Lucy turned around and realized that she was standing in the doorway of Gunpowder Cottage. The stairs were in the same place although the doorway on the right now led into a great hall rather than the cozy sitting room that she remembered and there was a passageway stretching away behind her that was partitioned with wooden paneling.

She was simultaneously aware of her own puzzlement overlaid on Catherine’s confusion and distress. This time, in this dream, she felt so much closer to Catherine than she had before. She wasn’t simply an observer. Their thoughts seemed to tangle and separate again. Wait...she wanted to tell Catherine, let me catch my breath, but Catherine was running again, down the corridor toward the kitchens, so different from the shiny modern one that Lucy knew, a place with a huge empty hearth and cold ashes that spun into a ghostly spiral when stirred by the breeze...

Lucy woke suddenly again, bathed in sweat. It was hot in the barn and she had managed to wrap the duvet around herself, pinioning her arms to her body and making her hotter still. She struggled to free herself and sat up. Her reflection gazed at her from the mirror directly opposite the bed, pale face with freckles scattered over her snub nose, short straight dark hair, wide mouth, wide-set pale blue eyes, the whole familiar and unremarkable. It was also a very different face from the one she had seen reflected in the dusty prism when she had looked out of the window at Gunpowder Cottage. The face that had looked back at her then had been rounded, framed with fair hair. She had had a rosebud mouth and big blue eyes.

It had been Catherine’s face.

Four

Anne Catesby

Ashby St. Ledgers, Northamptonshire
Christmas, 1598

“The advantages of the match are all on your son’s side, of course,” Lady Leigh said, looking down her Spencer nose at me. She was a tall woman, expensively clad in red velvet that hung on her thin frame like a curtain. Her hair was a faded version of her daughter’s vivid gold and her face still held a hint of beauty. It mattered not to her that she was in our house, partaking of our Yuletide hospitality. She was nevertheless going to make her feelings clear on the inferiority of a Catesby as a husband for a Leigh.

“Catherine is comely, rich and of elegant manners,” she added, with a self-congratulatory smile. “She could easily ensnare a baron.”

“I am sure she could, madam,” I agreed with a warm smile. “Your elder daughter is indeed a paragon. However, Robert would be a worthy match for her. He—” I had no chance to boast of Robert’s imaginary virtues for I was interrupted by old Lady Leigh, Catherine’s grandmother.

“What nonsense you talk, Kate!” she said, waddling up to us and slapping her daughter-in-law’s wrist with her fan. “Have you seen the boy? He is handsome and charming and bold.” She gave a cackle of laughter that sounded unrepentantly lewd. “There is not a woman in this room who would not wish to be in Catherine’s shoes now, or more to the point, in her marriage bed when she weds Robert Catesby. I’ll wager he knows a thing or two about how to please a maid!”