Is she dead?”
“I don’t think so. Poke her.”
“You poke her!”
I didn’t recognize the voices. I groaned, trying to open my eyes. The candlelight seemed impossibly bright. And the faces gathered around me weren’t any more familiar than their voices had been.
“I’m not dead,” I croaked at the ghosts. My throat felt like it was full of sand. Mr. Rochester whined and licked my hand. A young girl gave me a gap-toothed smile. “I don’t think.”
The man who’d spoken first looked vaguely like a pirate. He grinned wickedly at me. I could see right through his teeth to the ceiling above him.
“There you are, lass.”
“Not another ghost.” My head felt like it was on fire.
He threw back his head and laughed. “Don’t worry. I know exactly who killed me and I deserved it.”
“She’s awake!” It was Colin’s voice this time, flooded with relief as he rushed toward me. “Are you hurt? Can you sit? Violet?”
The pirate winked at me. “Love, lassie. Good for you.” He fell apart like smoke. The matronly woman on my other side sniffed disapprovingly at Colin. “He oughtn’t be holding you like that,” she complained before fading away as well. “ ’Tisn’t seemly.”
I couldn’t see Rowena anywhere. I probed my memories gently, as if they were an aching tooth in my head. Some of the events were fuzzy, but at least I knew which events had happened to me and which had happened to Rowena. I was finally alone inside my head.
“Thank God,” I said. I clutched my head when Colin hauled me up. “Ouch.”
“Sorry, sorry.”
I’d never seen him look so worried and frantic. He looked years younger and years older at the same time. His hair was disheveled, as if he’d been shoving his hand through it. His shirt was dry and I was in a proper nightdress, which meant I’d been unconscious for a good length of time.
“Where am I?” I couldn’t be sure what lay behind the glow of the candles.
“In your sitting room,” Lord Jasper said mildly from a chair by the hearth. “You are quite a resourceful girl, aren’t you?”
“Rowena?”
He smiled gently at me. “Gone. One would imagine she is finally at peace, thanks to you.”
I sighed, relieved. “Good.”
“I owe you an apology, Violet.”
I blinked. “Whatever for?”
“I invited you and your mother here for my own purposes. I’d hoped a medium in the presence of the same people at the same time Rowena died might bring some of the facts to light. I had no idea.”
“You knew Rowena’s drowning wasn’t an accident.”
“I suspected not.”
“What of Tabitha?” I asked. “Is she all right?”
“I’m here,” she croaked from the room my mother had used on our first visit. Colin had to help me shuffle over to the doorway, where I collapsed against it. She was lying under a pile of blankets, looking wretched.
“I had her brought here as soon as I could,” Lord Jasper explained quietly. “The doctor’s been and gone. You’re both to rest.”
“You look dreadful,” she whispered at me. I thought she might be trying to smile. I tried to smile back. I felt limp as a cooked noodle.
“You too.”
“Violet?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
I nodded, then clutched at my head. Colin practically carried me to the empty sofa. “Might I have some water?” I drank greedily when he brought me a glass, then laid back against my pillow, exhausted. “What of Mr. Travis?”
“He’s recuperating at home. He had a nasty gash on his head and his leg is broken. He’ll likely have a limp but he’ll survive.”
“And Wentworth?” I would have spat his name if I’d had the energy.
“Newgate Prison,” Lord Jasper told me. “The constable’s already taken him away. He won’t be tried, since he’s a peer, but I suspect he’ll be deported. In fact, I plan to make certain of it.”
“Good.” I yawned. “I really don’t like him,” I muttered groggily. I glanced at Colin. “Thank you for punching him.”
“My pleasure,” he said grimly.
I struggled to peel open my third eye, which felt crusted over with sleep. Mr. Rochester sat up from where he’d apparently been curled up on my lap. He looked straight at me and barked happily. I had to smile.
Tabitha watched me hopefully. “Rowena?”
I shook my head. “Gone,” I whispered.
She nodded, biting her lip.
“Finally at peace.” Lord Jasper touched her shoulder. “I’ve sent word to your father. You will, of course, stay here with us until he can be located.”
“Thank you.” She fiddled with her ring.
“I want you both to rest now,” he added, taking Caroline and Colin with him.
After another day of rest I woke ravenous. I ate a mountain of food and felt well enough to get dressed. Tabitha still kept to her bed though she looked like she was improving. Elizabeth snuck into our adjoining parlor before the breakfast tray was even cleared. She wasn’t properly dressed, just swaddled in a voluminous robe.
“Oh, Violet, you’re better!” she exclaimed, rushing to hug me. I hugged her back.
“I’m much better,” I assured her. “I thought you’d left already.”
“We’re the last of the guests and we’re off today. That’s why I snuck over here. Mother forbade me to talk to you.” She pouted. “Which seems a fine how-do-you-do since you discovered a murderer and brought him to justice. To your own peril, I might add.”
“But I did it in my underwear.”
She sighed with a small grin. “Yes, that doesn’t help.”
I shrugged. “I’m just glad it’s over.”
“No sign of Rowena?”
“Not since the ball.”
“That’s good, right?”
“I think so.”
She hugged me again. “I’d best go before she comes looking for me. I’ll write to you.”
It occurred to me that I wasn’t entirely sure where she should address her envelopes. The lease on our town house had expired and we didn’t have enough money to renew it. I wasn’t sure I could do enough readings to fix that particular problem. My head hurt just to think about it.
I decided to go for a walk now that I was finally out of bed. I found Colin around the back of the stables, leaning against a tree, shirtsleeves rolled up. I picked my way through the dandelions toward him. He pushed away from the oak, grinning.
“Violet.”
“I was worried you’d gone back to London.” I couldn’t help the wide, silly smile on my face.
“As if I would leave without you,” he said like I was daft. He reached for my hand. His palm was warm and callused and comforting, even as pleasant tingles danced in my belly. “Where are you off to, then?”
“I’m going to visit Mr. Travis.”
“I’ll come too.”
We walked the hedge-lined road down to the village. Colin picked blackberries and wrapped them up in a handkerchief for later. The sun was warm on my shoulders. We stopped once so I could steal a few apples from a tree at the edge of an orchard. I gave one to Colin, remembering what he’d said about his mother’s apple pie. He placed it very carefully on the low stone wall before closing his hands around my shoulders and hauling me up against him. I felt a small bundle in the top pocket of his coat. His kiss was long and slow and wicked. We stopped when a cart rumbled down the road toward us.
The village was small, with pretty cottages and a main street lined with shops. We found the painted sign for Travis and Sons Tailors and went inside, where one of Reece’s brothers pointed us upstairs. Reece’s very pregnant sister-in-law answered the door and led us into the bedroom.
Reece lay on a narrow bed by a window, a table cluttered with medicines beside him. There were bruises on his face, a bandage wrapped around his head, and another bandage binding his leg.
“Miss Willoughby.” He smiled. “I’m glad to see you’re well.”
“I’ve brought you a gift,” I said gently, handing him a ribbon-wrapped pile of letters. The smell of lily-of-the-valley perfume thickened the air. “I convinced Tabitha to give them to you.” His eyes looked suspiciously bright. I looked away to allow him to compose himself. Colin stood just behind me, his shoulder brushing mine.
“Thank you.” Reece’s hands trembled slightly when he reached for the packet. “I only kept the one,” he explained. “I sent them back to her when I tried to leave her. She kept them and planned an elopement instead. I never could deny her anything.” He clutched them tightly as if he meant to never let them go.
We left him so he could read them in private and headed back to Rosefield.
“I’m really going to miss it here,” I told Colin. He just wound his fingers around mine, and we went up the tree-lined lane and through the forest of roses to the front door. Lord Jasper was in the foyer, finishing a consultation with Mrs. Harris about dinner. A footman bowed to me, handing me a letter. I nearly groaned as I reached for it. I’d had my fill of letters lately.
This one was no better.
“Mother has quit the town house,” I told Colin quietly. “And has accepted Lord Marshall’s protection.” My mother had set herself up as a mistress. I grimaced and kept reading. “Marshall moved her into new lodgings. And as daughters are a liability to a paramour’s work, I am not welcome.” Colin’s hand clenched at his side. “She says she was on her own at sixteen and I can be too, seeing as I stole the Spiritualist reputation she worked so hard to maintain.”
“Bollocks,” Colin muttered. “Never mind, you’re well rid of her.”
I took a deep breath. “What shall we do now? Advertise for a position? Keep sheep?” I tried to smile.
“You’ll stay here.” Lord Jasper thumped his cane insistently. “You clearly need more training,” he insisted. “You can’t be letting spirits take up residence in your head like that, my girl.”
I smiled, nervous and hopeful and grateful. “But what about Colin?” I didn’t want to be greedy, but I wasn’t going to abandon him. “I can’t just leave him to fend for himself.” I squeezed his hand.
“Never mind me,” he said.
“His grandfather was a gardener,” I offered helpfully.
Lord Jasper shrugged. “What’s one more? We have extensive gardens. I reckon Godfrey could use the help.”
“Thank you, sir,” Colin replied. It wasn’t ideal, but it would afford us some time to make plans of our own. And besides, he hated London.
“I can work too,” I assured Lord Jasper.
He just shook his head. “You’ll be working hard enough learning to use your gifts properly.” Being a medium under Lord Jasper’s tutelage seemed far less disconcerting than doing so under Mother’s control. “You should get some rest now,” he added. “You’re still recovering.”
Colin walked up the stairs with me, incongruous in his plain clothes against the fine paintings and gilded banister. He was more beautiful than any antique carvings of Jasper’s knightly ancestors.
“Do you mind very much?” I asked. “Being a gardener, I mean?”
“It’s a sight better than being your mother’s lackey,” he said, brushing my hair off my face. “I don’t mind hard work, never have.”
I kissed him lightly and used the moment to slip the package out of the inside of his pocket. It was a white kerchief folded into a square. “What’s this?”
He pretended to look put out. “Did you just pick my pocket?”
“Yes.”
“Good thing it’s for you then.”
“It is? Really?” I’d only been teasing him when I went through his pockets. I unwrapped it, touched. It was a small brooch made of tin, in the shape of a rose. “Oh, Colin, it’s lovely. Thank you!”
“I thought the rose would remind you of this place. I guess now you don’t need it.” He pinned it to my top, just under my collarbone. “I love you, Violet. Could you love a gardener who can’t afford real silver, now that you’re an earl’s daughter living in a fine house?”
I leaned forward so my lips were so close to his they brushed lightly when I spoke. “I love you, Colin Lennox.”
His grin was crooked and wicked.
“Then we’ll be just fine.”