“You’re kidding!”
“Unless I find thirty-one million pounds before the sale becomes final to repay some eye-watering debts—and even that will onlyjustkeep us afloat—we have no option but to go through with it. The new owner came up from London first thing with an engineer and a demolition contractor.”
“Demolition? How is that possible? Isn’t the place protected?”
“Only the front façade, it turns out. An oversight, in hindsight. The rest will go, unless this caveat magically kicks in. So, yes, I’m drinking at eleven on a Thursday morning, unless you happen to have thirty-one million pounds you wouldn’t miss?”
“I could spare thirty-one bucks, at a stretch?”
Off the main tunnel were several alcoves, with wide raw-timber planks laid roughly over the compressed-dirt floor, and crates and barrels lining the stacked-rock walls. In one alcove, an exquisite hand-knotted pile carpet covered the timber. A central medallion with an acanthus motif marked the middle, spanning out into scrolling floral trails. But it was the colors that lit up Amelia’s brain: rosy pink, ice-blue, and green. She crouched and brushed loose dirt from the carpet’s fringe. Sure enough, a name was woven into the edging.
“Well, holy shit. You have a Thomas Moore carpet—in your basement!”
“Er, I do?”
“There’s a date on it. Looks like … 1769! Same date as a carpet of his I saw last week at Syon House. Different design, but the colors are an exact match.”
“Syon House?” he called back. “In London?”
“Where they filmed some of the Gwyneth PaltrowEmma. This alone has to be worth tens of thousands, if not more.”
“A drop in the bucket compared with what this place owes, I’m afraid. Hopefully, they’ll flog it off to an antiques dealer rather than toss it in a skip.”
“You can’t fight the sale?” she said, jogging to catch up.
“I’m out of options, and out of time. Demolition is booked for next week.”
“So soon?”
“Oh, it’s been a long time coming.” Something creaked, above them. “Yes, yes,” he called, looking at the low ceiling, “I know you’re not happy about it.” To Amelia, in a whisper, he added: “Best not use the ‘d’ word. She’s very sensitive about it.”
He walked through another archway and halted. Amelia almost ran into his back.
“Is this a tunnel?” she said. It looked like it had been dug out of the earth by hand.
“Pretty much. It was the estate’s air raid shelter in World War II. Before that, legend has it that it was used for smuggling, or to hide the servants when the tax collector came.”
“Hide the servants?”
“In George III’s time, you paid two pounds per servant in taxes. These days, the space is put to far better use.” He pulled a brass chain and a bare overhead bulb clicked on, revealing a narrow passageway. Its walls were lined with a honeycomb of wooden wine racks that disappeared around a dark corner. “Which was probably the purpose intended by the monks who dug it under the original abbey. What do you feel like?” he said, scanning the racks. “Claret? Champagne? Maybe a La Sainte Trinité Burgundy. Or an 1899 Château Angélus?”
“Can I hazard a guess that this wine collection is worth quite a lot?”
“Things are only worth as much as the intersection between what someone is willing to pay and how desperate the seller is to liquidate. Unfortunately, in this case, the latter prevails. It’s all earmarked for the new owner. His many, many lawyers brought in assessors to make a register of every valuable item on the estate, and I’m forbidden fromremovingany of it. But my lawyer confirmed that there’s nothing in the fine print to prevent me fromconsumingthe valuables.” He pulled a bottle from a slot and studied the label. “I can’t eat a Picasso or a Chippendale, but as long as we relieve ourselves on the estate, we’re good. I plan to liquidate as much of this as possible in the short time I have left here.”
The light flickered and extinguished, plunging them into darkness. Amelia sharply inhaled. She felt a light touch on her shoulder, and flinched. “I’ve got you,” Tom said calmly. “Can be disconcerting down here when the lights go off. Just a sec, I’llgrab the cord…” With a dull click, the light came back on. Amelia released her breath. “Dodgy wiring,” he explained. “I’d get it fixed but…”
She stepped closer to him. Being stuck underground in pitch darkness was the stuff of nightmares, and she already had quite enough inspiration for those. “Is this place really haunted?”
“Only by disappointment and shattered dreams, but don’t tell that to the people on the haunted house tour. The abbey is not so much Pemberley as Miss Havisham fromGreat Expectations, frozen in time and slowly disintegrating within the silk and lace of her wedding dress.” He ran a finger along a row of dusty bottles, as if choosing a book at a library. “A ’62 Vega Sicilia Único?” he said, pulling one out a little.
“This is crazy.”
“Welcome to my world, which I intend to spend today escaping from, and that is not something I do nearly enough. Desperate times call for generous measures, as they say. How about a Château Lafite-Rothschild? You like red?”
“No, I can’t. I—” She shut her mouth.Escaping. Wasn’t that exactly what she’d come here to do? This country, this house? So far, she hadn’t succeeded, so why not try a new plan? One that involved drinking insanely expensive wine with an actual member of the ton. She giggled.
“You’re laughing?”
