It must have been the prospect of seeing him again that fueled my impish mood. The tall, dark-haired gardener with the intense gaze and handsome face had occupied my thoughts ever since I'd first noticed him on our walk almost two weeks earlier. I'd seen him every time we'd taken a turn in the garden since. When I'd asked Miss Levine his name she'd dismissed my question with a flick of her skeletal fingers.
"Where shall we go?" I asked Vi. "Down to the lake or across the park?" It wouldn't matter which way we went. He would be there. I knew it as surely as I knew my name was Hannah Smith.
Without waiting for an answer, I steered Vi down the terraced garden, Miss Levine trailing behind. That was another reason I enjoyed our walks. Although Miss Levine was always in attendance, she stayed a few paces back, giving Vi and I privacy.
"The sky looks rather ominous," Vi said, stopping abruptly. She cast a glance over her shoulder and I followed her gaze, just in time to see a pale face disappear from a window on the first floor. I didn't know which room the window looked into, but I did recognize the face. It belonged to Vi's fifteen year-old sister, Eudora.
Vi and I had never met her, having been condemned to the attic together when Eudora was born, and not meeting her even once on our walks. When we'd first seen her watching us through the window some ten years ago, Miss Levine had informed us that she was Vi's sister. It was the first we'd heard about her. We'd not even heard her crying as a baby.
I suspected Eudora had been ordered to stay away from us. The only other times I'd seen her was when I looked out the window as she'd left to walk or ride around the estate or to step into one of her father's carriages.
"Nonsense," I said cheerfully. "It's lovely out. Those clouds are miles away." It was an optimistic statement. The entire sky just beyond the house was as black as night, the low clouds heavy with rain. The sun, however, still shone on Windamere's façade, bathing it in a golden glow it didn't deserve.
The mansion was a statement of architectural perfection from the previous century when an ancestor of the current earl had built it. Wide and rectangular, it was all straight lines and right angles. The dozens of windows were precisely the same distance apart on all its three levels, and the grand front porch was placed exactly in the middle, the columns holding up the portico like soldiers keeping guard. Nothing was irregular or wrong at Windamere.
Nothing, that is, except Vi and I.
"Continue, girls," barked Miss Levine. "Violet! Don't stop now."
Violet held the brim of her hat and led the way across the park toward the woods. The breeze ruffled the feathers attached to the hatband, and a strand of my hair fluttered against my cheek.
"You're looking for him, aren't you?" Vi said as I drew alongside her.
"Don't be ridiculous."
"You shouldn't. You know nothing about him."
"What has that got to do with anything?"
She held the lapels of her coat together at her throat for warmth. "He could be dangerous. He could be waiting behind the bushes to..."
I snorted. "Vi, stop worrying. What do you think he's going to do with you and Miss Levine here? Ravish me?" I laughed at the absurdity of it, but even so, my scalp tingled at the thought of the new gardener kissing me.
"It's not a joke, Hannah." We'd almost reached the edge of the woods, and she stopped again, eyeing the bank of trees as if they would stretch out their branches and capture us. "It'll start raining soon."
"You want to turn back, don't you?"
She looked down at her boots and said nothing.
"Come on," I said. "The exercise will do you good. Cool that fire within you." I smiled at my little joke, but she only frowned harder. I winced. "Sorry."
"If you're determined to have your walk, then let's walk." Her tone was curt, crisp, so like Miss Levine's. "I want to go into the woods today."
"Really? I thought you hated the woods."
I glanced back at Miss Levine. She still followed, her gaze focused not on us but on the trees.
I tilted my face into the cool breeze and a fat raindrop exploded on my cheek. "Bloody hell."
"Hannah!" Vi scolded. She hated my occasional outburst, but she was used to them nevertheless and no longer truly shocked.
"We'd better hurry," I said, walking faster, clutching my gloves tighter. Another raindrop splashed on the end of my nose, then another and another. "We need to find shelter. Shall we head towards the orangery instead?"
"No!"
I blinked at her. Her vehemence was so odd, so unlike her.
"The woods are closer." She set off at a run toward the trees, and I followed. She was correct in that the thick canopy would provide some shelter against the rain. I didn't look around to see if Miss Levine followed until I reached the trees, and when I did, I was surprised to find that she was not with us.