When all remains quiet, I make my way toward the ball only to hear the trio of gossiping women have entered the corridor. To return the way I came means passing them. I should, chin high, but I can’t be bothered. Not if I don’t have to. There’s another way around, and I decide to take it rather than risk any scene that might torpedo my perfect evening.
I head down a hall, and then another and then . . .
And then I’m lost.
Seriously? It’s a house. You can’t get lost in a house.
You can if it’s an estate like this with a dozen bedrooms and a half-dozen sitting rooms. When I spot narrow steps leading up to the second level, I realize I’ve reached the servant wing.
I’m turning around, orienting myself, when I catch a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye. I spin to see the hem of a dress flipping around a corner.
“Miss?” I call.
I hurry to the corner. There’s a young woman ahead. Light hair. A pale blue dress. Moving soundlessly as her feet seem to float an inch above the floor.
A chill runs through me.
I shake it off. I don’t see ghosts. Okay, I have seen them, but only at Thorne Manor, and those have all been laid to rest. I haven’t seen one since. Nor have I seen one anyplace else.
This isn’t a ghost. It’s just a maid wearing slippers, a maid who has learned to move noiselessly through the house.
“Miss?” I call again.
She disappears around another corner.
I sigh and lift my skirts to follow. “Miss?” I call. “I’m a guest from the ball. I seem to have lost my way. If you could direct me . . .”
I trail off as I catch a low laugh. A laugh I recognize as the earl’s. I slow and turn the corner to see the young woman looking back at me, her pale face in shadow. She lifts one hand as if in a wave, and I take a tentative step forward. She moves through a doorway, vanishing again.
Another chuckle from somewhere ahead and around yet another corner. Definitely Everett Courtenay. I don’t want to bump into him, and I presume the maid’s thinking the same, waving me into a side room until he’s passed. Skirts lifted again, I jog along the hall and veer into the room she’d entered.
It’s empty.
No, it simply seems empty. It’s a music lounge, complete with a gorgeous little piano and seating that rings the walls. It’s also dark, and I walk in, squinting to see where the girl is hiding.
“Hello?” I whisper.
No answer. I take another step, and my knee thumps against a stool. I stifle a yelp of surprise and bend to move it aside, my fingers sliding over crushed velvet.
Something moves alongside me, and I jump, straightening fast.
“Hello?” I try again.
Nothing. The room is silent and still, the only light coming from the hall. I squint and struggle to see until I’ve surveyed the entire room.
The maid is gone.
I firmly remind myself that I do not see ghosts outside Thorne Manor. Well, the manor and the moors. Still, they’d all been connected to a single killer, and they’ve been laid to rest. Therefore, this is not a ghost.
Then what is it? A teleporting maid?
No, it’s a maid playing a game. I couldn’t see her well enough to guess her age. She could be a parlor maid or a between maid, young enough to have a bit of fun with the fancy guests. Or young enough to want to see the ball, and now she’s hiding before her master catches her. I thought she was waving me into the music parlor, but she could have been waving me on, telling me which way to go to return to the party.
A perfectly reasonable explanation. And I don’t buy it for a second.
I saw the ghost of a woman in a blue dress. Not a maid’s uniform, but a lady’s dress. A fair-haired woman, small of stature.
When I’d been secretly trying to identify the ghosts at Thorne Manor, I’d asked William to describe Rosalind. Could she be tall and dark haired? No, the opposite. Tiny and blond.
Like the figure I just saw.
I take a step deeper into the room and whisper, “If you want to speak to me—”
A yelp sounds outside the door. A young woman’s cry of surprise, dissolving into nervous laughter. I consider, and then I back up to the doorway to listen.
“Please, m’lord,” a young voice says. “I really do need to return to my duties.”
A rumble of a male voice, words indistinguishable, but the tone sounding like Everett Courtenay. I hesitate in the doorway and listen. When another girlish yelp comes, I hurry toward the voices without thinking.
Again, the yelp becomes nervous laughter, and I know that sound only too well. A young woman trying to make light of a concerning situation. Trying to laugh it off.
“You should get back to the ball, m’lord,” the young woman says. “They’ll be expecting you.”
“Is that an order?”
More anxious tittering. “N-no, sir. Of course not. I just thought your guests might appreciate your attentions—”
“More than you?”
The giggles take on a note of panic. “N-no, sir. I appreciate your kind words.”
“They aren’t kind. They’re honest praise. You’ve grown into a very pretty lass.”
I stride around the corner to see that the earl of Tynesford has a maid against the wall, his hand cupping her bottom as he leans into her. It’s Lottie, the maid who came out to greet us.
Lottie lets out a shriek, a little too loud for the surprise of seeing me. I feign a startled gasp and fall back. Then I laugh softly.
“My lord,” I say. “My apologies. You gave me a start. I’ve been wandering these halls for at least a quarter of an hour, trying to find my way back to the party.” I look from him to the maid. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
“Not at all, m’lady,” Lottie says, a little breathlessly as she squirms away from the earl. “His lordship was just asking if I’d refill the punch bowls when I had a moment. Why don’t I escort you back to the ball, and I’ll see what needs to be filled.”
Tynesford doesn’t get a chance to even speak before Lottie is past him, hurrying over to me. I thank the earl for the lovely party. He only glowers at me and then turns on his heel and stalks off.
I let Lottie lead me down another hall. Then I say, as carefully as I can, “I do hope I didn’t interrupt anything you did not want interrupted, Lottie. It sounded as if you might . . . welcome the excuse to escape.”
Her fair cheeks blaze bright scarlet. “Yes, m’lady. I did. Thank you. He . . .” She swallows. “He has had a lot to drink this evening.”
“Ah. That’s a rare occasion, is it?”
Another flush, this one paired with a low chuckle. “It is not, m’lady.”
“Does he often ‘notice’ you when he’s in his cups?”
Her gaze drops, and her feet move faster. “He didn’t used to. Not until this summer. He hasn’t—hasn’t done anything like that. But Cook did warn me I ought to be careful when he’s . . . like this. He surprised me.”
“Hmm.”
“It’s all right, ma’am.” She flashes me a smile that’s a little too bright. “I’ll be fine.”
I don’t answer. I’m already deep in thought. Looking closer at Lottie, I’d guess she’s about sixteen. That explains why she might not have had trouble with the earl before this summer. I could be outraged at the thought that she’d have trouble with him now—she’s a third his age and his employee.
What I just witnessed, though, is hardly a unique situation for a pretty girl in service. I could blame the Victorians, but I remember a summer job at her age, having to deal with my fifty-year-old supervisor’s gaze never rising above my well-endowed chest, with his “accidental” touches that always managed to brush my breasts.
The difference is that I’d been in a temporary position, and I would have quit if it’d gone any farther. I didn’t need the money, and my mother would have insisted I quit if she’d known. Lottie doesn’t have those options. No more than Mary do
es. Their choices are limited, and at sixteen, a job is the beginning of a career. It’s not pocket money but a means to survive.
I can’t offer Lottie a job. She wouldn’t want it anyway, I suspect. This is her family in service, and there’s prestige in working for an earl. She might change her mind if it becomes more than drunken groping in a back hall. Or when it does—I have little doubt it will.
What I can do is inform August. He’ll care. He might have had quite the reputation before he married, but like William, August’s reputation features only willing lovers moving in the same social circles. Neither William nor August has anything good to say about men who dally with their housemaids.
Here, I will interfere. There is no question of that. Which, I reflect as we near the ball, answers my other question, too.
If I intend to live part-time on this side of history, I cannot do it in a bubble. It’s like hearing a cry for help and telling yourself someone else will respond. I despise such people for cowards, and I’ve always vowed I won’t be one of them. If I heard that cry on a modern street, would I pause with a thought for the future I might be disrupting? Wonder whether it’s the victim’s destiny to be attacked, even killed? Of course not. And so I won’t do it here.
Del is right. If true time travel is possible, and I’m in the same timeline as ours, then the universe will accommodate for that. It’ll heal itself.
I won’t act carelessly, but I will act. I must.
11
I find William, and I tell him what I saw in that back hall. With every word I speak, his face darkens, and I begin to wonder whether I should have waited until we’d left. The last thing William’s reputation needs is for him to call out his host. He does no such thing, of course, because whatever his reputation may be, he is well versed in temper management. He’s angry and outraged, but he’s not about to go hunt down Tynesford, not when anything he does could open Lottie to retaliation.
“August wondered whether he’d prey on the child,” William says when I finish. “He has a history of that, which is why the housekeeper prefers to hire older women and girls who are less to his taste. I believe Lottie was a special case, a dire circumstance.”
He glances over my shoulder and then steers me farther aside as a couple approaches, laughing. “The point being that August feared trouble, and he has considered offering the girl a position in his own household. He doesn’t particularly need another maid, but he could find work for her.”
“That would be wonderful,” I say.
He kisses my forehead. “I’m glad you were able to stop him tonight. August has been watchful, but Tynesford knows he’s being watched. The man is, sadly, not an idiot. I’ll speak to August, and he’ll offer the girl a change of position.”
“Thank you.”
“No, thank you, for getting lost. The fact that you managed to help that girl means I shall be far less inclined to suffer the guilt of having abandoned you.”
“Mmm, pretty sure I abandoned you. The punch bowl seemed much more enticing than a discussion on tariffs.”
He puts out his arm for me to take. “Still, accept my apologies with a return trip to said punchbowl before it is well and truly empty. I presume you did not manage to refill your cup.”
I tell him about rescuing Surrey, which I’d left out of the initial explanation. I’d also left out the mysterious disappearing maid. No need to worry him about that. But now that I’m reminded, there’s something I need to ask.
“This may sound like a foolish question,” I ask as we approach the banquet table. “But when we were touring, I don’t think I saw a portrait of Rosalind.”
“Ah, no, you did not. That . . . would not be on the tour. Not if August is giving it.”
His face reflects the same emotions I feel, that mingle of pain on August’s behalf and frustration with how he’s handling his grief.
William straightens his cuffs. “There is one picture of her, I believe. One he has not managed to . . . make disappear. Would you like to see it?”
“I would. Please.”
We’re in a dimly lit alcove, close enough to the kitchen that the heat from it has me sweating. I can smell roast pork, breakfast for those guests lucky enough to win overnight invitations.
“Where are we?” I whisper.
William motions for quiet and then opens a door into what seems like a cramped sitting room, stuffed with castoff furniture.
“It’s for the staff,” he says.
“And Rosalind’s portrait is here?”
“I believe so.” He takes an oil lamp, lights it and raises it. “Yes, it’s still here. The cook was quite fond of Rosalind, and I believe the old woman snatched this photograph before August could . . . put it into storage.”
He points at a small table where several ornately framed photographs are displayed. When I pause, uncertain, he lifts one and passes it to me.
I lift the picture into the light and—
“Oh!” I say.
I expected some dour-faced formal portrait. There’s always a misunderstanding that Victorians didn’t smile for photographs, when the truth is that the process took so long that attempting a smile would result in a blurred face. A serious pose was less likely to show the distortion of movement. Yet while the subjects in this picture aren’t exactly grinning, they exude a joy brighter than any hundred-watt smile.
It’s Rosalind and August, when they’d been courting. She’d owned a bakery in London, quite a scandalous thing for a young single woman, especially one of her good breeding. But she’d been the oldest of three girls who’d lost their parents. To support her sisters, she’d either needed to marry quickly or make use of her stellar baking skills. She chose the latter.
This photograph was taken in front of her bakery. Rosalind holds August’s arm, and they gaze at the photographer with a joy so incandescent that just looking at them feels like an invasion of privacy. I have seen August happy, but I have never seen him like this.
As for Rosalind, she’s positively ethereal, a beautiful young woman of no more than twenty-two, tiny, with light hair and a face that’s as beautiful as her soon-to-be-husband’s is handsome.
“She’s gorgeous,” I say.
“She was many, many things,” he says. “That was one of them.”
I could be envious, hearing my husband speak this way of another woman. I’m not. I know how much he cared for Rosalind. She’d been like a sister to him, years after he’d lost his own.
“I . . . I thought I saw a young woman in the halls,” I say. “I mean, yes, I did definitely see one. I presumed it was a maid and went after her because I was lost, but she kept moving. She disappeared into a room . . . after beckoning me. That’s how I found the earl and Lottie.”
William nods slowly. Six months ago, I’d have tensed, interpreting his careful reaction as doubt, but I know now he’s assimilating my words.
When we first reunited, a comment about ghosts had elicited a very clear reaction from him. A very dismissive reaction. Superstitious nonsense. So I’d kept my experiences to myself, only to later discover that as soon as I said I saw ghosts, he believed me. The critical part there was me. If I told him I saw unicorns, he’d believe me, and if he said the same, I’d believe him.
“This young woman led you to Tynesford,” he says. “So you could interrupt and rescue Lottie.”
Now I’m the one pausing. “I hadn’t thought of that, but yes, it makes sense.”
“And you thought it might be Rosalind’s ghost.” He glances at the photograph. “Was it?”
“No.” I look at the picture. “The figure was fair haired and small of stature, and I didn’t get a good look at her face, but I’m quite certain it wasn’t Rosalind.”
He exhales, echoing my own relief.
I continue, “I wouldn’t want to think of her trapped here, unable to communicate with her family. I also . . .” I take a deep breath. “August isn’t the only one who doesn’t want to believe she’s dead. That’s s
illy—I never even knew her. I certainly don’t want to think of her having abandoned her family, though.”
“She wouldn’t,” William says firmly. “August and Rosalind were having . . . troubles.” He looks at the photograph. “I haven’t admitted that, have I? It wasn’t the sort of trouble where one abandons one’s family, though. Certainly not for anyone as attached to family as Rosalind. She loved August, adored her son and was very close to both her sisters. The problem was August. He could be very jealous, and he struggled with that. He could be controlling, and she struggled with that. They would have worked it out. But you wonder why he believes she left. That is it, I think, even if he’d never admit such a thing. He fears he drove her off, and somehow, it’s easier to blame her for abandoning them. Do I think she ran away? Absolutely not. Do I think she died? Unfortunately, yes. Do I hope to be proven wrong? That she fell and struck her head and lost her memory, like some gothic heroine, and she’ll reappear one day? Yes. Mostly, though, like you, I simply would not want to think of her as a ghost.”
He pauses and then says, his voice lower, “That is what I’d hoped for, though, when I thought you were lost to me. That I’d stay at Thorne Manor even after I died. That I’d see you again that way when you returned. That you might even see me . . .” He rubs his hands over his face and shivers. “Fortunately, it did not come to that.”
I hug him fiercely, my head on his shoulder. I’d thought the same thing . . . while hoping that even if we were separated forever, he’d have moved on and found peace, no matter how much I’d have desperately loved to see him again.
He hugs me back and kisses the top of my head. I reach up and kiss him properly, a deep one that chases away the memories of that terrible, uncertain time.
“It could have been a maid,” I say as we part. “A living maid, who alerted me to the issue and then slipped through a door I didn’t see in the dark.” I roll my shoulders. “Either way, that particular young woman seemed fine. It’s Lottie that matters.”
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