The main room of the cottage was brighter, its several windows letting in light from all sides.
No one was there.
She took the last few steps more quickly and darted across the room to glance out the window by the door. At first, she thought she saw a ripple of movement in the shadows outside, but then there was only stillness. It must have been her imagination, she decided, the noise she heard only the timbers settling in the damp and shifting temperature.
Mira shivered, suddenly aware of her state of undress and the chill in the air. She shook off the sense of foreboding and looked about the cottage. The night before she had seen little—only a vague glimpse of rough-hewn furniture and a massive fireplace. Now she noticed that the plank table and benches, though rustic, were straight and clean. A kettle hung in the fireplace, its brass gleaming even in the weak light. The floor was wooden rather than dirt, and it, too, appeared clean. The cottage might not be used often, but it was certainly well tended.
She saw a swath of fabric draped over one of the benches by the table. Nicholas’s cloak, she thought. She took a step toward it, thinking to use it to ward off the chill. But as she approached, and the weak light picked out the green of the fabric, she realized that she had been wrong. It was not Nicholas’s cloak at all.
It was her own.
Her green Kashmir shawl. The one Nicholas had said he had seen by the site of her fall. The one that had supposedly been gone when he returned with Pawly.
Slowly, Mira reached out and picked up the shawl. As she did so, something slipped from its folds and fell to the floor. A delicate gold chain, and, on one end of the chain, a gold disk.
A locket.
She bent low and, with a trembling hand, lifted the locket by the chain, the heavy weight of the ornament swinging down and twisting slowly, catching the morning light. It seemed to wink at her, including her in some sly jest.
She held up the locket so that she could examine it, but she was strangely reluctant to touch it, to hold it by anything other than the two fingers that gingerly grasped the chain. The locket itself was quite plain, adorned only with an etched design of a leafy vine and flowers. By the faintness of the marks, she guessed the piece was old. A family heirloom of some sort.
Dread filled Mira’s mouth with a bitter taste and slowed her movements as she carefully took hold of the locket itself and pressed the tiny clasp on its side. The locket swung open and revealed the image of a woman.
A woman who looked remarkably like Sarah Linworth.
True, the face in the miniature was more mature, a little heavier around the jaw, but it could easily be how Sarah Linworth would look in just a few years. It could easily be how Sarah Linworth’s mother—Olivia Linworth’s mother—looked before she died.
Olivia Linworth’s locket…here with her own shawl. Her shawl that Nicholas had said was missing, but which was now in the cottage where, by his own admission, he had spent the past day. Alone.
In a heartbeat, Mira was overcome with self-doubt. Nan’s warning to think with her head not her heart rang in her ears. Could she have been so wrong about Nicholas? Could her judgment have been that clouded? She thought of Jeremy’s mocking taunt at the dinner table. Poor benighted little girl, reason obliterated by a few sweet words.
She felt sick, every bruise and scrape suddenly screaming to life, and a wave of nausea roiling in the pit of her stomach. She thought of the way she had given herself to Nicholas the night before, the tenderness and heat in his eyes. Could that have been a lie?
She wanted to run, to yell, to rail against the world and hide from it all at once. Yet, all she could do was stare at the image of Olivia Linworth’s mother, smiling so serenely, never imagining the horrible fate that awaited her daughter or the part her own likeness would play in the ensuing drama.
The creak of the cottage door and a sudden gust of cool air startled Mira. She leapt to her feet, frantically wrapping the shawl around her shoulders and hiding the locket in her tightly closed fist. She spun around to discover Pawly Hart standing in the doorway, face split by an enormous grin.
He pounded into the cottage, apparently full of vitality and good spirits, and heaved a satchel onto a bench by the door. Relieved of his burden, he executed several odd dance steps. As he spun around on his heel, he caught sight of Mira and threw up his hands in mock alarm.