Chapter Eleven The Hunting Lodge
Eastmere Lodge had been built for men who believed loneliness was a privilege.
That was Marianne Vale’s first thought upon seeing it through the carriage window, and the thought, once formed, would not be persuaded into politeness.
The house stood half a mile beyond the old beech wood on a rise above a narrow stream, its grey stone darkened by years of weather and neglect, its shutters closed like lowered eyelids, its chimneys blunt against a sky the colour of unpolished pewter.
It had none of Halgrave House’s cold magnificence and none of Lantern House’s guarded warmth.
It did not receive. It endured. Low, square, and severe, with two wings added at different times and without affection, it seemed less a dwelling than a place where comfort had once been permitted to visit briefly and had decided not to return.
There were no flower beds, no bright gravelled sweep, no glasshouse, no terrace where ladies might take air.
The drive was rutted, the grass long and winter-bent, the iron gate furred with rust. A pair of stone hounds flanked the entrance steps, their faces worn by rain until they looked less like hunters than witnesses.
Beyond the house, the land dipped toward the stream Sebastian had mentioned during the journey, though from the carriage Marianne could see only a silver twist between reeds and leafless branches.
The morning had begun in London with reluctance.
Helena had not forbidden the expedition.
That would have been too simple, and Helena Vane had rarely found simplicity where duty was concerned.
She had stood in Lady Theodosia’s study, the black iron key on the desk before her, and listened while Sebastian explained what he had found in his father’s locked drawer: the key marked Eastmere, the estate map, the torn wrapper in Evangeline’s hand, the absence of the letter it had once enclosed.
She had asked practical questions. Who knew he had found it?
Which servants had seen the key? Had the lodge been searched by Halgrave men since Evangeline’s disgrace?
Were there caretakers? Was the road safe?
Had anyone followed him the previous evening to Lantern House?
Each question had been answered. None had reduced the danger.
“You should not go alone,” Helena had said.
“I do not intend to,” Sebastian replied.
His gaze had not moved toward Marianne then. He had learned that much. Or perhaps, after the rupture between them, he understood that asking in private and assuming in public were different offences with a common root.
Helena turned to Marianne. “You do not have to go.”
The same words again, and again they mattered because they were true.
Marianne looked at the key. It was ugly, old iron, heavy for its size, the bow shaped like a hunting horn, the teeth worn but intact.
A key did not merely open a door; it admitted intention.
Someone had hidden it. Someone had kept it from the usual key rings.
Someone had thought the lodge important enough to preserve and dangerous enough to conceal.
“I will go,” Marianne said.
Sebastian said nothing, but the relief in him was visible because he did not attempt to hide it quickly enough.
Helena had arranged the terms. They would travel with Tom and a Halgrave groom.
Two additional men would follow at a distance rather than in obvious escort, so as not to alarm anyone watching the road.
Mrs Alderley would not accompany them, having been informed by Mrs Finch that no woman of her age and argumentative circulation was to be dragged to a damp hunting lodge before luncheon.
Mrs Alderley had protested that she had not been dragged anywhere in years and would welcome the novelty, but Mrs Finch had triumphed by threatening gruel.
The journey itself had been strangely quiet.
Marianne had expected tension, perhaps awkwardness, perhaps the jagged formality left after hurt not yet forgiven.
There was some of that. Sebastian sat opposite her, hands bare because he had removed his gloves to sort the estate map and then forgotten to put them back on.
She noticed the absence of the signet first, then realised he wore it on the other hand, perhaps because he had spent the morning comparing the seal to old marks and had replaced it without thinking.
He looked out often, not like a man admiring the country but like one watching memory approach.
For the first hour, they discussed the plan.
The lodge was officially closed but not abandoned.
A local caretaker came twice a month to check for leaks and vermin.
Sebastian had sent no warning ahead, fearing any message might travel faster than they did.
They would enter by the front if the key worked.
If not, the servants’ door might be forced.
Marianne would take notes. Sebastian would search the study, if there was one, and any locked chests.
They would begin with rooms Evangeline might have occupied.
No document would be handled without being listed.
No hiding place would be dismissed because it seemed too small, too domestic, or too obvious.
“I have learned,” Sebastian said, “that women hide important papers in places men consider beneath inquiry.”
“You have learned something after all.”
“I should be offended.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
That small exchange, almost gentle, had carried them several miles.
After that, the conversation thinned. Not painfully.
Not with the old combative silence. It became a different sort of quiet, one in which the noise of the carriage wheels, the damp strike of branches against the roof, the occasional call from Tom outside, and the rustle of the estate map between Sebastian’s fingers made a kind of uneasy companionship.
Marianne had not forgiven him entirely. Forgiveness, to be honest, had never been one of her more efficient skills.
Yet the apology had entered where the insult had struck, and though the bruise remained, it no longer throbbed at every look.
Halfway through the journey, Sebastian spoke without looking at her.
“I taught Evangeline to fish near Eastmere.”
Marianne turned from the window.
“She cannot have been very old,” he continued, as though he had not quite intended to continue and yet found the memory moving without permission.
“Seven, perhaps. I was home from school and desperate to be treated as a man, which meant I had acquired a passionate interest in activities I did badly. Fishing was one of them.”
“You did badly?”
“I was impatient. Evangeline was worse. She believed fish should recognise enthusiasm and volunteer.”
Marianne looked down at her folded hands to hide a smile. “Did they?”
“No. She declared them ill-bred.”
“That sounds consistent.”
“She dropped the line into the reeds, tangled it twice, fell into the stream before noon, and then informed me that if we did catch anything, she would not eat it because she had become personally acquainted with the family.”
The smile escaped.
Sebastian saw it.
The memory softened him in return. Not with ease. Ease was still too far from him. But his face changed, the hard lines loosening as if he could see beyond the carriage window not the road but a little girl on the bank of a stream, soaked to the knees, indignant on behalf of fish.
“She was impossible,” he said.
The words might once have sounded like dismissal. Now they sounded like love grieving its own language.
“Many loved people are,” Marianne said.
He looked at her then, and something passed between them — not forgiveness exactly, not declaration, but the recognition that they were both trying to make room for a dead woman to be more than useful to pain.
Now, as the carriage drew up before Eastmere Lodge, the memory seemed to stand beside the house like a ghost too lively for its surroundings.
Tom jumped down first, followed by the groom.
The air was cold enough that Marianne’s breath showed faintly when Sebastian handed her from the carriage.
He did not take her hand until she offered it.
She did. His fingers closed around hers for the briefest practical moment, warm through the glove, and then released.
The lodge watched them.
“There is no caretaker?” Marianne asked.
“Not today, it seems.”
“Or he is avoiding a ducal carriage.”
“Also possible.”
Sebastian’s gaze moved over the shuttered windows.
He had become very still. Not the defensive stillness of the ballroom or the dangerous stillness of the storage room, but something deeper.
The boy who had taught his sister to fish had returned to a place where the woman she became had waited for him, and he had not come.
Marianne did not press him.
That, too, was something that had changed between them. Once she would have asked at once, in the name of truth and usefulness. Now she understood that some doors had to be allowed a moment before one fitted the key.
Tom tried the front handle. “Locked, miss.”
Sebastian drew the black iron key from his coat.
It took effort. The lock resisted as though the house itself objected to being opened after years of keeping its secrets damp and undisturbed.
Sebastian’s jaw tightened, but he did not force it too soon.
He worked the key once, withdrew it, wiped rust from its teeth with a handkerchief, and tried again.
This time the lock turned with a heavy click that echoed through the empty interior.
The door opened.
Cold, stale air breathed out.
Marianne stepped in behind Sebastian and thought at once that no frightened young woman should ever have been brought here for comfort.