Chapter 1
Imogen looked at Odile.
Odile stepped backward.
I became completely still.
That small movement told me more than any denial could have.
I kept my voice low.
“Why did you look at her?”
Imogen’s bandaged hands tightened against her chest.
Odile answered first.
“She’s frightened.”
I turned my eyes toward my fiancée.
“I didn’t ask you.”
Silence.
Good.
I looked back at Imogen.
“Who taught you the melody?”
Her lips parted.
No sound.
Then:
“A woman.”
My chest tightened.
“What woman?”
Imogen glanced toward the ballroom doors.
Same instinct Odile had.
Interesting.
“Name.”
“I don’t know her real one.”
Odile closed her eyes.
There.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
Imogen continued.
“She called herself Mara.”
I knew no Mara connected to my mother.
“What did she look like?”
Imogen swallowed.
“Older. Gray streak in her hair. Tall. She wore gloves.”
Odile whispered:
“Stop.”
I turned.
That one word changed the room.
“You know her.”
“No.”
“You recognized the description.”
Her jaw tightened.
I stepped closer.
“Who is Mara?”
Odile’s composure finally cracked.
“She’s nobody.”
Nobody does not make a woman injure a maid’s hands to stop a song.
I looked at Imogen again.
“Where did you meet her?”
“The west cottage.”
My pulse slowed.
That cottage had been empty for eleven years.
Since my mother died.
“Why were you there?”
“She asked for tea.”
“Who let her in?”
Imogen looked at Odile.
Again.
There it was.
I turned fully toward my fiancée.
“You brought her onto my property.”
Odile’s eyes hardened.
“I was handling something.”
“Apparently badly.”
No answer.
Then Imogen whispered:
“She said the melody belonged to her too.”
I looked at her.
“What exactly did she say?”
Imogen closed her eyes, remembering.
“She said your mother only knew half of it.”
That landed harder than I expected.
My mother, Helena Ashbourne, had played that melody every winter of my childhood.
Never at public dinners.
Never for guests.
Only after everyone left.
She told me once:
“This song belongs to someone who never came home.”
I assumed grief.
Maybe a dead friend.
Maybe family.
I never asked.
Now a stranger had taught a housemaid the same melody and claimed my mother knew only half.
Then Odile said something she clearly regretted the moment it escaped.
“She wasn’t supposed to come back.”
The entire ballroom seemed to disappear around me.
Come back.
Not arrive.
Not visit.
Return.
May you like
Which meant whoever Mara was—
she had belonged here once.
