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Out of the fog, a pair of iron gates appeared, attached to stone pillars. There was no sign. We waited, the jeep idling for ten seconds, until they opened onto a long, climbing drive, winding under the branches of alder and redwood.

The house was suddenly there, at the top of the hill, like the fog had yawned and let it slip from its mouth. A beautiful, monstrous Queen Anne in pale green and cream. Not the ruinous pile of its predecessor; this was a masterful restoration. A restoration that whispered old money and fresh means.

A wraparound porch glowed with amber lanterns. It should have felt welcoming, like a hug from a well-appointed grandmother. Instead, it looked watched, as if every window had learned to keep its expression blank. Menace, right on the doorstep, would have been easier on my nervous system—peeling wood and the croak of a raven from the gingerbread. But this immaculate pile, with its sparkling conservatory and its hydrangeas clipped into obedience, made me feel messy and stupid and poor before I’d climbed out of the jeep.

“Okay,” I said, mostly to myself.

Damian put the jeep in park but didn’t cut the engine.

“Delete everything in the group chat,” he said, turning to me.

“Seriously?”

“And everything from me.”

My face dropped, but I did.

“Last thing,” he said. “When we’re inside, I’m going to do whatever I need to do to get this done. I’m going to talk the way I need to talk to them. That’s how we survive this.” He took my hand. “But it’s not who I am. The man I am is the man I am with you. And that’s all I want to be. Don’t let them win by making you wonder.”

I looked down at his hand in mine, trying my best to be brave, when all I wanted to do was tell him to put the jeep in reverse.

“I’ve got the real one,” I said. “Go be whatever you need to be.”

We approached the porch, where the narrow flames of carriage-style gas lamps glowed like cat’s eyes. Two impossibly precise topiaries flanked the large front door.

An elderly woman in a duck-egg blue pinafore opened the door before we’d reached the doormat.

“Mr. Halcyon.”

“Nora,” Damian said.

“They’re expecting you in the east salon.” She held out her hand. “Phones please.”

I looked at Damian. He nodded.

I checked the screen, making sure it was locked, then handed it over. Damian did the same.

We entered an opulent front hall beneath a high plaster ceiling and a chandelier that looked as carefully restored as the exterior. White oak floors gleamed under Persian rugs in wine reds and indigo that looked old enough to be a character in some tale of the Silk Road. The walls were wrapped in silk chinoiserie the color of pale blush, painted with birds, flowering branches, and distant garden pavilions. It was exquisite at first glance, but looking closer, as we followed Nora down a long corridor, I saw a dead rabbit in a beak. A fox in the reeds that was missing an eye.

Flowers were everywhere, dense architectural masses of orchids, peonies, black calla lilies, hellebore, lemon branches, and glossy dark foliage rising from Chinese porcelain and enormous brass vases. Arrangements that would put Vivienne’s to shame.

The corridor was lined with portraits under discreet spotlights, women and only women, preserved in oil paint. A severe Victorian woman in black silk posed by an obedient hunting dog, a rifle and a dead hare at her feet. A silver-haired beauty in pearls and champagne organza, smiling like smiling was strictly a courtesy. Another in reading glasses and a tweed coat, behind shelves of books. None of them looked easy to love.

We passed a dozen rooms, some open, others with their doors locked. Staff passed us, silent and self-erasing, all in servile linen uniform. The only men I could see were the ones I caught sight of through the velvet-draped windows, all young and broad-shouldered, working the gardens. One pruned roses. Another clipped a topiary.

A woman, her face as serious as a nun’s carrying explosives, passed us holding a gold and purple teapot. Somewhere deeper in the house, I heard a man laugh once from what I guessed was the kitchen, low and startled, before it was cut short.

Two Siamese cats sat on the back of a settee and watched us pass. They were obscenely plush and beautiful, their fur like cream silk capped with cappuccino-brown points, and their blue eyes narrowed with disdain. One of them opened its mouth in a silent yawn.

“Do not touch the cats,” Nora said. “They scratch.”

We neared a large set of wooden double doors at the end of the corridor, under a stunning sage transom.

Nora stopped short of them.

“Do not enter any rooms you have not been granted access to,” she said, looking at me.

“Of course,” I said.