December 31, 1799Edenbridge, England
Lord Sutton is cursed.
Or so the rumor that piqued Beatrix’s interest a year ago claimed. The only sailor to return from a trade expedition to the East Indies, he refused to tell a soul what happened to his ship or the rest of the men on it. Instead, he fled London to serve a self-imposed exile at his country estate.
Beatrix was skeptical, especially after Jane’s concocted story. Maybe the man felt guilty for surviving a voyage his crewmates didn’t. Maybe he didn’t have the stomach for gossip. Maybe he wanted to forget whatever happened out at sea. This, at least, was in line with the other rumor circulating the city: that Lord Sutton was a laudanum addict, too out of his mind for anyone to trust his word, even if he could bring himself to speak about what happened on that ship. The lord barely seemed worth her time, except for one nagging detail. It wasn’t just the whisperings of London. He was convinced he was cursed, too.
So, Beatrix searched out Lord Sutton’s home in Edenbridge and rang the bell. She was about to turn away when he answered the door in his dressing gown, though she didn’t know why he bothered. He slammed it in her face before she could say hello. The second time she rang the bell, he demanded to know what in the bloody hell she wanted.
“A job,” Beatrix said, raising her chin to the wiry, gray-haired man scowling down at her. “You seem to be short of staff.” Cobwebs shifted in the breeze on the chandelier behind him, and he had answered his own door.
He was halfway to slamming it in her face again when he stopped, his hard gaze falling on her fidgeting hands. She clasped them in front of her to keep them still.
“What’s that on your hand?” he demanded.
Beatrix twisted the narrow band on her finger. “Just a ring.”
“I can see that. A wedding band?”
“No.”
Lord Sutton raised his bushy eyebrows. “What’s it for, then?”
The man was ill-tempered and rude, but he had all his wits about him, at least at that moment. Beatrix tested him with the truth. “It’s meant to keep the faeries away. It’s iron.”
“It’s iron,sir,” he replied, and hired her on the spot.
Beatrix has led no end of strange characters into the parlor in the months she’s worked at the estate. They all claim they can break Lord Sutton’s curse: doctors and psychics, mediums and relic hunters, experts in the occult, professors of the obscure, and holy men of every faith imaginable. One woman even declares herself a witch. Beatrix just smiles politely and asks them how they take their tea.
As far as she can tell, the supposed curse breakers are all frauds, after Lord Sutton’s money or notoriety or both. At least the physicians bring laudanum. Forgetting the world in an opium-induced haze seems to be the closest Lord Sutton can get to finding peace. Beatrix can’t help but wonder if it might have the same effect on her.
If her curse is inescapable, maybe this is the next best thing: make her mind so distant she can’t recall what haunts her, and make her body so numb that if she does manage to conjure a memory, she won’t feel it tearing her apart.
Like Lord Sutton and his parade of charlatans, Beatrix has nothing to lose. The lord doesn’t keep track of his laudanum, doesn’t know it’s gone until he has turned his study upside down in a frenzy, searching for what isn’t there. It is easy enough to slip one of the small amber bottles into the pocket of her apron while she dusts.
Beatrix hides it away like a treasure, wrapped in a handkerchief inside a musty trunk beneath her bed. She waits for the right time to take it, and in its own way, her restraint keeps her curse at bay. She is constantly evaluating if she can bear the present moment without it. So far, she has.
Most days, her work keeps her busy, up before dawn as Lord Sutton’s sole housekeeper. Most nights, she falls into bed, her body exhausted,her mind numb even without the aid of laudanum. But tonight, she can’t escape the numbers. As everyone insists on telling her, the 1700s are becoming the 1800s, and you only live through a New Year’s Eve like this once.
Not her. She was born more than three hundred years ago. Three hundred and eighteen years, five months, and twelve days ago, to be precise. But her birthday is the easiest to ignore. Her death is harder to forget. The day she started counting. By hours, at first. But hours soon turned into days. Days since she died, days since she was cursed, days she shouldn’t have been alive. Then counting by days became impractical. It became months of living on the streets of London, months since William banished her. Then that became impractical, too. Until it was years since she saw her daughter, years without a home, years spent utterly alone. It’s been two hundred and ninety-four years, six months, and eighteen days since the night she died. Since the day her daughter was born.
She can count the deaths she has cheated, too, since the first. She should have starved on the streets of London her first weeks in the city, frozen to death during her first winter. Should have died of old age at least three times by now.
She has lived in four different centuries. And when the ornate pendulum clock in the front hall chimes at midnight, it will be five.
But the worst way to count—the one that slows time to a crawl—is the newest. How long it has been since she last saw Oliver. Eighty-two years, nine months, twenty-nine days. A lifetime.
She didn’t think of the counting when she asked to see him again. She didn’t think of a lot of things, only knew the ballet had made her forget—that Oliver made her feel a little less alone in the world—and she wasn’t ready to let that go.
Those six years between Venice and the ballet had taken some getting used to. She’d be going about her business when the thought of Oliver would pop into her head unbidden, not as part of her past but as part of her present. Her heart would flutter at the idea of seeing him. He wasn’t lost to time like all the others. And when she thought of their night at Carnevale, the memories didn’t have that melancholy pall to them. She wanted to remember.
So why is she counting the days since Oliver’s last visit instead of thedays until his next? Why does she bury that date away, try never to calculate the time until he returns? Because remembering and waiting and counting are difficult, the most difficult things Beatrix has done since she pulled herself off the forest floor and took a step toward London instead of Lancaut. Hoping is another beast entirely.
The grand pendulum clock in the foyer chimes the first stroke of midnight. Can she bear this moment, this new year, the next fourteen years and thirty-two days until she meets Oliver again? Because shehascounted them, of course she has.
Beatrix crosses the foyer as the last chime fades into the heavy silence. She climbs the stairs toward her room and her hidden treasure. Somewhere above her, a violin plays the first strains of “Auld Lang Syne” and a shiver runs through her. The song is meant to usher out the old year with a fond goodbye, reminiscing about days long gone, but Beatrix doesn’t think there is anything fond about goodbye. She follows the mournful music.
Lord Sutton stands in the middle of his study, playing a violin by the flickering glow of firelight. She has seen the instrument in its case in the corner—wiped it free of dust every week—but has never heard him play a note.
