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LORD ELIAS WILDER TO MISS CLARIMONDE BETONY, AGE 16

Miss Molinari stormed out of Clarimonde’s bedroom.

Her pace was swift and unrelenting. Her manner was off-putting. Her nose was absolutely perfect. (Lord Foxglove had spent nearly a quarter of an hour crafting it.)

“You are being very foolish!” Clarimonde called after the woman. “You will have cause to regret it!”

The false Miss Molinari did not deign to reply. Instead, she swept down the hallway with a short, indignant huff and soon disappeared.

Perhaps it was only Clarimonde’s imagination—but she thought she saw one of the nearby shadows detach in order to follow her.

A few minutes later, Clarimonde dragged the true Miss Molinari from the bedroom. There was, admittedly, a bit of resistance. Miss Molinari was painfully cognisant of the borrowed shirt and trousers she now wore. At least, Clarimonde thought, Lord Foxglove’s moonlit waistcoat was somewhat loose about the other woman’s bust. It would be easier that way for people to mistake her for him from a distance.

“I will never live this down,” Miss Molinari fretted, as Clarimonde pulled her towards the staircase. “What will people here think if they see me dressed like this?”

Clarimonde snorted. “They will think that you are embracing Lady Hollowvale’s aesthetic,” she replied. “This is hardly the most scandalous thing that has happened beneath this roof.”

She left Miss Molinari briefly at the top of the stairs in order to scan the abbey’s nave. The feast, of course, was still ongoing there. But neither Tertia nor Mr Brand were at the table—and for the moment, that was Clarimonde’s only concern.

No one at the banquet table even looked up as they passed.

Outside, the fog had deepened to a milky soup. Though it must have only been mid-afternoon, a terrible chill had settled upon the cliff where the abbey stood. The mist dampened the wind’s tinny howl through the gravestones, but did nothing to assuage its frigid bite.

Clarimonde unfurled her moonlit parasol in order to illuminate the path. “Mother Barclay lives below us, I presume,” she said. “Bother. It’ll be the stairs again.”

“They are easier on the way down,” Miss Molinari assured her distantly.

Each step down into Whitby felt like descending from a dream. Though the cloying fog remained, the world seemed to solidify slowly beneath Clarimonde’s feet. Until now, she had considered herself resilient to Hollowvale’s influence—but as a subtle cloud over her mind began to lift, she was alarmed to discover that she had been lacking a certain sharpness while in residence at Whitby Abbey.

“I do not like coming down here,” Miss Molinari murmured absently, in contrast to Clarimonde’s thoughts. “It is so terribly dreary.”

Privately, Clarimonde thought that an old abbey on a cliffside was drearier by far—but she understood instinctively what Miss Molinari meant by the words. Reality itself could be a heavy weight, when you were of a mind to escape it.

Eventually, Whitby’s tall buildings resolved out of the mist, as though regaining their solidity. As Clarimonde finally stepped onto the cobblestone street below, she found herself breathing a soft sigh of relief.

The long black hearse was still parked at the foot of the stairs, patiently waiting. There was a heavy sleepiness to its aura of dread, as though it could not be bothered to contemplate the inevitability of mortality today. Clarimonde offered it a tentative pat as they passed into the town.

Here on the ground, there were a handful of other silhouettes moving through the mist—normal townsfolk pursuing their day-to-day existence. The mundane sense of routine was reassuring, after days of remote solitude.

“You will need to guide me from here,” Clarimonde told Miss Molinari briskly.

“Mother Barclay is not far,” Miss Molinari replied. “I sought her out more than once for poor Mr Bligh.”

Miss Molinari brought them to a narrow stone building, draped by white-flowering honeysuckle vines. The place looked as though it ought to have been a shop, squeezed as it was between a bakery and a teahouse—but while the front door was unlocked and inviting, it was immediately clear upon stepping inside that it was more of a home than it was a place of business. A warm stove heated the single downstairs room, casting back the chill of the fog outside. Most of the space was taken up by a small kitchen and a cramped set of table and chairs; there was, however, a set of stairs leading upwards and a window that looked out upon a tiny enclosed garden just behind the building.

Mother Barclay was currently settled into one of the chairs across from two other women—both heavily wrinkled, with full heads of grey hair. A pot of tea steamed upon the table between them. They seemed already in the throes of conversation as Clarimonde and Miss Molinari entered, judging by the breathless, cackling laughter at the table.

Mother Barclay coughed on her tea as she noticed her new visitors, struggling to regain her composure. “Oh dear,” she wheezed, forcing a sober note into her posture. “Someone else has come down ill at the abbey, then?”

Clarimonde glanced at the other two women at the table, both of whom had done nothing to hide their nosy interest in the conversation. “Miss Molinari is doing poorly,” she said. “I had hoped for your advice on her treatment… and perhaps for some herbs, if you have them on hand.”

Mother Barclay rose from her chair, still faintly coughing on her humour. She shot the other two women an expression caught halfway between stern admonishment and helpless amusement. “It’s back to work for all of us then,” she told them. “The tea is cold, regardless.”

“We could always break out the gin,” one of the women suggested. “No need to warm it up.”

Mother Barclay made a shooing gesture at them both—though she smiled as she did it.

The ladies toddled out, with reluctantly curious glances. Once the door had closed behind them, Mother Barclay gestured at the pot. “Shall I put on more tea?” she asked. “Or else… I suppose there is the gin.”