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As with everything else on the estate, everyone knew what she was doing. Three times she’d awakened in the morning to find pots of herbs and flowers on the doorstep. During the night someone had delivered them to her and, the next morning, she’d happily planted them.

  “This suits you,” William said. “This garden, this place, it all suits you.”

  She knew what he was actually saying. She had saved him and sometimes he seemed to believe himself to be in love with her. But she knew he wasn’t, and she wasn’t in love with him either. For all his teasing and laughing, she understood why William Hawthorne had never married. He wasn’t a man who’d likely be faithful to any woman.

  “Yes, it suits me,” she said. “I’m really just a class above a farmer.”

  He hadn’t said anything to that, and she thought he agreed with her. His class system, which was ingrained in him, only made her laugh.

  Now, she left him alone with his niece, to spend time together. It was two hours later that Beth came inside the orangery. “You have made it very nice in here,” she said, looking around. “Is that old vine growing?”

  “Yes. It’s just showing the pink tip of the leaves. I think it got just enough water through the broken glass to keep it alive.”

  Beth touched the vine for a moment, then turned to look back at her. “My brother, Tristan, and I have talked about what we can do to repay you for what you have done for our uncle.”

  “It was nothing,” Faith said. “You’ve taken me in, fed me, clothed me. I couldn’t ask for more.”

  “But Tristan takes care of a hundred people, but they did not save our uncle. We want to give you something.”

  “No, please,” Faith said. “I don’t need payment.” She thought that the truth was that if she was going to stay there, a nice fat pot of gold might prove useful. But she was going to leave in less than two weeks, so what good would gold be to her? “Really, I can’t take anything.”

  “We talked to Amy and she suggested that you might like this for a reward.” Beth held out a little packet wrapped in paper with a pretty block-printed design.

  Faith had an idea that it was some wonderful book, but of what use would it be to her? When they’d been sent back in time, they’d arrived wearing different clothes. Faith was sure that whatever they had here would be taken away from them.

  She took the book and thanked Beth for it. “How very sweet of you to think of this,” she said. “It was most kind.”

  “Will you open it?” Beth asked.

  Smiling in a set way because she was sure she knew what was in the package, Faith opened it—and her mouth dropped open. It was a book of hand-copied recipes for the fabulous soap and shampoo and four other products. Faith’s first thought was that she could memorize the recipes. If she put them to memory, she could take them back to her time.

  She looked at Beth with wonder in her eyes. “These are…” She didn’t know what to say. “Thank you.”

  “They are worthless as they are.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Faith said.

  “Read one.”

  Faith looked at a recipe for face cream. It was simple enough: oil, water, a bit of beeswax, a few herbs. Then at the bottom she saw that it called for something called “balm.” “What is this last thing?” she asked. “A Balm of Gilead?” She looked at Beth’s eyes and saw that she thought this Biblical herb was not attainable. “We have this in my country,” Faith said, and wanted to add, “In my time.”

  “Would you like to take a walk?” Beth asked.

  “Certainly.” Faith slipped the book into the pocket of the apron she was wearing and followed her outside. She stopped to tell Thomas to look after William while she was gone.

  William looked at his niece in surprise. “Do not tell me, Beth, that you are going to show her the secret of the women of this family?” His voice was teasing, but Faith could hear a deeper note under it. “Do you say that my life is worth that much to you?”

  Beth, who had just a short while before been in tears to see her uncle, now gave him a look of dismissal. “You will never know,” she said to him over her shoulder.

  Faith looked at William in question.

  “Do not ask me to tell you,” William said loudly as the women left the garden. With the weight he’d gained his voice had improved. “Only once did I try to invade their secret. My father made sure I did not sit down for a week.”

  “Beth,” Faith said when they were outside the walls, “what’s he talking about?”

  They were walking past the old house, but Beth didn’t so much as glance at it. “Do you remember that I told you my family has lived here for a long time?”

  “You said ‘since the dawn of time.’”

  “Yes. That old house that you love so much—no, don’t deny it, I’ve heard how you shoo the cows out and wander through it every day—was the third house my family has had on this land.”

  “Third?” Faith asked, thinking about how long they must have lived here.

  “Come, and I will show you something that will interest you.”

  Faith had to hurry to keep up with young Beth as she walked quickly across the pasture, then through a gate and into the woods. There was a narrow path, meant for one person only, that snaked through the dark woods. She looked up at the trees, growing so close together that no sunlight came through, and she wondered if she was seeing virgin forest: uncut since the creation of the world.

  “No one is allowed in here,” Beth said. “There have been signs of wolves so sometimes I’ve taken Thomas with me, but never Tristan or my uncle. My mother hated it in here and refused to go, but then she was not of Hawthorne blood. I learned what I know from my grandmother and she from her mother.”

  Faith had no idea what Beth was talking about, but the hairs on the back of her neck were beginning to stand up. The woods were dark and a bit creepy, and Beth’s words made it seem as though they were going to come upon a house full of witches.

  “Beth, are you sure it’s all right for us to be back here alone?”

  “Of course. There!” she said at last. “Look at that.”

  Faith saw a clearing in the woods just ahead of them. There was a little hill and unless she missed her guess it was man-made, and looked to have been built a very long time ago. On the top of it was a short, round tower of stone, with a door in it, but no roof that she could see.

  “What in the world is that?” Faith asked. “And how old is that thing?”

  “It was there when one of my ancestors went on the Fourth Crusade,” Beth said.

  “Crusade? So we’re talking about the year one thousand?”

  “The Fourth Crusade was from 1201 to 1204,” she said, looking at Faith oddly, as though wondering if she’d ever been to school. “The tower is older than that. My grandmother told me that all the stones from the fields were piled here, then the stones were covered with dirt. More stones were used to build the tower.”

  “I wonder if it could be Roman,” Faith said, looking up at it. It couldn’t have been more plain. The trees had been cut back from around it and from the look of the place, some trimming had been done recently. “Do you take care of it now?”

  “Yes. I will pass it on to my daughter.”

  There wasn’t a weed around the base of the building. If Beth was taking care of the tower, she was doing a good job. With the trees cut back, it was bright on the little hill and the sun fell onto the top of the stone building.

  Beth reached into her pocket and withdrew a big iron key. “I am going to show you what is inside.”

  Faith’s first thought was to say no, thanks, and run back to the orangery. What in the world was inside that could be such a mystery that it was protected by the women of the family, with no men allowed to see it?

  Beth led the way up a narrow stone staircase that was embedded in the hillside, and every fairy tale Faith had ever heard went through her head. Maybe some monster was chained inside the building. Maybe—

  She held her br