Mr. Cabot knelt before them, gathering up the spilled tansy blooms and the wedding linens from the floorboards where Gemma had dropped them. She had no memory of doing so.

"No." She reached for them. "I have to wrap her in the winding sheet. And the flowers must be in the folds. She favored them. I had saved them for dyeing — " The unintentional pun made her breath stop. She gasped, a harsh, desperate grab for air.

"My dear, we shall take ever such great care." Mr. Button stepped forward to take Gemma's cold hand in his warm ones.

Lysander was as solid as one of the stone cairns beside her.

Gemma managed a breath. "You must sew it closed. The children. It mustn't come unwound."

Mister Cabot held the winding sheet and the basket of tansy out of Gemma's reach. "We can sew," he reminded her calmly, although there was a night-sky of sympathy in his silvery eyes. "I know just what to do."

Gemma believed him. This was not the first time the mysterious Mr. Cabot had prepared a body for burial.

At last, she allowed Lysander to walk her from the room. After one touch of her icy hands, he took a heavy shawl from where it hung draped over the worn chair beside her clothes press.

Thus wrapped against the shivers that had begun to travel through her in waves, she moved shakily with help to the seldom used front door.

She wished she could tell Lysander how grateful she was not to pass through the kitchen where she would be forced to meet the gaze of Jennie's grieving husband. And oh! Those poor children! She flinched from the crushing weight of it all.

The unbearable burden of her guilt.

I did it. I killed Jennie.

THEY SAT ON THE front steps of the manor in the last warmth of the setting sun. From dawn until nearly dusk, they had fought for Jennie and her child.

Their last sunset had been such a joyous one. How could so much change so quickly?

Most of Lysander's newfound speech deserted him. A fiercely burning tightness clamped around his throat. The words he'd just recently begun to tame to his hand now took wing, leaving nothing behind upon his tongue.

Sitting beside him, Gemma mourned. She was visibly agonized, every muscle in her body as tight as a harp string. She trembled with it as she stared dry eyed and unseeing at the beautiful day.

"It should be raining," she whispered hoarsely. "Why is the sun shining?"

Lysander knew she wasn't speaking to him. She was lost in the darkest recesses of her mind, pawing for reasons, for explanations, for sense in a nonsensical world.

"You did what you learned from the book." It was a weak comfort and he knew it, yet the notion of speaking actual truth made his breath wheeze in his locked throat.