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She came to a sudden stop and shielded her eyes.

“Take down that cross at once, Mr. Cremble! It is too bright and burns my eyes!” She’d shouted it loud enough for Cook to hear it and then hurried past the cross as if it might incinerate her.

She gave the cook a meaningful glance. He was a clever fellow and would catch on to it, even if he did not entirely understand what he was catching on to.

They were long associated and he would trust her lead.

“The cross hurts your eyes, Mrs. Right?” Mr. Cremble said behind her. “The cross?”

She did not answer, as she might laugh if she did so. Rather, she hurried into the kitchens, rubbing her eyes. Hopefully, they would become as red as possible. “Cook, there you are, very good to see you, your kitchen maid will be down directly. Might we get a pot of tea?”

Cook nodded. “Already anticipated it, Mrs. Right. It’s on the table. Goodness, your eyes, you look as if, well as if—”

“Yes, well, Mr. Cremble has hung a cross just inside the stairs.”

“Mr. Cremble,” the cook said in a condemning tone. “You ought not to have done it. You can see for yourself that it hurts her eyes.”

“But why?” Mr. Cremble asked in a satisfyingly high-pitched tone.

Cook only shrugged, which was just as well. Why on earth would a cross hurt her eyes unless she was in league with the devil?

Mrs. Right went to the very shiny silver teapot on the servants’ table and said, “It’s the shine of the metal, you see, Mr. Cremble. It is too bright for my eyes and burns them.”

Mr. Cremble’s own eyes drifted to the shiny teapot that did not seem to burn her eyes.

Mrs. Right heard the familiar sound of boots coming down the stairs.

The footmen had got the luggage into the great hall and would have a quick cup before hauling it all above stairs to its various destinations.

She looked at Cook with her brows arched.

The clever fellow raced to the bottom of the stairs and called up it.

“Charlie, Thomas, there is a cross on the wall. Dispose of it if you will—we all know how it burns Mrs. Right’s eyes! You remember, boys, a cross will burn the lady’s eyes something terrible. Mr. Cremble didn’t know it and foolishly put one in the stairwell.”

There was a moment’s pause as the two footmen took in these clues as to what was going on in the servants’ hall. Then Charlie answered. “A cross! Everybody knows a cross will burn Mrs. Right’s eyes!”

Clever boy.

Charlie came in and said, “Do not worry, Mrs. Right, Thomas has taken it down and will put it away where it won’t hurt your eyes.”

“You boys are very good to see to it,” Mrs. Right said, sipping her tea.

Mr. Cremble had gone rather pale, which was really saying something since he had been graced with a complexion like raw dough to begin. “I am a godly man, Mrs. Right. I must inquire more closely into this disturbing circumstance.”

“What circumstance, Mr. Cremble?” Mrs. Right asked as if she could not imagine what he referred to.

“Why a religious cross would hurt your eyes.”

“Oh that, well, it never used to,” Mrs. Right said, prepared to spin a story of horrific happenings in the Dales, “but then there was the incident.” She let the idea of a mysterious incident hang in the air.

“Incident! What sort of incident?”

“Oh, aye, I forget that you were not in the area at the time. You see, when I was a girl of fifteen, I was lost on the moors. Actually, I should not say lost—I was chased there by a ghostly figure. Gracious, what a cold night it was, moonless and the wind was whipping something fierce. Suddenly, I saw this fire. No, it was not precisely a fire, it was a towering, flaming fire in the shape of a man. It did not bend with the wind and it strode toward me. I was enveloped in the fire but did not burn. I cannot recall what it spoke of through the night but I was in the fire that long. As the dawn came, the fire collapsed into a heap of ashes. And what do you know, I survived the night and here I am today.”

Mr. Cremble’s teacup clattered on his saucer. If she was not mistaken, Mrs. Right felt confident she had planted the idea that she might have sold her soul to the devil that night on the moors.

“But the cross burning your eyes!” he cried. “Do you not wonder about it?”

Thomas had returned to the kitchens. “She don’t have to wonder about it, Mr. Cremble—I took care of it. It won’t bother her anymore.”

“My brother has written me of the dangers of the moors, but he has never hinted at such ungodly goings-on as you describe,” Mr. Cremble said, twisting his hands together.

Mrs. Right shrugged. “It’s easily managed,” she said, “I just stopped going to church. You can imagine, with all the crosses in there it really is painfully bright. The whole place is bright, even the doors. My parents, very naturally, were against my quitting my attendance, what a fuss they put up about it! I was steadfast, though, and not a day later my pa fell off a wagon and broke his neck, and the next day my ma suffered a deadly fever. Unexpected tragedies, one following the other, to be sure. But I reckon if you wished to look on the sunny side of things, you could say it all worked out in the end. Well! I’d better go above stairs and see how my girls are making out. ”

Mrs. Right rose and left Mr. Cremble to contemplate that he was just now up against one of the devil’s handmaidens.