chapter 7

A Name That Doesn’t Fit

The Lockhart house woke at five-thirty. Wren knew because she was awake for it, lying in a bed the size of a small boat, listening to the pipes tick and the first footsteps cross the hall below. At the diner she had always been up before the sun. Sleeping in felt like being a fraud twice over.

On the first morning she walked into the kitchen in a silk robe and found the cook, a broad, quiet man named Mr. Bellamy, arranging eggs on a tray. Three maids stopped what they were doing. Wren took in the long table, the cold coffee at the end of it, and did what she had done every morning for six years: she picked up the pot, poured a cup, and carried it over to Mr. Bellamy’s elbow.

“Ma’am,” he said slowly, “the staff takes their coffee in the pantry.”

“I know,” said Wren. “I just thought you looked like you needed it.”

Silence. Then one of the maids, a young woman with freckles, hid a smile in her sleeve. By the end of the week Wren knew all their names. Mrs. Okafor, who had kept the Lockhart house for twenty-six years, sniffed and called it “irregular,” but she began leaving a small pot of tea outside Wren’s door each morning without being asked.

The rules of the house were quieter than the Ashworths’ and harder to break. Breakfast was at seven. Adrian took it standing, reading three newspapers and answering none of her pleasantries. He left at seven-forty in a black car and returned after dark, and they met at dinner, where he asked her one precise question each night and listened to the answer without once looking at his phone.

“What did you read today?”

“A book about birds,” she said, on the second night. “From your library. I hope that’s all right.”

“Which birds?”

“Starlings. They fly in huge groups and nobody’s in charge. Each one just watches its neighbors.” She heard herself and stopped. “Sorry. It was interesting.”

“Don’t apologize,” Adrian said, and went back to his soup. But a minute later she caught him looking at her over the rim of his glass, with an expression she could not name.

The library became hers. She went there at night, after the house had gone silent, in socks and a borrowed cardigan, and sat in the leather chair by the window with a lamp and a book from a shelf she could only reach with the ladder. It was the first time in her life she had had a room full of books and nothing to do but read them. On the fifth night she fell asleep in the chair and woke to find a blanket over her knees and the lamp turned low.

She didn’t ask who. She suspected she knew.

The trouble came on the sixth day, in the drawing room, when Adrian’s aunt Vivienne arrived unannounced with a silver-headed cane and an appraising stare. Vivienne Lockhart was seventy and sharp as a paring knife. She took Wren’s hand, held it a beat too long, and said, “So you are the famous Seraphina. I remember you at twelve. You had a laugh like a bell.”

Wren laughed. It came out a beat too late.

“Hm,” said Vivienne. “It has changed.”

“People change.”

“Not usually in that direction.” The old woman’s eyes flicked between her and Adrian. “Which school did you finish at, dear? Your mother was so vague.”

Wren’s mouth opened to produce the answer Charles had rehearsed with her. Educated abroad, dislike discussing it. But Vivienne was watching her with a patience that felt like a trap, and Wren heard her grandmother’s voice, you touch your left ear, and felt her hand start to rise before she caught it.

“I’ve never been to a school like that,” she said instead. “Not the kind you mean. I learned most things from books.”

It was true, and it came out sounding like a confession.

The room went very still.

“Fascinating,” said Vivienne at last. “You will tell me more at dinner on Friday. I have been longing to know my nephew’s wife.” She tapped her cane once against the floor and swept out, leaving a card on the table.

Wren sank into a chair. “I’m sorry. I ruined it. I—”

“You did not ruin it.” Adrian had been standing at the window the whole time. He turned. “You answered a question without lying. That is more than most of my family manages in a year.” He studied her. “But my aunt will be at that table, and she does not forgive sincerity. If you are to survive Friday, we will have to practice.”

“Practice what?”

“Being Seraphina,” he said. “Or at least, being someone Vivienne cannot disprove.”

Wren looked at the card on the table. Cream paper, black ink, a single line in an old-fashioned hand: Friday, eight o’clock. Do bring Seraphina’s famous wit.

She did not have Sera’s wit. She had a small, stubborn kind of courage, and a husband who, for reasons he refused to explain, had just offered to teach her how to hide it. Somewhere beneath her ribs, something she did not want to name began to hurt in a new way.