Daniel wasn’t going to argue with her now, though she’d slapped him so many times over the years that Arriane kept a tally in a little spiral notebook marked You’re Fresh.
“My mistake,” he said quickly. “I—I thought you were someone else.” He’d already interfered with the past too much, first with Lucia in Milan, and now here. He began to back away.
“Wait.” She reached for him. Her eyes were lovely hazel orbs of light pulling him back. “I feel almost as if we do know one another, though I can’t quite remember—”
“I don’t think so, I’m afraid.”
He’d made it to the door by then, and was parting the curtain on the window to see if Cam was still outside. He was.
Cam’s back was to the shop, and he was making animated gestures, telling some fabricated story in which he was surely the hero. He could turn around at the slightest provocation. Then Daniel would be caught.
“Please, sir—stop.” Lucinda hurried toward Daniel. “Who are you? I think I know you. Please. Wait.”
He’d have to take his chances on the street. He could not stay here with Lucinda. Not when she was acting like this. Not when she was falling in love with the wrong version of himself. He’d lived this life before, and this was not how it had happened. So he had to flee.
It killed Daniel to ignore her, to go away from Lucinda when everything in his soul was telling him to turn around and fly right back to the sound of her voice, to the embrace of her arms and the warmth of her lips, to the spellbinding power of her love.
He yanked the shop door open and fled down the street, running at the sunset, running for all he was worth. He did not care at all what it looked like to anyone else in town. He was running out the fire in his wings.
SEVEN
SOLSTICE
Łuce’s hands were scalded and splotchy and tender to the bone.
Since she’d arrived at the Constances’ estate in Helston three days before, she’d done little more than wash an endless pile of dishes. She worked from sunrise to sunset, scrubbing plates and bowls and gravy boats and whole armies of silverware, until, at the end of the day, her new boss, Miss McGovern, laid out supper for the kitchen staff: a sad platter of cold meat, dry hunks of cheese, and a few hard rolls. Each night, after dinner, Luce would fall into a dreamless, timeless sleep on the attic cot she shared with Henrietta, her fellow kitchen maid, a bucktoothed, straw-haired, bosomy girl who’d come to Helston from Penzance.
The sheer amount of work was astonishing.
How could one household dirty enough dishes to keep two girls working twelve hours straight? But the bins of food-caked plates kept arriving, and Miss McGovern kept her beady eyes fixed on Luce’s washbasin. By Wednesday, everyone at the estate was buzzing about the solstice party that evening, but to Luce, it only meant more dishes. She stared down at the tin tub of scuzzy water, full of loathing.
“This is not what I had in mind,” she muttered to Bill, who was hovering, always, on the rim of the cupboard next to her washtub. She still wasn’t used to being the only one in the kitchen who could see him. It made her nervous every time he hovered over other members of the staff, making dirty jokes that only Luce could hear and no one—besides Bill—ever laughed at.
“You children of the millennium have absolutely no work ethic,” he said. “Keep your voice down, by the way.”
Luce unclenched her jaw. “If scrubbing this disgusting soup tureen had anything to do with understanding my past, my work ethic would make your head spin. But this is pointless.” She waved a cast iron skillet in Bill’s face. Its handle was slick with pork grease. “Not to mention nauseating.”
Luce knew her frustration didn’t have anything to do with the dishes. She probably sounded like a brat. But she’d barely been above ground since she’d started working here. She hadn’t seen Helston Daniel once since that first glimpse in the garden, and she had no idea where her past self was. She was lonely and listless and depressed in a way she hadn’t been since those awful early days at Sword & Cross, before she’d had Daniel, before she’d had anyone she could truly count on.
She’d abandoned Daniel, Miles and Shelby, Arriane and Gabbe, Callie, and her parents—all for what? To be a scullery maid? No, to unravel this curse, something she didn’t even know whether she was capable of doing. So Bill thought she was being whiny. She couldn’t help it. She was inches away from a breakdown.
“I hate this job. I hate this place. I hate this stupid solstice party and this stupid pheasant soufflé—”
“Lucinda will be at the party tonight,” Bill said suddenly. His voice was infuriatingly calm. “She happens to adore the Constances’ pheasant soufflé.” He flitted up to sit cross-legged on the countertop, his head twisting a creepy 360 degrees around his neck to make sure the two of them were alone.
“Lucinda will be there?” Luce dropped the skillet and her scrub brush into the sudsy tub. “I’m going to talk to her. I’m getting out of this kitchen, and I’m going to talk to her.”
Bill nodded, as if this had been the plan all along. “Just remember your position. If a future version of yourself had popped up at some boarding school party of yours and told you—”
“I would have wanted to know,” Luce said. “Whatever it was, I would have insisted on knowing everything. I would have died to know.”
“Mmm-hmm. Well.” Bill shrugged. “Lucinda won’t. I can guarantee you that.”
“That’s impossible.” Luce shook her head. “She’s … me.”
“Nope. She’s a version of you who has been reared by completely different parents in a very different world. You share a soul, but she’s nothing like you. You’ll see.” He gave her a cryptic grin. “Just proceed with caution.” Bill’s eyes shot toward the door at the front of the large kitchen, which swung open abruptly. “Look lively, Luce!”
He plunked his feet into the washtub and let out a raspy, contented sigh just as Miss McGovern entered, pulling Henrietta by the elbow. The head maid was listing the courses for the evening meal.
“After the stewed prunes…,” she droned.
On the other side of the kitchen, Luce whispered to Bill. “We’re not finished with this conversation.”
His stony feet splashed suds onto her apron. “May I advise you to stop talking to your invisible friends while you’re working? People are going to think you’re crazy.”
“I’m beginning to wonder about that myself.” Luce sighed and stood straight, knowing that was all she was going to get out of Bill, at least until the others had left.
“I’ll expect you and Myrtle to be in tip-top shape this evening,” Miss McGovern said loudly to Henrietta, sending a quick glare back at Luce.
Myrtle. The name Bill had made up on her letters of reference.
“Yes, miss,” Luce said flatly.
“Yes, miss!” There was no sarcasm in Henrietta’s reply. Luce liked Henrietta well enough, if she overlooked how badly the girl needed a bath.
Once Miss McGovern had bustled out of the kitchen and the two girls were alone, Henrietta hopped up on the table next to Luce, swinging her black boots to and fro. She had no idea that Bill was sitting right beside her, mimicking her movements.
“Fancy a plum?” Henrietta asked, pulling two ruby-colored spheres from her apron pocket and holding one out to Luce.
What Luce liked most about the girl was that she never did a drop of work unless the boss was in the room. They each took a bite, grinning as the sweet juice trickled from the sides of their mouths.
“Thought I heard you talking to someone else in here before,” Henrietta said. She raised an eyebrow. “Have you got yourself a fellow, Myrtle? Oh, please don’t say it’s Harry from the stables! He’s a rotter, he is.”