It happened, now and then, that despite a tested immunity, a maid would start to cough. To pale. To waste. Sick above her station. But then, there’s not much to be found in a maid’s room, save for what she’d scavenged from others—and she’d no doubt have worn it out or worn it dull or somehow made it low or common. But the head housekeeper, their matron—different story.

It was Darcy who had final say over which maid got to strip and pack a room. Often, she did it herself. With Darcy gone, the maids all looked ready to shoulder through her doorway—to pick up a set of new darning needles, perhaps, or the music box they all swore they’d heard one day—a flagrant breach of the school’s regulations.

They’d not find the chocolates Darcy always had as gifts from the headmistress. Mallow had eaten them, sitting on Darcy’s bed, while she waited. Don’t need a boy to pick a lock.

Mallow shut her door against the chaos in the hall and peeled the gloves from her hands. Sticky dried blood and the crisp, jagged edges of her skin snagged at the fibers as she pulled. She reached for the vial of morphine. Still some left over, to soothe her. It had taken most of the vial to level Darcy. She didn’t relish the taste of it, the way she’d seen the fine young ladies do, but she welcomed the spreading fuzz, the cozy dull. A down quilt for the mind that muffled the world.

Mallow curled up on her creaking, threadbare cot and pulled out Darcy’s diary. If she hadn’t been so sure of what she might find, she might not have had the stomach for looking. Dull. So dull. Outraged missives on the misuse of dish soap. Lamentations over starch. Heavy praise of a new brand of sponge. Impossible. But there, among the housekeeping drivel, was the scandal.

Mallow had been her favorite maid, once, in the beginning. Her skill with the polishing rag, dusting dexterity, her mopping footwork. Darcy indulged in her help. Empowered her. Delegated important tasks till Mallow was more a partner than subordinate. Till Mallow became essential to the school’s function, and when Mallow barked an order at a fellow maid and the maid scampered, a switch flicked in Darcy. Then Mallow was competition, and Darcy wanted her gone. But she’d had no reason to dismiss her, no grounds for firing.

Not till the night Darcy ran out of morphine and couldn’t sleep, walked halls where she shouldn’t be and saw things she shouldn’t see.