Chapter One
~ Day One ~
Long before Cora ever stepped foot onto Enchanted Hill, she knew it like the back of her hand.
She had pored over the blueprints of Byrd Castle in her small, leaking New York City apartment six months earlier, the light flickering above her head, the winter draft slicing through the soft rotting wood of the windowsill.
She had pulled her sweater around her shoulders and committed to memory the intricate honeycomb of passages, gardens, citrus orchards, glass-tiled pools, and guest houses—eighty-five rooms in the main house alone, set among mazes of boxed hedges and fountains hewn from white marble.
The estate was designed by a woman architect, who took newspaper magnate Truman Byrd’s ideas and spilled them first onto paper and then raised them to life.
The realized dream perched on top of the cliffs, disappearing and reappearing in the ivory fog.
The gardens smelled like hyacinth and orange blossoms during the spring months, and the parties built in size and clout as the days rolled toward May.
Cora had arrived on the Hill last November, and she had long since stopped sparing a glance for the zebras.
Now she hurried along the hallways of the servant cottage, tying on her apron, donning a stark black-and-white uniform of her own.
She loved the first morning light that spilled through the corridors, and the way the air was chilled with mist and ocean salt.
A breeze rustled the palm fronds while the sky turned as orange and red as the insides of a pulped peach.
She was tempted to stop and breathe it in.
There were things about the Hill that she would miss.
But Cora couldn’t risk losing the one position she’d worked months to finally slide into.
Cora quickened her pace across the esplanade.
The red Spanish tiles were laid out underfoot like checker pieces, spattered with the shadows of palm trees and the looming bell towers.
The glass remnants of last night’s party glittered in the sunlight beside discarded curls of lemon rind, and, just beyond, something dark fluttered in the bougainvillea.
Cora paused to pull it free and examine it in the morning light.
It was a man’s necktie.
“I control the guest list on Enchanted Hill,” Truman Byrd always declared on the first nights of his parties, crooking a wide smile, “and Prohibition wasn’t invited.
” He would stand, towering and formidable, at his customary spot next to the eight-foot fireplace, as Cora and the other maids distributed cocktails of elderflower sprigs and gin, or decanters of heady red wine pressed from his own grapevines—and just like that, the rules from the outside world simply evaporated.
From the looks of it, the previous night’s party had been no exception.
Cora tucked the necktie deep into her apron. She had gained a reputation for her uncanny knack of finding the owners of lost things.
“Cutting it close, Miss Duluth,” Mrs. Macready barked when Cora stepped into the kitchen a minute later.
She was buxom and meticulous, and she often reminded Cora of the warden’s wife on Pelican Island, who kept a switch over every doorframe in her house so that she could easily take one to a wanton child’s backside.
As a girl, Cora had once told her to shut her clackbox, and when her father got wind of it, she had spent a week moving rocks from one side of the island to the other.
Cora briefly wondered what Macready would do if she repeated that sentiment now.
Instead, she kept her mouth shut and moved deeper into the bustling kitchen.
Dorothy, the cook, stood over two copper pots billowing white steam.
Almost all the food at Byrd Castle was sourced fresh from the grounds—citrus plucked from branches just beyond the kitchen’s windowpanes, breakfast eggs gathered when they were still warm.
The poultry came from the ranch nestled at the bottom of the hill; the fresh, frothy milk from speckled dairy cows grazing among the zebras.
Cora took her spot next to Dorothy, setting an herb omelet beside sourdough toast, two pats of fresh butter, and apricot jam, all served on a silver tray engraved with nightingales.
Next went a sterling silver dome, a pot of coffee, and a glass of fresh orange juice choking in pulp, all topped with the morning’s Byrd newspaper.
Cora sneaked a glance at the front page.
CLEMENTINE GARVER STUNS IN NEW FILM, the headline said.
The image next to it was of a striking woman, her dainty lips parted as if in surprise, her hair set in waves that swept along her cheekbones.
The film Perfume of Dusk—bankrolled by Mr. Byrd’s own production company—was due out the next month.
Cora noted the date and felt a heaviness settle deep within her as she lifted the tray.
Only a week remained for her to secure what she had come for.
Because her real employer was getting antsy.
Cora carried the tray out of the kitchen, across the marble foyer, and then up the grand front staircase.
The hallways were dim, with unlit sconces dipped in bronze, and tapestries depicting musty scenes of archery and owls and unicorns with long, golden horns.
Cora took pleasure in how the ice cubes barely grazed one another in the glass when she crested the third floor.
She almost wished her father could see her, a thought she instantly banished as ridiculous.
Did she really expect him to be impressed that she could hold a tray?
And why would it matter anyway, she asked herself.
She wasn’t six years old anymore, twirling and balancing on the rocky soil of Pelican Island, desperate for his attention.
Perhaps she was still trying to make up for what happened all of those years ago, no matter how far she had tried to outrun it.
She knew well the taste that regret left behind.
Bitterness, without anything sweet to cut it. The dried track of salt down a cheek.
Cora paused just outside the Astral Bedroom and gathered herself. The faint scent of perfume wafted through the oak door, sweet like narcissus, with a note that lingered of biting spice. Cora knocked and pulled open the door.
Inside, the Astral Bedroom was a honeycomb box of teakwood and light.
The sun carved through wooden panels that had been patterned after a Moroccan trellis.
It shone through the walls in solid beams, turning the room inside a rich amber.
A woman was lying in bed, draped in a silk crepe chemise the color of a robin’s egg.
She was lush and beautiful, with her pillowy lips and her hair honey in the sun.
The woman brushed her curls away from her face and looked at Cora expectantly. “Morning,” she said breathily.
Of course her quarters were separate from Byrd’s, for appearances’ sake. He had a reputation to uphold, and an entire floor of the mansion to himself, stretching above their heads.
Cora glanced around the room for anything like a wayward tie or one of Byrd’s monogrammed slippers, hearing her father in her ear all the while.
Weak evidence, he’d huff in his strained voice.
And you know it. His forehead would crease, his face settling into a pockmarked map.
He seemed torn between his interest in the job Cora was doing and a concern for her safety.
He knew all too well what fits of jealousy, what sneaking around, what the hot fire of passion and rage could do, after working on a place like Pelican Island himself.
He knew what dark and rustling things could be uncovered when you started turning over rocks—and what lengths people would go to in order to ensure they stayed hidden.
Cora cleared her throat. “Breakfast, miss?” she asked. She glanced up from the photograph of the starlet on the front page to see the woman in the flesh before her.
Clementine Garver.
Cora’s mark, and the real reason she had come to Enchanted Hill.