“Please, listen. We need to go back inside soon.” Now Edward was brusque. “There was a house and a barn on the property, and the house had a shed attached to it. Sometime in 1847 or ’48, the Doyles began to hide runaway slaves who were on their way north, in that shed. It became a kind of open secret among certain people in Old Gate.”
Randolph nodded. “That sounds like it was virtuous, but dangerous.”
“There are people in this house tonight whose parents didn’t like what the Doyles and the Quakers were doing. People who didn’t want to lose their own slaves because of such subversion close to home. Randolph, a group of Old Gate men surrounded the property one night and set fire to both the house and shed. When the family and, it’s said, two female slaves and their children tried to escape, the men held them at gunpoint until they went back inside the buildings. If they didn’t, they shot them dead, right there.”
In their own momentary silence, they heard a woman’s laughter from the house.
“It’s a terrible story, but it has nothing to do with me. I thank you for telling me, Edward. Was anyone prosecuted?”
“Of course not. It was done at night, and there were no witnesses left. No one is really even sure how many were killed. Eight, maybe ten people.”
“I see.”
“No, I don’t think you do. A few years later, another house was built there, on that same site. But no one was able to live in it for more than a few months at a time. Everyone who lived in that house suffered some tragedy, and they were forced to leave. Suicides. Madness. A murder.”
Randolph scoffed. “That’s bald superstition, and quite ridiculous. You’re an educated man. Surely you don’t believe in such things. Superstition is the stuff of old women and parlor games. To be honest, I’m amused by the superstitious aspects of the old pagan rites. Why, the Romans were a noble bunch, and the Celtics, too. But ghosts? That’s nonsense.”
Edward stiffened. “You would put your family at risk?”
“Of course not. There is no risk. There’s nothing left of any buildings there except traces of a foundation. And that will be dug up before any building begins. I dare any curse to try to cling to me. It would find that I am not so easily cowed.”
“I wish you would listen. There are other farms to be had.”
“We should go back inside, Edward. It’s growing late.” Edward’s shoulders fell, and he shook his head. They started back to the house. Not wanting to leave his new friend dispirited, Randolph made an effort to acknowledge his obviously genuine concern. “As a priest, perhaps you could perform some sort of blessing on the land. Might that not help obviate any curse, or whatever seems to be going on?”
Edward stopped. “I dislike that the Old Gate parties involved in this sale have not been frank with you. They seem to take it as rather a joke that someone like you—someone from a part of the country that they revile—is paying good money for the site of such an atrocity. You do not have true friends here, I’m afraid, Randolph. I don’t know that they will ever be different if you choose to build your house here.”
The light from the salon touched Randolph, illuminating his not quite handsome face. When Edward looked down into those eyes, he wasn’t sure if the sincerity he saw there was true or skillful manipulation. There was something else, too, something harder, that he hadn’t seen when they were in the house.
“I hope I may consider you my friend.” Randolph rested his hand on the taller man’s back, just as Robert Archer had touched him in friendship, and Edward felt an unpleasant sensation of cold spread over his body.
An hour later, the party broke up with many promises for future invitations. Randolph was heartily enjoined to write to his new friends just as soon as he knew when he would be returning to Old Gate to begin building his new home.
As he settled into the coach that would take him back to Missus Green’s Inn and Boardinghouse near the center of town, Randolph felt in the left pocket of his waistcoat for his matches. The matches were there, but there was something else: a small, folded note, which, when opened and held close to the flame of a lighted match, was revealed to be an invitation of a particularly intimate sort, written in a delicate, well-formed hand. He smiled. It was an invitation he would gladly accept.
He blew out the match and settled back in the seat. Yes. He was very much looking forward to settling in Old Gate.
Chapter 1
Lucy
Walpurgisnacht, 1924
Lucy Bliss ran blindly through the moonlit rose garden, thorns grabbing at her as though they would keep her from leaving. As she reached the break in the garden wall that would lead her to the woods, her robe tangled on the last bush, so she tore it from her body with a cry and left it behind. Was someone following? Surely Randolph, who was as frail as a man risen from a grave of five years, could not capture her.
My husband risen from his grave! So much is explained. The voices in the night. The light near the springhouse. How did I not see?
Above the trees the distant lights of Old Gate shone silver on the scattered clouds. Only twenty-five years earlier, before she had married Randolph in 1899, there had been but a dozen gas streetlamps in town, and the night sky had looked endless and cluttered with stars. How different it had been. Walking with her friends to the little theater, or home from a party, her laughing voice louder than she knew was proper. But she hadn’t cared. She had been cheerfully rebellious, happy to disregard her mother’s constant instructions about minding her behavior, and her father’s lectures from both his Episcopal pulpit and the dinner table. Though they were rigid people, and difficult to love, she had loved them both, and had obeyed—to a point. Few things were ever serious to her in those days. It had all been in fun.
Bright. Her life had been so wonderfully bright.
Now she was well into her forties, and her life had dimmed. Her feet were bare, tender from running over the crushed shells on the winding garden paths beside Bliss House, and her breath came in bursts. From moment to moment she wasn’t sure if she were dreaming or not. Before she’d gone to bed, Terrance, who had run Bliss House for her these past few years, and was no older than she, had given her the medicine that helped her feel calm, helped her forget. But she had terrible dreams and often woke to find that she had chewed the knuckle of her finger until it bled and there were tears on her cheeks. Now, dreaming or awake, she had fled the house, running, running. For months she had been loath to walk outside. Loath to leave her room. How she had run when she was a child! And when her son, Michael Searle, was young, they had run through the orchards together, playing and racing, far from Randolph’s critical gaze.
Michael Searle, my son. But more than a son. A gift.
This very night he was on his way home from North Carolina, where he had been visiting the woman he would marry. She had to get somewhere safe, to warn him—before he arrived—never to return to Bliss House.
Your father is alive! He will steal your happiness, my sweet child.
The path into the woods was crowded with brush and newly red switches of wild blackberry, whose thorns were even more ambitious and brutal than those of the roses. She slowed. Her thin, torn gown was no protection from the cool night, and a layer of sweat caused her to shiver violently. Craving the former safety of her own bed within her flower-covered bedroom walls, she thought of sinking to the ground, nesting in the brambles like an animal. Still, she pushed deeper into the woods, even though no one seemed to be coming after her.
Do they think I am weak, that I will come crawling back?
As a girl, she had thought of Bliss House as a mysterious, magical place, all the more fascinating because her parents had told her to stay away. Now she knew every inch of its shining wood floors and paneled walls. She had danced in the ballroom dozens of times, and hurried up and down the staircases twenty times a day, and aired the rooms, and watered flowers and written letters at her desk in the morning room, and rocked her son to sleep, and wiped his brow, and entertained fr
iends, and listened to the bees drowsing over the roses, and watched her husband, the man who had built Bliss House, go slowly mad. And she had lived in the presence of ghosts, and had even ceased to be afraid of them.
But if Randolph were alive—truly alive—she would have to live in fear.
Again. It didn’t matter if she were awake or dreaming. She would rather die than live with Randolph. Again.
Ahead, in the trees, there was a quivering light where there should not have been a light. Lucy glanced again over her shoulder to make sure she hadn’t gotten turned around, but there was Bliss House rising tall and threatening behind her, its windows glowing warmly as though it were still a safe place. A place where, sometimes, she was happy.
Thank God Michael Searle is away. I will keep him safe.
Yes. Ahead of her was a light where there was supposed to be nothing, and desperation carried her toward it.
Are you hooked yet?
* * *
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