ONE
“What are your feelings on mummies?”
I look across the drawing-room table at Annis. We’re in the middle of a brutal game of cards. Sure, I suspect “cards” and “brutal” should never be used in the same sentence, but this is Annis, who could turn Go Fish into a blood sport.
This particular game is écarté, which is similar to whist, except it’s for two people. While playing a card game with my boss’s sister might seem like a reprieve from my housemaid chores, it’s actually the opposite, because those chores aren’t going anywhere. This just means I’ll be stuck folding the damn laundry after I should be done with work and chilling.
But what Annis wants, Annis gets, and if she demands I play cards with her, I don’t have much choice. Okay, yes, I could refuse. After all, I’m not really a housemaid in 1869 Edinburgh. I’m a twenty-first-century police detective who is—for reasons the universe refuses to divulge—trapped in the body of Dr. Duncan Gray’s twenty-year-old housemaid.
Gray knows my story. His other sister, Isla, knows it. But they’re not here, having abandoned me for some secret mission that I’m not pissy about at all. I’m stuck with Annis, who doesn’t know my secret, and if I tell her that entertaining unannounced guests isn’t my job? Well, that isn’t something a Victorian housemaid tells a dowager countess.
So I’m playing écarté, and she’s slaughtering me, despite the fact that I’ve actually been getting good at this game. No one plays like Annis. At least the bloodshed is only figurative. This time.
“Mummies?” She waves a hand in front of my face. “Are you listening to me, Mallory?”
“What are my … feelings? On … mummies?”
“Have you been nipping whisky while my sister is out? That might explain this.” She waves at the cards. “The only other explanation is that you feel obligated to let me win. I expected better of you.”
I ignore the jabs. With Annis, you choose your battles, or you won’t stop fighting until you drop of exhaustion and she declares herself victor.
“I fear, Lady Annis, that I am a poor substitute for Dr. Gray and Mrs. Ballantyne. I do not travel in the proper social circles, and while I am certain there is some custom where one stops in the midst of a card game to ask one’s partner’s feelings on mummies, I do not know the appropriate response. Please forgive me. I am such a dunce.”
Her eyes narrow. “No, you are rude, disrespectful, and sarcastic. Fortunately for you, I find those all admirable qualities in a young woman, so long as she is not my maid. Now, mummies. Your feelings on mummies.”
“You are talking about Egyptian mummies, yes? This isn’t some secret code among the nobility, where ‘mummies’ really means ‘morphine’? I have strong feelings on morphine. It is bad. Don’t take it. There, now, I want to discard these.” I slap down two cards.
“There is nothing wrong with a little morphine under the right circumstances. The problem is laudanum, which dulls the wits. That I cannot abide. But yes, I mean Egyptian mummies. Have you ever wanted to unwrap one?”
I blink. Did I hear that right? I peer at Annis, focused on her eyes, which seem as cobra-bright as ever. No signs of whisky or morphine.
“Have I ever wanted to … unwrap a mummy?” I say.
“And see what’s underneath all those bandages.”
I relax. Right. I remember where I am. Victorian Scotland during the rise of the British Empire, when Egyptian mummies were all the rage. What seems like a non sequitur to me is just Annis making actual conversation. She must have read an article on an excavation and thought it might interest me.
I’m actually flattered that she’d make the effort. That’s not usually Annis’s style. We do get on, though, despite my grumbling about her roping me into the role of companion. Lady Annis Leslie is not a nice woman. But she is interesting, and as long as she continues to repair her relationship with Gray and Isla, I can admit that I don’t mind her company.
“A withered corpse,” I say, as I examine my cards. “That’s what lies beneath the wrappings. A desiccated human corpse without a stomach, liver, lungs, or intestines. Oh, and the brains. They take out the brains through the nose.”
Silence. With most people, I’d presume I’d offended their sensibilities. But the woman across from me is a Gray, born to a father who made his fortune as an undertaker and a mother who shared her love of science with all her children. In this house, no one is going to faint at the mention of pulling brains out nostrils. Instead, it’d be an invitation to a heated discussion of the procedure.
So when Annis goes quiet, I look up, confused.
“Where did you read that?” she asks.
From the way she’s staring at me, I want to tartly remind her that I can read, very well thank you. But then she might insist on knowing exactly where I read it, and I wouldn’t know what to say, so I tell her the truth. “I’m sure I’ve read it somewhere, but I’ve seen mummies, too. In museums.”
“Which one?”
I go still as I realize my mistake. This is the source of her confusion—we aren’t in a world where kids go to museums on school trips, especially not girls like Catriona Mitchell, whose body I inhabit.
I flutter my hand. “I do not recall. Somewhere on my travels.”
“What travels?” She peers at me. “You are a nearly illiterate housemaid who has likely never left Edinburgh.”
“I am not nearly illiterate. I realize that I had presented myself as such, before the injury to my head, but I now suspect that I always knew how to read. I chose not to for some unknown reason. My reading skills are, in fact, excellent.”
“Head injury” is the excuse given for those who don’t know my secret. I crossed over when Catriona and I were both strangled, and she did receive a head injury, one that left her unconscious for days. Gray explains my personality changes—and peccadilloes—as brain trauma. It also lets me use my own name—I feel like a different person, and so I have asked to be called Mallory instead of Catriona.
I sip my tea. “Now, let us return to this rousing game of—”
“You have never left Edinburgh, Mallory.”
“Of course I have. I was in Leith just last week.”
Her eyes narrow. “You did not see a mummy in Leith.”
“Are you certain? One sees all sorts of oddities in Leith. Why, on this last trip—”
“There are no museums in Leith.”
“Perhaps it is a secret museum. I am sorry, Lady Annis, if you have never been invited to tour it, but they have a strict policy against admitting those accused of poisoning their husbands, even if they were found innocent.” At this point, I’m willing to do anything to distract her, including bringing up her recent past.
“I am certain you think that is very amusing.”
“As do you, who finds a way to bring it into most conversations. I do not know where I saw a mummy, Lady Annis. That is part of the damage to my brain. I only recall seeing one. Perhaps I heard someone speaking of it, and I misremember the story as having experienced it myself. The mind is a mysterious thing.”
“As you keep reminding me, whenever I point out that you do not, in any way, behave like a twenty-year-old housemaid.”
“Housemaids behave in all sorts of ways. As Catriona, I was a thief with a clear tendency toward sociopathy. As Mallory, I am, as you put it, rude, disrespectful, and sarcastic. If you prefer sociopathy…”
“I do not know, having never heard the word.”
“My apologies. Again”—I tap my head—“this causes all sorts of problems, including my propensity for inventing new language. I am only lucky to have found such a tolerant family, willing to overlook my foibles.”
“No housemaid should know the word ‘foible.’”
“Have I used it incorrectly?”
She shakes her head. “You have far too much fun teasing me with whatever secrets you hold.”
“I hold none. Not even in this hand of cards, which is wretched. Now, if I may be so bold, Lady Annis, may I ask why you mentioned mummies?”
“Perhaps because I was about to offer an opportunity a girl like you is unlikely to encounter in her lifetime. However, as you insist on needling me most disrespectfully, I am inclined to rescind the offer.”
“You cannot rescind what you did not offer.” I peer at her. “It’s something about mummies?”
“An unwrapping party.”
“A … mummy-unwrapping party?”
She flaps a hand. “They call it a scientific demonstration, but it is a party. An evening get-together at the home of Sir Alastair Christie, newly returned from Egypt with two mummies, one of which he intends to unwrap, in what may well be the event of the season—or the week, at least. The unwrapping will be done by Sir Alastair, who is also a surgeon with the Royal Infirmary. Sir Alastair is quite the bore and will insist on lecturing, too, but it is a small price to pay to see a mummy unwrapped.”
I school my expression. I’ve learned to do that a lot here, just as I’ve learned not to actually speak to outsiders the way I’ve been talking to Annis.
I’m sure at some point, if Annis remains in our lives, she’ll need to know the truth. But no one—particularly me—is rushing to tell her just yet. It does, however, give me the excuse to rumple the composure of Gray and Isla’s unflappable elder sister.
As for a mummy unwrapping, yes, I will fully admit that ten-year-old Mallory would have salivated at the thought. Thirty-year-old Mallory is horrified. It’s like hosting a party to dig up a grave and ogle the corpse within. Except even Victorian Scots would know that was wrong. This is acceptable because the person inside those wrappings is Egyptian. I don’t expect Annis to understand that, even if Gray—her half brother—is a man of color himself.
Does the idea of unwrapping a mummy offend me? Yep. Would it offend everyone in my own time? Nope. Would everyone in this time be okay with it? Nope. I suspect that’s one reason this unwrapping is being swathed in the respectable cloak of science.
“You’re inviting me to this … party?” I say carefully.
“I am inviting Duncan and Isla, who may bring you and that detective friend.”
“Hugh, Lady Annis,” I say. “His name is Hugh McCreadie, and you have known him more than half your life, as he is your brother’s best friend.”
“Yes, yes. Hugh. He may come.”
“I thought this was an exclusive party. You can just add a plus-four to your invitation?”
“I do as I wish,” she says. “I am Lady Annis Leslie.” She sips her tea and sets the cup down with a decisive click. “The only reason I have been invited is to add an air of delicious scandal to the proceedings. The notorious widowed countess.”
“Ah.”
“So I decided that if they want scandal…” She trails off with an elegant shrug.
“You’ll give them scandal,” I say. “By extending the invitation to your chemist sister, illegitimate brother, and their detective friend … along with the housemaid your brother insists on calling his assistant.”
Her lips curve in a smile. “Precisely.”
I sigh. “This sounds like a very bad idea.”
“All the best ideas are.”
I’m opening my mouth when the back door clicks open. I won’t say I’ve been listening for it. I won’t say I have to restrain myself from leaping up like an abandoned puppy hearing her family return. If any of that is true, I blame Annis and this endless game of écarté.
“Go to him,” Annis says with a sigh. Then her brows rise. “Oh, do not give me that look, child. The only person you fool is my brother, who is too endlessly distracted to notice.”
I don’t bother arguing. Let Annis have her fun. I perked up because both Isla and Gray are home, and I might discover what they were up to, which could be something exciting, like the start of a new case.
I walk with all due dignity from the drawing room and down the stairs to the ground level, where I can hear Isla’s voice. When my footsteps click closer, she calls, “Mallory?”
“Coming.”
I see Isla first. She’s a handsome thirty-four-year-old woman, about a half foot taller than me, with pale skin, freckles, and copper curls. Gray is behind her. Three years younger than his sister, roughly six feet, broad-shouldered, with a square jaw, brown skin and eyes, and wavy dark hair already breaking free of its pomade.
They are in the rear foyer, removing winter outerwear.
Isla smiles. “Mallory. We have brought you a present.”
She gestures, and only then do I notice the young woman nearly shrunk into the shadows. She is about eighteen, tiny and fine-boned, wearing a brown dress that makes her resemble a wren. A wren ready to take flight at the first opportunity.
“Lorna?” Isla says. “This is Mallory. It is her job you will be taking over as our housemaid.”
“Another one?” says a voice. I glance up to see Annis descending the stairs.
“I thought I was choosing a maid for you,” Annis says.
“No, dear Annis.” Isla folds her gloves with care. “You offered to do so, and we told you no. Absolutely, unreservedly no. We have very specific requirements—”
“Which I understand perfectly, having grown up in this house. What is this? The fourth girl you’ve hired to take Mallory’s place?”
“Third.”
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