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wing?” she asked Claude when he turned along the gallery.
    “No one. I don’t think they’re used.”
    “I want to see the rooms our mothers had when they were young,” Lizzie told him. “Are those the empty ones?”
    “Let’s find out,” Maggie suggested.
    “Remember, walk softly and on no account must you giggle.”
    Maggie rather doubted that seeing her mother’s old room was a laughing matter, but she took his point. It would not make the grands like her any better if she were caught snooping about without permission—she hadn’t missed the fact that only Lizzie had been invited to treat Seacombe House as her own home.
    The first room was decorated in a soft green with white trim. The bed had no old-fashioned hangings, but rather a gauzy canopy that was held up by wide grosgrain ribbons in a darker green. Combs and brushes had been laid out upon the dressing-table as if their owner would step in to use them at any moment. On the nightstand lay a book, as if put aside the evening before.
    “Maggie, look. It’s a copy of Aesop’s Fables —the book that Mama used to read to us when we were small.”
    On the flyleaf was written in a girlish hand:
     
    Elaine Seacombe, her book,
    in hopes that it may strengthen her character
     
    “I would say it worked,” Maggie remarked. “Your mother had no shortage of character, from all accounts.”
    “So this was her room.” Lizzie closed the book and laid it down as she had found it. She opened the wardrobe, but if she had hoped to find dresses from decades ago, and hats and ribbons that might have told her something of her mother’s tastes, she was disappointed. The shelves contained nothing but linens and the winter spread for the bed. Its cubbyholes were empty, but in the drawers of the dresser, a faint scent rose from the paper that still lined them.
    Lavender, with a hint of lemon.
    Instantly, Maggie felt as though she were being enfolded in loving arms, pressing her nose to warm skin and breathing it in. A pang of loss rippled through her at the memory.
    “She wore that scent,” Maggie said. “I remember.”
    Lizzie nodded. “I do, too. Fancy it still being in the drawers when everything else has been cleared away. I don’t suppose we’ll find anything of her, will we?”
    “I wonder why not? She was the good one.”
    At the door, Tigg stirred, as if someone had poked him in the ribs. Claude was standing guard outside, empty rooms having no interest for him, but Tigg had risked the impropriety of being in a bedroom with two young ladies to offer them his silent support.
    “Don’t say that, Mags,” he said softly.
    “Well, she was. She was the one who married well, who became stepmother to the only boy who could be heir to the shipping empire, who did everything right.”
    “Who was killed for it,” Lizzie pointed out, her voice hollow.
    “That was not her fault.” She slipped an arm around Lizzie’s waist. “If what you remember is the truth, she died protecting us. Which proves my point. Come, let’s see if anything remains of my mother in this house.”
    The other bedroom was painted in a rose pink so soft that it was nearly cream, and the medallions on the ceiling and the wainscoting had likewise been painted white. Again, there was no indication that a young lady had grown up in this room, or dressed for a ball or giggled with her sister or daydreamed in the window seat, which looked out toward the east and would have caught the morning sun over the distant rooftops of their less important neighbors.
    After one comprehensive glance, Maggie went straight to the top bureau drawer and bent to breathe in whatever scent might be left there.
    Cedar.
    No paper. What a disappointment.
    A quick search of the closet—no wardrobe here— and the other drawers produced nothing but linen and a quantity of writing paper bearing the Seacombe crest of a stone arch with a wave coming through it.
    A murmur down the hall made Maggie glance up at the