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“Would you?” she asked, closing the distance between them. The gall of it surprised her more than anything.

“Yes.” He looked down at her lips, then turned and walked back to the connecting door. “Goodnight,” he called over his shoulder.

“Goodnight.”

The door clicked shut behind him.

Laura plopped down on the edge of her bed and let out a long sigh, her hands pressed flat against her knees to quell the tremors.

She was still sitting there, caught in the grip of fear, of blood and fever and a child she might not survive to raise, when a smaller knock sounded at the main door.

“Laura?” Iris’s voice called, muffled through the wood. “Are you ready for the tour?”

Laura closed her eyes and made herself stand.

“Perfect timing,” she said, opening the door. “I think a tour of the castle is just what I need.”

“Excellent!”

CHAPTER 8

Unsurprisingly, Iris proved to be an enthusiastic guide.

“This is the long gallery,” she announced, marching Laura and the two women trailing behind them, Mrs. Holt on one side and Miss Borden on the other, down another corridor lined with gilt-framed portraits. “Uncle says these are all dead people.”

The women could not help but laugh at her bluntness.

“That one was his grandfather,” she explained. “I suppose that makes him my great-grandfather?”

“Indeed, it does,” Miss Borden said encouragingly.

“Well, he looks cross all the time, doesn’t he? I think he’d have been cross, even if someone told him a funny joke.”

“He does look rather severe,” Laura agreed, fighting a smile.

“This is the music room, but nobody plays in it. I don’t like to play the pianoforte. Do you play, Aunt Laura?”

“Not well, but I can carry a tune,” she replied. “I much prefer reading and the occasional needlepoint.”

“That is great timing. Over here is the library.” Iris guided her and the other two women to a grand room filled from top to bottom with tomes of every shape, color, and size. “Uncle says I may go in whenever I like, so long as I don’t spill anything on the books—which I did once. It was very bad, but I’m not to speak of it.” She said it with such solemn dignity that Laura had to press her lips together to keep from laughing.

They walked around the room for a few moments.

Laura could not help but admire the large stained-glass window set between two large shelves. A ladder on wheels stood nearby. Looking at it, she realized that here in this castle, all the great books known to man would be within her reach.

“It is a very beautiful library,” she said, walking back to Iris.

The girl took her hand and guided her out of the library and back down the hall. “And this is the way to the state rooms, but they’re boring, so we needn’t go in. Unless you want to.”

“I trust your judgment.”

They continued to another music room, an echoing dining hall, a conservatory with more dust than plants, until the corridor narrowed and turned. It brought them to the foot of a spiral staircase enclosed in a squat stone tower. A heavy door stood at its base, iron-banded and unmistakably locked.

It was entirely unlike all the grandeur Laura had seen earlier.

“What’s up there?” she asked before she could stop herself. She lifted a hand to the door and traced the iron bands.

“That’s the west tower,” Iris replied, with none of the usual levity in her voice. “We’re not to go there. It is forbidden.”