The bedroom was not as bright as the last time she’d been there. The rain and the lateness of the afternoon edged everything with a gloom that sent a slight chill up Julia’s spine.

  “Zora?” she called out, because she needed to break the unnatural silence that lay on everything like years of collected dust. She was about to turn away, to shut the door behind her, when she noticed something different about the room.

  Her gaze settled on the dressing table, where the jewelry box with its hidden stash of love letters had been. Except it wasn’t there anymore. And neither were several other items that Julia remembered, a hairbrush and a mirror, and a matching comb.

  The absence made her breath catch. There might have been other things missing as well, but Julia had no idea what had been hidden away in the various drawers and the wardrobe, so she wouldn’t know what to look for. She backed out of the room, then rushed down to the kitchen again and snagged the attention of one of the upstairs maids as she passed through.

  “When did Mrs. Holland leave? Do you know?” She kept her voice steady, unwilling to let any fear creep in.

  “Hmm, a little while after you left?” The young woman, named Helen, screwed up her features in thought. “Yes, I think it was around then. You went off to teach and I saw her in her coat and hat not long after.”

  “Did she give any clue as to where she was going? When she would be back?”

  Helen glanced up at the kitchen ceiling, as though Mrs. Holland’s itinerary might be scrawled across the rafters. “No, not that I recall. Though it’s not really our place to question her, if you know what I mean.”

  Julia nodded. She could well understand the reluctance of the staff to interrogate the housekeeper about any matter she didn’t choose to share with them first. “Has she ever been gone this long before on an errand? And on a Sunday?”

  “No, Mrs. Benton. To be honest, I was surprised when she said she’d be going into town. Usually when she wants something, she sends one of us to fetch it for her, especially with the weather today being so awful and all.”

  Julia smiled, even though her face fought against the expression. “Thank you, Helen. Um…” She touched the girl’s arm before she could turn away. “Do you think you could… Well, would it be too much trouble for someone to go out to the stables and some of the other buildings and see if they can find Miss Halberd? I worry she’s wandered out in this weather and might be hiding somewhere, waiting for the worst of it to pass before returning.” It was true that Julia wanted the stables and various outbuildings searched before she would allow herself to panic. Even the rest of the house needed to be looked through, in case Zora was reading beneath a table or setting up a battalion of soldiers inside a linen closet.

  And so she began a quiet, methodical search through every room on every floor, checking wardrobes and cupboards and even asking for help with a ladder to climb up into the attics. By the time she was finished, the day had grown dark and the men who had gone to search the outbuildings and the surrounding grounds returned with a report that Miss Halberd was nowhere to be found.

  “Right, um…” She stood in the middle of the drawing room, two maids and a footman standing in front of her, waiting for her to tell them what to do. “Where is Mr. Halberd? Has he returned yet?”

  James, the footman, shook his head. “If he’s anywhere, he’s still at Markham’s farm. Trouble with their sheep, or something like. I can send someone—”

  “Yes.” The word slicing through the air quick enough to make one of the maids wince. “Tell him… Tell him his daughter is missing and he needs to come home right away.”

  In the meantime, she decided to search Mrs. Holland’s room. She didn’t have a key, and the door was firmly locked.

  “Mrs. Holland has the only key I know of,” Helen told her when they ventured down to the servants’ quarters.

  “Fetch James, then,” Julia said. “He can open it for us.”

  The maid gave her a confused look, but when she returned with the footman a few minutes later, he showed no hesitation when she told him to break the door open.

  She walked into a cold, dark room. “A light,” she ordered, and Helen ran to fetch a lamp.

  At first glance, the room appeared untouched. The bed was made, the shelves bearing Mrs. Holland’s books for the keeping of the household tidy and dusted. Julia went to the wardrobe first and flung the door open. Emptiness greeted her. Half the drawers were the same, cleared of their contents.

  “She’s gone,” Julia said, staring at the depths of a desk drawer where only a few broken quills and dried spatters of ink remained. “She’s packed up and left.” She pressed her palms against her forehead, as though the pressure of her hands was a dam set against the chaotic workings of her mind. Mrs. Holland was gone. So was Zora. The two could not be a coincidence, no matter how much she wanted them to be.

  “Family,” she said suddenly. She turned around. Helen and James both stood there, watching and waiting. “Does Mrs. Holland have any family? Where is she from originally? Does she come from Cornwall?”

  Helen shook her head. “She came with Mrs. Halberd from London, as far as I know. But I couldn’t say where she hailed from before that.”

  God, why couldn’t she think? Why would Mrs. Holland take Zora? How did it benefit either of them? Or was the housekeeper’s animosity towards her so strong that she would risk removing a child from the protection of her home and family merely to separate her from Julia’s influence?

  She walked out of Mrs. Holland’s room, James and Helen trailing behind her despite the fact she hadn’t asked them to follow. She returned to the nursery, Helen’s lamp bobbing behind her like a drunken moon. The bed was rumpled from that morning, Zora’s skills at tidying up after herself still leaving something to be desired. Her newest gown was missing, along with her finest bonnet and her best shoes. But all of her favorite things — her most comfortable boots, her book about King Arthur and his knights, her deck of cards — were all still where she’d left them. Julia went to the bed and slipped her hand beneath the pillow, her fingers wrapping around the ammonite fossil Alexander had given her.

  She pulled it out and held the cool stone to her chest, her thumb rubbing over it as though it was a talisman. Zora was gone. Mrs. Holland must have taken her, must have packed up a few of her things and spirited her away without anyone noticing. Julia squeezed her eyes shut, wincing at the headache rapidly building behind her left eye. She had been away at the schoolhouse for several hours, while Alexander had been at the Markham’s farm all afternoon, leaving ample opportunity for someone to slip away without it being remarked upon.

  A sound from downstairs dragged Julia’s attention from her own scattered thoughts. The slam of a door, followed by loud voices — Alexander’s voice louder than the rest — and then the quick, heavy tread of footsteps on the main stairs. Julia rushed out of the nursery, meeting Alexander halfway down the hall.

  “Where’s Zora?”

  Julia swallowed over a lump in her throat that hadn’t been there only a moment before. “I-I don’t know. But some of her clothes are missing, and…” She closed her eyes. Her teeth had begun to chatter, but she didn’t feel cold. Instead, it was fear crawling under her skin, setting her very bones to trembling. “Mrs. Holland is gone, too. She’s packed up her things and left, and I think she’s taken Zora with her.”

  His hands gripped her shoulders. She looked at his face, the anger and horror and fright doing everything in their power to tear him to pieces where he stood. “Are you certain?”

  Julia took strength from his touch. She needed it to find her voice, to keep from tumbling into an incoherent heap on the carpet. “No one has seen either of them since after I left this afternoon. It’s been hours now. Zora hasn’t disappeared for this long since I came here, especially not since she has Ellen to care for. And Ellen is still here, down in the kitchen. She would not have left for so long without her.”

  “Has the house been searched?”

  His voice. She prayed she would never have to hear such agony from him ever again.

  “Yes.” She said it from between gritted teeth, her jaw clenched so tight she thought it might crack from the pressure. “And I sent people out to check the stables and other buildings, but… nothing.”

  Alexander pushed his hands through his hair, the ends still soaked from his ride home. The rest of him was coated in mud and dripping onto the carpet, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to convince him to change his clothes or even to dry himself by the fire until Zora was found.

  “When did she leave? Mrs. Holland, I mean.” His gaze darted from Julia to James to Helen, anticipating an answer from anyone who would speak.

  Julia told him what they knew, the servants filling in what details they could as Alexander was apprised of everything that had occurred during his absence.

  “So she left here on foot? The both of them?” Alexander asked as they quickly returned downstairs.

  “No horses are missing,” James said. “And no one saw any kind of coach or carriage make its way up to the house.”

  “She must have gone into town first, then,” Alexander remarked as they turned and entered his study. A fire had already been lit, and Helen and James both worked their way around the room lighting candles for additional illumination. “I want to know of any coaches that came through town and if Mrs. Holland — with or without a passenger — found a seat on one.”

  “I’ll go,” James volunteered. “And I’ll take a few men with me, spread out a bit and get the work accomplished faster.”

  “Good man. And you,” he turned his attention to Helen. “I want you to go into Mrs. Holland’s room and gather up every letter, every scrap of paper you can find. Maybe she’s left something behind that will give us a better idea of where she’s disappeared to.”

  Helen stepped out as hurriedly as James did, leaving Julia and Alexander alone. Beyond the walls of the study, they could hear orders being relayed, the bustle of footsteps and of doors being opened and slammed shut again.

  “Julia.”

  She took a step towards him. When he raised his eyes to her, he looked stricken. “Do you really believe Mrs. Holland’s taken her?”

  Julia looked down at her hand. She still held the ammonite fossil, clenched hard in her fingers. “I do.”

  “But why?”

  It was the same question she had already asked herself a hundred times. “I don’t know,” she said. But she did know. Or at least she had the semblance of an idea.

  She thought back to the last conversation she’d had with Mrs. Holland, and her breath froze in her chest as every one of the housekeeper’s words transformed into a premonition with the power of Julia’s memory fueling it. “No, wait. When we last spoke, she said… She declared that Zora had shown little improvement since my arrival. She asked if there would be a new governess after we married, and I… I told her it was no business of hers what we did.”

  Alexander’s breath hissed between his teeth. “She said that? To your face?”

  “Yes,” she admitted. But she didn’t understand why it upset him so much.

  “Julia.” He placed his hands on her shoulders, squeezing slightly before his arms went around her, pulling her closer. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because…” But she faltered, because she wasn’t certain why she hadn’t told him of Mrs. Holland’s behavior towards her.

  Because it felt familiar, she realized. Expected. Because after years with Frederick, she believed it was as much as she deserved, to be spoken to with open disrespect.

  “I didn’t think it was important,” she confessed. “I’m sorry.”

  “This is not your fault,” he said, as though he could already sense the direction of her thoughts. “Something this drastic… I fear it may have been planned for longer than we can imagine.”

  Julia stepped back, out of Alexander’s embrace. She needed to move and to fidget and to roll her shoulders before the frustration at not being able to immediately do anything overwhelmed her. “I always assumed Mrs. Holland didn’t care for Zora. That she regarded her as a trial, a nuisance. She so often complained of her behavior, I thought she would’ve wanted to be well rid of her.”

  But even as she spoke, something dawned on her. A facet of the housekeeper’s conduct that she had failed to see before.

  “No,” she said, and covered her mouth with her hand. “She wanted Zora to be her mother, a little dress-up version of her. She didn’t like that I wasn’t raising her to be another Mrs. Halberd.” And as soon as she said it, she knew she was right. All of the times Mrs. Holland had mentioned Zora’s prospects, the future the housekeeper seemed to have sketched out for the child in her mind. “It must be why she took her, to remove her from our detrimental influence.”

  Alexander cursed under his breath. “If we can’t raise Zora the way Mrs. Holland believes she should be raised, she’ll simply do it herself? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Julia threw up her hands. “It doesn’t make any sense! You’re her father, does Mrs. Holland think you won’t come after her and take back your own child?”

  It was a brief hesitation. Alexander raised his eyebrows, while his mouth worked silently for a moment before speech finally came out. “Perhaps she thinks I won’t care, since I’m not Zora’s father.”

  “But you…” Julia stopped while her mind tried to catch up to the rest of the conversation. “Does Mrs. Holland know?”

  “Of course she does. She was my wife’s maid first, remember?”

  Julia shook her head. “But anyone who would see you and Zora together would know how much you love her.”

  Alexander laughed. It was not a happy sound. “Do you think love matters to people like Mrs. Holland? No, she sees blood, she sees pedigree. And no doubt she assumes that’s how everyone else sees the world, as well. Why should I care if Zora is taken from me if she’s not mine to keep?”

  There was a low hum of anger carrying his words, but running through all of it was an overwhelming tone of resignation. And Julia wondered how many times these same arguments had sounded in his head, had kept him awake at night, had made him feel as though he wasn’t enough. Enough of a father, enough of a husband. Enough of anything.

  “We’ll get her back,” Julia said, standing in front of him. Her hands hovered over his, yet she refrained from touching him, afraid that a single brush of her fingers might shatter him like crystal.

  She turned and walked out of the study, needing to move. To run, to scream at nothing. Alexander followed her. In the hall, they ran into Helen, already returning from her search of Mrs. Holland’s room.

  “I didn’t find much,” the maid confessed. “A few receipts and letters and things. Nothing seemed very important, but I gathered up everything for you.” She passed the small stack of notes and papers into Julia’s outstretched hands.

  “Did she ever write to anyone?” Alexander asked as Julia began flipping through the mundane papers, nothing offering any real clue as to where Mrs. Holland might have gone. “Were there any letters that regularly came for her, or that she wrote herself? Sent to the same address, perhaps?”

  “It’s George who mostly handles the post,” Helen said. “I can fetch him if you’d like.”

  Rather than fetch him, they followed Helen down to the servants’ hall, passing the kitchens — where dinner preparations were still underway, despite the sudden chaos infecting the household — and through to the narrow dining area where the staff ate most of their meals. An older man sat at the end of the table, the light from the lamps shining off his bald head while his thick white brows twitched above a pair of spectacles perched on the peak of a sharp nose.

  “George?” Julia approached the old man, Alexander right behind her. His shoulders were hunched forward over his work, which appeared to be a clock torn to pieces and scattered across the end of the table.

  He looked up at the sound of his name, his misty gaze switching from Julia to Alexander and back again. “Yes, ma’am? Sir? How can I be of help?”

  “You handled some of Mrs. Holland’s letters, did you not?”

  “Aye.” He knuckled his spectacles back into place and sat up straighter, though his shoulders retained their forward slope even with his elbows off the table. “I’ve taken care of Langford’s post for near forty years. Thousands of letters have passed through these hands,” he boasted, holding up a pair of gnarled hands that wriggled with a deceptively quick energy.

  “And the housekeeper’s letters as well,” Alexander said, keeping the conversation steered in the direction they wished it to travel. “She trusted them to you?”

  “Of course she did, every last one.”

  “Did she keep any regular correspondence with anyone in particular?” Julia asked. “Letters coming and going to the same place over and over?”

  George wrinkled his nose, which made his spectacles slide down, which made him push them up again with the side of his thumb. “Now, I’m not good with my reading and writing. Only learned to sign my own name a few years ago, rather than just an X like my father before me. But when you see the same words written, they do have a way of sticking in the mind a bit.”

  Julia held her breath. She wanted to reach out and shake the old man, but she realized that he would work his way around to what he wanted to say at his own speed and there would be no hastening him along if he showed no inclination to rush. “Were there words you saw written more often than others?”

  He sniffed. “I never liked that Mrs. Holland. Always acting like she was better than ev’ryone else here, just because she had her fancy London ways. But she wasn’t from London, was she? Wrote to Cornwall more often than she ever wrote to anyone in the city, especially these last few months. Must have taken a dozen letters from her hand or more, and delivered just the same back to her.”