She swung the door open, Irvine at her side, and the voices fell silent. Here, the furnishings had changed substantially since her mother’s time—they were depersonalized, stripped of character. She wondered who had lived here since, and whether they had died here too. And yet … the window seat, in particular, caught her eye. The sagging blue velvet cushions on the ledge, beaten free of dust, felt familiar against her knees as she leaned against them, peering out over the murky courtyard. She hadn’t sat here since she was a little girl. Once upon a time, her mother had sat here too, outlined in sunlight, her chestnut hair wound in a foreign style around her head. Even after all this time, the memory was clear. Constance had always been able to remember things better than other people.

Irvine joined her at the window as the servants bustled out. “I will leave you to rest before the feast. I’ve asked for refreshments to be brought up to you, and you’ll find clothes in the chest at the foot of the bed. They should fit you. They belonged to Livia. … She … she died last summer. The Pestilence …”

His jaw was suddenly tight. Constance remembered his sister, three years his senior. She’d been beautiful, with her mother’s brown skin and laughing black eyes, and had loved to dance. Constance had often wished, as a pale, awkward child, that she could be like Livia. “I’m so sorry,” she said simply. “Was that the last time the Pestilence struck?”

Irvine nodded. “Ancestors be thanked, it has been over a year now. This summer we have been spared. Perhaps … with your arrival … I wonder if this horror is finally ending,” he said.

“Perhaps,” she murmured. She turned away from him, trying to disguise the jolt caused by his words. It has been over a year now. She cycled through the descriptions she had studied, detailing the growth of the spell…

Six years in full the spell shall gestate. First year, a vapor, a mist. Second year, a fog, a storm cloud. Then three years in summer, it shall feast on death. In the sixth year, the sickness stops—the quiet before the storm. And then, in autumn, the contractions begin…

Her eyes flicked back to Lord Irvine, who was gazing out the window. She joined him. The cloud was thickening and thinning, concealing and revealing the courtyard like a cheap conjurer’s trick. The quiet before the storm, she thought.

Her mind drifted over what she had learned, and she frowned. “But then … how did the Duchess die?”

“She had been ill for some time—a malady in her lungs. It was no great shock when she passed, but …”

Constance finished for him, hearing his hesitancy. “But of course that doesn’t make it any easier. Poor Winton.”