“It’s educational,” I answer.
He leans forward, both elbows on the table. “And what have you learned?”
I hesitate, remembering the black door, my promise to Mrs. Whitby, the sense of being watched. “That some places never change. No matter how much you want to clean them up.”
Larkin’s smile softens, the aggression replaced by something like weariness. “You can’t clean this place up. You can only survive it, if you’re smart. Or lucky,” he adds after a moment.
Mrs. Whitby enters, the soundless herald of the next round. She sets a fresh carafe of wine between us, then lingers behind my chair. Her hands are clasped at her waist, the knuckles whiter than bone.
I break the silence. “I’d like to see the accounts. The ledgers. My aunt’s records.”
Larkin freezes, the glass halfway to his mouth. His hand shakes, just once, then steadies. “What for?”
“To see what I’m inheriting.” I keep my voice neutral, but inside I’m gloating a little. The shift in his demeanor is immediate and seismic.
He sets the glass down, the tap of crystal on wood unnaturally loud. “You wouldn’t understand them. It’s all . . . peculiar. Hemlock’s never turned a profit. It exists to exist.”
“Even more reason to see them.”
His face closes, shutters slamming behind his eyes. “Suit yourself. But I wouldn’t waste time counting ghosts.”
Mrs. Whitby’s gaze is locked on Larkin, her mouth drawn to a hard line. “Miss Vale is the rightful heir. She may see whatever she chooses.”
Larkin’s eyes dart to the housekeeper, then back to me. There’s a moment—a flicker of real fear, or maybe something older and sadder—before he masterfully reconstitutes his smile.
“Of course,” he says, voice low and pleasant. “Anything for the lady of the house.”
I stand. The meal is over, the battle scored but not decided.
“Thank you for the dinner,” I say, aiming it at both of them. “I’ll be in the library, if you need me.”
As I leave, I hear Larkin’s fork clatter to his plate, his chair scraping back with more force than necessary. Mrs. Whitby remains still, but her eyes follow me down the corridor, calculating.
The air outside the dining room is colder than before. I close my eyes for a moment and listen to the house breathe.
The library isdifferent at night. It smells of slow decay and floor polish, the air sweetened by a ghost memory of pipesmoke. The lamps are kept low—Mrs. Whitby’s rule—so that the spines of the books gleam in horizontal stripes, casting the long rows of shelving into alternating shadow and gold.
I sit at the old reading table, a fortress of carved oak, with a leather-bound album propped before me. It’s older than the century, its binding stiff and pebbled, the paper foxed to a state of near-fragility. The album is heavy, as if its memories have grown denser over time. I turn the pages with the tips of two fingers, trying not to leave a mark.
The photographs are a genealogy of excess and melancholy. The first pages are filled with the severe faces of Vales in their Edwardian prime. Men in morning dress, women cinched so tightly their ribcages cast shadows. A few children, all unsmiling, caught between the brutal light of magnesium flash.
As I turn another page, a flurry of dust motes erupts in the lamp’s cone of light. The movement reminds me of Lane’s hands in the garden, brushing away debris with a kind of brutal care. I wonder where he is now. Probably asleep, with the hours he keeps. Or finishing a simple dinner out in his cottage. He hasn’t yet joined us since I invited him, and I try not to take it personally.
A noise—a low creak, then a sigh, like furniture surrendering to gravity—makes me glance up. The room appears unchanged, but the sense of being watched is as sharp as a pinprick. I return to the album, but my shoulders crawl with anticipation.
I skip to the back, to the more recent pages. My mother, as a child, sitting on the lap of a woman I don’t recognize. My mother’s eyes are bright, but her mouth is an afterthought—a horizontal dash, almost erased by the shadows. Next to her, an older Maeve, upright and imperious, her hand clamped on my mother’s shoulder like a vise.
I stare at the photograph, at the line of my mother’s jaw, and try to remember the last time I saw her alive. The memory evades me, replaced by an image of her handwriting in a card she gave me on my tenth birthday. “Don’t let them teach you fear.” I wonder if she meant the Vales, or the world, or both.
A second noise, closer now. Movement. I look up again, and this time I see him.
Larkin stands in the doorway, one arm braced against the jamb, the other dangling a glass half-filled with something viscous and red. He is not dressed for company—shirt unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled, the fine cut of his trousers ruined by the nonchalance of bare feet.
He watches me for a long moment, then says, “You really are obsessed.”
I close the album, deliberately slow. “Just trying to get a sense of things. See what I’m up against.”
He grins, teeth white in the gloom. “You won’t find it in there.” He steps into the room, movements precise but weighted. “All the real damage is locked away.”
