Chapter 11
Dinner for Three
I’ve sequestered myself in my room all day when the invitation arrives—if it can be called an invitation.
It is a square of thick cardstock, the edges watermarked with an ancient family crest, the ink so dark it glistens.
Mrs. Whitby does not bother with pleasantries; her script is vertical, almost violent.
Miss Vale,
Dinner will be served at seven. Attire: formal. Attendance is not optional.
I finally head downstairs to get some tea. The kitchen is empty, but the scent of boiled chicory still hangs in the air, sharp and rooty.
At precisely five, Whitby appears. She glides in, black dress fanned out like a priest’s vestments, a string of dull pearls tight at the throat.
Her face is lacquered with the expression of one who has already buried the evening’s disappointments.
She regards me with a patience so dry it could start fires.
“You’ll want to prepare,” she says, not a question.
“For what?”
She tuts, as if I am a child refusing medicine. “Tradition is all that stands between us and the wolves, Miss Vale. Best to honor it.”
She sweeps out, and the silence that follows is somehow heavier than her presence.
I retreat to my bedroom and find, laid across the bed, a dress.
Black velvet, thin-strap, the kind of garment I have only ever encountered in photographs.
The tag at the neck bears a designer’s name I recognize but cannot pronounce.
There is no note, but the implication is clear: put this on or be a disgrace to your lineage.
I hold the dress up by its hanger, let it swing, and try not to imagine the hands that measured, or the eyes that selected it.
The mirror confirms my suspicions. It fits, not only in the physical sense—though it cinches at the waist and skims the hips with a precision that is almost surgical—but in the psychic one, as if the house had been sizing me up since the moment I crossed the threshold.
I braid my hair and twist it up. I do my makeup for the first time since my arrival, filling in the scar at my brow with a pencil borrowed from Whitby’s own vanity. The transformation is total. I look like the subject of an oil painting, the kind that hangs in mausoleums to haunt the living.
The stairs are ridiculous in heels, but I refuse to remove them.
If I’m to be paraded, I will act the part.
The house receives me in silence, save for the faint music of the radiators and the slow tick of the grandfather clock in the east hall.
My footsteps echo—four stories of hunger, condensed into a single, fragile sound.
The dining room is unrecognizable. Candles, arranged in spires, stand along the length of the table, their flames doubled and redoubled in the mirrors that line the wainscot.
The mahogany is so polished I can see the veins in my hands reflected back, blue beneath the surface.
The cutlery—silver, all of it, enough to bankrupt a small city—is set with military precision.
Each place setting is accompanied by three crystal goblets, aligned as if awaiting an alchemical ritual.
Larkin is already seated. He wears a tuxedo, the fabric so black it seems to consume the candlelight, collar crisp and white against the edge of his jaw.
He is reading, or pretending to, the spine of the book half-hidden beneath the curve of his hand.
His cufflinks are emerald, a match for his eyes; his posture is less relaxed than calculated, a pose learned from generations of men who have never needed to justify their presence at a table like this.
Lane stands at the far end of the room, by the fireplace. He has submitted to the indignity of a suit, though the jacket sits on him like a borrowed skin. The shoulders are too narrow, the sleeves a touch too short. He looks like he is preparing to lift the casket at his own funeral.
Whitby floats between them, topping off glasses of wine and rearranging napkins with the care of a surgeon prepping an operating theater. She nods to me as I enter, her eyes glancing over my attire before flicking to the empty chair at the head of the table.
“Miss Vale,” she says. “We are complete.”
I take my seat, with the help of Lane who pulls my chair out for me.
The chair is heavier than it looks, and I wonder how many bodies have occupied it before mine, how many generations have gripped the lion’s head at the end of the armrest and wished to be anywhere else.
The linen napkin is folded into a fan, the edge crisp enough to draw blood.
I’m suddenly conscious of every inch of exposed skin, every stray hair. Larkin watches me, unblinking, his eyes a challenge. Lane seats himself at the far end, as if planning his own escape.
For a moment, no one speaks. The only sound is the breathing of the house, the slow, tidal intake and exhale that can be heard if you know how to listen. I study the arrangement of the place settings, the order of the glassware, trying to guess the rules of engagement.
Larkin is the first to break the silence. “You look lovely,” he says, voice so smooth it slides over the edge of sarcasm and lands in some other, less inhabited territory. “Did you choose it yourself, or did the house?”
I smile, small. “I trust the house’s taste more than my own.”
He laughs—a real, unguarded sound, brief but bright. “Careful. It’s a slippery slope from there to total surrender.”
Lane shifts in his chair, the wood creaking under his weight. His hair is still wet, slicked back in an attempt at civility, but one lock has escaped and curls over his brow. He’s so ruggedly handsome, I want to climb into his lap and kiss his face.
He watches me, not with Larkin’s predatory interest, but with wariness and it breaks my heart a little.
“You look beautiful,” he says. Tears prick my eyes but I hold them back, and smile my thanks.
Whitby sets the first course—a blood-red soup, garnished with a swirl of cream and the barest sprinkling of chive.
She serves with a precision that borders on religious devotion, never letting her sleeve brush the table, never allowing her shadow to fall on the food.
When she finishes, she retreats to the sideboard and folds her hands, waiting.
I lift my spoon, the silver cold against my palm, and take the first taste. It is beet, and maybe red cabbage, layered with enough pepper to clear the sinuses. The flavor is as bold as the color, a challenge rather than a comfort.
Larkin tastes his, then says, “Whitby never does anything by halves. If she ever poisons us, we’ll die in style.”
Whitby’s mouth tightens at the edge.
Lane snorts, but says nothing. He eats with the focus of a man who knows better than to speak out of turn, each movement deliberate, methodical. When he finishes, he sets the spoon down with the concavity up, a detail I remember from some etiquette book in a waiting room.
“Did you always dine like this?” I ask, more to Lane than to Larkin.
Lane wipes his mouth, looks at me sidelong. “Sometimes, if there were guests. Usually just cold meat in the kitchen for me. No one expects you to know which fork to use if you’re only good for shoveling snow.”
Larkin’s smile sharpens. “Don’t sell yourself short. I’m sure you’ve learned a trick or two in the trenches.”
Lane doesn’t rise to the bait, but the set of his jaw tightens. Whitby clears the bowls, silent as breath, and replaces them with a second course—fish, translucent and fanned over a bed of pickled fennel, the plate rimmed with what looks like edible gold leaf.
For a while, the only sound is the scrape of forks and the soft, intermittent drip from the ice in the window. I try to focus on the food, but the sensation of being watched is overwhelming, as if the portraits on the walls are less painted than embalmed.
Larkin breaks the silence again. “Tell us, Nora. What did you do before you became Hemlock’s newest curiosity? You worked in art, correct?”
I set my fork down, consider the question. “Restoration,” I say. “Mostly paintings. Sometimes tapestries. Once, an entire wall of a church. People send me things that are too broken for anyone else to care.”
Larkin’s eyes flash. “There’s a metaphor in that, I’m sure.”
Lane grunts, “Not everything has to be a metaphor.”
Larkin tips his glass, studying me over the rim. “Ha, in Hemlock House it does. Besides, it helps, doesn’t it? The stories we tell about ourselves. The roles we play.” He leans in, voice dropping. “I’ve always wondered which part of the house you’d choose to repair first. If you had the chance.”
I look at Lane, then at the clock above the mantel, then at the dark windows. “The east wing,” I say, surprising myself. “The rot is visible, but if you cut it out, the rest can stand another hundred years.”
Whitby appears, as if conjured by the mention of the house’s bones. She replaces our plates with the next course—meat, rare, sliced thin, resting in a lake of jus so dark it might as well be ink. The aroma is intoxicating.
“Eat,” Whitby says. “You’ll need your strength.”
I take a bite. The flavor is explosive—rich, metallic, a little gamey. I wonder where she sourced it, what animal had to die for this ritual to proceed.
Larkin sets his knife down, dabs at his lips with a linen square. “Do you believe in destiny, Miss Vale?”
I want to laugh, but the earnestness in his eyes disarms me. “No. I think most people get what they can reach, and the rest is luck.”
He leans back, steeples his fingers. “Do you not believe this house is your destiny? Why else would you come here?”
I sense the danger in the question, the way it tightens the air. I meet his gaze. “Because it was given to me. And because I wanted to see what was left of the world that made my mother.”
The men consider that, and we continue eating in silence for a few minutes.
“Lane,” Larkin calls down the table, “do you remember the time Whitby served us dandelions and called it ‘haut cuisine’?”
Lane looks up, the line of his mouth severe. “She was trying to kill us, I think.”
“Doubtful,” Whitby interjects from the sideboard. “If I wished to kill you, Mr. Sullivan, there are a hundred ways to do it outside and not in my dining room.”
Larkin laughs, the sound dry and genuine. “See? Always the poison wit.” He turns to me. “Nora, if you ever want to know the history of this place, just ask Whitby. She knows where all the bodies are buried.”
“Do you mean that literally?” I ask, only half joking.
Whitby replies, “Sometimes the difference is academic.”
The wine flows. It is golden, nearly viscous, the kind that warms rather than cools.
With each glass, the barriers soften. The talk turns to weather, to politics, to the sorry state of the world beyond Hemlock’s grounds.
Larkin is at his best in this mode: raconteur, devil’s advocate, master of the offhand cruelty.
He pivots from topic to topic, testing, prodding, always waiting for someone to falter.
Lane, by contrast, is a wall. He speaks only when addressed, answers in the fewest syllables possible. When he disagrees, it is in the clench of his jaw or the angle of his shoulders, never in words.
I try, for Whitby’s sake, to keep the peace. “Were you close growing up?” I ask.
Larkin doesn’t miss a beat. “Too close for our own good. I tailed him like a lonely little puppy until Maeve decided I was to be her protege, of sorts. Lane was born here, in a shed, did you know that?”
Lane shrugs. “She made you an inside-dog.”
Larkin’s smile is a blade. “Indeed.”
The next course arrives: lamb, pink as the inside of a cheek, resting in a bath of thyme and garlic. The aroma is narcotic. Larkin carves his, holding the knife with a surgeon’s grip. He watches as I take the first bite.
“It’s good,” I say, surprised.
“Whitby’s a sadist, but she can cook,” Lane offers, voice gruff.
The wine is red now, darker, almost brown. I drink it too fast, and feel my tongue loosen, my cheeks flush. The talk gets meaner, but also more honest.
Larkin says, “When we got older, the roles reversed. Lane used to follow me around the house. Also like a dog, but with more self-respect.”
Lane’s knuckles whiten around his fork. “You begged me to.”
“Did not.”
“You cried, first night. Remember?”
Larkin’s face goes still. “We were children,” he says, quiet.
Lane softens. “Not for long.”
I jump in, desperate for neutral ground. “What did you two do for fun?”
Larkin’s answer is immediate: “We made up ghost stories. Tried to scare each other to death.”
Lane snorts. “He always scared easier.”
The next dish is a wedge of cheese, white and veined with something blue-green. Whitby sets it down herself, the knife glinting as she slices. “Blue Stilton,” she says. “Imported for the occasion.”
Larkin spears a piece, chews, and says, “Did you ever notice how the best things are always imported? Even the people.”
Whitby’s eyes flicker, but she ignores the bait.
Lane eats his cheese in silence. Larkin refills my glass, then his own, then raises it in a toast. “To the outsiders, may they always find a way in.”
The wine is doing its work. My head is light, my limbs loose. I feel the room shift, the center of gravity moving toward the end of the table where Lane sits, rigid and unyielding.
Larkin says, “So tell us, Nora. Who do you trust more: the man who wants to impress you, or the one who wants to protect you?”
The question is a trap, but I answer anyway. “Depends what I need protecting from.”
Larkin grins, wolfish. “You see, Lane? She’s smarter than both of us.”
Lane doesn’t reply, but the muscle in his jaw twitches.
The meal winds on. The air grows dense, the windows opaque with frost. Whitby clears each course, her footsteps the only sign of order in a room spinning toward entropy.
Larkin licks his spoon, lets it clatter to the plate. “I suppose we should thank you, Whitby. It’s been a memorable evening.”
Whitby bows, the gesture regal. “It’s not over yet, Mr. Hughes.”
She leaves the room, and the silence is immense.
Larkin reaches for the wine, but Lane’s hand closes around the bottle first. For a moment, their eyes lock. I watch as Lane pours himself a glass, then refills mine and sets the bottle down with a deliberate care.
There is murder in the pause, but also longing.
Larkin says, “You want to hit me, don’t you?”
Lane shrugs. “Not in front of a lady.”
Larkin laughs, low and mean. “You’re all class, Lane.”
I push back my chair, the velvet catching on the edge of the rug. “I should go,” I say, though I don’t mean it.
Larkin stands as I do, his hand at my elbow. “Don’t,” he says. “Please.”
Lane looks away, the shadow of his face doubled in the candlelight.
Larkin’s fingers trace the inside of my arm, barely touching. “Stay,” he says, and for once, there is no irony in it.
I do.