“ ‘Oh to be sure,’ I said. ‘It becomes wilder and wilder, all the darkness surrounding Little Nell; just keep going.’

“ ‘Oh, I will,’ she said.

“ ‘She snuggled up to me. The feathers of her negligee tickled my nose but I loved it. I loved her frail arm so close to mine. I could read the book in her hands if I wanted to. I smelled her sweet perfume. She could buy anything in the world and she wore drugstore Chantilly, and a sweeter scent in all the world there is not.

“I remember seeing the violet sky through the windows.

“ ‘Lord, it’s almost dark,’ I said. ‘I have to go to the Hermitage! I have to see my Petrine masterpiece.’

“ ‘Tarquin Blackwood, you will not go out in that swamp at this hour.’

“ ‘Nonsense, I have to,’ I said, kissing her forehead and then her soft powdered cheek. ‘Both Mona and Goblin are denied to me, and of Goblin’s loss I have nothing to lament, I confess it, but I must go out there and claim what I’ve done.’

“I remember further protest, but I was deaf to it.

“I hurried up the stairs and into my room and into my closet, and I knew myself to be light-headed still as I pulled on a new pair of jeans and a new shirt and new boots (all purchased for my new size by Big Ramona as soon as she knew we were coming home) and then I took my thirty-eight pistol from the nightstand and headed down and out of the house. From the kitchen I took a bottle of water and a big knife, and from the shed a flashlight, and then I went down towards the swamp.

“Of course I was disregarding the terms of my bold and savage partner, but I had never agreed to them, had I? It was for myself that I had done the refurbishment and the renovation of the Hermitage. It was for me the fine furnishings that I would soon see. I had no fear of him, and if anything I felt a brooding curiosity to see him again and contend with him—perhaps to have a decent conversation with him. Perhaps to discuss ‘our’ little house and to discover whether we did indeed have a bargain, since I had achieved all of the splendid renovations, not he.

“That Goblin was not with me to help me did not matter to me. I would handle it. The Hermitage was mine.