Chapter 2

Arabella stopped pacing.

Martha gripped the rug, her knuckles white. "Down in the basement."

Arabella had them fetch the registry—a thick leather tome accounting for everyone on the grounds, from stable boys to ash collectors.

I skimmed to the bottom. Basement workers. Three names. All female.

One look, and Arabella decided.

"Bring them up."

The three women shuffling into the hall ten minutes later barely looked human.

The gardener came first. Everyone called her the Hag. A black veil was pinned beneath her jaw, hiding her face. She was mute, reeking of damp earth and rot.

Agnes the washerwoman dragged her feet. Her spine was locked into a hunch, her chest rattling with a wet cough.

Bertha the cook brought up the rear. Her milky eyes were unfocused. She stood off-center, orienting herself by sound, radiating the stale stench of old pork fat.

Arabella pressed a lace handkerchief over her nose and stepped back.

"Lucian’s standards haven't just dropped," Arabella sneered through the fabric. "They've rotted away. Tell me exactly where you hags were the night the Duke was drinking."

The veiled gardener held up her hands. Her fingers moved in sharp signs. 'Greenhouse. Pruning dead branches. Never left.'

Agnes wiped her mouth with her sleeve. "Laundry house, Madam. Boiling the east wing sheets."

Bertha tilted her head. "Kitchen cellar. Boiling bone broth."

Three airtight alibis. No hesitation.

I stepped forward and undid the top buttons of Agnes's and Bertha's collars. It was useless. Their skin was ruined—leathery, folded over their collarbones, covered in psoriasis and age spots.

Martha gripped my elbow hard.

"Edith," she whispered. "The right hand."

I grabbed Bertha’s right hand. A dead end. Her palm was an uneven spread of melted skin.

Agnes thrust her hand out. The skin between her thumb and index finger was eaten away by lye, leaving thick calluses and weeping cracks.

The veiled gardener extended her hand last. The webbing of her thumb was a massacre of overlapping thorn slashes, dark soil permanently embedded into the scars.

Every single one of them had a ruined right hand. There was no way to isolate a specific burn mark.

I dropped the gardener's hand and spun to face Agnes.

"You said you were in the laundry house," I kept my voice low, stepping into her space. "That door gets padlocked from the outside at sundown."

Agnes’s wet cough hitched. "One of the boys... he unlocked it for me."

"The key never leaves the head butler's belt," I said, backing her toward the wall. "He stood night watch for the Duke. You're lying."

Agnes’s knees hit the stone floor. Her twisted hands grabbed at her apron.

"Madam, please!" She looked past me at Arabella, tears cutting through the dirt on her cheeks. "I owe gambling debts. I was desperate... I snuck into the Duke's room to steal. I swear on my life I never touched him—"

Arabella didn't let her finish. She backed away in disgust, waving sharply at the guards.

"Drag her to the Duke," she ordered. "Let her take the fall."

Two footmen grabbed Agnes by the armpits and dragged her screaming out the double doors.

Past midnight, I crossed the grand hall in the dark.

Something wet hit the bridge of my nose.

It was thick and warm. I wiped it with the back of my hand.

I looked at my fingers. Black in the moonlight. Smelling of copper.

I looked up.

Agnes was hanging from the crystal chandelier. A silver piano wire wrapped her throat, biting so deep her head tilted at a broken angle. Blood dripped steadily from her boots, hitting the marble next to my shoe.

A heavy voice echoed from the second-floor landing above.

"Did you think a random scapegoat could deceive me?" Duke Lucian leaned over the railing, looking down at the corpse. "She is not the woman I am looking for."

I couldn't breathe. My lungs locked.

I stumbled backward, breaking into a run until I hit the servant’s corridor. I found Martha in the shadows and slammed her against the wall by her shoulders.

"Martha, listen to me!" I shook her. "When Lucian killed you in the snow—what exact words did he say?"

Martha gasped, touching her throat by reflex. "He said... she had a cross tattoo on her chest."

My blood ran cold.

"Last time, he killed me because I didn't have a burn scar," the words rushed out. "Martha, do you understand? A man searching for a one-night fling doesn't hyper-fixate on permanent ink and old wounds."

He knew exactly what marks to look for before he ever arrived.

He wasn't hunting a bedmate from yesterday. He was hunting a ghost. Someone he already knew. Someone deeply tied to this estate.

I left Martha in the hallway and sprinted to the Duchess’s bedroom.

The door was wide open. Lucian had stripped the wing of Arabella's guards. She was completely isolated.

Arabella stood barefoot in the center of the room, surrounded by shattered wine glasses. She looked up, chest heaving, her hair wild.

"Madam," I stepped over the glass. "He knows who he's looking for. And it's not a living woman. If we don't bring him a body, we all die. We need to dig up the ruins in the backyard."

Arabella froze.

The panic that washed over her face was terrifying. She lunged forward, grabbing my shoulders. Her nails dug into my skin.

"Get the shovels," Arabella snarled, her voice dropping to a feral hiss. "Tear open the old rose garden! Dig up every root!"