Fran?oise returned with two warmblooded young women bearing armfuls of clean clothes. She gestured at my night rail, and I ducked behind the bedpost to disrobe. Grateful that my time in locker rooms had squashed most of my qualms about changing in front of strangers, I drew the linen over my hips and up to my shoulders.
“Kit will. He’s been looking for a reason to dislike me, and this will give him several.”
“He won’t be a problem,” Matthew said confidently.
“Is Marlowe your friend or your puppet?” I was still wrestling my head out of the fabric when there was a gasp of horror, a muffled “Mon Dieu.”
I froze. Fran?oise had seen my back and the crescent-shaped scar that stretched from one side of my lower rib cage to the other, along with the star that rested between my shoulder blades.
“I will dress madame,” Fran?oise coolly told the maids. “Leave the clothing and return to your work.”
The maids departed with nothing more than a curtsy and a look of idle curiosity. They hadn’t seen the markings. When they were gone, we all began to speak at once. Fran?oise’s aghast “Who did this?” tumbled over Matthew’s “No one must know” and my own, slightly defensive “It’s just a scar.”
“Someone branded you with a badge of the de Clermont family,” Fran?oise insisted with a shake of her head, “one that is used by milord.”
“We broke the covenant.” I fought the sick feeling that twisted my stomach whenever I thought about the night another witch had marked me a traitor. “This was the Congregation’s punishment.”
“So that is why you are both here.” Fran?oise snorted. “The covenant was a foolish idea from the start. Philippe de Clermont should never have gone along with it.”
“One that’s kept us safe from the humans.” I had no great fondness for the agreement, or the nine-member Congregation who enforced it, but its long-term success at hiding otherworldly creatures from the attention of humans was undeniable. The ancient promises made among daemons, vampires, and witches prohibited meddling in human politics or religion and forbade personal alliances among the three different species. Witches were meant to keep to themselves, as were vampires and daemons. They were not supposed to fall in love and intermarry.
“Safe? Do not think you are safe here, madame. None of us are. The English are a superstitious people, prone to seeing a ghost in every churchyard and witches around every cauldron. The Congregation is all that is standing between us and utter destruction. You are wise to take refuge here. Come, you must dress and join the others.” Fran?oise helped me out of the night rail and handed me a wet towel and a dish of goop that smelled of rosemary and oranges. I found it odd to be treated like a child but knew that it was customary for people of Matthew’s rank to be washed, dressed, and fed like dolls. Pierre handed Matthew a cup of something too dark to be wine.
“She is not only a witch but a fileuse de temps as well?” Fran?oise asked Matthew quietly. The unfamiliar term—“time spinner”—conjured up images of the many different-colored threads we’d followed to reach this particular past.
“She is.” Matthew nodded, his attention focused on me while he sipped at his cup.
“But if she has come from another time, that means . . .” Fran?oise began, wide-eyed. Then her expression became thoughtful. Matthew must sound and behave differently.
She suspects that this is not the same Matthew, I thought, alarmed.
“It is enough for us to know that she is under milord’s protection,” Pierre said roughly, a clear warning in his tone. He handed Matthew a dagger. “What it means is not important.”
“It means I love her, and she loves me in return.” Matthew looked at his servant intently. “No matter what I say to others, that is the truth. Understood?”
“Yes,” replied Pierre, though his tone suggested quite the opposite.
Matthew shot an inquiring look at Fran?oise, who pursed her lips and nodded grudgingly.
She returned her attention to getting me ready, wrapping me in a thick linen towel. Fran?oise had to have noticed the other marks on my body, those I had received over the course of that one interminable day with the witch Satu, as well as my other, later scars. Fran?oise asked no further questions, however, but sat me in a chair next to the fire while she ran a comb through my hair.
“And did this insult happen after you declared your love for the witch, milord?” Fran?oise asked.
“Yes.” Matthew buckled the dagger around his waist.
“It was not a manjasang, then, who marked her,” Pierre murmured. He used the old Occitan word for vampire—“blood eater.” “None would risk the anger of the de Clermonts.”
“No, it was another witch.” Even though I was shielded from the cold air, the admission made me shiver.
“Two manjasang stood by and let it happen, though,” Matthew said grimly. “And they will pay for it.”
“What’s done is done.” I had no wish to start a feud among vampires. We had enough challenges facing us.
“If milord had accepted you as his wife when the witch took you, then it is not done.” Fran?oise’s swift fingers wove my hair into tight braids. She wound them around my head and pinned them in place. “Your name might be Roydon in this godforsaken country where there is no loyalty to speak of, but we will not forget that you are a de Clermont.”
Matthew’s mother had warned me that the de Clermonts were a pack. In the twenty-first century, I had chafed under the obligations and restrictions that came with membership. In 1590, however, my magic was unpredictable, my knowledge of witchcraft almost nonexistent, and my earliest known ancestor hadn’t yet been born. Here I had nothing to rely on but my own wits and Matthew.
“Our intentions to each other were clear then. But I want no trouble now.” I looked down at Ysabeau’s ring and felt the band with my thumb. My hope that we could blend seamlessly into the past now seemed unlikely as well as na?ve. I looked around me. “And this . . .”
“We’re here for only two reasons, Diana: to find you a teacher and to locate that alchemical manuscript if we can.” It was the mysterious manuscript called Ashmole 782 that had brought us together in the first place. In the twenty-first century, it had been safely buried among the millions of books in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. When I’d filled out the call slip, I’d had no idea that the simple action would unlock an intricate spell that bound the manuscript to the shelves, or that the same spell would reactivate the moment I returned it. I was also ignorant of the many secrets about witches, vampires, and daemons its pages were rumored to reveal. Matthew had thought it would be wiser to locate Ashmole 782 in the past than to try to unlock the spell for a second time in the modern world.
“Until we go back, this will be your home,” he continued, trying to reassure me.
The room’s solid furnishings were familiar from museums and auction catalogs, but the Old Lodge would never feel like home. I fingered the thick linen of the towel—so different from the faded terry-cloth sets that Sarah and Em owned, all worn thin from too many washes. Voices in another room lilted and swayed in a rhythm that no modern person, historian or not, could have anticipated. But the past was our only option. Other vampires had made that clear during our final days in Madison, when they’d hunted us down and nearly killed Matthew. If the rest of our plan was going to work, passing as a proper Elizabethan woman had to be my first priority.
“‘O brave new world.’” It was a gross historical violation to quote from Shakespeare’s Tempest two decades before it was written, but this had been a difficult morning.
““Tis new to thee,’” Matthew responded. “Are you ready to meet your trouble, then?”
“Of course. Let’s get me dressed.” I squared my shoulders and rose from the chair. “How does one say hello to an earl?”