And Torgos had said Magoulias’s name.

Vres ton. Magoulias. Férte ton se ména.

Find him. Bring him to me.

Í tha se skotóso.

Or I will kill you.

CHAPTER 11

It was odd to be wearing gloves in bed, thought Gwen. As if one had suddenly transformed into a leper overnight, and was forbidden human touch for the rest of one’s wretched existence. Only this leper had arms that were prepared to go to the opera, sheathed in white satin nearly to her shoulders.

The packet of letters sat on the night table next to her bed. She had had a boiled egg and toast for her breakfast, brought to her on a tray by Prudence herself, along with another glass of bicarbonate. Ronnie, forewarned by Agnes, had tiptoed in with such a serious face and exaggerated attention to quiet that she had almost started giggling. She gave him a hug and reassured him about the state of her health, then sent him off, first to church and then to playtime with Tommy in the Wild West.

She felt guilty, both for missing services and for shamming illness, or hangover, if that was what the staff truly believed, but she could not deny the pleasure of wallowing in bed for a late morning. The greater guilt was for missing church. Even in the sanatorium, she would be wheeled to the chapel, and she would duly read the responses and sing along with the raucous chorus of the disturbed.

She knelt by the side of her bed and prayed, hoping that God would find that sufficient. She had much for Him to forgive over the past few days. And it wasn’t as if she were without purpose—she had letters to read.

She glanced first at the ones young Alice had penned to her great-grandmother. Ordinary accounts of ordinary events—parties, horses ridden, puppies embraced. The girlish scrawl was in English, complete with some misspellings. Well, one wouldn’t expect perfection of a woman kept in aristocratic isolation. Even Gwen herself had more freedom growing up in the twenties and thirties than Alice had had in the waning years of the last century. And Gwen had more access to schooling, albeit in a primarily female environment, than Alice had had.

On the other hand, Alice had lived in a palace with Queen Victoria for a while, and that wasn’t a bad deal at all.

The final letter was to her mother, written while on her honeymoon. She was eighteen, thought Gwen. In love with her handsome prince, discovering the unknown. One could sense the rush of the pen as she wrote of sights seen by day while trying to conceal the other sights seen at night that her mother must have known were hidden below the surface of her tale. There was a joy in this that Gwen remembered only too well.

She looked closely at the letter, examining the swoop and curl of each letter as it flowed into the next, how Alice had crossed her t’s, how she made her capitals.