TGOH Chapter 2

"Where are you headed?"

It was a young coachman's voice that broke her from her thoughts.

Henry's funeral, and the letter—she had been lost in them. Ah, that's right. I'm at Hamilton already.

Veronica thought that to herself. Then she answered him.

"Hamilton estate."

The coachmen around her recoiled in unison, brows furrowing simultaneously.

"Ah. We don't go there."

The young one repeated it, as though for emphasis.

"Best turn back, ma'am."

Veronica, bewildered, asked: "Why?"

"…You don't know?"

"Know what?"

"There's a funeral on."

She knew perfectly well. She had come for that very funeral.

When someone of Mr. Hamilton's standing—a man of local consequence—died, the obituary appeared in the regional paper before the body had gone cold. Letters circulated among acquaintances, and those acquaintances descended upon the estate in an unbroken stream throughout the proceedings. That was the ordinary shape of an English funeral.

So there must have been carriages ferrying those people to the estate already. Veronica's puzzled expression prompted the coachman to exhale deeply.

"Everyone who's come here so far has turned back without setting foot inside. They're not receiving visitors, apparently. You'll be turned away too, ma'am. Don't waste the trip."

But Veronica had been personally invited by Ian Hamilton. Her sister was in that house. She was not going to be turned away—of that she was nearly certain. She caught the young coachman by the sleeve, the only one who would speak with her at all, and pleaded.

"You needn't take me to the door. Just close enough. I can walk the rest of the way myself."

"…Ugh. I really don't want to. Something feels wrong about the whole thing—bad feeling. If you ask me, everyone in that house has gone completely mad."

"I'll make it worth your while."

In the end the mention of payment decided him. The young man helped Veronica into the carriage. The other coachmen went white with protest, but he took up the reins and climbed to his seat regardless.

"I'll bring you close, ma'am. The gate may actually open—that would be something. If you're not back within the hour, I'll take you straight to the station."

Clip-clop, clip-clop—a bright, steady rhythm as the hooves found the road.

From what the coachmen said, the grief of such a sudden death must have been devastating. From the moment the obituary ran, Hamilton estate had bolted its doors and turned every caller away.

Hearing it, Veronica recognized the resurgence of her childhood friend's oldest failing.

He hasn't changed.

Ian Hamilton was—charitably speaking—a man of thorough preparation. Less charitably, a man who worried too much and whose instinct, when overwhelmed, was always to run.

No different from the last time they had been in contact.

In all likelihood, Ian had locked himself away because he could not face what had fallen on him. This was how he ran from things.

Whether to be glad he's consistent…

The carriage crested a low hill, and the manor appeared in the distance.

Something uncomfortable moved through her.

A tightening in the stomach—a coiling tension. As though she had swallowed something wrong and felt her stomach thudding up against the base of her throat. The sensation intensified as the estate drew closer. Against the familiar roofline of Hamilton coming into view, Veronica shut her eyes briefly.

Ghost.

Why that word had crossed her mind just then, she could not have said.

The coachman who had promised to let her off nearby surprised her by bringing her all the way to the front of the house. Whether that was guilt on his part, or unease about leaving a widow alone before such a cheerless estate, she couldn't say.

She was grateful not to have to walk far. She jumped down from the carriage and looked up at the gates rearing toward the sky. The iron railings were clean enough at a glance, but when the wind moved they shifted and let out a long, slow creak.

No one had thought to oil them.

Standing before the gates, she heard the young coachman's voice at her back.

"Don't do anything rash, ma'am. Come back and get in this carriage, and we'll go."

"I'd like to wait a little longer."

"These gates haven't opened once in the last week, ma'am. The doctor who came to see the master was the last person through—and even he stopped coming after a while. Not a soul in or out since."

But as if to mock him, the gate swung slowly open. Whether from the wind, or because it had never been latched at all, she couldn't say.

Veronica took it for permission. She stepped through.

An overgrown garden met her.

"M—ma'am!"

"Could you come back in a week?"

"You've absolutely no fear, have you!"

Veronica laughed lightly and waved her hand. She had become a harder person the moment she became a widow. She'd had to. She could no longer live as she once had—as that guileless, unguarded girl of her teens. There was no one left to protect Veronica now but Veronica herself.

She walked on. Through the iron gate, and the front door of Hamilton estate was drawing closer. The young coachman who had fretted over her seemed to have gone. The silence behind her was complete.

Knock-knock.

"…Is anyone there?"

The words had barely left her mouth when the door opened. The face that appeared was one that existed in Veronica's memory. He had evidently become the butler—he wore a fine suit—and though time had moved, she knew him in an instant.

Veronica exclaimed aloud.

"…Joseph?!"

Joseph. Among all the household staff, the one who had devoted himself to making a young Veronica happy. Now there were pale threads in his mustache, but his face still carried the shape she remembered.

Joseph recognized her just as quickly.

"Good heavens, Miss Veronica. How many years has it been?"

Miss Veronica. She smiled and shook her head.

"I've been married for years now. I'm far too old to be a miss."

"To me, miss, you will always be miss. Was the journey difficult? Ah—but this is no time for that. The family has just gathered for lunch. Come along. I'll get you something warm to eat, and then tea to take the chill off."

"Am I welcome at the table?"

"Of course you are. Why ever not? The young master will be absolutely delighted."

The young master. Veronica's shoulders twitched. There was only one person Joseph could mean by that.

Her old friend. Ian Julius Hamilton.

The one she would certainly have grown up alongside all the way to adulthood, had she not been rushed to London to see a doctor over that fever. Her childhood companion.

Whenever she thought of Ian Hamilton, Veronica always found the first image that came to her was a face—smiling too brightly, a little foolish with it. The artless smile and the corners of his mouth curled high, his cheeks still soft with baby fat. The warmth of him before anything had changed.

His thick dark brown curls had been lovely, and those green eyes—the color of summer woodland transported whole—had always been finding her, always trailing after her.

'Veronica! Come with me!'

Veronica blinked herself back to the present. They had reached the dining room door without her noticing. She hesitated on the threshold—and Joseph knocked on her behalf.

"Young master. Miss Veronica has arrived."

A clatter from inside, and then the door was thrown open. Veronica had been reaching to open it herself and stumbled back two steps in surprise to find a young man standing there instead.

He looked as though he had lived hard these past weeks—or hadn't eaten—the planes of his face sharp in the way that speaks of weight lost. His teal-green eyes were clear to the point of pain, like summer light falling directly through leaves. She knew those eyes. And at the same time, she didn't.

He stood with his mouth closed and simply looked at her—one long suspended moment. And then, with a luminous smile breaking across his whole face, he said:

"Good Lord! Veronica!"

Veronica! The warmth in it struck the walls of the dining room like something physical. Chairs scraped back. Even the elder Mrs. Hamilton—who would, under any ordinary circumstance, have corrected the noise—was walking toward Veronica with her eyes already bright.

Then his arms came around her.

"…Ian?"

Veronica's hat fell as her face was fully revealed.

"I'm so glad you came, Veronica. So glad to see you——"

Standing in the embrace of a man who was not her husband, not three weeks after the funeral, without so much as a veil for propriety's sake—if anyone from London's social circles had witnessed it, they would have been appalled.

And yet she had no desire to step back. She rested her hand quietly on his back. His voice came low against her ear.

"I heard what happened to Mr. Highfield. I'm so terribly sorry. He was a gentleman among gentlemen."

"It was sudden, even to me. I never thought he would go like that."

"They say heaven takes the best ones early."

Ian breathed the words more than spoke them. Veronica rested her forehead briefly against his shoulder. He was right, that much was true. First Father, and now Henry Highfield——

"Goodness me! Who can this be!"

Her thoughts broke apart. A voice——

A woman came at her in a rush. Her deep gold hair caught the firelight and turned red. Her hazel eyes were bright with recognition. Veronica's older sister—Julia Upton, who was Julia Hamilton now—spoke with her arms already open.

"Vera. How have you been? You're heartless, you know that? Not a single letter since the wedding. Your sister worries."

Veronica laughed and pulled her sister close.

"I'm sorry, Julia. Truly—I had no room to breathe. Settling into London took everything I had. That household's standards were rather——"

"Suffocating! And that—what was his name—that revolting little swine! I mean it, if it hadn't been for Henry, I'd have wanted nothing to do with that dreadful family!"

That revolting little swine. Henry's younger brother, that would be. During the early days of the marriage, Julia had come to visit and Veronica had told her everything, and Julia had evidently stored every word of it intact.

Veronica was briefly taken aback, but she felt no real inclination to correct her sister.

This was not Highfield estate. Here she was surrounded entirely by people who were on her side.

Which meant that speaking ill of a certain revolting little swine would cause no one here to find Veronica insufficiently ladylike. That grinding propriety could wait outside for a while. That was what Veronica thought.

"He's been behaving as though he's my husband, now that his brother's gone."

"Ha! That little nothing?"

Ian laughed—short and contemptuous. Veronica laughed too.

"Reaching well above his station, for a man who doesn't know his place."

She had been welcomed this warmly from the very threshold, which was somewhat unexpected—but Veronica was quietly, deeply glad of it. She felt, at last, as though she had come home.

"Welcome home, my dear."

The elder Mrs. Hamilton took both Veronica's hands in hers and held them.

Veronica had spent years being careful, perpetually careful, performing correctness like a second skin. But these people asked none of that from her. Here, among them, she could simply be Veronica. The love they gave her was entirely, unconditionally her own.

For a little while, the shadow of death that had fallen over all of them disappeared entirely—and it was as though she had stepped back into Hamilton estate as it had once been, long ago.