PROLOGUE
“It does not do to trust people too much.”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
What was it about hats that always seemed to catch Marigold Manners’s eye?
This hat was outlandish—judged by Marigold’s decidedly less flamboyant taste—an oversized, sodden, blue velvet tam-o’-shanter with an elaborate spray of pheasant feathers bristling out of a shining brooch.
Had she seen it before? No matter, someone had likely paid a very pretty penny for the chapeau and brooch and would want it back, even if it were dripping from its dousing in the lake. Let that be a lesson to young ladies to secure their fashionable headpieces with sturdy hatpins, especially while broaching the decidedly brisk fall winds coursing along the shore of Lake Waban.
Marigold shaded her eyes to look back up the hill, judging the distance to the gothic pile of College Hall, where she would need to return the hat if it were to be reunited with whichever young collegian had been so careless as to lose it. Or perhaps she would just take the hat with her, so as not to be late for her appointment at the boathouse.
But as she stepped off the path, careful of her footing in the soft, marshy ground along the edge of the dock, her gaze went beyond the hat, to the trailing skein of dark hair tangled in the reeds, rippling with the motion of the waves. And to the unmistakable shape of a hand, pale and shimmering white like the belly of a fish, below the surface of the clear, cold water.
Recognition screamed through her in the same instant panic propelled her forward, sloshing deeper, reaching frantically into the icy water, hoping against hope that this time she would not be too late.
Boston, Massachusetts
October 1894
Marigold Manners paused in the chilly twilight along Back Bay’s Park Drive and gazed at the row of townhouses glowing in the gaslight.
They were the sort of elegant, substantial houses that made one think nothing bad or tiresome or troubling could ever happen within. That if you lived there, you could not be hungry or worried or plagued by any of the ills of people who lived elsewhere, in meaner, less well-kept houses. They were the sort of houses that inspired equal amounts of jealousy and devotion. The kind one wished one had grown up in.
But the fact that Marigold had grown up in just such a house had taught her there was no true buffer against illness or misfortune. That grand houses could conceal ugly truths just as easily—if not more easily—than the meanest hovel.
That evening, with the sharp edges of the autumn wind scratching at the corners of her eyes, Marigold felt she would always be on the outside looking in. Always looking into the darkness hidden by the light. Always suspecting, if not expecting, the worse.
Murder, she supposed, had made her see wickedness in every corner.
Murder, and finding out she really wasn’t who she thought she was.
“Marigold?” A cultured voice called from the dark before a portal was pushed wide in welcome. “There you are, darling!” Isabella Dana, friend, confidante, and all-around bonne vivante, ushered Marigold into her townhouse’s opulent cocooning warmth. “I was beginning to grow concerned. It’s gone quite dark.”
“I am here, never fear.” Marigold dashed away the self-indulgent tears and pushed aside the lingering chill of her malaise. She was a rational creature ruled by logic, not girlish emotions.
She pasted on a smile before she went in to be cocooned, carefully wiping her walking boots upon the polished iron scraper. One didn’t track leaf dirt into such a house. Not if one wished to be invited back. And Marigold most fervently wished to be invited back.
She had nowhere else to go.
No. That was her strange melancholy restlessness, the hazy, dissatisfying feeling of having no true purpose of her own. In former years, the arrival of fall had always made Marigold glad. The start of fall school term, with its promising new beginnings had cheered her.
But without any money, there was no return to school.
No purpose.
Isabella, on the other hand, was fulsome with both money and purpose. “Come into the drawing room. There’s a fire laid to chase off the chill.” She hooked her arm through Marigold’s. “I’ve poured sherry.”
“Thank you,” Marigold unpinned her hat and accepted her friend’s hospitality for the gracious gift it was. It really was a marvelous thing to have rich friends.
But there on the tray that held the sherry decanter and two glasses was also a freshly pressed set of handkerchiefs. And a waxy beige envelope.
The lingering misapprehension crept back along the line of Marigold’s shoulders like a stray cat. “What is that?”
gram has come for you.”
Marigold felt the unwelcome kick of dread in her midsection but would not give in to its tawdry clutch. “A wire doesn’t always mean bad news.”
“Good news arrives with fresh flowers,” Isabella countered. “Bad news shows up uninvited and unaccompanied, wearing beige like a mother-in-law. Hence the sherry. It’s from New York,” she warned. “The telegram, not the sherry.”
From New York, Marigold might expect the telegram to be from her half-sister, Daisy Manners Endicott, or Daisy’s husband of a few months, Tad Endicott, who had recently relocated from Boston to Manhattan to start his publishing career. Or perhaps from her twin brother, Seviah—how strange it was to even think those words—who had been appearing on the vaudeville circuit in the city. Or perhaps from her dear friend Lucy Dove, her half-brother Wilburt’s half-sister, who had recently traveled to the metropolis in search of a publisher for her remarkable book teaching cookery.
All of whom were now far too dear to Marigold to bear being the subject of bad news.
She took a quick, fortifying sip of the rich, golden wine before she calmly took the folded missive from the tray. She refused to let her hands shake.
She ripped open the envelope.
“Your sister?” Isabella was clearly thinking along the same lines as she.
“No,” Marigold answered, before she was nearly overcome with surprise. “Oh, gracious!” She covered her mouth to keep from gaping like a goldfish.
“I knew it!” Isabella instantly wrapped an arm around Marigold, lest she succumb to an unseemly swoon. “What has happened?”
“Nothing,” Marigold managed over her smile—and her absolute astonishment. “Everything. It’s—” She swallowed around the unexpected lump in her throat. “It is the very last thing I might have expected. You may congratulate me, my dear friend, for it seems I finally have a profession! Mr. Matthew White—one of the editors Tad Endicott suggested to me—has bought my story of the Great Misery Island murders, to be serialized in The Argosy literary magazine!”
“Oh, Marigold, darling!” Isabella put a hand to her stylishly rounded bosom in relief. “What excellent news.” She clasped Marigold’s hand in delight. “It’s not exactly Scribner’s, but it’s just as I told you it would be.”
“Naturally,” Marigold agreed, for indeed, Isabella had predicted her success. In fact, without Isabella’s prompting and support, Marigold would never have thought to write the story of the Great Misery Island murders. “I have learned my lesson never to go against you! Mr. White writes that he is entirely receptive to my mystery story and not in the least surprised or hesitant to employ a female writer.”
“Naturally. Just as I told you!” Isabella said staunchly.
Marigold laughed at her friend’s easy shift from foreboding to fortune-telling. “And the best part is that once the magazine has run the full story, I am free to sell it to a novel publisher. But Mr. White will pay me well for the privilege of first printing.” Marigold waved the wire like a parade banner in absolute delight.
“Well done, darling, and so well deserved,” Isabella offered with her usual grace. “Especially after all you’ve been through.”
“Been through” was not exactly the right euphemism for Marigold’s involvement in the murders on Great Misery Island but was certainly the right expression for the crisis of confidence she had experienced after finding out the secret of her less than legitimate parentage, and her surprisingly complicated coterie of full and half siblings—as well as unrelated half siblings of her new half siblings.
It had all been, frankly, more than a bit much. Even for her.
“Champagne then, instead of sherry, to celebrate!” Isabella decided.
“Oh, yes! Let’s,” Marigold agreed. She was too happy to care if she got tipsy before dinner. She accepted her coupe with pleasure. “Here’s to paying the bills!”
“Yes!” Isabella agreed. “Financial independence is the best sort of independence.”
“Agreed,” Marigold laughed. “But I’m ambitious enough to want all sorts of independence to go along with it. A matched set of independencies,” she joked. “Style, substance, and spondulicks, as they say.”
“A matched set.” Isabella raised her glass.
“You know what this means?”
“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me—as long as you don’t start going on about repaying me for your room and board or clothes,” I
Isabella began. “I won’t hear of such nonsense.”
As the couturier and owner of the House of Dana, Isabella had always been generous in making clothes for Marigold. “I’ve told you, time and time again,” she went on, “young ladies daily visit my atelier vying to look as stylish and elegant as the inimitable Miss Marigold Manners and spending delightful gobs of money to do so. I should be much the poorer if you stopped wearing my clothes.”
Marigold had learned to accept such convoluted logic with gratitude. “You have been very kind to me Isabella—overly so.”
“That is what friends are for, darling. What kind of friend would I be if I couldn’t see you through this terribly trying time you’ve had?”
“Everyone should be lucky enough to have such a friend.” Not only had Isabella convinced Marigold to put pen to paper and write the story of the murders of Great Misery Island but had also given her the time and solitude needed to write it. “I have decided the best way to repay you is to resume the life I was meant to lead.”
“You’re going to marry Cab?”
A sharp pang of misapprehension landed in Marigold’s midsection. Jonathan Cabot Cox had been Marigold’s sometime—or at least onetime—beau. She had turned down his proposal of marriage, not because she didn’t love him, but because she loved the life she had planned—and worked toward and wanted with an ache approaching feverish—more.
“Much as I admire and respect Cab, I will not be marrying,” she answered firmly. “I meant that I am going to go back to college to finish my degree and my thesis of an English-language translation of the Greek myths. And graduate with honors and then finally—finally!—spend next summer on the island of Kefalonia, where I will complete my archaeological fieldwork on the Classical Period site at Leivathos. All just as I had planned.”
Just as she had planned before her parents had died, leaving her near penniless. Before she had gone to live with relatives on Great Mystery Island. Before she had discovered the murders.
“I don’t see why you couldn’t get married and still do all that,” Isabella groused. “You could do your archaeology on your honeymoon. I’m sure Cab wouldn’t object to a summer in Greece.”
“Isabella,” Marigold chided. “Do you really think Cab is the sort of fellow to idle away his time doing nothing while I was busy with my avocation?
Or that his law firm will simply let such a man take leave for five months so soon after letting him involve himself with Great Misery?”
“For a honeymoon, surely,” Isabella answered. “It would hardly be unprecedented. My own wedding trip took six months.”
“Your dear late husband had already secured his fortune and could do as he liked in those days.”
“As I’m sure could Cab,” Isabella pressed. “If only you—”
“—asked him to?” Marigold finished for her. “But I won’t. Because if I did, then I couldn’t go back to school to earn my degree—nor use that degree to gain a professorship if I were married.”
“I don’t see why not.” Isabella was not giving up her point gracefully.
“Because it is against the rules, my dear.” Marigold had explained to Isabella time and time again that all the major universities required their female professors to remain unmarried.
Of course, Wellesley was more progressive than most colleges—her favorite professor of Greek, Julia Irvine, had joined the faculty after her marriage, and even been promoted to the presidency of the college. But not every other university was as forward-thinking where women were concerned as Wellesley. And Professor Irvine had been a widow, like Isabella—the rules were different for them.
Marigold had to live in the world as it was, not as she wished it to be. “When they change their rules, then so will I. So, there you have it.” She glanced at the clock. “I’ve got just enough time to get to the wire office to send my acceptance to Mr. White at The Argosy and send notice to the registrar of Wellesley College that I’ll be returning for the first semester.”
“You’re that serious?” Isabella asked. “Hasn’t the fall term already started? The Radcliffe girls were knocking down my doors, begging for fitting appointments more than a month ago, at the beginning of September. Surely, you’re too late to start back now?”
“I’ll wire my Classics professor to advise me,” Marigold suggested. “But I’ll send a bank draft to the bursar regardless—they’ll welcome payment of my outstanding fees at any rate, even if I’m too late to register for the fall semester.” She headed for the stairs to change into suitable attire for settling one’s bills—something entirely respectable, like broadcloth or well-brushed wool. “Professor Irvine will surely advocate for me—she was exceptionally sympathetic when I had to leave last year. And she’s president of the
college now—she’ll have more sway than before. She knows I’m capable, both of making up any work I’ve missed and getting ahead for the future. Oh, Isabella, don’t you see what this means?”
Isabella pulled a face. “That you’re leaving me.”
“No, my dear friend.” Marigold softened her tone of voice. “I’m not leaving you. Rather I’m rejoining myself. Despite everything—or perhaps because of it—I’ve found my way back to the life I was meant to live all along.”
“I suppose so,” Isabella finally agreed. “Just as you should. Though we’ve had such a marvelous time, I hate to see it end. I shall miss you. I shall even miss the sound of that horrible typewriting machine!”
Marigold had used the last of the annuity she had been left upon the death of her parents to purchase her reliable Dougherty Visible typewriting machine, upon which she had produced her manuscript for The Argosy. “I shall be happy to relieve you of its din by taking it with me to college, where I will astound my professors and fellow students alike with my professional acumen. See if I don’t!”
“I’m sure you shall, darling girl,” Isabella answered fondly. “For I’ve learned that you always do whatever it is you set out to do. No one should always do whatever it is you set out to do. No one should ever, ever bet against you.” ...
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2025 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
