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Sure, it’s overhyped marketing fluff, but it speaks to a secret longing for romance and adventure buried deep in Poppy’s childhood soul—the kind of wonder she’s only ever glimpsed between the dog-eared pages of her beloved books.
Even the delivery of the brochure felt magical. It arrived in a heavy white envelope embossed in gold, hand-delivered to Lillith’s stone castle in the Highlands on a morning dense with rain and swirling mist.
The fact that she—Poppy Buchanan—was even inside a castle on windswept moors to receive the invitation still feels like a dream. She has to pinch herself daily to remember her new job as personal assistant and travel companion tothefamous Lillith Ravenscroft McGregor is not a fantasy.
In the front seat of the taxi, Lillith adjusts her stiff leg. She’s in her mid-seventies now, recently widowed. Her husband, Angus, was a gruff political kingmaker—alternately hated, revered, feared. Lillith carries her own legend as a once hard-drinking, drug-taking, brazen Pulitzer-winning war photographer. It’s how she met Angus, through her work.
That Poppy’s path ever crossed Lillith’s at all is sheer karma.
Just over a year ago, Poppy was pushing the wheelchair of her dying nonagenarian client along Brighton’s seafront when she noticed an old woman with a black eye patch, sitting on a bench. She had a camera in her lap, and leaning against the side of the bench was a lacquered black cane. Beneath the cane’s glossy varnish was a wild collage of serpents, dragons, orchids, masks—it looked like something from a forgotten dynasty, a fever dream from the Orient. Poppy was immediately intrigued.
As she passed, the woman called out and asked if she could photograph Poppy and her client against the sunset. She introduced herself as Lillith. They talked as she snapped photos with hands that trembledslightly. They met again the next day at the bandstand, for gelato. The woman was friendly, kind. She made Poppy feel—if only briefly—as though she actually mattered.
She quizzed Poppy about her client, and Poppy explained how she’d qualified for care work after it became clear that her degree in English literature wasn’t taking her anywhere beyond dead-end office admin jobs.
When they parted, Lillith gave Poppy her card, saying she and her husband were potentially in the market for a home-care companion. She was also searching for someone who might help compile her memoir. She said Poppy should call if she ever needed a new job down the line.
It was only after Lillith left that Poppy took a proper look at her business card and realized with a jolt that she’d been speaking totheLillith Ravenscroft McGregor, third wife of one of the wealthiest men in Britain. Her mind started whirring and scheming.
And why wouldn’t she scheme?
Poppy is solidly in midlife—menopausal, overweight, not pretty, zero relationship prospects, no savings, and no house to call her own. Her entire life has been the shittiest run of bad luck and misfortune. No one is coming to save her. A woman with her outlook needs a plan, and Lillith Ravenscroft McGregor quickly became Poppy’s plan—her financial parachute.
She glommed everything she could find on the internet about Lillith and Angus. She learned Lillith was a generous benefactor to many needy causes. Poppy certainly considers herself needy. She also learned that grizzly old Australian Scotsman Angus McGregor recently made headlines by cutting his own children and previous ex-wives out of his will, making Lillith the sole beneficiary to his global media empire.
When Poppy’s nonagenarian client finally kicked the bucket and left her nothing in his will—counter to his promise that he would—instead giving all his money to a measly animal charity, she picked up the phone and called Lillith.
Two days later Poppy was on a flight to Inverness Airport, on her way to Lillith’s Scottish estate to be interviewed for a job.
She was hired on the spot.
She flew back to Brighton to collect her few belongings and returned to move into a private suite on the ground floor of Lillith’s castle. This happened just before Christmas.
By New Year’s Day Angus McGregor was dead. Poppy was the one who found his body on the cold stone steps in the dark dawn of January 1. Lillith inherited everything.
Now, nine months later, here Poppy is, embarking on a cruise that Lillith and Angus had intended to enjoy together. She’ll have the old woman entirely to herself for a full nine days and nights, far from her family of hyenas clamoring for financial scraps and threatening lawsuits to challenge Angus’s will.
Poppy’s goal for the cruise is to keep Lillith isolated, and to make herself indispensable, and to perhaps even edge her way into Lillith’s will. Her trained nursing eye has already determined that Lillith’s health is faltering, and rather alarmingly fast. Poppy intends to find out what exactly is ailing Lillith, and how much time she might have to win the old woman over before she dies.
The taxi driver abruptly slams on the brakes, and Poppy jolts forward. The burly Greek lays on the horn, cursing violently as the little evil eye pendant on his rearview mirror swings wildly back and forth. Poppy’s heart hammers. Lillith up front—cool as a cucumber—says nothing.
The driver rolls down his window and gestures at a passing truck. Through the open window comes a wave of heat carrying the sounds of the Port of Piraeus: honking cars, excited chattering, yelling, a helicopter thudding above, drums of a marching band on the dock.
Traffic snarls toward the terminal.
As their taxi finally pulls up in front of the baggage drop-off, Poppy checks that both British passports are in her bag. Hers. Lillith’s. She hasher wad of euros, a credit card for travel expenses, the cruise tickets. Her big bag of “support” books. She exits the cab and hurries around to help Lillith out of the front seat as the driver unloads the bags. Poppy offers Lillith her cane, and the woman stumbles onto the curb as she reaches for it. Poppy catches her arm.
Lillith breathes hard from the shock of her near fall.
“Are you all right?” Poppy asks. “Shall I fetch us a wheelchair?”
Lillith looks up and meets Poppy’s gaze with her one good eye. “Not a chance in hell, my dear. You know what they say about cruises? For the newly wed and nearly dead.” She grins. “Well, I’m not dead. Yet.”
A quiver passes through Poppy. “Of course not.”Yet.
And with that Lillith leans heavily on her cane and hobbles determinedly for the entrance, her left leg dragging awkwardly behind her.
