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She was on the brink of drifting off, draped over them, when they spoke again, their voice soft.

“My mother and father were among the visitors to the Ladies’ cottage, before I was born. Mother said they rode very well and showed her particular favor.” The hand lazing through Elfreda’s hair paused and cupped her head more tightly. “I’ve often wondered if that visit planted the seed of doubt, for her, about her decision to marry.”

Elfreda’s eyes opened.

Their heart was beating hard beneath her.

“There is a secret,” they murmured. “It’s not dark, rather the opposite. But it casts a strange shadow on my life all the same.”

“Georgie,” she whispered, in case they thought she was asleep, in case they were drowsing, unguarded, confessing to something in the night they’d regret in the morning. “You don’t have to say anything else.”

“I know.” Their arms locked around her. “I want to say it. I’ll just…say it, then. I’ll say it. She’s alive.” Their heart was beating faster. “My mother is alive.”

—

Georgie had said it. The words floated free. My mother is alive. There was no taking them back.

“It’s not true, the story about the spring tide, that she was swept out to sea. I believed it, though, like everyone. I mourned her. I would sit under the willow by the fishing pond and sob. When you weren’t there, that is.” They sensed rather than felt Elf’s movement, it was so infinitesimal.

“That’s how you came upon me reading? You were going to the willow yourself, to…”

“I always loved that tree.” It had felt odd, and oddly fated, seeing her there, bent over her book. Each time, they’d back away, silently, letting the fronds fall into place.

“Your mother…” There was confusion in Elf’s voice, a hesitant hope, an undercurrent of apprehension. But how was anyone to greet such news, the details as yet obscure? And even then.

“She might not be alive, I suppose.” Anything could have happened in the decade since she’d disappeared. “All I know is that she didn’t die in Scotland that day. She wrote my father a letter, afterward, saying she was sorry. Saying goodbye. I found it in his study, in London, but not until he’d died. I couldn’t ask him to explain.”

Ask him to explain. How reasonable it sounded. How measured. They’d wanted to scream in their father’s mild-eyed, sweet-tempered face.

“Most of the letter’s illegible,” they said, when they were sure none of that shattered fury would poison their tone. “He must have held it over the candle, then changed his mind and waved out the flame. But I could read enough.”

Elf was caressing them, fingers moving lightly, soothingly, along their collarbone. It felt better than good. It felt like a miracle, her tender touch, the way she fit against them. “There was only the one letter?”

“Only one.” They stared up blankly at the bed’s carved tester, shadow-formed faces leering down in the struggling candlelight. “I tore his study apart. That one letter—I found it by accident.” They exhaled shakily, aiming for self-deprecatory humor but landing instead on something bitter: “I can’t find a damn thing on purpose.”

“You can,” said Elf at once. “What about those pages of my grandmother’s manuscript?”

“I knocked those pages from your hands during an attack by a disgruntled ungulate, which I caused.” They laughed and were grateful for the easing of pressure in their chest. “I don’t deserve credit for finding things I made go missing in the first place.” They thought of her amulet and grimaced. They thought of their mother and shut their eyes.

They hadn’t made her go missing. She’d spent her days, and nights, mostly with her friends, with Lady Beverly, but she’d enjoyed their company in bursts. She’d liked to ride with them, fast, taking fences. She’d applauded with unfeigned enthusiasm when they acted out their favorite scenes from The Busie Body in the drawing room. They hadn’t driven her off. But they hadn’t given her reason enough to stay.

“What about the hoard?” asked Elf. “The hoard of the Great Heathen Army? That’s a damn thing.”

“We haven’t found it yet.” They opened their eyes.

“We will, though.”

“You believe that? Despite this past week?” Of course she did. Once she committed herself, she was tenacious. They sighed.

“Yes,” they said. “We will find the hoard of the Great Heathen Army.”

Elf’s fingers stilled. “You want to find her. That’s what you meant.”

They rocked their head slowly from side to side. “I want her to find me. And nothing could be easier, if she wanted. I’m right where she left me.”

Elf hugged them, her grip so sudden and so fierce, they lost their breath. She was far too small to have any right to be so strong.

“I’m sorry,” she said.