“Inform him of Mr. Wetherby’s actions, if you must,” Lottie said as she turned toward the exit. “But please, I beg you, tell him nothing of me.”

Mrs. Houston called after her as she hurried out of the sitting room. But Lottie could take no more revelations today. She bolted up the stairs, barely registering the grand portraits of so many dour-faced ancestors as she raced toward her room. Until she turned a corner and her mother’s familiar green-eyed gaze brought her to a halt. The formal portrait had been commissioned shortly after her mother’s eighteenth birthday, in accordance with Lewis family custom.

Lottie stepped closer and closer until she could reach out and brush the heavy gilded frame with her finger. Ada Lewis would meet John Carlisle less than a year after this was painted. It seemed unthinkable that Lottie was nearly the age her mother was when she died. She had possessed a tranquil wisdom that made her seem ageless. But Ada had been a young wife and mother, with a life very different from her daughter’s.

And what would she say now?

Lottie abruptly turned away from the portrait. Her room no longer seemed like a welcome refuge. It was full of reminders of the parents she had lost, of the life she had never gotten to have. But one place remained where she could truly be alone.

The fairy cottage was only a short distance from the main house, but it was tucked away in a hidden glen few knew about. Dusk was approaching as Lottie picked her way along the path overgrown with weeds and wildflowers. The cottage itself was covered in thick tangles of ivy, all but forgotten over the years.

Lottie’s grandfather had erected the tiny cottage as a playhouse for his youngest daughter and was partially inspired by Marie Antoinette’s model village in Versailles. Ada had christened it the “fairy cottage” when she was a child, and the name stuck. It was not a grand building by any means. Nothing more than two small rooms. But it had been sturdily built from area stone, and the thatched roof still appeared intact. Lottie found the cottage key in its usual spot under a large stone planter by the entrance and brushed away the accumulated dirt.

She couldn’t remember the last time she visited. Had it really stood empty all these years? The door would not budge until Lottie applied her shoulder with some vigor, and when it abruptly swung open she nearly toppled onto the floor. She shook out her skirts and took in the space. It smelled of damp and moss, but otherwise was just as she remembered. The larger of the two rooms contained a little wooden table, two chairs, and a lantern, while the other housed a camp stove and narrow cot.

The cottage’s lone diamond-paned picture window was partially covered in ivy, letting in only a bit of fast-fading daylight. Lottie found a remarkably dry pack of matches in the table’s drawer and set to lighting the lantern. Once the room was cast in a comforting glow, she curled up on the window seat, tucked her skirts around her legs, and rested her head against the glass.