Suspicion (25 page)

“Talk to me, Lucia.” I try to adopt a soothing tone, but my voice is high-pitched with shock. “Tell me what happened. Why did you do this? How could you do this?”

She lets out another frightening wail, beating the carpeted floor with her fists. I look from her to the door in a panic. Should I get help? I need to find out the truth from her but I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m not equipped to handle her nervous breakdown.

“Lucia, it’s me,” I try again. “Your cousin, Imogen. Once we were the closest of friends. Don’t you remember?”

She lifts her head. Her face is red and swollen, but the wild animal in her seems to have calmed. Relief mingles with despair in an expression I’ve never seen before.

“You’re going to hate me,” she whispers.

“I won’t,” I tell her, though I know that’s something I can’t promise.

Lucia hesitates, her eyes flicking nervously back and forth. “I don’t think I can say it. But—” She reaches for the pendant around her neck. I watch, astonished, as she opens the pendant … and pulls out a tiny flash drive.

“What is that?”

“I knew that when I died, I wanted to be buried as me,” she says haltingly. “The real me. So I wrote my story and kept it in here. That way whoever found my body, whether it be in the near future or later years, would discover this drive and learn who I really was.”

I reach out my hand and Lucia drops it into my palm, squeezing her eyes shut as if in pain.

“I—I hope you won’t think too much worse of me after,” she whispers as I hurriedly plug the drive into my computer.

Lucia

August 2007

I
’m huddled on my bedroom floor, studying the framed photograph in my hands. The room is in a complete state of chaos, with clothes and books strewn about and untouched trays of food in a row by the door. Anyone would assume I haven’t ventured outside these walls in days. And they would be right.

I’m so fixated on the photo of my parents that I don’t notice someone else has entered until I hear the voice.

“Well. You’ve certainly made a mess of things,” says Maisie.

I leap to my feet, holding the photograph protectively against my chest.

“What are
you
doing in here?” I demand, staring daggers at the hateful maid. “Get out at once!”

“I’ve come with a solution to your predicament,” Maisie says smoothly.

“Didn’t you hear me?” I draw myself up to my full height, until we are nose to nose. “I said. Get. Out.”

“Oh, I don’t think you’re in a position to give me orders anymore,” Maisie says loftily. “Not after what you did.”

I freeze.

“What are you going on about?” I ask, a touch too loudly. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Maybe you need me to refresh your memory.”

Maisie pulls a cell phone from her pocket, the same cutting-edge model my father had.

“How do you have one of those?” I ask, my pulse racing in fury at the thought that she might have taken it from my father.

“Dad bought it for my mum,” Maisie answers, scrolling through the phone as she looks for something.

“
My
dad. Not yours,” I snap.

“It’s a little late to be in denial,” Maisie retorts. “Look.”

Reluctantly, I glance at the phone. The screen is filled with … a moving image of the Rockford gardens. A cry escapes my lips as I see myself enter the frame, dressed in pajamas and carrying a lantern as I stand outside the Shadow Garden’s gate.

“You were filming me—
spying
on me,” I gasp. “How dare you! Why would you do something so twisted?”

“It turned out to be rather bright of me, actually,” Maisie boasts. “I had to know if you were going to tell Imogen the news at your little sleepover, so I followed from a distance. Then, when I saw you leave in the middle of the night, I knew you had to be up to no good.”

I recoil as my father enters the screen. My undoing, my most terrible act, has been caught on film.

“What are you doing out here so late, darling?” Dad asks, swaying slightly as he holds a martini glass aloft. “Shouldn’t you and Imogen be in bed?”

“She is. But I heard you all carrying on out here,” I say disdainfully, “and I couldn’t sleep. Where are Mum, and Uncle Edmund, and Aunt Laura?”

“They’re having a nightcap in the Shadow Garden. I should be there with them, and you, my dear, should be in bed. Let me walk you back—”

“No.” The force of my voice catches my father off guard. “If you want to know the real reason I can’t sleep, it’s because of what that foul little maid of ours told me yesterday.”

“What did she say?” Dad seems to sober up instantly. “What did you hear, Lucia?”

“Maisie said
you
are her father,” I spit. “She said you had an affair with Mrs. Mulgrave and that you two are still in love. As if anything could be more ridiculous!”

But Dad doesn’t deny it. He simply stares at me, a sad look in his eyes.

“Tell me it’s not true!” I shout. “
Tell
me, and then sack the pair of them. Please!”

Dad takes my hands in his.

“I can’t. I hoped you wouldn’t find out until you were much older, but I … I can’t lie to you.”

“No,” I mutter, shaking my head violently. “It can’t be.”

“Mrs. Mulgrave nursed me through my injuries after a near-fatal accident during my military training almost twenty years ago,” he says. “I suppose I fell for her then. But I was already engaged to your mother at the time, and I loved her too, in a way.”

“In a
way
?” I echo, my voice rising to a hysterical pitch.

“Shh.” Dad looks anxiously at the Shadow Garden’s gate. “I’ve been a good husband and father, despite my faults. Your mother is happy, and you have everything you could ever want.
You
are the Rockford heiress, not Maisie. Please, darling, try not to let this trouble you. Many British families we know have a secret like this one. We’re no better or worse.”

“Sack them,” I demand. “I can’t live in the same house as your disgusting second family. If you love me, you’ll get rid of them.”

Dad rubs his forehead wearily.

“Darling, I do love you, more than anyone. But I can’t send them away. Maisie is my daughter.”

And those are the words that send me over the edge.

“I’ll never forgive you for this. Never!” I shriek, throwing my lantern onto the grass.

“No!” Dad yells as the lantern hits the trunk of a tree, shattering into pieces. The exposed flame latches onto the grass, and I freeze, watching the flame grow and spread, moving toward the Maze.

“The others!” Dad cries. He grips my shoulders. “Lucia, get out of here now. Go back to Imogen and call for help. I have to get your mother and Edmund and Laura out of there.”

“But—” I stare at the flames in a panic.

“Go!”

The screen darkens. I crumple to my knees, sickened with regret.

“You killed your parents.
Our
father,” Maisie says bitterly. “Not to mention your aunt and uncle. How can you live with yourself after that?”

“I—I don’t want to,” I whisper. “I wish I died instead.”

Meeting Maisie’s eyes, I am filled with renewed rage. “But it’s all your fault. If you had only kept your knowledge private, and not tortured me with it—”

Maisie snorts.

“You can hardly blame it on me. How was I to know you were mental?”

I shrink back at the word.
Mental …
That’s just what I always feared I was, after Mum and Dad started making me see Dr. Heron.

“Besides, I’m the one who called 999 right away,” Maisie continues. “If it hadn’t been for me, your precious cousin and everyone else in the house might have died too.”

“Why are you doing this?” My eyes fill with frightened tears. “I’m suffering enough. There’s nothing you can say to make it worse.”

“Yes, there is. I could show this tape to the authorities.” Maisie leans forward. “You’d be shipped off to juvenile prison or a mental institution, and would forever be known, in the papers and all over the world, as the girl who killed her own parents.”

I feel myself gagging, choking on the thought of what will become of me. And what will Grandfather and Imogen do when they learn the truth? They are my only family left, though surely they will despise me and cut me off for good if they discover what I’ve done.

“Please, don’t,” I beg. “I’ll do anything.”

Maisie smiles.

“I thought you might say that. And as it happens, I’ve got a brilliant idea. I have a feeling you’d rather be anyone but yourself right now. Correct?”

“Yes,” I admit through my tears.

“Then switch places with me.”

My head snaps up.

“What?”

“Switch places,” Maisie says, her voice taking on a silky, alluring tone. “And no one will be the wiser about what you did that night. You can start over again—as me. Put those terrible memories, and all your guilt, behind you.”

“But—but—” I sputter. “No one would ever believe it. We’re not identical!”

“Oh, I have a plan for that too,” Maisie says calmly. “You are going to beg your—our—grandfather to send me and Mother to Switzerland with you, as your guardian and companion at boarding school. While there, you and I will give each other lessons on how to successfully ‘be’ each other. We’ll make the physical changes too of course, like dyeing our hair. Being away for months on end will make the switch much more seamless and believable when we return. Mother will help too.”

“You’re serious,” I whisper. “You want me to turn over my life to you and become a
maid
?”

Maisie’s eyes flash.

“Don’t act as if it isn’t deserved. I was born six months before you. If the world were just, I would have been our father’s heiress, not you. But let me tell you, being a maid in this house is nowhere near as terrible as being stuck in a mental institution or prison. The choice is yours.”

“Your mother actually approves of this idea? She wants me posing as you?”

“She argued against the switch when I first told her about it,” Maisie says with a shrug. “But she quickly became enamored with the idea of her own daughter living as an heiress, next in line to be the Duchess of Wickersham. In her mind too, it’s my rightful place.”

“And you really think dyeing our hair and teaching each other the ways of life belowstairs and above is enough to convince Grandfather, Oscar, and everyone else of the switch?” I ask in disbelief.

“It’s simple. You’re leaving on the cusp of adolescence, and will return at the end of term as a teenager. You’ll be expected to look a little different, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but our grandfather isn’t exactly
with it
these days. I highly doubt he’ll second-guess that I am the real Lucia when I sashay into Rockford just like you.” Maisie closes her eyes dreamily for a moment. “And as for you … well, take it from me. No one pays much attention to the housekeeper’s daughter.”

I move to the window. Despite myself, I’m growing tempted by Maisie’s offer. The chance to escape my crime, to be someone else, is too much for my tormented mind to resist.

“Okay,” I say softly. “I’ll do it.”

I
reach the last word of Lucia’s story and turn away from the computer to look upon her—this person I never really knew. I have so many questions, but all I can think of in this moment is what might have been, if she had just stayed in the boathouse that night.

“My parents,” I whisper, tears welling up in my eyes. “You—
you
took them away from me.”

“It was an
accident,
” Lucia wails. “You can’t really think I would ever mean to hurt my own parents, or yours. I loved them—all of them.”

“But it was an accident that you caused. If you hadn’t decided to start a fight with your dad that night, our parents would still be alive.” My chest tightens with pain, but I can’t give in to my grief. Not yet.

“I know.” Lucia’s face crumples. “I can’t forgive myself either, and it’s the reason for everything I’ve done.”

I shake my head in shock.

“Why didn’t you ever come to me and tell me what happened, and that Maisie was blackmailing you?”

“I was too scared,” she admits. “I knew it was impossible to expect you to forgive me for the fire—and I had to tell you about that for you to understand everything else.”

She’s right. I believe her that the fire was an accident … but forgiveness will take a long time.

I push my emotions aside. There’s much more I need to find out before I can process everything fully.

“How could you stand it, being around them every day, after everything?” I ask.

Lucia shakes her head grimly.

“You’d be surprised what a person can stand when there doesn’t appear to be any other option. I thought it was either live as a maid or spend the rest of my years in lockup.”

“But then you … killed her. Didn’t you?” I ask nervously.

I’m calling her bluff, trying to catch her in a confession. But I already know the answer. I knew it as soon as I discovered Lucia was alive.

Lucia buries her head in her hands. When she looks up at me, her cheeks are wet once again.

“When she finished boarding school and began living here year-round while attending Oxford, Maisie became even more unbearable than before. To outsiders, she was a little princess, but to me and anyone else who got too close, she was verbally abusive. And then she became obsessed with Lady Beatrice and Elementals—obsessed with
you.
” Lucia pauses. “Did you ever get the letter I sent your parents? Warning you about something?”

“
That
letter? From more than a year ago?”

She nods, and I gape at her in surprise.

“That was from
you
? But neither Harry or Oscar recognized the handwriting.”

“Because I used my old penmanship, not my Maisie handwriting,” Lucia explains. “I would have typed it up but I couldn’t risk getting caught, since we only have shared computers in the staff quarters.”

“What were you trying to warn me about?”

“Maisie wanted to—to get rid of you. She was horribly insecure about having to pretend to be me in order to live the life she wanted, and she was terrified of you coming in and getting everything if the prophecy were true. And I knew she was plotting something.” Lucia looks at me earnestly. “You were like a little sister to me growing up. You were
my
Zoey. I always cared about you, even later on, when we weren’t talking.”

I glance down. I’m touched by her words, but I don’t want to be. I’m still too angry.

“The night she died, I saw her sneak out in the middle of the storm,” Lucia continues. “Her behavior had been maddening in the days before, and I could tell she was up to something. So I followed her. She was swinging one of Sebastian’s old polo sticks as she walked toward the Maze. At a certain point I made a noise and she turned around and caught me.”

“And?” I whisper.

“She started taunting me, telling me it was no use following her, that I’d never again get to have her life. And then …” Lucia’s tears fall freely. “She told me she’d uncovered a way to
eliminate
you, just like I had done to my parents. And I snapped.” Lucia takes a shallow gulp of air. “Maisie was going into that Maze with the polo stick, to take something of yours. I don’t know what exactly she was planning, but from everything she’d let slip, I knew she considered you the biggest threat to her title. And so … whatever she planned to do, I stopped it. I took the polo stick from her hands when she was caught unaware, and I struck her on the side of the head.” Lucia looks down. “She died instantly. I didn’t mean for it to go so far—I only wanted to stop her.”

I cover my mouth with my hand.

“I heard someone coming, so I hid. It was Theo. He lost it when he saw that she was dead. He kept crying aloud that it was all his fault. I never understood what he meant, and I was so nervous someone would catch him at the scene. But then Sebastian came and took him away.”

“He thought Theo did it … and Theo must have thought
Sebastian
was the one,” I realize suddenly. “That’s why he kept saying it was all his fault, because he and Lucia—or rather, Maisie—were seeing each other behind Sebastian’s back. He probably saw the polo stick and the body and figured Sebastian killed her in some kind of jealous rage.”

I feel a rush of relief that neither of the brothers was responsible—and I am moved by the lengths to which they were both willing to go to protect each other in the end.

“You’ve got to come forward and clear Sebastian’s name,” I say urgently. “He is completely innocent in all of this. And if you meant what you said about your guilt over the fire, then this is the way to start making up for it. You’re the only one who can set him free.”

Lucia nods, staring at the floor.

“I know. I’ve always known it was only a matter of time.”

I release the breath I’ve been holding.

“You’ll be doing the right thing.”

We sit in silence for a few moments, and then I remember another of my endless questions.

“How did you hide the truth about Maisie’s death from Mrs. Mulgrave? I’m guessing she would have lost her mind if she’d known from the beginning that it wasn’t an accident.”

“The way she fell, with her head up against the pillar, it looked like an accident. So that’s what everyone thought for over a year, including Mrs. Mulgrave—even though she’s the one who saw Sebastian at Rockford that night. But she was convinced Sebastian was madly in love with Lucia, that no one could possibly want to hurt her
perfect
little daughter. It wasn’t until she saw the way Sebastian was with you, that she began to think differently.”

“Mrs. Mulgrave was the witness,” I realize, flushed with anger. “
She
called the police on Sebastian.”

Lucia nods.

“Did she set the fire in my room the other night too?”

Lucia shifts uncomfortably.

“I saw her afterward with a matchbox. I didn’t know what she was doing with it until I heard about the fire the next day. I’m sorry. …”

“And when you were being Maisie, how could you act like you were Lucia’s biggest fan? You clearly hated her, and for good reason.”

Lucia smiles sadly.

“I spoke about her as if she were me—as if I were the one studying at Oxford and dating Sebastian Stanhope and doing everything I dreamed of but she got to do instead.”

I stare at my cousin. When we were little I always knew she was complicated, but I never could have imagined how so. I thought she was glamorous and dramatic, when in reality she was struggling with her embattled mind, a sickness that brought her to this point. And then after the fire, when I assumed she’d forgotten me, she was being held hostage by the Mulgraves all along.

I reach across the space between us, and take Lucia’s hand. I might never be able to forgive all that she’s done … but in this moment, I choose to forgive
her
.

A knock sounds at the door, and Lucia quickly turns away to wipe her eyes while I answer it. Carole stands in the doorway, her expression uneasy. For a moment I’m shocked to see her. I’ve been so immersed in my discoveries, I nearly forgot she and Keith are here.

“Hi. How are you guys liking your room?” I grin, but she doesn’t smile back.

“Sweetie, have you seen Zoey?”

Something in her tone gives me pause.

“No. I came back from my—my walk and she wasn’t here. I thought she might have been with you guys.”

Carole wrings her hands.

“One of the maids saw her leaving a little while ago with the housekeeper, Mrs. Mulgrave. I’m sure she was just showing Zoey around, but the trouble is, they were supposed to be back by now for dinner.”

A cold wave of fear washes over me. But I can’t let Carole see.

“Mrs. Mulgrave was probably just—just giving Zoey a tour of the gardens. I’ll go find them.” I force a smile onto my face. “Don’t worry.”

I’m growing hysterical with worry as Lucia and I race outside; I curse myself for leaving Zoey alone. What was I
thinking
?

Nightfall makes the Rockford grounds look even vaster and more impenetrable, and I swear loudly in frustration and fear. How am I supposed to know if she’s by the lake or the park, in one of the gardens or on the riding trail?

The water-stone.
In all my panic, I nearly forgot that I am wearing my greatest ally on my ring finger. Drawing a sharp breath, I bend down, touching the diamond icicle to the earth beneath my feet.

“Where’s Zoey?” I whisper to the land around me.

I feel the ground heat up beneath me, and Lucia shrieks as a path lights up in front of us. Just like in the Maze.

“So it’s true?” Lucia cries. “You really
are
an Elemental?”

Ignoring Lucia’s questions, I grab her arm and break into a run, following the lit path that leads into the gardens. Lucia and I sprint alongside each other, and for a while the only sound is our panting breaths and our shoes pounding against the dirt and gravel, until the path stops near the Shadow Garden. We turn to stare at each other, and in her eyes I see my own uncertainty reflected.

“I—I can’t go in there,” she stammers.

“We have to.”

I pull her along with me, and suddenly I smell … smoke. Lucia looks at me in horror.

Please,
I pray silently.
Let me have a chance to fix it this time. I can’t lose her.

The gate is ajar. Lucia and I step inside—and I hear us both scream.

The Shadow Garden, now a wilderness of climbing, writhing weeds, is starting to burn once again. A gasoline can lies carelessly on the ground, while a growing flame licks the fallen leaves and inches toward the two figures huddled at the other end of the garden.

“We can go together,” I hear Mrs. Mulgrave say to Zoey, who is wearing a dress I recognize—the very dress from Lucia’s State Room portrait. “It will be so easy. We’ll be rid of them all, and with our Charles again.”

Zoey screams as the flame multiplies in two, and I dart forward. Holding my palms above the flames, I try to concentrate, to make water with my hands even though I’m crying and sweating too hard to think—

The water shoots from my fingers. From the corner of my eye, I can see Zoey’s body quake with shock as she watches me. Relief fills my lungs as the fire goes out—but I’m not done yet.

I pull two gnarled vines from the dirt and aim them in Mrs. Mulgrave’s direction. The first vine ties her arms around her back; the second ties her feet together until she can no longer move. Zoey is free from her clutches. She runs sobbing into my arms, while Mrs. Mulgrave and Lucia both gape at me in fear.

“What
are
you?” Mrs. Mulgrave hisses.

I ignore her question and ask my own.

“What were you doing with my sister?”

“That’s not—she isn’t—” Mrs. Mulgrave blinks, as if seeing Zoey for the first time. “That’s
Lucia.
She’s wearing her clothes, her necklace—”

“I went exploring after you left,” Zoey says through her tears. “And I found this room with a closet full of beautiful clothes—I didn’t realize—”

“It’s okay, Zoey,” I try to assure her. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

I squeeze her hand a little tighter, and with a deep breath, I turn back to Mrs. Mulgrave.