Chapter 1
“Then who was the person I just helped put on this dress in that room?”
For several seconds, I did not move.
Neither did Isabetta.
Celandine held Rosamund’s wedding gown against her apron, the pearl flowers glinting beneath the chandeliers.
Fresh lipstick marked the inner neckline.
Not five-year-old lipstick.
Not a stain preserved in storage.
Fresh.
I looked toward the upstairs gallery.
“Which room?”
Celandine swallowed.
“The blue guest room.”
Locked for the last week because Isabetta claimed wedding gifts were being stored inside.
Of course.
I took the gown carefully.
Rosamund had worn it once.
Five years earlier.
Then I had packed it away because looking at it hurt more than not looking.
“Stay here.”
Isabetta stepped in front of me.
“Percival.”
I stopped.
“Move.”
“You’re making this absurd.”
“Then upstairs will disappoint me.”
Her face tightened.
I went anyway.
The blue room door was locked.
Celandine had returned the key to Isabetta earlier.
I held out my hand.
She did not move.
“Key.”
Slowly, she removed it from her evening bag.
Inside the room stood a woman before a dressing mirror.
Dark hair pinned like Rosamund wore hers on our wedding day.
Pearl earrings.
Soft red lipstick.
A photographer’s lamp in one corner.
An old-fashioned camera on a tripod.
And hanging from a wardrobe—
a second dress made to resemble Rosamund’s reception gown.
The woman turned.
Not Rosamund.
She only resembled her from a distance.
Same height.
Similar jaw.
Close enough beneath dim light to make an old photograph believable.
I looked at Isabetta.
“What is this?”
The woman answered first.
“My name is Maribel Crane.”
Isabetta shut her eyes.
Maribel continued.
“I was hired to recreate photographs.”
My jaw tightened.
“Photographs of what?”
She looked toward Isabetta.
Wrong direction.
I stepped between them.
“Of what?”
Maribel whispered:
“Your wife.”
Then she pointed toward a stack of developed test prints on the vanity.
I picked up the first.
Maribel in Rosamund’s gown.
Standing beside a man.
His face partly turned away.
But I recognized him.
Sebastian Vale.
May you like
The man my family had spent fifteen years believing Rosamund secretly met before our marriage.
And the photographs were being created to make that old suspicion look true.
