Reaching the second floor, she turned down a dark corridor with covered paintings and closed doors. As she padded along it, a gust of wind blew from a cracked window at the far end, and a dust sheet on a painting she was passing billowed up. Mary caught sight of the picture beneath and stopped in her tracks. It was a portrait of her mother! She held the dust sheet back and gazed at it, loss and guilt stabbing through her. Her mother looked about eighteen. She was sitting at a piano, smiling and happy, her dark hair falling in waves to her shoulders. Mary blinked. It felt wrong to see her mother like that. In all her memories, her mother was frowning and turning away.

She lifted the dust sheet on the next painting. It was another picture of her mother. This time she looked a few years older. She was sitting on a swing in a clearing, wearing a white dress, and there was another woman, the same age as her, in a blue dress. Something tugged at Mary’s mind. She almost felt as if she’d been to that clearing, but it looked like it was in England, so that was impossible.

Intrigued, she looked closely at the other woman. She was very similar to Mary’s mother, but slightly taller and her hair wasn’t brown but a dark chestnut-red like Mary’s. Mary knew it had to be her mother’s twin sister, Grace, her uncle’s dead wife. They hadn’t been identical twins, but they looked very much alike.

Leaving the paintings, Mary tiptoed on and turned into a carpeted corridor with a grand mural on the wall. There was a bedroom door opposite her, and it was open. Whose bedroom was it? Curiously, she crept closer. Her eyes widened as she saw a dark-haired boy, about her age, asleep in an ornate bed.

He opened his eyes and looked at her. She leaped back out of sight.

“I saw you!” the boy’s voice rang out.

Mary’s thoughts raced. Who was he? He couldn’t be a servant—the bedroom was far too grand. It was bigger and far more beautifully decorated than her own.

He spoke again. “I can’t say I saw you enough to positively identify you, but I’m sure if I told them that I’d seen a little servant girl, they’d know who I meant and you’d be in firm trouble, wouldn’t you?”