EDINBURGH, 1814

“Little Sarah…you haven’t changed at all.”

They were the first words Winifred Wakefield had said to Lady Sarah Lark in years. And they were accompanied by the briefest flicker of dark lashes as Win looked her up and down, saccharine smile still in place. Sarah tensed, but she hid the reaction, as she hid many things.

Sarah had never liked the nickname. She was two years younger than her cousin by marriage, and currently, only a couple of inches smaller. For a while, she’d been nearly a head shorter than Win, but she’d hit a growth spurt around the age of fourteen and almost caught up to her. Oddly, it was only then that the nickname had arisen, and it had never seemed entirely good-natured to Sarah, more like a thing that was coated in honey to disguise its thorns.

Which, now that she contemplated it, was a lot like Winifred herself.

Or how Win was now. How she’d become, the year she’d turned sixteen and caught the eye of Sarah’s cousin.

She hadn’t been like that before.

Sometimes, even now, Sarah found herself thinking wistfully of the years they’d been nearly inseparable, like some kind of halcyon age, a glorious mirage on the horizon that she couldn’t quite reach.

“Nor have you.” she finally said.

It was true—physically, at least. Win still had that untamable curly red hair, was still plump, still had pale skin that didn’t freckle or darken in the sun, only burned bright and painful. Her mouth was sweetly curved, nose a touch too long. She looked, in sum, like she’d looked when she’d been Sarah’s closest, dearest friend, but there was something new in her eyes. A hardness. A brittleness.

Her friend might still be there, behind those stranger’s eyes, but Sarah could no longer find her.

Win had clasped Sarah’s gloved hands when she’d first stepped forward to greet her. Through the kid leather, Sarah could feel the warmth that Win had always burned with.

Now Win stepped back, letting her hands fall. “I’m surprised you haven’t married yet,” she said.

Sarah didn’t know how the other woman managed to make seemingly innocuous words feel like a slap to the face, but somehow she did. Sarah wasn’t sure if this was deliberate or not.

But she smiled at her old friend, anyway, her face a mask of politeness. She would be pleasant, even if it killed her. “I haven’t found a man to suit me yet, I suppose. I’m sure it will happen, though.”

“And your father dotes on you, of course, so he probably wouldn’t force the issue.”

Sarah hesitated. That wasn’t quite correct anymore. She knew her father loved her, but lately, they were at odds more often than they were in agreement. “I suppose not,” she finally replied, and then, because she thought it needed to be said, no matter how much things between them had changed, “I should offer my condolences on the loss of your husband.”

Win’s gaze slid away. “You already sent me a letter, and he wasn’t only my husband. He was your cousin,” she pointed out.

“We were never close, not like you must have been.”

“Ah,” she said. “True.”

Sarah couldn’t tell if the glimmer in Win’s eyes was real sadness or false emotion. She hoped it was the former, but after all this time, she couldn’t be certain that what she read in Win’s face was actually what was there. The knowledge cut like a knife.

“It must be difficult, as well, to lose your home not so long after,” Sarah said.

Win clasped her hands together and lifted her shoulders. “Creditors don’t particularly care about a mourning period.”

Sarah wondered how much Win cared, and how much of it was simply going through the motions.

She was out of deepest mourning. The black linen dress she wore was accented with white gloves and dangling pearl earrings. Sarah had to admit, the simple severity of the colors looked good on her. She would probably start adding grays and lavenders soon, but Sarah would remember Win’s mourning period like this—a study in breathtaking contrasts, bright red hair and a dress like a moonless night and gloves like freshly fallen snow.

“It was kind of your parents to allow me to stay with you.”

“You are family,” Sarah said. “We could do nothing else.”

She did not say that she’d dreaded the thought of being under the same roof as Win since the moment her mother and father had told her that her cousin’s widow would be coming to live with them. She didn’t say that she was counting the days until Win left again. Sarah was nothing if not unfailingly polite.

“Of course,” Win replied, with a twist of her lips. “Family.”

“Of course,” Sarah said, smiling.

“I should retire,” Win said. “It’s been a long day, after all.”

Sarah nodded and stepped back, but the hem of Win’s dress grazed her as she walked past, and Sarah’s chest tightened when the faint scent of roses spilled from the other woman’s skin. She still wore the same fragrance as she had back then.

Sarah’s mind was catapulted to late night conversations and hushed laughter and drinking too-sweet tea and the tickle of Win’s hair when it would occasionally brush her face, and that soft, rose scent, surrounding her, underlying everything.

A wave of longing crashed through her, so fierce that it hurt. But she turned away from it, and turned away from Win.

They’d been close once. They weren’t close any longer.

For a handful of years, Winifred Wakefield’s life had continued relatively unchanged, and if she sometimes missed the things, or the people, she’d left behind, she tried not to dwell on them too long. She’d done that once, and only had pain to show for it.

But, then, everything had come crashing down.

She hadn’t realized how far into debt Gregory had sunk—she knew he went to gaming hells sometimes, but she hadn’t suspected he was addicted to the rush that came with risking money, with winning it, to the extent that he would ignore how much he was losing, or have some misguided faith that he could win it back.

So she certainly hadn’t expected a sharp rap on the door a few months after Gregory’s death, announcing a creditor…the first of many. The land, which wasn’t entailed, had been sold, along with the house and the furniture, the silver and the paintings. All she had was her settlement money, which didn’t amount to much when one had no possessions to their name.

So she’d swallowed her pride and agreed to move in with Lord and Lady Lark in lieu of better options.

And here she was. Eating breakfast in the morning room like she was part of the family. She buttered a roll and tried to believe that she belonged with them. Or, if belief was too far outside the realm of possibility, she at least tried to pretend.

“It is good to have you with us again,” Lord Lark said, as he gathered a plate from the sideboard. “I’m hoping you’ll be a good influence on my daughter.”

Win caught Sarah’s gaze across the table and something in her jolted. Sarah, impossibly, was even more beautiful than she’d been a few years ago, the last time Win had seen her. Her gleaming brown hair was pulled into a perfect chignon, showing off the swanlike grace of her throat. She was slender, but it suited her frame.

As a child, she’d been a little thing—awkward and inelegant, with hard jutting bones and sharp angles. Sometime around her fourteenth year she’d grown taller and filled out, and Win had begun to notice her friend in a way she hadn’t before. She’d realized that Sarah was no longer a child. That neither of them were.

Now, Win noticed a glimmer of amusement in Sarah’s clear blue eyes. She knew what Sarah was thinking…between the two of them, Win had always been the bad influence.

“She simply won’t decide on a husband. I think she’s being too picky—perhaps you can help with that. You two were always close.”

Win looked at the roll in her hand. Whatever influence she’d once had on Sarah, if she’d had any at all, was nonexistent at this point.

“And here I thought you invited me out of the kindness of your heart,” she said lightly.

Lord Lark chuckled. “We’ve tried to persuade her to travel to London for a Season, but she won’t have it.”

Win felt a painful twinge. Win had moved to London after she’d married and remained there until her husband’s death. She wondered if that had something to do with Sarah’s refusal.

“You spoil her,” she said, with a smile that concealed her thoughts. “Most fathers would simply command it.”

“Command her?” Lady Lark cut in with a raised eyebrow. She set down the broadsheet she’d been reading. “Don’t let her fool you with the demure act. She’s as stubborn as an ox underneath it.”

Even with her parents? Win knew that Sarah had a stubborn streak, hidden beneath polite manners and pretty smiles. But nonetheless, her will seemed to fade somewhat in light of her parents’ good opinion. Had that changed in the years Win had been away? Had Sarah changed, even in the subtlest of ways?

She didn’t like the thought of it. For so long, they’d changed together, and Win had been able to mark each difference, examine them, and tuck them close to her heart.

“I would like to see London,” Sarah said after a moment. “But not to take part in the marriage mart.”

“Our daughter has said she may not marry at all,” Lady Lark said, with a glance at her husband.

“It’s that girl’s influence,” Lord Lark said, the word girl slipping out like an oath. “Sarah needs to be in the presence of someone rational. Someone level-headed. Someone who understands the sanctity of marriage.”

He was looking at Win, but she was still caught on girl. “Of whom do you speak?”

“Eleanor Townsend,” Lord Lark bit out.

“MacGregor now,” Lady Lark corrected.

“Oh yes, the oddities she already possessed weren’t enough for her. She had to run off and marry that pugilist as well.”

Lady Lark took a calm sip of tea. “At one point, you seemed to be considering that pugilist a possible suitor for our daughter.”

“I was at my wit’s end!” Lord Lark exclaimed. “And he passed as a gentleman as long as you forgot his origins.”

Lady Lark smiled, coolly amused. “Do you think you could have?”

“That is neither here nor there.”

Win was reeling. Sarah had been courted by a pugilist? Who’d married Eleanor Townsend? Who was apparently Sarah’s friend?

She didn’t even know where to start untangling everything.

“Eleanor is married,” Sarah said. “So I don’t know how you can say she doesn’t understand the sanctity of it.”

Eleanor, was it? Something in Win twisted sharply.

“Yes, she’s married,” Lord Lark allowed. “But Winifred went about it in a much more appropriate way, didn’t she?”

Win reached for her teacup. An appropriate way? She’d caught Gregory Wakefield’s attention, and he was handsome and charming, and he’d had a great deal of social connections, so when her parents had pressed for the match, she’d relented. She hadn’t really known what else to do.

She’d daydreamed, sometimes, of a different future, but she’d cared for her husband, even if she hadn’t quite been swept away like the books promised, and it had seemed like the best course of action at the time. As her mother had so often pointed out, she wasn’t pretty like Sarah, or as well-bred as Sarah, or as wealthy as Sarah. No one would look twice at her when she was always with the other girl.

But Gregory had.

There’d been an affinity between them. Gregory was, ostensibly, a gentleman, but he’d been born a rascal, and she supposed two rapscallions had a way of finding each other. (You’re too loud—her father used to say when she was younger and hadn’t learned yet to contain herself. He hadn’t meant only the volume of her laughter. He’d meant everything—her bright, bold hair, her penchant for color, the exuberant way she moved.) So she’d given in. She’d followed the plans laid out for her.

It hadn’t been so bad.

That was what she’d told herself.

But in accepting Gregory, something between her and Sarah had shifted. She’d moved to London with her new husband, and the letters from Sarah had come every month like clockwork, but they didn’t sound like her at all. If the pacing was like clockwork, so was the writing. It felt like Win was corresponding with a distant acquaintance.

The weather has been cool these past weeks, and dreary.

Win remembered that line particularly vividly. Remembered her angry visceral response to it.

When had they ever talked about the weather?

Maybe if they’d been able to see each other, to talk in person, things would have sorted themselves out and gone back to normal, more or less. But Sarah had never come to London, and Win had never returned to Edinburgh, so things went on like that—polite, distant, friendly (but not too friendly)—for years.

Every month, with each polite clockwork letter, Win was cut open once more. She’d thought about not responding. Simply letting their friendship fade to silence. Because it was over. Somewhere between Winifred’s marriage and Winifred moving to London their friendship had ended. Sarah couldn’t have made things any clearer. The silences between her prettily written words spoke loudly enough.

And still, Win wrote back. She could never quite bring herself to sever that last tattered thread between them.

Even though she should have.

“Eleanor doesn’t do things to please you, Papa,” Sarah said, cutting into her thoughts.

With the cold, brutal precision of a knife’s blade.

“You seem quite taken with her,” Win said.

“She is,” Lady Lark said before her daughter could speak. “She greatly admires Mrs. MacGregor. She even joined the natural history society.”

Win ignored the twinge in her stomach. “I thought it didn’t allow women.”

“The new natural history society,” Lord Lark said sourly.

“I helped Eleanor start it, actually,” Sarah explained. “She isn’t very comfortable in polite society, so I acted as a liaison in the early stages.”

Her father snorted at that.

“Are you interested in science?” Win asked. She remembered the first time she’d met Sarah. Win had picked up interests and dropped them like she was trying on cloaks. She’d been in a rather intense chemical philosophy stage at that point and had drawn her new friend into any number of wild experiments.

“Not as much as Eleanor. But I’ll sit in on the chemistry lectures at times.” This was the first time Sarah’s gaze slipped away from Win’s, as though remembering, as though acknowledging how close they’d once been. “And I go to all of Eleanor’s lectures. She’s an entomologist, with a focus on beetles.”

“Beetles,” Win echoed.

“It’s all quite fascinating, though I’m sure it doesn’t sound like it.”

Win recalled, suddenly, something she hadn’t thought of in a long time. Soft-hearted Sarah—capturing spiders in jars and releasing them outside. The maids would stomp them or smash them with a broom if they saw the spiders in the house, and Sarah had made it her mission to save as many wayward ones as she could find.

“You’ve always had a soft spot for hideous insects, haven’t you?”

Sarah’s eyes widened. A flash of shimmering blue. Had she expected Win to forget?

After a moment, Sarah said, “If you’re thinking of spiders, they’re actually arachnids.”

Win felt the strangest mix of emotions, then—a pang of fondness and a swell of irritation. “Is that so?”

“Insects have six legs. Arachnids have eight.”

“Either way sounds like a few too many, but how kind of you to inform me.”

Sarah’s mouth was tucked in at the corners, like she was holding back a smile. “And don’t make the mistake of thinking spiders are the only arachnids. There are also scorpions and mites. It’s a common mistake to make.”

“And I, of course, am a mere commoner in this regard.”

The smile she’d been holding back slowly suffused Sarah’s face, and Win’s chest warmed. She was thrown back to a simpler time, a happier time. When it was only her and Sarah and the contentment they’d found in each other’s company.

But life and age and the passing of years had a way of complicating things.

“True,” Sarah said. “But we can’t all be experts.”

“Enough with this talk of insects at the breakfast table,” Lady Lark said mildly. “I daresay you’ll meet Mrs. MacGregor soon enough, Winifred. She visits Sarah now and then.”

“Perhaps you can show her how a proper lady behaves,” Lord Lark muttered.

Win wasn’t sure where he’d gotten this idea that she was a proper lady. He either misremembered, or Eleanor MacGregor was dreadful by comparison.

“I’m looking forward to meeting her,” Win said.

Sarah tucked back into her plate, and Win gripped her teacup a little too firmly as she took a sip.

She wasn’t lying. She was curious about Eleanor MacGregor. But curiosity was currently warring with bitterness. While Win had been making acquaintances in London and finding them all lacking, finding them missing that small, indefinable thing she always, always looked for, Sarah had moved on.

She had a new friend. Judging by the way Sarah spoke of her, the admiration that was clear in her voice even before Lady Lark had mentioned it, they were close. It was a good thing, wasn’t it, that Sarah had made friends after Win had left?

She would be a truly horrible person to resent whatever companionship Sarah had found in her absence.

Win, apparently, was a horrible person.