They had struggled.

And Vanessa had shoved her, hard, backward — into the antique mirror, which shattered under the impact and sent Maria to the floor amid the falling glass, striking her head, opening the cuts, knocking her unconscious.

And when Maria fell and did not move, Vanessa had not called for help.

She had begun, instead, to drag the unconscious woman away, to move her, to arrange the scene into something that could be explained — a drunk servant, a clumsy fall, a private matter quietly handled before morning.

It was in the middle of that arrangement, that cold and calculated tidying-away of a woman she had just gravely injured, that Daniel had opened his door.