the high back of the chair, gleaming against the purple velvet.
A hair. One single, very fair hair, long and curling, caught on the fabric. Swiftly, as she turned away, she snatched it up. As she made her way out of the dining room she wound it around one finger for safekeeping.
Now she unwound the hair and laid it in a careful curl on the surface of the dressing table. The napkin with its stain, and the crumbs of cheese she had scooped up, she set beside the hair, taking care so as not to brush the crumbs onto the floor. She took up the lump of wax and warmed it between her hands.
When it was malleable enough, she made a rude image of a man with stubby arms, longer legs, a middle. She pressed the wooden bead into the top and then used the mucilage to secure the single hair to it, curling it around and around the bead. She had no paint, but she drew eyes onto the bead by upending her pen over it and letting two drops of ink fall onto the wood. The eyes were rather blurred, but they were more or less in the right places. She drew a line for the mouth, straight and uncompromising.
Last she pressed the crumbs of cheese into the waxen middle of her manikin and folded the napkin around the whole, so it looked more or less like a nightshirt. She propped the thing against the mirror and regarded it for a moment. It was inelegant and unconvincing, but it would do.
She sighed and stretched. It was going to be a long night.
She had thought it strange, when she first saw Rosefield Hall, that the house’s facade faced the wrong way, looking away from the sea. Her bedroom faced in the opposite direction, with a beautiful vista of a narrow stone terrace, a shrubbery and lawn dropping down a gentle slope, and the English Channel in the distance.
Best of all, for Frances’s purpose, was a small mock-Greek temple at the end of the lawn. It was pillared, open to the air, and partially hidden by some sort of large bush that grew beside its steps.
A folly. It was perfect.
Wearing her dressing gown and a pair of soft boots, and with the valise cradled in her arms, she crept along the corridor toward the servants’ stairs. With an excuse ready on her lips should she need it, she slipped out through a baize door and into a narrow staircase. A half moon glowed through a single small window, shedding just enough light for her to pick out the treads. It seemed a good omen to her that she didn’t encounter anyone, neither the butler nor the housekeeper nor any of the dozens of other servants. The house was peaceful, sleeping like a many-headed beast, quiescent under the moonlight. Her body throbbed with excitement, and though she felt as if she could have flown down the staircase, she forced herself to move with care, lest a tumble put an end to all her plans.
She had to unlock the back door. She left the door off its latch as she sidled through, her valise close to her chest. She kept to the shadows as she made her way across the terrace and down the steps.
Shards of moonlight striped the folly through its pillars. A few leaves littered the floor, and branches of a huge rhododendron, its blossoms spent but its leaves thick and dark, hung over it. A stone bench curved along the inside, and Frances laid out her things on it, one by one, herbs, vials, and the two manikins. Poppets, her ancestresses used to call them, but that word was too trivial for what she had created.
“It’s a new age, grandmothers,” she whispered, smiling into the dark. “A modern age of witches, one you could never have imagined.”
She had brought a needle, and she pierced her left forefinger to harvest more of her blood. Her last rite had worn off too quickly, allowing Annis to flaunt her rebellious ways much too soon. This one would have to hold for the length of their visit, long enough to achieve an offer of marriage and an acceptance of the offer. A betrothal.
She squeezed her finger until the blood ran, half filling the little vial.
She mixed her ingredients, stirring in the wine and blood. She reduced her potion over the candle flame, tilting the saucer to test its thickness. As before, she painted the