Chapter 2
Arabella stopped pacing.
Martha gripped the edge of the woven rug, her knuckles turning white. "Down in the basement."
Arabella had them fetch the registry—a two-inch-thick leather tome that accounted for every last person on the grounds, from stable boys to ash collectors.
I skimmed down to the bottom. Basement workers. Three names. All female.
One look, and she decided.
"Bring them up."
The three women shuffling into the hall ten minutes later barely looked human anymore.
The gardener came first—everyone called her the Hag. A thick black veil was pinned tightly beneath her jaw, hiding her entire face. She was completely mute. She reeked of damp earth and rotting fertilizer.
Agnes the washerwoman dragged her feet behind her. Her spine was locked into a permanent hunch, her chest rattling with a wet, heavy cough every few seconds.
Bertha the cook brought up the rear. Her eyes were milky and unfocused, completely half-blind. She stood slightly off-center, orienting herself entirely by sound, radiating the stale, nauseating stench of old pork fat.
Arabella immediately pressed a lace handkerchief over her nose. She took a large step back.
"Lucian’s standards haven't just dropped," Arabella sneered, her voice muffled through the fabric. "They have entirely 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, practiced signs. 'Greenhouse. Pruning dead branches. Never left.'
Agnes wiped her mouth with her sleeve. "Laundry house, Madam. Boiling the east wing bed sheets."
Bertha tilted her head. "Kitchen cellar. Boiling a clear bone broth."
Three perfect, airtight alibis. No hesitation.
I stepped forward and undid the top buttons of Agnes's and Bertha's coarse uniforms. It was useless. Their skin was entirely ruined—leathery, deeply folded over their collarbones, covered in psoriasis and rough age spots.
Martha gripped my elbow tight enough to bruise.
"Edith," she whispered, her voice trembling. "The right hand's mark."
I immediately grabbed Bertha’s right hand. Complete dead end. Her entire palm was a massive, uneven spread of melted skin.
Agnes thrust her hand out. The skin between her thumb and index finger was completely eaten away by lye and harsh soap, leaving layers of thick white calluses and fresh, weeping cracks.
The veiled gardener extended her hand last. The webbing of her thumb was a massacre of deep, overlapping thorn slashes, mixed with dark soil permanently embedded into the old scars.
Every single one of them had a ruined right hand. There was absolutely no way to isolate one specific burn mark.
I dropped the gardener's hand. I spun around to face Agnes.
"You said you were in the laundry house." I kept my voice low, stepping directly into her space. "That door gets padlocked from the outside at sundown."
Agnes’s wet cough hitched in her throat. "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 are lying."
Agnes’s knees hit the stone floor. Her twisted hands grabbed at her own apron.
"Madam, please!" She looked past me at Arabella, tears cutting through the grime on her cheeks. "I owe gambling debts to the carriage drivers. I was desperate... I snuck into the Duke's room in the dark just to steal something, I swear on my life I never touched him—"
Arabella didn't let her finish. She backed away in pure disgust, waving her hand sharply at the guards.
"Drag her to the Duke," Arabella ordered. "Let her take the fall."
Two footmen grabbed Agnes by the armpits and dragged her screaming out the double doors.
Sometime past midnight, I was crossing the grand hall in absolute darkness.
Something wet hit the bridge of my nose.
It was thick. It was warm. I wiped it with the back of my hand.
I looked at my fingers. Black in the moonlight. Smelling heavily of copper.
I looked up.
Agnes was hanging off the three-meter crystal chandelier. A thin, silver piano wire was wrapped tightly around her throat, biting so deep her head tilted at a broken angle. Blood dripped steadily from her boots, hitting the marble right next to my shoe.
A heavy, authoritative voice echoed from the second-floor landing above.
"Did you honestly 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 completely locked.
I stumbled backward, breaking into a run until I hit the servant’s corridor. I found Martha hiding in the dark 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 purely out of reflex. "He said... he said she had a cross tattoo on her chest."
My blood ran completely cold.
"Last time, he killed me because I didn't have a burn scar," I said, the words rushing out of my mouth. "Martha, do you understand? A man searching for a one-night fling doesn't hyper-fixate on permanent ink and old wounds."
He already 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 straight to the Duchess’s bedroom.
The door was wide open. Lucian had just stripped the estate of Arabella's personal guards. She was completely isolated.
Arabella stood barefoot in the center of the room, surrounded by shattered wine glasses. She looked up at me, her chest heaving, her hair wild.
"Madam," I stepped firmly over the broken glass. "He knows what 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 sheer, unfiltered panic that washed over her face was terrifying. She lunged forward, grabbing both my shoulders. Her nails dug violently into my skin.
"Get the shovels," Arabella snarled, her voice dropping into a desperate, feral hiss. "Tear open the century-old rose garden! Dig up every single root!"
