His blue gaze traveled over me, up and down again. “Are you all right?”
“I think so.”
“What—?” His gaze moved past my shoulder. “That’s not Maisey.”
I turned. Through the trees, I briefly saw the figure of a girl; then it disappeared.
I was frozen to the spot, but Jack touched my arm. “Was that the girl you saw the other day?”
“I don’t—I don’t know.”
“I’m going after her.” He started to move.
“Jack, what are you doing?”
“She might lead me somewhere,” he said. He turned and looked at me. “How much damage can she do if I’m awake?”
I had no choice but to follow him as he took off at a trot. When we emerged, we saw only a flash of fabric through a stand of brush fifty feet away. “Hello?” Jack shouted, but she was gone again before we got there. We fought through the brush until we could see clearly, and then we were only in time to see her figure descend the other side of the rise. She had her back to us and she did not turn. She was slender and she wore the same simple blouse and skirt I’d seen before, her blond hair wound behind her head, her gait stately and unhurried. Her shoulders dipped behind the rise, and then her head, and she was gone.
“Bloody hell,” said Jack, and he took a run up the rise, his strides taking him up the slope with no effort at all. I was still halfway up when he reached the top. “Where the hell did she go?” he cried in frustration.
I pointed. “Over there.”
She’d made it to Portis House. She was back by the west wing, where I’d seen her before. There were footprints flattening the grass. As we watched, she picked up her skirts and turned the corner out of sight.
“She’s not a damned ghost,” said Jack.
“No.” The realization drained me of fear as I stared at the trail she’d left. “And she’s not Maisey, either. Let’s catch her.”
We ran. He was faster than me, but I’d been working hard and climbing the stairs dozens of times a day; I nearly kept up with him. We followed her trail around the house, giving a wide berth to the patch of weeds in front of the isolation room. We saw nothing, not even when we fanned out and looked from all angles.
“She can’t have gone far,” Jack said. “We’d see her. She must be hiding somewhere.”
The sun had come up now. Martha would be getting up, would find the bed next to her empty, and breakfast would be started in the kitchen. “We can’t,” I said to him. “We’ll get in trouble.”
He looked at me. “To hell with trouble, Kitty. We have to find out who she is.”
But I shook my head. I’d promised Martha only the day before, and here I was, alone with Jack Yates, outside at the wrong time of day, chasing shadows instead of working. We might have been seen already. “I can’t be caught, Jack. Not again. I can’t.”
He spun around, his gaze looking for the mysterious girl. I backed away.
He swore, colorfully. He was very good at it.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” I said, and I turned back toward the house.
? ? ?
No one had noticed that I had broken the rules yet again. I served breakfast in obedient silence. I told a bewildered Martha I’d had a nightmare and had gone for a walk. My explanation seemed to satisfy her.
I fed Archie in the infirmary. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. I made a note to ask Nina to check on him more frequently, and to see whether a mild sleeping draft would be possible. There must be a way to help a tortured man get a little rest, I thought, without punching him with a drug that would fell cattle. But any draft would likely come from the odious Dr. Thornton, and God only knew what would be in it.
I’d given Archie an aspirin as a weak consolation and was heading back through the downstairs hall when Boney stopped me. “Nurse Weekes,” she said.
The words sent an icy bullet of foreboding into my chest, but I kept my chin up. “Yes?”
Two spots of high anger rose on her cheeks. “I thought you knew the rules,” she said accusingly.
I stared at her, fighting dismay.
“You’ve been here for several weeks now,” Boney said. “I thought it would be obvious.”
“I—”
“But perhaps,” she talked over me, “this particular rule was not explained.”
Now I was confused. “What rule?”
She sighed as if she’d lost count of how many times she’d repeated herself. “About visitors. They are not allowed. Especially men.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Nurse Weekes, I’m telling you there’s a man in the front parlor who claims to be your brother. Whoever he is, get rid of him.”