In the living room, Rosamund moved.

She did not strike anyone and she did not shove anyone; she stepped into the space and brought her forearm up horizontally between Sabina’s hand and Gemma’s arm and turned her shoulder, and the grip broke, and Gemma stumbled backward into her sister, and Rosamund did not follow the movement — she stopped, planted, and stood there with her arms slightly out from her sides, palms open, breathing hard.

“Don’t touch her,” Rosamund said.

And in a room eleven feet by nine, under the house, Chadworth Prescott stood up so fast that the chair went over backward and hit the wall.