Page 65 of A Legacy of Lies

“Still brooding?” Edith asked, not unkindly.

Clara blinked. “I wasn’t—”

“Of course you weren’t.” Her knife struck the board. “And I’m Queen Charlotte come to inspect the beef pie.”

A flush rose to Clara’s cheeks. “I was only thinking.”

Edith gave the kettle one last swirl before setting it aside to steep. “You think too hard, that’s your trouble. Herbs can fix a hundred ailments, but not a head tangled in worry.”

Clara managed a faint smile, though her chest felt tight, thoughts circling the day like restless birds. Every moment since the market square had been spent trying to understand the man who had once watched her with laughter in his eyes and now looked through her as if she were a ghost.

She had clung to an image of him longer than she’d meant to.

Not the man who had stormed into Hartleigh with whiskey on his breath and threats in his voice, but the one who had once lifted her from muddy knees and called her his clever girl. The one who hummed off-key lullabies, who brought her peonies in spring because she liked the color. A man who had belonged to a world of light before he chose the dark.

But that man, if he’d ever truly existed, was gone. What stood in his place carried ruin in its smile.

She could not reach him through memory. She could not ransom him through obedience. Her father had chosen. Survival over love. Power over peace. Himself over everyone.

And she, too, had a choice to make.

Edith stirred the mug with the back of a spoon. “If you’re not too tired from all that thinking,” she said, glancing toward the windows, “there’s a basket by the scullery door. I meant to send Thomas, but you’ve steadier hands. Just a few herbs from the stillroom garden. We’ll need them for tomorrow.”

The thought of the night air raised gooseflesh along her arms, but still, relief stirred. The kitchen walls had grown too close. “Of course,” she said.

“Take a lantern,” Edith called after her, her voice all brisk affection. “And mind the gravel. It always lies.”

Clara hesitated. The mist had returned to the lower lawns. She’d watched it roll in from the scullery window like a slow tide, swallowing the edges of the path, curling low around the stillroom wall. It didn’t frighten her, not exactly, but it unsettled her. The way the fog clung to the stones, the way sound carried strangely through it, as if the night were holding its breath.

“Fetch me the last of the lavender and a bit of thyme from the stillroom patch,” Edith said, already turning back to her chopping. “And check the corner pot. The rosemary’s not happy this year.”

“Yes, Mrs. Greaves.” Clara stood, smoothing her apron.

“And take the gravel path, not the orchard cut-through.” Edith didn’t glance up. “It’s always softer after rain. You’ll ruin those slippers.”

Clara paused. “Thank you.”

“Tch. Off with you.”

She stepped out the back door, the warm kitchen air giving way to the breath of evening. The cool struck her first, moist and metallic, smelling of earth and rain. The copper light of dusk warmed the outer stones of the kitchen wall, but already the mist crept back.

It rose like breath from the ground, curling around the stillroom wall and softening the hedgerow’s edge. A hush settled over the garden, as though the whole estate leaned in to listen. Clara let the door fall shut behind her and drew her shawl tighter. The air had turned damp with something unspoken.

The herbs would wait. She did not need them. Edith had sent her out for air as much as leaves, and Clara had taken the excuse. The noise of the kitchens had grown unbearable with the scrape of knives, the chatter, the clatter of ladles, everything too bright, too alive.

But out here—

She slowed.

Out here, everything breathed differently. Bramble walls exhaled quietly. Beyond them, crows called from the trees, their calls fractured by the fog. Beneath her slippers, wet gravel whispered.

Her heart had quieted since the village. Nathaniel’s steadiness still lived in her thoughts, anchoring her against the storm her father had left inside her. The way Nathaniel had bent to the child. The way he had watched Clara, not as something fragile, but as something seen.

She nearly smiled.

Somewhere behind her, the Hall groaned, a low, familiar sound, deep enough to stir the marrow. It was the kind of sound that didn’t belong to the weather.

This wasn’t memory. It was a warning. The house had spoken.