CHAPTER FOUR
The tea arrived before Ceci had decided which version of herself she could safely be.
A quiet knock, then the door opened just enough for a young girl to slip inside carrying a tray that looked far too heavy for her.
She couldn’t be more than thirteen. Fourteen at most. Her uniform hung off her shoulders, the sleeves too long, the hem just brushed the tops of her shoes.
Ceci straightened instinctively.
“Hi,” she started, then stopped. The girl did not meet her eyes. She crossed the room, set the tray down with a soft clatter on the small table by the window and turned to leave without a word.
“Thank you,” Ceci said anyway. The girl paused, not fully, but long enough to register the words. Then she slipped out the door and closed it behind her.
Silence settled again.
Ceci looked at the tray.
Then at Duncan.
Then back at the tray.
“Well,” she said, “that was deeply unsettling.”
Duncan moved to the table, unbothered.
“Efficient,” he said.
“She didn’t say anything.”
“She isn’t required to.”
Ceci watched him pour tea like this was the most normal interaction in the world.
“She’s a child.”
“She is employed.”
“That’s worse.”
He handed her a cup.
“Miss Bishop,” he said, “you will find many things here differ from what you expect.”
“That’s becoming very clear.”
She took the cup anyway. It was delicate. Warm. Real.
Everything is real.
That thought was getting harder to ignore. She took a sip. The tea was strong, bitter, and grounding in a way she didn’t realize she needed.
Outside the window, the morning was brightening, but the room still felt closed around her, full of polished wood, old warmth, and the quiet confidence of people who have never once doubted where they belong.
“Okay,” she said after a moment. “New question.”
He glanced at her.
“How many people live here?”
“In the house?” he asked.
“Yes. The house. The estate. The… Downton Abbey cinematic universe you appear to be operating.”
He paused at that.
“I am not familiar with that reference.”
“Tragic.”
He ignored that.
“My uncle,” he said. “A small staff. Occasionally, my cousin, when she chooses to remember we exist.”
“Grace?”
“Yes.”
“Grace,” Ceci repeated. “And what is she like?”
One corner of his mouth threatened movement.
“Not at all like Margaret.”
“Thank God,” Ceci said. “One Margaret is enough to keep a country standing.”
That almost earned a smile this time.
He studied her.
“You are remarkably at ease,” he said.
“I am deeply not at ease,” she replied. “I am simply committed to not unraveling in front of you.”
“That is considerate.”
“You’re welcome.”
A knock interrupted them. Two sharp raps, then the door opened without waiting for permission. The woman who entered was… arresting. She was stunning, though not in the soft, ornamental way Ceci might have expected from someone in a house like this.
Her dress was tailored in a way that felt intentional rather than decorative.
The cut was modern for the time, or at least forward-thinking, the fabric a warm neutral that set off her pale skin and striking blue eyes.
Her warm blonde hair was cut short, sleek, precise. She took in the room in one sweep.
Ceci.
Duncan.
The tea.
The untouched second cup.
Her gaze found Ceci and stayed there.
“Well,” she said. “You’re real.”
Ceci blinked.
“Last I checked.”
The woman smiled. It wasn’t soft. It was delighted.
“I wasn’t entirely certain,” she said. “Dax has a tendency to exaggerate when something irritates him.”
Ceci glanced at Duncan.
“Dax?”
He looked faintly pained.
“Only to a select few,” he said.
“Everyone who matters,” the woman corrected. She crossed the room without waiting to be invited and extended her hand.
“Lady Sabrina Gladstone.”
Ceci took it.
Her grip was firm. Confident.
“Cecily,” She stopped herself. “Bishop. Ceci.”
Sabrina heard the correction. The faint sharpened look in her eyes made that clear. Ceci connected dots in her mind. “Are you from the Gladstone Manor, Lady Gladstone?”
Sabrina waved her gloved right hand insouciantly in the air, “Oh yes, but that’s boring, and it’s Sabrina.”
“Tell me,” Sabrina said with a cat-like grin, “how did you end up being dragged in from the grounds looking like something out of a gothic novel?”
“Bad judgment. Bad weather. Possibly a concussion.”
Sabrina’s smile flashed brightly.
“Excellent. I do prefer an answer with options.” She released her hand and turned to Duncan.
“And you,” she said, “what exactly are you planning to do with her?”
“Ensure she is safe,” he said.
“How dull.”
“She was found alone.”
“Yes, you said. And now she’s here. Which is infinitely more entertaining.”
Ceci watched the exchange carefully. The air between them had history in it. Friction. Familiar.
“Am I a problem?” Ceci asked. Sabrina turned back on her.
“Undoubtedly,” she said, pleased. “But not in a way I intend to correct.”
Duncan exhaled.
“Sabrina.”
“No,” she said lightly. “You’ve already decided she’s suspicious. I can see it all over your face.”
“I have decided nothing.”
“You’ve decided everything,” she said. “You simply haven’t said it out loud yet.”
Ceci raised her hand.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “I also find the whole situation suspicious.”
Sabrina’s smile widened.
“Oh, I like you.”
“That feels premature.”
“I don’t think so.”
She moved toward the window, glancing out before she turned back.
“So,” she said, “Miss Bishop”
There was a subtle emphasis on the name.
Acknowledgment. Choice.
“What do you remember?”
Ceci stilled. Duncan did too. The air in the room shifted. Sabrina was no longer playing.
“About?” Ceci asked carefully.
“Before,” Sabrina said. “This morning. Yesterday. Your life before you walked onto that hill.”
Ceci wrapped both hands around her cup. This was not the moment to tell the truth. It was the moment to decide how much of a lie she could live inside.
“I remember everything,” she said. Sabrina nodded once, studying her face.
“Good. Then you are not wandering about in a fog.”
“No.”
“Are you hurt?”
“My head hurts,” Ceci said. “Everything else is mostly pride and confusion.”
Sabrina smiled faintly at that.
“And your explanation?”
Ceci looked down into her tea for a second, buying herself time.
“I was meant to be at Gladstone’s Library. Then, I took a walk to the Old Hawarden Castle ruins. There was a storm. I must have fallen, or fainted, or done something equally idiotic, because I woke up outside and nothing looked the way I expected it to.”
“That is all?” Duncan asked. There was no accusation in the question. Only scrutiny.
Ceci met his eyes.
“It is all I can prove.”
Silence followed.
Sabrina watched her with unmistakable interest.
“That is a very careful answer.”
“Yes,” Ceci said. “I’m trying to have as few reckless ones as possible today.”
One corner of Sabrina’s mouth lifted.
Duncan stepped forward, not enough to crowd her, only enough to make clear that he had not accepted the explanation.
“You said someone took money at the gate.”
“Yes.”
“There is no ticket taker.”
“I am aware of that now.”
“Yet you insist there was.”
Ceci felt the first spark of temper, small but useful.
“Yes,” she said. “I do. I also insist I’m not in the habit of inventing old men in barred windows for personal amusement.”
Sabrina looked delighted.
Duncan’s expression altered only slightly, but she saw it. He had expected her to retreat. Instead, she had dug in.
“Then either you were mistaken,” he said, “or you encountered someone who had no business being there.”
“Those don’t seem like the only possibilities.”
“What others would you suggest?”
A hundred answers rose in her throat, every one of them disastrous.
That the world shifted under her feet. That she woke in the wrong year. That his house felt like a draft of something she already knew.
She swallowed them all.
“I’d suggest,” she said carefully, “that something happened on that hill that I don’t understand yet.”
Sabrina’s gaze sharpened.
“That, at least, sounds true.”
“It is true.”
Duncan looked between them, reading more in the room than anyone was saying aloud.
“You’re frightened,” he said.
The directness of it caught her. Ceci laughed once without humor.
“Yes,” she said. “That would be the appropriate response.”
Sabrina left the window and came closer, though not so close that it felt intrusive.
“Then let us begin with something simpler,” she said. “You need food, rest, and a chance to decide whether you trust either of us enough to say more than you have.”
Ceci looked up at her.
“That’s unexpectedly reasonable.”
“I’m capable of it in flashes.”
Duncan said nothing, but he did not object. Sabrina glanced at him, catching that silence and interpreting it exactly as she liked.
“You will stay here for now,” she said to Ceci. “At least until you’re steady enough to go wherever it is you mean to go next.”
Ceci’s grip tightened on the cup. She looked to Duncan, expecting a rebuff or at least a frown at Sabrina’s presumption. On his angular face, she found neither.
Here.
In this house.
The idea should alarm her more than it did.
“That’s generous,” she said.
“It’s practical,” Duncan replied.
“There,” Sabrina said. “You see how well we work together when no one insists on being difficult.”
Duncan gave her a look that suggested he had no intention of answering that.
Ceci sat her cup down before she dropped it.
There was still too much she did not understand.
Too much she was keeping locked behind her teeth.
But exhaustion was winning ground, and whatever else was true, these two people are paying attention in very different ways.
One of them was trying to classify her. The other had already decided she was worth keeping.
For the moment, that would have to be enough.
Sabrina reached for the bellpull near the door.
“Duncan will have Margaret prepare a room,” she said. “And perhaps after you’ve slept, you can decide whether you want to continue being mysterious or make my afternoon truly worthwhile.”
Ceci let out the breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding.
“I’ll do my best to be disappointing.”
Sabrina laughed.
“I doubt that very much.”