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She froze, not even daring to breathe.

His eyes were brown, she could see that now, flecked with gold. They swept across the wall where she hid. Searching. Sensing.

He suspected someone was there.

Isolde’s pulse thundered in her ears, drowning out even the cliff’s eternal song. She should retreat, disappear into the passages before he could … what? See her? Impossible. The grate was positioned to allow her to see out while remaining invisible from within the chamber. It had been designed that way three hundred years ago, and Papa had maintained the mechanisms perfectly as had their forefathers before him.

And yet Angelo continued to stare at the wall, his expression shifting from curiosity to something more focused. Intent.

“Angelo?” Lady Trenwith’s voice broke the moment. “Are you well?”

He turned back to the group, and Isolde sagged against the stone wall in relief. “Sì, forgive me. I was just … the mirrors are extraordinary. They make one contemplate infinito … infinity.”

His voice was as beautiful as his face. Warm, rich, animated even when speaking of abstract concepts. The Italian words woven naturally into his English, not pretentiously, but as though he thought in two languages simultaneously and sometimes one emerged before the other.

Isolde placed her palm against the cold stone, centering herself. This was dangerous. She had allowed herself to become too fascinated by a stranger, had taken risks she normally would never consider. If Angelo had seen her, if he had raised an alarm …

But he had not. He had turned back to his companions, joining their discussion of Lorenzo’s disappointment and the possibility of undiscovered chambers.

She should leave now, while they were distracted. Return to her workroom, to her distillation of oils and her carefully constructed solitude.

Instead, she remained poised against the grate, watching as the lamplight caught Angelo’s profile, gilding him like a figure from a Renaissance painting.

He exuded a lightness of spirit she had never encountered before. An exuberant cheer that seemed entirely at odds with the ancient gloom of Grimsfell Hall, but somehow perfectly suited to it. At nearly six feet, many inches taller than her own meager height, Angelo was strikingly handsome, young, with a boyish and lively demeanor that suggested he had not yet been ground down by the world’s cruelties.

As the party discussed Lorenzo’s quest and his determination to prove that Matteo di Bianchi had been an unacknowledged master, Isolde felt the first stirrings of concern.

These secrets were what Papa had endeavored to protect. What the Fairfax family had sought to protect over the centuries. Now an entire party of crusaders in pursuit of those secrets had taken up residence in her hall.

But even as worry tightened her chest, Isolde had to admit that these guests represented the most excitement she had experienced in years. Watching Lord and Lady Trenwith had been pleasant enough, their obvious affection for each other was touching, even if it emphasized Isolde’s own isolation. But they were careful, controlled, their interactions modulated by English reserve.

Angelo was anything but reserved. He gestured as he spoke, his hands painting pictures in the air. He laughed easily, the sound echoing through the Hall of Reflections like music. He touched his companions without hesitation. A hand on Lorenzo’s shoulder in commiseration, a steadying grip on Nicholas’s arm when the other man’s injured leg seemed ready to give way.

He was, Isolde realized, everything she was not. Open where she was hidden. Warm where she was frozen. Connected to the world while she floated through it like a ghost.

And that marked face of hers would ensure she remained a ghost forever.

The party was preparing to leave the Hall of Reflections now, Lorenzo clutching his frustration while Lord Trenwith discussed the possibility of finding other clues within the hall’s architecture. Angelo cast one more glance toward the wall where she hid, his expression thoughtful, before following the others back toward the hidden entrance.

Isolde remained motionless until their footsteps faded, until she was alone with the mirrors and the organ and the endless whisper of wind through stone.

Only then did she allow herself to move, to draw back from the grate and lean against the cold wall of the passage. Her heart was still racing, her breath coming quick and shallow, like a bird trapped in a cage.

She raised her right hand to her face, fingers tracing over the birthmark she had memorized. It covered her from temple to jaw, a sprawling stain in shades of rose pink and mauve that no amount of powder or careful positioning could fully disguise.

In the darkness of the passage, it did not matter. Here, she was just Isolde. Not the marked girl. Not the devil’s child. Just herself.

But Angelo lived in the world of light and faces and judgment. If he ever saw her, truly saw her, that warmth in his eyes would cool. The easy smile would freeze. He would look at her the way the vicar’s wife had looked at her all those years ago. Like the others had looked at her. Horror. Pity. Revulsion. Barely concealed behind polite concern.

Isolde closed her eyes, willing away the tears that threatened. She had learned long ago that crying solved nothing. Papa was gone. Grimsfell Hall was her responsibility now. And her duty was to protect its secrets, not woolgather over handsome strangers who could never see her as anything but a monster.

She would watch them, as was her right and responsibility as guardian of this place. With their damaged clues, she was confident they would not uncover secrets that should remain buried. And when they eventually left, as all visitors did, she would return to her solitude, her passages and her music, and the companionship of dimly lit mirrors that reflected without judging.

It was enough. It had to be enough.

CHAPTER 3

“The house seemed to watch her, and she watched it in return.”