Chapter Twenty
I’d hit that point in the afternoon where my brain felt like an old sponge that had been wrung out and left on the sink, technically usable, but not really good for much.
Cleo had finally let me bully her into taking a break.
“Go,” I’d said, physically removing a pen from her hand. “Eat something that isn’t a breath mint.”
She’d made a protesting noise, then surrendered and wandered off in search of a very late sandwich and a view. I’d promised I’d keep the place from catching fire for an hour. The universe, as always, heard this and took it as a challenge.
I was halfway through drafting an email with the subject line ‘Please, for the love of God, do not move the arch again’; when Noah appeared in the doorway.
He didn’t knock, just filled the frame with his height and that steady energy he carried like a well-worn jacket.
“You’ve got a minute?” he asked, voice low enough that it didn’t quite disturb the calm. “I have to show you something.”
I swivelled in my chair, relief flaring at the idea of anything that wasn’t another RSVP update. “Please tell me it’s not another change from Lady Beaumont,” I said.
Noah’s mouth ticked, but the seriousness in his eyes didn’t move. “Nope,” he said. “Something else.”
I stared at him for a beat, trying to decide if he was joking.
He wasn’t. The sensible part of my brain suggested I should at least save my work.
The rest of me, the part that had been stuck in guest lists and colour palettes for eight hours, stood up so fast my chair rolled back and bumped the cabinet.
“Lead on.”
We slipped out of the office and through the corridor, the air shifting as soon as we left the heart of the house.
Noah moved with purpose, and I followed, heels tapping on the stone before the sound dulled into the carpet and then into the hollow thud of wooden steps as we turned towards the cellar stairwell.
The temperature dropped with every step down, warm to mild to cool.
The light narrowed, and the sound dulled. It always amazed me how a house could hold two different worlds inside it, above, chatter and flowers and lists; below, a hush that felt almost like deference.
At the bottom of the stairs it smelled of oak and stone, and the wet-chalk scent of old walls. A drop of condensation plinked somewhere to our left.
The dim overhead lights threw beams across the paved floor, and the shadows of the barrel rows lined up around us like orderly onlookers.
“I wanted to take a proper look down here after the door was left open the other day,” he said as we moved past the newer racks towards the older, darker end of the cellar. “It hasn’t sat well with me, knowing someone was down here.”
The back of my neck prickled. “Have you found any clues about what happened?”
“None at all.” He sighed, the sound edged with frustration. “There’s no sign of a break-in. Nothing missing, no muddy footprints I can see. But…”
He stopped, switching on a hand-held torch. The beam skimmed over the far wall, where the neat modern brickwork gave way to something older, rough-hewn blocks, uneven mortar threaded with hairline cracks, a faint bloom of salt where damp had risen and dried again.
“I noticed something that didn’t seem right,” he said.
I stepped closer, careful not to brush against the barrels. “Okay,” I said, because sometimes you have to say something to prove you’re not spooked. “Define ‘not right’.”
“An old mark on the wall,” he said simply. “Here.”
He rapped his knuckles lightly against one of the larger blocks at knee height. The sound that came back carried a faint emptiness, like tapping a wall and finding a pocket of air instead of solid weight.
He shifted his hand thirty centimetres to the right and tapped again: dull, reassuringly dense. Back to the first spot where the mark was: hollow.
Even my untrained ear heard it.
He ran his fingers along the seam where two blocks met, pressing gently. The cement crumbled under his touch, like it was old chalk. Up close, I could see the mortar here was a different colour to the rest, faintly yellowed, as if someone had repaired it long ago with whatever they had to hand.
The beam of the torch drifted, caught on a minute irregularity, a line that wasn’t quite straight. The kind of thing you could stare at for years and never notice until you were looking for it.
“You think there’s something behind it?” I asked, keeping my voice low because speaking loudly in this space felt like knocking over a glass.
“Maybe a recess,” he said. “Maybe nothing. But I’ve never noticed this before.”
He crouched, sleeves tugging back on his forearms, and for a silly second, I was very aware of how practical his hands were, steady, competent, the kind that had learned a place by touching every part of it over time.
He took a small flathead from his pocket and wedged it into the crumbly edge.
Of course Noah Langston would carry a screwdriver the way other people carried lip balm.
He didn’t force it, just teased at the mortar as if coaxing a pet with food that had decided to be shy.
A thin flake of mortar came away. Another. The hollow tap sounded again when he brushed the stone with his knuckles, more pronounced now.
I realised I was holding my breath and forced myself to inhale.
“Do you think the door being open has anything to do with this?” I asked.
He nodded, eyes still on the work. “Could be coincidence. Could be someone came down to fetch a case and didn’t latch it properly.
But the latch is stubborn. You have to mean it.
” He paused, easing the screwdriver a fraction deeper.
“And if you’d been searching around back here, you might not want to stand around relatching things. ”
I studied the hollow space in the wall. “So whoever came down here… they didn’t find this?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“And nobody else knows it’s here?”
Noah glanced up briefly. “I don’t think so.”
He paused then, sitting back on his heels to roll his shoulders once, the careful kind of stretch someone does when they’re about to commit to something.
He looked up at me, and in the torchlight his eyes had that deep, green-brown colour of bottled wine when you hold it up to a window.
“Go on,” I said, suddenly far more invested in this than was probably healthy. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
He returned to the seam, carefully working away another line of crumbling mortar until a clean edge of brick emerged.
Then Noah eased the block loose. It came away with a sound that was half sigh, half crumble, sending a puff of dust swirling through the torchlight before settling across his sleeve. He set the block carefully beside him and reached into the narrow hollow.
I sucked in a breath as he pulled something out.
It was a bundle wrapped in linen so old it had yellowed to the colour of weak tea. A ribbon, once red but now faded, held it closed.
He placed it on the nearest crate, and for a moment neither of us said anything.
Noah brushed a thumb across the fabric. “Feels like envelopes inside,” he murmured.
“Like letters?” I asked. “That’s so romantic!”
His mouth curved faintly, but the humour didn’t reach his eyes. He untied the ribbon with a care that made my chest tighten. Inside were three or four envelopes, stacked neatly together. The top one was sealed only by age and dust, the flap curled slightly open.
Noah lifted it, turning it so the light fell across the front. The handwriting was beautiful, slanted, graceful, the kind people used to learn in boarding schools.
Across the top was written:
July, 1963.
To Edward.
He went still, as if the name had frozen him mid-thought. “Edward,” he repeated. “My grandfather.”
I leaned closer. “He’d have been young then, wouldn’t he? Early twenties?”
“Twenty-one, maybe,” he said, without taking his eyes off the letter. “Around the time he left for Europe.”
I waited, unsure whether to speak or not, until curiosity won.
“So, before he met your grandmother?”
He nodded once, a small movement. “Before her.”
He hesitated, then turned to me. “Do you want to…?”
“Yes,” I said, far too quickly. “Absolutely.”
A small smile flickered, then he slipped a finger under the flap and eased it open.
The paper crackled faintly, delicate as wings. He unfolded it carefully and held the torchlight to it, the ink faded to a beige brown but still legible.
When he began to read, his voice was almost reverent.
"My dearest Edward,
Not an hour passes that I do not think of you. The world feels dimmer without your laughter in it. I close my eyes and can still see your hands, the way they steadied mine as though I were something precious instead of foolish.
I wear your brooch and imagine you are near, it catches the light, and I swear, for a moment, it feels like your gaze.
If I could bottle the peace I feel when you look at me, I would keep it with me always.
Until we meet again, I will hold you here, in every thought, every breath, every quiet corner of my heart.
Yours, always and only, T."
The sound of his voice filled the space between us. It was the kind of letter that made the world slow down, the kind that left no doubt what it meant. There was no pretence, no guarded phrasing, just love written plainly, as though the writer trusted the page to keep their secret.
Noah stared at the letter for a long moment after finishing, his jaw tightening.
“I grew up hearing about harvests and expansion plans,” he said. “Not… this.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said finally, the words coming out a little breathless.
He gave a low chuckle. “It’s... definitely something.”
“She really loved him,” I said, certain. “You can feel it.”
He glanced up, meeting my eyes. “And he her.”
Something in his tone made my pulse quicken.
For a heartbeat, I forgot about the chill, the faint tang of dust and oak, the drip of condensation echoing somewhere in the shadows.
The cellar felt smaller suddenly, as though the walls had drawn closer to listen. His voice still lingered there, wrapping itself around the words of that letter, and somehow, they didn’t belong only to the past anymore.
I looked up at him, meaning to say something clever, something to break the spell, but the words tangled somewhere on the way out.
His eyes caught the light from the torch, green, brown, and gold all at once, and in that moment, it felt indecent to look straight at him, like I was seeing something private he hadn’t meant to show.
Heat crept up my neck, soft and traitorous.
It was probably a good thing the cellar was dark because I had absolutely no idea what my face was doing.
I broke the silence first. “So… who on earth was writing to him?”
Noah exhaled, still staring at the letter in his hands. “I have no idea.” He folded it carefully, like the paper might tear if he moved too quickly. “But whoever she was, she clearly mattered.”
I glanced back at the date. July, 1963. The ink had faded at the edges, but not enough to dull the feeling behind it.
Noah stared back down at the letter. “Could’ve been anyone, I suppose. Staff, local girl, farmer’s daughter.”
“Look at that handwriting,” I said. “Nobody wrote like that unless they were educated by a nun or a governess.”
That earned a small laugh, the sound contrasting against the cold cellar air. “Still doesn’t explain why he hid them down here,” he said, folding the paper again.
“Maybe because he couldn’t throw it away,” I said. “Some things you can’t destroy.”
He thought about that for a beat, the paper still in his hand. “This letter must be from the woman in that photograph, wearing the brooch, right?”
The question hung between us. I pictured the photograph again, the woman’s half-smile, the glint of the brooch at her collar, the year pencilled faintly on the back, 1963.
“It fits,” I said slowly. “The timing, the way he looks at her in that photo. It’s not just a friendship.”
He met my eyes, and there was something in his expression, something thoughtful and distant, but also strangely gentle.
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
I shook my head. “Not a word. It’s your family’s secret, not mine.”
He gave a short, grateful nod and began to retie the bundle, the ribbon slipping loose and catching on his thumb. “Maybe we should take the rest upstairs to read them. It’s getting colder down here.”
I watched, half-expecting the linen to fall apart, but it held.
A voice echoed faintly down the stairs. Izzy’s, sharp and impatient. “Noah? Are you down there?”
The spell broke. Noah’s expression tensed briefly before he carefully folded the letters and slipped them into the inside pocket of his jacket. He slid the loose stone back into place, the noise of it settling into the wall sounded strangely final.
He dusted his hands together and turned to me, an apologetic half-smile tugging at his mouth. “Guess history will have to wait.”
“History’s been waiting sixty years,” I said, amused. “It’ll survive another evening.”
His gaze flicked briefly towards the stairs before returning to me. “Meet me later?” he said softly. “We’ll read the rest properly.”
A slow warmth crept through me at the invitation, annoyingly noticeable considering we were standing in a freezing wine cellar.
“Deal,” I said, trying for casual and probably not entirely succeeding.
As we turned to climb the stairs, I peered back at the patch of wall that seemed no different to any other and felt a tiny shiver of something I couldn’t name, wonder, maybe, or warning.
The cellar door closed behind us with a hollow, echoing thud, as if the old stone walls themselves were reclaiming the moment.
When we stepped back into the light, it felt almost like a different reality. As the late sun spilled through the corridor, somewhere deep under the Estate, an old love story had just stirred again.