reined up, drawing us to an abrupt halt. When he turned to face me, his face was darkened by such an expression of anger that I had to fight a cowardly impulse to draw back.

“Mrs. Lammle,” he said in a dangerously quiet voice, “I’m certain you’re accustomed to getting away with behavior like this because of your beauty and charm. But I will not have you speculating about my mother’s death. It is a most painful subject for me, as anyone with a brain ought to know, and if you don’t stop at once I may just pick you up and toss you over the side of this vehicle into that snow bank. Do I make myself clear?”

I had to clear my throat to dislodge my voice. “Yes,” I said. “Quite clear.”

“Good.”

After a long look at me, as if daring me to open my mouth again, he slapped the reins lightly on the horses’ backs, and we resumed our journey. For a time we rode in silence.

“You find me charming, then,” I observed brightly, after we had traveled a mile or so.

He muttered something under his breath. It sounded like an oath.

“Oh, don’t be embarrassed. I tend to have that effect on men, and you are only human, after all.”

His only response to this was to breathe heavily for a moment. Not in ardor, but as if he were keeping his temper only with the greatest difficulty. It was quite diverting to watch the frosty puffs of air expelled through his nostrils; the effect was much as if his anger had so heated his blood that he was breathing out jets of steam. I hummed an air from The Magic Flute to myself for the rest of our journey. I was almost disappointed when the road finally gave onto High Street and our destination.

Accustomed as I was to cities, the village struck me as terribly small and primitive. One building served for both post office and jail. Another was a general store whose windows displayed wares ranging from farming equipment to piece goods to penny candy. A shingle on a two-story structure proclaimed it to be the offices of a lawyer and notary, as well as the county clerk. A smithy announced its presence through the familiar ring of metal on metal, and a few other buildings, including the apothecary shop, completed the tiny hamlet.

“Where do you wish me to drop you?” he asked, in a tone that suggested he was envisioning dropping me in a literal sense, preferably off a cliff.

“The apothecary, if you please.” I had learned that the doctor’s consulting room adjoined it.

“Are you in need of a tonic for your nerves after communing with so many ghosts and haunts?” he asked sarcastically as we drew up before it.

Men can be so tetchy when their pride is wounded. “The only thing wrong with my nerves, Mr. Brooke,” I said, “is that you are wearing on them,” and I made a neat descent from the cutter to the snow-crusted ground.

“I’ll return for you in an hour,” he said shortly. “If you aren’t ready, you can walk home.”

As I said. Tetchy.

The apothecary shop was a trim little building, quite new, with blue-painted siding and white gingerbread trim. There were two doors leading onto the front landing, one of which bore a small sign with the painted legend “Edmund Carfax, Doctor of Medicine.” Before I could mount the few steps to the landing, the door opened, and Arabel Keith emerged followed by a pleasant-faced fellow in his thirties with ginger hair and moustache—presumably the doctor, for he wore no hat. Neither noticed my presence at once, for the very good reason that they were deeply absorbed in each other.

This intrigued me, and I hung back to observe. Arabel’s cheeks wore a becoming pink tint, and she was smiling as she extended her hand to her companion. “Thank you, doctor,” she said. “Talking to you always does me as much good as any of the apothecary’s tonics.”

He took her hand in both of his and held on a little too eagerly. “It’s you who does me good, Miss Keith,” he exclaimed. “I would like to call on you tomorrow to make certain that you are feeling quite better, if I may.”

This was not, it seemed to me, the way a doctor would usually go about arranging to make a house call. Arabel seemed to feel a similar doubt, for her smile faltered and she freed her hand from his grasp with a little effort. “My brother and I are always happy to see you whenever you are passing,” she said, but her voice was distant. Under his gaze she seemed to grow self-conscious, for she darted a look around and saw me. “Sybil!” she exclaimed, her voice warming again. “How delightful to see you.”

“I came to call on Dr. Carfax. I do hope you are not ill.”

“Oh, I have difficulty sleeping from time to time. Dr. Carfax always wants to make certain that I haven’t developed any worrisome symptoms before he will write me a prescription for my sleeping draught.”

“That seems like good sense,” I said, picking up my skirts and ascending the steps. In our mourning dresses, Arabel and I were as conspicuous and cheerless as two great black crows, especially in contrast to the doctor, who wore a jaunty checked suit in mustard yellow. I extended my hand to him, and he shook it in a firm grip that bespoke strength of character. His mouth had a good-humored set to it, which I approved of. I have always felt that a doctor, like a parson, should possess not only compassion and wisdom but a sense of humor, for in the course of their callings both are likely to see man reduced to his most fundamental crotchets.

“Doctor, this is Mrs. Sybil Lammle,” Arabel was saying. “She has come to live at Brooke House. At least—”

“At least until the judge tells me I mayn’t,” I said cheerfully. “I wondered if I might consult you about a medical matter. That is, if I am not interrupting your discussion with Miss Keith.”

Arabel assured me that she was quite finished and quickly retreated in the direction of the apothecary’s door. The doctor gazed after her with a slightly dazed smile.

“Doctor?” I inquired, and he gave a little start as he remembered my presence.

“Forgive me—so absentminded! Do come in, Mrs.—er—Lammle.”

So Dr. Carfax was in love with Arabel. How interesting. Did she return his feelings? Recalling the heightened color in her cheeks and the beaming expression she had favored him with, I thought it likely. Why, then, had she retreated into chilly propriety? Did she feel that it would be disloyal to her dead lover to accept another man’s attentions? I would have to find an opportunity of asking her.

The doctor’s consulting room was something like a study, with one side dominated by a desk and a bookcase, but with some striking differences, such as the examining table half hidden by a screen and the frightening instruments in a tray. I averted my eyes from these and noted the more reassuring touch of the framed diploma on the wall. At the doctor’s gesture, I seated myself in a straight chair before his desk. A small coal stove warmed the room deliciously. I felt that I would never again take being warm for granted after my miserable excursion in the Brooke House grounds.

“Now, Mrs. Lammle, what seems to be the problem?” he asked, sitting down behind his desk. “Chilblains, perhaps, or some other winter complaint? Or difficulty sleeping, like Miss Keith?”

“It was such a pleasant surprise to encounter her here,” I said. “She is the loveliest thing, is she not? I cannot imagine how she is still unmarried.”

The doctor smiled ruefully. “It is not for lack of suitors, I can tell you. But as long as she continues to mourn for the man she lost…” He sighed.

I hoped that Mr. Keith had been correct in his statement that men were tremendous gossips. And it was just possible that the doctor was so distracted by his visit with Arabel that he might be more forthcoming than at a time when his mind was completely on his work. “How tragic,” I said sympathetically. “I do hope that she finds herself able to seek happiness here among the living. But since you mentioned sleeping complaints… that is correct in a sense, for I confess that I am rather frightened to be living in a house whose last mistress expired in so dreadful a fashion. To die in such agony! You must have attended her in that last illness, doctor.”

He nodded, his expression becoming grave. “It still grieves me that I was unable to save her. Although she had summoned me occasionally in the previous weeks for gastric distress, it did not seem very serious. By the time Mrs. Tully sent for me when the end was near, her condition was so severe that it was too late for me to do anything for her.”

“I am so sorry—for you as well as her. You, ah, had no doubt that illness was the cause? She had not perhaps ingested something poisonous?”

He gave me a sharp look. “Accidentally, do you mean?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps it was given to her.”

“Are you asking me if the lady was deliberately killed? Heavens, no!” He stared at me as if I had suggested something indecent—as I suppose I had. “There was nothing in her symptoms to make me suspect such a thing,” he asserted. “Besides, who could possibly have wanted to do away with as gentle and gracious a lady as Mrs. Lammle?”

Someone who stood to inherit property from her, perhaps. “Mr. Brooke must have been devastated,” I said, trying a different tack. “I imagine he was at her side every moment toward the end, as solicitous as a good son should be.”

“No, to my knowledge he was out of the country throughout her illness.”

“What? Did he return for her funeral?”

His single shake of the head was certain. “All the letters sent to him went unanswered, or so Mrs. Tully said at the time. I understand that Tully even sent a telegram to his last known address. I wrote to him after his mother’s passing to give him the sad news, but I never received a reply—and I have always regretted that I could not deliver such terrible news in person. It must have been a great blow to read it in a letter from a stranger… if he even received it. For all we know he was no longer at that address.”

How peculiar. Roderick Brooke had struck me as someone whose sense of honor would have brought him rushing to his mother’s side when she was severely ill. That did seem to suggest that none of the letters had reached him. “Did the poor lady have no one else?”

“The parson visited toward the end, I know, and I believe Mrs. Dove visited her friend’s sickbed on numerous occasions. As Brooke House’s closest neighbor and Mrs. Lammle’s dearest friend, she would certainly have offered support. Besides, it is in her nature to try to help those in need.”

Perhaps I could gather some more information about this paragon. “Do tell me more about her, Dr. Carfax. I hear she is a beauty… but it is difficult for me to imagine anyone outshining Miss Keith.”

Sitting back in his chair, he smiled into the distance. “Indeed, Mrs. Lammle, you are quite right. Mrs. Dove has her own charm, but she lacks the youth and freshness of Miss Keith.”

“Ah! So she is older?” I tried to keep the unbecoming eagerness out of my voice.

That brought a thoughtful crease to his brow. “I could not say, really. Something about her manner gives the sense of being past her youth. A kind of authority, perhaps. But her features and complexion are flawless.” A mischievous smile tugged at the corners of his lips, lifting his moustache. “As a matter of fact, however, they may owe as much to art as to nature.”

“Oh?”

He chuckled. “You ladies are all alike, wanting to outdo one another in beauty! Burns, the apothecary, tells me that Mrs. Dove takes an active interest in all his preparations for the hair and complexion. Mind you, you did not hear this from me.”

Hastily I assured him that I would never reveal the source of my information.

“It does beat all,” he said, shaking his head, “the way you ladies fuss so over your appearance. It is virtue, Mrs. Lammle, and a pure and loving heart, that are a woman’s truest beauties.”

“Dr. Carfax,” I said, and although I spoke pleasantly a little thread of iron had entered my voice, “you know perfectly well that we are all of us, men and women, susceptible to outer beauty. Inner beauty can be more elusive and take time and pains for an observer to unearth, but a fetching exterior shines forth as powerfully as a lighthouse beacon on a dark night. Be honest, now: if I had a face like the side of a barn, would you have been so patient and forthcoming and generous with your time as you have?”

But I posed the question with my most charming smile, the one that created the illusion of a dimple in my left cheek, and I threw the hint of a laugh into my voice. It would not serve my purpose to offend the doctor. I wanted him as an ally, for who knew how much else information I might be able to extract from him?

Fortunately, in response to my challenge he only gave a rueful chuckle and admitted, “You may have a point at that.” I had been correct in thinking him good-humored. That suited me nicely: Arabel should not marry an ill-tempered man. “Now that you mention it, though,” he added, “I should be drawing our visit to a close, as enjoyable as it has been. You said your complaint was nervousness, I believe?”

“Yes. I would very much appreciate your assurance that there is no contamination in Brooke House. The late Mr. Brooke, for example—of what did he die?”

“Ah, now, he was abroad at the time. I don’t call to mind just what did for the gentleman, but it was nothing he contracted in this part of the world.”

“Excellent, excellent. Who else has died in Brooke House’s recent history? I know it must seem very morbid of me, but I would find it so reassuring if I only knew that I had nothing to worry about. No miasma or tainted well or suchlike.”

But it seemed I had exhausted the good doctor’s memory. He believed he had heard that Margaret Lammle’s parents had died of a fever, but that was before his time. The previous doctor? Had died, sadly, and I would have to find someone else to question about his era. I stifled a sigh of vexation. I had gleaned some interesting facts, but I had hoped my progress would be greater. There was nothing that definitely suggested that Margaret Lammle was the spirit inhabiting Brooke House, but as yet I had no leads on any other identity for the specter.

“Thank you, doctor,” I said, rising. “You have relieved my mind greatly. I am sure I shall have no difficulty in sleeping now.”

“I’m happy that I was able to ease your anxiety, Mrs. Lammle. But if you should find yourself in need of a sleeping draught, Mr. Burns the apothecary can help you.”

That was a good thought—perhaps Mr. Burns could be a useful source of information as well. I thanked the doctor and made my way out of the office and down to the apothecary’s entrance, where Arabel had gone before me.

Mr. Burns was an affable elderly gentleman who was happy to discuss with me some of the different health tonics and sleeping potions he dispensed. Had I not been nearing the end of my allotted hour, I would have questioned him about his knowledge of Brooke House’s fatalities. “And I hear you offer some aids to the complexion as well,” I said. “Apparently Mrs. Dove relies on your preparations.”

“Mrs. Dove is a loyal customer, yes, but I would not recommend her beauty regime,” he said seriously. “I know that some in my profession claim that a solution of arsenic is a perfectly healthy tonic for the hair and complexion, but I have the gravest doubts as to its safety. Nevertheless, she is the picture of health, so perhaps she is right in insisting that it is only a matter of using the proper concentration.”

I did not need Mr. Burns to dissuade me from bathing my face with arsenic soap. There were doctors in England, too, who touted its health-giving properties, but far more who warned that it did more harm than good. Graves had been most definite, I recalled, about avoiding dress fabrics dyed with arsenic. Emerald green was the color most likely to contain the substance, so she had insisted upon testing any green piece goods for it before allowing me to purchase them. I settled on some castile soap and cold cream, and two bottles of toilet water as gifts for Mrs. Tully and Mrs. Vise. I am not above a bit of minor bribery where it can promote a more friendly environment.

I had barely completed my purchases and exited the building when Roderick Brooke drew up in the cutter, looking slightly less ill-tempered than when I had seen him last.

“You’re on time,” he said, as I climbed in—with no help from him, as usual.

“Do try to contain your delight,” I urged him, “or you will turn my head. Did you complete your business?”

“As much as I could in this primitive place.” He chirruped to the horses, and we drew away. Though I agreed with him about the undeveloped state of the village, I was almost sorry to leave it behind for the isolation of Brooke House. “I’ve arranged for a new housemaid, since you frightened the last one off,” he said presently. “She’ll be arriving tomorrow.”

“That’s quite unfair,” I protested. “Her leaving was none of my doing. But that reminds me…”

An exaggerated groan from my companion made the horses’ ears twitch, but I ignored this childishness.

“…I asked Dr. Carfax about deaths that have occurred at Brooke House, and nothing he said led me any further toward identifying the spirit.”

“So you don’t insist that my mother is haunting the house?”

He asked this in so guarded a tone that I could not gauge the feeling behind it. If he was still angry, I did not want to risk being pitched into a snow bank, and I weighed my response accordingly. “I insist on nothing,” I said, “except keeping an open mind.”

He gave a derisive snort. “If you are an example of such a thing, Mrs. Lammle, I would be afraid to open my mind lest its present contents fall out.”

“Oh, that is very good,” I said approvingly. “Did it take you the last hour to think it up?”

So absorbing was our discussion that the sound of a strange horse’s neigh startled both of us, and my companion had to rein up abruptly. Standing in the middle of the road before us was a handsome white horse, and on its back was one of the most striking women I had ever seen.

“How do you do,” she said, in a soft yet carrying voice, with a tone that was somehow silvery. “I am Mrs. Lavinia Dove.”

She was so slight that when standing she probably only came to my shoulder, but she sat her horse with the imperious assurance of an empress. She was dressed in a black riding habit that set off her slender figure and made her stand out all the more starkly against the snowy landscape.

Beneath the veil of her hat, which hid her eyes, her complexion was so pale that she might have been made of snow herself. Her face was the delicate three-cornered shape of a cat’s, and her mouth, like the rest of her, was tiny but exquisite. Her hair was an unusual shade of pale ash brown, smooth and straight and glossy, and when she turned her head for a moment I saw that it was knotted at the base of her neck beneath a black net.

“You must be Mrs. Lammle,” she said to me. “Word has already spread of your beauty.” She managed to make this sound less like a compliment than something inexplicable and puzzling. Her voice was sweet, almost piercingly so—a sound so pure it was also cold. Before I could reply, she added, “I was planning to call on you once you had a chance to settle in and when your loss was not so fresh.”

If this was designed to make me feel guilty for not sequestering myself in the appropriate gloom, it succeeded. “Ah, well, you see—”

“But with such a handsome companion at your side, I don’t wonder that you find yourself ready to venture out into the world,” she added in a tone of amusement. “Won’t you introduce me?”

“I’m Roderick Brooke,” said that gentleman, whose manner had thawed under the cold radiance of Mrs. Dove. His glower had lessened a good 15 percent, I judged. “How happy I am to finally meet my mother’s dear friend in person.”

Her sudden smile dazzled like sunlight on frost. “Mr. Brooke, what a delightful surprise! Margaret told me so much about you. I had not realized you were in town.” There was a slight hesitation before she ventured, “The two of you are, ah, residing together?”

So hasty were Mr. Brooke and I to correct her implication that we spoke almost at the same time.

“My stepmother is only staying temporarily, until my stepfather’s estate is settled,” he explained.

Glaring at him, I corrected, “Mr. Brooke is only staying temporarily, until the judge rules Brooke House to be mine.” My stepmother, indeed! He made it sound as if I were old enough to be his mother, which was probably his intent.

Mrs. Dove held up a small gloved hand as if to stem the avalanche. “Truly, I didn’t mean to pry—it’s none of my business. It’s silly of me to be shocked. With Mrs. Lammle being an actress and all, she will think me hopelessly unworldly.”

Now, did she mean that because I was an actress I would find her foolish, or that she shouldn’t be surprised that an actress was living with a man? I was parsing her statement to decide how insulted I should be when Mr. Brooke, of course, rushed in to soothe the woman—as if she were in need of comfort.

“What you call unworldly is most appropriate in a lady,” he told her, and his voice had taken on that velvety warmth that was so effective at close range. “Don’t let my stepmother make you uncomfortable.”

This I could not let pass. “What I think Mr. Brooke means,” I said tartly, “is that there is nothing in our present arrangement that should bring a blush to even the most innocent cheek, let alone a widow’s.”

Mrs. Dove’s voice in response was so gentle that I almost regretted my sharpness. “You are quite correct, of course, that it is disingenuous of me to play the innocent. I suppose I have simply been rather sheltered, living out here in the country. I would be hopelessly provincial in such a setting as you are comfortable in, Mrs. Lammle.” Holding one gloved hand to her heart, she gave a little sigh. “I am simply old fashioned, I’m afraid.”

She meant, in Dryden’s words, that she was a silly, harmless, household Dove. What she truly was, I reflected, was diabolical. This delicate-blossom performance was aimed straight at the masculine protective reflex, and I was unsurprised—if displeased—that Mr. Brooke took the bait.

“Don’t reproach yourself, Mrs. Dove,” he urged. “The world needs more gentle, womanly ladies like…”

On second thought, I shall not repeat all of his idiotic utterances. I will spare him that indignity, although he spared himself none. Suffice it to say that after his passionate outpouring in defense of Pure Womanhood and the Angel in the House had brought a dainty blush of pleasure to Mrs. Dove’s face, he proposed that she ride ahead to Brooke House, where we would rendezvous with her and continue our delightful conversation under more comfortable conditions, et cetera, et cetera.

She complied readily and was soon almost out of sight. “What luck to encounter Mrs. Dove,” said my formerly gloomy companion, now practically beaming as he drove us at a brisk pace in the direction of home.

“If one can call it luck when she is our nearest neighbor and we were bound to encounter her sooner or later.”

He gave me a sidelong glance. His hazel eyes were alight with interest—or devilry. “What a crosspatch you are. Don’t be so grumpy just because you’ve discovered you aren’t the prettiest woman in the county.”

This enraged me so much that I remained silent for the duration of the journey. Now that I think of it, in fact, that may have been his entire design. After my earlier chaffing of him, he was evening the score nicely.

He paused at the front entrance of the house so that I could climb down from the cutter before he drove it to the stable. I could hear him roaring for Tully as the horses rounded the corner of the house.

Mrs. Dove, still mounted, was waiting before the front stoop, and I hoped against hope that she would not dismount and come inside. As best I could tell with the veil obscuring her eyes, she was regarding the house thoughtfully. “I always loved this place,” she said in a pensive voice, “and I do even now that it is where my dear friend died. I hope you are not distressed by the fact that you’re replacing such a beloved person.”

I could not let her continue to get the better of me. “I would not say replacing,” I began, but that was as far as she let me get.

“I myself have the reassurance of coming from a distinguished family whose heritage goes all the way back to the Mayflower, so I can only imagine how uncomfortable it must feel to be a foreigner here… and particularly from the very nation that we rebelled against just one short century ago.”

“Well, I’ve traveled a good deal,” I said firmly, before she could continue her monologue, “and that helps me to feel at home quickly in a new place.”

At that, she reached up and carefully turned her veil up, tucking it over the brim of her hat so that she could regard me clearly. Revealed, her eyes were as green and as hard as malachite. She could modulate her voice and her gestures to be soft and demure, but her eyes gave the lie to her dovelike persona. This was Narcissa Holm in excelsis.

“Oh, truly?” she inquired. “I would have thought that this life would be so far from your experience that it would be unsettling, if you’ll pardon the pun. You know—finding yourself so thoroughly out of your element. Among folk who regard actresses as, well, women of ill repute. You must be very brave indeed to venture into the village knowing what everyone thinks when they see you.”

Suddenly I was forced to reassess my visit into town. Had Dr. Carfax and Mr. Burns seen a wicked woman when they looked at me? Were they even now snickering behind my back about my brazen boldness, my lascivious ways? Remembering how I had consciously acted the charmer with the doctor, I squirmed inwardly. Had they noticed that Mr. Brooke had been my escort into town? Someone must have observed us, and now perhaps they were drawing the same conclusion that Mrs. Dove had until we disabused her: that the two of us were engaged in an illicit arrangement.

I wondered if I had ruined once and forever any chance of being accepted into this community. My fresh start might be over before it had properly begun—especially since I had gotten off on the wrong foot with Mrs. Dove.

“Goodness,” she said now in a bright voice. “What a brisk day it is, isn’t it? Even for this time of year.”

This was a statement that needed no translation. “Won’t you come inside?” I asked grudgingly. In truth, I was getting very chilled now that I was no longer in the sleigh covered by the lap rug, and I was looking forward to warming myself by the fire.

But she said, “Oh, no, I couldn’t put you to the inconvenience; you weren’t expecting guests. I’m only stopping for a moment to let Circe cool down.” She patted her horse’s neck before returning to what was apparently her favorite topic: me and my shortcomings. “I do admire your optimism in trying to make a new home for yourself here. It must be particularly difficult to adjust to country life when you have spent your career honing talents so ill suited to this sphere.”

Finally, an insult I could counter, and without breaching courtesy. “One does improvise sometimes on stage,” I said triumphantly, “and that can assist one in doing so in life.”

“But in the theater that is only for a few hours each evening, yes? Whereas in life there is never any time when one is offstage and may rest. It must be an exhausting prospect, spending all one’s waking hours playing a part.”

That was a depressingly accurate summation. At this point I was actually grateful for the sight of Mr. Brooke approaching, covering the ground with long powerful strides. The wind stirred his curly hair and brought a flush of color across his broad cheekbones, and I thought Mrs. Dove’s smile deepened at the sight. Truly, it was a spectacle to gladden the feminine heart, and I supposed that, lacking definite evidence to the contrary, she must possess that organ.

“Won’t you come in and warm yourself, Mrs. Dove?” he called as he neared us. “My stepmother seems to have forgotten her manners in forcing you to remain out here in the cold.”

Her smile was indulgent. “Oh, I’m certain Mrs. Lammle was just too absorbed in our conversation, and one must always be forgiving when people’s memories lose their sharpness with age. I should love to come in, Roderick.”

At this point I felt I could have happily dragged her from her horse’s back and strangled her. When she placed one dainty hand in his and leapt lightly to the ground, I spared a wish that her horse would immediately gallop off so that she would have to run in pursuit of it, but this happy scenario did not occur. Instead, her host offered her his arm, and she slipped one hand through the crook of his elbow and rested the other on his forearm. Quite cozy they looked, the pair of them.

“I do hope you don’t mind if I call you by your Christian name,” she said softly, in as intimate a voice as if I were not even present. She had a trick of lowering her head and glancing up through her eyelashes that managed to look both shy and seductive. I would have to practice before a mirror to see if I could master it. “It is how I am accustomed to thinking of you,” she explained, “for that is always how your dear mother referred to you.”

“That’s quite all right, Mrs. Dove,” he said gently. “In fact, I would be honored.”

Thoroughly out of sorts by now, I reached out to open the door. The latch depressed, but the door itself did not move.

Let me be more precise. There was no motion whatever. No tiny movement such as even locked doors permit, the miniscule distance they shift before being restrained by the bolt. No give even in the boards of the door itself, when I took my hand from the latch and pushed at it. This door felt as if it were part of the solid wall.

Slightly unnerved, I jiggled the latch, pushed harder, tugged—even though I knew the door would not open outward. I might as well have tried to budge Stonehenge.

The house was asserting its own will again, and I wondered uneasily what this meant.

“The door won’t open,” I said inadequately.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mr. Brooke said, with a return of his peremptory manner. “You’re simply doing it wrong.”

I put my hands on my hips. My feet were beginning to go numb, and that on top of everything else was making me cross. “And how many ways are there of opening a door, pray? Must I remind you that I have been opening doors, quite successfully, for nearly all of my life?”

“Your lucky streak was bound to end sometime,” he said, with a wink to Mrs. Dove. Odious man.

“Very well, then,” I said sweetly, “why don’t you show me how it should be done? As a man, you naturally have the advantage in plumbing the mysteries of complex machinery. My feeble feminine brain is insufficient for the challenge.”

“For heaven’s sake, woman, it’s only a door.” He reached out to give it a push, and nothing happened. Only slightly nonplussed, he grasped the latch and gave it a proper try. A look of irritated perplexity drew his dark eyebrows together.

I attempted not to look smug. However, I did not attempt it very hard.

“Hmm,” he said. “It does appear to be stuck.” He gave the bell pull a tug, and we heard the bell jangle distantly in the house. “Mrs. Tully or Mrs. Vise will let us in shortly. I’m sure they can get it open from the inside.”

As we waited, our guest said, “I would love for the two of you to come to my next musicale. It will be such a good way for your new neighbors to get to meet you both, and you them. My musical gatherings are quite popular, if I say so myself. Everybody performs a little something—singing or playing or both. Roderick, your dear mother told me of your remarkable skill with the violin. Won’t you favor us with a selection?”

His smile was no more than a social reflex. It was the first time he had not made an effort to be charming to her. “I shall be glad to play the piano, Mrs. Dove, but my fiddling days are over.”

“Oh?” When he did not volunteer an explanation, she said to me, “And you, Mrs. Lammle? What can you do?”

By now I was rubbing my hands over my upper arms and almost dancing from one foot to the other in an effort to warm myself. “I sing a little,” I said shortly.

Her smile was angelic. “Don’t be ashamed,” she cooed. “We can’t all be talented in the musical arena. I’ll choose something that won’t demand too much of you, never fear.”

Mr. Brooke’s patience gave out. “I’ll try the study door,” he said, disentangling himself from the woman’s clutches—gently, it must be said—and striding away.

Mrs. Dove gazed after him. “He’s extraordinarily handsome, isn’t he? I don’t blame you for setting your cap at him, even though some spiteful people might say that at your age you should have more dignity.”

This made me open and close my mouth wordlessly, unable to choose which slander to contradict first. Perhaps most offensive of all was that she had to be my own age or well beyond it; her assured manner and knowing eyes—and skill at verbal swordplay—made it almost certain. But I could not be entirely sure of it, for her skin was as smooth as a child’s, and like many petite women she had an ageless quality. As for the idea that I was pining after Mr. Brooke, this was so insulting that I hardly knew where to start to correct it.

She took advantage of my involuntary silence. “People can be so cruel, you know,” she murmured, “and after all, one’s age isn’t one’s fault, is it? But I do believe that we ladies must do all in our power to hold on to our youth. It is a sad fact that once we lose that—or at least its appearance—we seem to lose not only our power to attract but also something of our dignity as well. One hears so many cruel things said about old maids, you know.”

“I am not—”

“Of course not, but you know what nonsense people will say.” With a considering look that took me in from the top of my mourning bonnet to the snow-draggled hem of my dress, she added, “My mother used to say that a compress of raw veal does wonders for the complexion; you might try it.”

At this point Mr. Brooke returned, thus forestalling an act of murder.

“The study door won’t open either,” he reported. “They must both be frozen shut, and I can’t raise anyone within the house. This is very embarrassing, Mrs. Dove.”

She patted his arm. “Please don’t be embarrassed. If you and Mrs. Lammle wish to be left alone in your little domestic nest, I shan’t disturb you.”

He reared back as if she had shot him. “That’s not the case at all, believe me!”

“Definitely not!” I confirmed.

She beamed. “I am glad to hear that. I think too highly of you both to imagine the scathing gossip that would wound you if anyone thought that Roderick was entangled with his stepmother. I am ashamed to say it of my own sex, but we women can be so rapacious, so shameless, when a handsome and brilliant man of good character is involved.”

“You astonish me,” I said witheringly.

Again the trick of tucking her chin down and looking appealingly up at him. “I beg your pardon, Roderick. I hope I did not embarrass you by speaking so frankly.”

Embarrass him?

“Not at all, Mrs. Dove. If anything, I am flattered by your concern.” Why could he never be this civil to me? “Call again soon, and I’ll have Tully see to the doors so that this doesn’t happen again.”

He helped her mount the patient Circe, and once Mrs. Dove was situated again, she gazed down at us from her height like a triumphant Nemesis.

“I shall look forward to seeing you this Wednesday fortnight for the musicale. And if either of you would like to join me for a ride in the meantime, I should be delighted to have a companion in my rambles.”

“I’ll join you for a certainty,” said the increasingly obliging rogue next to me. “But I do not believe my stepmother rides.”

She regarded me with unflattering astonishment. “You cannot mean that! Truly, you do not ride? At all?”

She made this sound like a character defect, but I replied as cheerfully as was within my power. “Not at all, I’m afraid. I am a creature of the metropolis, and my knowledge of horses is limited to which bits to avoid. The teeth, the hooves, and the—well, everything else.”

A pitying look greeted this admission. “How sad to be frightened of horses at your age,” she exclaimed. “No, don’t be ashamed, Mrs. Lammle,” she continued as I started to defend myself against this aspersion. “I’m only worried that you shall find it very lonely in our part of the world if you cannot ride—at least when the ground is unfit for walking, as it is for most of the winter and spring. A house can come to seem like a prison under such circumstances.”

“How kind of you to worry about her,” said Mr. Brooke. It would be a double murder, I decided. But which to strangle first? “I trust you’ll do your neighborly best to prevent our becoming despondent, and come to visit often.”

“I shall be more than happy to do so. And I look forward to riding with you, Roderick. But for now, au revoir.”

“I almost forgot,” I exclaimed, as something occurred to me. “I have a message for you from my late husband’s lawyer. Gareth Bascombe.”

“Oh?” She clearly recognized the name, but her face revealed nothing more than that.

“He sends his apologies,” I told her.

I was hoping she would offer an explanation of this cryptic message, but my hopes were disappointed. She merely smiled—a hard, humorless smile, unlike her usual sweet expression—and said, “And well he should. Good day to you both.”

She touched her horse’s flank with her riding crop, and her mount took off at an impressive pace, with snow flying up from its hooves.

Roderick Brooke watched her vanishing form with almost a smile. “She has as good a seat as any horsewoman I’ve seen,” he said.

“All the more impressive,” I said, “considering that one doesn’t expect to see a cat on horseback at all.”

His laugh was like a puff of smoke in the wintry air. “I think she’s charming.”

“Oh, you made that quite clear.”

“What does that mean?”

“You were practically fawning over her—just as she intended.”

A glare from his hooded eyes had the force of a physical blow. “You have a nasty, suspicious mind,” he told me. “I shall be glad when you finally give up this preposterous fantasy of being lady of the manor and return to your proper place.”

He strode to the door, and I did not remind him that it was stuck fast. I would rather enjoy watching him bump into it. It might put his handsome nose out of joint.

But to my astonishment the door opened as promptly as it ever had, and he stalked through without so much as a pause.

More slowly, I followed him inside. When I examined the inner surface of the door I saw nothing unusual. Experimentally, I stepped outside again, closed the door, and waited a moment. When I tried the door, it opened normally.

It seemed, then, that only one person had been denied entrance. As I crossed the threshold once more and shut the door behind me, I whispered, “It seems that you don’t like Mrs. Dove any more than I do,” and immediately I had the most interesting sensation of the house listening to me. As on that first night, there was a kind of awareness to the silence, as if something were concentrating intently on me.

Who, I wondered, was the entity whose presence I felt? If Margaret Lammle had been so fond of Mrs. Dove, her spirit would not now be barring her from the house. That theory was clearly in error.

But then, I seemed to be failing at most everything. I had been wildly unsuccessful at getting into Mrs. Dove’s good graces. Her pointed remarks about my inability to fit into this community and this life had certainly been designed to fill me with doubts, but that did not make them any less accurate. It had been foolish of me to assume that I could find acceptance here when nothing in my past prepared me to be a part of this world. Even if the judge ruled in my favor and I inherited Brooke House, what kind of existence would I lead? I might be cut by my peers, the other landowners. The house would indeed feel like a prison then.

And that was even if I could bear to live here knowing that I had seized what by rights belonged to Margaret Lammle’s son. This was his legacy, not mine. And that left me with—what?

I ate my midday meal in my room, too dispirited to emerge and risk crossing swords with Mr. Brooke again. Afterward I tried to settle with some reading, but my thoughts were too turbulent to allow me to concentrate on Dr. Johnson. It was a welcome distraction when the sound of music penetrated to my room.

It was piano this time, not the violin. I opened the door to my room and moved out to the landing, listening.

Before I had consciously formed the intention I realized I had followed the sound downstairs and was standing outside the small parlor door, which was ajar. So this music was human in origin. Perhaps Roderick Brooke was practicing what he would be playing at the musicale.

But soon I found myself frowning. The music was technically proficient, yes, but lacking in emotion. In fact, it was strangely mechanical. This surprised me, considering all I had heard about Roaring Brooke and his dazzling, passionate performances of years past… but this must be the effect of his injury. It struck me as a terrible loss that his ability to portray emotion through his playing did not remain to him, and I wondered how agonizing it must have been for him, a sensitive artist by all accounts, to recognize this diminishment of his skill.

His playing continued as I slipped noiselessly inside. The pianoforte was on the opposite wall, so his back was toward me. The piece he was playing must have been composed by someone of the Romantic school, for it was full of dramatic changes of tempo and mood. Or it would have been, had Roderick Brooke been able to convey mood any longer.

As I watched him, noting the strain in his neck and shoulders, the force with which he brought his fingers down on the keys, I experienced a strange shift in my perspective. It was as if I were looking at him through someone else’s eyes, with someone else’s associations and memories. This person felt warmth toward the man at the piano. More than that—tenderness.

I felt my heart contract with feelings that were not my own. I felt the sympathetic pain of one watching someone dear to them grasp in vain after what they had lost. I had taken an involuntary step forward before I came to myself, and as I halted I felt the Other keep moving. The Other left my body, and my heart was my own again.

Still, I found myself wishing I could comfort this man. Was this my own feeling, or some residue from the entity that had visited me? I could not be certain. But as I watched, something remarkable took place.

Almost like a breeze ruffling his hair, there came a soft movement of the black curls at the crown of Roderick Brooke’s head. It was no breeze, though, for nothing else in the room moved. Rather, it was as if someone unseen had caressed his head in a gesture of affection. To console, to reassure, or simply to feel near to him? I wondered.

I also wondered how those jet curls would feel under my own hand. They might be coarse and springy, but then again they might be silky, as his voice was silky when he was not shouting. Where his hair curled over his collar it looked soft as down. You should not be thinking such things, I told myself, but I had not quite managed to subdue them when his posture tautened into awareness, and he turned and saw me.

His clear eyes meeting mine was like a tangible touch, but their expression was not angry, as when we had last spoken. There was a kind of questioning wonder in them. “Was that you?” he asked almost inaudibly.

I was all the way across the room from him. It was impossible that I could have touched him from here, and I shook my head before remembering that I shouldn’t know what he was asking me. “Er—what do you mean?”

“Never mind. I thought…” He seemed to brood for a moment, then asked, “Why are you here?”

Strangely, it was not a challenge. I answered cautiously, lest he retreat into his usual antagonism. “I heard you playing. What was the piece?”

“De Bériot’s ninth violin concerto. I’m adapting it for the piano.”

“Oh. Well, it sounded lovely.” I was a little embarrassed at this lie, but it would have been cruel to let him know that his injury had so ill an effect on his playing the one instrument that remained to him.

I was turning to go when he added in a voice that was not as offhanded as it was meant to be, “Have you seen ‘Home, Sweet Home’?”

“The sheet music? Not since yesterday evening.”

“Hmm. I can’t find it… May I ask why you believe so strongly in the spirit world?”

The suddenness of the question startled me, but his tone was respectful. I said, “I’ve had a number of experiences with it, going all the way back to my childhood. But most have happened since I became an actress. I suspect that something about actors—the way we make ourselves conduits for all of humanity—makes us better able to sense the presence of things that are not of this sphere.” The fact that I had been a conduit of sorts just moments before may have influenced the way I shaped my thought into words. Talking about this was new to me.

To my astonishment, instead of jeering or mocking me, he said, “Tell me about one of these experiences.”

“But you will scoff at it.”

“I give you my word I won’t.”

“I… very well.” With a feeling of unreality, I took a seat on the divan. He left the piano bench for a wing chair nearer to me. It was almost beyond belief that Roderick Brooke was patiently and attentively awaiting my tale.

I sifted through some occurrences in my mind before deciding that I should tell him about the one I found, for lack of a better word, most haunting. It had lingered with me long after happier memories had faded.

“The worst experience was something that happened when I’d only been with Atherton’s troupe a short while, perhaps six months,” I began. “I didn’t know all the players very well. I was still shy—that will surprise you, I know—and kept my mouth shut and my eyes open and learned as much as I could, both onstage and off.

“What I didn’t know until later was that the second male juvenile—Martin was his name—had a sweetheart. But the girl was married, and to a brute. He used to beat her. Martin pleaded with her to leave her husband and come to him, but she was too frightened of what her husband would do. And with good reason, as it turned out.

“The… visitation happened one night during a performance. The play was some farce, and in the second act a mood of despair began to creep over all of us who were on stage. I could look at everyone’s faces and see it happen. The cheer—whether genuine or put on—bled away, and a terrible sense of oppression and—and grief began to weigh us down. I felt it too. Eventually even the audience began to feel it. The laughter became quieter and less frequent, until it died away altogether.”

He listened in silence. I continued, more haltingly as I reached the more affecting part of the tale.

“There were too many people on stage, too. Whenever I tried to count, I couldn’t find anyone who should not have been there, but then out of the corner of my eye I would see her. A woman with dark hair. She was following Martin around the stage. Finally, when he was still, she crept up silently behind him and put her arms around him. And she just clung to him, as if for… well, for dear life.

“He felt her presence, that was clear to me. He started and broke off in the middle of his line to stare all around him. His face was haggard. And she…” I groped for my handkerchief. “She held him so tightly, and when he moved it was as if he were dragging her weight with him. Yet he could not see her. I think I am the only one who did.”

“And then?” he asked quietly.

I wiped my eyes and took a moment to collect myself. “When we were taking our bows—and never have I been so grateful for a performance to draw to a close—I saw the policeman in the wings. Martin saw him too, and his face went white. Not out of anxiety for himself, you understand. But because he had worried all along for his sweetheart’s safety, and… and he knew now that what he had feared had come to pass.

“Her husband had discovered that she met with Martin, so he killed her.” There was no emotion in my voice. It was the only way I could tell that part of the story, by refusing to let myself feel what I had felt all those years ago. And still felt, sometimes, in bad dreams. “Then, knowing he would be found out, he flung himself into the Thames. The police had come to question Martin about his role in the whole sad business.

“He left the theater after that. I don’t know what happened to him. I would like to think that he moved out to the country to raise chickens and married some sweet girl who made him happy. But I don’t know. I don’t know.”

I realized that I was twisting my handkerchief, and with an effort I stilled my restless hands. When I raised my eyes to look at him, his eyes were fixed on me so intently that it gave me a little jolt to meet their gaze. “You see,” I said, “she could not leave this existence without contacting Martin one last time. Whether to say goodbye, or whether because somehow she felt that she could save herself if she could lay hold of him, absorb some of the life and love that animated him, I have no idea. But her pain was real, very real indeed. I hope never to feel anything like it again.”

A silence lay there for a moment. Then he sat back in his chair so that his face was in shadow and I could no longer see his eyes. “That’s a sad story,” he said, in a flat voice, “even if it is just an elaborate lie.”

Shocked, I stared at him. My eyelashes were still wet with tears from reliving the experience. “Why should I be lying?”

His voice had taken on the sneering tone I disliked so much. “First, you are an actor; and second, you are a woman.”

“I had not realized I was quite so low in your estimation.” I could not help but be disappointed that he had returned to his earlier position of enmity and rudeness toward me. He had seemed to be addressing me almost as a friend before, or at least with the basic respect due to a fellow creature, and I felt the change painfully.

“It wasn’t meant as an insult,” he said now, with a shrug. “It’s simply been my experience. Women aren’t to be trusted—particularly women of the theatrical world.” He rose from his chair and favored me with a brief, humorless smile. “If the dead truly haunted the living as in your tale, I’d never have a moment’s peace.” Then he stalked out of the room.

Still shaken by the events I had recounted, I sat unable to move. And then I remembered the rumor that I had been unable to recall before. That Rory Brooke’s career had ended because he had killed a man.

“Whoa,” I pleaded. “Whoa!”

But the mare Sand ignored my feeble tug at the reins and gathered speed, jouncing me mercilessly. My tenuous perch on the sidesaddle began to slip. The now-familiar feeling of doomed inevitability came to me as, once more, I fell to the ground.

“Wretched creature,” I muttered. After two hours of attempting to learn to ride, my entire body was aching so much I did not want to try to move again. Perhaps I should just stay here, lying on the ground, gazing up at the sky. I always ended up here anyway, and it would save time and trouble.

“Have you given up?” a masculine voice inquired, but it was not the voice of Tully, my purported teacher in this ill-fated enterprise. The hand extended to me was Roderick Brooke’s. He was gazing down at me with an expression of barely suppressed laughter.

Naturally he would find my predicament entertaining. I wondered how many times he had seen me fall. Since the circular front drive was the one place on the grounds relatively clear of snow, that was where Tully had insisted that I practice, which meant that I had been in clear view of anyone in the front part of the house.

“I have not given up,” I said, nettled, “but I think today’s riding lesson has gone on long enough.”

“Don’t you mean falling lesson?” he inquired. He was in fine fettle indeed.

Reluctantly I accepted his offered hand, but he was so much stronger than I anticipated that I misjudged how much effort I should put into getting to my feet, with the result that I was launched straight into him. For a moment he staggered, and perhaps reflexively, his arms closed around me.

“It may be jaded of me,” he said in a voice tinged with laughter, “but I had a feeling you’d throw yourself at me one day.”

For a moment, I confess, I made no move to free myself from his arms. For one thing, it was the warmest I had been all day. But that was not the only reason that it felt very good indeed to be exactly where I was. It had been so long since I had been embraced by a man, and I was caught off guard by how pleasurable it was. With the strength of his body against me, his breadth and height so far surpassing mine, I felt… protected.

Which was a dangerous illusion indeed, considering all that I knew—and did not know—about this man. Indeed, one of the reasons I had approached Tully for a riding lesson was so that I could question him about Roderick Brooke, but the manservant had been far more interested in making critical comments on my posture and handling of the reins than in parting with any morsels of information about the possibly homicidal history of his employer. So it was entirely possible that the arms that now held me—rather tightly, I thought—were those of a killer.

Somehow, though, that was not an urgent concern. Held against him, feeling his chest rise and fall with his breathing, I did not feel myself to be in danger. Not of murder, at any rate. It was all too easy, on the other hand, to imagine letting my hands slide up to his shoulders to draw him even closer, to…

This would never do. “You may release me now,” I informed him.

“Sorry? I didn’t quite catch that.” His arms did not perceptibly loosen.

“I said, let me go.”

“And if I don’t desire to?” His voice was unreadable. Was he teasing me, or could he be in earnest?

It was folly even to wonder. I pushed hard against him and he finally released me, so abruptly that I almost fell. Again.

Tully had evidently made good his escape, for he was nowhere to be seen. The mare Sand stood a short distance away, looking unconcerned. She was named, so Tully had told me, for the scandalous novelist George Sand. How like Mr. Brooke that even his livestock lacked propriety.

I frowned at the horse. “It doesn’t seem right that human beings, with our superior intellect, should be forced to depend on these capricious beasts in order to travel from one place to another,” I said. It was to some degree her fault that I felt so flustered and unsettled, or so I told myself—but her shortcomings were also a safer train of thought than my enjoyment of Roderick Brooke’s embrace.

“Perhaps you should purchase a velocipede,” he suggested. He stood with his hands in the pockets of his shabby black trousers, regarding me with amusement. “I suppose learning to ride one of those would involve just as much tumbling to the ground, but at least the machine would not need oats and a rubdown afterward.”

“You are in a good humor,” I observed, brushing the latest accumulation of snow from my skirt so that I did not have to meet his knowing gaze. I had no proper riding boots or habit, which had added to the difficulty of keeping my seat… something I considered pointing out in my own defense. “It isn’t very chivalrous to take such pleasure from my difficulty.”

“I was just admiring your bravery. Let me see, how did you put it? I find it quite admirable for a woman of mature years to try to add to her accomplishments.”

He was so clearly pleased with himself at being able to quote my own words back at me that it was impossible to be angry, and I laughed. “A good memory is a most tactless thing in a man, Mr. Brooke.”

Now it was his turn to laugh. “Tact, madam, is the refuge of cowards. I prefer to live honestly… and dangerously.”

Dangerous, I recalled abruptly, was what this man almost certainly was. I should not let myself forget that this could be a killer I was bantering with. True, with his cocky grin and wind-tousled dark curls he did not look like a man who could kill someone. Still, it behooved me not to drop my guard altogether.

“What brought you out here?” I asked in a cooler tone. “I hope you did not come merely to gloat.”

“I thought I would relieve Tully,” he said, taking Sand’s reins. “He looked so cold.”

“Didn’t you think that I might be cold as well?” Despite my resolve, I felt unaccountably injured.

“Oh, but you have all that falling down and getting up to warm you. Not so with Tully; the poor man had nothing to do but stand about until it was time to help you mount again.” His grin widened, and his voice dropped into a more seductive timbre. “Holding you in my arms also brought to mind another way of warming you, and quite a tempting one.”

Somehow I was not as outraged at that suggestion as I should have been, and for that very reason I could not look him in the face now without blushing. I said hastily, “I am going indoors,” and set off toward the front entrance.

“Ah yes,” he said, easily keeping pace with me, “there is also the combustible effect of your anger. The becoming pink flush in your cheeks tells me that your furnace of indignation is working most efficiently.” He lowered his voice in exaggerated solicitude. “I observe that you are walking rather awkwardly. Did you bruise something besides your dignity?”

It was just as well that he thought my blush was anger. “My dignity is very well, thank you,” I said, with an attempt at nonchalance.

“Hmm.” His attempt to visually assess my person for damage seemed to penetrate my many layers of clothing, and I walked more quickly to escape his alarmingly intimate scrutiny. “All the same, a soak in a tub with some Epsom salts will do wonders for it. Your dignity, I mean. And massaging with liniment can help as well.”

We had reached the front stoop, where he must cease pursuing me or else abandon Sand. I paused with my hand on the door latch and looked back at him. “Are you volunteering for that office?” I asked sweetly.

The impudent knave actually winked at me. “If you like,” he said.

“Mr. Brooke,” I said, “believe me when I say that you are never getting your hands on my dignity.”

I slipped inside the house and shut the door on the sound of his laughter.

One does like a good exit line to be appreciated, and perhaps that was why I found myself smiling. Or perhaps it was simply that his cheerfulness was contagious… even, heaven help me, irresistible. The rogue could be charming, no question.

The possibility that there was an ulterior motive behind his charm was one I did not want to consider at the moment. Now that I was out of his sight, I was overcome with relief that I did not have to keep up the pretense that I was not monstrously sore and battered. The prospect of a tub bath, even if he had mentioned it simply to embarrass me, was a cheering thought.

Moving in a wincing fashion, I directed my uneven steps toward the kitchen with the intention of asking one of the housekeepers to heat some water for me. Perhaps because I was proceeding more slowly from soreness and thus more quietly than usual, I could hear the two women in conversation as I approached the door. When I heard my own name spoken, I could not help but pause to listen.

“Mrs. Lammle does have some pretty ways,” Mrs. Tully was saying, “but what a flibbertigibbet!”

“Now, now,” Mrs. Vise responded, in a more indulgent voice than I had ever heard from her. “She means well, and it isn’t her fault that she’s never had to learn housewifery.”

“True enough. And she did keep me on even though she brought you with her. That was right decent.”

“Besides, the way Mr. Brooke provokes her would drive anyone to distraction,” Mrs. Vise pointed out.

Mrs. Tully’s voice was mildly indignant. “Mr. Roderick is well enough. And she enjoys a good fuss as much as he.”

“That’s so. Two peas in a pod they are, Mrs. Tully, and if they just stopped flapping about long enough to see—”

I struck open the door with my palm. “Mrs. Tully, Mrs. Vise, I won’t have this gossiping. I won’t.”

Startled, the women looked up from their activities. Mrs. Vise was mending what appeared to be a sheet, and Mrs. Tully was stirring something in a mixing bowl. A rawboned woman in her thirties who must have been the new maid, Bertha, was just taking the kettle off the range. Under the force of my glare, their expressions went from relaxed to guarded.

“Right you are, missus,” said Mrs. Tully. “I’m sorry you were bothered.”

“Did you need something, madam?” Mrs. Vise asked.

Their cool tones told me that I had just lost ground in their estimation, but I didn’t care. It was shocking for them to gossip about me and Mr. Brooke in that manner, and they needed to know that it was unacceptable.

However, it did put me at a bit of a disadvantage since the request I had come to make was rather tedious. “I’d like water heated for a bath,” I informed them, trying to sound firm and not let the words turn into a question. “Now, if you please.”

Bertha ducked her head in acquiescence. “Yes, missus. Right away.”

“Thank you,” I said, embarrassed at having all three of them staring at me. I was suddenly conscious of how disheveled I was, with my dress and hair rumpled and snow melting into my skirts. Not a very prepossessing figure for mistress of the manor. No wonder they saw me as a flibbertigibbet. “I shall be in my room,” I mumbled, and fled.

I had no doubt that they immediately took up their conversation where I had interrupted it. One could not blame them, I suppose, for discussing such an unusual and lively domestic arrangement as the one at Brooke House. But it hurt my dignity—the actual one, not the euphemism—to be discussed so freely.

As I learned barely two hours later, though, my servants were not the only people who found our situation such fascinating fodder for discussion. When, warmed and refreshed by my bath, I had put on a fresh dress, Mrs. Vise knocked at my door to inform me that I had visitors.

Mr. Keith and Arabel were waiting in the drawing room when I descended. “What a pleasure to see you both again,” I exclaimed, extending my hand to Mr. Keith. “I’m so pleased that you called.”

My visitors did not look pleased, however. Mr. Keith’s handshake was brief, and although Arabel embraced me, she avoided looking me in the eye. “Is something the matter?” I asked, puzzled.

A dry laugh came from the direction of the fireplace, where I now saw that Mr. Brooke was standing. Leaning against the mantel, he said with a wry twist to his mouth, “The reverend and his lady sister have come to lead us away from the path of sin.”

“The path of—?” Then comprehension came. “Truly, there’s nothing to worry about in that regard, Mr. Keith.”

“I believe there is.” For all his cherubic looks, the pastor could appear very grave, it seemed. His blue eyes regarded me steadily and without any of the mischief that I recalled from our first meeting. “Surely you know what an immoral arrangement this is, Mrs. Lammle.”

Against my will I found my thoughts returning to the short time ago when Mr. Brooke had held me in his arms, and I had found the experience far from unpleasant. But that had not meant anything. I didn’t have a tendresse for the man. Still, I was grateful that no one had seen that encounter. It probably would have looked immoral, to use the minister’s word.

Oblivious to my train of thought, he continued, “When we first met I had not realized that Mr. Brooke was also in residence here, or else I would have insisted that you stay at the manse with Arabel and me instead of returning to Brooke House.”

“I cannot move into the manse with you.”

“I do wish you would,” Arabel urged. Her eyes, too, were earnestly fixed on me as if I were on the brink of damnation. “It will look a bit peculiar, granted, with my brother being a bachelor. But at least in my brother’s house I can act as chaperone. Out here, all alone…” She bit her lip and exchanged a troubled look with her brother.

“I fear for your immortal souls,” he said quietly.

Roderick Brooke kicked at the fender with the toe of his boot, sending up a burst of sparks. “My soul already has far worse black marks against it than can be caused merely by living in the same house as an unattached female,” he said in a strangely blank voice.

His eyes were unreadable. Could he be referring to murder? Having come to know him a little, I found it hard to believe him capable of a scheming, calculated killing, but with his temper I could see how he might easily fly into a rage and do something rash that he might later regret.

“Besides,” he added now, with a return of his usual vigorous manner, “this is my house. If anyone leaves, it should be Mrs. Lammle.”

“Do come away, Sybil,” Arabel pleaded. “Think of how your name is being dragged through the mud by gossips. They are already saying the worst that can be said of a woman.”

With the two pairs of earnest blue eyes fixed upon me, I was torn between the impulses to laugh and to give in. But with Mr. Brooke present, there was only one course open to me. I would not give way and leave him a clear field, not until I knew that the house would never be mine.

“If our arrangement were a sin,” I said lightly, “I suspect it would be more enjoyable. I don’t feel any need to discontinue an arrangement that inconveniences Mr. Brooke and me equally.”

“But your good name,” Keith began.

“What good name would that be?” I inquired. “I am an actress and a foreigner, and for that alone I believe I am already accounted a scarlet woman. How much worse can my reputation get?”

Mr. Brooke tsked at me in mock concern. “That sounds like a challenge, Mrs. Lammle. Pray that the heavens don’t hear your defiance and find ways to make you regret those words.”

A chill of anxiety clutched me. He was right. What if my flippant remark brought bad luck down on me? What a fool I had been. This was tantamount to saying the name of the Scottish Play backstage.

I tried to reason away my panic. I had already squandered my good name when I had agreed to be the scapegoat for Atherton’s misdeeds. So perhaps this was a case of trying to close the barn door after the horse had escaped… although that turn of phrase now brought back all my irritation with Sand.

I would not let Mr. Brooke know that his dart had struck its target, however. “Regardless of the damage to my reputation, I will not leave Brooke House,” I said firmly. “I’m certain that the local gossips will soon find a tastier morsel to ruminate over, in any case.”

“There you are, reverend,” said Mr. Brooke. “My stepmother refuses to give way, and so do I. I’m afraid you’re wasting your breath.”

Mr. Keith sank back in his chair as one accepting defeat. “You understand that I had to try to make the two of you see reason. Perhaps this conversation has planted a seed that shall bear fruit later on.”

“Now your conscience can be at rest, reverend. But there’s no point in prolonging the discussion.”

“So it seems.” Fortunately Mr. Keith was too amiable to resent being thwarted. “Let us talk of something less contentious, shall we? Mr. Brooke, how do you suppose your students are faring during your absence?”

While they were pursuing this topic, Mrs. Vise brought in tea. As I poured a cup and handed it to Arabel, she whispered, “Are you not a little afraid of him?” Her eyes went to Mr. Brooke. “What a temper he is said to have. And his eyes seem to go right through one.”

“He can be a formidable gentleman,” I allowed, “though I would never dream of letting him know I believed so. But tell me, Arabel, what is between you and Dr. Carfax? He is quite enthralled by you. I believe he would marry you this very day if you gave the word.”

That brought a deepening pink to her cheeks. “Well… he has proposed to me. Hush! John does not know. I—I am quite fond of him, I admit. It saddened me so to refuse him.”

“Why did you?” I asked. “If you will forgive my being blunt, your sweetheart is dead. It would not be disloyal of you to marry another.”

Her eyes shut briefly as if in pain. “But it would feel that way, Sybil. Edmund is a wonderful man, but I can’t consider marrying him. Not unless my love tells me I may.”

“Tells you?” I repeated before I remembered that she believed his soul could make contact with her. “Have you… er… had any messages from him?”

She gave a tiny shake of the head. Her usually smooth brow was furrowed with what seemed to be the effort of holding back tears, and unthinkingly I reached out to take her hand. “Not one,” she whispered, gripping my hand tightly. “I have attempted so many times to contact his spirit, but not one word have I received from beyond the veil. I feel as if—as if I were under some kind of paralysis, Sybil. I cannot choose a path for myself until Phineas gives me his blessing. But I don’t know what he wants me to do. He will not speak to me. I have tried so many ways of reaching him…”

If she went on like this, she would be crying in good earnest. I gave her hand a squeeze and tried to think of a distraction. “Forgive me,” I said. “I’ve distressed you, and that wasn’t my intention. Let us speak of something else. Oh, I met your friend Mrs. Dove. She is…” I paused to find an adjective that would be socially acceptable yet not an outright lie, but fortunately Arabel rushed in to fill the void.

“She is very elegant, isn’t she? She has such dignity. I suppose it comes of being from such a distinguished family.”

“What family is that?” I asked.

“Oh dear, I was afraid you would ask. The truth is that I don’t remember the name, just that they are an old New England family. John? Who are Mrs. Dove’s people?”

Mr. Keith frowned. “Do you know, I don’t remember. I seem to recall her mentioning that one of her ancestors was harassed a bit during the Salem witch trials, but the name escapes me.”

So she could easily have been lying about her distinguished forebears. “Perhaps it’s her husband’s family that is so revered. What do you know of the Doves?”

Arabel gave a self-conscious laugh. “You are going to think us such dunces, but I know nothing about them. I never had the opportunity to meet Mr. Dove; he had already passed on when Mrs. Dove bought the Willowwood estate. But I believe he was supposed to be something important in… the railway, was it?”

“I was thinking wool exports,” her brother said.

“It seems that Mrs. Dove has created her own mystique,” Mr. Brooke said.

I had to agree. I could almost see her fashioning a quilt of lineage, stitching together snippets from different sources, and the conceit reminded me of something.

“Arabel, I would like to ask you about something I found. I’ll just fetch it from my room—I won’t be a moment.”

I had taken but three steps toward the door, however, when I saw the very object I was going in search of: the strange little cloth doll that I had found under my mattress. It should have been upstairs in my bureau, but now it sat on an end table, propped up against a lamp.

My heart gave a little jolt, and I swallowed hard. I knew the doll had not been there when I had entered the parlor. It was out of Arabel’s line of vision, so it was no use asking her whether she had noticed its appearance. Would I ever become accustomed to the way things moved around in this house of their own volition?

Perhaps more urgent, however, was the question of what the appearance of the little figure signified. Since I had meant to fetch it, the house had been very helpful in bringing it to me, so perhaps that was a good omen.

“Mrs. Lammle?” The minister had noticed that I was standing immobile, apparently for no reason.

I summoned a smile. “I was just going to show Arabel this funny little toy I found to see if it was familiar to her.”

“No,” she said thoughtfully, taking it from my hand. “I don’t believe I’ve seen it before. Where did it come from?”

“Mr. Brooke’s mother’s room.” Before he could accuse me of tampering with her belongings, I added, “I wasn’t searching her things. I just found it among the bedclothes. Be careful; there’s a pin in it.”

“How odd.” Arabel gave a little shiver and held out the doll toward Mr. Brooke. “I don’t like it.”

“Perhaps because the eyes are sewn as if shut,” he said musingly, turning it over in his hands. “This is the first time I’ve seen it, certainly.”

“So you don’t think it might have belonged to your mother when she was a little girl?” I asked.

He shrugged. “It may have been made for her, I suppose—the yellow hair would suggest it—but if it was given to her all those years ago, she must have kept it stored away.”

“May I see it?” There was such a strange intonation in Mr. Keith’s voice that Mr. Brooke glanced at him curiously as he passed it over. The minister examined it closely. “Would you say the doll resembles your mother, then?”

“The color of the hair is close, yes, but there’s really nothing else to go by.”

“Hmm.” He turned the doll over in his hands, squeezing it, and before I could remind him to be careful he gave a sudden exclamation of pain and released his hold. The thing fell to the floor.

“John, what is it?”

“I just pricked myself, Arabel. It’s nothing to worry about.” More cautiously, he picked it up from the carpet. “The pin is stuck through where the heart would be in a living person. I can’t help but be reminded of the poppets that witches were once said to make for use in casting their spells.”

“What do you mean?” Mr. Brooke asked.

“If a witch wanted to cast a spell on a person, she would make a poppet in their image. They were generally made of either wax or cloth, but sometimes clay or another substance would be used.”

“What kinds of spells were they used for?” I asked.

“Sometimes to heal, sometimes to harm.” He inspected the forefinger of his right hand, where a bright bead of blood had formed. “I would say that a sharp object driven through one did not indicate friendly feelings.”

“The closed eyes,” said Roderick Brooke. “Might they mean death?”

Arabel shuddered. “What a horrid thing. John, you don’t actually suppose anyone meant harm to come to Margaret Lammle, do you?”

He placed the poppet, if such it was, on the nearest table and drew his handkerchief from his breast pocket to wrap around his finger. “It seems likely, as it was discovered in her room,” he said, and his voice was grave. “The closer a poppet was placed to its human original, the greater its power over that person.”

“Who would do such a thing?” Arabel exclaimed.

“I would like to know that as well.” Mr. Brooke’s voice was soft, but a glimpse of his face showed the anger burning in his eyes. “If someone meant harm to my mother, I want his neck between my hands.”

Despite what Dr. Carfax had said, I still could not dissuade myself from the thought that Margaret Lammle’s death might not have been natural. This nasty little device seemed to suggest that it was a real possibility. But who would have benefitted from her death? Alcott already owned Brooke House, and he would not necessarily have inherited anything more from her, American property laws being what they were. Unless he knew that she had made him her legal heir, he could not have relied on gaining any of her property upon her death. That would seem to be the case for all of her potential heirs… including her son.

The others may have been preoccupied with similarly grim thoughts, for silence had fallen. Then Mr. Keith cleared his throat, with such suddenness that Arabel gave a little start. “We may not be considering all the possibilities,” he said. “The intended victim may not have been your mother, Mr. Brooke. It may have been the second Mrs. Lammle, who is also fair haired and who, after all, found it in her bedclothes.”

The three of them turned as one to look at me. A hollow formed in my stomach at the idea of this gruesome little figure being meant to work magical destruction on me. But it was hard to imagine anyone feeling enough malice toward me to go to the trouble of making and hiding the poppet. Narcissa Holm might have done it, but she was an ocean away. Roderick Brooke was too direct and open in his contempt for me to resort to conniving means such as this, and he had not arrived at Brooke House until after I had discovered the thing. I could not imagine a reason for the Tullys to have planted it before my arrival.

“Why would anyone do this to hurt me?” I asked. “Who would benefit from my death?”

“Mrs. Dove,” said a voice.

Naturally this was not an answer to my question. In the startled fraction of a second that it took for us all to locate the source of the words, I suspect we all realized that. Nevertheless, it was a strange enough coincidence to jar me, and I did not immediately grasp the significance of Mrs. Vise and Mrs. Dove standing in the doorway to the great hall.

But of course, I chided myself. The housekeeper had merely been announcing the arrival of Mrs. Dove, who had evidently decided to call on us.

“How somber you all look,” was her greeting. “I hope that I may bring a bit of cheer with me.”

We all rose to go through the ritual greetings. Today she was wearing a half mourning dress of soft lavender silk, simply trimmed but expertly fitted to show off her figure. Her hair, in that odd color between ash and fawn, was again combed sleekly back and arranged in a heavy chignon at the base of her neck. Everything about her appearance spoke of modesty and gentle femininity except for her strangely flat, opaque green eyes. Against my will I found myself contrasting them with Roderick Brooke’s fathomless, lucent eyes. His revealed the soul beneath, but hers seemed to hide it.

“What is this funny little doll?” she asked after we had all greeted her.

“Have you never seen it before?” I asked. “It was in Margaret Lammle’s room.”

“No, I can’t say that I have.”

“We have been considering that it may be a poppet of the type used in witchcraft. Perhaps that is something you can tell us about, since Mr. Keith tells me you have an ancestress who was accused of being a witch.”

It was not tactfully put, but she merely smiled. “The women in my family have always been known for their charm,” she said. “An almost supernatural ability to have their own way. Some call it witchcraft, but I leave that question to more scholarly minds than my own.” She turned to the Keiths. “You are coming to my musicale, are you not? Reverend, you are exempt from the requirement to perform, but I hope your charming sister will favor us with a selection.” Mrs. Dove gave her no time to reply before turning back to me. “My dear, I took the liberty of bringing you a new gown to wear for the occasion. Since you’ll be making your social debut, it’s only right that you should leave off your full mourning.”

“Won’t everyone think it’s a bit soon for me to stop wearing black?” I asked doubtfully.

“Let me make certain I understand you correctly,” Mr. Brooke drawled, crossing his arms over his chest and regarding me with a maddeningly superior smile. “You’re prepared to flout convention by living with a man to whom you aren’t married, but you’re worried that people may gossip about the color of your dress?”

I glared at him, but Mrs. Dove smiled. “An excellent point, Roderick, if bluntly expressed. Do at least take a look at the dress to see if it suits you, Mrs. Lammle. I confess I had been looking forward to giving you a treat.” She beckoned to someone behind me, and Bertha brought in a large box and placed it on the divan where I had been sitting with Arabel. Mrs. Dove raised the lid and lifted a covering of tissue paper to reveal the gleam of silver-gray silk tussah.

“How lovely,” Arabel exclaimed. “And how kind of you, Mrs. Dove. Sybil, that color will look so elegant on you.”

“It is beautiful,” I said grudgingly. Perhaps I had misjudged the woman. Had she truly wanted to assert her status as the most desirable female in her circle, she would have given me something ugly or unflattering. Yet when I reached down and lifted the bodice from the box, it was beautifully made and the apex of fashion, with its cartridge-pleated white grosgrain trim and deep square neckline filled in with a dickey to make it suitable for day wear. “Thank you, Mrs. Dove,” I said, feeling like a schoolchild dutifully thanking her elders.

“You’re most welcome.” Her face was as seraphic as ever; she was not at all disappointed that I liked her gift. I wondered if I had been mad or wicked to imagine that she wished me ill.

But all my doubts vanished the instant I saw the sheet music in the box beneath the bodice. An incredulous laugh escaped me when I looked at the title. “The Queen of the Night aria from The Magic Flute? You must have brought the wrong music, Mrs. Dove. You said you were bringing me something simple.”

Her expression was all gentle concern. “It is a bit ambitious, I grant you, but I thought you would be so charming singing it, and I’ve already told all of our neighbors that is what you’ll be performing. They are so looking forward to your performance.” With a gentle sigh she added, “I suppose if you don’t mind disappointing everybody I might be able to find something else, but…”

“Do try it before you decide against it,” Arabel urged me.

My self-doubt had vanished. The woman had given me one of the most notoriously difficult arias ever composed, expecting me to make a mess of it, which proved that my distrust of her had been justified. “Oh, I’ve nothing against this song,” I said airily. “I sang it about a year ago in a benefit performance. I quite enjoyed the challenge, in fact. A fortnight should give me plenty of time to get reacquainted with it.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Dove, her voice flat. All the animation had left her face, I observed with satisfaction. “I hadn’t realized you’d sung it before. I’m sure you’d rather have something new. I’ll find something else—”

“Absolutely not! Don’t go to the trouble. I shall enjoy revisiting it. There’s a kind of comfort in returning to songs one knows, isn’t there, like slipping on a pair of boots that have shaped themselves to one’s feet.” I was overstating my degree of comfort with the aria, and I knew I would have to practice a great deal to do a respectable job, but I took pleasure in putting a spoke in Mrs. Dove’s wheel. It was clear that the conniving woman meant to humiliate me in public by requiring me to perform such a difficult piece, and I was more than a little smug that she would be denied the pleasure of watching me fall on my face at her musicale.

But Mr. Brooke gave an exaggerated groan and buried his head in his hands. “Have pity on me, Mrs. Dove. Think of what you are condemning me to! Imagine the torment I shall have to endure, listening to her practice that for two weeks.”

“All the more reason for me to sing it,” I said brightly. “My rehearsals may drive you out of the house, and then Mr. Keith will not have to worry for our souls any longer. Perhaps he and Mrs. Dove are in league to break up our cozy home.”

Mrs. Dove dropped her lashes over her eyes as if modesty prevented her from looking upon us unrepentant sinners. “I confess I would be easier in my mind if the two of you were to work out some other arrangement—something that did not leave you open to malicious gossip and speculation.”

“Perhaps you can persuade Mrs. Lammle to see reason, then,” Mr. Brooke said, brightening. “In fact, I think Mr. Keith should join me in a cigar while you ladies are discussing the matter. Do not be merciful, Mrs. Dove. Speak home truths. Force my stepmother to turn her eyes into her very soul, where she will see such black and grainèd spots as will not leave their tinct.”

“For a man who professes to despise actors,” I told him, “you have a suspicious familiarity with Shakespeare. I wonder, do you secretly practice declaiming verse into your mirror?”

“Sybil,” Arabel pleaded. “Leave off baiting Mr. Brooke, and try on your new dress.”

I was baiting him? The charge was unjust, but I did not want to demean myself by arguing in front of the composed Mrs. Dove. Moreover, I recollected with a start, this might be a murderer I was addressing so familiarly. True, at this moment he did not seem to be in a murderous mood, but it behooved me not to antagonize him until I knew more of the story.

“I would love to see how it fits,” Mrs. Dove said now, bringing my mind back to the mundane matter at hand. “It’s best we find out whether it will need to be altered.”

“That is a good idea,” I admitted. “I’ll run up to my room and try it now.”

“Perfect,” Mrs. Dove declared. “We’ll join you. It is always better to have another pair of eyes when trying on a gown.”

“Will it not be too painful for you?” I asked. “I am in the late Mrs. Lammle’s room.”

If anything, that sharpened her interest. “It’s kind of you to be concerned, but I shall be fine.”

“Very well,” I said, managing not to sigh. I led the way to the stairs, with Mrs. Dove at my side and Arabel close behind. At the end of the procession came Bertha, carrying the dress in its box. The two men followed us out of the parlor but then proceeded toward the study, so they did not witness what happened.

As the four of us ascended the stairs, Mrs. Dove in her eagerness almost outpaced me. “It will be a bittersweet pleasure to look again on the room where my dear friend died,” she told me. “So many happy hours we spent there before Margaret’s illness, laughing and sharing secrets like schoolgirls. I miss her so. What a shame it is you never knew her.”

Again I felt a pang of self-reproach. If Margaret Lammle had held this woman dear, she must have some good qualities. After all, the dress was an extremely generous gift. In an impulse born of guilt as much as charity, I asked, “Is there anything of hers that you would like as a keepsake? Naturally I would have to ask Mr. Brooke before giving away any of his mother’s belongings, but I’m certain he’d be happy for you to have a memento.”

“How kind! I was afraid to ask, but I can see now I should not have been.” Pleasure brought a flush of color to her ivory features that was very flattering. “In fact, I should love to have her favorite red bed jacket. It would be such a lovely reminder of Margaret.”

“Of course,” I said automatically, but once again I found myself uncertain how to interpret her. She had been so quick to claim something for herself—but it was nothing more than a bed jacket. Try as I might, I could think of no ulterior motive for wanting such a practical and unremarkable item. “I haven’t seen anything like that, but then I haven’t come upon any of Mrs. Lammle’s clothes. The servants must have packed them up.”

“It was a gift from me, you see,” she explained. “It meant so much to me that she continued to wear it right until… well, if you could find it, I should be so grateful.”

I nodded, but I was wary all the same. The more intent she became upon the thing, the more suspicious I was. It probably said something very bad about my character, I reflected, and then we reached the landing in front of the open door to my room.

It happened with great suddenness. Mrs. Dove was in the lead, slightly ahead of me, in her mysterious urgency, so it was she who was closest to the threshold when the door of my room slammed in her face.

The noise was astonishing. It resonated through the house like the blast of a cannon, and I was not surprised when I heard Mr. Brooke call from downstairs, “What happened? Is anyone hurt?”

“No,” I called back, although my heart was galloping. I turned toward the stair so that he could hear me better. “We are fine, only—”

The words stuck in my throat. On the landing at the head of the stairs, in the way we had come just moments before, sat the poppet.

Bertha gasped. Arabel gave a little squeak. And Mrs. Dove’s eyes widened momentarily.

I knew the thing had not been animated with life, that it had not climbed the stairs in our wake, unseen. But its stuffed cloth body, of such homely materials, now had a sinister quality. The thing was positioned as if it were sitting up, with the head flopped down, the yarn hair spilled down its front. Suddenly I could picture the doll raising its head and opening its closed eyes, and I had an urge to scream that I could barely fight down.

“It is a sign,” someone whispered. When I dragged my gaze away from the grotesque figure on the landing, I saw that it was Arabel. Her hands were pressed to her heart. “The house has a connection to the world beyond the veil. Oh, Sybil”—and she turned to me with shining eyes—“let us have a séance here, I beg you. I just know my Phineas would finally be able to reach me!”

“Séances are frauds, my dear,” said Mrs. Dove with surprising gentleness. “All so-called mediums are just charlatans.” Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully as she stared at the poppet. I wished I knew what she was thinking. She did not look frightened, but she was not easy in her mind, either. She looked… intent.

“Some of them must be genuine,” Arabel insisted. “And with Brooke House so eager to speak to us, surely we can find someone who will convey its message! Sybil, won’t you let us try?”

My first instinct had been to say, as had Mrs. Dove, that they were nothing more than acts of trickery. But if we could create an environment truly welcoming to spirit contact, it might be a way to identify the restless spirit at Brooke House—or spirits, if more than one—and determine what they wanted. It might even be possible to contact Arabel’s sweetheart… or to take a hand and give her a message, even if it was a false one, that might impel her to leave off her mourning and resume living. “I have no objection,” I said.

At this point Bertha fainted.

Fortunately, by now the men were already on their way up the stairs to determine the source of the disturbance, and Roderick Brooke was just in time to catch her. He laid her gently on the floor and took one of her wrists in his hand. “She should come around shortly,” he said. “Now, what exactly is happening? What was that noise?”

I would have liked to know how Mrs. Dove would describe what had taken place, but Arabel rushed in. “The door of Sybil’s room slammed shut of its own accord just as we reached it! And then the poppet appeared on the landing, when we left it downstairs. Some spirit is trying to communicate with us!”

“Are you certain it wasn’t one of the servants who shut the door?” Roderick Brooke rose from Bertha’s side and tried the knob, but it would not turn. Either the door was locked or the mysterious force was barring us from entering. He pounded on the door, calling, “Who’s in there? Mrs. Tully?”

There was no response from inside the room, but from the floor below we heard a “Sir?” The housekeepers must have been drawn by the commotion, for Mrs. Vise had appeared in the hall, and Mrs. Tully now joined her. “Do you need something?” Mrs. Vise called.

“Where is Tully?”

“In the kitchen,” his wife said. “I just left him. Is something wrong?”

He gave the closed door a considering look. “I don’t know,” he said. “You may go, both of you. Sorry to have summoned you for nothing.”

“You see, Mr. Brooke?” Arabel’s face was so full of hope that it almost hurt to look at her, so vulnerable she seemed. “There is no natural explanation.”

“It might have been the wind,” her brother pointed out.

“The wind would not have locked the door,” Roderick Brooke said grudgingly, “unless it blew the door shut in such a way as to jar the key, which would take some doing. The poppet is more easily explained. It may have fallen from the table onto the train of one of the ladies’ dresses and been dragged upstairs.”

“Only Mrs. Dove is wearing a gown with a train,” I pointed out. “And Arabel was behind her. She would have seen if the thing had snagged on Mrs. Dove’s skirt.”

His expression showed that he was still far from convinced, but Arabel was not discouraged. “If you let us conduct a séance here you will be performing a tremendous act of kindness,” she pleaded. “I shall not be able to rest until I am able to learn whether Brooke House can open a door between me and my Phineas.”

“Arabel, I cannot condone it,” said her brother before Mr. Brooke could speak. His voice was firm but not unkind. “I grieve for your unhappiness, but to try to communicate with the souls of the dead in this way is terribly wrong. It is tampering with things that should be left to God.”

The face she turned to him was so bereft, so uncomprehending that it might have been a child’s. “John, please don’t try to stop me. You know what this means to me.”

He sighed but then reached out to take her hand. “I want what is best for you, Arabel, but I don’t think this will bring you peace. Mr. Brooke, you agree, don’t you, that this is a terrible scheme?”

Roderick Brooke’s eyes were impossible to read. “I don’t see the harm in it,” he said slowly, “and it could be diverting. If you would all like to come over for dinner the day after Mrs. Dove’s musicale, afterward we can do a bit of table-tapping in the study.”

Arabel was as radiant as a bride. “Thank you, Mr. Brooke. And Mrs. Dove, you must be the medium.”

“Pardon me?” For once she was at a loss, perhaps startled out of her own thoughts. It was curious that she had been so silent.

“You are the most sensitive person I know,” Arabel explained, “and it was not until you joined us today that the supernatural energy became active.”

That wasn’t true, for the poppet had moved before that. But I saw no harm in letting Arabel think that Mrs. Dove had brought the house’s entity into the open.

Mrs. Dove’s eyes took on a considering look. “It does sound fascinating,” she admitted.

“Please say yes. I shall be eternally grateful.”

Arabel’s blue eyes were wide with entreaty, and finally Mrs. Dove capitulated. “Very well, I’ll be your medium. Who knows who we might make contact with? Perhaps even the Mahicans who once lived on this land. We could learn their lost history.”

Mr. Keith’s smile was wry. “And would not be able to understand a word of it.”

“Come now, reverend. That’s the voice of skepticism.” Mr. Brooke, oddly, was starting to look energized by the idea too. “With as sensitive a lady as Mrs. Dove at the helm, who knows what interesting things may emerge? We may even learn the location of privateer gold. Now, however, I think we need to get Bertha some place better than the floor for her to rest. If you’ll assist me…”

“I can walk, sir,” came the voice of the maid. Unnoticed, she had recovered her senses and sat up, and I wondered how much of our conversation she had heard.

Since she was capable of moving under her own power, I sent the others back down to the drawing room and myself escorted Bertha to the kitchen to be looked after by the two housekeepers. It was a welcome opportunity for a few moments of reflection. Why had Roderick Brooke been so accommodating to the idea of a séance? Was he, against all likelihood, acting on my words about keeping an open mind? Or did he see it as a means to some unknown object of his own?

When I had seen that Bertha was being tended to and returned to my guests, I found that the subject of conversation had turned to more prosaic matters. Our guests were now in animated discussion of a young woman of their acquaintance, a Miss Hope Field, who was recently returned from finishing school.

“She is quite a beauty,” Arabel said. “And such charm! She is going to gather many hearts now that she is a young lady. Indeed, I can imagine her becoming the most popular belle in our circle.”

Mrs. Dove’s eyes narrowed, but she said nothing.

“It seems quite likely,” her brother said. “She has already won the admiration of Lamont Stuyvesant, and he had been sitting with Miss Elizabeth Van de Graaff in church for some time now.”

“Miss Van de Graaff is nearly five-and-twenty,” Mrs. Dove pointed out. “Her day has passed. Since she did not secure her hold on her suitor, she should not be surprised to lose him to a younger woman.”

“That’s rather harsh, wouldn’t you say?” Mr. Keith objected. “Just because a woman ages does not mean she has lost her worth.”

“Indeed,” I said, thinking of Alcott Lammle, “I know there are gentlemen who can see beyond our age.”

Mrs. Dove’s eyes fastened on me, and her hard green gaze was merciless. “You are aware as much as I, Mrs. Lammle, of the cruelty of Nature. She gives us youth for such a brief while, scarcely the space of a breath, so that we have not even begun to use it when it is snatched away from us, and no efforts of ours can bring it back. You have seen, I’ll wager, younger women rise up and take from you what is your birthright. It is a bitter thing to watch women less intelligent, less talented, less beautiful seize what you have simply because they have walked this planet fewer years.”

The truth of this silenced me, as I thought of Narcissa Holm. Mrs. Dove continued unrelentingly. “And they in their turn will be usurped by still younger women. As Miss Field will come to learn, the world will lay all its riches at her feet… up until it ceases to. Youth is the most precious thing we can possess, but it is wrested from our grasp so soon. We are left straining after it, yearning for it, while it flits away remorselessly. And then we have the rest of our life to contemplate what we lost, all that we did not do when we had that most precious of gifts.”

“You are most persuasive, Mrs. Dove,” Arabel said in her soft voice, “but I would venture to say that we women possess other, more valuable, gifts than youth. Compassion, for example, and godliness, and virtue. These things do not vanish with the passing of the years.”

Mrs. Dove’s smile was so gentle that I almost thought I was imagining the contempt in it. “Yes, my dear,” she said, “but they are all far more attractive in the young. All virtues are magnified by youth, just as all vices are softened by it.”

Arabel said hesitantly, “Forgive me, Mrs. Dove, but that is rather cynical.”

Roderick Brooke interrupted. “You misspeak, Miss Keith. Only the old are called cynical. The young, like you and Mrs. Dove, are merely called perceptive.”

Mrs. Dove smiled on him with more warmth than his pleasantry warranted. “You are the one who is perceptive, Roderick, but then men have the happy advantage of retaining their youth long after women are considered old.”

His expression sobered. In a grave, quiet voice unusual for him he said, “I have passed out of what I can call my youth. I have lived more than many other men my age, and it has not been an advantage. I don’t think either youth or age is in itself to be envied or feared, madam. Sometimes a single moment can age a man to the point that he feels he has had enough of life.”

That observation seemed to put a damper on the afternoon, and soon afterward the guests rose to depart. Mrs. Dove was the first to take her leave, and I thought the sickening stream of compliments she and Mr. Brooke exchanged would never end. But I had to credit her with courage: as the first to leave the gathering, she had to realize that she would be the topic of discussion as soon as the door shut behind her.

Or she might have been, but instead the minister took the opportunity offered by her absence to return to the sensitive topic of my soul and Mr. Brooke’s. He was still talking on this subject as he and his sister took their leave.

“Please do consider my words,” he said to me, pausing on the stoop in the very act of putting his hat on. “Arabel would love to have you stay with us at the manse, and there is a degree of danger in your proximity to Mr. Brooke. Do you not see how much the two of you are behaving like a married couple already?”

“But we are always at war,” I protested. “Each of us is so infuriated by the presence of the other. And don’t tell me that is how married couples behave, Mr. Keith, for such a thought is far too jaded for a man of God.”

His reply, however, was made in all seriousness. “Each of you is already the most important person in each other’s world,” he said, “if only because you trust each other less than anyone else.”

His gravity was touching, I admit. Even though I had difficulty in taking my domestic arrangement seriously as a blight on my soul, he was clearly very much concerned. “I’m sorry to contradict you, Mr. Keith,” I said, “but each of us sees the other as merely an obstacle. And I did not postpone marriage until the age of—until my present age without having withstood many offers and proposals, some quite attractive. I am no green girl whose head can be turned by a fine physique and Byronic airs. As soon as the judge determines who the owner of the house is, our domestic arrangement will end, and Mr. Brooke and I will go our separate ways forever.”

The look he gave me was somber. “It may be too late by then, Mrs. Lammle.”

For some reason my thoughts flew to the sinister poppet, the unnerving feeling of the presence in the house that watched and listened and invisibly moved things. “Too late for what?” I exclaimed. Had he intuited that something in the house wished me ill?

But the way his usually candid blue eyes evaded mine told me that I had put the wrong interpretation on his words. He had meant Ruin, the primrose path, the loss of a woman’s most priceless jewel. I had to bite my lip to keep from smiling. So earnest, this young preacher. A perverse instinct took hold of me.

“Mr. Keith,” I said, giving him my most cajoling smile, “it occurs to me that there is a way you can rescue me from the path to perdition.”

“Name it,” he said promptly. Oh, such naïveté! He was dangerously unworldly. Perhaps I had been placed in his life’s path to teach him wisdom.

I gave him the sidelong glance that showed off my eyelashes so nicely. “It is my understanding that American men of the cloth may take wives,” I said.

To his credit, instead of stammering and taking to his heels, he threw back his head and laughed. Now when his eyes met mine they were no longer grave but merry. “Mrs. Lammle, you place a great temptation before me. Unless you can in fact see yourself as a village pastor’s wife, I entreat you not to make yourself quite so alluring.”

“Oh dear, was I being forward? Pray forgive me.” I extended my hand, and with great good humor the young pastor bowed and kissed it. “I shall attempt to restrain my natural vivacity from now on.”

“That may be wise,” he said. “Not all men have my stern self-control.”

“Oh, don’t go as far as suppressing it altogether,” came Mr. Brooke’s voice from behind me. “Watching you make eyes at the good reverend is rather entertaining.”

“I had no thought of entertaining you, Mr. Brooke,” I said coldly. “I do not care a jot whether you are amused or not. Indeed, for all I care you may—”

Arabel gently cleared her throat, bringing me back to myself. “Come to us at any time, dear,” she said. “Even if you simply want a change of scene.”

It was too cold to watch after them until they drove out of sight, so as soon as they had climbed into their sleigh I gave them a final wave and shut the front door behind me. Roderick Brooke was lounging against the newel post, watching me.

“A pleasant afternoon,” he commented. “Mrs. Dove is enchanting company.”

The look I gave him should have made him burst into flame. “She certainly has cast a spell on you,” I said. “With your hatred of deception in females, I am frankly astonished that you can tolerate her presence.”

His eyes went dangerous. “Oh, so you declare her deceptive? What entitles you to judge her?”

“If you want to know what a person is really like, ask someone from whom they have nothing to gain,” I said. “I am not the one she is angling to marry, so she has no need to impress me. She is only civil to me when there is someone else present to observe her. Whereas with you…” I shrugged. “Perhaps I should just let you blunder on in blinders. By the time the honeymoon is over you should start to see the reality.”

I made to pass him and ascend the stairs, but his voice stopped me. “Don’t underestimate me, Mrs. Lammle,” he said softly, in a tone that sent an ominous shiver up the back of my neck. “I’m not to be trifled with. I don’t trust any woman, and you’d be wise to remember that.”

Without looking at him I proceeded up the stairs. My heart thumped at each footfall, because I knew that he watched me every step of the way.

The days that followed put me on edge. Roderick Brooke made himself scarce, either sequestering himself in his room or going for long rides or snowshoe hikes. (Had Mrs. Tully made known to me earlier that there were snowshoes in the house, my first miserable tour of the Brooke House property might not have been nearly as demoralizing.) It seemed quite likely that he was meeting Mrs. Dove during his rides. And that should not have made the least bit of difference to me, except for dismay at seeing any fellow human be deceived by her false sweetness. Why, I would have felt the same pitying compassion toward anyone caught by her wiles, even the detestable Bascombe.

For my part, it was all I could do not to go mad from lack of stimulation. I undertook every activity I could think of. I took more riding lessons from Tully, although to my chagrin my improvement was slow. I explored the house, investigating unused rooms full of draped furniture and attics full of dusty old trunks and crates. I made an attempt at walking in snowshoes, although the process was unwieldy and did not invite further attempts.

I read. I practiced my song. I started to write my memoirs but gave it up after two days because so many of the memories I was recording brought back the pain of all that I had lost. I even tried to spend time with Mrs. Tully and Mrs. Vise, only to find that my presence made them uncomfortable; they were no longer free to talk and gossip as they pleased, and my efforts to help them in their work were clumsy and futile—besides boring me to the point of madness.

In short, to be quite honest, I proved that the country life was not for me… not unless one could winter in a warmer climate or fill the house with lively guests to make the time pass more pleasantly. I longed for the entertainment and variety of the city. And I was simply lonely. I had grown accustomed to having people all around me during my years as an actress, and I found solitude alien and uncomfortable. Even my grudging housemate would have been better company than none at all. After some days of scarcely seeing him, I was forced to acknowledge that even when he behaved obnoxiously he was always a stimulating presence.

To my surprise and pleasure, however, company did materialize at the end of the week. One afternoon while I was sitting in the study, listlessly turning the pages of a volume of Cowper, the sound of an unfamiliar voice caught my attention. I was not expecting visitors, so it was with great interest that I set the book aside and walked quickly to the great hall.

The front door was open wide, and through it I could see a rustic sleigh drawn by two horses. Tully was removing a large leather satchel from it, and Mrs. Tully was escorting inside the man who must have been the passenger. He was elderly, with a silver goatee and pince-nez, and he carried a walking stick, but his step was as elastic as a young man’s. He was a bit shorter than average but very trim, a compact person, and dressed stylishly. His overcoat had a seal collar, and beneath it he wore a gray suit, beautifully tailored.

“I’ll let Mr. Roderick know you have arrived,” Mrs. Tully was saying as she took his coat and high silk hat, when the visitor turned and saw me.

“How do you do,” I said, approaching him with my hand extended. “I am Sybil Lammle.” Even if he was a guest of Roderick Brooke’s, I was so starved for company that my curiosity and interest overcame my caution.

His eyes were a clear brown, bright with humor and intelligence, and strangely ageless in his wrinkled face. They regarded me with pleasure as he took my hand, and he bowed over it with a courtly manner that gave me the idea that he was European. “What a pleasure,” he said, in a voice that was slightly accented. “I had no idea that I would find so beautiful a lady to greet me.”

“Then we are even, for I had no idea a guest was expected. Mr. Brooke does not keep me informed, I am sad to say.”

He had not released my hand, but I was content to let him continue to hold it as he gazed at me admiringly. Admiration was something else I had missed. “Perhaps practical thoughts leave his head when he is with you,” he said with a chuckle. “Indeed, I can tell already that you are having a similar effect on me, for I have not yet introduced myself. I am Dr. Emile Hartmann.”

“Professor!” came a delighted shout from above, and Roderick Brooke came plummeting down the stairs. His handsome face was transformed by a smile. Lately I had only seen him glowering, and the change was startling—and reminded me with a jolt how extremely attractive he could be. What must it be like to be greeted with such affection and eagerness by this man?

This enthusiasm was shocking enough, but the professor then embraced him as if he were a long-lost child. “My boy,” he exclaimed at length, pulling away so he could survey him. “You are looking well. I had my doubts, but the life of the country schoolmaster must be agreeing with you.” Then he glanced at me with what can only be described as a twinkle in his eye. “Natürlich, with such exquisite company, even the quiet country life must be filled with felicity. Sybil…” He snapped his fingers with an exclamation of victory. “Are you not Sybil Ingram, the actress?”

“Why, yes,” I said, delighted. “How did you recognize me?”

“My dear, I saw your Cleopatra three times in Munich.”

“But that was… let me see, that was four years ago.”

He shook his head admiringly. “What man could forget your beauty and the pathos of your performance? Roderick,” he said, turning to him, “I congratulate you on your lovely consort. Such a sensitive actress—what an inspiration to you she must be!”

“I’m afraid Mr. Brooke misled you,” I said, with difficulty conquering my urge to fly across the intervening space and box that man’s ears. “I am not his consort, as you term it.”

The professor gave me an indulgent look. “My dear, I am an old man, and I stopped being shocked long ago by how artists live. The two of you needn’t feel you have to hide your arrangement.”

Mr. Brooke looked no happier than I at this misinterpretation. “That isn’t the case at all,” he protested. “This is my stepmother, professor. She thinks that by taking up residence here she can cheat me out of my inheritance.”

The professor laughed heartily at this. “You are jesting with me, my boy. Why, with the lovely Miss Ingram at your side, I can only imagine what heavenly music you are producing these days. I hope you have taken up your violin once more.”

“I have not.” Mr. Brooke’s jaw was set at its most implacable angle. “In any case, you remember what happened the last time I had feminine inspiration.”

“Did you chop her up and hide her under the floorboards?” I inquired. “It would not greatly surprise me.”

“And I am surprised,” he returned, “that you have reached your present age without having met the same fate.”

The professor looked from one of us to the other. “I confess I don’t understand, then.”

“Mr. Brooke and I are combatants,” I explained. “We are vying for the house, and each of us is here to protect our interests until a judge determines which of us it belongs to. Then the victor will remain, and Mr. Brooke will depart.”

“What a pity.” The professor’s eyes rested on mine for a moment, and I was surprised at the depth of compassion and understanding there. This was a man, it seemed to me, who had seen a great deal during the course of his life, probably every bit as much sorrow as joy. “For two beautiful young people, and both artists, at that, to be adversaries—it seems a great waste.”

“The only thing being wasted is our time, by Mrs. Lammle,” Mr. Brooke said. “Professor, let me show you to your room. I want to hear all about what you’ve been doing since we last met. Have you composed another symphony?”

“Not until you tell me that you have taken up the violin again.” The elderly gentleman bowed over my hand again. “I look forward to seeing you at dinner, my dear. There is so much I wish to talk with you about.”

“I shall be charmed,” I said, all the more warmly because Roderick Brooke was glaring fiercely as if to prohibit me from speaking to the professor. “Until dinner, then.”

Dinner would be a perfect excuse to debut the dress Mrs. Dove had given me. It was probably a good idea to give it a dress rehearsal, as it were, since I still did not entirely trust her gift. If the dress had a stain or hole in an embarrassing place—for I would not consider an act of sabotage beneath the woman—it was better to find out now than when among the larger company at the musicale.

The dress was attractive, I had to admit, and it even fitted me well. Was my figure so similar to the giver’s, or had she merely guessed my measurements so accurately? Whatever the answer, I decided as I surveyed myself in the cheval glass, the result would do quite nicely. The cartridge-pleated white grosgrain trim on the overskirt, sleeves, and neck gave it a jaunty appearance, and the light gray color was a relief after the endless black I had worn ever since Alcott’s death. I still missed the bright colors of the dresses Graves had made for me, but this was a sartorial step in the right direction.

Satisfied, I seated myself at my dressing table to brush my hair and style it more formally. I could wear the tortoiseshell combs with mother-of-pearl inlay, which had been shut away with the rest of my jewelry awaiting the end of my mourning period. But by the time I had finished arranging my hair, the collar of the dress was chafing my neck badly. When I drew it away and looked in the mirror, I could see an angry red flush on my skin.

With a sigh, I unfastened the bodice and took it off. My examination of the inside of the collar showed nothing amiss, however. Perhaps it was simply too tight. I would have Bertha or Mrs. Vise remove it and alter the neckline before the musicale. For tonight, alas, it was back to dressing like a crow.

Despite my unflattering garb, however, Professor Hartmann’s face lit up when I joined him and Mr. Brooke in the small parlor before dinner. Both men had dressed for dinner, and I realized from a certain murmur of activity nearby that the meal was being laid in the formal dining room, which would be a new experience. Roderick Brooke must esteem the professor indeed to put on Brooke House’s best face for him.

“Miss Ingram, you are a vision,” Professor Hartmann said warmly. “I have been anticipating with pleasure the prospect of discussing the theater world with you, but I must say that looking on you is every bit as great a pleasure.”

“You are very kind,” I said. His courtly manner, after my housemate’s rudeness, acted on me like rainfall on drought-parched earth. “I had hoped for the chance to speak with you away from Mr. Brooke’s glower, professor. But it seems that he has preceded me.”

“You shouldn’t have taken so long to dress,” Mr. Brooke told me. Unwillingly I observed how striking his olive complexion was against his white stiff-front shirt and black evening jacket, and how pleasant a contrast there was between his wild cloud of hair and the formality of his suit. “Especially since the result hardly seems to warrant extensive preparations.”

“Roderick, that is most ungallant,” the older man chided. “Do you not observe that Miss Ingram has done something delightful with her hair? It is rather reminiscent of a classical Roman goddess, in fact.”

“How long can you stop with us, professor?” I asked, and my eagerness made him smile.

“Sadly, I am only making a break in a longer journey. I must be off again tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

My voice must have revealed my disappointment, for the professor laughed and patted my hand. “You know how to flatter an old man’s vanity, Miss Ingram, and for that alone my visit has been worthwhile.”

“Speaking of flattery,” Roderick Brooke said, “if you feed Miss Ingram’s vanity any further, professor, she’ll be impossible to live with. Even more so, I should say.”

“I am willing to take that risk,” I said loftily. “It would be most convenient should you decide you cannot live with me.”

The sinister interpretation of these words did not occur to me until I had already spoken them, and immediately I wished I could call them back. Fortunately, Mrs. Vise materialized at my elbow to inform me that dinner was ready, putting a happy end to the conversation. The professor offered me his arm, and Mr. Brooke was left to follow us in to dinner.

Professor Hartmann, too, looked elegant in his evening clothes. The light of the candelabra on the table gleamed on his silver hair, and he held my chair for me with all the panache of a Regency buck. I felt rather as if I had stepped into the world of royalty, for the dining room of Brooke House was opulent. On the walls, oak panels carved in arches rose to shoulder height, above which paper in a damask pattern of red and gold cast a warm grandeur. The long table was clothed in white, and china in an exotic pattern I had never seen before adorned each place. Mrs. Tully had set three places at one end instead of separating me and Mr. Brooke by placing us at the head and foot, respectively. Although the massive chandelier had not been lit, the room was just as magnificent in the more intimate lighting of the candelabra on the table. Even Bertha was unusually dressy, in a black dress and starched white apron and cap. Mr. Brooke must have given Mrs. Tully advance warning, for I doubted she could have produced an elaborate dinner in the time since the professor’s arrival.

“How do the two of you know each other?” I asked, as Bertha served the soup.

It was the professor who answered. “I was Roderick’s tutor and sponsor when he embarked on his first tour of Europe. He was but seventeen, and a revelation. Never had I taught a student so intuitive, with so much natural talent of expression. That first tour made him famous. And from there he only went from strength to strength, until…”

“Until?”

Roderick Brooke said shortly, “It’s a painful memory, because of my own stupidity as much as anything else. The professor saved my life.”

The professor made a dismissive gesture.

“You did, sir, quite literally.” The earnest tone surprised me; for once, Mr. Brooke was not carrying before him the shield of scorn. He added slowly, “If not for you I’d be dead by now—of drink or laudanum or self-contempt.”

This was a new and startling insight into Mr. Brooke’s career, and I did not quite know what to say in response. I didn’t want to touch on a painful area, but I was extraordinarily curious. “Is that why you decided to become a teacher?” I asked. “Because the, ah, excesses of the artistic life were endangering your health?”

His answer, however, was unsatisfying. “The professor found the position for me at Woodlow and arranged everything.”

“I was glad to do it, my boy. I could not bear to see you… well, I shan’t dwell on it. Let us discuss something less somber. Miss Ingram, I am overjoyed at the chance to see you and tell you of my admiration. Roderick, I hope you have had the chance to see this sublime artist perform.”

A wry smile showed that his moment of sincerity had passed, and I was once again confronted with my familiar adversary. “Perform?” he repeated. “Not on stage, no, but I have definitely seen Miss Ingram’s talent for deception.”

“Are all actresses subject to your contempt, or am I the only one?” I asked, genuinely curious.

He raised his wine glass in an ironic toast. “All, madam, but you are eminent among your kind.”

“Come, Roderick,” chided his mentor. “Creative artistry is something to admire in any medium, but especially one that relies on the body itself as its instrument. Miss Ingram is a wonder to behold. I adored your Beatrice, and I only wish I had seen your Duchess of Malfi.”

“That one had a very short run,” I said ruefully. “Audiences seemed to find the play too gruesome and hopeless.”

“A pity. But your Cleopatra! Even with the limitations of Dryden’s verse, you made her come alive. There was that one speech in particular that was so moving—how did it go? ‘The gods have seen my joys…’”

“Oh, yes!” I exclaimed.

“The gods have seen my joys with envious eyes.

I have no friends in heaven; and all the world,

As ’twere the business of mankind to part us,

Is armed against my love: even you yourself

Join with the rest; you, you are armed against me.”

As I spoke the last two lines I realized I was directing them at Roderick. I had not consciously intended to, but as the echoes died away I thought what a shame it was that he and I were, in fact, armed against each other. In our determination not to be friends, were we denying ourselves the opportunity for something that might have been precious, as the professor had said?

I wondered if Roderick could read my thoughts in my eyes, so relentlessly did his gaze hold mine. That hooded, intense stare had never been more compelling… or more opaque. I had no idea what this man was thinking. And I wanted to know.

I did not realize how long the silence had stretched until Professor Hartmann’s voice penetrated my reverie. “Yes, that’s the one,” he said softly. “Such an eloquent and moving appeal from Cleopatra to Antony to stop fighting his love for her. Brava, Miss Ingram.”

That broke the spell. Roderick was the first to look away, reaching for the wine decanter to refill the professor’s glass, then his own. “Brava indeed,” he said tonelessly. “It takes a fine liar to mimic an emotion she has never felt—and may be incapable of feeling.”

“If you mean love,” I said, “you assume a great deal about me.”

He cocked an eyebrow, and his voice was a velvety purr when he said, “Do tell us, Miss Ingram.”

This time I was the one to look away. “My past is my own,” I said. “I won’t parade it before you just to defend myself from your slander.”

“It is not slander to call acting lying. That is fact.”

My temper ignited. The man could call me whatever he wished—and frequently had—but I could not allow him to belittle an entire profession, one whose members numbered among some of the finest and most hard-working artists I had ever known. “Would you call Gulliver’s Travels or Pamela or Oliver Twist lies?” I demanded.

“Of course not, but that’s different; they are stories.”

“That is what theater is—a way of telling stories. It is books and poetry come to life.” My voice softened as I looked back into my past. “When I first saw actors in a play, even though they were just a few ill-dressed players performing at a fair, it transformed everything for me. Watching them, I felt as though I were living lives I would never know in my tiny drab sphere. And acting, actually putting on the mantle of other people’s lives, was even better than being in the audience. In the theater you carry the audience along with you wherever your character goes—to ancient Rome, to a medieval Scottish heath, to the battle of St. Crispin’s Day. You are giving them a taste of adventures, tragedies, romances that they may never live to experience firsthand.”

The professor applauded softly. “Well put, Miss Ingram.”

“But it is that way with music as well, isn’t it?” I added, struck for the first time by this idea. “You make people feel happy and sad and agitated and peaceful in turn. You take them on a journey from one emotion, one set of associations, to another.”

“It’s exactly like that.” Roderick chimed in unexpectedly. “Only where in the theater you have tableaus at the end of scenes, a musical composition is never still. Its meaning comes from remembering all that went before and discovering how it leads to each moment that passes. The present is always building on the past, always in motion toward a conclusion.”

“Yes,” I exclaimed. “Like a story without words.”

In his eagerness he leaned toward me as if he could not get the words out fast enough. “We carry audiences along with us, allowing them to don another soul, live another existence, feel with another’s heart. To feel with an intensity most people will never know in their own day-to-day lives. And they love us for that.”

“You are right—we give them a taste of life at its most concentrated, and they give us their love in return.” For a moment we were in accord, smiling at each other in the delighted astonishment of finding that we felt the same sense of wonder.

The professor’s voice was hushed. “The storytellers among us, whether musicians or poets, actors or singers, are the historians of human hearts. That is why they are revered. The stories we tell each other make us human; they show us who we are.”

His eyes still gazing into mine, Roderick asked softly, “And who are you, Sybil Ingram?”

The question made me self-conscious, and I twisted the stem of my wine glass. “Well, neither Sybil nor Ingram, for a start. I was born Sally Ingersoll, and that is who I was for the first fifteen years of my life. Miserable years they were, too. Not that we were starving or that I was mistreated, only… only there was nothing of beauty or excitement in that life. When I look back, those years are the colors of soot and mud in my mind. I wanted crimson and purple and sapphire blue.”

“I think I am beginning to understand you better,” Roderick said. To my surprise, he did not say it mockingly, more as if he were truly seeing me for the first time. “The stage would naturally appeal to you.”

“What you call deception was, for me, transformation. It was magic.” But recalling those days also brought back in a rush the memories of all I had lost, and my throat closed painfully. I took a sip of wine so that I would have an excuse to look away from my listeners.

“Magic can come at a price,” the professor observed gently. “Did it?”

I nodded. When I trusted my voice, I said, “I did not leave on good terms with my family. When I saw Atherton’s troupe performing and discovered that I could join them, I… I never returned home.”

“Why not?” Roderick’s voice was soft, inviting further confidences.

“I was too frightened that my parents would prevent me from going if they had the chance, so I sent a boy with a note to explain where I was going. For the next two years I wrote to them and sent money when I could, but I never heard a thing in reply. Not until the day I received the parcel.” My hands were fidgeting with my napkin in my lap, and I forced them to be still. “In it were all the letters and all the money I had sent ever since I had left, and a note from my mother saying that anything I sent henceforth would be burnt. My brothers and sisters had been told I was dead.”

I deliberately kept my gaze on the tablecloth, unwilling to look at them, so I did not know from which man came the exclamation of shock or pity—but it threatened to undo what was left of my composure, so I hurried to the end of my story. “I tried to find ways of contacting them even so. I thought perhaps I could even send money anonymously, but they moved house and I was unable to locate them again. I have often thought that I could pass one of my own sisters or brothers on the street and not know them.” But if I went on in this way I would be depressing myself—and them as well. I cleared my throat and made myself speak in a bright voice. “So my fellow actors became my family.”

Professor Hartmann reached over to take my hand. “You have the love of your public now.”

“I did,” I whispered.

“And yet you gave that up.” Roderick’s voice was puzzled, not critical. “Why?”

I tried to make my voice offhand. “It seemed the best course at the time.”

Professor Hartmann was startled. “You mean to give up your art?” he demanded.

“I already have. Now, shall I ring for Bertha to bring in the next course?”

But Roderick would not be fobbed off. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What could possibly make you give up something you are so passionate about? Not simply the chance to marry my stepfather, surely. I can’t imagine him inspiring that much ardor in a woman like you—not even with all of his wealth.”

I thought I heard contempt in his voice, and it stung. “Do you like talking about giving up performing?” I returned.

His glower returned, and he said curtly, “I’ve no wish to discuss it.”

“Then you can understand why that is exactly how I feel.” I chose my next words with care; I was dangerously close to tears, and it would be too humiliating to cry before him. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life to leave the theater, and I’d rather not go into the painful details.”

The professor stepped in to steer the conversation away from me and into a less intimate channel. His recollections of performing for Empress Eugénie and other crowned heads made the rest of our meal pass quickly and delightfully. When at last Bertha served us dessert, a dish that she called cobbler, the professor turned his attention back to me.

“Roderick has told me about the challenging piece you will be singing at this event of Mrs. Dove’s. I should love to hear you sing it, if you would favor us with a performance after our meal.”

“That, as theater folk say, is my cue to depart,” said Roderick, rising and tossing his napkin down. “I have heard quite enough of the Queen of the Night for one fortnight—one lifetime, I might even say.”

The professor gave him a rebuking look. “Your manners have deteriorated sadly since last we met, Roderick.”

He had the grace to look abashed. “I am sorry to be blunt, but it pains me to hear a perfectly serviceable mezzo tortured into coloratura.”

“That is neither chivalrous nor kind,” the older man said gravely. “Anyone would think you did not know how to conduct yourself in a lady’s presence.”

I waited for him to respond that he was not in the presence of a lady, but he refrained. Perhaps his mentor’s reproach had struck home. “Miss Ingram must forgive me for my shortcomings, country-bred boor that I am,” he said instead. “Professor, I hope you will join me later for port in the study.” After making me a brief bow, he exited the room.

The professor turned to me a face in which tact and apprehension were warring. “If you would not mind the observations of an old man past his musical prime,” he said, “perhaps I might endeavor to help you with any difficulties you are having with the Mozart.”

“That would be very kind of you,” I said gratefully. “I want to avoid disgracing myself if possible.” It was probably too much to ask for him to help me sing well enough to gain the respect of Roderick Brooke. But that night I had glimpsed in Roderick the kindred spirit of another creative artist, and I wondered if, despite all that had happened, we had any chance of becoming friends.

Then a recollection came to me that quelled thoughts of friendship before they could fully form. “Professor Hartmann,” I said in a low voice, leaning toward him in case anyone was lurking within earshot, “is it true that he killed a man?”

He regarded me thoughtfully through his pince-nez for a long moment. Then he said, “That is something you should ask Roderick.”

But I didn’t have to. That reply, in that grave voice, could mean only one thing: yes. Roderick Brooke was a killer.

The next morning at breakfast I was glad to have the professor to myself. Since on the previous evening our after-dinner conversation had been limited to discussion of my technique on the aria, this was my last chance to learn more about the professor—and about his knowledge of Roderick Brooke. As we shared a companionable meal, I peppered him with questions.

He answered readily when my queries were about him. He was traveling to Vienna after a stay in Philadelphia to teach a promising young pianist, and, sadly for me, he did not know when he would pass this way again. He was widowed, and his only children had been his students, so he had no particular place to call home; rather, he traveled where his heart and his work took him.

“It sounds wonderful,” I said wistfully.

“But what is preventing you from doing the same?” he asked genially, stirring more sugar into his coffee.

“I lack connections,” I said with deliberate vagueness. “Professor…”

He chuckled. “Now you are going to ask me about Roderick.”

“Well—yes.”

With an exaggerated sigh, he helped himself to more toast. “A man has truly outlived his usefulness when a beautiful woman gets him alone merely to discuss another man.”

“Now, you know that isn’t so. But since this is my only chance to learn about him from someone who knows him so intimately… what is his story?”

“You must ask him that.”

“He won’t tell me, though.”

He smiled. “My dear Miss Ingram, how hard have you tried? You possess a very persuasive way when you choose to exert it.”

I could well imagine how Roderick Brooke would react if I were to try to charm him into disclosing his past. Such scorn he would heap upon me! I had no desire to subject myself to that. “He distrusts me too much,” I said, pouring the professor more coffee. “He does not see me as a confidante.”

“However he sees you, it is clear that your presence has done him good. He is so much more alive than when I saw him last. It is as if he has finally regained his will to live.”

I deserved no credit for that, only shame, since it was my designs on his home that had energized Roderick so. “Having an enemy can certainly infuse one’s life with new purpose,” I said.

“An enemy? Is that what you believe you are to him?”

There was no point in answering that. It was quite impossible that I could be anything else. One day the judge would make his ruling, and Roderick Brooke and I would part ways forever. I winced away from the question of what I would do if I were the loser. But it was almost equally painful to imagine Roderick cast out of his own home. If he had not despised me so much, it might have been possible to make some arrangement to apportion some of the property to him. But the two of us as co-heirs was a prospect filled with so much antagonism that I knew it could not be.

Into the silence came the sound of the professor clearing his throat. “This much I can tell you,” he said. “Roderick suffered a great blow. To his trust as well as his heart. You know, Miss Ingram, I sometimes wonder at the ways of destiny. To see catastrophe end the most promising career I have ever witnessed…”

“I remember reading that he was extraordinarily talented. A phenomenon.”

“He was that. To hear him play was to be present when a window was thrown open to the world of the gods. When I think of that gift taken away from him, from the world, and by—” He broke off, shaking his head.

“I wish I had heard him play in those days,” I said.

“I wish you had as well, my dear.” For a moment he was lost in thought. Then he continued, “But fate was not done with him even then. It used him as an instrument of destruction, and it stripped away all that remained of what was dear to him. It is not surprising if he is reluctant to open up to you, my dear. It would be the same with any woman.”

“You speak as if I wanted to marry him,” I said, bridling at the sympathy in his voice. “Mrs. Dove is the one attempting to entrap him, not I.”

“Ah yes, he mentioned this Mrs. Dove.” He drained the rest of his coffee and placed the cup precisely back in its saucer. “Her gentle manner reminds him of his mother, I suspect.”

“You knew Margaret Lammle? I should love to know more about her.”

“You would have liked her, I think. A talented artist, but without temperament. There was a calmness about her that bespoke intelligence coupled with patience—an unusual combination, in my experience. I was shocked to learn of her death.” He removed his pince-nez and polished it with his handkerchief. “I had hoped to see her again, but it is not to be… not in this world, at least.”

“I wonder,” I said. “Professor, have you felt her presence still here in the house? Or another one?”

That won me a sharp look. “What do you mean?”

Perhaps he would think me a fool, but since I might never see the man again after today, I was willing to take the chance. “Brooke House is haunted,” I informed him. “I have seen and felt things that can have no other explanation. Mr. Brooke refuses to believe it, which is particularly sad because he might find comfort if he let himself accept it.”

The professor stroked his beard as he considered this. “Do you feel that you or he is in danger from the visitant?”

“No, I don’t,” I said without hesitation. As unnerving as the slamming door and wandering poppet had been at the time, upon reflection I had decided that they, too, were simply attempts to communicate. “But it is unsettling all the same. I wish I could understand what the house is trying to tell us.”

“Why don’t you tell me what you have observed, and I shall tell you if any solutions occur to me. If not today, then I can write to you.”

I was happy to have someone to confide in who did not seem to be blinkered by prejudice, and I related everything I could remember as thoroughly as I could. I was just concluding when brisk footsteps in the corridor announced Roderick’s approach. I could have beaten my fists against the table in frustration at this poor timing.

“Good morning, professor,” he said. “If you are truly determined to depart, Tully will bring the cutter around to take you into town. Oh, Miss Ingram. Good morning. Perhaps you can persuade the professor to stay another day.”

“Yes, please stay,” I said. “It would be wonderful to have a longer visit.”

Professor Hartmann smiled. “If anyone could persuade me to change my plans, it would be the two of you. Alas, it is impossible. Another time, perhaps.”

“But there won’t be another time,” I said. “At least, not like this.” Not with all three of us, I meant. I had risen from the table, but the professor caught both my hands in his.

“No, my dear, I shall not ask you to see me out. The day is too cold for you to be standing about saying lengthy goodbyes. Let us just say auf Wiedersehen.” He leaned close and whispered in my ear, “I shall think on what you have told me. Be of good courage.” Then he kissed me on both cheeks and smiled at me before releasing my hands.

Forlorn, I sank back into my chair as he and Roderick Brooke departed, discussing train schedules and steam ships. The professor’s presence had given me my most pleasant evening to date at Brooke House, and I wondered if Mr. Brooke and I would now revert to our previous state of armed wariness with the departure of our mediator.

As the hour of the evening meal approached, I was in the small parlor going over my aria with the aid of an occasional note on the pianoforte to help me find my place. When the door opened behind me, I turned, expecting Bertha with my meal, only to find her bearing a much larger array of dishes on a tray, followed by Mrs. Tully and Roderick Brooke.

“I know you won’t mind sharing this room, missus,” said Mrs. Tully as she transferred the tray’s contents to the table. “’Tis so much easier for my old bones not to have to carry supper upstairs for Mr. Roderick.”

“I’m sure Bertha wouldn’t have minded taking up a tray,” I said, puzzled.

“It’s my ankle,” said Bertha. “I turned it.”

How odd. I had not noticed her limping when she entered; but then, my mind had been on my aria.

“It seems we are to be rearranged to suit our staff,” said Roderick, but he did not sound greatly put out. “Well, it won’t hurt me to leave my room occasionally. I hope you don’t mind my intruding on your solitude for the space of the meal.”

“It’s quite all right,” I said, wondering if his company would be an agreeable addition to my evening or not.

To my surprise, he held my chair for me as I seated myself at the table. Such gestures of courtesy were usually absent from his dealings with me. What was the man up to? It was tempting to ask him outright if this was part of a new scheme to get rid of me. But if he was truly feeling more amiable to me after the last evening’s brief accord, I didn’t want to spoil it. Perhaps the professor had said something to him in private to improve his disposition.

There was scarcely room enough at the small table for both our place settings, and almost at once our hands collided as I reached for my glass at the same time that he reached for his fork. We begged each other’s pardon simultaneously.

“Perhaps we had better agree,” he said, and I was surprised at how amiable his tone was, “that we shall be getting in each other’s way a great deal, and neither of us means offense by it.”

“Yet we have been getting in each other’s way ever since you arrived, and you have always been ready to take offense before,” I said thoughtlessly.

His expression went remote, and inwardly I berated myself. If he was in a conciliatory mood, I should at least meet him halfway—especially considering what the professor had told me. How could I expect consideration from Roderick Brooke if I showed him none? It was up to me to extend an olive branch, and after a moment’s thought one occurred to me.

“I have been thinking about what you asked last night,” I said. “And if you want to know my story, I’ll tell you, even though it will be difficult.”

“Your story?” His tone was still wary, but there was interest there as well.

I said with difficulty, “I did love a man once.”

His raised eyebrow was a challenge. “Yet you plumed yourself on your virtue when we first met. Are you telling me now that you are soiled goods?” I could not tell from his tone whether he was using that revolting expression ironically. I hoped so, or else I might have to correct his notions of purity with a glassful of wine thrown in his face.

“No, that is not what I mean. One can feel a passionate attachment without acting on it. At least, women can—I don’t know if men are capable of that restraint.” My voice had sharpened against my intention, and he held up his hands to appease me.

“I am duly chastened, and I beg your pardon for maligning your virtue. Please continue.”

I gathered my thoughts. I had never told this story before, and it was going to make me feel exposed. But that was the purpose, was it not—to show him that he was safe to open himself up the same way? “I was still new to the theater,” I said slowly, “just fifteen years old. Still dazzled by everything, still… well… naive. And this man, the first juvenile lead, he was extraordinary, or so it seemed to me then. Handsome, dashing, clever, and so expressive and sensitive on stage. I worshipped him. It was obvious to everyone how infatuated I was with him, but at the time I did not care. I even… this is very embarrassing to recall.” He did not speak up to reassure me, but somehow that showed more consideration than if he had urged me on. “I even pestered Atherton—the manager—to cast us as Romeo and Juliet,” I confessed. “I could not imagine anything more gloriously romantic than that. Thank heaven, he refused. He said I was not yet ready, and he was right. It was one of the older actresses who finally took me aside and told me the truth about the object of my adoration.”

“He was a rake?” His voice, I was grateful to note, was respectful.

I nodded. It was so obvious in retrospect, but I had been entirely new to that world. “He evidently made a pastime of collecting the hearts of all the pretty new actresses, and frequently more than their hearts, if you understand.”

“What did you do?”

My hands moved in a little futile gesture. Remembering that time, I felt a wave of compassion for the young girl who had suffered so. I wanted to step back in time and tell her that she did not have to break her heart for that worthless man. “I went to him and asked him if it was true,” I said. “That was the one decent thing he did: he was honest with me then. He told me I meant nothing more to him than a passing affair.

“I don’t know if I can express how much pain I was in. I thought I would die from it—wished I would die from it.” The words were inadequate to convey the sense of betrayal, of uncomprehending shock. “But even if I cried all through the night, every morning I forced a smile onto my face and pretended all was well. I practiced in the mirror until I could say his name without a blush or a tear. In fact,” I said, with a faint smile, “I became an actress.”

“An agonizing way to learn one’s art.” His voice was kind, far more so than I would have imagined. “And after that? Did you decide it was safer not to let yourself love again?”

“Very much so. Oh, I enjoyed flirtations, but I never allowed anything to progress past that. Not only because I refused to risk having my heart broken again, but because I had come to cherish my independence. I did not want to be in any man’s power. Actresses are among the few women who may create their own destinies”—to a point, at least—“and I did not intend to squander that.”

“Yet you married my stepfather,” he said. Still his voice held no judgment, only a desire to understand me better. “Tell me truly, why did you leave the theater for him, after so many years of glorious independence? Did you fall in love despite your intentions?” Something in his voice suggested reluctance, as if he was not certain he wanted to hear the answer.

“No.” I could tell him part of the truth, at least. “I shall be thirty years old in a few weeks, Roderick. And ingénues of that age are rare… at least, it is rare when they can draw an audience. I have passed my prime as an actress, and it would be too agonizing to cling to the remaining shreds of my celebrity, watching audiences dwindle more and more with every year that passed. Better to make a clean break. So it seems that after all I never was truly in control of my fate. That was just an illusion.”

“I wonder if any creative artists really are ever in command of their destiny.” His eyes were shadowed as he gazed into space… or rather, I suspected, into the past. “Those of us who feel keenly and deeply enough to excel in our art must also feel our failures and disappointments more powerfully—so much that they can destroy us when they might be shrugged off by those of coarser stuff.”

“You may be right.” I waited, but he did not elaborate, so I gave him the rest of his answer. “In any case, marrying Alcott was a reasoned decision. I liked and admired him, and I believe he liked and admired me. I felt that in him I would find a safe harbor. But instead my life became unmoored when he died and left me no inheritance.”

“You have your freedom again, at least. I should think that would be exciting.”

“Exciting?” I repeated wistfully. “Perhaps if I had more resources at my command. As it is, I can claim little but the few possessions I brought from England. The theater is no longer an option. And that is how I ended up here, trying to stake a claim on the home of your childhood. For what it is worth, I’m sorry.”

A smile just touched his lips. “Does that mean you withdraw your claim?”

“I’m afraid not.”

The smile became a chuckle. This was a side I had not yet seen to Roderick Brooke: relaxed, even contented. On any other night, I would have sworn to it, he would have retreated behind a mask of mockery. But somehow tonight our masks had been laid aside. “I appreciate your honesty, at any rate,” he said.

“What was it like growing up here?” I asked. “I should think that for an imaginative boy, living in a medieval castle must have been thrilling.”

“Oh, it was. I tried so many times to put on the suit of armor on the upstairs landing that my father resorted to having it bolted together. And I found endless amusement in creeping through the secret passageway to startle my parents and their guests.”

“A secret passage? Are you in earnest?”

“It isn’t as exciting as it sounds; it merely connects the study and the dining room, and as you know there is a perfectly normal door joining them already. The hidden passage was a charming caprice of my grandfather’s but quite impractical. It is so narrow that by the time I had my first pair of long trousers I could scarcely squeeze into it.”

“Still—what a wonderful memory.” My conscience gave another painful twinge at the idea of separating him from this place.

Fortunately he seemed to be too focused on the past to reproach me. “The most exciting adventure, though, was discovering music, and the violin in particular. It was my father’s old instrument I started with. He was so pleased when I took to it; my mother told me long afterward that he had always longed to be a musician, but his ability fell short.”

How delicious his husky voice was. I rarely had the chance to simply listen to him; usually I had to be on my guard. Now I felt that I could nestle into his voice as into a feather bed, feeling an almost tactile softness brushing over me.

But my attention was wandering. I brought it back to the present moment to hear him saying, “So both of them were delighted to see the direction I chose for myself. Even after Father died…”

“When was that?” I asked.

“Just over a year after I began studying with the professor. I don’t like to think how dark that time would have been without his guidance and the violin to sustain me. My mother still wanted a real father for me, though, I suspect. At least, I think that is one of the reasons she married Alcott Lammle some years later. But by then I was thirteen, and that was not an age receptive to a stepparent.”

You were not much more receptive at thirty, I thought but did not say; I did not want to interrupt this unusually open and thoughtful mood. I was learning things tonight about Roderick Brooke that I had never expected to.

“It was a dream come true a few years later to set off on my first tour,” he continued. “It was so successful that from that time I only returned to America for brief visits. Once I reached my majority and no longer needed a guardian, the professor moved on to other students, and in the years that followed I continued touring and gained some celebrity.”

“What a glorious life, doing what you loved best and being acclaimed for it.”

“It was, for quite a long time. But you will be curious as to how things began to go wrong. Perhaps it will not surprise you greatly to know that a woman was at the heart of things.”

He fell silent for a moment, gazing into the fire. The firelight cast his eyes in a lambent glow, making them so transparent that it was almost as if I could read his soul there. “An extraordinary woman,” he said at length. “Or so I thought for a long time. Spirited, ardent, a brilliant singer, a captivating actress. A famous beauty as well. You’ll have read about her—Julia de Lioncourt was the name she used then.”

“Yes, I’ve heard the name.” I tried to recall what I had read about her. Her raven-haired beauty had been lauded, and her remarkably pure coloratura. I could easily picture her inspiring young Rory Brooke. Two Romantic artists, burning bright, each kindling the other’s creative genius to new intensity. But if she had inspired his distrust of actresses, their partnership could not have ended well.

He shifted in his chair, and now the firelight did not reach his eyes. They were hooded, unreadable. “We became lovers almost at once,” he said. “I loved her beyond all reason.”

At once images flashed into my mind that I tried to push away. I’ve been told I am a devilish fine bedfellow, he had said that first day, and I could well believe it. What must it have been like to be loved by the man Roderick was then—that passionate, eager, heart-stoppingly handsome young genius? How exquisite must it have felt to be kissed and caressed by him, to lie sweetly entangled together… I was glad when he resumed speaking so that I could wrench my mind away from the tantalizing notion.

“As artists we were perfectly matched,” he said. “We traveled together, performing—I playing, she singing—and it felt as if collaboration with her magnified our talents until we attained heights of artistry never known to mortals before.”

“It must have been wonderful,” I said softly. The moments in my career when I had felt that my performance had come within sight of greatness were few and precious. To imagine a proliferation of them, attained in partnership with someone I adored—someone who loved me “beyond reason”—sounded like a foretaste of heaven. Had Julia de Lioncourt understood just how fortunate, how blessed, she had been?

“Oh, you needn’t be envious,” he said, as if reading my thoughts. “It didn’t last. After two years of this felicity I made a grave error: I asked Julia to marry me. And then our story took an unexpected turn.” He rubbed his temples as if his head ached from the burden of his thoughts. “She could not take me as her husband, for that office was already filled.”

“She was married?” I exclaimed.

He nodded. “All the while. And like the hotheaded young fool that I was, I would not rest until I learned where to find her husband. And then I… I called him out.”

“You challenged him? But…”

This time his smile held its former wryness, but his mockery was directed at himself. “Yes, I know the wronged husband is usually the party to propose a duel. But she led me to believe that he stood between us, that he had sullied her honor by refusing to set her free. Later I realized that she had been deceiving him as well. But by that time the poor man was dead.”

A wordless exclamation escaped me, and he raised his eyes to meet mine. There was a depth of pain there that struck me to the heart. “Yes, I killed him,” he said in a quiet, empty voice. “A lucky shot—or unlucky, certainly for him, poor devil. I struck him through the heart, and he died there on the field.”

There was nothing I could say to that. Eventually he added, in the same depleted voice, “He had managed to wound me first, though, and there was a kind of justice in it.”

“Your wrist,” I breathed. “The reason you can no longer play the violin.”

“Yes.” He unfastened his right shirt cuff and unwrapped the black silk bandage beneath. When he extended his arm toward me I saw a round scar on the inside of his wrist, like a tiny sun with a few uneven beams radiating from it. Very gently I touched it with a fingertip, and he did not evade my touch. “I lost Julia as well as my career,” he said softly. “It was only fitting. I had taken a human life, and as much as I told myself that it was a matter of honor, I knew in my heart it was jealousy. It tormented me that another man had had her, and still had a greater right to her than I did. But when she learned I could no longer play, she left me and took up with someone who better served her ambitions.”

I waited in silence, for as terrible as this was, I could tell that it was not an end to the story.

“The next year or so is indistinct. I thought life held nothing more for me, nothing but pain, and I tried to block it out with drink and laudanum. I would have ended up dead if Professor Hartmann had not come in search of me. I truly owe him my life—although at the time I did not consider it a kindness in him to insist on my coming back to the world of the living. He fed me, weaned me off the substances that had given me the oblivion I craved, and brought news that completed my transformation.” He paused, it seemed, to gather his strength. “The news that my mother had died. And without a word or sign from me.”

“Roderick, I am so sorry.” My hand closed around his, and his fingers pressed mine in response.

“I had not thought it possible to despise myself more, but that news achieved it. While she had been suffering, as her very life had been ebbing day by day, I had been lying insensible in a rented room above a Paris tavern. Professor Hartmann persuaded me that my mother would have been brokenhearted had I continued in my debauch and squandered my musical gifts. But what could I do, now that the violin, my other half, was denied me? I felt like a centaur who had been cut in two, lacking the rest of my being. But it seemed I could play the piano—after a fashion. Not well, but enough to teach music at a school whose students needed only the most basic instruction. So the professor found me the position at Woodlow. And now you know the whole of it.”

Again I let my fingertip touch the scar on his wrist. “And you are certain you cannot play the violin now? Even now that you have healed?”

For a long moment I thought he would not answer. The only sound was the crackling of the fire. “I am afraid to try,” he said at last. “It was my penance to stop playing, you see. Even if I hadn’t been injured, I felt like I owed it somehow. To Julia’s husband, to my mother—I wasn’t even certain whom I was paying the debt to.”

No wonder the violin music on his first night back at Brooke House had had such a violent effect on him. It must have seemed to be mocking him most cruelly. But as I thought back to that gentle melody and to the sheet music that had been placed for him to see on the pianoforte, I wondered all the more if his mother’s spirit had been trying to speak to him in the language that had once been dearest to him—not merely to let him know that he was welcome but to say that she forgave him, that she still loved him. I did not know if I could find a way of expressing this to him that he would accept, however.

Unaware of my thoughts, he took up the thread of his story. His voice was exhausted now. “Even now that I am less confused, I don’t know that I’m strong enough to make the attempt. The man who played the violin with such passion and intensity is the man who made a fool of himself over a deceitful woman… but, far worse, the man who took another life. And who was not there for a dying woman when she needed him most.”

“You should at least try,” I whispered. “Penance won’t bring them back, but you can still give something to the world that no one else can.”

“Can I? Perhaps my gift died with my love for Julia. Perhaps even if I find that the physical strength is left to me I’ll have lost my skill. I could be just as pallid and mechanical as I am at the piano.” His crooked attempt at a smile almost broke my heart. “You’ve heard me play. You would not have been so polite if I hadn’t been terrible.”

“You must make the attempt, though,” I urged him. “How can you deny yourself the chance to know whether your genius still lives within you? And think of what we were talking of last night. If you still have this power to transport people, to lift them out of their ordinary lives into something splendid and poignant and rare, don’t you want to share that?”

I realized that I was leaning across the small table toward him, my lips parted with emotion, and our hands were clasped. In his eyes I glimpsed a tentative hope, and it spurred me to whisper, “Do try, Roderick. It will make you whole again. Trust me.”

Immediately I saw that I had said the wrong thing. At those ill-chosen words, his eyes suddenly reflected wariness—and then a blank void. As the veil came down over his emotions, he drew his hand out of my grasp.

“How adept you are at winkling a man’s secrets out of him,” he said tonelessly. “The winter evenings will seem longer when you have left my house, Mrs. Lammle.”

With a suddenness that made me start, he pushed back his chair and rose to leave. I caught hold of his arm to detain him.

“Not all women are like her,” I said rapidly, before he could pull away. “She deceived you, but that does not mean every other woman will. I’d like to be a friend to you, if you will only let me.”

His eyes as he looked down at me were questioning. “Can I trust you?” he asked, almost gently. “Can you promise you will never lie to me?”

I opened my mouth to promise—and then closed it again. I could not make that vow, not after what I had agreed to for Atherton’s sake.

He took my silence, correctly, as my answer. Drawing his arm out of my grasp, he left the room.

My hand closed on nothingness. I knew now what he meant about feeling incomplete. When our hands had joined, there was a perfect rightness to it, as if mine had been fashioned with the single purpose of fitting into his. There had been comfort in that touch, even tenderness.

But he was right not to trust me: I had not earned it. I was still the woman determined to steal his inheritance. Besides, what point was there in becoming friends, after all? We would only be parting soon.

I rose from the table to ring for Bertha to clear the table and bank the fire for the night, and my body moved grudgingly, as if I had aged half a century. When I drew the curtain aside to gaze out the window, the moonlit landscape was as bleak and cold as a world that had never known love.

“I don’t know what to do,” I whispered. But I could not tell whether the house was listening to me.

“Bertha!” I called. Too restless to ring for her, I hung over the stair railing and shouted downstairs. “Bertha! I need you.”

“I’m coming, missus.” She started up the stairs, seeming to me in my impatience to be moving particularly slowly. “Goodness, you sound just like Mr. Roderick.”

Perhaps I had picked up the habit of shouting from Roderick Brooke. Or perhaps it was just a convenient vent for my frustration. For the last two days, since our intimate supper in the small parlor, he had been polite to me. Actually polite. Gone was our invigorating repartee; now he was distant, quiet, and as courteous as if I had been a stranger.

The upshot was that I had been more of what he would have called a crosspatch than ever. Lonely and restless, I longed for the day of Mrs. Dove’s musicale, for the company of other people, for the stimulation of conversation and music and social intercourse. Now that day had arrived, and I was more nervous than I had dreamed I could be. Not even episodes of stage fright had made me this uncertain of my reception. Would polite society shun me because of my theatrical past—or my unconventional domestic arrangement of the present? Would I be able to get through the aria without making a fool of myself? Since I did not trust Mrs. Dove to champion me as Margaret Lammle had sponsored her, I felt that I was truly on my own, and this was a social arena that was new and daunting. Like Webster’s Duchess, I was going into a wilderness where I would find neither path nor friendly clue to be my guide.

Bertha crested the top of the staircase, and I almost dragged her into my room. “I need you to take my dress downstairs to give it a touch of the iron. I’m sure it’s crumpled from being in that box. Now, if I can just decide which earrings to wear…” What jewelry would show a proper respect for the occasion and company without looking overdone, gaudy, or desperate? Was this a time for amber or seed pearls? I was digging through my jewel case, wishing I had something nicer than semiprecious stones to wear, when I heard Bertha gasp.

Something about that tiny inhalation filled me with foreboding. I turned around very slowly.

Bertha had placed the dress box on the bed and now stood with the lid in her hands, staring down with an ashen face. Setting the lid aside, she dipped her hands into the box. When she raised them they were draped with frayed strands of fabric that hung from her hands like the entrails of some desiccated creature.

“What has happened?” I cried, and darted over to peer inside the box. It was almost impossible to believe. Someone had shredded the dress, taken scissors or a knife or something sharp and cut every bit of it into thin strips. Even the grosgrain trim had been sliced into ribbons.

“It wasn’t me, missus,” Bertha whispered. “All I did was take off the collar, like you said…”

My heart gave a great panicked thump in my chest, and I ran out onto the landing once more. “Mrs. Tully!” I shouted down the stairwell, throwing my voice as if I were onstage before an audience of one thousand. “Mrs. Vise!”

“Good lord, woman, you’ll bring the roof down.” Roderick Brooke appeared at the door to his room as suddenly as a pantomime devil emerging from a trap. With his saturnine looks, all he lacked was the burnt-cork beard and pitchfork. He was in shirt sleeves with no cravat, having evidently been dressing for the musicale. “What are you in such a taking about?”

“Do you know who did this?” I demanded. “It wasn’t you, was it?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Then, as he took me in more fully, he cocked an admiring eyebrow. “Is this what you’ll be wearing? I must say I approve, although you may ruffle a few feathers.”

I stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment before I remembered that I had already taken off my ordinary dress when I had called for Bertha. I was running around in my chemise, corset, and stockings.

“You really are the rudest man imaginable,” I snapped, distracted for a moment from my shock. “You could avert your eyes or return to your room like a gentleman, but instead you choose to stand here leering at me.”

Folding his arms across his chest, he deliberately walked toward me and favored me with another leisurely look. A slow smile came over his face. “My dear Miss Ingram, if you insist on cohabiting with a bachelor, certain things come with the territory. I’m only human, as you yourself have observed, and you are—how shall I put this?—pleasingly shaped. A man would have to be a fool to avert his eyes from such a vision.”

Abruptly all the indignation drained out of me. At any other time I would have bridled at the way his gaze caressed my limbs, but just now I had no will to fight. “It doesn’t matter. Just tell me, please—it wasn’t you who destroyed the dress, was it?”

His brows drew together in perplexity. “What dress? Show me.”

When I gestured to the bed, he swiftly entered my room, with me close behind. When he looked inside the box on the bed his lips pursed in a silent whistle. “This is extraordinary,” he said, all the laughter gone from his voice, as he lifted a fragment of the dress to gauge the damage. “An act of destruction this thorough took quite some time to accomplish.”

“Yes,” I said, and my voice was not entirely steady. “Time and determination. Someone must dislike me very much to have done this.” Someone or something. I had thought that the entity in the house had accepted me, or was at least tolerating me, but it appeared I was mistaken.

Anger flared into Roderick’s face, but it was not directed at me. “Sit down,” he said. “I’ll have Mrs. Tully bring you some tea, and perhaps brandy as well. You’ve had quite a shock. Do you know who could have done this?”

“Very nearly anyone, I suppose. I hadn’t looked inside the box from the day Professor Hartmann visited. I asked Bertha to alter it.” The maid was standing by the wardrobe, looking as sick and shaken as I felt, and I asked, “Bertha, when did you last see it whole?”

“A week or more ago, missus,” she said faintly. “May I go, please?”

I nodded my dismissal, and Roderick’s eyes followed her thoughtfully as she scurried from the room. “You’re certain it wasn’t her?” he asked once she was out of earshot.

“She was as shocked as I was. And there was no reason for her to do such a thing. I can’t think of any reason that Mrs. Tully or Mrs. Vise would do something so spiteful either.”

“And so furtive,” he added thoughtfully. “Either one of them would have confronted you instead of doing something like this behind your back.”

I felt the same. If they had wanted me to leave Brooke House, I would have known it from their demeanor long since. “It isn’t such a great tragedy, not really,” I said. “It’s not as if I don’t have other dresses to wear.” The words were brave enough, although the prospect of appearing in full mourning at my first social event, on top of everything else, further depressed me.

“None of your other things have been damaged, then?”

“I don’t think so. I haven’t looked.”

Swiftly he went to the wardrobe and pulled the door open. My black gowns hung seemingly undisturbed, but he began to hold each one up in turn for inspection. All were intact. When he moved on to other garments and held one of my filmiest lace-trimmed chemises up to the light, I said hastily, “I think you can stop now. It seems clear that only this dress was the target. It’s the only thing suitable for the musicale.”

He closed the wardrobe door and brought my dressing gown to wrap around me. The touch of his hands on my shoulders was oddly comforting. “You needn’t go if you don’t want to,” he said with unexpected gentleness. “You won’t be missing much. Our stodgiest neighbors bleating their way through some hackneyed tunes, followed by tepid tea and stale finger sandwiches.”

“Of course I’m going! If someone thought they could stop me by ruining my dress, I cannot let them think they won.”

He shook his head, whether in admiration or dismay I could not tell. “You’re a very stubborn woman,” he said.

Even though his tone had not been critical, I countered, “A woman must be stubborn if she is to make anything of herself.”

I expected him to contradict me, but he actually seemed to reflect on the matter for a moment before conceding, “You may have a point at that. Especially in a profession as chancy as the theater, I imagine tenacity in a woman is vital to her survival.”

“That’s very enlightened of you,” I said, and he smiled at the surprise in my voice.

“Whether I wish it or not, I find that knowing you is changing how I think on certain matters.” His pensive tone made me think of the sense of kinship we had experienced during Professor Hartmann’s stay, that fragile but harmonious accord. Perhaps it had not been destroyed forever after all. “I have to say I admire what you have been able to achieve—and without compromising your honor.”

“Thank you,” I said in growing wonder. Incredible though it seemed, I almost believed that he was starting to accept me without judging me. I could even dare to hope that he might understand the unpleasant business with Atherton if I confided in him, and that would be the last barrier to my being completely honest with him. “Roderick—” I began.

“Mrs. Lammle? What is the matter?” The two housekeepers stood in the doorway, eyeing me in surprise and concern. I imagine it did look peculiar for me to be wearing only my underclothes and dressing gown, conversing with Roderick in my bedchamber. Their arrival was not happily timed, but perhaps the conversation I wanted to have would be better saved for another day.

Showing a tact that I had not previously seen, Roderick sent Mrs. Tully to fetch me tea and brandy and withdrew to his own room to leave me in privacy. As Mrs. Vise tsked over the wreckage of the gray dress, I dully considered which of my black ones to wear. I was thoroughly weary of all of them. Having been on the verge of dispensing with full mourning made it somehow unbearable to contemplate going back.

Suddenly a thought popped into my mind. I had a trunk in the box room upstairs that I had not opened since I had arrived in the States, and in it were a few of the wonderful gowns that Graves had made for me. Gowns that were completely inappropriate for a widow whose loss was as recent as mine. Gowns that would probably shock and outrage proper gentry. Gowns that would give me confidence.

“Mrs. Vise,” I said, hopping up with new energy to fetch the key from my bureau, “in the box room you will find a trunk of mine, and in this trunk you will find a magenta taffeta reception gown. Be good enough to fetch it for me, please.”

“Magenta!” she echoed, staring. She said it as she might have said “strychnine” or “stark naked.”

“Yes,” I said firmly. “It is time I brought color back into my life.”

Roderick had been waiting more than a quarter of an hour in the great hall by the time I was ready, or so Mrs. Vise informed me. I could tell that she disapproved of the dress far more than my tardiness, but after I had informed her that I did not care to hear her opinion of my clothing, she was forced to find fault with me in some other way.

It was easy for me to disregard her, however. My spirits were buoyant now. Giving my ensemble a final check in the mirror, I could not resist blowing myself a kiss. I was Sybil Ingram again, even if only for an afternoon.

“We shall be late!” Roderick was shouting, but when I emerged onto the landing his voice stopped abruptly.

I took the stairs at an unhurried pace, trailing gloved fingertips along the banister. The abundant taffeta skirts created a pleasant swishing sound with every movement, and my long pendant earrings swayed. Even though I kept my eyes demurely lowered, a certain charged quality to his silence told me that he was watching me closely.

When I reached the bottom of the staircase I revolved slowly, giving him plenty of opportunity to take in the full effect. The vivid color, I knew, made my complexion glow. The poufed and bustled skirt made my already slender waist appear even smaller, and the deep square neckline—far lower than anything I had worn in weeks—set off certain other of my features to advantage. I wore white kid gloves that extended nearly to my elbows, and on my feet were high-heeled satin slippers instead of practical boots. I had dabbed my favorite perfume behind my ears. There was the tiniest touch of rouge on my cheeks and a whisper of rice powder across my nose.

I felt elegant. I felt powerful. I felt irresistible.

“Well?” I asked him, and smiled. “What do you think?”

That was sheer wickedness on my part, for I had only to look into his eyes to see what he thought. They were brilliant with the intensity of his stare, as if he could devour me with his gaze alone. His lips curved faintly in an echo of my smile.

“Come here,” he said, his voice husky.

Intrigued but wary, I took a slow pace toward him. When he did not move, I ventured another.

He crooked his finger. “Closer.”

Step by deliberate step I moved toward him. He did not stop me until I was so close that I could catch the scent of his bay rum and see the amber flecks in the sea green of his eyes. Without once taking his eyes from me, he slowly drew the fawn scarf from about his neck. It brushed softly against my skin when he wrapped it around my throat and knotted it in front, letting the ends rest over the expanse of skin bared by my bodice.

“We’ve a cold drive ahead of us,” he said. His voice was barely audible, a velvet murmur. “I wouldn’t want you to freeze your… throat.”

So close he was. I wondered if he could hear my heart beating. I certainly could.

“What a surprising person you are, Mr. Brooke,” I said softly.

“How is that, Miss Ingram?”

I rose up on tiptoe and leaned close so I could speak into his ear. “Any other man would be kissing me now,” I whispered. With my face so near his I could feel the heat of his skin.

“Aren’t you relieved?” he said in a normal voice. “To know that I do have some remnants of proper behavior, I mean.”

Surprised, I drew back. With a slight bow, he produced my cloak and held it for me. This was new for him as well. “It seems,” I said, hiding my confusion with an effort, “that you are determined to be unpredictable.”

Amusement warmed his eyes. “It isn’t the domain of females alone, Miss Ingram.”

I had no response to that, so in silence I turned my back so that he could wrap my cloak around my shoulders.

We emerged from the house to find a dazzling day, with the sunlight sparkling on the fallen snow and turning the ice-encased trees to crystal. The air was so pure and cold it almost burned my lungs, but it was bracing to breathe. Roderick helped me into the cutter—really, he was almost unrecognizable today—and drew the lap rug over me before climbing in. Then we were off, skimming over the white lane toward what lay ahead. The breeze of our passing stirred the scarf that lay against my bosom.

“If it will reassure you,” he said after a long silence, “the thought did occur to me.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the noise of our progress.

“What thought?” I asked.

“Kissing you.”

I kept my eyes resolutely on the road before us, but I could tell from his voice that he was smiling. So was I.

“Rogue,” I said mildly.

“Minx,” he said. It was as tender as an endearment.

When we arrived at Mrs. Dove’s estate, I needed every bit of the confidence provided by my magnificent dress. Willowwood was even larger than Brooke House, and its perfectly white stucco exterior made me squint to look at it. The house was a severe classical style that I associated with Regency buildings in England, as far from the excesses of Brooke House as one could imagine. We approached the broad front stair by a straight drive that gave us plenty of time to absorb the house’s dignity and grandeur.

Once inside, I peered around in curiosity. As with the exterior, the interior of Mrs. Dove’s domain was marked by its simplicity. Where Brooke House attempted to recreate the elaborate ornamentation of the Gothic era, Willowwood was all clean lines and light. The floorboards glowed like honey in the sunbeams that streamed through the windows, and the walls were a pale wheat color, hung with a few tasteful paintings.

Roderick and I seemed to be the last to arrive, and everyone I saw was dressed in tastefully subdued or neutral colors. In my magenta gown I was positively gaudy by comparison. When the butler took my cloak, in a burst of cowardice, I kept Roderick’s scarf around my neck instead of removing it and handing it over. None of the ladies were wearing dresses cut as low in front as mine. Everywhere I looked I met staring eyes, raised eyebrows, and pursed lips.

Roderick, I observed in some surprise, was dressed much more elegantly than was usual for him in the daytime, in a handsome maroon coat over a silk waistcoat striped in maroon and royal blue. Perhaps it was finery left over from his career as the toast of Europe. It certainly made an agreeable change from his usual country schoolmaster clothes.

“Mr. Brooke, I believe?” A middle-aged man with the long doleful face of a mournful grandfather clock approached and offered Roderick a handshake. “I’ve not seen you in these parts for years.”

“Mr. Grandison, it has been quite some time. Allow me to present Mrs. Sybil Lammle, my stepfather’s widow.”

When I offered my hand, Mr. Grandison took it as doubtfully as a housewife would handle a week-old halibut. “How do you do,” he said without enthusiasm. “Mr. Brooke, how is it that you find yourself in our part of the country again after so long?”

As Roderick spun a tale about feeling a call to teach, I took the opportunity to examine our surroundings more thoroughly. Unless Mrs. Dove had left the estate in the same condition in which she had purchased it—which I found unlikely—she had carefully arranged the furnishings to provide an effective setting for herself.

For example, most of the paintings, I observed, were landscapes. It seemed that she did not desire painted faces to distract visitors from her own. One portrait was on view, however, and it was given pride of place over the mantel. It appeared to be Mrs. Dove, but unless she was arrayed for a fancy dress party, that could not be the case, for the woman in the painting was dressed in the style of at least thirty years before. Clusters of curls framed her temples, and her pink satin gown had the sloping shoulders, puffed sleeves, and high waist of the 1830s. There was no name plate.

“Is this Mrs. Dove’s mother?” I asked Mr. Grandison, interrupting him in the middle of some bland comment to Roderick about the local fishing.

His smile was patronizing. “I’m surprised you have to ask.”

That was singularly unhelpful, but the portrait had caught Roderick’s attention now. “The likeness is remarkable,” he observed. “So much so that I could almost wonder if this is Mrs. Dove herself, except that it’s impossible for her still to look so young.”

“What a charming compliment, Roderick.” The soft, silvery tones of our hostess in the flesh made me start, as if I were guilty of something. But it was my escort who held her attention, and she held out both her hands to him. “How lovely to see you again. I so enjoyed our ride yesterday.”

To my astonishment, he took her hands in his and kissed them, one after the other. “As did I,” he said, in a tone of voice that hinted that all manner of thrillingly illicit things had taken place. “I hope we’ll have another soon.” What was the man up to?

She bent her head and regarded him through her lashes in her favorite gesture. “You may depend upon it.”

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Dove,” I said clearly, since she seemed not to have noticed my presence.

“Ah. Mrs. Lammle.” Her eyes hardened as she regarded my ensemble. “I am so sorry that the dress I gave you proved unsatisfactory,” she said, and her voice, too, had lost its warmth. “Not that the one you’re wearing isn’t delightful, of course.”

“There was an unfortunate accident,” I said, wondering if she believed me. I probably would not have, in her place. “I was distressed not to be able to wear your gift, but it was not possible after all.”

“That is a pity.” Her voice was all concern now. “If it needs to be altered…”

“I’m afraid it’s more serious than that. If I find the culprit who damaged it, you may be sure I’ll have some choice words for him.” I was nearly certain, however, that the saboteur was a she, not a he. That kind of patient, thorough, deliberate vandalism bespoke a woman’s spite. A man, I felt certain, would have done something quick in a blaze of temper, like throwing it on the fire or pouring ink on it. To change the subject, I added, “I adore what you are wearing.”

She was in pale lilac today, an appropriate shade for half mourning. Her hair was drawn back smoothly over her ears into its usual graceful chignon, but her appearance was made festive by long pendant earrings not unlike mine, except that hers were set with what appeared to be rubies and mine with paste gems. The look she gave me implied that she knew how insincere my words were. “How kind of you. Now, let me introduce you both to your new neighbors.”

As she led Roderick and me around to meet the other guests, it was remarkable to observe how everyone’s attention focused on her. For such a quiet and demure presence, she was nevertheless the undoubted queen and these people her subjects. I noticed that everyone followed her lead in responding to us, greeting Roderick warmly but treating me with distant hauteur. When I saw Mr. Keith and Arabel among the company, I slipped away from my hostess and escort to dart over to them.

“How glad I am to see someone who will not snub me!” I told them in a whisper.

Arabel seemed not to have heard me. She was staring at my dress. “Sybil,” she said gently, “whatever made you decide not to wear Mrs. Dove’s gift? I’m afraid she will be offended at your choosing something else.”

“That wasn’t my intention, but I’m afraid it couldn’t be helped.” To change the subject I asked, “Is Miss Hope Field here? I am curious to see her after all your praise of her beauty.”

Arabel shook head. “It’s a pity, but she wasn’t invited, or so I heard.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” her brother said. “She is a noted beauty, after all, and I suspect our hostess likes to be the observed of all observers.”

“Why, Mr. Keith,” I said. “Shakespeare? You are a man of parts.”

That made him smile. “You’re a shameless flirt, Mrs. Lammle, but I imagine you know that already. I suspect that you enjoy attention every bit as much as our hostess. Certainly your choice of gown suggests it—not that it isn’t beautiful.”

Really, he could be almost alarmingly shrewd sometimes. “My years as a leading lady accustomed me to being the observed of all observers,” I admitted. “Once one acquires a taste for it, it is difficult to give up.” Perhaps Mrs. Dove and I were alike in that regard… a disquieting thought.

“Hmm,” he said. His blue eyes were bright with mischief. “I sense a battle royal in the brewing. This should be an interesting afternoon.”

“Oh, John, don’t be silly.” Arabel gave him a reproachful look. “Our friends are much too civilized for anything of the sort.”

How little she knew of what was to come.

Mrs. Dove called the event to order. With her usual trick of gathering everyone’s attention, she did not even have to raise her voice to seize everyone’s attention. “Ladies and gentlemen, I believe everyone is assembled. Shall we begin the entertainment?”

Since Roderick was the man closest to her, he had little choice but to offer her his arm. Mr. Keith presented himself to lead me in, which was satisfactory to me, but Mr. Grandison looked peevish at being partnered with Arabel. The more fool he; she was far sweeter than the reigning goddess, Mrs. Dove.

The music room was decorated in cream and pale blue, and a great many spindly little chairs were set in rows facing the pianoforte. I discovered quickly that unless I were willing to engage in ruthless use of my elbows and fingernails there was no way for me to secure a chair next to Roderick, so I accepted the inevitable and sat between the Keiths.

Mrs. Dove seated herself with Roderick, of course, and another new admirer took the chair on his other side. Roderick looked around to find me, and when I caught his eye he gave me a rueful half smile.

Pasteboard programs disclosed the order of the performers. I noticed that my name was given directly after that of our hostess, and Roderick a few spaces after me. The programs did not list what each person would be presenting, and I was more than a little curious about what Mrs. Dove planned to give us.

The lady herself now rose to thank us all for coming and made some pretty little speech about music uniting souls, or some such treacle. She then introduced the first performer, a matron whose lugubrious performance on the cello started the entertainment on an inauspicious note. I confess I paid little attention to that or the following performers; it was far more amusing to watch Roderick try to disguise his flinching at the less than stellar musical talent on display.

Finally our hostess rose to take up a post before the pianoforte, and Mr. Grandison seated himself at the instrument to accompany her. Now I was paying my full attention. The opening chords were familiar, but the outrageous truth did not dawn on me until Mrs. Dove began to sing.

“Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen…”

My body went rigid in outrage. She was singing the Queen of the Night aria.

Even worse, she was singing it better than I could. Her voice was pure and sweet, and her range was higher than mine, so she did not have to strain as I did to reach the cascading high notes. The fact that she lacked the appropriate ferocity for a song of vengeance was a minor consideration. Never, indeed, had I seen a Queen of the Night who was so self-satisfied.

I forced a vacant smile onto my face. I could not let her know that she had succeeded in angering me. Only once did I try to catch Roderick’s eye, only to find him gazing at her in consternation mixed with what might have been… no, I could not believe he would be disloyal enough to admire her performance. Not even when she was so obviously a gifted coloratura.

The applause when she concluded was deafening, and not even the desire of her admirers to flatter her could completely account for it. She had given a beautiful performance. And her gentle smile, belied by the hard green gaze fixed on me, showed that she was fully aware of it. Just try to surpass me, her eyes taunted.

That was a challenge I was prepared to accept.

“Mrs. Lammle will be our next performer,” she said sweetly, after the applause and calls for an encore had finally died away. “Do please give her your kind attention.”

She settled herself into her chair like a hen into its nest. For once there was no softness about her; her spite shone out clear and strong. Or perhaps it was only I who saw it.

I rose slowly and walked to the front of the room. Mr. Grandison was still seated at the piano—ready, no doubt, to provide accompaniment for me. I dismissed him with a jerk of my head, and he withdrew hastily to his chair.

“I shall not be singing,” I announced. Mrs. Dove’s eyes were still bright with smug anticipation, and in that moment, as the blood hummed angrily in my ears, it seemed to me that the entire room watched me with the same spite and expectation of failure. I took a deep breath. “This is a dramatic monologue entitled ‘The Sorceress,’ by Theocritus. It depicts the witch Simaitha casting a magic spell to regain the straying attention of the man she loves.”

I turned my back long enough to draw Roderick’s scarf from around my throat and bind it quickly around my head, knotting it several times at the back of my neck so that it covered my blonde ringlets and gave the illusion of straight fawn-colored hair smoothed back into a heavy chignon. Then I took a deep breath and turned back to face my audience.

“‘Where are the bay-leaves, Thestylis, and the charms?’” I demanded. I threw breath into my voice to recall the silvery tones of Mrs. Dove.

“Fetch all; with fiery wool the caldron crown;

Let glamour win me back my false lord’s heart!”

Silence reigned in the room. My hostess’s self-satisfied expression had vanished. Now her face was a mask. She knew that I was not going to surrender without giving her a fight. I raised my chin and let my anger ring in my voice, reverberating through the Dove-like tones.

“Twelve days the wretch hath not come nigh to me.

Sure his swift fancy wanders otherwhere,

But I’ll charm him now with charms.”

The woman was indeed a witch, at least in her own mind. The poppet had been her doing, I would stake ready money on it. The house knew. Brooke House had tried to bar her, then to frighten her. Despite that, she had set her sights on Roderick. But it would take supernatural force to win him, and this fact I put on display for all to see.

“All hail, dread Hecate! Companion me

Unto the end, and work me witcheries

Potent as Circe or Medea wrought!

Turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him I love.”

She could not hope to win him, not even with sorcery. Not without the intervention of the gods themselves. And I intended for everyone present to know.

“Swiftly as this brazen wheel whirls round,

May Aphrodite whirl him to my door.

Turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him I love.”

My gaze alighted on Roderick. His luminous eyes were intent on me, and a thousand memories rushed through my mind. His eyeing me with insolent suggestion on the day we met. His softly drawing the scarf around my throat just an hour before, his gaze a bright challenge. My hand lying in his that night at dinner, in a moment when it felt that we were joined together as two parts of a whole.

My voice softened as I reached the part of the monologue where the sorceress recalled meeting the man she loved. “‘I, a willing listener, sat, my hand in his,’” I murmured. I remembered the warmth of his fingers pressing mine, the way we two had sat close together, revealing our secrets, our weaknesses. My whisper carried to the distant corners of the room.

“His cheek touched mine, and we discoursed

In soft low language.”

Was he remembering the same thing? For even as I watched, he leaned forward in his chair, linking his hands and resting his chin on them, as if to see even more intimately into my eyes and heart. For the space of a breath we simply gazed at each other.

But I was in danger of forgetting my purpose: unmasking the Dove. As I took the speech up again, I lowered my head, looked up through my lashes at Roderick in the favorite trick of my rival, and heard gasps in response.

They knew. They saw. I was Dove, pining for Roderick Brooke. Pining for him—and losing him. I let the rage of frustrated love resonate through me, thrumming in my breastbone, almost shaking the chandeliers with the force of Dove’s futility.

“Now ’tis a fortnight since I saw his face.

Doth he then treasure something sweet elsewhere?

Am I forgot?”

Yes. You are forgotten. I am the woman who holds his heart, not you. Gazing into the clear depths of his eyes, I felt the hum of electric connection, the magnetic force that bound us. I loved this man. Loved him in my blood, my bones, my very atoms. We were connected so strongly that I could almost pity the wretched woman who tried to divide us, who sought to destroy me so that she could have him… not that she ever would. Not if she used all the magic of the old world and the new.

And she must realize that. She could not sit beside him now and not feel how his every breath harmonized with my breathing, how his soul and mine chimed together like music in tune.

The knowledge would surely make her crazed with fury. It would transform her love into destruction, her beauty into ugliness. My voice lifted into a violent shriek as I spoke the vengeful final lines of the monologue.

“I’ll charm him now with charms.

But let him try me more, and by the Fates

He’ll soon be knocking at the gates of hell!”

I fell silent, gasping for breath as if I had run a mile. Now my eyes were locked not on Roderick but on my rival. My defeated rival, whose face even now was turning from its flawless ivory into a mottled angry red.

As she rose from her chair, her body rigid with outrage and what I recognized as pure, primal hatred, I suddenly felt light, boneless, floating. Euphoria buoyed me up in a wave. All the tension left my body, and I dipped into a deep curtsey, bowing my head to acknowledge the silence.

Silence sometimes bespeaks greater reverence than applause. I had stunned them—had presented them with something so powerful that they forgot themselves too much even to acknowledge it.

When I straightened from my curtsey and looked up, Mrs. Dove was standing erect, her hands clenched into fists. Her eyes were naked in their hatred of me. If she had had a weapon to hand, I knew with complete certainty, she would have struck me dead at that moment.

“Mrs. Lammle,” she said. Her voice was soft with barely controlled rage. “I will not tolerate such disrespect in my own home.”

I could not keep from smiling. A bright joy was fizzing through my veins like champagne. “No true artist expects her work to go unchallenged, Mrs. Dove,” I told her. “Little minds always attempt to tear down genius.”

“Genius?” Her voice rose into a tone I had never heard from her before: strident, almost shrill. “You have acted offensively to me, Mrs. Lammle. It is spite, not art, that you have shown us today, and I will not tolerate it. You are no longer welcome in my house.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “There was never a moment when you made me feel that I was, madam. I am happy to go.” I tugged the scarf from my head and shook out my hair, relishing the freedom. “Goodbye, Mrs. Dove,” I said. My voice rang through the room. “I thank you for a revelatory afternoon’s diversion.”

All eyes were on me as I glided to the door, and the silence had become so profound it was almost tangible. Sybil Ingram’s final performance had been a triumph.

By the time I reached the foyer the whispers had begun. Then came the murmur of Roderick’s voice, and Mrs. Dove saying in reply, “But there is no need for you to depart, dear Roderick.”

“I’m afraid there is. I am my stepmother’s escort. Thank you for a charming afternoon.”

He emerged from the music room and paused to close the door behind him, muting the buzz of scandalized conversation, before joining me. “Time to go,” he said briefly.

The drive home was even more exhilarating than the outward journey. My thoughts would not be still. How liberating it had felt to let my true feelings toward Mrs. Dove show! How satisfying to confront her with her scheming, sneaking ways. My own voice rang in my memory speaking the words of Theocritus. It had been splendid to perform again, to use the strength and suppleness of my voice to strike emotion into the hearts of those watching and listening. To turn the woman’s own mannerisms against her. They had been fascinated, captivated by me… and by what I was showing them about the false idol they worshipped.

“I imagine everyone will be discussing that for some time to come,” I said with satisfaction. “I daresay no one has ever seen anything like that before at one of Mrs. Dove’s musicales!”

“I daresay.”

I sat back and enjoyed the wind rushing past us, cooling my cheeks. My blood was still running fast, and a giggle escaped me. “Thank goodness I still remembered that monologue. It’s been months since I performed it. When she stole my aria, I had no idea at first what I could do to repay her for that. What a two-faced creature she is! I’ve never seen her like, not in all my years in the theater. Well, now we shan’t have to endure her hypocritical simpering anymore.”

A slight movement from the man beside me brought my thoughts back to him. So acute was my awareness of him now that I felt his every motion as if his body were an extension of my own. Recalling the passionate connection to him that I had experienced during my monologue made me both excited and shy. Had he truly felt the emotion I had ascribed to him, or in my heightened emotional state had I imagined it? Remembering the almost physical sensation of his eyes meeting mine, the way he had unconsciously leaned toward me, I could not convince myself that it had been all imagination.

For my own part, I knew that what I felt was real. Never had I dreamed that I could feel something so powerful for a man. Even if he never rediscovered his muse and his genius, even if he remained a country schoolmaster, I knew that I wanted to be with him. Living in rural obscurity with him would be more rich and exciting and fulfilling than living alone in the glittering capitals of Europe.

Of course, his masculine pride might prevent him from speaking for me if I ended up inheriting Brooke House. Well, in that case I would simply have to propose to him. Indeed, I had half a mind to do it now. What would happen, I wondered, if I snatched the reins out of his hands, drew the sleigh to a stop, and set about kissing him senseless? I had to bite my lip to hide the smile that arose at the thought.

How surprising that he was not celebrating with me or taking any delight in the glorious revolution that I had staged, though. He drove without turning his head from our path, his eyes hooded and dark. He could not possibly be angry, could he? Mrs. Dove did not mean so much to him that he would be offended by my behavior to her.

Some of my audience might have been, though. Must have been. Arabel’s feelings might have been hurt when I behaved so rudely toward someone she admired. But surely even she would realize after due reflection that I had only behaved as I did under severe provocation. She would be forced to admit that Mrs. Dove was not worthy of her respect.

Still, when I forced myself to confront the matter, I knew that not everyone had refrained from applauding because of awe. Perhaps that had been true of Roderick and Arabel and Mr. Keith, but from some of my more aloof and disdainful new acquaintances the silence had surely been a snub, a sign of disapproval.

I glanced again at Roderick’s profile. A strong and noble profile it was, but one that gave away nothing of his feelings. He had been strangely silent. “What did you think of my performance?” I asked.

For a moment he did not speak. Then, quietly, he said, “It was a revelation.”

But that could mean anything. It might mean that I had impressed him favorably, or that I had revealed myself to be more monumentally stupid than any human being he had ever met. Maybe he felt I had revealed a nasty, spiteful side of myself. Perhaps I had killed the fondness he was beginning to feel for me.

“Thank you,” I said, but the words were uncertain.

He remained silent for the rest of our journey, disquieting me further. It was possible that he was simply lost in thought—replaying my performance again in his mind, reflecting on how fetching I had looked in my magenta taffeta, or even just concentrating on handling the sleigh. To comfort myself I clung to the expectation that he would speak when we reached home.

He did not.

He dropped me at the front door, as was his way, but for once he did not take the cutter around toward the stable. Instead he made as if to continue around the drive, which would circle around to take him back in the direction from which we had come.

“Where are you going?” I exclaimed.

“I’ll only be an hour or two,” he said before the sleigh gathered speed again and took him out of the range of my voice.

Was he returning to Willowwood? It was possible. Perhaps he anticipated settling permanently at Brooke House and did not want to be on poor terms with his neighbors. Or perhaps I had misread his feelings toward Mrs. Dove and he was fonder of her than I had thought. Even now he might be driving back to apologize, to placate her, to make sure of his place in her affections. The prospect sent a stab of pain into my heart. Roderick Brooke was an expert at flirtation, as I well knew. Had he merely counterfeited an attachment to me—perhaps to secure his future if he did not inherit the house? Perhaps he was stringing both of us along, me and Mrs. Dove, so that he would not have to return to the life of a poor schoolmaster.

Absolutely not, I told myself. He must simply have another errand. Something that perhaps he would otherwise have had to postpone due to the musicale. But my heart was full of misgiving.

So ran my thoughts during the rest of the afternoon, back and forth between hope and fear. I lingered in the small parlor so that I would hear Roderick when he returned, but I was too distracted to settle down with any pastime. Every five minutes, it seemed, I went to the window, straining for the sight of the cutter returning. Twilight was beginning to draw in when he finally returned. I waited with beating heart, but when his footsteps finally entered the house, they proceeded straight up the front staircase without pausing by the small parlor.

Disheartened, I rang to ask for my supper to be brought. It was Mrs. Vise who answered the bell. “I expected that you’d be dining at Mrs. Dove’s, madam,” she commented.

“I made myself unwelcome to my hostess.”

“Mrs. Dove?” She was taken aback. “Does that mean she won’t be coming tomorrow, then?”

“Tomorrow?” I repeated, before memory returned. Tomorrow evening was when we were to host dinner and a séance. Would Roderick still want to move forward with that if Mrs. Dove declined to come after I had insulted her? “It’s probably best to ask Mr. Brooke. He may know better than I what her feelings are.”

“I’m sure an apology will bring her around,” said Mrs. Vise in what was probably supposed to be a reassuring tone.

“No. I won’t be apologizing.”

“I see,” she said, in a tone that indicated the opposite. After a brief hesitation, she said, “Madam, may I ask what your plans are if the judge doesn’t rule the house to be yours?”

It was a topic we had avoided discussing. I had hoped that by now I would have a good answer for this question, but I was forced to admit, “I haven’t come up with a plan yet.”

There was another hesitation. Then she said, in a more awkward manner than I had ever seen in her, “I had rather wondered… you and Mr. Roderick…”

“Nothing has been settled between us,” I said, too surprised to prevaricate. I had not considered that Mrs. Vise had a stake in any connection that grew between me and Roderick… as did the other servants. Another thought dawned on me. “That night that he and I had supper together here—was that of your devising?”

She evaded my gaze, moving to brush a bit of dust from one of the picture frames. “Mrs. Tully thought there would be no harm in it. We’d both seen how you look at each other, and perhaps you just needed a nudge.”

How unlikely an idea it was that our domestic staff had been playing matchmaker for us. I was glad that I had not known how faithfully they had observed us together. It was a deeply embarrassing thought. How had I looked at Roderick to lead them to the conclusion they had reached? And what had they seen—or thought they saw—in the way he looked at me?

She seemed to gain confidence from my lack of reaction. “Really, you two should make a match of it. If you don’t mind me saying so, it would be better for all of us if you did! I find that after all I rather like it here.”

“That’s quite a turnabout,” I said, startled. “Does Mr. Brooke know that you and Mrs. Tully engineered our supper together?”

At least she had the grace to look abashed. “He suspected something was up, yes. He spoke to Mrs. Tully and said we were never to interfere like that again.”

“I see.” A dull sinking feeling grew in my stomach. He would certainly have had no patience for attempts to throw us together if he had no interest in me.

I sent the housekeeper off for my supper and curled up in my favorite chair by the fire, taking no comfort in its warmth. He might be thoroughly angry with me. Not only for destroying his chances of making friends in the community but because I might have embarrassed him by singling him out during my performance. Whether or not he shared my love, it must have made him deeply uncomfortable for me to have shown my feelings so clearly. Even if he and others had assumed that this was part of the performance, meant as an expression of Mrs. Dove’s sentiments toward him, that too could result in a great deal of gossip and speculation at his expense. If he had been on the verge of falling in love with me, I realized now, my own actions might have made him decide that I was not the right woman for him.

I ought to apologize, I decided as I ate my supper. But not tonight, when events were so fresh. Tomorrow would be soon enough. Daylight would make everything less upsetting, and he might be ready to dismiss injuries that were rankling him now. And perhaps tomorrow I might be able to contemplate everything with a mind that was less turbulent… and a heart that was less sore.

I retired early. Weary of the direction my thoughts were taking, eager for merciful oblivion, I took shelter under the eiderdown of my huge bed and wished for morning. I don’t know how long I had been sleeping when the music woke me.

It was a violin, but unlike the time before, it did not stop when I opened my eyes. This was no ghostly manifestation, it seemed, but a reality. There was only one person in Brooke House who could be playing the violin.

Rising, I drew on my dressing gown. When I eased my bedroom door open a crack, the sound was louder. It was coming from the direction of Roderick’s room.

The hallway carpet muffled my footsteps so that I was able to reach his door without making a sound. The door was cracked, and with infinite care I pushed it open—slowly, for I did not want to be observed and disturb his playing.

The disjointed phrases were not, at first, a coherent tune. This was the playing of a man who needed to know if he had the physical ability even to draw music from this instrument. But every note seemed to give him courage, and he drew the bow more strongly. After a moment’s pause he launched into a nimble, energetic tune, a tune that danced.

When I had opened the door enough to peer around, I caught my breath.

He stood facing me, but his eyes were closed. He was shirtless, as if he had paused in undressing for bed to take up the instrument, unable to postpone any longer this reunion. He bent and swayed with the music he drew from the violin, his body itself expressing the song he was creating. His brow was drawn in concentration and effort, but his lips were parted in wonder—the expression of one who has rediscovered his essence.

Under his dexterous fingers the tune built in urgency and speed. The melody grew complex and passionate, his bow blurring with the speed of his playing. And then, drawing a gasp of pleasure from my lips, it developed into a waltz rhythm. Suddenly it was playful, charming, a tune that made one’s feet restless to dance.

I could not look away. This was the complete man, Roderick Brooke with his genius restored to him, and the sight was magnificent. His skin gleamed like gold in the lamp light, almost as if he were Apollo himself, all sunlight and poetry and music. The ecstasy on his face made me catch my breath. His entire being vibrated to the rapture of being whole again, of being the vessel that could bring lesser mortals the sensation of rising above this earthly sphere into the realm of the gods.

As I watched and listened, scarcely breathing, the song gentled. The sway of his body slowed. The dazzling, darting notes gave way to tenderness and wonder and deepest happiness, trailing off at last into piercing sweetness, as of paradise attained. One long, slow final note, the last glimpse of transcendence, and he lowered the violin. The echo hung in the air like the glow of the evening star. Then his eyes opened.

They were so full of wonder at what he had wrought that I thought at first he did not even see me. But then a still deeper joy flared in them, and even as he set violin and bow aside and stepped forward purposefully I was darting across the few paces that separated us.

The instant our bodies touched his arms wrapped around me, holding me tightly against him as his lips eagerly sought mine. I buried my hands in his hair, and it was soft as swansdown, but his body against mine was strong and vital. The touch of his lips turned my blood to molten fire, and in his arms I felt I could dissolve into pure delight—or soar.

We were greedy for kisses, taking them by the score, as if we would never have our fill. When at last he raised his head to look at me, his eyes were luminous in their intensity. He took my face in his hands and stroked his thumbs over my cheekbones, searching my face as if to memorize every particle of it.

“Splendid Sybil,” he murmured, and the sound of my name spoken in his voice was as miraculous as his music. “Magnificent. Glorious…”

“You are the splendid one. Professor Hartmann said you were a genius, and now I hear it for myself.” I wound my arms around his neck. “You are a marvel.”

With his fingertip he traced my lips, and the touch sent exquisite shivers over my skin. “Only because of you. It was your courage today, your brilliance, that inspired me.”

“Truly?”

“You were breathtaking. So ferocious, then so tender… and so genuine. It was clear that you truly felt what you portrayed—the anger and ardency and pain. I saw the honesty in your art. In you.”

His eyes gazed into mine with such candor that I felt that I could read his every thought almost before he put words to them. He was letting me see him wholly, and it filled me with wonder. Was this the same Roderick who had been so distrustful, so suspicious of me as both an actress and a woman? The man with me now was like a different being—a man transformed. “You believe in me now,” I whispered.

His smile was like the break of day. “You dared to go in front of everyone who matters in our set and show your true feelings. To show me, when I had given you little enough reason to trust me with your heart. If you were brave enough to do that, I had to be brave enough to pick up my violin again. Your courage gave me back my soul… and my heart.” He placed my hand flat against his chest and held it there, and beneath the silken tickle of hair I felt the pulse, strong and steady—the rhythm beneath the music of his words. “Never have I been so inspired,” he whispered. “You are my muse, Sybil Ingram, and my strength, and my passion.”

His kiss was joyous, and I gave myself up to it completely. I felt the warmth of his caress glide down to the small of my back and let my own hands learn more of him, discovering how smooth the planes of his back and shoulders were. This was a bliss I had never known. Now I, too, was whole again, as I never would be when parted from him.

But eventually a small inner voice whispered that if I stayed too long it would be easy to lose my head entirely. With aching reluctance I broke our kiss and drew back far enough to speak. “Dearest,” I said, and my voice was breathless, “I should go.”

All he did was draw me close again and put his lips to my throat. “But I don’t want you to,” he whispered, and his gentle breath against my skin made my knees go weak—and threatened to do the same to my will. Then I thought of a plausible pretext.

“You are too gallant to say it, but I know you are longing to take up your violin again.”

He raised his head and looked over at the instrument where he had laid it on the bed, and the light that kindled in his eyes told me I was right… but I knew that he was torn when he tightened his arms around me. “I would rather hold you than the finest Stradivarius ever made,” he said softly. His voice was a seductive purr.

He was not making the difficult task of parting any easier. “Really, I must go. Tonight is for your music. You and I… we can talk in the morning.”

“Talking is not foremost in my mind at the moment.” He leaned in to kiss me once more, but I drew back just enough to stop him. For a long moment his face revealed a silent struggle. Then, with a deep sigh, he released me, although his hands still lingered on my shoulders. “You’re right. If you stay much longer, we’ll fulfill the good Reverend Keith’s prophecy for certain.”

“The possibility had crossed my mind,” I admitted. My pride rebelled at the thought, although other portions of me were considerably more enthusiastic.

“My lovely Sybil. I don’t want to compromise you, but…” He drank me in with a long look that caressed me from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes, and shook his head as if in wonder. “It seems an eternity until morning. Shall I play you something to send you off to bed?”

“That will be perfect,” I said, love welling up in my heart at his care of me. “Your music will give me dreams of you.”

Before I could change my mind I stepped away from him and retreated to the door. At the threshold I paused to look back. He was raising the violin to his chin, and his face wore such a beatific expression that he might have been an angel with an unruly black halo of curls. When he met my eye and smiled, I blew him a kiss. He raised the bow in his right hand with a flourish, and I saw that he had removed the bandage covering his scar. He was unfettered now.

That indelible glimpse of him stayed with me as I withdrew. Then the sweet strains of a Chopin nocturne, slow and gentle, came to my ear. The music followed me down the hall and into my room, where I returned to bed and at last, lapped by waves of happiness, fell asleep.

When I woke in the morning my thoughts were full of him, and I sang to myself as I dressed in the jaunty tartan dress made by Graves in the time before my marriage. How glorious life was! I was filled with so much hope that I could even consider the chance that I could become to Roderick a partner in the service of the muse like Julia de Lioncourt. A “perfectly serviceable mezzo” he had said I possessed, and from him, as obstinate as he had been in his criticism of me, that was high praise. With training and patience, perhaps I could become worthy of singing with him. Professor Hartmann might be able to tell me. I resolved to write to him and let him know what felicity his former protégé and I had found together.

In my happiness I scarcely paused to reflect upon the more ominous events that had so recently taken place. They no longer had the power to cause me anxiety. The destruction of the gray dress, which had seemed so sinister when I first discovered it, had now dwindled in my mind into a kind of lucky accident, since it had led to my wearing my old finery—and my bold theatrical persona with it. I might never have defied Mrs. Dove without that impetus. A nudge, Mrs. Vise might have called it. And without that monologue, how much longer might I have gone without fully recognizing how much Roderick had come to mean to me?

As for Mrs. Dove, I cared nothing for whatever revenge she might take against me. Roderick and I had each other. What did it matter if the woman induced the rest of our acquaintance to cut us? Mr. Keith and Arabel would still recognize us, I was certain, and Professor Hartmann would call whenever he could. It would be enough—more than enough.

In short, my life seemed to be sorting itself out beautifully, and that should have been the first warning to me that disaster was coming.

I rapped at Roderick’s door before going downstairs, but there was no answer. Most likely he was already awake and about. When Bertha brought my breakfast to me in the small parlor, she said in response to my query that he had taken the cutter and gone out.

“Did he say when he would return?” I asked, wondering what errand had been so compelling as to have drawn him from my side without a word.

“No, missus. He didn’t say.” Bertha twisted her hands in her apron. “Mrs. Lammle, I—I don’t rightly know how to say this, but I’m scared.”

“Of what, dear?” In my happiness I felt affection for all the world. If I could have presented every living being with a hot posset and woolen muffler, I would have.

But Bertha was genuinely distressed. “This business tonight,” she said with an effort. “Trying to call up spirits. It ain’t right, missus.”

Well, that was a bit of a poser. I could hardly reassure her that no spirits would be summoned, because in Brooke House one could never be certain that spirits weren’t underfoot. Nor could I promise her safety, if I was being completely honest. I had a strong feeling that there would be no danger in trying to communicate with the resident spook or spooks, but I certainly could not make a guarantee. Then I hit upon a solution.

“If you don’t want to be here, you may spend the night elsewhere,” I told her. “If your family is too great a distance, perhaps in town. With the Keiths, even. We won’t be needing the cutter once Mr. Brooke returns, so you can have Tully take you wherever you need to go and then fetch you back tomorrow.”

She beamed in relief. “Oh, thank you, Mrs. Lammle! I’ll help Mrs. Tully and Mrs. Vise make everything ready before I go.”

It was well that she did, for there seemed a great many preparations to make. I volunteered to do what I could as well, for I needed something to occupy myself with until Roderick returned. Great happiness seemed to have the effect on me that snuff has on some—it gave me a restless energy that, without my beloved close at hand, lacked a ready outlet. Assisting with cleaning, ironing, and cooking was tedious in the extreme, but it did make the day pass more quickly.

When I was retrieving a platter from the sideboard in the dining room, I remembered what Roderick had said about a secret passage. Smiling at the image of him as a curly-headed boy sneaking about, I began to search for a hidden door. I seemed to recall that such things were most likely to be found near a fireplace—something about extra space being disguised when it was adjacent to a chimney, perhaps. Or had that merely been a convention in one of the vampire plays Atherton’s troupe had staged?

The device, when I found it, was so obvious that I wondered at not seeing it before. But then, the only occasion on which I had spent much time in this room was when entertaining Professor Hartmann, and I had not made a close inspection of my surroundings at that time. The mantelpiece was supported by rampant carved lions, each holding a shield. The shield of the left-hand lion showed a fleur-de-lis. The shield of the other showed a door.

Of course—the man who had thought up this fanciful house would have wanted its Gothic extravagances to be noticed and appreciated. I pushed on the shield, and it obligingly sank inward half an inch as a section of paneling in the wall close by opened with a wooden groan.

It only opened a few inches, however, and it took strength and determination to widen the opening enough to put my head through. At once I began to sneeze, and I held my handkerchief to my nose and mouth as I waited for the dust to settle. The passage was terribly narrow, as promised, but short. Cracks of light showed around the door to the study, shaped like a gothic arch, but I could not venture inside to try it. No woman in a bustle dress had any chance of maneuvering her way into this passage. Still, I enjoyed having the knowledge. I could easily imagine the rascal popping out to startle hapless adults.

As the day drew in and the early winter twilight fell, I was surprised that Roderick had not yet returned. Surprised and uneasy. I had assumed a great deal based on a few kisses, came the voice of doubt. Perhaps Roderick was embarrassed at what had happened and felt it necessary to put some distance between us. Last night he might have spoken in haste, spurred by gratitude and relief that he had not lost his gift, only to realize in the cold light of morning that his feelings for me were far milder than he had believed them to be. Remembering the smoldering intensity of his eyes, the ardency of his caresses, I found it unlikely, but men were not always rational creatures. Even though I had recognized that he was now essential to my happiness, I might be utterly dispensable to him. The thought was shockingly painful.

Nervous now, I tidied myself and changed my dress for the magenta one again, which was better suited to a dinner party than anything else I owned. With no indication to the contrary, I might as well assume that tonight’s plans were unchanged. I was returning downstairs when the sound of horses’ hooves came to my ears, and I took the last few steps at a run and threw the front door open eagerly.

Roderick was just climbing down, handing the reins to Tully, who stood by. Another man was seated in the cutter, but I did not recognize him in that first glance, and he did not matter to me.

“Roderick!” I just stopped myself from running to meet him. If we had been alone, perhaps—but before visitors I should be careful not to do anything that might embarrass him, at least until I knew for certain where we stood. I realized now that his expression was grim. Had he received bad news? “Where have you been all this time? I was worried.”

A humorless smile greeted these words. It was startling to see so harsh an expression on his face. “I drove in to town to send a wire and wait for my answer,” he said, and his voice, too, was without warmth. It was as if we had returned to the barbed, wary interplay of the first days we knew each other. “Mr. Bascombe was courteous enough to travel here in person to deliver the response.”

“Mr. Bascombe?” Now that I took my eyes from Roderick, I saw that his passenger was indeed the lawyer I disliked so. His unprepossessing appearance had not improved during the interval of time since our last meeting. He was now descending from the cutter, brushing snow from the shoulders of his greatcoat with an expression of distaste. “What is he here for?”

“I asked him if the judge had ruled yet on the disposition of the house. Fool that I was, I wanted to know what I had to offer you when I asked you to marry me.”

I felt wrenched between joy and fear. He spoke of marrying me—but not in a way that sounded as if it would still come to pass. Uncertain, I said, “I hope that you received the answer you wished for.”

The lawyer now joined us on the stoop. In his black greatcoat and tall hat, he was as cheerless a figure as a hired mourner. “The judge has made his ruling,” he said in clipped tones. “The house belongs to Mr. Brooke.”

“Mr. Bascombe,” I said coolly. “I had not expected to see you again.” Nor had I desired to—and the way his lips thinned in distaste showed how mutual was the feeling. “I should think you could have delivered that news in a wire rather than coming all this way.”

His raised eyebrow and flared nostrils registered his disdain for me. “When I received Mr. Brooke’s wire, which made reference to proposing marriage to you, I could not stand idly by and let him make so grave a mistake,” he said in a voice of venomous satisfaction. “I had to come in person to apprise him of your character, Mrs. Lammle. To be certain you did not entrap him with your wiles.”

“My character…” My voice died away as a terrible dread tightened my chest. I hoped that I was wrong, that he had not learned the false story Atherton had spread, but the triumph in his expression told me that the worst had come to pass.

“Yes, Mrs. Lammle. I am not surprised to see you blanch and stammer. To have embezzled your fellow actors’ hard-earned money and squandered it in gambling dens! Even for an actress, that is shocking.”

The words were like blows. I summoned enough strength to say, “You have no proof of any of this.”

“I have the word of one of your former associates,” he returned.

That was all too likely, but it was far from proof. I appealed to Roderick with as much confidence as I could muster. “You cannot believe this ridiculous tale.”

“Is it ridiculous?” he burst out. “I should have realized something was wrong when you were so evasive about why you left the theater. Too painful to discuss, you said. Now I see why! Naturally you would find it difficult to talk about how you stole from your own troupe.”

Reaching for his arm, I broke in desperately. “It wasn’t like that. May I speak with you in private?”

“I see no need.” He pulled away from my touch, striding past me into the hall, with Mr. Bascombe at his heels. When he turned and looked me in the face, I was shocked at the anger in his eyes. “If you can deny this charge, you can do it before Mr. Bascombe.”

“It isn’t that simple. Please—”

“I beg to differ. It is as simple as saying whether or not the claim is true.”

His manner astonished and wounded me. As much as I hated the thought of undoing all the good I had so painfully achieved by agreeing to this lie, I could not let the accusation stand. I could swear him to secrecy—once I had convinced him the tale was false. “Very well, then,” I said unhappily. “It isn’t true.”

Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he favored me with a sour smile. “You might at least try to make it sound convincing.”

The words were like the lash of a whip, and they cut me to the bone. That he could take Bascombe’s side after all that he and I had come to mean to each other was incomprehensible to me. “This isn’t a performance, Roderick!” I cried. “I tell you I am innocent of this thing.” But the skeptical lift of one eyebrow was his only reply, and my voice rose in consternation. “What more do you wish me to say?”

A caustic laugh greeted the question. “Say whatever you wish, madam. It’s clear you are no more capable of speaking the truth than a canary is of speaking Latin.”

He could not truly mean those words. A cruel joke of some kind, possibly—but I had never known Roderick to be cruel. A physical pain was growing beneath my ribs, as if he were wringing my heart in an armored fist. How could the man I loved—the man who I thought loved me—treat me in this way, without even letting me explain myself?

“Roderick, why are you acting like this?” I cried. “Last night you led me to think that you love me. Do you care for me so little, after all, that you can turn against me with such flimsy cause?”

“I thought you other than what you are,” he said bitterly. “You’re an expert actress, as you proved at the musicale, and I admit you fooled me for a time. I actually thought you might care for me and not the house. But now I see you clear, and I know you are a liar.”

“Don’t you know me well enough to realize that this story can’t be what it seems?” I pleaded. “How can you trust me so little, even now?”

His lips compressed in a bitter semblance of a smile. “Pray continue your performance, madam. You are the consummate picture of innocence maligned. That one perfect tear coursing down your pale cheek—brava!” He applauded loudly, waking echoes that seemed to mock me.

My throat closed in grief, and I could only stare at him wordlessly as the terrible truth dawned on me. In his eyes, I was another Julia. How naïve I had been to think that he truly saw me, truly knew me. Probably he would never be able to trust any woman again because of Julia de Lioncourt’s betrayal. No matter how much he might have loved me, Julia’s shadow would always hang over us, whispering to him that one day I would deceive him. He would always be waiting to catch me in a lie. It was impossible to think that we could have found happiness together.

While I struggled in silence with this devastating realization, Bascombe took the opportunity to make his presence felt. “I am glad I removed the scales from your eyes in time to prevent you from making a terrible mistake, Mr. Brooke,” he said. He looked disgustingly self-satisfied.

“Why, Gareth,” said a silvery voice that I had not expected to hear tonight. “What a charming surprise.”

To my shock, Mrs. Dove was standing just inside the door. Beside her were Arabel and Dr. Carfax, looking worried and perplexed. Mrs. Dove, however, was glowing with satisfaction as she gave the lawyer her hand to be kissed.

“My dear Mrs. Dove,” he said, and the look in his eyes as he bent over her hand was worshipful. I had not imagined him capable of such warmth, and I realized then that the two had been in league. When he had sent that message to her through me, I should have known that he was somehow working to further her interests. A surge of anger momentarily thrust away my pain.

“What are you to her?” I demanded. “Are you her minion? Roderick, you can’t trust this man. He must have been working on Mrs. Dove’s behalf all this time.”

Bascombe stiffened. “I do sometimes represent Mrs. Dove in legal matters,” he said coldly. “That does not mean that I fabricated the news I brought today. It is easily corroborated, Mr. Brooke, if you require it.” He flourished a sheet of paper, and I gasped aloud as I recognized it as the letter from Gertrude Fox that had brought me the terrible news.

“You stole my letter!”

“Then you admit it is true?” Roderick’s question was swift and cutting.

“Of course I don’t! I wish you would let me explain to you in private. It’s too delicate a matter—”

“Delicate hogwash.” His eyes were cold, implacable. How short a time ago I had seen them shining in wonder as they gazed into mine. “It’s time this charade ended. Give over, Mrs. Lammle. Your masquerade is finished.”

I had to pitch my voice very low so that it would not tremble. “For the last time, Roderick, I have not played you false. I am innocent of this charge, I swear it on my life.”

“I don’t wish to discuss it further.” His voice was hard, clipped, and his eyes had gone dark and remote, the color of the sea beneath storm clouds. “You will leave my house.”

The words robbed me of breath. I could hardly comprehend that he was ordering me out of Brooke House—and out of his life.

“Mr. Brooke, let’s not be hasty.” The doctor’s voice was a welcome dose of normality, so sensible and calm did he sound. “I’m certain there’s some reasonable explanation.”

“Yes, I’m certain Sybil can explain,” Arabel said eagerly. “It must be a misunderstanding. She would never do anything to hurt those she cares about. Don’t lose faith in her, Mr. Brooke.”

Bascombe sniffed. “Faith has little place when it comes to matters of money,” he said. “Conviction does not make crooked books balance, Miss Keith, or unrob a bank.”

Mrs. Dove had been silent to this point, but now she spoke. Her soft voice was as gentle as a fall of snow, and as remorseless. “Even a well-meaning woman can be impetuous,” she murmured. “I am guilty of this myself, I confess, and I am grateful to Roderick for permitting me to join you all tonight even after I lost my temper yesterday.” She smiled at him, the two-faced witch. “As you have forgiven me, Mr. Brooke, so you may find it in your heart to forgive even Mrs. Lammle’s trespass, shocking though it is.”

“Do not presume to plead for me,” I almost shouted. “You may counterfeit charity, but I know what you really are.”

“I, counterfeit?” Her voice was gently puzzled. “But it is you who seem to have been putting on a show for us all, Mrs. Lammle. A show of virtue and innocence. And for all your faults, you are a fine actress. I’m sure Roderick will agree.”

She could not have chosen more damning words. When I looked at the aggressive set of Roderick’s jaw, the fierce line of his eyebrows, I knew that was exactly what he was thinking: that my show of love for him had been nothing more than an act. “Leave my house at once,” he said coldly, “or I will have Tully carry you out.”

Outrage flooded me in a hot tide. This man did not deserve my love—or my explanations. “I’ll leave you, and gladly,” I returned. “Since you are proving so inconstant, so easily led, I am better off on my own. But when you search your heart, Roderick, you’ll know that you have been unjust to me. And you’ll have only yourself to blame for having lost me.” I moved to the bell pull and yanked it hard. “I won’t trespass on your precious hospitality any longer than it takes me to pack a bag. I will leave with Bertha.”

Arabel gave an exclamation of dismay. “Sybil, don’t go. Don’t part from us like this.”

“It seems I must, according to Mr. Brooke.” I gave him a long look, one final chance to redeem himself, but he merely folded his arms and returned my stare, his jaw set like granite. Coldly I concluded, “And the sooner the better.”

Turning my back on the searing gaze of the man I had loved, I hurried up the stairs to my room before I could do something I might regret—like throwing something at his head.

He would regret this. In the days and weeks to come he would realize what a fool he had been, what a jewel he had thrown away. I had been wise all those years, not trusting my happiness to a man. I would not make that mistake again.

This was the direction in which my thoughts ran as I tore off the magenta gown and changed into one more suitable for travel. Bertha quickly packed some necessaries in my valise. Less than twenty minutes had passed by the time the two of us descended the stairs and made for the front door.

As we passed the dining room I paused. The double doors were closed, but I could hear lively conversation within. How heartless that Roderick should proceed with the evening’s plans as if nothing had happened. Of course, it might well be pride at work, making him feel he had to show an untroubled face to the world. Or perhaps he had truly put me out of his thoughts—and his heart.

I was tempted to fling open the doors and blister his ears by telling him just what I thought of his betrayal. But in front of the odious Mrs. Dove and Mr. Bascombe I would not stoop so low. Snatching up my cloak and scarf, I hastened out of the house.

So furiously were my thoughts churning that it was not until Bertha and I had climbed into the cutter and Tully asked, “Where to?” that I realized I had no place to go.

“Where are you staying?” I asked Bertha, with some thought of trespassing on her family’s kindness for the night.

“The parson’s housekeeper always has a spare room ready,” she said. “A young woman can be safe there.”

“I hope two can share the room.” Staying the night at the Keiths’ might be soothing to my spirits, but in truth any place on earth besides Brooke House would have appealed to me. “Tully, take us to Mr. Keith’s manse, please.”

As the horses started off and gathered speed, the wind began to cut against my cheeks like a blade. In my haste and trouble of mind I had forgotten to bring a hat. I drew my scarf—Roderick’s scarf—from around my neck and tied it around my head. The cloth still held the fragrance of his bay rum, and this reminder of him was so vivid and painful that I tore the scarf from my head and let it blow away into the night.

The moon was full, casting an unearthly light on the colorless landscape, and with such good light to guide us we seemed to move very quickly. That suited me quite well. I wanted to put as much distance between me and Brooke House as possible, as quickly as could be managed. “How fortunate we are to have such a moon to travel by,” I observed. Conversation would keep my thoughts from Roderick.

Bertha gave me a perplexed look. “But it isn’t fortune, missus. Out here folk always plan their parties for nights when there is a moon for their guests to travel by.”

That was just one more confirmation that I was not cut out for country life. Such a stratagem would not have occurred to me. What did people do between moons? How lonely they must be in so isolated a place. Just a few feet from the road in either direction the wilderness began. I shivered and huddled deeper into my cloak, my thoughts yearning toward the companionability of civilization. Perhaps Roderick Brooke had merely come to seem attractive because of my loneliness, and once among livelier society I would find that he ceased to matter so much to me.

But even as injured and furious as I felt, I knew that was not true. I loved him, and his betrayal had not brought an end to that. I tried not to remember last night, the warmth of his lips on my skin, the way his heartbeat had felt under my palm. By the time we reached the manse, my hands and feet had gone numb, and I only wished my heart would do the same.

Unexpectedly, Tully steered the cutter into the minister’s barn. “Are you not returning to Brooke House?” I asked him.

“Oh, aye. But first Mrs. Washington will give me something hot to take the chill off.”

The kitchen was blissfully warm in comparison to the outdoors, and comforting smells of bread and tea greeted us. I wanted to sit down with Bertha and Tully at the deal table for the promised hot drink—especially if Mrs. Washington could be persuaded to lace it with spirits of some sort—but when I had explained the reason for my presence she insisted on showing me to the minister’s study.

To my surprise, Mr. Keith himself was there. He was installed in an armchair with a shawl around his shoulders and a blanket covering his lap, with a small table at his elbow covered with all the paraphernalia of illness. “Mrs. Lammle,” he said, in a tone that showed surprise equal to my own, and I realized from the sound of his voice that he had a cold. “I was not expecting you.”

“Nor I you. I gather you found a way to avoid the séance, although it seems somewhat extreme to fall ill just to avoid a social engagement.”

He smiled, but it lacked its usual vitality. His normally mischievous blue eyes were bleary and red-rimmed, and his nose too was red, probably from copious use of his handkerchief. “It was not deliberate, believe me. How is it that you aren’t among the spirit wranglers?”

“I have been cast out of Brooke House,” I announced, dropping onto the sofa. “I am an orphan in the storm, Mr. Keith, unless you and Arabel take me in.”

He gave me a narrow look. “Mrs. Lammle, forgive me for saying so, but you have a slight tendency… something of a predilection… well, to be blunt, you tend toward the theatrical. Sometimes I cannot tell if you are exaggerating something for dramatic effect.”

“I concede you may have reason to suspect that of me. Unfortunately, Roderick’s actions tonight were genuinely dramatic and need no embellishment.” Unable to sit still, I rose from the sofa and began to pace. Somehow I felt that if I kept moving, I might shake off the tumult in my heart.

Mr. Keith observed me in surprise. “You seem distressed,” he said in a feat of understatement. “Perhaps it would relieve your mind to confide in me.”

“It might,” I admitted. “But there is a part of the story that must not pass beyond these walls.”

He blew his nose before replying. “I am not Roman Catholic, so the strictures of confession do not apply,” he said. “However, I’ll keep your secret unless my conscience tells me I must make it known.”

In my turbulence of mind, that seemed sufficient. I told him of my arrangement with Atherton, of my agreement to take the blame for his misconduct, and of how this tale of last resort had spread in a way that I had never anticipated. “And Roderick will not believe that I am innocent. I told him the story is a lie, yet all of his former mistrust of me has come rushing back to harden his heart against me.” My mind winced away from the image of him as I had last seen him, the cold rejection in his eyes. My indignant anger was giving way to grief, and the pain was agonizing. “I thought he loved me. And he knows I love him. How he can believe this of me when he had come to trust me I don’t understand.” Wretched, I sank onto the sofa once more and buried my head in my hands. “It is almost as if he is all the more adamant because he had finally let himself begin to care for me.”

“Mrs. Lammle, you led me to believe that there was nothing of that nature between the two of you. Are you saying you lied to me?”

How stern the minister sounded, like a schoolmaster scolding a wayward child. I conquered a reflex to squirm in guilt. “Not at all. I never intended for such a thing to happen. Nor did he, I’m certain of it. But he…” Anguish welled up, momentarily preventing me from speaking. I could tell myself that he had killed my love for him, but the truth was far more painful. “He has come to mean more to me than anything in the world,” I said simply.

“That is a delicate situation.” The minister wiped his eyes, but I suspected it was his cold, and not emotion, that had caused them to water. “What do you plan to do?”

“Do? What can I do? He refuses to consider my side. If he is so easily turned away from me, I am well rid of him.” That was quite the opposite of what I felt, though. I ached in body as well as soul, as if I had lost a limb. How unfair that when I finally gave my heart it was to a man whose love had proved so feeble and so fleeting.

“Give him a day or two for his first rage to die down, and then try again,” suggested Mr. Keith. “He strikes me as a volatile man, the sort who flies into a rage easily but quickly calms down.”

“How does that help me? Mr. Bascombe and Mrs. Dove both have free rein in the meantime to keep his head filled with terrible thoughts about me. For her this is a godsend—an unexpected boon that has removed her rival from the running.”

He looked taken aback. “Do you truly think she wants to marry Mr. Brooke? She must be a great deal older, and she has wealth and position of her own. I don’t see that she has much to gain from marrying again.”

I almost smiled at that. “I can’t be impartial in this matter, Mr. Keith. To be honest, I wonder that more women are not in love with Roderick Brooke. And she has been quite tenacious in her attentions to him.”

“Well, that does not mean that he feels the same about her. And despite your peculiar history together, Mr. Brooke strikes me as a man with a code of honor, of a sort. Perhaps if I were to speak with him—”

“No. I won’t send anyone to plead for me.” I sighed, and all the will seemed to drain out of my body with my breath. I felt defeated, exhausted. “Maybe tomorrow my head will be clearer and I can think of some solution.” But I said it without much hope. Roderick had seen me with all the rapturous wonder of a lover, yet now he could look at me with cold distaste. If he could be turned from adoration of me to abhorrence in less than a day, what could I possibly do or say that could reverse it?

“Yes, things will look far different in the light of day.” The minister’s voice was gentle and somehow wiser than his years. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”

Wearily, I rose. “I think I shall retire now, the better for the morning to arrive more quickly. And you need quiet as well so you can rest. Do you think Arabel would mind sharing her room with me?”

“She will be delighted, I’m sure. Don’t despair yet, Mrs. Lammle. All will yet be well.”

I was afraid that if I tried to answer I would burst into tears and he would suspect me of more theatricality, so I retreated to my borrowed quarters.

Arabel’s room, which I had seen on the Sunday when I had visited after church, was simply furnished. It suited her, for she had not struck me as a person who would place a great deal of value on material possessions. I looked briefly at the carte de visite on her bureau of her late fiancé, then turned my attention to my valise, which had been left on the bed, presumably by Mrs. Washington. The candlewick bedspread was a quaint, homely backdrop for the bag that I abruptly recalled had been given such sinister powers of locomotion on my first night in Brooke House.

Why was I recalling that at this moment? Whatever entity had tried to frighten me away would hardly have followed me here. There should be nothing more to fear. Still, I was wary as I sprang the catch on the bag and drew it open.

Inside the valise lay the poppet.

I reached inside and cautiously drew it out. It looked no different from when I had last seen it—when it had appeared at the top of the staircase and attracted Mrs. Dove’s notice. She had recognized it, I was certain. What was its purpose now? To seize my attention?

If that was in fact its intent, it had certainly succeeded. Now I felt driven to see what else my valise held. The object on which the poppet had lain was of bright red fabric that might have been silk. I lifted it out and held it up to see it fully. It was a jacket—a loose, unlined, ruffled affair that fastened only at the throat. It must be a bed jacket.

Perhaps the very one Mrs. Dove had asked me about, in fact. And I, quick to thwart her in even the most insignificant matter, had dismissed her with a promise to look for it—a promise I had had no intention of keeping. And here it was, provided for me. What on earth did it mean?

Snatching it up, I ran downstairs and through the front rooms to the back of the house, where the kitchen was. Mrs. Washington and Bertha looked up at my entrance with startled faces. Tully was nowhere to be seen. “Bertha,” I said, “did you pack this in my valise?”

She shook her head. “No, missus. I’ve never seen that before.”

That eliminated a benign reason for it to have appeared. There was some significance to the spirit’s having given it to me. Now I had to determine what that was.

“Did I do something wrong?” Bertha asked nervously.

“No, quite the opposite! I… I had mislaid it, is all.”

“There’s a water spot on it,” Mrs. Washington observed critically, lifting one sleeve. “Silk spots so easily. It really isn’t practical for a bed jacket.”

“It isn’t, is it?” Water spots rang a distant bell in my mind. “Mrs. Washington,” I exclaimed, so suddenly that I made Bertha choke on her tea, “where are your spirits of ammonia?”

Confused, she said, “In the study, where the reverend will have them handy. But what—”

I thanked her briefly and raced back down the passage to the study.

The minister was still in his chair, and on the edge of sleep, I judged, when I began searching through the bottles and containers at his elbow. He stirred and blinked at me as I brandished the bottle of spirits of ammonia and exclaimed in triumph.

“What are you doing?” he asked drowsily as I opened the bottle and poured a tiny bit onto the fabric.

When I saw its effect on the silk a wave of nausea swept over me. Even though I had half expected this result, it sickened me. The thing was poison.

“What does it mean?” he asked, peering at the place where I had poured the ammonia.

I swallowed hard. “It means,” I said, replacing the cap on the bottle, “that this fabric has arsenic in it.”

“Why would there be arsenic in fabric?” he asked. His thinking must have been dulled by his illness, or perhaps he simply had no knowledge of such things, though they were commonly discussed in England.

“Some dyes contain it. My dressmaker, Graves, explained it to me once. Mostly green dyes, particularly emerald green, but sometimes red and…” I sat down abruptly as another shock struck me. “Sometimes gray,” I whispered. The destruction of the gray dress might not have been malicious in intent after all—it might actually have been a way of protecting me. Recalling the way the collar had irritated my throat, it seemed all too likely that the dress, like Margaret’s bed jacket, had been designed to kill.

The realization that Margaret had been dealt that slow, agonizing death, and through something as seemingly innocent as a bed jacket—a gift from a woman she thought was her friend—made me want to cry. But it also made me want to scream at the uncaring universe. Such things should not happen. “This means that Margaret Lammle was murdered,” I said, and my voice was hard. “Mrs. Dove must have given her this knowing that the material was infused with arsenic. That is why she wanted it back—so that no one would ever find the murder weapon.”

“You can’t mean that wearing a poisoned garment could have killed someone.”

“It may well have, if she wore it day after day, as she would have if confined to her bed. With the repeated contact against her skin, and constantly inhaling any loose dye from it… that poor woman. What a horrible, horrible death.”

“But why kill her at all?” The minister’s gaze, already bleary from illness, was filled with confusion. “What could Mrs. Dove possibly gain from such a thing?”

“Margaret must have had something that she wanted,” I mused. “Otherwise it would have been murder out of spite, and I think I would have heard by now if there had been any kind of falling out between them. Mrs. Dove somehow stood to gain from Margaret’s death, or thought she did.” Standing around idly pondering this, however, was not doing anything to address the more urgent issue. “I must go back to Brooke House and let Roderick know that his mother’s killer is under his very roof.”

“Mrs. Lammle, you don’t know for certain that this is what happened,” he said, with an increase of energy. “You have no direct proof, just speculation.”

I wanted to protest, but it was true. Moreover, in Roderick’s present mood, he would be unlikely to heed any theory of mine that I could not prove with evidence. But no one, I felt, could really be safe until they knew what Mrs. Dove was capable of. “In such a case isn’t it better to be overcautious?” I demanded. “I must put him on his guard for his own protection. And Dr. Carfax and your sister as well. What are you doing?” For he had risen from his armchair and rung the bell.

“I am accompanying you,” he said, removing the shawl from his shoulders. “We must get to the bottom of this, and if you are correct, time may be of the essence.”

“That is wonderful of you, Mr. Keith, but perhaps you should stay behind. Your cold—”

“—will not prove fatal, whereas Mrs. Dove may. In any case, you cannot ride or manage a cutter, if I recall correctly, so you need a knight errant for the sake of conveyance.”

Maddeningly, he was right. If I tried to reach Brooke House on horseback I was likely to end up in a ditch before I got to the end of the lane. I hate the country, I thought in frustration as Mrs. Washington entered the room in response to his ring. In London or New York City I could have hailed a hansom and been well on my way by now. If I was not going to be able to spend my future with Roderick, I resolved to find some nice big metropolis in which to settle, never to stir from it again.

“Mr. Tully has already left, sir,” Mrs. Washington was saying. “If I’d known you would need to go to Brooke House…”

“Never mind, we’ll manage.” Purpose had restored Mr. Keith’s energy; indeed, it almost seemed to have cured him. “Mrs. Lammle, fetch your cloak and summon your fortitude. Tonight you are going to learn how to help me harness a horse.”

“Very well,” I said. I was ready to do whatever was required to get me to Brooke House. I snatched up my cloak and the bed jacket and followed Mr. Keith to the barn at a near run.

Sooner than I had dared to hope we were on our way, almost flying along the route to Brooke House. Thoughts tumbled through my head to the rhythm of the horses’ hooves. Turn, magic wheel, bring homeward him I love, went the refrain. But it was I who was going homeward, and only hoping I could save him I loved—from what sinister design of Mrs. Dove’s I did not yet know.

“Go around to the kitchen entrance,” I ordered Mr. Keith as we started up the drive. “I should like to come upon them unexpected.”

He gave me a sidelong look but guided the cutter as I had directed. “Do you have a plan in mind?”

“Possibly. I need to find a way to make her confess.” The scheme that was forming in my mind was audacious, perhaps even foolish, but if the circumstances fell together it might be very effective.

Mrs. Tully had opened the door and was holding up a lamp to view the unexpected arrivals. “Bless us, it’s Mrs. Lammle,” she said to someone behind her, and Mrs. Vise joined her in the doorway. The look of relief on her face sent a stab of guilt through me. I had not given a thought to her future when I had been banished.

“I was in such a hurry, I didn’t think,” I said contritely. “Did Mr. Brooke dismiss you?”

“No, madam. He told me I could stay until he found me another position, but I had no idea where you had gone. Does this mean you’re back for good?”

“I don’t know. Right now I need to right a great wrong. Where is everyone now? Have they finished the meal?”

Mrs. Tully primmed up her mouth in disapproval. “Aye, they’ve gone to the study for their table-tapping.”

Perfect. If everything went as I hoped, Margaret Lammle would be the ghost they summoned at the séance—given physical form by Sybil Ingram.

“What is it you’re planning?” Mr. Keith asked as we stepped into the kitchen. “And how can I contribute?”

“I need you to stand guard in the dining room by the door that leads to the study,” I said. “I am going to try to startle Mrs. Dove into speaking the truth, but she may well try to run, in which case you must stop her. Has Tully returned?” I asked the housekeepers, and when they replied in the affirmative, I said, “Ask him to station himself on the veranda outside the study door. I want to bottle her up.” Taking the minister by the arm, I led the way rapidly to the dining room.

The table had not yet been fully cleared; the noise of our arrival must have drawn the housekeepers from their work, and I only hoped that that did not mean we had been noticed by the group in the study. Quickly I walked over to the fireplace and pressed the lion’s shield, and Mr. Keith’s eyes widened as the panel in the wall sprang open. It was shockingly loud, and once again I could only hope that the spirit seekers had been too distracted to hear—or that they had ascribed the noise to some other cause than an intruder.

“What is this?” he whispered.

“A secret entrance to the study. I intend to appear to them as a ghost, and this will make my appearance more dramatic.”

“I see. You will seem to materialize like a spirit—if you can enter unnoticed and surprise them, that is.”

“Just so.” I began feverishly unfastening my tartan dress.

“Mrs. Lammle?” The minister’s whisper was startled, not surprisingly. “What are you doing?”

“Removing my clothes,” I said, tossing the bodice onto a nearby chair and starting on the hooks at the waist of my skirt. “You may turn your back if you wish; in fact, I should prefer it.”

“Er… may I ask why you are disrobing?” Now he sounded downright apprehensive. Perhaps he thought that my mind had given way and I had gone mad.

“I cannot hope to fit through that passage in a dress like this.” A few more hooks, and I was almost free. “Your arm, if you please.”

From the expression on his face, one would have thought I had asked for something far more shocking. But with one hand on his arm to steady myself, I was able to quickly step out of my skirt and steel-hooped bustle petticoat. The boots would take too long to unlace, and the corset could stay as well; fortunately it was one of my plainest ones, made of white coutil, and not the crimson one.

“The dead are frequently said to appear in their white winding-sheets,” I said. “With any luck, my white underclothes will be close enough to pass muster in a dim light.”

“Why not wear a sheet over your head? Or the tablecloth?” He made toward the dining table as if to strip the cloth from it—probably for the sake of modesty as much as authenticity—but I stopped him.

“I wouldn’t be able to see. Besides, the bed jacket wouldn’t fit over it.”

The bed jacket was the finishing touch to my ensemble, the element that I hoped would throw Mrs. Dove into enough of a panic to give herself away. A shudder of revulsion passed through me as I slipped my arms into the sleeves. If I was correct, it was an engine of death, and even though I knew brief contact could not do me much harm, it went against all my instincts of self-preservation to wear the thing.

“How will you disguise your face?” Mr. Keith asked.

There was little I could do to alter my features, but I pulled some of my front hair from its pins to hang over my face. It was the best thing I could improvise. Margaret had been fair-haired, after all, even though her hair had been straight where mine was curly. “Go now,” I whispered, nodding toward the door that led to the study as I stepped into the passage.

The space was so narrow that I had to progress sideways, crab-like. My feet stirred up choking dust, and I held my hand over my nose in an attempt to avoid breathing it in. The farther I progressed into the darkness, the more the light of the dining room receded and the more clearly I could see the outline of the hidden door to the study. I could also see a pinprick of light just about at eye level. Thank goodness—a peephole.

When I reached the door I passed my hands over the surface until my fingers encountered a small knob. Before I tried turning it, however, I paused to put my eye to the peephole and to listen.

The room was lit only by the fire, greatly dimmed by a pierced metal screen drawn in front of it, and a candle in the center of the table around which the company sat. There was barely enough light to recognize the faces of those seated around it. All four held hands, with their clasped hands resting on top of the table, whether for some mystical reason or to prove that they were not surreptitiously rapping on the table I did not know. Arabel and Dr. Carfax sat at opposite sides, their eyes closed. Mrs. Dove sat with her back toward me, and opposite her was Roderick.

Despite the tense circumstances, my heart gave a pained little thud at the sight of him—still so dear, yet so impossibly distant. His eyes were in shadow, but as I watched he raised his head enough for the candle’s light to show that they were open. He was watching the woman opposite him so narrowly that I wondered if he knew or guessed more of her wickedness than he had indicated before.

The woman herself was speaking in a kind of chant, almost an incantation. “Come to us, ancient spirits!” she called. “Disclose to us your secrets from the time before the white man’s invasion. We forced you from this land, but we come to you humbly seeking your wisdom now.”

It was the Mahican tribe, I recalled, that she had shown such interest in contacting. What in particular was it that she hoped to learn? What knowledge of theirs could have any bearing on her life in this modern age? She must have in mind something that would have endured through time, and there must be precious few objects of that sort. Certainly nothing of Brooke House was very old in truth, only in appearance.

But that was not my most urgent concern. With infinite caution lest I make a noise, I pushed open the hidden door. The bookcase on the other side swung gently out, and I slipped through the opening and closed it again behind me, the whole process taking but three seconds.

The movement, however brief, had caught Roderick’s attention; I saw his posture stiffen. Before he could give away my presence, however, something happened.

Out of the darkness gathered beneath the ceiling the poppet dropped onto the table. It landed before Mrs. Dove with a soft plop that made her push her chair back violently and start to her feet.

I jumped. I could not help it; it was so sudden and unnerving to see the thing materialize out of thin air. Roderick recoiled, and Arabel and Dr. Carfax opened their eyes and stared.

“Where did that come from?” someone whispered. If I had not witnessed its previous appearances, I would have been just as baffled as they. First there had been nothing, then the little doll.

Now, with them all alert and full of tension, would be the right time to begin my performance. I drew a breath to speak… and drew in something else along with the breath.

It was like the previous occasion when the Other had borrowed my body, but this time she—for I knew now who it was—was not radiating feelings of tenderness. This time she was filled with righteous anger and pain, and I felt the strength of her emotion growing, pushing out cold rivulets into my limbs until she could move my arms and legs as she willed. And I felt the icy inner embrace suffuse my throat and lungs, so when I spoke it was not even surprising to me that the voice was not my own.

“Lavinia,” it said. It was a low, clear voice that in life must have been quite pleasant to hear, but now it trembled with anger. And it made Mrs. Dove spin to face me, one hand clutching the table to support herself. Her eyes were wide in shock that turned to fear as she took in the sight of me.

“Margaret?” she gasped.

Arabel and Dr. Carfax had seen me now. Arabel’s hand went to her mouth to stifle a gasp, and a startled sound escaped the doctor.

My body took a step forward. It was no longer under my control. I could think and observe, but I was only an instrument now. “Lavinia, I name you my murderess,” said the voice through my lips.

“I—I don’t—this is a hoax, a trick—”

“You know it is not.” My arms stretched toward her, making her cringe. “I am wearing your gift,” Margaret’s voice said. “The gift with which you poisoned me. You could not kill me with the witchcraft of your poppet, so you turned to a more direct means.”

Roderick rose to his feet so abruptly that his chair toppled over. His eyes, riveted on me, held an anguish that hurt me to see—and it hurt Margaret as well; I could feel her pang of protectiveness and sorrow. “Poisoned?” he repeated in a stricken whisper.

Mrs. Dove licked her lips. “This is some prank. That, or a mistake. I never—”

“Yes. You did.” Margaret’s words were as implacable as a marble headstone. “And while I was dying, suffering so cruelly, you stood by and gloated. ‘I will marry Alcott,’ you said. ‘Then Brooke House shall be mine, and I will finally find the hidden spring.’”

“What spring?”

Roderick’s words seemed to touch off a fury in Mrs. Dove. “You idiot,” she cried. “The fountain of youth. The Mahicans knew of it, but when they were driven out of the area its exact location was lost. I thought at first it was Saratoga Spring, but there was no magic there. For years I sought it, purchasing land where I could, riding all over the countryside seeking a trace of it. I finally narrowed it down to Brooke land. But your grandfather and then your mother and stepfather refused to sell. The most powerful magic in the world, and I am barred from it because your miserable family built a house on top of it!”

Dr. Carfax cleared his throat and stood—but slowly, with one wary eye on me. Mrs. Dove was standing next to Arabel, and he must have feared for her safety as the woman grew ever more wild in her looks and words. “Madam,” he said in a soothing voice, “compose yourself. Do not panic because of a clever parlor trick.”

“She knows what I am,” said the voice that spoke through my lips. “I will not be denied.”

“You seek vengeance, then?” a new voice challenged, and a face like a skull swam out of the darkness. A jolt shook me in the fraction of an instant before Bascombe emerged fully into the light, and his dark suit and hair became visible. He had been sitting silently in the darkness beyond the table.

“I seek peace,” said Margaret, and for an instant such agony welled up in her voice that tears pricked my eyes at the reminder that none of this was her doing. Her life had been cut short by her supposed friend, and Margaret’s spirit had only tried, with such small strength as was available to it, to protect and warn her son. “Leave this house and do not return, Lavinia. You’ll not harm my son and his bride, or you shall learn what true suffering is.”

“Enough!” Mrs. Dove shouted. A moment’s desperate fumbling beneath her overskirt, and to my shock she was extending a pistol toward Margaret. Toward me. “When I killed you I ended any control you have over this house—or me. I will find the spring, and there isn’t a thing you can do to stop me.”

“Do not dare,” Margaret thundered in a voice like doom, and then the pistol fired.

Margaret still controlled my body, and she threw me sideways to escape the bullet’s path. But I seemed to move with paralyzed slowness, and I could see the others moving in the same sluggish way—Roderick reaching out for me, his mouth forming a shout; Arabel flinching away from the sound of the shot; and Dr. Carfax and Mr. Bascombe both starting toward Mrs. Dove as if to subdue her. A look of fear and triumph was frozen on her face.

I struck the fire screen as I fell and felt a burst of heat along my leg. Then Roderick was crouching over me, rolling me in a rug, and vision and sound were muted. I could still hear shouted words, but I could not tell what they were until he freed me.

I blinked up at him, dazed. Arabel hovered behind him. “Sybil, are you all right?” she cried.

“I believe so, yes.” My voice and body seemed to be my own again, and it was disorienting. My leg smarted, but not badly. “Let me sit up, Roderick.”

“Not until I’m certain your clothes have not caught fire.” He patted me firmly in a number of places that were probably inappropriate, but this was not the time to be concerned about that. His eyes were wide and his movements hasty, almost panicked. “The bullet didn’t graze you, did it?”

“You had best tell me.”

He turned me this way and that, scanning for a wound. “She must have missed you. Thank heaven. You could have died. She could have killed you.” Suddenly he was holding me in his arms and kissing me over and over.

This was delightful but ill timed, and I pushed at his chest so that he would let me speak. “Roderick, wait. Where is she? Mrs. Dove?”

“God only knows. Somewhere in the house.”

Distant shouts told me that the other men were in pursuit of her. “Arabel,” I said, “your brother is in the dining room. Make certain he knows that she has a gun and is liable to turn on anyone.”

“Of course.” She gave me one last look of anxiety and affection mixed, then ran from the room.

“Thank heaven you’re all right,” said Roderick again. “What happened just now? You sounded… it is impossible, I know, but your voice… and you looked not quite yourself, either.”

“It was your mother. She—well—borrowed me. I found this bed jacket after I left and realized Mrs. Dove had killed your mother with it. It is poisoned with arsenic.”

“Arsenic? Good God!” He grabbed the jacket and pulled it off me, and before I could even react he had wadded it up and flung it well away from us. “It hasn’t harmed you, has it?”

“No, I’m quite all right. I just had to come back and warn you, especially knowing Mrs. Dove was here. And then Margaret… well, you saw what happened.” I shivered. It would be a long time before I could think of Margaret Lammle without a shudder for what had happened to her.

He tore off his shabby black jacket and wrapped it around me. “I should never have sent you away. And I should never have let that woman in the house.” He hesitated. “Is she—is my mother—”

“She’s gone now. Or at least she isn’t in possession of my body anymore.”

He took that as a cue to eye the aforementioned body, and the beginnings of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “You really will seize upon any pretext to parade yourself before me without your clothes on, won’t you?”

This hardly seemed fair, considering that he had stripped the bed jacket from me, but there were other things more pressing than badinage. “Roderick,” I said urgently, “You must believe that I didn’t take the money. The troupe’s money, I mean. I didn’t steal it.”

With a forefinger he lifted a loose tendril of hair out of my eyes. “I know that now,” he said gently. “No one as loyal as you could have done such a thing. You came back here to warn me after I cast you off most cruelly. That’s not the action of a woman who would betray her friends.” He had bent his head to kiss me again when running footsteps burst into the room.

“She’s set the place afire,” Arabel cried. “She is throwing lamps in her path so that we cannot follow her, and they have caught.”

“The main stair and the drawing room are alight,” Dr. Carfax added, at her side. “What can we do?”

Roderick sprang to his feet, then reached down to help me rise. “There is a portable pump with a hose in the closet beneath the main stair. Sybil and I will get it working. If you will find Mrs. Vise and the Tullys and make certain they know of the danger—both dangers—”

“At once,” said Dr. Carfax briefly, and caught Arabel’s hand to draw her after him. They vanished through the doorway to the dining room.

“They said the staircase is already alight!” I cried, following Roderick as he darted after them. “What if we can’t reach the hose?”

The great hall was already filling with smoke. Shocked, I saw flames drawing bright outlines along the drawing room doorway; within, a brighter blaze shot up from the carpet and furnishings. That must have been the start of the blaze. The fire had only reached the first few steps of the great staircase. Roderick found the closet door, which I had not noticed before, and yanked it open. A wheeled metal device with a hose met my eyes.

But the hose was frayed and rotted. That much was clear even before Roderick rapped out an oath and snatched at the end to unreel it. It was not usable. “What now?” I asked, trying to keep panic out of my voice.

Mr. Keith came running toward us from the direction of the kitchen. “I am so sorry,” he cried. “I left my post. I had to sneeze—I was afraid of being heard—”

“No matter,” Roderick said. “Tell Tully, if you see him, to ride out for help.”

“What can I do?” I demanded.

The face he turned toward me was rigid with urgency. The smoke was thickening every moment, and soon it would not be safe for us inside at all. The house of his youth was being destroyed before his eyes. “Buckets,” he said. “In the kitchen. We’ll fill them at the tap. And in the wine cellar there’s an old well—spring fed—we’ll work twice as fast if we use it.”

“An old well?” I repeated, and even as the words left my lips, I saw the pale three-cornered face of Mrs. Dove hovering over the minister’s shoulder through the smoke. The triumphant curve of her lips told me that she had overheard—and thought that she had found the answer she sought. “Mr. Keith, behind you!” I cried.

He whirled around, but before he could make a move she fired the pistol. The sound struck my ears like a blow, and a chip of marble sprang up from the floor. Immediately she darted away down the passage, her shoes striking echoes from the marble tiles.

“Tully!” Roderick roared. “Carfax! Head her off!”

“She’s going to the wine cellar,” I shouted. “Where is Bascombe?” The crackling of the fire was growing louder, and it was harder to be heard.

“Here,” said his voice so close to my ear that I started. His face, once ghastly pale, had streaks of soot upon it. “We must catch her, and quickly. If we do not all get out of the house soon…”

“Then you must help us!” Roderick shouted. “You have the best chance of any of us to make her see reason.”

But the woman was a stranger to reason, I thought, as I raced after Roderick to the door of the wine cellar. It was standing open. “She’ll shoot,” I called to him. “Don’t follow her too close.”

“Let me,” Bascombe ordered, pushing past us and plummeting down the steps. I was all too glad to let him go first. He had some connection with her; perhaps she would listen to him and allow herself to be led from the house, and we could all escape to the outdoors before it became an inferno.

The dim light of a candle illuminated the wine cellar; it cast leaping shadows on the stone walls, where moisture glistened eerily. The scrape of metal on stone came to my ears, and as we ran toward the far end of the underground room, where the wine racks ended, I could see the bent form of Mrs. Dove. In the candle’s light her shadow was grotesquely misshapen, hunched like a crone from a fairy story. She was unfastening the latch of a round metal lid that covered the circular stone rim, slightly raised from the floor, of what I knew must be the well. As Roderick flung out his arm to stop me before we drew any closer, she threw the lid back on its hinges, and the clanging clatter echoed shockingly in the narrow chamber.

Her face, when she lifted it toward us, was triumphant. Then she raised the pistol. “Stay back,” she commanded. With her gaze and the gun both aimed at us, she stepped onto the stone rim of the well.

Bascombe, a few paces ahead of us, held out a hand in appeal. “Mrs. Dove,” he said, with a gentleness I had never heard from him before. “Lavinia. Don’t do this.”

She laughed, and her face was as untroubled as a child’s. “Gareth, why would you stop me?” she asked, and her voice was once again as sweet as when we had first met. “This is my apotheosis, my heart’s desire. I shall be eternally young.”

“Lavinia, you’ll die.” His voice was pitched low, so as not to panic her, but there was a note of anguish there that wrung my heart. He truly cared for this woman.

She shook her head. Her fine silky hair was coming out of its pins and hung in wild strands about her face, but her expression was serene. “I shall never die,” she said softly. “Not now that I have found the spring. Be comforted, Gareth. You shall see me again soon.”

Before any of us could speak or make a motion, she had stepped off the rim and dropped out of sight into the well.

To my stunned senses it seemed a long time before we heard a splash. Bascombe screamed—the most horrifying sound I had ever heard in my life—and darted to the edge of the well, leaning over to peer down. “Lavinia!”

“Careful, man! Or you’ll follow her down.” Roderick seized him by the arm and made to pull him back, but the lawyer thrashed wildly against him.

“She’ll drown! Quick—a rope. She can still be saved. Lavinia!”

Roderick seized him by the lapels and forced him around to look him in the face. “Take hold of yourself! There is no time.”

A terrible rending, cracking noise sounded from above. When I looked up, I could see flame licking along the beams overhead. Even as I watched, a searing orange and yellow glow enveloped this end of the chamber. “It’s falling in!” I shouted. “Get back, now!”

The firelight was reflected in Roderick’s eyes as he looked up at the blazing ceiling, and I saw the muscles in his neck stand out as he threw his strength into hauling Bascombe back from the well’s mouth. I staggered back, throwing my arm up to protect myself as a beam cracked in half and fell toward us in a shower of sparks.

It landed across the mouth of the well with a force that crumbled the rim and sent blocks of stone plummeting into the void. There would be no way of rescuing Mrs. Dove now. And as the flames darted overhead more swiftly, we were all in danger of being crushed or burnt.

Bascombe strained toward the wreckage over the well, but Roderick shouted in his ear, “Stop struggling or I’ll knock you out and carry you. Either way, it’s on your soul if we die because of you. Now, man! You can do nothing more for her tonight!”

The lawyer’s body seemed to sag. He did not resist as Roderick and I each grabbed one of his arms and dragged him to the staircase. When we reached the stairs some belated sense of self-preservation spurred him to walk under his own power, or I doubt we could have emerged from the house in time. As it was, we struggled through the smoke-filled passage to the back door, a line of flame almost seeming to race us as we staggered toward the doorway to freedom.

The sharp cold air had never tasted so good. I relished every gust of icy wind against my scantily clad body, and the crunch of the snow under my boots was like a celebration. We lived.

Roderick and I turned Bascombe loose and stood with our arms around each other, watching with dazed eyes as flame engulfed the house we had once warred over.

Tully had ridden out for help, it developed, but the neighbors he rounded up were too late, and the fire had grown too huge, for the house to be saved. By daybreak the damage was complete, and as soon as it was safe to do so, men brought a team of horses to drag away the beams that covered the well opening.

I stood watching from beside a bonfire some of the neighbors had built well back from the site. There was still so much charred and smoking debris on the site of the house that I did not want to risk going closer, but since Roderick was among those working there, I could not leave until I knew he was out of danger. Someone had found a dress and cloak for me to wear, so at least I was not completely exposed to the elements while I waited. At length he trudged back through the wreckage and snow and ice to my side.

“There’s no way she survived that,” he said, putting his arm around me. “Maybe it’s just as well. I wouldn’t have wanted to go through a trial and recount how she killed my mother… or from what an unconventional source I learned the facts.”

“Has she been found?”

He shook his head. “Probably she will be when the spring thaw comes.”

The thought made me shudder. “Why did you bring her here for the séance?” I asked. “After what happened at her musicale, I was astonished to see her.”

“And a little hurt as well, I expect.”

“Well… yes.”

His arm tightened around my waist, and his hazel eyes were very tender when he smiled down at me. “It wasn’t my intention to hurt you. But I had come to see what you saw in her all along—a sense that she was duplicitous and scheming, that she was singling me out for some reason to charm. While I have a healthy sense of my own good points, I could not see that my person alone could inspire such a tenacious pursuit.”

“Such modesty,” I said, tousling his curly hair.

“There was something more, though. Once when she didn’t think I was listening she spoke of my mother with a strange contempt, which was especially odd since she claimed to have been my mother’s dearest friend. So I began to wonder if she had cultivated my mother for the same reason she was making up to me. I wanted to see what would happen if she was permitted to be medium at a séance. I felt certain she would find a way to turn it to her own advantage, and I wanted to learn all that I could about her aims.”

“So after the musicale you went to her and renewed the invitation?”

“I did not even have to do that—all I had to do was return to Willowwood. She was so eager to smooth things over with me that it made me even more suspicious.” He shook his head in mock sorrow. “To think that she was only after me for my property… just like you. You women are rapacious creatures.”

“Do not, I beg you, put me in the same category as that despicable woman, even in jest!” The very thought reminded me that I had not yet told him all of my story, and I felt I could not wait another moment to clear myself in his eyes. “Roderick,” I said, “I want to explain the embezzling story Bascombe told you.”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“No, I really must. My troupe was in financial straits. Atherton, my manager, confessed to me that he had been gambling with the receipts, and keeping that a secret was crucial to his partnering with a new leading lady who could fill the seats better than I. A scapegoat was required—and I filled that role.”

Roderick’s dark brows drew together in a frown. “But why would he let you take the blame like that? That was far too great a sacrifice. He can’t be much of a man to agree to such a thing.”

“Well,” I said awkwardly, “as far as agreeing goes… it was rather his idea.”

“His idea?” He stared at me with a degree of consternation that was almost comical.

“I owed him a great deal, you see. He had been almost a father to me.”

He snorted derisively. “A most unnatural father, forcing you to sacrifice your good name and your career to save his own miserable hide. I’d like to thrash the scoundrel within an inch of his life.” He strode a few paces away, then spun to face me. Even his hair seemed to be bristling with outrage. “We’ll take him to court,” he announced. “We should sue him for slander. This horrible fiction can’t be allowed to spread any further.”

This was gallant but alarming. “Dearest, don’t you see that if we expose the truth he and the troupe may lose their livelihood?” I pleaded.

He dragged his fingers through his hair in frustration. “If it does ruin him, he brought it on himself.”

“Please don’t judge him too harshly. After all, I did agree…”

“Of course, because he knew exactly how to make it impossible to refuse. Who would know better that your loving heart and your loyalty made you vulnerable to his wheedling and conniving? That blasted Atherton!”

His anger would accomplish nothing right now. “I love that you wish to clear my name,” I said placatingly. “Believe me, I would like to clear it as well! But now is not the time to find a solution.” I gazed past him at the blackened ruins of Brooke House. “We have enough to deal with right here.”

“So we do.” His jaw set as he, too, stared at the wreckage. “It’s difficult to believe that one wicked woman could sow so much destruction.”

“I loved her,” said a deep voice, and I jumped a little. Mr. Bascombe, unnoticed, had joined us. His cadaverous face wore an expression so bleak that I could almost pity him. Almost, but not quite. “True, she was desperate and selfish—”

“And a murderess,” Roderick reminded him in a steely tone.

“That as well, yes. But I loved her all the same. From the day I first visited Brooke House on business for Alcott Lammle and saw her in conversation with your mother, I was lost. She became everything to me in that instant.”

“So you became her puppet,” I said, “working secretly on her behalf while pretending that your loyalty was to Alcott.”

“Yes,” he said simply.

Roderick’s face darkened. “Did you know that she killed my mother?”

The horror on Bascombe’s face seemed genuine. “That I assuredly did not, Mr. Brooke. I… I was aware that it was very convenient for her, but I did not suspect her capable of cold-blooded murder.”

“Yet you tried to prevent me from marrying Alcott,” I said. “She had already had two years in which to inveigle him into marriage. If she could not manage it in that length of time, what made you think that she still had a chance with him?”

“Her fear held her back from putting herself in his path. She was afraid to travel too far away from Brooke House once she had determined that the spring was somewhere on the property, convinced that her life was bound up in it somehow. But she was certain that someday Lammle would return here, and then she would work her charms upon him. After you scotched that plan…”

“Then I became the object of her attentions.” Roderick’s voice was somber. “My mother’s killer meant to make herself my wife. It is enough to sicken one’s very soul.”

I took his hand and held it tight. “I am glad that Margaret was able to face her killer,” I said. “Perhaps now she will be able to sleep peacefully in her grave.”

Bascombe’s gaze momentarily left its distant contemplation and focused on me. “Ah, yes,” he said thoughtfully. “That was quite a performance of yours last night, Mrs. Lammle.”

“It was no performance,” I told him. “It was a visitation.”

He considered this in silence, his gaze once more becoming remote. Perhaps, I thought with a shudder, he was hoping that the ghost of Mrs. Dove would haunt him. Such a fate might be more dreadful than even he deserved.

“What will you do now?” Roderick asked gruffly. “Attempt to conceal your wrongdoings and continue in the law as if you had never betrayed it?”

There was only the slightest hesitation before Bascombe shook his head. “No,” he said quietly, bowing his head. “You’re right, my hands are not clean. I may not have conspired to murder, but I did betray my profession—as well as the trust of those who employed me. I shall have to seek some other means of making my way in the world. And perhaps I can even make amends to some small degree.”

Dipping one bony hand into the breast pocket of his coat, he produced an envelope, and the handwriting on it made my eyes widen. “This is for you,” he told me. “I obtained it when it was delivered to the Lammle Arms. I had intended to keep the contents quiet until Mrs. Dove had achieved her end regarding Mr. Brooke, but it can do no harm now, and may bring you comfort.”

After everything else he had done, I should not have been shocked that the man had opened and read a letter addressed to me. The hand I extended to take the envelope was not quite steady, for I had recognized the writing as Atherton’s. I extracted the letter from within and began to read.

My sweet nymph, it began, typically. By now the grievous knowledge will have reached your ears that your once illustrious name is blackened, and by none other than your doleful servant. But let not your heart be downcast! All has changed in the blink of an eye…

“Good heavens,” I exclaimed as my eyes darted through the florid phrases to find the meat of the message. “Atherton is married! ”

My beloved’s expression darkened even more, if that was possible. “If he expects a wedding gift from us, he will be greatly disappointed.”

“No, quite the opposite, in fact.” Joy and astonishment brought laughter bubbling up from my throat as I scanned the rest of the message. “He has married a wealthy patroness of the arts, and she has persuaded him to clear my name! Now that his future is secure and he has no fear of becoming a bankrupt or a pariah, he has publicly admitted that he… what is his word… ‘misrepresented’ me.”

“The fatuous old fraud,” Roderick growled, snatching for the letter. “He’s lucky he isn’t where I can get my hands on him. As it is, I’ve half a mind to show up on his new bride’s doorstep and bloody his nose. What’s the address?”

“Now, now, let us be generous,” I said, holding the letter out of his reach. “He apologizes quite prettily, and he truly does seem remorseful.”

“As well he should! He almost ruined you, and I cannot forgive that. A thrashing is most definitely in order.”

I had the luxury of being forgiving since he was displaying all the righteous indignation that I would otherwise have felt. “My love, you would give him a heart attack, and I won’t have that on your conscience—or mine.” I took his arm. “Come to the stable. I’m told there’s a pot of coffee on the stove in the groom’s quarters, and you must warm yourself, unless you wish to let your temper serve that purpose.”

Mr. Bascombe had resumed his contemplation of the wreckage of Brooke House, and he looked so empty that I sensed something inside him had broken. I gave him a brief nod of farewell, and he offered one in return before his gaze drifted back to the ruin. Roderick and I left him there, a man who had lost his purpose, mourning his beloved murderess.

Roderick walked at my side, but his eyes soon fixed on some place far away. “A visitation,” he said, echoing my earlier phrasing. “What was it like? Could you sense what she was feeling?”

I knew what he wanted to ask. “I certainly felt her love for you,” I said. “She forgave you long since for not being with her when she was dying, Roderick. She doesn’t want you to reproach yourself for that. Your happiness is her dearest wish.”

Roderick drew me to a stop and pulled me into his arms. “Bless you for that,” he whispered.

Another wish of Margaret’s had made itself known last night, too. She had called me Roderick’s bride. I decided not to bring that up at this moment, but it was certainly a topic I wanted to return to at a more appropriate time. “She always acted to protect you,” I said. “Even when she tried that first night to scare me away, I think it was because at that time she saw me as your enemy. But then I believe she realized that I—well—that you and I were not destined to remain adversaries. And when Mrs. Dove gave me the poisoned dress, she destroyed it to protect me.”

“The dress was poisoned as well?” he demanded. When I nodded, he drew me to him again in a fervent embrace. “Thank heaven she prevented you from wearing it. It horrifies me to think what might have happened if she hadn’t.”

“She was a wonderful woman, your mother,” I said softly. “I am glad I had the chance to know her a little.”

His smile was bittersweet. “As am I.”

Presently we resumed our journey toward the stable, and he asked, “Are you certain she has completely left you?”

“Positive.” I suspected her spirit no longer clung to Brooke House now that justice had been served, but certainly I felt no presence in my mind of any consciousness but my own.

“That’s good,” he said, and his voice had taken on the roguish quality I knew so well. “The last thing I want is to be reminded of my mother when I hold you in my arms.”

“Oh?” I said, brightening. “So you have plans in that regard, do you?”

“Many plans,” he murmured, in that husky tone that brushed over the surface of my skin like silk velvet. “Many, many plans.”

What mortal woman could resist that? This time I was the one to draw to a stop so that I could kiss him.

Presently, though, I found that there was an answer I desired every bit as much as I desired his next kiss. “Dearest,” I asked, “when you said that earlier, about my only wanting you for the house—”

He was already shaking his head. “I was an oaf to say such a thing, even in jest. Please think no more about it.”

“I just need to be certain that there wasn’t a grain of truth to it.” It took a moment for me to work up the courage to say, “I want to be sure that you don’t see me as you saw Julia—that you don’t believe that my love for you is a disguise for self-interest.”

“Of course I don’t believe that!”

“Yet it was self-interest that brought me to Brooke House.” I had to make the case against myself as strong as I could so that he could demolish it entirely. I must be merciless, even though what I wanted was to stop conversing altogether and kiss him until we were both breathless.

He took my face in his hands and looked into my eyes, as solemn as a judge. Which was, in a way, the position in which I was placing him. But his brilliant eyes were clear and untroubled.

“Sybil,” he said solemnly, “I understand now what your motives were in coming here. When my stepfather died, what other choice did you have without sacrificing your self-respect? I know how desperate you were and yet how well meaning, with your adorable, idealistic fancies of becoming a guardian to young Master Roderick Brooke. My sweet, you are as different from Julia as a queen from a guttersnipe, and I shall never stop reproaching myself for not believing you when you first told me of your innocence.”

“If it comes to that,” I ventured, “why didn’t you?”

Dropping his eyes, he rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. “You know what I thought of actresses before I came to know you. What Julia’s betrayal did to me.” His voice was rough with embarrassment. “And then there was your monologue at the musicale. Your performance was like nothing I had ever seen or heard before. I realized then that you were a true artist—and a gifted one. So later, when Bascombe told me the nasty little story, I realized that someone with your acting talent might have been able to fool me.” He pressed a contrite kiss to my forehead. “I was too happy, you see,” he said sheepishly. “The last time I felt even a fraction of such joy, disaster followed. I couldn’t trust the happiness you had brought me. Not then.”

“And now?”

“Now?” The smile that broke over his face warmed me more than the sunlight. “Do you know, I could almost thank that booby Atherton for his colossal selfishness, since it brought you into my life. From the moment we met, you got into my blood and bewitched me.”

A blush of pleasure warmed my cheeks. “I thought you might only have been pretending—playing the cad in an attempt to be rid of me.”

The mischievous grin that I loved came over his face. “In part, to be sure. But I wouldn’t have fought you off if you had agreed to any of my lecherous suggestions.”

“You are a wicked rascal,” I told him, but I’m afraid I was unable to summon much indignation.

“That’s quite likely.” His words curled around me like silken strands. “But I’m the wicked rascal who loves you more dearly than life itself—and cannot imagine a future without you in it.”

“I am glad to hear it, for I feel exactly the same about you.” I laid my hand against his cheek, marveling at how much this extraordinary man had come to mean to me. “You have changed everything for me,” I said softly. “I love you, Roderick, and I cannot wait to see what adventures are in store for us in our life together.”

He drew me to him for a kiss. “With you by my side, life will be a glorious adventure indeed. After all, it was your fire and ardency and strength that gave me the courage to get my father’s violin out again. And when I found I could play”—he seized me around the waist and lifted me high in the air, swinging me in a circle until the world spun and I shrieked in protest—“it was like finding my way back from the land of the dead. I will always love you for that, Sybil.” He set me on my feet again and held me close as the world reeled around us. Softly he said, “But more than that, I’ll always love you for being you.” He punctuated each word with a kiss. “Infuriating… intoxicating… incomparable you.”

I was still dizzy, and not only from his kisses. But it did not matter, for there was one fixed point in my universe: the man before me. As long as he was there to be my center, the rest of the world might fly away.

By noon, as we warmed ourselves at the wood stove in the back room of the stable and drank soup brought from the manse by Mrs. Washington, people were starting to disperse. Arabel and Dr. Carfax tarried the longest, smiling a great deal at each other but saying very little. It emerged that, while Roderick and the lawyer and I had been locked in that final confrontation with Mrs. Dove, Arabel and Dr. Carfax had been in the small parlor above when a section of the floor abruptly gave way.

Arabel told me that she had never been more frightened in her life than when Dr. Carfax half vanished through the gap in the floor. She grasped desperately for his hands, and with her help he was able to pull himself to safety while those of us below were flinching back from the falling beam.

“In that first moment I thought he was as good as dead,” she told me softly. “I thought I was watching him die. So when he lived—when I was able to help him climb out and escape the fire—it felt as if he had been granted another life.” She regarded her hands, smudged with soot and pink with scrapes. “And so had I.” She raised her eyes to meet mine, and though there were tears in them, they were bright with hope. “It is time I let myself live again,” she said simply. “I want to build a life with Edmund. And I don’t think Phineas would begrudge me another chance at happiness.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t,” I said, embracing her.

For a moment she returned the embrace, but then she released me and sprang to her feet. “We have something for you and Mr. Brooke,” she said eagerly. “Edmund? Shall we show them now?”

Dr. Carfax appeared so promptly that I suspected he was staying close to her side, and I could not blame him for it. His good-natured face was beaming all over, even though his hair and clothes were dark with soot. “It’s in the empty stall next to the mare. Sand, I think she’s called. Brooke, have you a moment?” he asked, raising his voice, and Roderick broke away from his conversation with Tully to join us.

Sand flicked her ears at us inquisitively as we crowded into the stall next to hers. Leaning against the back wall were two large paintings—vivid landscapes that I recognized as Margaret Lammle’s. I gasped in delight, and Roderick knelt to touch them as if to reassure himself that they were real.

“Arabel,” I exclaimed, “is that why you and the doctor were in the small parlor?”

She nodded. “Mr. Brooke showed the paintings to us before dinner, after you… er… left. I knew that he would be desolate to lose them.”

“I’m sorry we weren’t able to salvage more of them,” the doctor added. “But what with the floor caving in and so on…”

“Carfax, I cannot thank you enough. You or Miss Keith.” Roderick drew the second painting away from the wall, and then he went very still. His voice was hushed and almost reverent when he asked, “How did you find my father’s violin?”

Arabel and her betrothed exchanged a puzzled glance. “We didn’t find a violin,” she said. “It wasn’t here when we brought in the paintings, was it, Edmund?”

“Indeed it wasn’t. Is it valuable, Brooke? If so, I’m glad it turned up.”

Roderick sprang the catches of the violin case and lifted the lid. The gleaming surface of the instrument was untouched by smoke or flame, as if it had been spirited out of the house well before the fire had spread. As perhaps it had.

When he raised his head and met my eyes, I knew that we were thinking the same thing: somehow his mother had made this final gift to him. “Thank you,” he said under his breath, and perhaps a lingering presence there heard the words.

The miraculous escape of his violin from the fire was all the more wondrous because so little else had survived. The news about the house was uniformly grim. Almost nothing would be salvageable, it seemed, and I felt a little flicker of sadness for the loss of my magenta gown. But gowns could be replaced, after all… as could all the other clothing, furnishings, linens, dishes, and necessaries of life that had gone up in smoke. And even houses could be rebuilt.

Still, the cost of replacing all that the fire had taken—or even just a part of it—was likely to be staggering. When Tully had finished making his final report of the damages and withdrawn, I could not suppress a small sigh. “It looks as if we shall be as poor as poor can be, at least at first,” I said to Roderick. “Not that I mind, of course, but you must be patient with me as I learn how to live on a schoolmaster’s pay.”

My beloved cocked his head and gave me a perplexed look. “What are you talking about? I have money, and plenty of it.”

“You do? From where?”

“You goose, I made a king’s ransom when I toured as Rory Brooke. Even a year of consuming every bottle of wine and laudanum on the Continent hardly made a dent in the sum.”

“But you dress like—well—a country schoolmaster.”

“What a snob you are,” he teased, tugging one of my ringlets. “There was no reason for me to dress richly to teach piano to schoolchildren. We are quite comfortable, my Sybil, have no fear. And we’ll only become wealthier when we start touring and performing together.”

“You mean you don’t want to stay here in the countryside?” I exclaimed, hope rising in my heart with such suddenness that it almost choked me.

He laughed. “Whatever would make you think that? Now that you’ve given me back my music and have shown such a remarkable talent of your own, nothing can keep us here. That business about your being past your prime as an actress is simply nonsense. We’ll soon be drawing crowds in the finest theaters in Europe.”

To return to the stage, on my own terms, and in the company of the most exciting man I had ever known—it was so enchanting a prospect that I could hardly grasp it at once. “I have longed to return to Italy,” I admitted. “And I’ve never been to Austria. We can even visit Professor Hartmann.”

“Certainly we can. Think of it, love—performing together, inspiring each other… it will be paradise.”

Slipping my arms around his neck, I gazed into his captivating eyes. “It will indeed,” I said softly. “But when are we to be married?”

His grin was devilish. “Who said anything about marriage?”

I released him and gave him a little shove. “You rogue. You aren’t going to take me with you through Europe as your doxy.” Then a smile touched my lips as the perfect dialogue came to me. “I do here put off all vain ceremony,” I told him, “and only do appear to you a young widow that claims you for her husband.”

“Are you quoting some play?” he demanded suspiciously.

“You must get used to it, I’m afraid. It’s one of my endearing little quirks.”

“Hmm,” he said, eyeing me. But then his grin broke out again. “How about this?” he asked. “My heart’s so full of joy that I shall do some wild extravagance of love in public; and the foolish world, which knows not tenderness, will think me mad.”

“Dearest,” I exclaimed, touched. “Dryden?”

“All for Love, my sweet, all for you.”

The sound of someone clearing his throat interrupted our idyll. “I hate to disturb you at such a moment,” Mr. Keith said, “but what are your plans for the property?”

I glared at him. The last thing I wanted at this moment was to talk about such boring business.

Roderick, however, was more tolerant. “I don’t think we’ll rebuild,” he told the minister. “My wife and I shall make our home in whatever European city we choose to alight in until we move on, so there’s not much point in maintaining a house here.”

Even though that vision of our shared future thrilled me, I wanted to be sure that it would leave him no regrets. “Are you certain you won’t miss having a home here where you grew up?”

His seductive smile summoned a flock of butterflies to my stomach. “My home will be in your arms, love.”

“Perhaps I can help you find new positions for the staff,” said Mr. Keith, who was really showing an astonishing lack of tact.

“Of course,” Roderick said—absently, for I was distracting him by drawing a pattern on his waistcoat with my fingertip.

“And may I make a suggestion?”

It seemed impossible to stop him, but I managed to refrain from saying this aloud.

Oblivious to my irritation, Mr. Keith continued, “The legend Mrs. Dove believed in held that the Mahicans cursed this land when they were driven out and barred from use of the sacred spring.”

“Are you suggesting,” Roderick asked, “that such a curse really exists?”

The minister shrugged and smiled. “Mrs. Lammle tried to tell me once that my ideas were too narrow as regards supernatural phenomena. Perhaps it’s a good idea to err on the side of caution.”

“You mean, make the well available to all?” Roderick did not have to think about it for long. “It’s agreeable to me. I can deed the land for public use as a park, or whatever legal arrangement is necessary. Does that suit you, Sybil?”

“Oh, quite. But I have a question for the good reverend. How soon may Roderick and I be married?”

He smiled, and Roderick laughed outright. “My love, I have not even proposed to you yet.”

“Then permit me to suggest that this would be an admirable opportunity, dearest. Wouldn’t you like to celebrate our engagement with all those closest to us?”

When he looked around, he saw that we were surrounded by interested faces. It seemed that everyone who had come to help us in the fire’s aftermath had a keen interest in seeing us wedded. The Tullys were there, and Mrs. Vise, and even Bertha, who had arrived with Mrs. Washington. Arabel and Dr. Carfax, who had not yet departed, stood beaming at us hand in hand—perhaps a double wedding would be in order.

And just beyond them, in the shadows where the stable was dim, I had an impression of another presence. Beside me I felt Roderick become aware of her at the same instant, his gaze following the same direction as mine.

Indistinct in the dimness stood a woman with a sensitive, intelligent face. Though her form was not quite solid, she looked whole and healthy, as she must have been before her tragic final weeks. Her gentle smile radiated love at Roderick, and I heard him catch his breath. Then her unearthly gaze shifted to me and, still smiling, she laid her hand on her heart in a brief gesture of thanks before stepping forward into a stray shaft of sunlight.

In the glow of the sunshine her nebulous form seemed to dissolve into brilliance, and in the space of a moment she was gone. Margaret Brooke Lammle was truly free.

The face Roderick turned to me was alight. “Did you see…?” he whispered.

“Yes, my love.” My happiness was so complete that euphoria threatened to tip over into giddiness. “I think we can safely presume that we have your mother’s blessing.”

Roderick drew me into his arms once again. “Vixen,” he murmured in my ear. “How did you manage to transform my life so completely?”

I smiled to myself. Here, as in so many cases, Shakespeare said it best.

“It was as easy as lying,” I said.

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Also by Amanda DeWees

Follow the adventures of Sybil Ingram’s seamstress, Clara, in With This Curse.

“A feast for the eye and a joy to devour.” —InD’Tale magazine

Can a curse strike twice in a woman’s life?

In 1854, seventeen-year-old chambermaid Clara Crofton was dismissed from Gravesend Hall for having fallen in love with Richard Blackwood, the younger son of the house. Alone in the world, Clara found a tenuous position as a seamstress, but she always blamed the Gravesend curse for the disaster that had befallen her—and for Richard’s death soon after in the Crimean War.

A proposal…

Now, more than eighteen years later, Richard’s twin, Atticus, seeks out Clara with a strange proposal: if she will marry him and live with him as his wife in name only to ease the mind of his dying father, Atticus will then endow her with a comfortable income for the rest of her life. Clara knows that he is not disclosing his true motives, but when she runs out of options for an independent life, she has no choice but to become Atticus’s wife.

A deception…

For Clara, returning to Gravesend as a bride brings some triumph… but also great unease. Not only must she pretend to be a wellborn lady and devoted wife to a man whose face is a constant reminder of the love she lost, but ominous portents whisper that her masquerade brings grave danger. “This house will take from you what you most treasure,” her mother once warned her. But the curse has already taken the man Clara loved. Will it now demand her life?

Available in ebook and paperback ~ Length: 284 pages

Sensuality level: mild/sweet ~ Book club discussion questions included

Explore more captivating historical romantic suspense in Sea of Secrets:

Winner of the 2012 Reward of Novel Excellence award in mystery

“A captivating take on the traditional gothic romance.” —Raven Hart

Can she save him from the darkness in his soul… or will it destroy them both?

After her brother is killed in the Crimean War, innocent young Oriel Pembroke finds herself alone in the world. Disowned by the cruel father who has always despised her, she has nowhere to turn until she is taken under the wing of a glamorous relative she never knew: the former Duchess of Ellsworth, who has scandalized society by remarrying soon after her first husband’s death. At the opulent seaside estate of Ellsmere, Oriel thinks she has found a safe haven—but the darkly handsome young duke, Herron, believes otherwise. Haunted by the death of his father, he suspects that Ellsmere is sheltering a murderer.

Even as Oriel falls in love with the duke, she begins to fear that his grief and suspicion are turning to madness. When dangerous accidents start to befall both Herron and Oriel, however, she realizes that someone may be trying to stop them from discovering the truth about the past. And when someone from her past comes back into her life, she learns that he may hold the answer to the most horrifying secret of all…

Available in ebook, paperback, and audiobook ~ Length: 290 pages

Sensuality level: mild/sweet ~ Book club discussion questions included

Acknowledgments

Writing is a famously solitary occupation, but it is made both easier and more companionable by numerous wonderful people in my life. My particular thanks go to S.M. Boyce, Glenda Corwin, and Caitlyn Mitchell, for encouragement at critical times; to Red L. Jameson for research assistance; to my wise critique partners, Martha Crockett and Raven Hart (Susan Goggins); to ingenious plot wrangler Maurice Cobbs; and to my sharp-eyed beta readers, Lisa Blackwell, Joani Van Demark, and Peyton Smith-Hopman.

I’m also grateful to my brilliant editor, Diana Plattner, and my extraordinary cover designer, James T. Egan, for making Nocturne shine. And, as always, my love and gratitude go to my parents for their encouragement and support. Mom, I think you’ll really like this one.

About the Author

Amanda DeWees received her PhD in English literature from the University of Georgia and likes to startle people by telling them that her dissertation topic was vampire literature. Her books include the widely praised historical gothic romance Sea of Secrets and the Ash Grove Chronicles, a young adult paranormal romance series set in modern-day North Carolina. Visit her at AmandaDeWees.com for book extras and other delightful diversions.

Books by Amanda DeWees

Nocturne for a Widow

Sea of Secrets

With This Curse

The Ash Grove Chronicles:

The Shadow and the Rose

Casting Shadows

Among the Shadows

Copyright Notice

Nocturne for a Widow

Copyright © 2014 Amanda DeWees

All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or distributed in any printed or electronic form without the prior express written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design

Interior layout and design by Plaid Hat Books, LLC

Visit the author at AmandaDeWees.com or on Facebook as Author Amanda DeWees.