I could do nothing but stare at this time-faded version of my lovely childhood memory, full of wonder and dawning horror at the sight of her . . . here. “What is your name? Who are you?”

She nodded and smiled reassuringly, as if she’d heard something different than I’d said, smoothing long fingers over my hand as she cradled it.

I drew near to her in the dark until I could smell the straw in her hair. “Helena?” I pointed at her chest and repeated my mother’s name as clear as I could. “Helena Garvey Mourdant?”

She blinked, as if the word registered through the fog, but she shook her head. “Roe.” She touched her fingertips to her chest as her rosebud lips struggled to form the sound.

“Rose. Yes, you are Rose. Rosamond Swansea, yes?”

A slow nod.

I turned to the woman behind me. “Bridget, do you know anything about her? Who she is, where she came from?”

She shrugged. “Had a mother and father once, but they’re gone, from what I can tell. Doesn’t talk much, and she doesn’t seem to understand, neither. Any talking we’ve done has been with our hands, like two people speaking a different language. Figured maybe she was a Celt or something.”

I reached out a hand, caressing her dirty cheek, feeling the roundness I so remembered in those moonlit meetings at the pianoforte. Rose—Rose—had played in my home. In my mother’s pianoforte room. And her portrait—Mother’s portrait—hung in Seaton Hall.

She had to be. Had to be my mother.

But . . . not. Now that I sat face-to-face with the woman, there was a marked difference. Something in the bearing and nature that wasn’t quite the same as that portrait. Freedom and a youthful joy had been captured in that portrait, and Rose had always, even in our long-ago encounters, worn a quiet calm that made her seem almost shy. She was the same now. And the little birthmark on her lip—I saw it clearly before me, had seen it in the rose room all those years ago, but it hadn’t been in the portrait. The artist, I had assumed, had deftly covered up the supposed flaw, but perhaps it hadn’t been there to paint at all.

“I do know she’s like me—come from a mother who weren’t married.” Bridget heaved a sigh. “Makes life difficult on a person, that. Never quite sure who you are—or whose you are.”

“You managed to get all this from her?”

“Over time. Taught her to dump the tea they were giving her, and she’s been a lot better company since. We’ve had a few talks. Well, I’ve talked and she’s . . . you know.” Bridget’s hands floated around.