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“You will never have to consent. I am happily engaged. To a French countess. The adorable Marguerite. Marguerite Marie-Rose de Champagne. Her whole family was put to the guillotine, even the lapdogs. I am very much in love.”

Pure nonsense. Elfreda knew, too, when Georgina was poking fun. She was laughing now at Papa’s expense.

“That,” Elfreda spit out, “is the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard.”

Georgina studied her gravely. “I am sorry to disappoint you, Miss Marsden.” She paused and added, in an encouraging tone, “But I have no doubt that the right suitor will one day come along.”

That did it. She was going to scream.

“Tell Georgina,” she said instead, to Georgina, her voice impressively calm, “that I would rather eat a lapdog than sit at a table with any of you.”

She stalked off, head held high, but her sense of triumph faded with every step.

She was itchy and damp and so bitterly disappointed.

Today’s discovery should have changed everything.

Instead, it had changed very little. And Papa’s dismissal had planted a seed of doubt in her mind.

Maybe she had fallen under the spell of a funny little pebble and let her fancies run away with her.

Now she’d never know for sure. She’d keep digging, of course.

She’d dig on the bluff for twenty more years, if that’s what it took.

And it might. Digging was slow work when you dug alone, and only during those hours you could rob from other tasks.

She risked a glance over her shoulder. Papa and Georgina had parted company. Papa was walking northwest, not toward Marsden Hall, but not toward the river either. The Empress Matilda penny was safe.

Georgina wasn’t anywhere. She was fast, though. Perhaps she’d already reached the lane, disappeared through the hedges.

Elfreda veered into the orchard, a sparse grouping of gnarled apple trees, more dead limbs than flowering boughs. Crows perched high in the crowns, pecking at last year’s withered pippins.

She sat on a stump by the old rabbit warren, brooding.

Her grandmother had first taken her to the warren, opened it up with a shovel and showed her the tiny bones.

It was her grandmother who’d made digging seem magical, a way to make time fold over, so that the past and the present touched.

She never felt closer to Grandmama than when she was digging.

Grandmama, Grandpapa, Mother—they were all in the churchyard.

But when she had a shovel in her hand, Grandmama was digging with her.

Grandmama had been an archaeologist as well, although no one ever acknowledged her as such.

She’d accompanied Grandpapa to Stonehenge, and the drawers of her writing desk contained not only diaries but notebooks filled with observations in her own hand, some of which Elfreda recognized from Grandpapa’s published books.

“I wish we’d had longer,” Elfreda said to her, rupturing the orchard’s hush.

“There are so many things I would have asked you, now that I’m grown.

” Grandmama had died when Elfreda was ten, six years before her mother, whose memory had faded much quicker.

Mother had been faded too, in life. Grandmama was vibrant, then and now.

Elfreda could almost see her, between the trees.

“You would have believed me about the amulet,” she said. “You would have helped me figure out what to do next.”

A twig snapped. Three crows hopping around the stump flapped suddenly into the air.

Her skin prickled.

It wasn’t Grandmama ducking under an apple bough, coming toward her.

“Do you enjoy talking to yourself?” asked Georgina. “Is that why you scorn the very idea of friendship?”

Elfreda hunched on the stump, too tired for surprise, let alone outrage.

“Go away,” she said dully.

“What a lackluster retort.” Georgina plucked an apple, sniffed its wrinkled skin, and frowned. “Try harder. Tell me that talking to yourself is the only way to have an intelligent conversation.”

She gave a minimal shrug. “I wasn’t talking to myself.”

“Who were you talking to?” Georgina glanced about, intrigued.

It seemed wrong to let Georgina force her from her own orchard, but she’d developed a chill, and the stump had unfortunate protuberances, so she stood, ceding territory without any fuss.

“I’ll go, then. You can stay. I wouldn’t eat that.”

Georgie let the apple drop. “This orchard is a bit morbid. Crows. Dead trees.” She kicked the apple. “Mummified apples.”

Elfreda turned without a word.

“Elf.” Georgina caught her arm.

She froze in Georgina’s grasp. She felt lightheaded, and she smelled balsam, a bright, evergreen scent cutting through the orchard’s heavy fragrance of fermentation and moss.

Slowly, she rotated until she was looking into Georgina’s face. The sun struck red glints from her hair, and her straight black lashes framed her narrow blue gaze.

“I’m sorry,” said Georgina. “I’m sorry about the amulet, truly.”

Elfreda pulled back and felt a moment of resistance before Georgina released her hold. Georgina had sounded sincere, which most certainly meant she wasn’t.

“Your apology doesn’t interest me in the slightest.”

Georgina folded her arms. Her shoulders made a straight line, and her bosom was flat—or seemed flat. Elfreda’s could never compress to such dimensions.

Georgina’s hips were narrow. She’d always been slender, but in a tight coat, and tighter breeches, she appeared lean and muscular. Her legs were very long, and it felt a bit shocking, seeing them. Two of them. Their contours.

Elfreda realized that her eyes were tracing Georgina’s body. Georgina had realized too.

“ Something interests you,” she drawled. “Whatever it is, I’m amenable.”

Suddenly, Elfreda found it difficult to think. She found it difficult to breathe. She didn’t understand the implication of Georgina’s words, and she didn’t like not understanding.

A crow flapped out of a tree, cawing, and she jumped. To cover her confusion, she went on the attack, folding her own arms, glaring.

“You know you can’t go strutting around impersonating your brother. My father is terrible with faces, but no one else would be taken in.”

“I’m handsomer.” Georgina’s smile spread. “I’m aware.”

She ignored this. “Why, though? Why do it at all?”

“I never had any intention of impersonating Harry. Your father came up with that on his own.”

“But you are wearing breeches.”

“I got into the habit in London, on the stage.”

“On the stage!” Elfreda gaped. “Is that how you got into so much trouble? Acting?”

“The acting hasn’t come to light, thank God. How do you know I got into trouble?” Georgina squinted. “I don’t imagine you read the scandal sheets. Not enough mildew.”

“Your friend, Miss Poskitt, told me.”

“Of course she did. What else did she say?”

A broken engagement. A duel. A curricle crash.

Elfreda wouldn’t be distracted. “You act men’s roles? In the theater?”

“I act as a man, in the theater.” Georgina leaned closer. “In daily life, I act as a woman, or as a man. Either. Sometimes neither. Sometimes both. It depends on various factors.”

Elfreda wasn’t chilled any longer. She felt too hot, her mind working, the efforts fast, furious, and futile. It was like being confronted with a page of text written in a language she couldn’t read.

“Maybe I’ll put on a private theatrical.” Georgina straightened. “ Romeo and Juliet . We’ll take the title roles.”

Elfreda smiled thinly. More than four strangers in a room and her tongue locked in place. Georgina had witnessed her humiliations in countless parlors. She was mocking her now.

“My family dislikes your family.” Elfreda spoke in a brittle voice. “Your family dislikes my family. But I’d abhor you all the same if your surname was Mowbray or de Burgh.”

“My God.” Georgina’s laugh was low. “Even de Burgh? The snobbery.”

“It’s not snobbery. What I’m saying is I abhor you for you .”

“Because I teased you when we were children.”

“Teased me? You nearly put out my eye.”

“I was eight years old. And I said en garde . You were supposed to raise your stick and parry.”

“I was using my stick to roll my hoop, like everyone else.”

“No, you weren’t. Your hoop was on the ground. You couldn’t roll it for your life. You were standing there looking furious, and I thought you’d benefit from a bit of swordplay.”

“You cut off my braid in church.”

“Also at a callow stage of life. And I’d brought the most cunning little pair of grape scissors. I had to cut something.”

“Why bring grape scissors to church?”

“Good question.” Georgina paused. “It was just the tip of the braid.”

“You rode me into a ditch.”

“I didn’t see you. You matched the lane. I recommend brighter colors.”

“The time at Mrs. Pattinson’s.”

Georgina’s eyelids flickered. “Which time at Mrs. Pattinson’s?”

“The ball. The ball before you went to London. You were nineteen.”

Some quick, complex expression passed across Georgina’s face. Then she gave a small, negating twitch. “It wasn’t what you imagined.”

“I don’t care.” Elfreda wished she hadn’t brought it up. Memories of that night were stupidly tender, like bruises in her brain.

“Elf.” Georgina stepped closer.

“Stop.” It was overwhelming. The amulet. Georgina. The odd light in her eyes. Elfreda swallowed and met those eyes directly.

“Go fritter away your life,” she said. “Dance and drink champagne and play whist with your pretty friends and snicker at wallflowers and put on private theatricals and—”

“How is that frittering?” Georgina interrupted. “That is life. Except for the snickering at wallflowers. You’ve got me all wrong there.”

“Do as you please,” Elfreda continued. “Engage in all the superficial pursuits you like best, just as long as you do not come near me ever again.”

Georgina stared. “If I was born a thousand years ago, and buried in some barrow, you’d collect my buttons and hairpins. My frittering would seem significant.”

Elfreda did not concede the point.

“You weren’t,” she said. “And it doesn’t.”

With that she started walking up the rutted road to Marsden Hall.

“So I’ll see you at dinner!” Georgina called after her. “Seven o’clock. Lapdog fricassee.”

This time, Elfreda didn’t glance over her shoulder. She hoped she’d already seen the last of Georgina Redmayne.