“No…Sewel, what have you done?” I looked at the dark red smears on his hands. On his forehead and waistcoat.

He shrugged. “I was just trying to come through the back door, Fran. How was I to know you got all these servants?” He looked behind him. People in the street were stopping as they heard Maggie’s cries. “Guess this en’t a good time to talk after all. I’ll see you soon, Francisca.”

He fixed a final, threatening stare on me. Then he strode into the street and disappeared into the darkness.

I bolted the door behind him and ran to the kitchen.

The back door was thrown wide. I sped through it, out into the courtyard.

Maggie crouched over Malcolm, who was lying in the dirt. She pressed her hands to his neck, trying to stop the blood that poured out of him. So much blood. It was everywhere.

“My son!” she screamed. “That thief killed my son!”

Malcolm’s green eyes were open—but he was gone.

The next morning, Lucy and I sat in the parlor, holding hands as we waited for the police magistrate to arrive, our tea untouched and cooling on the table.

“I think I’m going to cry again,” she whispered.

“Go ahead. I will cry with you.”

We had been this way all night. She began our tears, or I did.

Hours ago, as our heads had lain on the same damp pillow, my room just beginning to brighten with the coming dawn, she’d admitted to me that she’d loved Malcolm.

“I know that’s wrong,” she’d confessed. “He was a servant, below me and out of reach, but…he was so kind. So decent.”

Some spy I was. Missing something that had been under my nose for almost four years.

I’d told her she didn’t need to explain. I understood—love obeyed no rules—and I couldn’t bear to hear anymore. My guilt was strong enough. I hadn’t drawn the knife across Malcolm’s neck, but I was responsible for his death. If Miss Coates had stayed dead, he would still be alive.

In time one’s mask becomes one’s face.

And one’s past becomes one’s curse, I added silently.

Lord, how I wanted to shed myself like a skin. Disappear to a place where I would never hurt anyone again, and where I’d be safe from Sewel, but no such place existed.

He’d found me.

He’d killed Malcolm.

Nothing felt safe anymore.

“Thank God,” Uncle Henry said by the front window, where he’d been all morning. He set his rifle down. “He’s here.” He pulled the front door open. “Come in, Duncan. Come in.”

Lieutenant James Duncan stepped through the door and immediately looked at me in the parlor. In an instant, he stood before me. “Are you harmed?”

“No. I’m fine.” He searched my face like he needed more proof. “I’m unharmed,” I said. “Truly, I’m fine.” I sank to the settee. Lucy and Uncle Henry disappeared from the parlor like mist.