CHAPTER SIXTEEN

We arrived late on a chill night that June, traveling for the first time overland, as Mama had insisted she would never again set foot in a boat. Having met with Mr. Coates in Middle Haven, we traveled the remaining miles sunk in obscurity, the moon shuttered by thick clouds. I remember how soundless the night appeared to me, as if the various clicks of the horse’s hooves were a pebble cast into a still pond, the tiny noise drawing attention to a fathomless silence. Mama leaned her head against the rim of the carriage door, exhausted.

The hoofbeats sounded to me like muffled voices, and as we drew closer to the House, my heart seemed to clatter about in its casing. I had read the diary and reached its ending—I knew the secret of the grave. Yet I could not shake the conviction that somehow I was now riding still further into the tale, where the living Miss Grange stood waiting. But what more could there be? I resolved not to think about Jonathan Lanman while I was here at Grange House, wishing no distraction, and I determined that our kiss, our small beginning, should remain quiet next to Miss Grange’s earlier secrets. It was better so; we need not rush—we need not act; indeed, nothing need be said about it to Mama. The last mile or so, I rode with my head stuck out the carriage window, holding my hat on with my hand, letting the small breeze from our movement cool my cheeks. It was this way that I saw the House glowing through the trees as we rounded the last bend. The lights of Grange House cast their own nimbus out into the dark night, and in that instant I had the distinct impression that the place we were entering was almost preternaturally charged.

Her slim, familiar figure waited on the back piazza, though the lights were so bright around her, she appeared at first a silhouette painted on the glassy clarity of that House. As our carriage slowed to a stop before her, Cook appeared from out of the shadows beside her and helped Miss Grange toward us.

“How unnecessary of her”—Mama sighed—“to await our late arrival.”

But I hardly heard Mama’s words, so shocked was I to see Miss Grange’s slow approach. She was grown quite thin, and though the light was not good, her eyes seemed to me wide and too big for her face. Still her voice, when she spoke, held the old rich warmth.

“Welcome, Thomases,” she said, and patted the side of the carriage. I saw Mama shake her head slightly before Miss Grange opened the latch upon the door.

“Hello,” I said with an uncertain smile from the carriage’s dark interior.