TGOH Chapter 3

Veronica scanned the faces around her, caught between nostalgia, an unfamiliar longing, and the simple gladness of seeing them again.

Then her gaze met a small girl standing at Julia's side. The child looked to be about seven years old—small and lovely, as though someone had plucked Veronica herself from childhood and set her down here intact. She had her mother's vivid golden hair and her father's pale green eyes, and together they made it easy to imagine what she might become.

Veronica had not seen her niece since she was a newborn.

Whether the child found her aunt's presence strange or frightening, she kept her distance, half-hidden in the shelter of Julia's skirts, stealing sideways glances at Veronica from the corner of her eye.

"Mama..."

"Oh, come now. It's your aunt. Go and say hello."

Veronica smiled and waved Julia off.

"It's all right, Julia. I'll come to her."

She bent her knees and lowered herself to the child's eye level. The girl's cheeks were round and flushed and soft-looking, smooth as something untouched. Veronica resisted the urge to press a finger into that warmth and instead carefully extended her open palm.

"Hello, little Veronica. I'm your Aunt Veronica."

Little Veronica. The child born from Julia's womb had been called that from the moment of her birth. Everyone, without a single dissenting voice, had looked at her and agreed at once that she must have her aunt's name—so much of the elder Veronica lived in her features, everything but the color of her eyes.

Little Veronica's mouth formed a small, perfect circle when she understood that the grown woman before her shared her name. A row of tiny teeth glinted, round and pale as river pebbles.

"We have the same name."

The child's murmur was barely more than a cheep—thin and soft, like a newborn chick. A small hand closed around Veronica's long fingers. Something in Veronica's expression gave way entirely.

"That's right. You're little Veronica, and I'm big Veronica."

"Big Veronica."

"You can call me Vera."

The child beamed.

"Vera!"

"You should say aunt, Veronica."

Edmund Hamilton, her brother-in-law, offered the gentle correction from beside Julia.

"Vera!"

Seven-year-olds were willful by nature. Veronica thought this with a smile.

Edmund gave a short, slightly helpless laugh and turned to her with an apologetic air.

"She's still a bit clumsy with words."

"That's what makes her a child. Are you keeping well, Edmund?"

"Much better than before. The air here suits me far better than London ever did."

Veronica agreed without hesitation. Even the simple fact of escaping that frantic London townhouse had let her breathe again—whether it was the air itself or the lifting of some invisible pressure, she couldn't quite say.

"It really is remarkable, isn't it—two people who look so alike, and both of them named Veronica."

Ian made the idle observation with the ease of someone who didn't particularly mean it.

The Hamiltons all laughed at once. It was a peaceful scene—almost absurdly so, like a painting of the thing rather than the thing itself.

After dinner, Veronica took some time to walk through the estate for the first time in years. A great deal had changed—the furniture, the paintings on the walls, the arrangement of rooms. And yet the atmosphere she carried in memory had been preserved, precisely, as though a room had been sealed against weather. The sensation of returning to it left her unsettled in a way she couldn't name.

"So much has changed."

Ian, walking beside her, smiled quietly at that. His gaze moved over her profile as he spoke.

"I had things seen to while I was waiting for you to come back, Vera. I kept thinking how pleased you'd be when you returned."

"How did you know I would?"

"It seemed like you would."

Veronica laughed. Ian Hamilton treated her as though she had never married—as though she were simply a person who had been away a while and was expected back. As though he had been keeping her place.

She was an Upton by birth, not a Hamilton—she had another home entirely where she'd come into the world. But she had spent most of her childhood here, because of her father's business. While he sailed between continents, his closest friends had taken the Upton sisters and raised them as their own daughters.

Their steps slowed and stopped at the greenhouse. It had been her favorite place since childhood, and it remained exactly as she remembered it: still and luminous, still tending its own warmth. The air inside carried just enough humidity to be pleasant against the skin. The afternoon light, diffuse and pale, seemed to rinse away some of the manor's habitual gloom.

And so Veronica found herself asking the question she had been turning over since she arrived.

"Why did you send everyone away?"

Ian looked out at the mist-filtered light and answered slowly, as though the words came up from somewhere deep.

"I wanted to spend it with just the family."

A plain reason. Too plain, really, to justify the deliberate breach of tradition. And yet there was nothing wrong with it—nothing she could argue with—and so Veronica simply fell quiet and set her hand gently on his forearm.

"......"

Ian smiled, faintly, and covered her hand with his. The warmth of it passed through the interlaced fingers between them. Standing here holding hands with this man who had been a boy she knew—bare hands, no gloves, nothing between them—produced an odd, unsteady feeling low in her chest.

'Why no gloves?'

Was it guilt? Guilt toward the husband who was dead and would never know?

Veronica drew back almost imperceptibly. Ian felt the small retreat in her palm and turned to look at her. That look—direct, wondering—made her feel more confused, not less. His eyes had been on her since she'd arrived; she'd been aware of it the whole time. But meeting them face to face was a different matter.

"My father always said the same thing, long before he was ill." Ian spoke slowly, as though recalling the exact words from somewhere specific. "Don't invite anyone to my funeral. Just the family. We told him not to say such things—but I think he already knew."

A silence.

"Of course... you're the exception. You're always the exception."

"Am I."

"Dear Miss Veronica Upton." His voice shifted, took on the formal cadence of a speech he had rehearsed. "How could we ever possibly turn you away."

What an insufferable thing to say.

Veronica dissolved into laughter, and Ian followed her into it. They were both well past the middle of their twenties now, changed too thoroughly from the children they'd been to make fair comparison. Changed in body, changed in mind, changed in the parts of themselves that had grown in directions neither of them could have predicted.

And yet standing here, in this place they'd shared, there was a strange and persistent illusion of time having folded back—of both of them being returned, briefly, to the years when they were barely more than fifteen.

Veronica reached toward him. Ian took her hand and turned it over, pressing his cheek slowly against its back. His skin was soft, moving against her knuckles. She couldn't quite decide whether it resembled a dog or a woman being deliberately coquettish; she found herself frowning slightly.

"Thank you for coming."

His voice was low and unhurried, grazing her ear.

"And truly—I've really missed you, Vera."

Ian Hamilton smiled—and for once, shyly.

Veronica looked at him with something that was almost alarm. The warmth in his expression was unmistakable, and she knew it well enough now to be certain of what it was not. A single marriage had been sufficient to teach her the difference between affection and something else entirely.

Ian's other hand came to rest at her waist. Slowly, gently—nothing more than resting there—and yet it produced the sensation of being held in place, of being caught. He bent toward her by degrees. In the haze of afternoon light falling behind him, half his face was swallowed by shadow.

"Veronica—when you returned, there was something I wanted to say—"

SHRIEEEEEK!

"—!"

"—!!"

Both of them went still at once. The face that had come close enough to brush her lips was turned away. Veronica spun toward the greenhouse windows. As if to confirm what they'd heard, a second scream tore through the whole of Hamilton estate.

They exchanged a single glance and ran.

The sound had come from the third floor of the main house. All the way up the stairs, that rending voice neither faded nor steadied—it gathered force, fed by something they couldn't yet see. Veronica's corset pressed her ribs with every stride, and still she could not slow.

"Are you all right, Vera?"

"I'm—I'm fine, damn it. It's just the corset."

Ian's brow drew in. He crossed to her in a single stride and lifted her before she could form another word. She drew a sharp, startled breath at finding herself folded against his chest—then understood it for what it was, and looked up at him.

Ian Hamilton took the stairs three at a time with her in his arms, barely a fraction slower than if he'd been running alone. She could see his throat working above her, his adam's apple rising and falling as he tried repeatedly to swallow against a dry mouth.

"While you're here, dress as you like, Vera. I don't want to see you struggling."

"...You're very kind."

"I'm worried."

Veronica let the corners of her mouth soften. Then they were at the top of the stairs, and the third floor opened around them. She could already see several people gathered near the sound. Julia was shouting at a maid: Don't let Veronica up here—not under any circumstances!

Veronica stepped down from Ian's arms. Ian—who had run up three flights carrying a grown woman and not disturbed a single breath—stood close beside her. She moved toward Julia.

"Julia."

Julia spun around with a start, and when she recognized Veronica's face something vast and ragged broke through her expression.

"...Oh, good Lord. Vera. What am I going to do?"

Julia's face was ravaged. The creased forehead, the cheeks bright with tears, the face that had drained to chalk from shock—all of it turned toward Veronica. Julia lurched forward and pulled her into an embrace. Her body shook like something without a spine, like a reed that had lost the current holding it upright.

Veronica stroked her back with one hand and sent a look over her shoulder to Ian. What is in that room? What could have put an entire household of people into this state?

Ian caught her glance. He moved with care toward the open doorway.

And he stopped.

The chest muscles drawn taut beneath his shirt went still. His fist closed, slow and deliberate. His jaw set. The dark pupils within those teal eyes spread wide as he stared at whatever lay on the other side of the threshold.

Veronica kept her focus on Julia first.

"I heard screaming and came. What's happened?"

"Oh, Vera. Oh..."

"It's all right. I'm here. Ian's here. Just breathe, just—"

But then came the words that stopped her entirely.

"...My husband. Edmund is dead."

Veronica froze where she stood and raised her head.

Who. She said who was dead?