“Do you like this one?” asked Jill, holding up a length of shimmering gray silk that looked like it had been sliced out of the mist on the moor. “I have a dress it would look perfect with.”

“It’s beautiful,” said Jack. “You should get that one.”

Jill pouted prettily. “But there are so many of them,” she protested. “I haven’t seen more than half.”

“I know,” said Jack, trying to sound soothing, or at least, trying not to sound frustrated. “Dr. Bleak expects me back by midnight, remember? I can’t disobey my master any more than you can disobey yours.”

It was a calculated risk. Jill knew what it was to be obedient, to bend her desires to another’s. She also had a tendency to fly into a towering rage at the slightest implication that her Master was not the only master in the Moors, as if having a capital letter on his name somehow gave him a monopoly on shouting orders.

Jill wound the ribbon around her finger and said, “The Master would be happy to have you still, if you wanted to come home. You’re very unsuitable now, you know. You’d have to be reeducated. I’d have to teach you how to be a lady. But you could come home.”

The thought of calling the castle “home” was enough to make Jack woozy with terror. She damped it down and shook her head, saying, “I appreciate the offer. I have work to do with Dr. Bleak. I like what we do together. I like what I’m learning.” An old memory stirred, of her mother in a pink pantsuit, telling her how to refuse an invitation. “Thank you so much for thinking of me.”

Jill sighed. “You’ll come home one day,” she said, and grabbed a fistful of ribbons, so many of them that they trailed between her fingers like a rainbow of worms. “I’ll take these,” she informed the stallholder. “My sister will pay you.” Then she was gone, turning on her heel and flouncing back toward the castle gates. Ribbons fell unnoticed from her fist as she walked, leaving a trail behind her in the dust.

Jack turned back to the stallholder, reaching for the coins at the bottom of her basket. “I’m so sorry,” she said, voice pitched low and urgent. “I didn’t mean to bring her to you. She forced my hand. I may not have enough to pay you, but I promise, I’ll return with the rest, only tell me what I owe.”

“Nothing,” said the stallholder. She still wasn’t looking at Jack.

“But—”