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was weary, when he had nothing to give me but the warmth of his

body. I would cease if I knew how.

But he has taken words I entrusted to him as his wife and set a

stranger at our door. I must know what that stranger has been

told.

Elizabeth’s throat hurt. She had been reading aloud for longer than she intended.

Mrs. Reynolds brought the water glass from the washstand and set it well away from the papers. Elizabeth drank before she attempted the final line.

Mara is not to answer them alone.

Neither woman spoke for a little while. The chamber about them was comfortable, its door unlocked. Elizabeth looked at the key in its ordinary place and wished she had not.

“Heresy,” she said at last. “That is what he can accuse her of.”

“Yes, miss.”

“The stories make her a witch. This says he means to use something she believed.”

“And something she trusted him with.”

Elizabeth looked again at the first entry, at the rosemary and the ill-placed pin. She had wanted to discover whether her dreams showed anything true. She had not thought what it would cost to find the woman within them.

“Who was Hewet?”

“I do not know.”

“Then we must look in Mara’s papers. He may have questioned her, too.”

Mrs. Reynolds nodded. “I shall fetch the box.”

Elizabeth reached toward the next leaf. The housekeeper put out a hand.

“We shall lose the words if we tear them.”

She drew back at once. Below the stain she could distinguish another date, but nothing that followed it.

A knock came at the door. Sally brought Jane’s invitation to breakfast.

“She has kept a roll warm for you, miss.”

“Tell her I shall come directly.”

When Sally had gone, they replaced the window-seat panel and covered the journal without pressing its pages flat. Mrs. Reynolds would bring her papers after lunch. Elizabeth set her new copy beside the account of her earlier dream.

The rosemary appeared upon both sheets.

She could not yet say why she had dreamed it. She could no longer dismiss it as something Mrs. Reynolds had told her.

Chapter Twenty-one

JANE HAD SAVED her a warm roll. She also had a letter from their mother, who wished to know whether Charles had considered the position of the kitchen at Alderbrook, and whether the house could receive visitors before all the work was finished.

“She thinks she might help us settle,” Jane said.