They wore simple clothes. Many wore trousers, like men, or had their skirts bound up around their knees, while others were clad in dresses that looked for all the world like they were made of butterflies. He had never seen so many girls together without a chaperone. Was it a mirage? He was drunk on the cloying scent of flowers . . .
And at the end of the stream, where water pooled deep and clear beside a waterfall, was a woman with hair that shone like the finest lacquer. She wore a gown of emerald-green silk, hitched up to bare her slim brown calves. She poured water over her hair from a jug, renewing its luster. Her head was tilted into the sunlight, and her eyes were closed. He could have stared at her forever, so peaceful did she look.
“Marigold,” he breathed, because he could not bear to be silent. Then, louder: “Marigold!”
Her head flicked to face him. Her eyes grew wide, and Isaac’s face broke into a smile. She was alive. He should admonish her for dressing so improperly, but instead he ran toward his treasure, arms outstretched to grasp her.
She screamed.
Isaac stopped dead. Marigold scrambled away from him, slinking down the rock until she was knee-deep in the water. “No. No,” she said. To the girls, she shouted, “Fetch the Erl-queen! Why on earth did none of you stop them?”
The children in the glade sprang to their feet. “Mother,” they chorused. “Mother, help Marigold!”
The plea was taken up all around them, until it echoed like a cry into the mouth of a bell. Isaac hardly noticed. All he could do was gaze at Marigold, and it seemed all she could do was gaze back, but there was nothing familiar left in her eyes. He looked upon a changeling.
“Leave me, Isaac Fairfax,” she said in a tremulous voice. Her skirts drifted on the surface of the water. “Let me go.”
“Marigold, you are bewitched.” He held out his hand. “The Erl-queen stole you. I can take you back.”
“Back to what?” Marigold shook her head. “Back to a life as a scullery maid, rented for profit?” She sank deeper into the water. “She says he’ll murder me. George. He’s always longed to do it, you know. If I return to that world, I am not long for it. I pitied you once—you were deceived—but I cannot forgive you. I cannot forgive you for not seeing through George’s lie . . .”
She had never spoken like this to him. The quake had left her voice. Now she sounded so cold, so hardened.
“Lie,” he repeated. “Marigold, what on earth do you mean? Nobody rented you.”
“Look to George. Look to your own heart. Did you never realize that when I wept, I wept because I was afraid—not happy?” She crossed her arms over herself, as if to shield her heart. It made her look so young, so fragile. So like his Marigold. “I know now. I know that I am whole, that I am strong, and I am free to make my life what I will. You will not take me, as Queen Victoria took Alice. As my father took me from my mother.”
“Marigold, enough of this.” She must be addled by the Erl-queen’s feast, but he was beginning to feel angry. All this way he had come for her, and all she could do was call her own brother murderous and talk about the mother she had never known. “You are confused, my love. You are not yourself.”
She raised her chin. “I believe I am best-placed to decide what I am. I am more myself than I ever was.”
“You were perfect before.” His throat was full. “You are perfect, Marigold.”
“No. I was compliant,” she said bitterly, “because that was what you wanted. He knew what you wanted, Isaac. My brother knows you like your women to be soft-spoken, to flatter you and simper for you!” Her hand struck through the water in frustration. Isaac flinched. “He blackmailed me. He saw me as his ruin, his mother’s death—in my cradle, I was poison to his name—and he meant me to pay for it. To pay my debt by marrying you, even if I had to spend the rest of my days in misery. He cared nothing for my happiness. Only his reputation.” Her face was contorted. “Oh, Isaac—do you still not see?”
Tears were in her eyes; her teeth were bared in anger. Leaves were shifting in the glade. The children emptied baskets of them, carpeting the grass.
This could not be Marigold.
“He was using both of us, Isaac,” she spat. “He told me he would kill me, the first time, if I refused to do what you wanted . . . and after, he promised he would ruin me if I was not the perfect mistress. He would tell the Sinnetts we met, allow them to find us. He was the one who arranged our meetings, wasn’t he? He always knew where we were.” Marigold rose from the water. Rivulets streamed from her hair, soaking her sleeves. “He befriended you because he thought you were weak-willed. My brother has a silver tongue. If you married me—if you could be persuaded, in the end, to marry me—he believed the Beath family would be raised to its former glory. That he would no longer be in destitution.” She shook her head. “I was never yours. I do not love you. I never did. If you care for me at all, leave me.”
Isaac was close to choking. “I cannot leave you.” He could not understand—would not understand. “George told me. He told me you loved me, that you wanted to see me—”
“A scullery maid in a household you had never visited. When did I become besotted with you?”
“You saw me through the window!”
Now she looked pitying. “Do you really suppose that one can fall in love with a person through a window?”
He could not stand this. He couldn’t look at her, knowing she would flee from him if he tried to take her in his arms again.
“Marigold, come here.”
Isaac was jolted from his memories. George had come into the glade. The children fled from him, crying for their mother.
“George,” he said faintly.
“Marigold,” George said, ignoring him, “you will stop making a fool of yourself and step out of the water. Come with us at once.”
Marigold stumbled deeper into the pool, so the water came past her waist. “No, George,” she said, eyes flashing. “I have had enough of your threats—your scheming—”
George clicked his tongue. “You see, Isaac. Bewitched, just as I said.” He strode toward her. She looked half wild with fear. “Marigold, I don’t want to have to hurt you.”
“Leave me be.”
Isaac cringed at her shrill tone. This was not her voice, not Marigold. George was right.
“You are becoming hysterical, sister.” George was always so calm, so unruffled. He fixed her with an unblinking stare, the sort one would use on a deer before shooting it. “Marigold, Isaac has given me his word that he will marry you when you return to England. You see? You will be Marigold Fairfax, a respectable lady of London, with a husband who adores you. Your reputation will not be ruined. And our family name will be restored. You’ll see.”
But Isaac had never promised to marry her. George must know that it was impossible. He must always have known that Isaac was meant to court Anne, surely, yet he spoke of the possibility so often . . .