‘Gracious, what are you doing?’ Rosa stared down at her. There was such a strange look in her friend’s eyes – a sort of desperate sorrow that Rosa did not understand.

‘I j-just …’ Beatrice began. ‘I w-wanted to t-t-tell you …’

‘What?’

Beatrice looked up at Rosa and frowned. Some inner process seemed to take place inside her head and the next moment she released Rosa’s wrist and stepped back.

‘N-Never mind,’ she said. ‘It d-doesn’t m-matter.’

‘Really, Beatrice,’ Rosa said. ‘You act most strangely sometimes.’

She rapped on the roof and the driver clicked his tongue to urge the horses forward, leaving Beatrice alone upon the frozen steps.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Beatrice watched Rosa drive away with a nagging feeling in her stomach, sharp as teeth tugging at her guts. Should she have told her what she had seen in the plum rain? But it was such a shocking thing to speak of, and Beatrice was not sure she had the words.

She sighed and walked out into her garden, wanting to be sure that everything was being attended to correctly. She had a horrifying fear of fire breaking out and so always checked and double-checked that all the candles and lanterns had been extinguished. She’d spent most of her time that evening up on the roof of Half Moon House. From there, she had a good viewpoint down into the gardens, and it certainly seemed as if it had gone well and that most people had behaved themselves properly.

The black apple trees had been excited to be involved, but seemed to have worn themselves out, because they’d finally gone still enough for icicles to form along their crooked, dark branches. The footmen had done an excellent job of clearing the supper booths – not so much as a crumb remained, and all the lights had been extinguished, leaving only the pleasant smell of candle smoke and canary-coloured marzipan upon the air.

It was pleasant to have the garden to herself once again and Beatrice enjoyed walking through in the snow-muffled silence. Just her, and the flowers, and the stars. The plant life would, of course, stay where it was, but the animals had all been relocated back to the temporary habitats built for them on the other side of the house.

She paused in the forest of plum trees, recalling the night she had first experienced them. After James had shown her how to create hybrid plants, she had laboured tirelessly to make something new and unique – something that the world, and the Spider Queen herself, had never seen. Finally her hard work paid off and, when she stepped into the purple rain for the first time, she glimpsed another world. In fact it was Rosa’s world, for she had seen what her life would have been like had she gone ahead with her marriage to Eustace. She had swapped lives with her friend.