Page 184 of Love at First Fright

Lady Grimthorne didn’t turn from the window.

“Do the others know?” I demanded. “Anyone?”

“No.” Barely a whisper.

Rage flooded through me, hot and vicious. I’d spent twenty-seven years in this house. Twenty-seven years feeling that wrongness seeping up through the floorboards, that hunger, that twisted malice. We’d all felt it. We’d all worked together to scare off anyone who might open that door.

And she’d let us believe it was some nameless evil. The “thing in the basement.”

“Bat—” Charlie started.

“You should have told me.” I rounded on her, my form flickering with the intensity of my anger. “You should have told all of us what we were dealing with.”

Lady Grimthorne’s shoulders hunched, her reflection in the glass fragmenting with the rivulets of rain.

I forced myself to breathe. Go through the motions of it. Focus. Think.

What did I actually know about Cornelius Grimthorne?

Not much. Lady Grimthorne rarely spoke about any of her children, though I’d always assumed grief explained her silence. She’d been dead for over two centuries. Everyone she’d loved had turned to dust ages ago.

But now that I thought about it properly… she did mention her daughters sometimes. Brief comments about their marriages, their children. The Grimthorne line continuing after she’d gone.

Cornelius, though? Nothing. Or near enough nothing that I couldn’t recall a single conversation about him.

I turned towards the portrait above the fireplace. The one I’d passed a thousand times without really looking at it.

Lord Reginald Grimthorne stood stiffly beside his wife, hand resting on the back of her chair. Two young girls flanked them, maybe twelve and fourteen, in elaborate gowns. And standing slightly apart, a young man in his early twenties.

Cornelius.

I drifted closer, my feet inches above the floor.

He wore clerical robes—black with white bands at the collar—and held a Bible in one pale hand. He’d been handsome, in that cold aristocratic way. Dark hair pulled back from a high forehead. Strong jaw. Eyes that looked directly at the viewer with an unsettling intensity. A smug superiority mixed with something harder. Crueller.

“The book.” Charlie’s excited voice cut through my thoughts. “That book I bought in the village! The Grim History of Grimthorne. It mentioned Lord Reginald’s son, remember? That local legend spoke of a witch who cursed the Grimthorne line after Lord Reginald’s son refused to marry her.”

The words hung in the air.

I turned slowly to face Lady Grimthorne. She still hadn’t moved from the window.

“Did your son drown Margery Darke in that pond?” I couldn’t hide my disgust. “Because that’s what she said when we dug her up. That the monster in the basement murdered her with two of his friends.”

Lady Grimthorne’s head bowed. “I just don’t understand where it all went wrong.”

“That doesn’t matter now!” I couldn’t soften my tone, even for her. “We don’t have long before Harrison Lancaster uses that electric saw to open the basement door!”

She turned at last. Pearly tears tracked down her cheeks, glinting in the grey light from the window.

“He was such a lovely child,” she whispered. “Bright. Curious. When he took holy orders, I thought…” Her hands twisted in her gown. “I thought he would do such good in the world.”

Charlie moved closer to me, the warmth of his living body a small comfort. “What happened?” he asked gently.

Lady Grimthorne drifted towards the portrait. She stared up at her son’s painted face with an expression of such profound sorrow that even my anger faltered.

“The Church gave him power,” she said. “A parish. Influence. The advowson meant he answered to no one. Reginald was so proud.” Her voice hardened. “I felt sick.”

She turned away from the portrait.