She felt strangely untethered from them all, like a bubble rising into the sky. Her head felt fuzzy and the room was swimming, though the champagne glass was still full in her hand. Their voices sounded underwater, distant and shapeless. Someone was in front of her now, a pale face with red lips peering at her, but the detail was blurring and within a few seconds, the white parlour had turned black.

‘In here.’ The voice was male but unfamiliar to her. She had a sensation of moving – or rather, of being moved – but the effort to open her eyes seemed too great. She was set down on something soft and felt someone pull off her shoes. She gave a groan, as she always did when her feet were free again.

‘I think she’s coming round.’

Her eyelids flickered a few times, then the dying light of day announced itself. A pale face, no red lips. Sholto?

She blinked again.

‘Back in the land of the living, then?’

Effie felt the room snap into focus as Henry pulled back. He was standing there with Mr Weir and Mr Graves. She looked around for Sholto but saw only salmon-pink walls, a large wardrobe; the bed had a roof on it . . . This wasn’t her bedroom.

‘How are you feeling, Miss Gillies?’ the butler asked her.

‘Where am I?’

‘You fainted. His lordship told us to bring you to the nearest available bedroom.’

She stared back at him. She supposed they could hardly carry her up and down two flights of stairs and halfway across the length of the house back to her own, but . . .

She remembered why it had happened, the confirmation she had been dreading since she’d arrived here hitting her like a brick again. The full awfulness of it rained down upon her head and another moan escaped her. She went to get off the bed, almost whimpering with fear. No, it couldn’t be true—

‘No,’ Mr Graves said firmly, stepping forward. ‘The countess has said you are to rest. You will stay here for tonight.’

Effie’s gaze slid to Mr Weir, who was looking on with open disdain. It was bad enough that she was not only dining upstairs, but now sleeping there too. But that wasn’t why he was regarding her with such contempt. She knew he suspected her for certain now. Why had she fainted? It was like putting a ‘guilty’ sign on her head. Mathieson had to have told him something, just enough, to put her in the frame as a suspect in his own murder. But what?

There was a knock at the door and Sholto strode in, like a sunbeam in the dark. ‘How is she?’

‘Recovered, sir,’ Graves replied. ‘She’s awake again.’

‘There’s no need for me to stay up here,’ she said quickly to Sholto, throwing back the cover again. ‘I’m fine.’

‘I’ve tried telling her, my lord.’