The Art of Inheriting Secrets(19)

“No, there’s a footpath behind the church. I’ll show you if you like.”

“I do love to walk. I hope to find places to get some good long walks in, actually, once I get my bearings.”

“Do you know about the right-of-ways?”

I shook my head.

“All of Britain is lined with footpaths, everywhere. An old man in the village walks the ones around here in rotation to keep them open. Dr. Mooney. You should meet him.”

I smiled.

“What?”

“You seem to know everyone in town.”

A one-shoulder shrug, a little shake of his head. “I love Dr. Mooney. He used to be the town doctor, but he retired. Sometimes I walk with him. He tells good stories.”

We emerged at the foot of the track that went between farmland and the farmhouses. From this side, I could see chickens pecking away beneath shelters behind the cottages and the starts of home plots. Again, it seemed to me a prosperous place—why let the house go so desperately?

He parked beneath a shed. “Pretty sure we can get in through that door. Wait here, and let me check.”

From this angle high on the hill, I could see over the tops of the farmhouses toward the wood and the open fields. The angle of the road hid the town, but I knew it was there, just beyond my view. The whole was blurred beneath the gray rain, but far away on the horizon, impossibly blue, was a swath of cloudless sky.

Samir called out, “We’re in!”

I dashed out of the car and splashed through the mud underfoot. In the vestibule, plain and empty except for a single forgotten broom hanging from a hook, I stomped my feet. “Should we take off our shoes?”

He only looked at me.

“No, you’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking. Lead the way.”

He ducked into a narrow passageway, turned a corner, and headed up a set of stairs. The walls were stone, the wooden banister utterly plain. “Servants’ stairs,” I said.

“Yeah. But this takes us to some less damaged parts of the house, so you can see that it’s not all like what we saw last week.”

He tried to open a door on the next floor, but even when we both yanked on it, it wouldn’t budge. “Swollen. It’s all right. We can go up another floor and come back down the other side.”

A couple of mullioned windows spaced at intervals as we climbed offered a view of the landscape, the soft greens of emerging spring, arrowed rows of dark pines, and when we climbed above a hedge, a tumble of gray ruins. Maybe the old abbey.

At the next floor, the door was off the upper hinge, sprawling sideways. Samir pulled it upright to give us passage, gesturing for me to go first. I shook my head. “Not a chance. You first.”

“Really?” His eyes twinkled. “Afraid of ghosts?”

“And spiders.” Afraid of all kinds of nameless things, actually. I touched my chest. “I’m hyperventilating right now.”

His grin flashed, and for a moment I forgot what we were doing. It was a wide, beautiful smile, with good strong white teeth, teeth that had been well tended, given braces and routine checkups, but it was the way it changed his face that made me nearly stumble, as if someone had flung open the curtains in a dark room, allowing sunlight to come flooding in. A generous, genuine expression. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had given me such an unguarded smile or looked at me so directly.

“My sister, Pavi, and I used to sneak in here all the time.” He held out a long-fingered hand, and I took it, letting him draw me forward. “It will be fine.”

I stepped over the threshold, and although I wanted to cling to him—my heart was honestly skittering in terror—I forced myself to let go, hovering just beside his arm. In front of us was one long section of the letter E that made up all Elizabethan houses. A corridor ran all the way to the other end, where it ended in a room so damaged I could see light coming in from above. To our left was a staircase and—I moved impulsively toward it—the light-and color-soaked grand staircase.

Samir caught my elbow. “Carefully,” he said.

I nodded and paid attention to where I was stepping, over a carpet that once must have had a pattern, toward a bannister that overlooked the stairs. The warm golden wood of the walls glowed from the light falling through the stained glass that had been taken long ago from the ruined abbey. As if to show off, a thick shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds and set half the window ablaze, giving the entire great hall an aura of life.

“Oh, wow,” Samir murmured.

“Seriously.” I looked down toward the littered stairs and across to the shadowy gallery. “How do you get there?”

“Stairs from the ballroom, but that’s one part of the house that’s very badly damaged.” He lifted a hand diagonally toward the back left corner and spread the other arm toward the front right. “Both corners and a lot of the rest of it is fine.”

Encouraged by the sunshine, I said, “Show me.”

We turned back from the stairs and headed for the corridor. Doors, some open, some closed, broke the line of the hallway, allowing in a few muted swaths of pale light. The old floorboards creaked with our steps.

“Creepy,” I said. “Are these all bedrooms?”

“Yeah. I don’t remember what’s in all of them, but there isn’t as much furniture up here. Maybe guest bedrooms or something like that.”