“I’m a maid?” she asked.
“Yes, Einstein, you’re a maid.”
Luce knew it was dumb, but she felt a little disappointed. The estate was so grand and the gardens so lovely and she knew she was on a quest and all that, but couldn’t she have just strolled around the grounds here like a real Victorian lady?
“I thought you said my family was rich.”
“Your past self’s family was rich. Filthy rich. You’ll see when you meet her. She goes by Lucinda and thinks your nickname is an absolute abomination, by the way.” Bill pinched his nose and lifted it high in the air, giving a pretty laughable imitation of a snob. “She’s rich, yes, but you, my dear, are a time-traveling intruder who knows not the ways of this high society. So unless you want to stick out like a Manchester seamstress and get shown the door before you even get to have a chat with Lucinda, you need to go undercover. You’re a scullery maid. Serving girl. Chamber-pot changer. It’s really up to you. Don’t worry, I’ll stay out of your way. I can disappear in the blink of an eye.”
Luce groaned. “And I just go in and pretend like I work here?”
“No.” Bill rolled his flinty eyes. “Go up and introduce yourself to the lady of the house, Mrs. Constance. Tell her your last placement moved to the Continent and you’re looking for new employment. She’s an evil old harridan and a stickler for references. Lucky for you, I’m one step ahead of her. You’ll find yours inside your apron pocket.”
Luce slipped her hand inside the pocket of her white linen apron and pulled out a thick envelope. The back was stamped shut with a red wax seal; when she turned it over, she read Mrs. Melville Constance, scrawled in black ink. “You’re kind of a know-it-all, aren’t you?”
“Thank you.” Bill bowed graciously; then, when he realized Luce had already started toward the house, he flew ahead, beating his wings so rapidly they became two stone-colored blurs on either side of his body.
By then they had passed the silver birches and were crossing the manicured lawn. Luce was about to start up the pebble path to the house, but hung back when she noticed figures in the gazebo. A man and a woman, walking toward the house. Toward Luce.
“Get down,” she whispered. She wasn’t ready to be seen by anyone in Helston, especially not with Bill buzzing around her like some oversized insect.
“You get down,” he said. “Just because I made an invisibility exception for your benefit doesn’t mean just any mere mortal can see me. I’m perfectly discreet where I am. Matter of fact, the only eyes I have to be watchful about are—Whoa, hey.” Bill’s stone eyebrows shot up suddenly, making a heavy dragging noise. “I’m out,” he said, ducking down behind the tomato vines.
Angels, Luce filled in. They must be the only other souls who could see Bill in this form. She guessed this because she could finally make out the man and woman, the ones who’d prompted Bill to take cover. Gaping through the thick, prickly leaves of the tomato vine, Luce couldn’t tear her eyes away from them.
Away from Daniel, really.
The rest of the garden grew very still. The birds’ evening songs quieted, and all she could hear were two pairs of feet walking slowly up the gravel path. The last rays of the sun all seemed to fall upon Daniel, throwing a halo of gold around him. His head was tipped toward the woman and he was nodding as he walked. The woman who was not Luce.
She was older than Lucinda could have been—in her twenties, most likely, and very beautiful, with dark, silken curls under a broad straw hat. Her long muslin dress was the color of a dandelion and looked like it must have been very expensive.
“Have you come to like our little hamlet much at all, Mr. Grigori?” the woman was saying. Her voice was high and bright and full of natural confidence.
“Perhaps too much, Margaret.” Luce’s stomach tied up in a jealous knot as she watched Daniel smile at the woman. “It’s hard to believe it’s been a week since I arrived in Helston. I could stay on longer even than I’d planned.” He paused. “Everyone here has been very kind.”
Margaret blushed, and Luce seethed. Even Margaret’s blushing was lovely. “We only hope that will come through in your work,” she said. “Mother’s thrilled, of course, to have an artist staying with us. Everyone is.”
Luce crawled along after them as they walked. Past the vegetable garden, she crouched down behind the overgrown rosebushes, planting her hands on the ground and leaning forward to keep the couple in earshot.
Then Luce gasped. She’d pricked her thumb on a thorn. It was bleeding.
She sucked on the wound and shook her hand, trying not to get blood on her apron, but by the time the bleeding had stopped, she realized she’d missed part of the conversation. Margaret was looking up at Daniel expectantly.
“I asked you if you’ll be at the solstice festivities later this week.” Her tone was a bit pleading. “Mother always makes a big to-do.”
Daniel murmured something like yes, he wouldn’t miss it, but he was clearly distracted. He kept looking away from the woman. His eyes darted around the lawn, as if he sensed Luce behind the roses.
When his gaze swept over the bushes where she crouched, they flashed the most intense shade of violet.
SIX
THE WOMAN IN WHITE
By the time Daniel got to Helston, he was angry.
He recognized the setting at once, as soon as the Announcer ejected him alone onto the shingle banks of the Loe. The lake was still, reflecting big tufts of pink cloud in the evening sky. Startled by his sudden appearance, a pair of kingfishers took off across the field of clover and came to rest in a crooked moorland tree beside the main road. The road led, he knew, into the small town where he’d spent a summer with Lucinda.
Standing again on this rich green earth touched a soft place inside him. As much as he worked to close every door to their past, as much as he strove to move beyond each one of her heartbreaking deaths—some mattered more than others. He was surprised at how clearly he still recalled their time in the South of England.
But Daniel wasn’t here on holiday. He wasn’t here to fall in love with the beautiful copper trader’s daughter. He was here to stop a reckless girl from getting so lost in the dark moments of her past that it killed her. He was here to help her undo their curse, once and for all.
He started the long walk toward town.
It was a warm and lazy summer evening in Helston. Out on the streets, ladies in bonnets and lace-trimmed gowns spoke in low, polite voices to the linen-suited men whose arms they held. Couples paused in front of shop windows. They lingered to speak with their neighbors. They stopped on street corners and took ten minutes to say goodbye.
Everything about these people, from their attire to the pace of their strolling, was so infuriatingly slow. Daniel could not have felt more at odds with the passersby on the street.
His wings, hidden beneath his coat, burned with his impatience as he waded through the people. There was one fail-safe place where he knew he could find Lucinda—she visited the gazebo in his patron’s back garden most evenings just after dusk. But where he might find Luce—the one hopping in and out of Announcers, the one he needed to find—that, there was no way of knowing.
The other two lives Luce had stumbled into made some sense to Daniel. In the grand scheme, they were … anomalies. Past moments when she had come close to unraveling the truth of their curse just before she died. But he couldn’t figure out why her Announcer had brought her here.