HOUSE OF SHADOWS

The Church of the Spirit met in a large grey house in East Melbourne. In good weather it would have been a pleasant walk from the Whitfields’ cottage, but today the sky was black and the air fragrant with imminent rain and it was from a cab that Ellen caught her first glimpse of the bleak-looking building.

The fence on either side sagged inwards, the palings strung together by ivy, and was overhung by a pair of camellia trees bearing their first creamy blooms. The garden looked as though it had once been lovingly tended, but it was now overgrown with weeds. The house itself was of bluestone, partly concealed by a veranda of wooden fretwork that looked heavy beside the delicate lacework of the neighbouring terraces, the fawn paint cracked and peeling over the faded timber. The arched windows looked to Ellen like hooded eyes, staring out from beneath slate-covered eaves.

The building barely looked lived-in; it certainly didn’t seem like the home of a thriving community. And yet it was here that Harriet intended to live, this looming stone edifice that seemed designed less to welcome callers than to frighten them away.

The sight of the decaying house before her was more chilling than the wind that whipped her skirts around her legs, but Ellen had never allowed foolish emotion to determine her way forward. On a sunny day, the house must look quite different. The impending storm had imbued everything with a gloomy, forbidding light.

She walked through the gate just as the first heavy drops of rain began to fall. If she had any thought of turning back, it was forgotten in her rush to get to shelter. Gathering her skirts, she ran up an uneven brick path with her head bent forward to stop the rain from blinding her, and made it to the tiled veranda just as the shower became a deluge. She did what she could to neaten her hair without a mirror, then gave three loud raps of the brass door knocker and stood back, straightening her dress, to await the answer.

It was not a servant who answered the door but an ageing woman in a black velvet dress trimmed with lace and ruffles that would have been impressive if it hadn’t been a decade out of date. Her silver hair, by contrast, was twisted into a simple coiled plait, and she was taller than Ellen, plump and broad-shouldered. Ellen found it difficult to estimate her age. Her bearing was that of a woman in her fifties, but her careworn face gave the impression of someone who had lived even longer. Could this be the Caroline McLeod whom Harriet found so impressive? Ellen had imagined someone younger and more beautiful: she couldn’t imagine this woman captivating anyone.

‘Yes?’ The woman’s brows were drawn into a wary frown. Ellen could barely hear her over the rattle of the shutters in the ceaseless, gusting wind.

‘My name is Ellen Whitfield.’ She fixed a pleasant smile upon her face. ‘I’m looking for the Church of the Spirit. Do I have the right place?’

The woman’s eyes narrowed as she looked Ellen up and down. ‘What business do you have with Mrs McLeod?’

So this was not the lady herself. The tension in Ellen’s body eased a little.

‘Miss Harriet Kirk is a dear friend of mine,’ she said. ‘She hoped I might attend one of the church’s meetings.’

The woman’s frown faded and the suspicious light vanished from her eyes. ‘A friend of Miss Kirk? You should have said.’

Ellen was not sure how she could have mentioned it any sooner, but resisted the urge to say so.

‘We have no meeting planned today,’ the woman went on, ‘but friends are always welcome. Mrs McLeod is out at the moment, I’m afraid.’

The woman opened the door a little wider for Ellen to step inside, where she stood in awkward silence as the woman closed the door behind her and engaged two separate locks.

‘Can’t be too careful,’ she said, placing the keys on a dark-stained hallstand. ‘There are those who disapprove of what we do here…or at least what they imagine.’ Her tone lightened as she turned back to Ellen. ‘But I should introduce myself. I’m Mrs Robert Plumstead—Margaret—and this is my home.’

Politeness called for Ellen to say that the house was lovely, but the dark hall with its faded floral wallpaper was no more welcoming than the building’s exterior. ‘I’m sorry; I didn’t realise,’ she said instead. ‘The way Harriet spoke of the house, I assumed it was Mrs McLeod’s.’

‘And it is, even if I hold the deed. It’s the church’s, too.’ Her pride made her stand a little taller.

‘Mrs McLeod must be very grateful to you and your husband.’

‘Oh, I’m a widow, dear, twice over. I buried my Robert years before I met Caroline. This place was always too big for a solitary woman. He’s happy now I’m not on my own.’

‘He?’ Ellen asked, although she feared she already knew the answer.

‘Robert,’ Mrs Plumstead said, as though it should have been obvious.

‘Ah, your…’ Ellen’s voice caught a little in her throat. ‘Your late husband.’

Mrs Plumstead seemed not to take offence. ‘You’ve not spoken with spirits before,’ she said. ‘I can see it in the way you look at me. It must all seem rather frightening.’

‘I’m not frightened,’ Ellen said quickly. She hated when people thought her weak.

Mrs Plumstead smiled. ‘A little strange, then?’

‘I…’ What could Ellen say that was both truthful and polite? ‘I struggle to understand your beliefs.’

‘Then that’s why Miss Kirk asked you here, I’m sure.’ Her smile softened her face, although a shadow of sadness lingered in her eyes. ‘It all sounds like magic or trickery until you hear for yourself.’

Ellen thought it best not to test the woman’s cordiality by agreeing. ‘I’m here to learn,’ she said. And it was the truth, or part of it. ‘I want to see what it is that has made my friend so happy when she has known so much grief.’

‘Poor child,’ Mrs Plumstead nodded, and the last vestige of wariness left her face.

When she spoke again, her tone was brisk. A decision, it seemed, had been made. ‘But here’s me making you stand in the hall like a salesman! Please, come sit somewhere more comfortable.’ She ushered Ellen through an open doorway on the left side of the hall. ‘The drawing room,’ she announced, showing Ellen to an overstuffed sofa. ‘I think Miss Kirk is upstairs. I’ll see if I can find her.’

And with that she was gone, leaving Ellen alone to take in her new surroundings. It was here, she assumed, that Caroline McLeod would greet the people who took part in the church’s meetings, but there was nothing in the drawing room’s decoration that suggested such a thing. She had imagined velvet curtains and occult-themed tapestries; perhaps an assortment of crystal balls. In reality, it was a room much like many she had sat in, apart from its unusual size. The furnishings were dated and there was not much light, but the impression was not so much mystical as stranded in time. Just as its owner was clothed in the fashion of a decade before, the drawing room looked back to a time now gone.

It didn’t seem a case of reduced means. The fireplace mantel was topped with fine china ornaments and a table beneath one window housed a small collection of silver vases and trinket bowls; the furniture was upholstered in choice fabrics. In this room alone, there was more of value than in all the Whitfields’ rooms combined. Had something happened, she wondered, to stop the clocks from ticking here—to hold all within the house motionless until it finally turned to dust?

There was the sound of footsteps in the hall, and Ellen rose to greet Harriet. The woman who entered the drawing room, however, was a stranger: tall and underfed, with dark eyes—the darkest Ellen had ever seen—set in an incongruously pale face. She was perhaps in her early twenties, although she had the slouching posture of a girl. In this room of shadows she looked almost otherworldly, with long waves of ash-brown hair that hung loose about her face. The deep plum hue of her dress heightened the whiteness of her skin; it seemed almost as if she might fade away entirely if not for the heavy wool fabric holding her in place. She started when she saw Ellen, the eerie black eyes widening as she let out a quiet gasp.

She composed herself almost immediately. ‘Who are you,’ she demanded, ‘and what are you doing here?’

Ellen did not do well with confrontation. ‘If that’s how you always greet visitors,’ she snapped, ‘it’s no wonder people think ill of your group.’

The woman didn’t falter. ‘Visitors? Busybodies more like.’ She studied Ellen’s dress and face. ‘You’re not a journalist. And your clothes are plain…not a lady here on a lark, then. A Salvationist, is it? Here to save our souls?’

‘I’m no evangelist,’ Ellen said. Was that really what she looked like? One of those grey-faced women who stood on street corners and scolded onlookers for their sins?

‘What, then? There’s no public meeting today.’

‘My friend asked me to come,’ Ellen said, although a part of her rebelled against telling this surly woman anything. It was not her house, after all. She had no right to reproach Ellen for being in it. ‘She wanted me to see for myself the things that she had experienced—although I fancy she must’ve had a warmer welcome than I have, or she’d have never got that far.’

‘A friend?’ The woman had the decency to look a little sheepish.

‘I’ve said all this already, you know. How else do you think I came to be sitting here? Mrs Plumstead was far more hospitable, I have to say.’

‘If you lived here—if you were one of us—you’d understand my suspicion.’

So this woman lived here alongside Harriet. That would go some way to explain the hair, she supposed, although she knew of no other woman who would leave it down so late in the day, even in her own house. How many others was Harriet to share her new home with? Would all of them, Ellen wondered, be as strange as the two she had met so far? She couldn’t imagine wanting to spend an hour with the young woman in front of her, let alone every hour of every day. It was hard to believe Harriet had chosen this.

‘You shan’t have to worry about that,’ she said, just as Harriet herself walked into the room.

‘Worry about what?’ she asked, and moved to embrace Ellen tightly. ‘I’m so glad you decided to come.’

‘You know I’m terrible at saying no to you.’ Ellen ignored her question and luckily Harriet didn’t press her for an answer.

‘I’m glad anyway,’ she said and then looked over to the rude woman. ‘I see you’ve already met Miss McLeod.’

‘Miss?’ Ellen glanced at the woman, then back at Harriet. ‘I thought—’

The stranger said, ‘You’re confusing me with my mother. Not a mistake you’d make if you’d ever met her.’

Harriet frowned slightly, sensing the tension between them. ‘I see you’ve not been properly introduced. Ellen, this is Miss Grace McLeod, Caroline McLeod’s daughter. Grace, this is Miss Ellen Whitfield, my dearest friend.’

Ellen forced herself to smile and nod her head. ‘Miss McLeod.’

The woman’s hostility made more sense now that Ellen understood her connection to the church. She would naturally be protective of her mother, just as Ellen was of William—although she couldn’t imagine Will doing anything to attract the world’s displeasure. He was kind, steady; not at all the type of man who might pretend to talk to ghosts.

Miss McLeod returned the nod, but not the smile. ‘Grace,’ she said, to Harriet as much as to Ellen. ‘My mother says the church is her family. She says there’s no room for formality between friends.’

‘Of course,’ Harriet said, abashed. ‘Old habits…’

Ellen did not care much for the niceties of etiquette, but she resented being grouped in with Caroline McLeod’s dupes. ‘I’m not here to join your church,’ she said. ‘Just to see things for myself.’

‘And I’m grateful,’ Harriet said before Grace had a chance to reply. ‘I should have thought to tell you when to visit. I feel terrible that you came all this way for nothing. There’s no meeting today. Caroline’s not even at home.’

‘Seeing you isn’t nothing.’

Harriet’s cheeks flushed pink. ‘And I’m pleased to see you too, of course. It’s been strange these past few days, not visiting you. But it didn’t feel right. Not with it being William’s home as well.’

Ellen’s gaze flitted towards Grace.

‘It’s all right,’ Harriet told her. ‘Grace knows everything.’

‘Everything?’ Ellen asked, hoping her eyes would communicate what the word alone did not.

Harriet’s blush deepened. ‘Not everything ,’ she said. ‘Not…’ She cleared her throat and began again. ‘Everything about William and my mother.’

Had Harriet told her? Ellen wondered. Could the scam really be explained so easily: Harriet confiding in this woman, who then relayed everything to her mother?

Grace either sensed her suspicion or anticipated it. ‘I know only what I’ve heard at meetings.’

Ellen wasn’t sure she believed it, but there was nothing to be gained by challenging her. At least not with Harriet present. ‘Meetings,’ she said instead. ‘I keep hearing that word, but don’t know what you mean by it. A church service? A seance? A lecture?’

‘Come back tomorrow and you can see for yourself,’ Grace said and then, with no more goodbye than a brief smile in Harriet’s direction, she left the room as swiftly as she had entered it.

Less an invitation than a challenge, Ellen thought; and one she was willing to accept.

‘Well!’ she said, once she could no longer hear the sound of the strange woman’s footsteps. ‘I hope the other members of your new family are more agreeable.’

‘What do you mean?’ Harriet looked genuinely confused.

‘Oh, I suppose the woman who owns this place was polite enough once she realised I wasn’t here to cause trouble, but you have to admit she’s rather strange. And that Grace!’ Ellen wrinkled her nose in distaste. ‘I don’t know how you bear to be in the same room with her.’

‘Grace? But she’s so lovely.’

Ellen stared at her, ever more concerned for her friend’s sanity. ‘Are we talking about the same woman? Tall, odd-looking, was just in this room…’

‘I think she’s rather pretty, actually. And she’s been ever so welcoming. A lot of the others are older, so it’s been nice to talk to someone closer to my own age.’

Ellen felt a spark of jealousy. ‘It sounds like you have all you need here.’ She was not proud of the note of bitterness she heard in her own voice. ‘I’m not sure why you wanted me to come.’

They had been friends too long for Harriet to miss Ellen’s meaning. ‘Because you’re my closest friend,’ she said, ‘and I need you . Lord knows I’ve lost enough this year without losing you as well.’ She moved to take Ellen’s hands and squeezed them tightly before letting them fall. ‘I’m not planning to replace you.’

Her words were reassuring, but she had tilted Ellen’s world on its axis when she called off the engagement, and now Ellen found herself questioning things she’d always considered solid and unchangeable. ‘You did it once before,’ she said.

Harriet sighed. ‘That wasn’t the same thing at all. If I’d thought you…I didn’t realise we saw things differently. But I’ve always been constant in my friendship.’

‘You have,’ Ellen admitted.

Was it Harriet’s fault that Ellen had wanted—believed in—something more? It was Ellen who had made assumptions without asking for clarity, and who still read meaning in things Harriet thought meaningless. She must bear the blame for persisting in her misapprehensions long after they had been proven false.

She had been foolish; childish, perhaps. She knew she was not made as other women were—to be a wife and mother—and she had allowed herself to believe Harriet was the same. It had been an easy dream to give way to when Harriet had been so free with her compliments and kisses. It did seem strange that girls were allowed—even encouraged—to play at romance with each other. Did they all drop the game so quickly when the chance of marriage came along?

Ellen’s feelings were not so mercurial. The words, the embraces, the love she had shared with Harriet were not merely a rehearsal. She had loved Harriet to her full ability; had even been able to celebrate Harriet’s engagement to William because she’d never seen her friend happier. She sometimes thought it would have been easier if she had distanced herself. But she would take the pain of watching her fall in love with William a thousand times over if it meant remaining at her side.

Now, it seemed, Harriet belonged to neither of them. A wound reopened, and all because of Caroline McLeod.

‘Come, then,’ Ellen said, forcing a note of cheer into her voice. ‘Let me see your new home.’

From the street, the house had looked imposing but its true size became apparent as Harriet showed Ellen around its many rooms: Mrs Plumstead’s husband must have been a wealthy man. The opulence was dimmed by at least a decade of inattention, but Ellen could picture in glimpses what it must have looked like when full of life.

Across the hall from the drawing room there was a second reception room, this one a more normal size, furnished in the same dated but expensive taste. The chairs here looked stiff and uninviting, and the looming dark mantel made the whole room feel grim and forbidding. The ceiling paint, peeling in places, had been stained by rising smoke.

‘I shouldn’t like to sleep in here ,’ Ellen murmured.

‘It’s a little unfriendly, isn’t it? Margaret told me her husband met all sorts of important men in here. Perhaps he thought cushions were a show of weakness.’

‘Well that’s just foolish, isn’t it? Even the most commanding of men must surely appreciate a comfortable seat.’

Beyond this room there was a wood-panelled office with an enormous desk covered in papers overlaid thickly with dust. One wall was lined with glass-doored bookcases but the others were bare apart from a large framed map of the East Indies. The ink was faded, although this room was as meagrely lit as the others.

‘Mr Plumstead’s office,’ Harriet said. ‘He had something to do with importing. I don’t think anything’s been moved since he died.’

Ellen didn’t doubt it. Even the air tasted stale. ‘She must miss him terribly.’

‘Less so since he began speaking through Caroline,’ Harriet said. ‘Before that, Margaret had been despondent for a long time.’ She checked the hallway for unseen listeners and lowered her voice. ‘It’s not just her Robert, you see.’

She had followed her first husband to Australia, Harriet said, only for him to die soon afterwards, leaving her alone to care for two infants. Robert Plumstead had been their saviour. She had loved him dearly for it and given him five more children—he had built this house for their growing family. But sickness stalked the Plumsteads mercilessly. Within a decade of moving in here Margaret Plumstead had buried a second husband and seven children, and was now alone in the world.

Ellen was not unmoved by the story, but it was Harriet her heart ached for. No wonder her friend had been drawn to the older woman; they shared a similar pain. She squeezed Harriet’s hand. ‘You have me,’ she said. ‘And William, if you change your mind.’

The noise Harriet made was noncommittal, but she clasped Ellen’s hand tightly for several seconds before leading her out of the room.

The next doorway opened onto the largest dining room Ellen had ever seen, with a table so long it was almost comical; one would have to shout, Ellen thought, to be heard from one end to the other. She smiled at the idea.

‘Yes, it’s quite amazing, isn’t it?’ Harriet commented, misinterpreting her expression.

Amazing was a good word for the room, to be fair, although it was obvious that Harriet meant it as a compliment, while Ellen would not go that far. The proportions were truly astonishing, as was the number of chairs tucked beneath the table: eight on each side, the richly coloured upholstery worn where it had been rubbed by the backs of countless diners. They were well spaced, too. There would have been room for more if needed.

A grand painting took up most of the wall behind the head of the table; Ellen recognised a much younger Margaret Plumstead beside a tall, bearlike man with an incongruously kind face, a flock of children arranged about them. A shiver passed through her, knowing that not one had lived to adulthood. She didn’t believe in spirits, but this house was certainly full of ghosts.

When Harriet had announced her plan to live here, Ellen had wondered how the church could possibly have the space. Now she began to wonder just how many other people called this place their home. There were several other rooms on the ground floor: a chilly washroom, tiled from floor to ceiling; a musty-smelling library; a surprisingly cosy parlour; and, of course, the kitchen, scullery and laundry, which could be reached through a door covered in the same floral paper as the wall surrounding it, so that from a distance it was invisible but for its small brass handle. All were empty apart from the parlour.

Here, they startled an elderly woman from her needlework. ‘Mrs Rutherford,’ Harriet introduced her.

‘You must call me Jane,’ the woman insisted, her words issuing indistinctly from a mouth almost entirely bereft of teeth. ‘We’re all family here.’

This felt shockingly disrespectful to Ellen, who had been raised to esteem her elders. But it would be equally rude to ignore the older woman’s directive. Ellen resolved to think of her as Mrs Rutherford and call her Jane only to her face.

They climbed a grand marble staircase lit by three high stained-glass windows that depicted bright citrus trees laden with fruit, so that the treads were dappled with orange and green light. Upstairs, there was an abundance of bedrooms and two bathrooms: a luxury that seemed almost unbelievable to Ellen. Most of the doors were closed, but Harriet briefly showed her Margaret Plumstead’s bedroom, the largest, and the room—almost as sizeable—in which Caroline McLeod slept.

‘Some of the women share rooms,’ Harriet told Ellen as they stood at the open doorway to a third bedroom. It was more modest than the others, sparsely furnished with two small beds, a wardrobe and a dressing table. ‘Annie and Frances are in here.’

It seemed the right moment to ask a question that had been worrying at Ellen’s mind. ‘It’s only women, then? You won’t be sharing your home with strange men?’

Harriet’s eyes widened. ‘Of course not!’

‘I wasn’t sure whether men were among the members of the church.’

‘They attend meetings sometimes. Caroline helps them when she can, but they rarely come a second time. They don’t like the thought of a woman seeing their hurts.’

Ellen could understand that. Only William and Harriet saw her at her most fragile, and even then she felt exposed. ‘Does she mind?’ she asked. ‘That they don’t return?’

‘If she does, she’s never said so.’ Harriet lowered her voice. ‘If you ask me, I think she prefers things as they are. She’s very devoted to her husband, but some men look at a widow and see a woman waiting for another man.’ She waved Ellen into a room at the very end of the hall. ‘This is where I’ll sleep.’

Harriet’s room contained a single large bed with head and foot shaped from rich burr walnut. The carving was simple, but clearly the work of an experienced craftsman: perfectly symmetrical and artfully designed. It was covered with a quilt that Ellen recognised from Harriet’s former bedroom, brought as a memento of her home. There was a dressing table and wardrobe—also burr walnut—along with a washstand and a small table with two chairs. It might have seemed cheerful but for the heavy curtains that, although pulled open, still blocked much of the morning light.

‘It’s cosy when the lamps are lit,’ Harriet said, as though she had heard what Ellen was thinking. ‘And the bed is very comfortable.’

‘It all seems perfectly…adequate,’ Ellen told her.

And it was. But there was nothing friendly about it, nothing inviting. Had it once been a guest room? Or had the ill-fated children slept here once they outgrew the nursery? If so, they had left no traces behind.

The thought unnerved her a little; she made an effort to brighten her tone. ‘Well. Shall I help you unpack?’

She could hear voices as she and Harriet walked back down the broad staircase. Harriet’s room remained cheerless in Ellen’s opinion, but at least it felt inhabited now, filled with things Harriet had brought from home. They had stuffed the wardrobe with her dresses, shawls and underthings, and made the room as welcoming as they could. A pair of china dogs now sat upon the mantel and a brightly embroidered cloth lay on the washstand, beneath the plain jug and basin. They had covered the little table with a similar cloth, and had arranged Harriet’s brushes and trinket boxes on the dressing table.

Harriet had made Ellen promise to visit regularly. Although Ellen felt uncomfortable frequenting a stranger’s home, she had never been able to resist that tone of pleading in her friend’s voice. ‘I shall come when I can,’ she had said, but by the time they left Harriet’s bedroom she had somehow agreed to return the very next day.

Downstairs, Ellen could hear voices in the drawing room. She hurried past the open doorway, fearing another encounter with the ill-mannered Grace, but when she reached the heavy front door she remembered the two locks that stood between her and freedom. Harriet would know where the keys were, but she was not an ally in this.

‘Oh, Caroline’s back,’ she said, grasping Ellen’s hand. ‘I’m so pleased you’ll be able to meet her.’

‘She sounds busy,’ Ellen protested. ‘I can meet her another time.’

Harriet glanced into the drawing room. ‘It’s only Grace and Margaret with her,’ she said. ‘She won’t mind at all.’

Resigned to her fate, Ellen followed Harriet into the room.

She had pictured Caroline McLeod as an older version of Grace: pale and black-eyed and overly lean. The woman now before Ellen, however, looked nothing like her daughter. She was broad where Grace was narrow, well-fleshed where Grace was little more than bones. Her hair was brown amid the silver, but a warm shade of chestnut instead of Grace’s ashy tones. The same warmth coloured her complexion and her full cheeks shone with a healthy pink glow. But it was her eyes that were most striking, the irises a deep, clear shade of blue that was startling even from a distance. Grace’s dark eyes were unnerving, seeming to stare right through you. Caroline’s eyes, although equally remarkable, enticed while her daughter’s repelled.

‘Caroline!’ Harriet hurried to clasp the woman’s hands.

The medium’s responding smile was gentle, almost maternal, and Harriet seemed to glow with reflected light. Ellen could see, now, how devoted Harriet was to this woman. She had thought that it would be easy to convince her friend that her new beliefs were foolish, but she had not understood the depth of her involvement. It was not only the false spirits that had bewitched Harriet, but Caroline McLeod herself.

Ellen stood, feeling awkward, and waited for Harriet to introduce her. But it was Grace who spoke first.

‘She’s the one I told you about.’

Grace stood beside the empty fireplace, apart from the rest of the group. Her head was lowered, as if to conceal her expression beneath the waves of her unpinned hair, but she had spoken boldly. Ellen thought it likely that sulkiness, not timidity, caused her to slouch in such a way.

The sound of her own name caught Ellen’s attention and she forced her eyes back to the other women. Harriet was looking at her expectantly, as though she had asked Ellen a question and was waiting for her response. ‘Uh…pleased to meet you, Mrs McLeod,’ she ventured.

If she had misspoken, McLeod was polite enough to ignore her blunder. ‘And you, my dear, although I insist you call me Caroline,’ she said, bestowing that same, tender smile upon Ellen. Her eyes were even more arresting, Ellen noted, when you were their focus. ‘Harriet speaks well of you.’

‘I should hope so,’ Ellen said, a little flustered. ‘That is…I mean…I’m glad.’

Harriet laughed. ‘She’s normally more eloquent,’ she teased.

‘I imagine it’s quite overwhelming meeting so many new people at once,’ Mrs McLeod— Caroline —said kindly. It would take some time for Ellen to become comfortable with the church’s dislike of appropriate forms of address. ‘We’re not at all frightening once you get to know us.’

‘I’m not afraid,’ Ellen said quickly, gaze flickering towards Grace and then back to her mother.

‘Then I hope you’ll visit us again. I’m sure you’ll have a warmer welcome, next time. Isn’t that right, Grace?’

‘Of course, Mother.’ The words were clipped, as though it took a great effort for Grace to say them.

When Ellen glanced back towards her she found that Grace was already looking her way. Their eyes met and Ellen imagined she could see the reflection of her own aversion in Grace’s dark gaze. She refused to be intimidated, however, and it was Grace who first looked away, ducking back beneath the curtain of her hair.

‘You must forgive me for being so suspicious.’ Margaret Plumstead had remained silent up to that moment, and Ellen had almost forgotten she was there, preoccupied as she was with the two McLeods. ‘I’m rather overprotective of our little family.’

‘And of me,’ Caroline added, although there was no disapproval in her tone.

‘With good cause! You wouldn’t believe the audacity of some of the people who come here,’ she said to Ellen. ‘They’ve a point to prove, and they don’t care at all whom they harm along the way.’

Ellen felt a pang of guilt but did not let it sway her. She wasn’t here to hurt anyone; in fact, she was here to protect Harriet from being further harmed. She didn’t care what these people believed in or what strange rituals they took part in—just that they had Harriet under their sway.

‘I’ve asked Ellen to come back tomorrow,’ Harriet was saying. ‘For the public meeting.’

‘And you’ll join us?’

Ellen felt the full weight of Caroline’s magnetic gaze upon her and found it difficult to refuse. ‘I’ll do my best,’ she said, knowing that curiosity and her fears for Harriet would ensure that she returned.

‘Tomorrow, then,’ Caroline said, as though it was decided.

Ellen saw Harriet’s grateful smile and realised that it was.