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“Your brother did not die of cholera, my lord.” The vicar clutched the Bible so tightly that his ungloved hands turned white.

“Yes, he did!” James insisted. “There was an outbreak at the mill and it swept through the town in 1854.”

“1854!” the woman snorted. “Your brother died last week. He was found in the gutter, his wrists⁠—”

My lady, that is not an appropriate topic—" the vicar began, his voice tightening as he cast a wary glance toward James, yet the woman ignored his protest.

"Where do you think we are, Georgie?" she shrieked, the sharp edge of her voice cutting through the damp afternoon air like a blade. As she spoke, her gloved hand lunged toward the heavy black cotton draped across the north-facing wall. Just as James knew he did not wish to see what lay beneath her veil, he was equally aware that he did not wish to see what was hidden under that dark fabric.

And yet, as her hand stilled for a fraction of a second, the world seemed to freeze in a terrifying tableau. Time itself grew sluggish, and only James existed in the void as he stumbled forward, driven by an overwhelming need to bring this nightmare to an end. He reached out and wrenched the cheap cotton down, the fabric giving way with a dry hiss, finally allowing him to read the inscription carved into the cold stone of the plaque.

The Honorable Harrison Reed.

1832-1861

"Harry..." James whispered, the name tasting like ash in his mouth. In that instant, a kaleidoscope of memories flashed before his eyes: a vision of Harrison, young and whole, with an unblemished face and the idealistic fire of youth in his two eyes. He recalled the days of their shared boyhood, of the secret thrill of sneaking into town to the Crown and the Loom before their elder brother, Lionel, could drag them back to Bailey Hall.

"Harry, no...." James crooned, a broken sound that barely rose above the wind. He swiped at his face with a trembling hand, only now realizing that his cheeks were wet with hot, salty tears. The weight of his brother's death, finalized in the cold dates on the stone, crashed over him in a suffocating wave. "This can’t be happening."

"But it is," came a soft, melodic voice from the shadows. It was not the high, nasal chirp of the woman who claimed to be his wife, nor the disdainful tone of the vicar. It was a voice that possessed an ancient, resonant depth. One that James recognized with a jolt of terror.

Without turning around, James traced the lines, the letters of the name before him before he spoke with absolute conviction:

“You're lying! Harrison went to war! He held the counter-mine at the Quarantine Bastion. He saved the entire vanguard from being blown to pieces!" He never told Harrison he read every account of what he could find of the War in the Crimea.

He should have told him.

“Aye, he did.” The old man’s voice was soft, almost pitying. “But he came home to no family. No friends. What did he have to live for?”

She’s my best friend, James.

His wife had offered his brother friendship and purpose when he had none, and all he had given them in turn was jealousy and disrespect. An even harsher truth knocked James to his knees. He had spent the last five years wasting his life because he put his dreams above everything else. Above everyone else’s. He had told the old man he did not wish to know Mariah because he did not want to feel the pain, not to spare her any pain.

James sank down to the unforgiving stone, its cold surface a stinging indictment of his own selfishness. In that moment, a crushing clarity descended, revealing the depths of his own vanity. Both his wife and Harrison had tried to show him, yet he had remained stuck in his own perceived slights, willfully blind to what Mariah and his brother sought to cultivate. Even as they labored to build a sanctuary for others, he, James, had schemed to undermine Monahan’s livelihood, for what? To preserve a crumbling vestige of his youth? What arrogance had led him to believe that his own dreams held more weight than the realities of those around him?

If he could go back, if he could be somehow different, somehow better. If he could put her dreams above his own…

Perhaps she would let him love her.

That thought jarred him to his feet and he placed his hands on either side of the plaque, still unable to turn around and view the man behind him. He caught the rough black cotton that had covered the plaque before it fell to the ground.

“Please.” He did not recognize his own voice. It sounded like someone who had lived ages, not just over three decades on the earth. “Please, bring my brother back. Bring…Mariah back. I don’t care about me anymore, I just…Please,” he begged. James Reed, the 8th Baron St. George had never begged a second in his entire life.

At last, he turned around, but the sun had somehow come out on that cloudy day, blazing behind the man before him so that James needed to squint to see him. The woman and the vicar were gone, and only the figure of the old man stood before him. But he did not appear so old now, did he? The wrinkles seemed to smooth into lines of wisdom, and the rags he wore took on a strange, unearthly luster in the blinding glare. The churchyard itself seemed to fall away, the sounds of the town and the distant, screeching cotton mills fading into an absolute silence.

“There is one thing you can do. One way you can bring them back.”

“Tell me,” He whispered, wringing the cloth between his hands. “I’ll do anything.”

And then it was as if the man was standing in front of his eyes, as if he were all around him. James blinked rapidly as the churchyard blurred before him.

“Wake up.”

6

The next thing he knew, a profound warmth enveloped his senses. The chill James had felt since the Crown and the Loom was gone, replaced by the kind of warmth that one gets from an evening reading by the fire. Despite his reputation, he had always adored reading by the fire as a boy and had continued the practice well into adulthood.

And this warmth was somehow more.