The Misbegotten

1821

It was easy enough to leave the house on Lansdown Crescent after hours. Starling’s room was little more than a cubbyhole adjoining the cook’s room, along a shadowy corridor from the kitchen. She had a narrow wooden bed and a rickety nightstand for the pot; no windows, but a rag rug on the floor to keep the chill off her feet. If Sol Bradbury was already in bed then she slept like a dead woman, snoring softly with her chin nestled into the pillowy flesh of her neck. If she was awake, then as long as Starling was reasonably discreet, the woman said nothing. They had an understanding – Sol Bradbury didn’t see Starling going out when she should have stayed in, nor did she comment when odd small items of food and leftovers went missing from the pantry; and Starling didn’t see Sol Bradbury drinking brandy in the mornings, or tipping the grocer’s boy coppers that weren’t hers for gossip about her friends and neighbours. The housekeeper, Mrs Hatton, kept herself above stairs once Mrs Alleyn had retired for the night; she and Dorcas had their rooms on the top floor.

Starling made her way to the Moor’s Head, to see her friend Sadie and to keep a tryst with Dick Weekes. She would need more of his doctored wine before long, but she was eager to see him anyway, however jealously she guarded all evidence of her favour. It would not do for Dick to know that she liked him overly well. He was devilishly easy on the eye, and never short of followers; dopey-eyed girls without a thought to share between them, who giggled and pouted at him wherever he went, all too keen to part their lips for whatever he cared to put into their mouths. But Dick Weekes was the type that needed something sharp to temper the sweet; that needed something off-kilter to keep his attention. And I am just the right amount of sharp and off-kilter, Starling thought, with a smile. The inn was crowded with drinkers and players, travellers and doxies. The heat and stink and press of bodies always cheered Starling after a humdrum day of work, and she smiled a crooked smile at Sadie as she reached the barrels and taps.

‘All the usuals to keep you busy,’ she said to her friend, as Sadie poured her a cup of frothy beer.

‘And some unusuals too – see that man there, the tall one with only one eye? You ever seen him before?’ She pointed out an ill-favoured man with a gaunt, sour face and a leather patch over his missing eye. His greasy hair was salt and pepper, and hadn’t been combed in a while.

‘No, I never saw him. He’s wearing a fine enough pair of boots, though. Why do you point him out?’

‘He says he’s loved me a long time, and watched me from afar. He says if I meet him in the yard afterwards, he’ll make me an offer I can’t refuse.’ Sadie chuckled, and Starling rolled her eyes.

‘He’ll make you his whore, and thrash you if you refuse.’

‘Aye, most likely. Perhaps I’ll meet him though.’ The plump girl shrugged. ‘He might be as good as his word. Those are fine boots… maybe he’s rich, and soft-hearted, and will marry me and give me a life of idleness.’

‘Maybe. And maybe I shall marry King George next Wednesday at noon. If you meet with him have Jonah watch you, for heaven’s sake. And keep your wits about you.’ Jonah was the stable boy at the Moor’s Head, a hulking lad of sixteen years, quite in love with Sadie. ‘Is Dick about?’

‘Dick Weekes? Not yet. Stay and talk a while, till he gets here.’

Richard Weekes came in not long afterwards, looking as dandy as he ever did, all loose hair and smiles. Sadie nudged Starling and nodded towards him, and Starling took her leave, planting a kiss on Sadie’s fat cheek. She waited until Richard had shrugged off his coat in the heat of the inn, then pressed a brimming tankard into his right hand as she clasped his left and pressed it to her chest. She smiled a wicked smile at him, the way he liked.

‘How do you do, Mr Weekes?’ she said.

‘Dying of thirst, but otherwise well. Leave off a moment, then, and let me drink.’ He smiled.

‘Leave off, he says! Why, you will break my heart, talking that way,’ she said mockingly.

‘Your heart?’ Richard laughed. ‘A thousand men with a thousand cudgels couldn’t break your heart, Starling no-name.’ Starling leaned closer to his ear, standing on her toes.

‘Not a thousand but just one, and just one cudgel too.’ She let her hand brush over his crotch, and felt his prick stir in response.

‘You’re eager tonight, aren’t you?’

‘I can’t stay out for long. Dorcas has taken to getting up after midnight to drink milk. She says she has nightmares – comes clattering around the pantry like a blind heifer. She’d love to find me out, and run to tell Mrs Hatton. How my dissipation would scandalise.’ Starling shook her head in irritation. ‘So, come, Mr Weekes. Take me somewhere quieter, if you please.’

‘It would be my pleasure. Just let me drink this at least. I meant it when I said I was dying of thirst.’

‘Can’t we go to your rooms?’ Starling suggested. Dick had brought her out through the back door, to the yard behind the pub, and was trying to usher her up the ladder into the hay loft above the stables.

‘No. Not any more.’ Dick put his arm around her shoulders, and squeezed her left breast too hard. Starling twisted away and slapped his cheek. ‘Tease,’ he scolded her.

‘Clumsy joskins,’ she retorted. ‘That hurt. What do you mean, not any more?’

‘In two days’ time I shall be married. I can hardly bring my new bride to a bed that’s ripe with your stink, can I?’ he said lightly.

‘I’m surprised to hear you’d take a wife so squeamish,’ said Starling. She swallowed against a sudden tightness in her throat. Somehow, she’d thought all Dick’s talk of marriage would come to nothing this time, as it had several times before. He usually backed away in the end, finding some fault in the girl; tiring of her, or declaring that he could do better. ‘Don’t you think she might smell me elsewhere – on your flesh, perhaps?’

‘Rachel Crofton is sweet, and innocent. She suspects nothing of the kind.’

‘Not yet, perhaps…’

‘Not ever. And if she discovers anything from you, I will have your teeth out. Do you hear me?’ Dick’s voice was hard; he took her upper arm in a bruising grip. Starling grinned in the half-light.

‘You mean to say, she believes you to be sweet and innocent, too?’ she said. Dick released his grip and gently rubbed away his fingermarks.

‘Yes, just so. Apologies, Starling. I am on edge. I want… I want everything to go well. With the wedding, and for my new wife. She is a fine creature, clever, and accomplished… with her by my side, my fortune and position can only improve,’ he said. Not clever enough to spot Dick Weekes for the tomcat he is, Starling thought, contemptuously.

‘My soul is consumed with jealous rage, sir. For it does sound as though you love this sweet and innocent and clever and educated Miss Rachel.’

‘Aye.’ He smiled, somewhat foolishly. ‘I believe I do.’ Starling stared at him, and for a minute found nothing to say. He was a dark shape, his face outlined by second-hand light from the pub. Starling stepped back into the deep shadows in case her dismay was plain.

‘Then perhaps, after she is home, you won’t come to meet me any more?’ She tried to say it lightly, as if she barely cared. Dick hesitated, as though the thought hadn’t occurred to him.

‘Perhaps not, Starling. Perhaps not.’ His words, so careless, stabbed at Starling. She had a sensation like falling, like things being taken from her control. She smiled, as she always did to conceal such feelings.

‘We’ll see. Perhaps this milk-white angel of yours will keep the hunger sated for a while, but variety is the spice of life, as Sol Bradbury likes to say. Come then, let me give you something to remember me by.’

She led him up the ladder into the hayloft, and there teased and coaxed and mocked him until his face was ruddy and his teeth clenched in a seizure of utter lust and frustration, and then she straddled him and rode him hard, feeling her own pleasure spread up her spine like a warm tide rising. Afterwards, she laced her small breasts back into her bodice and watched Dick angrily as he caught his breath. Her senses always seemed heightened at such times, and suddenly she could smell the reek of horse piss from the stables, and the cloying scent of Dick’s sweat and seed. She wrinkled her nose, and wiped herself with a switch of hay. Dick ground his fingertips into his eyes, where dust from the hay was irritating them, then blinked at her and grinned.

‘Oh, I shall miss you, Starling,’ he said.

‘We’ll see,’ she replied, shortly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I say. Now, I ask a privilege of you, since we are to part.’

‘What?’ He was instantly suspicious. ‘I already said I will not lace the wine any stronger. If Mr Alleyn should keel over dead…’

‘Nothing to do with him. I want to meet your new bride. I want to meet Mrs Rachel Weekes, and understand why I am so suddenly set aside.’ And perhaps I will spill some blood-red wine on her pure white gown while I’m at it.

‘You can’t,’ he said at once. ‘I wish to… draw a line. Between this old life, and the new one starting.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ said Starling, annoyed. ‘A new wife cannot make you a new man. You’ll still be Dick Weekes, son of Duncan Weekes… nothing will change that.’

‘Shut your mouth, Starling. I mean to start anew, and you won’t stop me. I won’t let you stop me.’ He caught her wrist and held it tightly, not letting go when she struggled.

‘Leave off!’

‘Not until you swear to be discreet.’

‘If you let me meet her, I will swear it.’ They struggled a few seconds more, then Dick released her arm.

‘Very well. Two nights hence, I shall bring her here for our wedding feast. You can play the serving wench for a time, or something. Or merely watch from a quiet place. But you will not speak to her. Understand?’

‘A wedding feast at the Moor’s Head? Ah, lucky Miss Rachel. Truly, she is bringing you up in the world…’

‘Understand?’ he pressed.

‘I won’t give you away. You have my word.’ You will do that yourself, she thought, defiantly, when you come running back to me.

To Rachel’s relief, there was more to the house on Abbeygate Street than she’d first realised. Steps led down from street level to the main area of the shop, which had its own door, and a sign painted onto the wall above it: Richard Weekes & Co. Fine Wine & Spirits Merchants. The room on this lower level was cool and clammy, the brick floor slightly damp. Barrels were stacked in wooden racks from floor to shadowed ceiling, and glass bottles of all shapes and sizes filled shelves against one wall. It was a dark and crowded space, and the air had a ripe tang to it, a pungent mix of wood and fruit, mould and alcohol. Through a door in the rear wall Richard had his tiny office, containing a desk with a simple stool pulled up to it, and a shelf laden with ledgers and receipt books. The desk was scatted with pen shavings, spent candle stubs and spots of ink.

Behind the house was a small yard, closed in by high walls furred with moss and slime. The yard had a stone sink built against one wall, the necessary house against another, and a shallow gully that ran into the sewer. It was poorly ventilated, and smelled accordingly rank. Rachel peered around it, and her heart sank. When Richard had told her there was a courtyard, she’d pictured a small garden where she might plant some herbs or flowers, and sit to read in either the morning sun or the evening, depending on which way the house faced. This yard was more like the damp inside of a cave. Within moments Rachel felt the walls begin to loom over her, and she stepped hurriedly back indoors, keen to conceal her dismay.

‘I have always sent the laundry out, and it’s probably best you continue to do so, rather than trying to dry it out here,’ said Richard, apologetically.

Upstairs, at raised ground level, was a kitchen-cum-parlour, a good sized and better-lit room divided into two halves – one half of simple utility: the stove, a work table, shelves holding a few pieces of pewter plate, candlesticks and cooking pots. The other half was more formal, with an upholstered armchair, settle and ottoman that had finely turned – if battered – legs. They’d been positioned with their backs to the kitchen, as if not wishing to be associated with it.

‘The parlour furniture came from Admiral Stanton’s widow, when she was forced to sell up. I had it at a very fair price at auction,’ Richard told her proudly. ‘Do you approve?’ He ran his hand along the back of the settle. Rachel nodded, feeling a pull of sympathy towards the faceless Widow Stanton, for her sad decline in life. She knew exactly how it felt to see people perusing and haggling over the things you owned and loved. Richard was watching her, expectantly.

‘They will do very well, Mr Weekes,’ she assured him.

‘In a similar manner, I mean to gradually work towards furnishing the place in a better fashion for you, my dear.’ He took her hand, and kissed her fingers.

The room had two large windows, one overlooking the yard, the other facing north onto the parade of shops, inns and accommodation on the opposite side of Abbeygate Street. By looking north-east from this one, Rachel could see the roof of the abbey. On the top floor of the house was the bedchamber where, the night before, Rachel had ceased to be a maid. Its beamed ceiling sloped to either side of the bed, and its window was smaller, tucked into the eaves of the roof. Rachel realised that the body of the house was hundreds of years older than its updated façade hoped to suggest. She ignored the smell of damp plaster, and turned to smile at her husband.

‘I shall be very comfortable here. And I’ll help make it even more cosy for us,’ she said.

Past the jumbled rooftops and chimney pots of their near neighbours, the sweeping curves of Bath’s smarter streets and crescents were visible, on the hills to the north. Rachel could make out the elegant march of Camden Crescent, high above the rest of the city; its tall façades uniform, pale, and immaculate. There, when she was fifteen, she’d spent three months one autumn and winter season with her parents and her little brother, Christopher. Her memories of it were a blur of tea invitations, card parties, outings and dances in the assembly rooms. Now Rachel wished she’d paid more attention, and cemented such happiness more firmly in her mind – as if she could have fashioned it into something she could keep for ever. But she remembered standing at one of the front windows in their apartment and looking down on the tangle of older, poorer streets around the abbey and wharves, and wondering about all the many lives that went on there, of which she would have no knowledge, and take no part. She smiled at the thought, with an odd mixture of wistful irony, and determination.

‘What is it? What makes you smile?’ Richard asked her, brushing a lock of her hair away from her face.

‘I am beginning to feel at home already,’ she said, deciding to make it true. She felt Richard’s arms encircle her, and in truth the sensation was already less peculiar, less alarming.

There was no food in the house, so Richard fetched fresh bread, cheese and a slice of ham pie for their breakfast. Then he took her on a tour of the street, introducing her to the neighbours she needed to know – Mrs Digweed, who took in the laundry, a woman vastly fat and startlingly ugly, with hands like a man’s and a broad smile for the world; Thomas Snook, who owned the stables around the corner, on Amery Lane, and hired out his horse and cart to Richard for deliveries. The horse was a squat, piebald thing, with feathery feet and sleepy eyes; Rachel remembered it from the times Richard had delivered barrels to Hartford Hall. Richard rubbed the horse’s forehead cheerfully, and said: ‘This is Trooper, and never was a horse less aptly named. “Dawdler” would be more like it, but he’s a serviceable chap. In a year or so I hope to be able to buy a smarter cart than Tom’s, one with my sign painted along the side, rather than carried with me on a board. And for that cart I shall need a smarter animal, I fear, Trooper. Something with less hair, and more spirit.’ He patted the animal’s sturdy neck, and Trooper sighed, as only a bored horse can sigh.

There was a small cobbled square called Abbey Green, just along from Abbeygate Street, and the lone plane tree growing there had crisp bronze edges to its leaves. The sky was overcast, and Rachel suddenly wished it was spring, not autumn. Spring would have made everything feel more promising, more like a new beginning. Later, once Richard had gone about his business, Rachel stood for a while in her new home, and wondered what to do. She knew Richard had a housekeeper, Mrs Linton, who visited on certain days, but the woman had yet to put in an appearance. She glanced around at the cobwebs high up in the stairwell, and the ground-in dirt on the floorboards, and thought that Richard had lived too long alone, and that Mrs Linton was either unfit, or had been left too much to her own devices, and grown idle. In the sudden quiet, Rachel took a steadying breath. She had never minded an empty room before, but suddenly the emptiness seemed to ring; it seemed to mirror and amplify the odd, empty feeling inside her. She shut her eyes, and tried to summon thoughts to fill it, to quell the strange and sudden panic she felt. Just then, she would even have wished Eliza Trevelyan back into her life, with all of her arrogance and scorn.

Rachel went upstairs and set about making herself a dressing table of sorts, on top of the small chest of drawers where Richard’s clothes and sundries were kept. She opened each drawer in turn, hoping to find an empty one that she could use, but all contained oddments of dress and accoutrements – worn-out gloves and stockings, boot buckles and tobacco boxes and combs with broken teeth. In the end she moved everything in the top drawer to one side, and put in a few of her own possessions. She did not have much – handkerchiefs and gloves, her sewing box, hairpins and what few beauty compounds she used: a small pot of rouge with a tiny, shell-handled brush to apply it; some heavy cream, scented with roses, for her hands; a pot of Lady Molyneux’s Liquid Bloom, which had been a present from Eliza at Christmas last. For you sometimes appear so pale at breakfast, it’s like you’ve died in the night and not realised. But the gift, meant as a criticism of sorts, had rather backfired on Eliza, because a few drops of the stuff rubbed into her cheeks did in fact make Rachel look lovely. She laid an old handkerchief on top of the chest and set out her hair brushes on it, and then unpacked her most treasured possession – a musical silver trinket box.

Her parents had given it to her on her sixteenth birthday, before any stain of scandal or hardship had touched the family, and the grief of losing Christopher had softened somewhat from the dagger strike of his sudden death. It had been her mother’s and her grandmother’s before it was hers; an item only as big as one of her hands, standing on little lion’s feet. The top was patterned with vines and flowers, forming a vignette around a brightly enamelled peacock; when the lid was lifted, providing the screw underneath was wound tight, it played a lullaby. The inside of the box was lined with deep blue velvet, and a lock of her mother’s tawny hair, tied with a ribbon, was pinned carefully to one side. Rachel touched it gently with her fingertips. The hair was straight, and smooth, and cold. She shut her eyes and tried to recall Anne Crofton’s face in every detail, even though she knew it was a cruel thing to do to herself, and only reiterated her mother’s absence.

Also in the music box was the only other precious thing she owned, which had also been her mother’s – a pair of pearl drop earrings with tiny diamonds on the studs. She’d hidden them in her bodice as the bailiffs had taken everything out to their wagon, past her father on the front steps, sitting with his boots unlaced and his face gone slack in shock. The bailiffs would have taken his boots too, if Rachel had not come out to stand over him, fierce as a lioness, shaming them into a retreat. She wanted to keep the box on display, but she hesitated. It seemed somehow boastful, like a deliberate attempt to show up the plainness of the room. Reluctantly, she wrapped it in its linen cloth and put it back in the drawer. Then she rose, and went to stand by the bed to watch out of the window. There was a small, foxed mirror on the wall; she positioned herself so that her reflection hovered in the corner of her eye, and at once felt a little less alone.

Richard was away from the house or ensconced amongst the barrels in the basement for much of the day, but for the first two weeks of their marriage they ate supper together every night, at the small table in the kitchen, with their food and faces lit by the yellow warmth of an oil lamp, discussing the housekeeping, the business, their hopes for the future. One evening, when Rachel had been talking about her parents, she looked up to find Richard watching her with a compassionate expression.

‘You miss them a great deal, don’t you?’ he said.

‘Yes. In truth, I do. My mother has been a good many years with God, but still I feel her absence, and the lack of her advice, her… good sense and her kindness. And that of my father, of course. But I can do nothing but try to accept, and not rail against the loss. I can remember the happy times we had together, when Christopher was still with us, and I was very young.’ Young and full of feeling, not numb and quiet, as now, said the shadow inside her head; but such observations were not for sharing.

‘Rachel.’ Richard covered her hand with his, and smiled. ‘I want so much for you to be happy again. For us to be a family,’ he said.

‘I am happy,’ said Rachel, and again she felt something stir inside her, the warmth of gratitude towards him. He does truly wish to make me happy. But there was also a fleeting barb of doubt, of deceit, when she spoke. I will be happy soon, she amended, silently. When he grows to fill my heart.

‘We are alike, you and I. In our experiences… we have both lost our families, the people who raised us and loved us. I… it is hard, not to dwell in the past. The temptation to do so is very strong.’ He squeezed her fingers, and in his eyes was some desperation she didn’t yet understand. ‘But we all need somebody to share life with. To understand us, and carve a future with us. I am so happy to have found you, Rachel.’

‘And I you. But… your father…’

‘My father is lost to me,’ said Richard, curtly.

‘I’m sorry for it, Mr Weekes.’

As a wedding gift, Richard had presented Rachel with a new book by John Keats, since he knew her love of reading. One evening she asked him to read it to her, and he took the book with a look of distaste and anxiety. He did his best, but it was clear that he did not enjoy the experience. The lines of the poems were stilted, the rhythm lost; the meaning hard to follow when read as he did – as words on a page, not as the deepest thoughts of a man, rendered beautiful with language. For as long as she could, Rachel listened to ‘The Eve of Saint Agnes’ made blunt and bewildering, but Richard’s rendition was like listening to a melody played on an ill-tuned piano, and she found after a while that her jaw was clenched tight, and her eyes too, and she longed for the noise to stop. When silence fell she looked up to find Richard watching her, his expression one of defeat.

‘I fear I am not a very good reader,’ he said quietly. Rachel coloured up with guilt.

‘Oh, no! You did fine, Richard. It’s only a certain way of speaking, and comes easily with practice,’ she said.

‘Well.’ He closed the book and put it into her hands. ‘It’s hard to change the way one speaks.’

‘Oh, I didn’t mean… I meant only that reading poetry is rather more like… acting in a play, than reading straight, as from a periodical,’ she said, trying to undo any slight he might have felt.

‘A skill I’ve never had call to acquire,’ he said, a touch crossly.

‘No more have you that call now, if you do not wish it. Shall I read to you for a while, instead?’

‘As you wish, Rachel. I’m very tired.’ So Rachel opened the book and immersed herself for some minutes in the wonderful images, the strange beauty of it. She concentrated, and shaped each line as best she could, seeking to delight her husband, to prove her love of poetry well founded. But when she finished his chin had sunk onto his chest in slumber. She wondered whether to wake him and lead him up to bed, but it still seemed too forward a thing to do. So she sat in silence for a long time, with only the sifting sound of ash settling in the grate for company.

Strange and conspicuous though it made her feel, Rachel took to walking the streets of Bath alone, without an escort. But whether it was a symptom of her age, her faded looks, or the unfashionable nature of her dress, she soon began to notice looks of disapproval, appraisal, and even amusement, aimed at her as she marched along Milsom Street. She wondered if she was mistaken for a servant out on some errand for her mistress. Milsom Street was wide and airy, a parade of shops and businesses running south to north through the middle of the city, its paving stones swept cleaner than the rest. Carriages and carts and people hurried to and fro, causing a constant clatter of hooves and wheels and chatter; barrow boys and hawkers shouted their wares above it all in voices gone ragged. Some of the shops Rachel remembered from years earlier were still in business – like the milliner where her mother had bought her a new hat, trimmed with silk roses and a green velvet ribbon. One afternoon she stopped in the abbey square. Of course the vast abbey and assembly rooms and hot baths were just as she remembered them, and it struck her hard that though they had not changed, she had. She did not belong to them in the way she once had.

Her family had never been rich, but were better off than most. Her father, John Crofton, was the squire of a small estate of four farms, and had owned several hundred acres of rolling countryside where sheep and cattle grazed. The manor house where Rachel had grown up was long and low – built in the reign of Queen Elizabeth – with thick stone walls, mullioned windows and a roof that sagged between its rafters. An ancient wisteria snaked across the entire façade, producing a throng of hanging purple flowers each May and June. It was a comfortable home, well worn-in by centuries of habitation. In Rachel’s room the wooden floor sloped so pronouncedly that she and Christopher often used it in games – setting their marbles to roll across it towards a particular target. It was a house in which the children’s laughter was encouraged to ring out, and come echoing down the twisted wooden stair, never hushed or reprimanded.

John Crofton was entirely happy in the midstream where he swam. He did not fret about cozening his superiors, or waste time trying to ingratiate himself with those who held themselves lofty and aloof. Instead, John and Anne socialised with friends they were genuinely fond of, so that supper parties and teas and music evenings were merry, jovial affairs. On one occasion they were invited to dine with Sir Paul Methuen at the impossibly grand Corsham Court, which seemed the sort of place from which Rachel’s parents might emerge for ever altered, chastened or mesmerised in some way. But the Croftons returned from their evening laughing about how dull Sir Paul had been, and how preposterous the other guests had made themselves, in seeking his favour. They were not invited back again, and cared not one jot.

The two years that Rachel was away at a boarding school for young ladies, she pined for the manor house, and visited her family as often as was permitted. The three seasons that the Croftons spent in Bath introduced Rachel to a greater scale of society, and to the different fashions and foibles of city life, but the same Crofton rules applied – there was no attempt at social gain, only the pursuit of enjoyment and diversion with like-minded people. If Rachel or her parents happened to meet a young man who might be a suitable match for her, then he would be judged on his temperament, his interests and his inclination to industry, not by his name alone. She never did meet anybody there that she admired in that way, however. Handsome faces almost always turned out to be attached to vain and foolish boys. She preferred walking with her mother and friends, shopping for oddments with which they could improve a dress or a pair of shoes, or could send out as gifts; and seeing Christopher, who hated to be left behind, come bounding down the stairs upon their return.

As Rachel left the abbey square and resumed her walking, Christopher’s face came so clearly before her eyes that her steps faltered. A thin, avid face beneath a thatch of sandy blond hair, so much darker than her own. He’d had honey-brown eyes and a sharp, straight nose that the summer sun scattered with freckles. The fever that took him was brutally quick. He complained of feeling dizzy at bedtime on Monday, and was dead by sunset on Wednesday. He’d been so vibrant, so full of life and mischief, none of them could believe it had happened. They sat with his small corpse for hours, all three of them, simply staring and trying to make sense of what they saw.

With a gasp, Rachel stopped abruptly in the street, suddenly unable to breathe. People parted around her, jostling, but none stopped to offer her any assistance. She heard a tut of disapproval, and looked up at an elegant elderly lady, who turned her face aside at once, gazing loftily away. Who are these people? Rachel turned off Milsom Street then, and did not return to it.

Her route led her past the Moor’s Head, where gulls wheeled above in a rare flood of sunshine, calling out their mocking cacophony. The pavement was crowded with people and tangled with their voices, but then Rachel realised with a start that one voice was calling her name – a name she was still unaccustomed to.

‘Mrs Weekes! Won’t you pause a moment?’ Rachel turned to see Duncan Weekes, now her father-in-law, crossing the street towards her on none too steady feet. She almost turned away and pretended not to see him, remembering Richard’s curt statement that his father was lost to him. But should I blank the old man in the street, then, when he is now also my family as well? And after two hours of walking, she couldn’t help but feel relieved to see a face she knew. Duncan Weekes’s brown coat might once have been decent, but it had worn through at the elbows, lost three buttons and had grease stains on the cuffs. His wig was as crooked as it had been the first time she saw him, and his face was ruddy, the nose a pitted ruin of broken blood vessels, knotty and purple.

‘Mr Weekes, how do you do?’ she said. A smile crowded his eyes with folds of pouched skin.

‘Mrs Weekes! I am all the better for seeing your lovely face, my dear. How do you do? And how fares my son?’

‘We are both very well, sir, thank you. I was just out walking…’

‘Very good, very good. I’m happy to see you again. And how are you finding our fair city of Bath? Is it to your liking?’ As he spoke, Duncan Weekes swayed, just a little. He peered at her closely, his eyes roving her face with a kind of meandering but relentless scrutiny that Rachel found almost intrusive. His breath was sour, and he spoke with a strong West Country accent.

‘Oh, very much, sir,’ she said. ‘I’d been here before, several times, with my family. It’s wonderful to become reacquainted with it.’

‘And where are your family now, my dear?’

‘They have… passed, I regret to tell,’ she said. Duncan Weekes’s face fell, and he nodded.

‘A sad thing, as well I know. You have my sympathies, my dear. Richard’s mother, my own dear Susanne, was taken far too soon, when Dick was still just a lad.’

‘Yes, he told me he scarcely knew his mother.’

‘Oh, he knew her well, and loved her better. But he was just eight years old when she died, so perhaps his memories of her grow dim,’ said the old man, sadly.

‘What was she like?’

‘Well, the handsome face my son inherits did not come from me, I dare say you can divine.’ He smiled. ‘To me she was as lovely as a summer’s day, though she had a temper that could scare the birds into flight five miles away, and a voice to match. So perhaps not a lady as refined as you, my dear, but a lady as dear to me as my own breath.’

‘I am not so very refined,’ Rachel demurred.

‘Oh, nonsense. Nonsense.’ The old man paused, and his eyes explored Rachel’s face again, full of that strange scrutiny. ‘Tell me… where did he find you?’

‘He… we…’ Rachel stammered, given pause by his odd turn of phrase. ‘I was governess to a client of his, outside Bath. It was there that we met.’

‘Outside Bath, you say? Well, well.’

Duncan Weekes paused, nodding in thought. ‘I could not be happier for my son, to have taken one such as you to wife. I have seen him strive to rise above the lowly situation of his birth… And he has done it, for certain. For how else would he win such a lady, if he had not made himself worthy?’ Duncan smiled again, but his eyes were full of questions. Rachel reflected for a moment, and thought of the long and lonely path that had led her to accept Richard’s proposal. Would that it were as simple and true a matter as his fair face, his self-improvement, and my admiration of both.

‘I have wanted to apologise to you for… for the abrupt way in which my husband dealt with you at our wedding feast. I should have liked for you to join us, since we are family,’ she said, a touch awkwardly. Duncan Weekes hesitated before replying, and his tired eyes blurred a little.

‘Ah, but you are a kind girl, as well as a fine one. My son harbours a staunch grudge against me, and has these many years. He is angry with me. Aye, still angry.’ He shook his head.

‘But whatever for?’

‘Matters long past. The list is a long one, and there are doubtless things upon it that I do not even remember…’ Duncan trailed into silence, and looked away as if not wishing to meet her eye. Rachel was sure that she was not being told the whole truth.

‘Forgive me – it’s no business of mine what has passed between you. But I can see that it saddens you, and I’m sorry for it. Perhaps if I speak to my husband, sir… I might be able to persuade him to let bygones be bygones?’ she suggested.

‘Do not risk his displeasure on my behalf, Mrs Weekes,’ he said. Rachel considered for a moment, then took his hand and held it in hers. His fingers were thick, the knuckles ridged with old scars and arthritis. He seemed so tired, so sadly disordered; but his hand in hers soon felt conspicuous, and she was made uncomfortable by her own gesture.

‘I can make no promise of success, sir,’ she said. ‘But I understand the importance of family; I hate to see such a valuable thing cast aside, so I will try.’

Duncan Weekes suddenly looked uneasy. He cleared his throat, and his next words sounded wary.

‘Have a care, my dear; wiser not to speak of me to my son. Old wounds are not easily healed, and he has some of his mother’s temper, as well as her looks.’

‘I have never seen him show a temper,’ said Rachel, releasing his hand. She suppressed the urge to brush her fingers on her skirt.

‘Indeed?’ Duncan frowned, but then his expression softened. ‘And indeed, who could show a temper to someone as sweet and kind as you, my dear. Perhaps you might come and visit with me sometime? I should be honoured to have you… we might take a brandy together, to toast your marriage, since I was absent from the feast.’

‘I will have to ask my husband, of course, but I should like-’

‘If you ask him, he will refuse it,’ Duncan interrupted, anxious again. ‘He would be wroth with you and I both, my dear, if you ask him outright. He might even seek me out to offer a reprimand.’

‘I’m sure he would not, sir… and I must ask him – of course I must.’

‘Then that is a great pity, for I had hoped you might indeed come.’ Duncan Weekes tucked his fingers into his waistcoat pockets and looked away along the street, his face losing all animation. Rachel wasn’t sure what reply to make to him. The old man was shivering slightly.

‘You must carry on, sir, and not stand about to get chilled here in the street. But do give me your calling card, so that I will know where to go,’ she said.

‘My card? My card…’ he muttered, patting his pockets absently. ‘My card. Yes. I fear I have none, my dear. But I will tell you the place, if you can remember it?’ Rachel committed it to memory, and as she took her leave Duncan Weekes caught her hand again. ‘But do have a care, sweet girl,’ he said earnestly. ‘Do have a care.’

That night she lay close to Richard, after they had made love. She’d tried, as she did each time, to find the physical pleasure that her mother had hinted at, on the few occasions when they’d spoken of marriage and what Rachel could expect. But while there was no longer any pain, there was no real pleasure either. Nothing other than a faint ache that she was curious to explore; a feeling that might be satisfying to pursue, like the pressing of a bruise. But Richard had always come to his climax, gasping for breath in the crook of her neck, before she’d had a chance to examine the feeling properly. She told herself that she was happy to give satisfaction, without needing to take any for herself, but at the same time couldn’t help but feel mildly disappointed.

But the warmth of Richard’s body, lying tangled with hers, was comforting. He felt solid, and real; something like an anchor when she had started to feel oddly cut adrift. She clasped her fingers tightly into the dense flesh of his shoulders, and pressed her cheek into the top of his head.

‘Are you all right, Rachel?’ he whispered.

‘Yes, my love,’ she said. She felt him smile.

‘That’s the first time you’ve called me that. Called me your love,’ he said.

‘Do you like me to?’

‘Very much so. I like it… very much.’ Richard’s voice was muffled, but she could hear that he was moved. She kissed his hair, and shut her eyes tight, suddenly afraid that she would start crying. She could not have said what the tears were for. ‘Are you… are you happy, here? With me? You have no regrets?’ he asked. Rachel did not answer at once, and Richard pulled back, rising onto his elbows above her so that she could just make out the shape of his face in the weak light from the street outside. ‘Rachel?’ he said anxiously. She put up her hand, cupped it around his chin.

‘I have no regrets,’ she said, hoping that this answer, to only part of his question, would be enough. Richard smiled again, and kissed her hand.

‘You are an angel, my love,’ he said, his voice thickening with somnolence. He returned his head to her shoulder, his chin digging into her collarbone, and was asleep within moments.

Rachel lay awake a long while. She could smell the faint grease of Richard’s hair, and the bitter tang of the coal smuts in the grate. When he plants a child within me, my love for him will grow along with it. Then we will truly be a family, and all will be well. Through the walls came sounds of movement and words; the bass rumbling of a man’s voice, raised in anger. The wooden skeleton of the building creaked with footsteps. A cold draught seeped in around the window frame, and touched Rachel’s face with a promise of the winter that was coming. When she slept, it was to dream of a sparkling river, fast running and lively with sunlight. She both loved and feared this river, in her dream, with a foreboding like gathering thunderclouds. She seemed to hover above the water’s surface, suspended somehow; she heard a shout of fear, and it wasn’t her voice. There was a smell of green summer all around, and the notion that the pretty river wanted something from her.

The next morning, Rachel waited until Richard had had something to eat and drink before she raised the subject of his father. He was often sullen and unhappy first thing after waking, and she had quickly learnt not to talk too much, or too loudly, until he had breakfasted. She fetched him slices of bread spread with honey, and some boiled eggs, putting them down around him as he stared at the table top and swigged from a tankard of ale.

‘You won’t guess who I chanced upon yesterday,’ she said, lightly, when the moment seemed right.

‘Oh?’ The word was spoken low, and barely interested.

‘Your father, Duncan Weekes.’ Rachel sat down opposite Richard, and her smile faltered in the face of his bleak expression. ‘We happened upon one another in the street, and…’ She trailed off. ‘He asked after you. Asked how you were,’ she said instead.

‘It is no business of his how I am, and you’ve no business talking to him. About me, or about anything else for that matter.’ Richard’s voice was low, but his words shocked Rachel.

‘But, my dear, he is your father! And since I have none, he is my father now too-’

‘No, Rachel! He is not your father! Not one whit!’

‘Haven’t we spoken of the pain of losing family, Mr Weekes? Haven’t we spoken of how important such people are, and how we wish to be a family to one another?’

‘I have disowned that man. He is no longer my father! Do you understand?’ Richard thumped the table top with his hand, making the cutlery and his wife jump. Rachel’s heart hammered, but she persevered; she was sure she had the right of it, that she could persuade him. Have a care. She remembered Duncan Weekes’s words, but rejected them.

‘No, I do not understand. What can he possibly have done to turn you away from him like this? And… even if you feel yourself aggrieved… he is but an old man, and clearly poor and in need of our charity…’

‘If I feel myself aggrieved? Do you doubt me, then? Do you think I would turn away from my father on a whim?’ Richard’s voice was rough with anger; he jabbed a finger at her as he spoke. ‘How dare you? That man would not be half so poor if he did not drink his every wage within a day of being paid it! He is a sot, and a fool, and he has blighted my life in ways you can’t possibly imagine! He killed my mother – did he tell you that? So do not seek to lecture me on how I should or should not treat him! You will have nothing to do with him, or by God I will hear about it!’

Rachel flinched away from him, from his raised voice and his pointing finger, and the anger stringing his body as tight as piano wire. She was robbed of speech by the shock of it; she had never been spoken to that way before, had never even heard such anger before. Richard glared at her, then picked up his mug to take another swig of ale, as Rachel simply sat and stared, her cheeks flaming and her mouth and mind empty of words. She was still trying in vain to find something to say when Richard stood and drained his drink. ‘I must be gone,’ he said, calmly but coldly. ‘Let us hear no more about this.’ He strode from the room with a scowl on his face, and Rachel sat in his wake feeling as though she’d been stripped naked in public – outraged and ashamed. It took a long time for her heartbeat to return to normal, and for her fingers to stop shaking.

Nine nights since Dick Weekes’s wedding and still Starling could not sleep. She lay on her narrow bed in the flawless dark of her room, and listened to Sol Bradbury huffing and mumbling in her sleep. There was a stale smell, sharp and feral, rising from her own body, and she realised she’d forgotten to wash. She clenched her fists tight, angry with herself. She’d been sleepwalking through the days since she set eyes on Dick’s new wife – on that face – with only a small portion of her mind tuned to any task and the remainder caught up in what she had seen, and what it might mean. One day she hadn’t noticed that the spit jack was jammed, and a shoulder of pork had been charred to cinders on one side. She’d ruined three gallons of ginger beer by adding too much yeast, so that those bottles that hadn’t exploded tasted vile. Even cheerful Sol had started to tut and sigh at her vacant expression and distracted frown.

When Starling pictured Dick Weekes’s bride, her breathing quickened involuntarily. She pictured large, heavy-lidded blue eyes, high cheekbones and a pointed chin with just the hint of dimple in it, a small, neat mouth, a stony pallor on smooth skin, and pale hair the colour of fresh cream. It could not be a coincidence. There had to be some meaning to this woman’s sudden appearance in Bath, and there certainly had to be some way in which Starling could use her. This was the chance she’d been waiting for, the chance she’d been longing for. She was not yet sure what would happen but the first step, she decided as the solid black of night began to pale, was that Dick Weekes must introduce his wife to Mrs Josephine Alleyn, mistress of the house on Lansdown Crescent. There was no other way that this new Mrs Weekes could be brought into the house, no way Jonathan Alleyn could be confronted with her alarming face, than by her first being seen by his mother, Josephine.

The next day, Starling was still mulling over how she would bring this about when a serendipitous opportunity presented itself. Dorcas still refused to go anywhere near Jonathan Alleyn, so Starling continued to see to his rooms. The day had dawned overcast, and drizzly. Viewed from the upper storey of the house, the city and the river valley were cloaked in mist and murk. Still, Starling saw Jonathan flinch as she threw open his shutters. He was tall and lean; long cheekbones in a fox-like face with a pointed nose and an angular jaw; long fingers, furrows across his forehead. He had dark brows above dark, watchful eyes, and his hair, greasy and knotted, grew in unkempt waves down to his shoulders. He had slept in his chair again, fully clothed, and he hadn’t shaved for days. There was a letter in his hand. One of Alice’s, Starling guessed at once. Her heart gave a funny little jump in her chest. The paper was old and rumpled, torn at the edges. He’d been sleeping with it clasped to his chest, as if for comfort. Beg her all you want, Starling thought. It’s too late. She can’t forgive you now, and neither will I. Jonathan stared at her for a minute in apparent confusion, and she braced herself, but then his head fell back against the chair, and his eyes slid away, fixing on the window glass.

‘Get out. Leave me be,’ he murmured.

‘Your breakfast is on the table behind you,’ said Starling, knowing he would not touch it. He rarely ate anything before noon, sometimes nothing until dark fell. Sometimes nothing at all, all day.

‘Leave me be, I said.’ His voice was cracked and hollow.

Starling drifted away from him to the fireplace. She swept out the cold ashes, laid in kindling and fresh coals, and relit it. There was a smashed glass on the floor by his desk, and she swept that up too, and only realised, as she was ready to leave the room, how quiet and kind to him she was being. It’s the letter, she thought at once. When he took Alice’s letters out of whatever secret place he kept them, it was like some trace of her came into the room; some ghost of her came into Starling’s heart, laid soft fingers on the hurt and the anger, and gentled her. No. I will not be gentled. She ground her teeth together and called to mind the reason why Alice was not there herself, to make everyone more gentle: the fact that Alice was gone. The thought cut her, and reopened the wound from which her bitterness flowed. She turned and looked at the top of Jonathan’s head, just visible over the back of his chair. His arm had flopped to the side now; Alice’s letter dangled precariously from his fingertips. If he lets it drop, like something of no import, then I will kill him here and now. But Jonathan did not let the letter fall.

Starling took several slow steps towards him. She could tell from his breathing that he was drowsing again, and she listened for a while because there was something pleasing in the sound – its simple rhythm; its vulnerability. He murmured in his sleep, his voice deep and indistinct at first, then rising to sound pitiful, frightened, almost childlike. Cautiously, Starling moved to his side. His head had lolled forwards, chin to his chest. She knelt down to look into his face, and saw his eyeballs switching to and fro beneath the lids. There was a crease between his brows and his breathing was faster now, less even. He dreams. He dreams in fear. She found herself leaning closer and closer to his face, fascinated. His lips moved, not quite giving shape to the sounds in his throat. What do you see, Mr Alleyn? What do you see that frightens you so? He gave a low moan then, and his hands jerked up, clenching into fists. Alice’s letter was crumpled between his fingers, and Starling stared at it, wondering if she could prise it free without him realising. She reached for it, pinched it and pulled gently, but Jonathan held it fast. Holding her breath she pulled harder, but the paper would not come free.

‘No!’ Jonathan cried out, and Starling was on her feet and backing away from him in an instant. But he was sleeping still. ‘No,’ he said again, in that high, plaintive voice. ‘No, no, no… I never meant to. I have… I have…’ His eyes had flickered open a fraction, showing a ghastly sliver of white. His mouth moved constantly. ‘There is blood! There is blood…’ he muttered, and then moaned again, a sound of intense anguish.

‘Yes,’ Starling whispered, suddenly cold right through to her bones. ‘Yes, I know. There is blood on your hands.’ At the sound of her voice Jonathan flinched, and shifted in his chair. His eyes stilled, and he said nothing more. Sleep easy while you can, for I will find a way to prove your guilt.

It wasn’t the first time she’d heard Jonathan talk that way. Sometimes, when he’d been drinking or had one of his headaches, he seemed to fall into a kind of waking trance, and would speak to people who were not in the room, as though he heard questions in the empty air. A lot of what he said – most of it – made no sense at all. But sometimes he would say something chilling, something that reeked of guilt and violence; and when he did Starling was reminded of the moment her suspicions became certainty, after Jonathan came back from the war for the final time, in 1812. That was three years after Alice’s disappearance, and no one in the house at Box was allowed to say her name. Jonathan lay in bed for several weeks with his leg all bandaged and stinking, and would see nobody.

Starling was a servant in that house, nothing more; she had to adjust herself – her feelings and her behaviour. She could not just speak to Jonathan, as once she might. When she thought of the smooth, bright face she’d glimpsed when first she saw him, she could hardly believe that this ravaged, hollow-cheeked creature was the same man. Eventually she found a way into his room, and she was incautious, and hadn’t yet learnt to be wary of his rages. She rushed right up to him, took his hand unguardedly and begged to know if he’d had word from Alice, or planned to search for her now his leg was healed. Jonathan pulled his hand away and dealt her a blow across her face that laid her flat out on her back, dazed and stupid. He was calm as he did it, all empty-eyed and absent. From then on she knew she would have to be more subtle if she wanted to glean anything from him; she knew he was not the same man she had known, and she began to fear what he was capable of.

And then, one day not long after that, she took a jug of warm spiced milk to his room and found him panting and sweating at the pains in his head, pacing the room, gripping his skull with both hands and muttering a steady stream of nonsense. And she heard him say it. She heard it for the first time, and she turned as cold and unfeeling as ice, all over. The crash of the milk jug as it hit the floor brought another servant running, and brought Jonathan wheeling towards her, teeth bared in the incoherent fury of his suffering, and all dissolved into chaos and strife for a while. But she had heard it, clear as day. She had heard him say it. She is dead. Oh God, she is dead. Starling did not sleep that night – did not even close her eyes. The long, empty hours distilled all her fears and confusion into a cold, hard conviction. She knew that Jonathan Alleyn was her enemy.

From then on, she tormented him in any way she could. She found a thousand little ways in which to make him suffer, to madden him, to prevent his rest. For why should he rest, when she could not? Why should he rest, when Alice was stolen and gone? She worked to make him betray himself; she worked to make him confess, and unmask himself to the world. And when he did neither of these things she worked on, ever on, driving and provoking him. Years later, when he attempted to take his own life, she had the chance to let him die. She could have made an end to it, but when the moment came she saved him. She stopped him. Death would be a relief, after all – it would bring rest. And she would not let him rest.

In the hallway outside Jonathan’s rooms on Lansdown Crescent, as he still slept with Alice’s letter clasped in his hand, Starling found Mrs Alleyn waiting for her, tall and serene. Jonathan’s mother was past fifty years of age, but still very lovely. In her day, it was said, she had been one of the most celebrated beauties in the West Country. Starling had first met her when she was forty, in the first awful weeks after Alice disappeared, and indeed she had been beautiful then. Now her cornflower-blue eyes sat surrounded by fine lines, and there were deep creases bracketing her mouth, which had begun to lose the curve in its upper lip. But her cheekbones were still high and smooth, her brows still delicately arched, and her jaw still firm. Her hair had once been a deep, dark brown, the colour of molasses; now it was iron grey, swept back against her skull but for some precise ringlets to frame her face. Many women half her age were not half so handsome. Starling curtsied at once.

‘Starling! How is it you are upstairs? Don’t tell me my son has seen off another housemaid?’

‘I don’t think she has quite run away yet. Mrs Hatton hopes to persuade her to stay.’

‘But she will not go into my son’s rooms?’

‘No, madam. She will not.’

‘Foolish creature.’ Josephine Alleyn sighed. ‘He is heartsick, and unwell. He is not a danger to anybody.’ Starling said nothing to this, and Mrs Alleyn studied her closely. ‘What is it, girl? You look as though you have something you would say?’

‘No, madam,’ said Starling.

‘You do not mind, then – helping my son when others will not?’

‘No, madam. Only…’

‘Speak.’

‘It makes it rather hard, to do all my work downstairs, when I have duties upstairs as well.’

‘I see. What do you suggest? That I raise you to housemaid, and employ a new kitchen maid in your place?’

‘If it please you, madam. There might not be another girl better fitted to serve Mr Alleyn than I am.’

‘Ah, but the very reason he does not shock you is the very reason that keeps you below stairs, Starling.’ Mrs Alleyn smiled, not unkindly. ‘I fear you are better suited to the kitchen and still room.’ Starling heard the unspoken implication of this quite clearly: You are a hedge rat. And you belonged to Alice. ‘But perhaps, if you are to continue with this extra work upstairs from time to time, it ought to be reflected in your salary. I shall speak to Mrs Hatton about it.’

‘Thank you, madam.’

‘Well. Now tell me, how is Jonathan this morning?’

‘He is quiet, madam. He does not eat, and his bed had not been slept in,’ said Starling. Mrs Alleyn took a breath; her eyes reflected a deep anxiety.

‘He… does he shake? Do you think it is the pains in his head again?’

‘I think not, madam. He seems only tired today.’

‘Well then, I shall visit him now.’ The older lady drew herself up, full of resolve. ‘Be about your work, Starling.’ She halffears him herself, Starling thought. She turned to go, but after a few steps she paused, glancing back. Now is your chance. Mrs Alleyn’s hand had frozen halfway towards knocking at her son’s door. ‘What is it?’ she said.

‘I saw Mr Weekes, the wine man, just the other day. He asked to be remembered to you. He is lately wed, and begs leave to present his new bride to you, if it please you, madam.’

‘Young Richard Weekes, married at last?’ Mrs Alleyn smiled slightly.

‘Yes, madam.’

‘And is his bride quite fit to be met?’

‘By all accounts, she is most refined. Perhaps… a deal more refined than Mr Weekes himself. She struck me as a somewhat… singular lady.’

‘Indeed? In what way?’

‘Perhaps you might be the better judge yourself, madam.’

‘Well, then, I should be interested to meet her. Curious that he did not call to make this request himself. But you may pass on a message for him to call on Thursday, at four, if he pleases.’

‘As you say, Mrs Alleyn.’ Starling curtsied and turned away, her heart thumping.

She knew that Mrs Alleyn would wait until she was out of earshot before going in to her son, but she still heard the shouts when she did enter, and the thud of something thrown across the room. Starling carried on to the lowest floor, checked that the coast was clear, then took a jar of pickled eggs from the pantry and added it to the bag of such items she kept pushed far back beneath her bed. Thursday, at four. She must make sure she could watch, if possible, the exact moment that Josephine Alleyn set eyes on Rachel Weekes.

At the thought, some restless uncertainty gripped her, and made it impossible to keep still. She suddenly realised that she had no idea how Mrs Alleyn would react to a person who looked so like Alice, the girl she blamed for her son’s illness and decline. And she realised that she herself longed to see the new Mrs Weekes again – however painful it had been the first time, feeling that wild surge of joy, dashed in the next instant when she realised that this was not Alice returned. Still, the novelty of such an uncanny likeness was fascinating. Starling longed to look again, and to compare – to verify her first impression that this woman’s face was the mirror image of that which haunted her memories. And if Josephine Alleyn is incensed at the sight of her, throws her out and refuses to have her back… then it is all over before it has begun. She paced the cramped floor of the bedchamber, turning so many times it made her dizzy. But the thing was set in motion now, and could not be stopped.