“I am ecstatic to finally meet you,” Marta exclaimed, her voice somehow melodic even at full volume. “I have heard so much about you, from Grandmama, but mostly from Cassian’s grumbling. I believe he must be obsessed with you if he is inspired to speak about you so often.”
“His grumbling?” Juliana repeated.
“Oh, my brother has always been a man of few words where people are concerned,” Marta said, settling back into her chair with the unhurried ease of someone entirely comfortable in her own company. “For years, one might have a conversation with him and come away knowing nothing more about his life than when one began. Recently, however, it has been rather different.” She tilted her head, those green eyes bright with amusement. “Juliana said this. Juliana defied me on that. Juliana had the extraordinary audacity to do the other thing. I confess I began to look forward to his visits purely for the entertainment.”
Juliana felt the warmth rise to her cheeks and was grateful that the tower room was dim enough to conceal it.
“I am afraid I owe you an explanation for my presence,” she said, because it seemed only honest. “I heard a scream some weeks ago, coming from this direction. When I came to investigate, Cassian caught me on the stairs and forbade me from coming any further.” She paused. “I thought… well. I entertained rather dramatic possibilities, as it happens.”
Marta looked at her with an expression of such delighted interest that Juliana found herself continuing despite herself.
“I thought someone might be being held against their will,” she admitted. “I had read rather a lot of Gothic novels, and my imagination is, according to my husband, entirely too active for anyone’s good.”
Marta burst out laughing, and Juliana realized with a small shock that it was the sound she had heard. Not a scream of distress. Laughter, carried down through old stone in the dark, transformed by distance and her own fearful imagination into something sinister.
She pressed her lips together.
“I feel rather foolish,” she said.
“You should not,” Marta said, composing herself with some effort. “Cassian’s secrecy is entirely his own fault. If he had simply said that his sister lives in the tower and prefers her solitude, none of this would have been necessary.”
“My granddaughter has a profound distaste for society’s performative nature. The tower suits her. It is quiet and warm, and nobody expects her to make conversation with people she finds trying.” She cast a fond look at Marta. “Cassian understands this and tries to protect her peace a little too vehemently. He is, whatever his other considerable faults, an excellent brother.”
“He is,” Marta agreed, and something shifted briefly in her expression, not quite pain, but the shadow of it. “He worries a bit too much about me. But then, he has had reason to.”
“Of course,” Juliana muttered.
Juliana looked at her, at the careful brightness she kept, at the life she had built for herself in this quiet room with its books andsketches and perpetual tea, and understood that there was far more beneath the surface of Marta Cavendish than an eccentric preference for solitude. She also understood, without being told, that this was not the moment to ask.
“Please sit,” Marta said, gesturing to the empty chair with a smile. “The tea is still warm, and I want to know everything! How did you manage to capture my brother’s attention? He always insisted he had neither the time nor the patience for a wife.”
“He… he did not capture my attention so much as purchase it,” Juliana said drily, then caught herself. “Forgive me. That was—”
“Honest,” Marta said, with evident appreciation. “Please do not apologize for it. I have had quite enough of people saying careful, considered things in my presence.” She poured a fresh cup and held it out. “You can tell me everything. Leave nothing out.”
Juliana looked at her husband’s sister, his secret, the reason behind half the locked doors in Stonevale, and found, to her own surprise, that she rather wanted to.
She sat down, accepted the tea, and began.
The Dowager set down her cup, offered Juliana a small, satisfied smile as though she had arranged the entire thing herself, and excused herself.
“It is not a cage but a room with a long hallway, endless it seems sometimes,” Juliana declared, setting the tray down on the small table by the window. “Not a prison, but an enormous place in which I am learning to take up space. At least that is what I tellmyself.” She looked around at the warm, book-lined room with its crackling fire and neat rows of sketches pinned to the walls, and felt, not for the first time, that she understood why Marta had chosen it. “But with you here, it feels considerably less so. I hope you feel the same about me being here.”
It had been a full week since Cassian’s carriage had disappeared down the drive, and in that week, Juliana had found herself climbing the tower stairs every morning with eagerness. She had brought tarts pilfered from the kitchens, novels she thought Marta might enjoy, and once a small bunch of roses from the gardens, which had made Marta go very quiet and then reach out to touch the petals with such careful reverence that Juliana had had to look away.
The change in Marta over those seven days was not dramatic. It was subtler than that. She laughed more readily. She talked more freely. On the third day, she even allowed Juliana to coax her as far as the window seat, where she sat in the afternoon light with her sketchbook open on her lap, her face tilted very slightly toward the sun, and said nothing at all, which Juliana understood perfectly.
On the fifth day, Juliana had suggested a stroll in the gardens.
Marta had refused at first, the brevity of her hesitation telling Juliana the idea was not without its appeal. On the sixth day, she had agreed, with conditions. It would be early morning, before the servants were about, and they would take the side gate rather than the main path for no more than a quarter of an hour. They had walked out together into the pale morning light, Marta’s hand tucked firmly into Juliana’s. Marta had not spoken a single word for the entire quarter of an hour, but she had stood among the roses, breathing the air. When they came back inside, there had been something different in her eyes.
Today, the seventh day, she had asked whether they might go again tomorrow.
Juliana had said yes without making a fuss, which she suspected was the correct approach.
Now Marta was sketching the tarts with her usual rapid, confident strokes, her brown hair loose around her shoulders, looking rather more like a young woman and less like a ghost than she had a week ago.
“You are quite an influence on me, Juliana,” Marta remarked, with a shy smile.
