Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

Faith and Amy stared at her.

“It was just a thought,” Zoë said. “Since both of you are so in love with her, maybe I should be the one to try to find out the truth about her.”

“You can’t interrogate her,” Amy said. “It wouldn’t be polite. And you’re not—”

“Her class,” Zoë said. “I know. Actually, I was thinking of getting chummy with her maid. Maids know everything their charges do. And I know that for a fact from all the rich houses I’ve lived in. Husbands rarely know anything about their wives, but the maids know it all.”

“Good idea,” Amy said, smiling at Zoë. “I knew I needed you on this trip. But don’t just ask what Beth is doing, find out about everybody.”

“What about the uncle?” Faith asked.

“He’s too sick to care much about anything.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Who knows?” Amy said. “I’m sure that if I took him to our time a doctor could give him a bottle of pills and he’d be cured in three days. But he’s not in our time, so the poor man is under the care of some old man who calls himself a doctor and—” She waved her hand. “This is one point where I’ve not been able to move Tristan. The doctor was a friend of his father’s. He delivered both Tristan and Beth, and Tristan thinks the man can do no wrong. I’ve complained so much that I’ve been banned from the sickroom.”

She took a breath. “I know it isn’t right but I have so much to do I haven’t had the time to tend to William. He’s the sweetest man, but he’s so sick that he does nothing but lie in bed all day. A horrible woman takes care of him. She empties his chamber pot, and watches over him, but I see to his food. Only the best of what we have is prepared for him. I’m sorry, but it is the best I can do.”

Faith and Zoë blanched at the mention of a chamber pot, but they didn’t let Amy see it. Amy was so cool and blasé about living in the eighteenth century that they wanted to hide their own awkwardness.

“Let me look at him,” Faith said. “I’ve had some dealings with illness.”

Amy smiled at her. “I was hoping you’d say that. If I have to hold a gun on Tristan, I’ll get you in that room. The head gardener told me he thought you might know something about herbs.”

Faith frowned. All she’d done was walk through the big kitchen garden. She hadn’t talked to anyone, hadn’t picked a flower. So how had they seen her love of herbs?

Amy seemed to read her mind. “Don’t let it worry you. You get used to it after a while. Everyone knows everything about everyone else.” She turned to Zoë. “Is it true that today Russell asked you to marry him?”

Zoë choked on the wine she was drinking, and Faith patted her back.

“All I did was visit a garden,” Faith said. “Have you really started a romance already?”

“You should see Russell,” Amy said. “He could have invented the word ‘stud.’ Every female on this place has been after him and a couple have had him, but he doesn’t give out marriage proposals.”

“Look who’s talking,” Zoë said. “You and his lordship. He said you were going to bankrupt him with all the strays you bring into his house.”

“He says that all the time,” Amy said. “It means nothing. I told you that there’s nothing between Tristan and me.”

Both Faith and Zoë looked at her with eyes that said they didn’t believe her, but Amy refused to comment.

“What happens when you leave here?” Faith asked. “It seems that your body was here before we visited Madame Zoya, so do you think that after we go back, your body will stay here?”

“And do what? Clean his floors?” Amy said bitterly. “I’ve learned enough here to know that Tristan and I could never marry. We’re of different classes. No one would speak to either of us if we wed. That’s too much of a burden on any marriage. That’s why I—”

When she broke off, the other two women leaned forward. “That’s why you did what?” Faith asked.

Amy took a while to answer. “You’re going to think this is crazy, but I sent Tristan to London to hire a genealogist.”

“He doesn’t know who his ancestors are?” Faith asked. “But Beth said they’d lived on this land since ‘the dawn of time.’”

“Not for him, for me,” Amy said. She lowered her voice. “Yes, there is a, well, a closeness between Tristan and me, but I can’t marry him. And, personally, I think that when the three weeks are up we’re going to be sent back to our time and Amy the housekeeper won’t exist anymore. If the memory of me is taken away, that would be okay, but I’m afraid that Tristan…” She looked down at her plate.

“He’ll have lost two women,” Faith said softly.

“Yes.”

“So what does a genealogist have to do with anything?” Zoë aske