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A hitch in the morning. Nothing grand. Enough to wake the itch again. She eased the nursery door wide and found the passage vacant. Slippers made no sound on cold flagstones. The stone bit through the thin soles and made her toes curl. At the head of the main stair she paused and listened. The house breathed around her. Drafts muttered through the grates as if the walls were trading secrets.

This house had always muttered. Isolde had heard it since she could walk and blamed the weather or the settling of old beams. In the quiet hours she sometimes fancied the sounds belonged to those who had come before, ancestors who raised the hall and packed their mysteries into the foundations.

She went down with care. Her fingers rode the carved rail. Vines twisted through the wood and seemed to shift under her palm. Portraits lined the walls. Stern men in Tudor ruffs. Elegant women in hooped skirts. Many wore the same gray-blue eyes that met hers now, and she had always read approval in them.

“We watch,” they seemed to say. “We wait.”

Isolde squared her shoulders. Pride sparked. She was a Fairfax, heir to a house of legends. Papa had promised more when she was older. Hidden histories. Duties kept in shadow. For now, she contented herself with small rebellions, and this errand counted as one.

The drawing-room door stood a little open. Firelight leaked into the dim passage in a thin gold stripe, as if it meant to invite her. She darted in, eyes on the settee where Dante waited. Her hand froze halfway to the book. The room was not empty.

Three strangers filled it. A stout vicar in black warmed his hands at the fire, back turned. A thin, sharp-featured woman sat rigid in a chair, prayer book clutched as if it might fend off harm. Between them a boy of perhaps six bounced on freckled legs that would not keep still. Mud from his boots spotted the Persian carpet. He turned a carved wooden blade over and over in both hands.

Isolde’s heart slammed. A wild thing in a cage. She had not thought to find them here. Papa received callers in the study, not this intimate room. Retreat felt impossible now. The door had creaked behind her and drawn their notice. She snatched the book and hugged it to her chest, meaning to slide out as quietly as she had come.

It was the vicar’s wife who saw her first.

The woman’s eyes went wide. Thin lips parted in a gasp that cut the air. She crossed herself three times, so hard her bonnet feathers shook like startled birds.

“Sweet heavens! The child is marked by the devil himself!” The hiss was sharp as a serpent’s warning, horror in every syllable, and it rooted Isolde where she stood.

The boy spun at his mother’s cry. Eyes that had been innocent a moment earlier creased with ugly glee as they locked on her face. He bounded forward until his nose sat barely a handspan from her cheek.

“Look, Mama! Beetroots all over her. Great red beetroots!” He jabbed a chubby finger and laughed until a hiccup broke the noise. “Devil girl! Beetroot face!”

The vicar turned then, stout frame lumbering, apologies tangled in his throat. His gaze stayed fixed on her face as if she might leap and devour him. Pity mixed with revulsion in his eyes. That mix stung worse than cruelty. Isolde’s stomach dropped. The chocolate she had drunk sat in it like a stone. She wanted the floor to open and take her down into the cellars where nobody stared at faces.

Isolde stood planted, Dante hugged so tight the gilt edges dug into her wrists. The binding felt like armor that had gone thin and wet. Heat flooded her. Cheeks blazed. The room tipped. The fire’s crackle became a roar in her ears and drowned the wind. She could not move. She could not draw breath. The woman’s horror, the boy’s mean delight, the vicar’s widened eyes pinned her like a specimen under glass. What fault had she committed to earn this? Was it curiosity? The small disobediences? Or was it something deeper, written on her skin?

Memories flickered. Whispers from maids, cut short when she entered a room. Papa’s insistence that she remain upstairs during rare visits. No mirrors within her reach. She had taken it for shelter, the ordinary caution of a father with one child. Now the pieces turned and formed a terrible picture. She was hidden because she was hideous. Cursed, perhaps. Chosen by the devil for some dreadful work. The itch in her heart twisted into fear. A cold knot. It tightened every time the boy’s laugh rang out.

The door behind her opened hard. Draft lifted the flames. Augustus Fairfax strode in. Rage had drained the color from his face. Tall, spare, and scholarly. His presence filled the room like weather gathering.

“That will do.” His voice cut the air like a lash. The boy’s mirth died. The vicar’s wife sucked in a breath. “Mrs. Roskelly!”

The housekeeper appeared as if summoned, kind eyes wide as she took in the scene. Augustus set a shielding hand on his daughter’s shoulder, his fingers trembling with banked emotion. He guided her toward the door and paused only to murmur, “Come, my love. Do not drop the book. Mrs. Roskelly will take you up. Go now.”

Isolde fled. The boy’s laughter chased her up the stairs like hounds. The woman’s hiss seemed to scorch the air at her back and brand her. Mrs. Roskelly’s arm circled her waist and hurried her along the corridor into the nursery. The latch clicked. The room closed around her. Only then did the tears come.

They started hot and silent, leaving salt tracks on her face. Then they broke into wrenching sobs that shook her narrow shoulders. Each sob let out a piece of the pain that had piled up like weather behind a dam. Mrs. Roskelly held her close and rocked her the way she had during thunderstorms, or on nights when the hall shook under the wind.

“Hush now, my lamb,” she murmured, Cornish still in the lilt. “They’re away. Away and good riddance to such ignorance. Folk of that sort know nothing of beauty, nor of kindness neither.” She stroked Isolde’s hair and hummed a scrap of an old lullaby. The tune threaded through the sobs and gave her something to hold.

Isolde barely heard. Outside, the gale climbed again, rushing up the cliff face in a long, moaning sound. Voices seemed braided into it, rising, falling, jeering. Grimsfell took its name from those mournful cliffs, and now every note seemed to chant the same cruel line … Devil girl stained with beetroots!

Something inside her split. The pieces were sharp. Each one showed a truth she had not wanted. This was the reason Papa left her behind when he traveled. This was the reason the drive stayed empty of carriages. This was the reason village fairs went unvisited, and church pews never held a Fairfax child. Shyness did not explain it. Neither did her size. She was marred. Held apart by fate or by some curse she could not name.

The hush that followed had no clock in it. She could not have said how long she cried. Chocolate cooled on the tray until a skin formed across the top, dull as a forgotten wish. The fire sank and threw jumping shadows that pointed from the walls like fingers. Mrs. Roskelly brought fresh handkerchiefs wet with rosewater and offered comforts drawn from old country talk.

“A mark such as yers is an angel’s kiss, my dear, or a token of great destiny. Yer granpapa Winthelmy used to tell of a lady stamped the same who saved a kingdom from ruin.” The words landed and ran off. They could not pass the wall Isolde had built around her despair.

At last the door opened again. The latch made a small sound, almost like a heart finding its beat. Papa came in alone and shut them in with care. He looked older of a sudden. Lines about his eyes ran deeper. His shoulders bowed under a weight Isolde now knew as the cost of keeping her from the world.

He went down on the carpet. His knees made a clicking complaint. Then he gathered her in as though she were still a babe, one hand at her back, the other cupping the unmarked side of her head. Ink and sea air lived in the wool of his waistcoat. She breathed them in. They were the only solid things in the room.

“Peace, my darling,” he whispered against her hair, voice thick with feeling he rarely showed. “Peace now. Other people’s opinions are nothing. In my eyes, you remain the loveliest child in Cornwall. In the whole of England besides.”

Isolde pulled in a shaking breath and tipped her face up to his. Sorrow lived in his eyes and matched her own. “I want to see,” she said, the words small and shaking. “Please, Papa. Show me what they saw.”