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Somewhere nearby, a girl laughed with delight; a high wavering note that caught and carried on the wind. Ah, such an enchanting sound, mused Edmund Avermore. The sound of youth. The sound of life.

It was an unseemly thought—or perhaps an unavoidable one, considering the circumstances. The barber was still bent over Lady Avermore’s bed, his lancet shining in a shaft of morning sunlight. The blade was slicing cleanly through the pale skin at the top of her left breast to release the evil vapors. Edmund winced. The barber and the motionless figure of Edmund’s wife did not.

As a bead of red oozed from the wound, the Lord of Avermore Manor focused on the lively noises climbing through the window. Several young females were chanting a rhyme he hadn’t heard in nearly four years, not since the last litter of beauties had been brought to the estate. One of the pretty, piping voices was singing a cradle song that had been lost to her generation long ago—and to the eight generations that preceded it, as well.

“Lalla, lalla, lalla, aut dormi, aut lacte…”

It was a lullaby as old as the Romans, and one she would never have learned had she not been among the latest group of bridelings culled from the village.

Edmund’s ears counted five children laughing, singing and playing in the courtyard below. He couldn’t tell for certain, but he could satisfy his curiosity by stepping to the balcony.

He refrained. The barber would take note of the lordship’s actions and gossip about it later. Edmund quelled his desire to study the New Ones, and gazed instead at the man standing at Sarah’s bedside.

The barber was old, his back stooped, his hands wizened. Nonetheless, his movements were sure and steady as he lifted one of the dozen wine goblets from the nearby table and inverted it over a candle’s flame.

“She will feel no pain, m’lord,” the barber advised gently. “As you can see, the previous treatments have eased her agitation. She is much calmer now.”

Then he hesitated.

Trying to convince himself, perhaps?

“She sleeps,” he finally continued. “A few additional treatments should turn the tide in her condition.”

With that, the barber placed the heated bowl of the goblet overtop the cut in Lady Avermore’s skin. The flesh puffed inside the glass, sucked upward into the shape of a round pillow by the vacuum of captured heat. The bead of blood swelled to the size of a marble, and then spilt, sliding down the pale mound of flesh to form a crescent along the lip of the glass. The man released the stem of the wineglass as it grabbed and held fast, pulling more of the life-threatening humours from her body.

Or so it was thought.

Physicians had been performing blood-letting for thousands of years. Edmund had seen similar treatments in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. In this current millennium he had noted that doctors no longer dirtied their own hands; they prescribed the surgery to barbers who, when they weren’t busy pulling rotted teeth, would come to scarify the flesh with their nasty knives. Edmund had seen vacuums applied using bronze cups, ceramic bowls, bell jars and now this crystal goblet. He wondered if he would ever enjoy the taste of wine again.

The Lord of Avermore Manor had no illusions about the outcome of today’s cupping. Sometimes patients fainted from the procedure, awaking later, astonished at how much better they felt. More often than not, however, they expired. Such would be the case for young Sarah Avermore, he feared.

About one thing the barber was correct however. Edmund’s wife would feel no pain. On Monday last, the woman had slipped into a deep sleep from which she could not be roused. Her pupils had become fixed, her limbs unresponsive. The convulsive clenching of her fists that had tormented her since the fall from her horse two weeks previous had ceased. The tumble obviously had done damage to her body that no amount of doctoring could correct. The lovely flaxen-haired woman, just beginning her twenty-first year, would not live to see her twenty-second.

Expecting the worst, Lord Edmund Avermore had instructed the tutors to bring the most promising of their young charges up from the village, but to keep them indoors in the garret above the stables. He hadn’t wanted to upset his wife with the noise of their excited voices so near to her apartment.

But when Sarah had shown no sign of hearing—not even the sound of her real name when whispered directly into her ear—he’d ordered the bridelings moved to the private cottage inside the walls of his estate. He would maintain a solemn vigil at his Lady’s side while the sand ran through her hourglass, but he had to be practical. The current Mistress of Avermore was leaving him unexpectedly. A new one would be called for sooner than anticipated.

The lullaby came again through the window, soft and sweet, building to a tremulous climax: “Lalla, lalla, lalla, aut dormi, aut lacte. Lalla, lalla, la.”

The notes climbed and climbed (lalla, lallaa, laaaa), as though calling to the woman lying motionless on the bed. At the moment they reached their zenith, Lady Sarah Avermore answered.

The former Lizbette Walker gasped loudly, arched her neck, and gargled in the meanest, basest of ways. Then, like the uncouth commoner she once had been, she died. Without so much as a thank you, Edmund noted with a frown.

The flow of blood pooling under the heated glass slowed and stopped. The goblet lost its seal, toppling onto the coverlet.

The barber stumbled forward, his hand raised to stifle a moan. He cut his eyes to his lordship’s face and waited. Edmund Avermore blinked and nodded—but nothing more. There would be more grief from the blood-letter than from the man who had called himself the ladyship’s husband.

With barely concealed surprise, the barber shook his head, and then lifted the sheet over the corpse’s vague and staring eyes.

“I’m so sorry, m’lord,” he ventured. “Her fragile disposition must have worked against her.” He clasped his hands together at his waist, as if praying.

As well he might.

Edmund had agreed to the fire-cupping only after much insistence that it would ease his wife’s discomfort and restore her to good health. Easing her pain had been the only valid argument, of course. Edmund had seen death’s shadow too often over the centuries to try to fight the inevitable. Delaying this wife’s end was counterproductive.

Belatedly, Lord Avermore lowered his head, mirroring the sorrow he saw in the barber’s eyes. Fussing in the pocket of his waistcoat, he extracted a crown and slipped it into the man’s fingers. “Thank you for all your efforts,” he murmured. “Now, please, if you could leave me alone with my wife…?”

The barber backed out of the room, bowing and mumbling sympathies that Edmund scarcely noted. When the door finally closed behind him, Avermore turned abruptly and stepped to the window overlooking the balcony.

Thick velvet draperies framed the opening, the shadows ideal to hide within as he surveyed the litter. Six young females were playing in the courtyard below. Not five as I first suspected.

No. That wasn’t quite right. Five are playing. The sixth sits alone.

What a grim and solemn thing she was, too: blonde like the others, willowy, with the high forehead and widow’s peak he demanded. Though he couldn’t tell from here, he knew her eyes would be deep brown. As they all would be.

He watched quietly for several minutes, judging, comparing, deciding. He couldn’t afford to wait until Lizbette Walker was tucked into a crypt to make his final selection.

Raising a new Lady Sarah Avermore took time.