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  “I have a note for you, Miss,” Millie said, holding out a folded paper.

  “It’s from Jack,” Lavender said as she made a lunge for the paper.

  But Millie pulled it back. “It’s for Miss Darci,” she said, then stepped into the room to hand the paper to her. Darci opened it.

  I know everything. Meet me at the usual place.

  Jack

  Usual place? Darci thought. What does that mean? Where is that?

  “It’s from Jack, isn’t it?” Lavender said, again reaching for the note, but Darci handed it back to Millie.

  “Tell him I’ll be there,” she said, then the girl left the room.

  Darci was smaller than Lavender, but she was strong. She put her hands on Lavender’s shoulders, pushed her to sit on a hard little chair, and looked into her eyes. “Listen to me. We’ve been careful not to tell you about this, but someone wants you dead. Do you understand me? Dead. Jack and I’ve been protecting you and trying our best to find out who’s trying to kill you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Who would want me dead?”

  “The women John Marshall slept with and promised to marry. Two of them were going to have his children but John paid for the abortions. The other five…The truth is that we don’t know about them, but Jack’s trying to find out. Now it looks like he’s found out something and I have to go to him to hear what it is. You are to stay here in this room. Do you understand me?”

  “You talk about John and Jack as though they’re two different people.”

  “They are. Sort of. Lavey, did you listen to anything I said?”

  “Yes, and I’ve heard it all before, but I don’t believe a word of any of it. I did, but I don’t now. John has changed into Jack, and no matter what he calls himself, he is extremely attractive to women. Darci, dearest, you always were so dramatic.”

  “You never met me before yesterday,” she said, frustrated, but Lavender just laughed at her.

  Straightening, Darci looked down at Lavender and knew that she’d not stay in the room. She was a woman in love and nothing was going to hold her. Darci tried to be understanding. If she’d been told that Adam was outside, could she have voluntarily stayed a prisoner in a room?

  Opening the door, Darci looked in the hallway and saw her maid. “Would you do something for me, Millie?” she asked, then told her that she wanted her to stay with Lavender. “If she tries to leave the room, go get the aunts.”

  “Yes, Miss,” Millie said. “You look beautiful.”

  Darci didn’t smile at the compliment. On the back of her head was a bun of real hair—probably bought from some immigrant, she thought in disgust—that had to weigh six pounds. Beside her face were ringlets plastered into place with something that made steel seem soft. Under her corset her ribs itched, and she was having trouble breathing. I should stay here and become the first Coco Chanel, she thought to herself. I could beat her to liberating women from the corset.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said to Millie, then Darci did her best to run down the back stairs. She had to stop twice to catch her breath before she could start running again. She had to run through the kitchen and a few people called to her, but they were so busy with the wedding preparations that they could pay no further attention to Darci.

  Where could Jack have meant by “the usual place”? she wondered. Outside, it wasn’t a lot cooler than it had been in the house. Picking up her skirts and knowing she would be causing a scandal by showing her ankles, she began to hurry down the street toward the house of John Marshall.

  When she opened the front door of the empty house, she looked into the barrel of a pistol held by a large, red-haired man. From the look of his slack lower lip with the drop of saliva, and the dull gleam in his eyes, he wasn’t very intelligent.

  “Sis said you’d come here,” he said. “She told me you’d do what she wanted you to.”

  Darci backed up to the door, her hand on the handle.

  “You can’t leave this house,” he said. “Mr. John is going to marry my sister and not that other girl.”

  “And who is your sister?” Darci asked, trying to inch her way around the door so she could make a run for it.

  The man looked at Darci blankly. “You don’t know Millie?” he asked after a while.

  It hit Darci then that this man with his red hair was the brother of Millie, her red-haired maid. Millie hadn’t been on the list that Tula had given them. But then, what did Millie need with love potions? She lived with John Marshall.

  For a second all that Darci had heard went ’round in her head. Millie had been angry because she wasn’t going to get to go to Lavender’s house to work. She was being left behind. There was the time on the stairs when Darci thought someone was watching her and it had made her hair stand on end. Even without ESP she’d felt the malevolence emanating from Millie.

  She looked at the man, at his slack-jawed face, and she could feel the love he had for his sister. What had Millie told him about Lavender? About Darci?

  “My brother is the lowest snake to ever have lived!” Darci said. “Scum of the earth. Maggots would gag if they fell on his skin.”

  The man opened his eyes wide and the gun lowered. “Millie doesn’t think that. She says that women lead him astray.”

  “Did you know that Lavender knows about Millie and plans to harm her? Lavender wants John all to herself.”

  “Miss Shay wouldn’t hurt anybody,” the man said, raising the gun again. He looked confused. “Millie told me you’d be on Mr. John’s side.”

  “But I’m not. I wish he was going to marry Millie.”

  “How could somebody like Mr. John marry Millie? She’s the maid.”

  Darci wanted to yell, Then what does Millie want? but she couldn’t think how to put it politely. All she knew for sure was that whatever was going to happen would occur within the hour. She had to get to the roof of Lavender’s house. With or without this man, she had to get there and stop what was about to happen.

  “You don’t know my brother like I do. Where is he now?”

  “He’s all right. He’s in the stables, all tied up. When he doesn’t go to the wedding, Miss Lavender won’t marry him. He’ll take my sister away then. He’ll live with her like Mr. John’s dad lives with that woman.”

  “Ah, I see,” Darci said. “What a clever plan. Millie is always very clever, isn’t she?”

  “Yes,” the man said proudly.

  “But sometimes bad people can be more clever than good people.”

  “Huh?”

  “I think that Lavender is more bad than your sister can handle. I think Lavender means to get your sister to the roof of her house and throw her off.”

  The man stood there blinking for a few seconds and the pistol lowered. He didn’t seem to know what to do.

  Straightening her shoulders, Darci pulled herself up to her full height—which meant she was about half the size of the man. “I want you to go to the barn and let Mr. John out. He needs to face what he’s done. We’ll turn him over to the sheriff right after we save your sister from death. Meet me at the church. That’s where they’ll be.”

  She saw that she’d completely confused the man, which gave her a few seconds to act. Cursing the giant skirt of the dress, she grabbed handfuls of it, pulled it up, glad for the crinoline underneath, and slipped out the front door. She didn’t know if the man would obey her or shoot her, but she had to brazen it out. As she ran, the skirt now up to her knees—which were hidden by knee-length cotton drawers covered in ruffles—she expected a bullet to enter her back.

  But she heard nothing as she ran. The streets were nearly empty, most of the people in town now at the church awaiting what was to be the event of the season.

  “Please release Jack,” she chanted to herself and wondered if she should have made sure the man untied Jack before she took off. But she’d had no time to lose. It couldn’t be more than forty-five minutes before the wedding.

  She reached t