Grace sat down on the sofa, folding her hands in her lap like a child. For a moment, James remembered the little girl who had passed him the briar cutters through the gaps in the fence around Blackthorn Manor, and felt a wash of sadness. “I don’t want to look at you,” he said. “I am going to summon the Silent Brothers. Do not think of going anywhere. They will hunt you down.”

“You needn’t worry about that,” Grace said. She was staring fixedly at the broken halves of the silver bracelet, where they had fallen on the floor. “I have nowhere to go.”

James felt sick to his stomach as he left the drawing room—shutting and locking the door behind him—and headed upstairs. How could he ever have thought he loved Grace? Even in the throes of enchantment, he had never felt for her what he felt for Cordelia. She had never made him happy. He had only felt agony when she was not there, and assumed that that was love. We suffer for love because love is worth it, his father had told him once: James had thought that meant that to love was to endure anguish. He had not realized his father had meant there should be joy to balance the pain.

The sort of joy that Daisy brought him—the quiet happiness of playing chess together, or reading, or talking in the study. Reaching the door of her bedroom, he threw it open, suddenly unable to wait to see her.

But the bedroom was empty. The bed was made, corners neatly tucked. Cortana was gone from its place on the wall. There was no fire in the grate. The air felt cold, the space very quiet. Desolate. He raced to his room; perhaps she was waiting for him there.

His room was empty too.

He hurried downstairs. A quick search of the ground floor yielded no Cordelia. A cold pebble of dread was now lodged in his stomach. Where was she? He started back up the stairs, only to hear footsteps. He spun around, his heart lifting—then falling again.

It was Effie, in a billowing gray dressing gown, covered in frills. Her hair was up in paper curlers. She sighed mightily at the sight of him. “I tell you,” she said. “A body can’t get a night’s rest around this bloomin’ place.”

James decided not to comment on the impropriety of a parlormaid appearing before the master of the house in her night attire. He didn’t care. “Have you seen Cordelia? Mrs. Herondale?”

“Oh, yes,” Effie said. “She was coming down the steps, like, and she saw you all cuddled up with that blond popsy. She tore out the back door like a scalded cat.”

“What?” James seized the newel post to steady himself. “Didn’t you think of going after her?”