How can it just be gone?
Sometimes everything is still, and she is moving. Sometimes everything is moving, and she is still. But not here. There is no time in the forest.
A spark drifts into the air, dances through the branches silhouettedagainst the darkening sky above her. Beatrix watches it, bright and free and gone. Escaped.
She pulls her wool shawl closer around her shoulders; the air has grown chill with the setting of the sun. She breathes deep, inhales the scent of woodsmoke and damp night. Everything is still, and she is still.
You will live to regret this moment.
She stares into the dancing flames of her campfire. Imagines that she survived that night. That she held her daughter, rocked her to sleep. That she had shown her how to weave crowns of flowers for her own unruly hair. That William had whittled her an entire farm of animals and taught her to climb the apple trees behind their home.
And then you will keep on living.
She could spend the rest of her endless life wondering what happened to William. Wondering what kind of life her daughter lived without her. Wondering if she should have turned back that night. If she should have returned to Lancaut on every one thereafter. Or she can forget them. Bury the memory of them deep in her heart and build a wall around it, strong enough so they can never hurt her again.
Was that what William did after he exiled her with their baby in his arms?
You will live to regret this moment.
She stares into the flames until they are only glowing embers, until they are barely lit ash. She is not so far from London, less than a day’s journey south on the back of a farmer’s cart. But swallowed by the dark, she could be anywhere. Any when.
She imagines she is waiting for William. That he will emerge from the shadows among the trees, look at her with that glimmer in his eyes, and ask her to dance. That she will place her hand in his. That he will pull her close. That he will never let her go.
And then you will keep on living.
She thought, after the Great Fire, she’d be numb to change, but London isn’t the same city she first set foot in. Sometimes she wonders if anyone else in the city cares, if anyone else even notices; if any of them worry that they could stay put and still become a stranger there. Until she remembers. No one else in the city—in the entire world—has seen London the way she has. She still can’t bring herself to look at the new cathedral,slowly rising from the ashes of hers. Still scrutinizes the faces of women in the street, as if she might recognize the foundling baby in them.
You will live to regret this moment.
She thought, after the Great Plague, she’d be numb to death. She still falls asleep to a litany of the lost running through her head, most nights.
Lost. As if she has only misplaced them. As if she can find them again. As if they are more than bones in the ground.
And then you will keep on living.
February 23, 1711Venice, Italy
Beatrix knots the black silk ribbon behind the lady’s head, careful not to disturb the blond curls she has just finished pinning into place. The young woman’s soft features disappear beneath a white porcelain mask painted with a golden beak and edged with iridescent feathers. Of course Lady DeSallowe would choose the peacock.
Beatrix knew it the moment she saw the finished dress, the morning she packed the trunks for Carnevale. It had taken the tailor four trips to the manor to perfect, with its layer upon layer of blue and green silk skirts, fitted bodice lavishly beaded in gold, and gauzy sleeves embroidered with feathers.
She still packed another three dresses for Lady DeSallowe to choose from, not to mention the matching shoes, accessories, and masks. The lady despised being told what to do. Sometimes she disagreed purely out of principle or—more likely, Beatrix suspects—spite. It is one of the reasons she has grown fond of the girl, despite her best efforts not to.
The other dresses Lady DeSallowe has dragged all the way from London to Venice are equally exquisite. An ivory gown embroidered with pastel flowers, a russet one that reminds Beatrix of an autumn wood, and an understated black dress with silver accents. Understated by Lady DeSallowe’s standards, anyway. They are all strewn across the floor now, discarded in favor of the flamboyant peacock gown.
“Oh, I just love a good masquerade,” the lady gushes as she examines herself in the dressing table’s oval mirror, preening like the bird she is pretending to be.
Beatrix can see the appeal. No one will recognize that the soft-spoken blond woman is the only surviving child of the Earl of Whitehall. The same child who, five years ago, went missing for a fortnight and whosefather, upon her miraculous return, claimed she’d been taken by the faeries. At a masquerade, Lady Jane DeSallowe can be whoever she pleases.
“It could be anyone under the mask. Isn’t that romantic?” she presses.
“Yes, m’lady,” Beatrix answers automatically, as she always did when Jane brought up matters of the heart.
“I can tell when you’re placating me,” she chides. “You have been doing it for going on five years now.”
A hairpin slips from Beatrix’s hand, tumbles to the lush floral carpet beneath her feet. It can’t be that long, can it? But the proof is sitting right in front of her.
Jane was barely a woman when her father offered Beatrix the position as her maid. She had returned Jane’s lost bracelet and hadn’t asked for a reward. The earl insisted it showed integrity, which might have been true if Beatrix hadn’t been the one who stole it in the first place.
