The tourists were silent for a few seconds, before one of them muttered: “Portends. Portends death.”
The woman wasn’t the most erudite of guides. She’d obviously never readPride and Prejudice, and she’d lost the group’s attention after two rooms and several fudged quotes, but at this new, darker topic, they perked up.
“There’s also a dead Catholic priest who was caught by soldiers while hiding out in the abbey that forms the original part of the house,” the guide had continued. “Come nighttime, you can hear him clicking his rosemary beads and chanting in a whisper. He was executed in the Refurbishment.”
“Uh, Reformation?” someone offered, while another muttered, “Did she just sayrosemarybeads?”
“And then there’s the old countess of the house looking for her lost diamond. She’ll appear at the foot of your bed at night.”
Amelia had gasped so loudly that heads had turned her way. She’d tried to swallow but momentarily forgot how to. Not that the idea of ghosts scared her. It was the living she had issues with, specifically the kind who appeared uninvited in a bedroom at night.
Yesterday, the idea of having the abbey to herself had seemed like dream fulfillment. Now, as Amelia descended the stairs, the pearly light appeared to curl the rays of dust into ghostly figures. She wished the tour group was still there. She was pretty sure she’d heard all the resident ghosts at various times in the night. Like when she’d jolted awake to a scraping noise outsideand opened her eyes to the vision of a claw reaching for her. She must have made a noise, because her next memory was of warm, strong arms drawing her in, deep, gentle words about the house talking to itself in its sleep, a kiss brushing her hair. She’d gratefully snuggled in, her back to Tom’s chest, exhaling away the fear. Cocooned. She’d lain there memorizing the feel of him so she could return there in her mind the next time she woke in the night, scared and alone.
As Amelia’s hand coasted down the smooth wood of the banister, the emotion of the moment surged through her as if it were happening all over again—from cold panic to warmth and safety. She inhaled deeply, as if she could suck in the feeling of comfort. Since the robbery—thehome invasion, because never was there a more fitting name for a crime—safety wasn’t something she took for granted.
On the landing above the grand entrance hall, she halted. An enormous ancient tapestry overlooked the hall—one of the few treasures that hadn’t been sold off yet. She recalled staring at it at some ungodly hour and having a life-changing epiphany. But what? Or wasthata dream? This all reminded her of the time she’d accidentally used her college roommate’s psychedelic mushrooms in a carbonara.
She stood back and appraised the tapestry. A little warped and threadbare in places, but remarkably well-preserved. A family seated outdoors: Mom and Pop with a scattering of children in grass at their feet. Eighteenth century, going by the clothing. Just your average aristocrats trying to remain relevant, like today’s British royals posting family snaps on social media, though the crowns encrusted with massive jewels in this picture were a little tone-deaf. One of the kids wore a gold crown at an angle, his pudgy arm shoving it back on—a surprisingly relatable touch. Two stone lions stood sentry—the same lions on the stepsoutside the abbey’s entrance—which had to make the family Tom’s ancestors.
What was life-changing about that? She should take a photo and send it to her boss. Something in the depths of the design museum might explain what was triggering her—a tapestry by the same weaver, a similar palette… She patted her pockets for her phone, and groaned. She’d left it in the car. To which she still didn’t have a key. Besides, her boss had ordered her to take the vacation in the first place: “Amelia, you’ve hardly left the conservation studio in a year. I’m concerned for your eyesight, for one thing. We see the world out of context when we’re constantly examining the threads of it. You won’t find the answers you’re seeking in the pomegranate motif of a fifteenth-century Venetian velvet.”
In the case of the tapestry in front of Amelia, the answers felt annoyingly close to the surface of her brain. As she stared at it, a draft tinkled its way through the large crystal chandelier above her and then rippled beneath the tapestry’s surface. The mom’s benign half smile melted into a wide-eyed smirk, and she raised her bejeweled head to look down her nose at Amelia. Amelia stepped back, blinking hard. She ran down the grand staircase, no longer bothering to tread quietly. A hallucination, obviously, but like the loop-de-looping dragon and the grasping claw, it felt as real as a memory.
It took her a few attempts to locate the kitchen in the rabbit warren of the former servants’ quarters, tucked away in the east wing. After finding herself in the cloakroom, the housekeeper’s room, and the linen room, she triumphantly entered the kitchen—and stopped dead. Several grapefruit were splattered on the flagstone floor and whitewashed walls. Half a dozen empty or almost-empty vintage wine bottles were scattered around the counters, one of them smashed, presumably by the potato lying next to it. She stared at the cast-iron range for a long timebefore she located a memory of pushing Tom up against it and kissing him. He’d tasted of the home-cured bacon he’d cooked them. She could still taste his saltiness. Her mouth watered. She also got a full-body reminder of the desire that had flooded her.Whoa. She picked up the remains of the nearest grapefruit and dropped it in a trash can, though tidying up a mansion about to be demolished was a little like rearranging deck chairs on theTitanic.
No keys though. Would she have to search the entire house? Wake Tom and ask for help, and thus endure the dreaded morning-after conversation?
She gazed through the smeary lattice windows to the walled kitchen garden, where vines trailed up a gray brick wall and weeds stuck up from raised beds—and then she screeched, rearing. Her sneaker slipped on something, and she clung to a butcher’s block to steady herself.
Another memory, hallucination, whatever: Two men, carrying a hefty rolled rug past that very window, lit by moonlight. Grunting. Footsteps crunching on a pebbled path. Thick gray hair spilling out of the coil at one end of the rug.Humanhair.
She pressed both hands to her heart, which thudded into her palms even through her many layers of clothing.
They saw a body last night.
Surely a hallucination, like the claw, the dragon, the mom in the tapestry. But it felt so real. And not in the way a vivid dream felt real. Amelia could see the pattern of the rug, feel the warmth from the fireplace, hear muttered voices. Ithadto be a hallucination. People didn’t carry bodies in rugs past windows, not in her world—though her world was no longer the happy little bubble she’d once assumed it to be.
Footsteps slapped on the flagstones behind her. She turned with a yelp. It was Tom, a towel wrapped around his waist,his whorled hair stuck to his scalp, a clump of foamy shampoo sliding down his forehead. Water droplets peppered his chest and arms. He stared through the window, open-mouthed, then his gaze locked on Amelia’s, blue-gray and stormy.
“I just remembered,” he said. “We saw a body.”
Chapter 2
Tom
Tom’s head was thumping so hard he was tempted to rest it on the old oak kitchen table in front of him. But that wouldn’t be a good look, seeing as he and Amelia were sitting across from Sergeant Sahima Kamdar of the Moorleigh Village Police Station. Plus, the table was smeared with dried remains of whatever meal he and Amelia had consumed in the early hours.
“No one’s been reported missing,” the sergeant said, tapping her stylus against her tablet.
Tom stared out the window, at the spot he’d seen the shadowy figures carrying the rug. The morning sun, weak as it was, hammered shards of pain into his brain. “But if it only happened last night?” he said. “We haven’t been able to find Duncan this morning. He’s not answering his phone or messages, and we tried knocking on the door to his cottage.”
“And how unusual is that? He’s a groundskeeper. And this estate is—what?—five thousand acres?”
“Three thousand now, including the woodlands. We sold some to the neighbors, along with the livestock.” Tom linked his hands behind his head, mostly just to support it. “It’s not at all unusual,” he conceded. “I just have a…”
“You have a…?” the sergeant prompted.
“I’m worried. No one else around here has gray hair like that.” Sergeant Kamdar had been the local cop since Tom was a kid, but he wasn’t about to admit that he merely had a bad feeling.
