“The idea that a husband and wife should sleep apart is ridiculous,” he rumbled. “That’s for aristos, not peasants like me.” He tugged on her wrist, and she had no choice but to edge back beneath the covers. “Whatever our arrangement for now, know this, Anne. You are my wife. I am your husband. We will always share a bed.”

Simple words, yet her heartbeat raced when she heard them. “As you like.”

He released his grip on her, and exhaled. “Don’t like it at all. Not now. But I will ... at some point. Now sleep.”

He continued to baffle her. Yet he was her husband, and according to the law and to the Church, that made him her master. “Good night, Leo.”

“Good night, Anne.”

He rolled over heavily. Within a few minutes, his breathing slowed and deepened. He slept.

Leaving her alone and awake, staring into the dark.

It didn’t surprise Anne to wake up alone. She had slept alone her whole life, and to stretch in bed and find the space beside her empty was no different than any other morning. Except, as she stretched, her arms wide, her fingers did not meet the edge of the bed. And the sheets smelled of tobacco and spice, not lavender.

This was not her bed. She suddenly remembered: she was married now. Married, but a virgin. Leo had touched her, and it had been both wonderful and terrible, until fear had overtaken her with humiliating ferocity. He’d been kind, and stopped. They had then spent the whole of the night together, chaste as schoolfellows. Now he was gone.

Her eyes opened to images of menacing flowers and vines tipped with thorns. The bed hangings. She pushed the fabric back to reveal the room. Someone had come in during the early hours to tend the fire, but now Anne was by herself. The drawn curtains kept the chamber dark, and it seemed that shadows congealed in the corners, trying to take shape.

She shook her head at her foolishness. Merely an adjustment to life in a new house.

The gilt bronze clock on the mantel showed the time to be well after nine. Not an unusual time for her to awaken, but perhaps Leo liked to rise earlier. He probably waited for her to join him for breakfast downstairs. Though their marriage had begun in a rather ... unconventional manner, she did not want him thinking her indolent and spoiled. He was a man of business, of industry. As his wife, she should be just as industrious.

Anne slid out of bed. As she padded toward the closet to make use of the close stool, the chill of the floor seeped into her feet and up her legs. Baffling, that. The fire should have taken the cold from the room.

After tending to her needs and washing up, she emerged from the closet and found the curtains pulled back and an apron-wearing girl waiting for her.

“Good morning, madam.” The girl bobbed a curtsy. She couldn’t have been more than a year younger than Anne. “I’m Meg, your maid.”

Anne had always shared a maid with her mother, as the family could not afford the expense of two, so to have one all to herself seemed a tremendous luxury. It seemed odd, though, that Meg had appeared without being summoned. Perhaps things ran differently in a household that never went into arrears and paid their servants on time.

“Has my clothing been unpacked?” Nearly all of her garments had come straight from the mantua maker, but some were hers from before.

“Yes, madam. Is there a particular gown you want?”

Anne realized she had no idea what constituted her new trousseau. Everything had been purchased so quickly, with hardly any consultation on her part. Still, she didn’t fancy the idea of the servants knowing that she’d come to their master nearly penniless.

“I trust you, Meg,” she said.

The girl brightened and hastened to the other clothespress. Eventually, she emerged with an open gown of peach-and-green Indian cotton, as well as all necessary undergarments. Anne resisted the impulse to peer into the clothespress to see what other gowns had been purchased for her, just as she fought the urge to admire the quality and newness of the gown Meg now helped her into.

As Meg fastened the dress, Anne looked at herself in the cheval glass and felt as though she put on another woman’s skin. The thought made her shudder, thinking that a woman’s flayed body lay somewhere, its muscles and innards exposed as the corpse cooled. She had a sudden vision of an attic chamber, perhaps in this very house, where other brides’ bodies hung.

You haven’t married Bluebeard, for heaven’s sake.

As if to counter her own fears, she said aloud, “Do hurry, Meg. I want to join my husband for breakfast.”

The maid blinked up at her. “He’s gone, madam.”

Now it was Anne’s turn to look blank. “Gone?”

“I only started working here last week, making ready for you, but the master always leaves the house by seven.”

“Where does he go?”

“To Exchange Alley, I reckon.” Meg glanced at her from beneath the frill of her mob cap, perplexed by Anne’s ignorance of her own husband.

“Of course,” Anne said, far more brightly than she felt. She pasted on a smile. “I’ll just take chocolate and rolls in here, then.”

“The master had Cook fix you a proper breakfast. Eggs, bacon, seed cakes. It’s waiting for you downstairs.”

She couldn’t refuse, not without possibly insulting the cook. Since Anne would be responsible for consulting with the cook about meals, she must be politic and make herself eat a meal she did not truly want. “Sounds delightful.”

After Meg finished her toilette, Anne quit the bedchamber. The hallway was very quiet, almost sepulchral in its stillness, barely interrupted by the sounds of servants attending to their daily tasks elsewhere in the house. If Anne had not left Meg in the bedchamber only a moment prior, she might believe herself completely alone. Maybe even the last person alive in the entire world.

Stop this ridiculous ghoulishness! She never indulged in thoughts of the macabre—she stayed clear of the hangings at Tyburn, and even went out of her way to avoid the occasional traitor’s head piked on Temple Bar.

It was simply nervousness at her unfamiliar surroundings, and trepidation as a new wife. Last night had been very tumultuous, so there might be lingering emotions. But there was truly nothing to fear. These awkward first days would soon pass.

Yet as she made her way down the stairs, that prospect seemed dim. It felt even farther away as she entered the dining room. Without all the guests from the day before, the chamber was an empty cavern scoured by gray morning light. All signs of the wedding celebration were gone—not even a crumb or wine stain on the carpet. Almost as if it had never happened, save for the music and laughter ringing in Anne’s remembrance like broken glass.

The large table was laid for one, and as Anne moved farther into the room, a footman hurried in from a side door to pull out her chair. She smiled her thanks and sat, and helped herself to far more food than she wanted. There was nothing she could do but force food down her throat as the footman stood in attendance. Everything tasted like pasteboard.

“Please tell Cook that the meal is delicious,” she said to the footman, who bowed. “I trust we will have more exquisite dishes for supper.”

“Suppose so,” the footman said. “Seeing as how the master don’t take no meals here, I wouldn’t know.”

“No meals at all?”

“Maybe a cold collation late at night, but he’s often out.”

“Are we to expect him today?”

The footman shrugged.

Leo’s absence at the table and in the house was a silent humiliation. Had she so little to offer her husband beyond her bloodline that he willingly left their bed to attend to business? She had believed him compassionate when he’d forestalled the consummation of their marriage. Yet now, with her alone in his house, alone in every way, she wondered if it had been kindness or merely disinterest. If the scandal rags were to be believed, Leo was accustomed to wild living, indulging in every vice. Nothing checked his desires, his impulses.