Lydia stepped into the entrance hall and felt, immediately, like she'd walked into a different world.
She'd been to the manor before, of course. Everyone in the village had, at one time or another, delivering goods, collecting payments, attending the rare formal occasions when the estate deigned to acknowledge the existence of the people who lived on its lands. But she'd always entered through the side door, been conducted to a small receiving room, and been dismissed as quickly as business allowed.
This was different.
The entrance hall was vast, larger than the entire ground floor of her uncle's cottage, with a ceiling that soared up into shadows and a staircase that swept upward in a graceful curve. The walls were lined with paintings in gilded frames, portraits of men and women who looked like they'd never smiled in their lives.
"It's very... big," Lydia said.
"That's the general idea. My ancestors believed that intimidation was a form of hospitality." Frederick moved to stand beside her, looking at the hall with the weary familiarity of someone who had long since stopped seeing it. "When I was a child, I used to slide down that bannister. My father caught me once and lectured me for an hour about the dignity of the Hawthorne name."
"You slid down bannisters?"
"I was six. And it was the only fun I was allowed to have, most days." He offered her his arm. "Shall I give you the tour?"
"The tour of what?"
"Everything. The whole house. All the rooms I've never shown anyone, all the ghosts I've never talked about." His voice was light, but his eyes were serious. "You showed me your world yesterday. I want to show you mine."
Lydia took his arm. "Lead the way."
***
The tour began with the portrait gallery—a long corridor lined with paintings that seemed to go on forever, face after face after face of Hawthornes stretching back into the mists of history.
"This is my great-great-grandfather," Frederick said, stopping before a particularly stern-looking man in an elaborate wig. "He once had a servant flogged for using the wrong fork at dinner."
"That's horrible."
"That's the Hawthornes." He moved to the next portrait. "This is my great-grandmother. She outlived three husbands and was rumoured to have poisoned at least one of them, though no one could ever prove it."
"Did she?"
"Probably. He was apparently a terrible person. Most Hawthornes are." He gestured down the length of the gallery. "Three hundred years of cold, calculating, morally questionable people, and I'm supposed to be the culmination of all of it. The pinnacle of the line."
Lydia studied the faces staring down at her; the same grey-blue eyes, the same angular features, the same expression of careful neutrality. Generation after generation of people who looked like they'd never been taught how to feel.
"Tell me about them," she said. "The interesting ones. The ones with stories."
Frederick looked surprised. "You want to hear about my ancestors?"
"I want to understand where you come from. Who made you?" She moved to the nearest portrait; a woman in an elaborate gown, her expression as cold as winter. "Start with her. Who was she?"
"Lady Catherine Hawthorne. My great-great-great-grandmother. She was married at fifteen to a man thirty years her senior and spent the rest of her life running this estate because her husband was too busy drinking and gambling to manage it himself." Frederick’s voice was thoughtful. "She was brilliant, by all accounts. Increased the estate's income tenfold, expanded our holdings, and negotiated contracts that are still in effect today. But she's never mentioned in the official histories. Just a footnote to her husband's legacy."
"That's infuriating."
"It is. But it was also the way things were done. Women managed, men took credit, and everyone pretended that was natural and right." He moved to the next portrait. "This is her son. My great-great-grandfather—the one who flogged the servant. He inherited everything his mother built and spent forty years running it into the ground. The estate was nearly ruined before his son managed to salvage it."
"How?"
"Marriage. His son married an heiress, the daughter of a wealthy merchant who wanted the respectability of a title. She brought money, we brought lineage, and everyone pretended it was a love match." Frederick’s voice was bitter. "That's how it's always been. Hawthornes marry for advantage, not affection. We accumulate wealth and power, but never happiness."
They continued down the gallery, portrait by portrait, story by story. The cruel grandfather who beat his children. The uncle who gambled away a fortune and shot himself in his study. The aunt who ran away with a soldier and was never spoken of again. The cousin who died in a duel over a gambling debt.
"This is the most depressing family history I've ever heard," Lydia said, after the tenth or eleventh tragic tale.
"I know. That's rather the point." Frederick stopped before a painting she hadn't noticed before; smaller than the others, tucked into an alcove at the end of the corridor. "But there's this one."
