A weak moan escaped his lips, and I whirled back to him upon the bed and saw one of his hands rise, then fall again swiftly down. I froze. “He lives?”

“Yes, Maisie. He will live.” She turned me from him to face her. “But your mother will not.”

A hot jolt reached me then from her fingertips straight through to my heart. I regarded her a long, speechless moment. “I do not understand you.”

“Your mama—”

“Nay,” I broke in. “I do not understand you. You who took my mama from me and now”—my eyes filled—“you who would give her back.”

“Ah.” She almost smiled as she reached a mechanical hand to nudge the shade above the bed back into place. “Me.”

“Why did Papa never tell Mama?”

“I forbade him.”

“You!”

She leveled her gaze upon me. “Every summer, you returned here, Maisie Thomas. And every summer, you grew beneath both—” She stopped. “Your mama and Nell might both have you, might both see you, though they were unknowing what they saw.”

She spoke it as if it were a gift, as if her logic were a treat. I stared at her, unbelieving someone could foster such an enormous lie. She drew in her breath, her eyes never leaving my face. “Ah.” She exhaled slowly. “I see you are a Grange after all.”

“Tell me,” I demanded quietly, “why?”

I do not know where the high, proud voice emerged from in me, but I spoke as if I were a justice upon a mount, and the woman answered me so, for she did not balk then, or turn away. She continued to look at me, and nodded when she saw I had comprehended it at last.

“But—Nell wished to protect you, I think.”

She gave a ghastly broken smile in response. “Aye, that were a dark protection. One that broke our House.”

“Then why did you stay and torment her so? Why did you not leave her?”

“Leave?” She shook her head at me, unbelieving. “How might I leave?”

I crossed my arms.

“Nay!” she whispered. “Nay, you will know.” She stared at the miniature hung behind my head for a long while, a great struggle upon her face as the words crossed through her, and yet she could not speak. It was as if I watched a drama played without the curtain falling in between, without the actors and their signal voices—yet I saw the scope of it in my aunt’s hard face, as if her face were the stage. And I needed none of the voices then, for the pantomime stirred in me an answering sorrow. When she finally opened her mouth to speak, I was startled by the clarity, the vigorous simplicity of tone—here was Susannah come through at the end; here was the woman who lived inside the cook. In the diary, she had been tall and proud and capable.