In name only. “She has aplan.”
His grandfather groaned. “Good God, not again. Good luck with that, son. And, Felix?”
Felix stopped on the stairs, looked down at the man who’d raised him from the time he was eight.
“Willyoube fine?” Grandfather asked. “To return to Hawthorne?”
“Of course.”
His grandfather gave a curt nod then pulled something from his pocket, shoved it at Felix’s chest. “I found that. Keep me updated, Felix!” Then he was gone before Felix could finish.
And Felix was repeating himself in the empty foyer. “Of course I can. It’s a house. Nothing more.” The house his family had died in. “It bothers me not.” What did bother him was his own foolishness. Of course, Hawthorne would be dilapidated. He’d pushed that little undeniable fact away because it was convenient, hadn’t he? He could not be around his wife, could not trust himself not to kiss her when she didn’t want that, so he’d let her go without a single protestation. Without having his man of business, at the very least, investigate how bad the house was, tend to his wife’s needs while there. He should have sent her a butler to take care of everything for her. Something. Someone.Anyone.
He looked at the object his grandfather had shoved at him before leaving. A book.Christ.He remembered. It creaked open, the childish penmanship and drawings jumping off each page. The summer after he’d come to live with his grandfather, he’d barely been able to move. He’d thought of nothing but what he’d lost.
Until Caroline. They’d written a story page by page. First her, then him, then her, then him. He flipped the pages now, slowly. It had been years since he’d thought of this. A miracle it still existed. His entries in the story had been short at first. A sentence or two, an attempt to appease the stubborn girl and send her away. But later entries stretched into paragraphs and pages. Reading their progression like walking down a long hallway that started in darkness, each step taking you closer to the light at its end.
Caro’s entries had been funny, energetic things to make him laugh. He remembered one about an army of rabbits in a garden, hopping so high they landed on the roof of thehouse. He laughed now. Just one loud knock of the stuff before slapping his palm over his mouth. No wonder he’d been halfway to something horrible with her back then. He’d been wise to disappoint her request. She’d always been the easiest little thing to love.
He was a bloody nodcock.
Marriage settlement or not, she could not remain in the situation his grandfather had described. Before they’d married for convenience, they’d been friends, Caro the one person other than his grandfather he cared for enough to hurt for. He wasn’t about to let her suffer.
Suffering washislot in life. Caro deserved comfort. And as his wife, shewouldbe safe. Even if she clearly did not care to be.
In an hour he’d washed the blood and muck from his limbs and mounted his horse with only a lightly packed valise in tow. Felix rode Troy south out of London. They made good time, and when they reached the long, tree-lined drive that would end at Hawthorne, Felix was… not anxious.
He slowed Troy, watching the dappled shadows on the rutted road disappear beneath the horse’s hooves. Difficult to breathe. Just a bit. Not really if he pushed his lungs hard, focused. Twenty-two years since he’d last stepped foot on this drive. The shadows danced, then merged, becoming fever-hazed memories. His skin once more burned with illness. His mother’s wails in his ears. Until they were no more. Silence for so long, then muffled footsteps.My God, the boy yet lives. Him. They’d meanthim.He still lived. But that meant others had not.
He almost turned Troy around.
Troy snorted, feeling Felix’s nerves.
Nerves? Me? Never.Yes, the memories were heavier here. But he simply would not let them bother him. He possessed full mastery over his every emotion.
“Come along, boy.” He pressed his heels into the horse’s sides and ventured forward, cold, dispassionate determination hardening his resolve.
Then… beyond a wavering film of fog—Hawthorne. Unreal, long forgotten. Light stone, sloped roof, windows dark like lifeless eyes. Flagstone steps on either side of the front door led right up to it. Worn, missing chunks of rock and mortar. A hazard. Grass and weeds grew through the holes, grew everywhere, an invasion against order. Landscaping had long ago lost the fight.
Caro washere? In this mausoleum? He’d known that of course, but knowing differed from seeing. How did someone so bright and alive as Caro stand it? Death clung to it like the fog.
He continued forward. The past was long gone. It hardly mattered. The house was nothing more than wood and bricks and nails, not some gapping ghoul waiting to drag him into its dark maw. No matter how ominous it looked. Rotten luck to return here for the first time during a heavy fog, thunderstorms approaching with rolling clouds in the distance.
The door opened, and a woman bustled out as if she hadn’t just bounced straight out of Hell. Caroline. She adjusted something near the door with both hands, and the lines of wall wavered. She was moving a ladder, settling it right before the door. She tucked something beneath one arm, then reached high and settled her foot on the first rung. What in hell did she think she was doing?
Felix slowed Troy into a walk. If she heard his approach—and surely she did—she paid it no mind, climbing higher and higher, her skirts whipping in the storm winds and tangling with the ladder rungs. Her reach was limited on one side because of whatever she held smooshed between her arm and ribs there.
Felix dismounted Troy, and the grass that had overgrown the gravel drive muffled his landing. Troy snorted and droppedhis head to forage on the grass that had grown up between the stones. He should tend to the beast, but—damn it—Caro’s ladder rested on uneven ground. The stairs before the house were overgrown, and pockets of grass between loose stones tilted the entire thing precariously.
When he stood right behind her, he said, “What in hell are you doing, Caro?”
She yelped, jerked, and the ladder wavered away from the wall until he caught it and pressed it back. She clung tightly to the rungs, eyes squeezed shut. “Oooooh oh oh oh!” Once everything had steadied, her eyes popped open. “What are you doing here?” Said with a rough exhale. “You terrified me. I could have fallen!”
He took a breath and spoke with a bored calm at odds with the fear alive in his chest. “I would have caught you. Come down. Whatever you’re doing—have someone else do it.”
“Oh, go away. The window needs fixing.” Indeed, one pane of the fan window over the front door had been broken out. “It’s going to rain.”
Anger jerked like a punch in his chest. “You have brought no servants here with you?” His grandfather had been right.
