Thank goodness Mitzi wasn’t there—for the thought of confessing in front of Mitzi, who had been so kind . . . Hal almost doubted she could have brought herself to do it.
But Lizzie knew—and with that came a kind of relief, for there was no going back, no way Hal could chicken out now. She had to push through with this, make her apologies, and . . . then what? Go to see Mr. Treswick, she supposed, to explain the whole situation.
But beneath those thoughts were layered other, more disturbing ones. For behind all this lay one simple, immutable fact: Maud was still missing—and no one seemed to know what had happened to her.
Sometime after February 1995 she had slipped out of sight of her mother, brothers, and cousin, and disappeared. Had she gone of her own volition? Or was the truth something else, something more sinister?
Hal thought of her as she walked, of the fiercely intelligent child that both Lizzie and Mr. Treswick remembered with such amused awe. Of the girl in Maggie’s diaries, who had fought with Mrs. Westaway and guarded Maggie’s secrets. And of the woman she had wanted to become—free, educated, independent. Had she made it? Was that the truth—that she had helped her cousin free herself from Trepassen House, and then disappeared in her own turn, to make her life somewhere else? It was possible. But it seemed so unlikely—and so strange, that in all the years, Hal’s mother had never even mentioned her name. However much Maggie had wanted to leave the unhappiness of Trepassen behind her, it seemed unbelievably callous to have erased the existence of a woman who had done so much to help her.
But the only other possibility was even more disturbing—that Margarida Westaway was dead.
CHAPTER 37
* * *
Hal was soaked and shivering by the time she got to the big wrought-iron gates. She was profoundly grateful that Abel had made her take his walking jacket, but the hood was too big to stay up. However tight she pulled the drawstring, the wind blew it back and sent the rain running down the back of her neck to soak her T-shirt.
For a mile or so she tried holding it in place with one hand, but even with her fingers scrunched as far as she could get into the cuffs of the coat, it left her hands cold and blue, and in the end she abandoned the hood, and shoved her hands deep into the pockets of the coat.
When Hal pushed open the gate, the hinges shrieked, a low, mournful sound that cut through the patter of the rain, and made her shiver in a way that wasn’t just cold. There was something about the long, low note that made the skin on the back of Hal’s neck crawl. It was as though the house itself were dying in pain.
By the time she got up to the house, there was a little sleet mixed in with the rain, the tiny shards of ice stinging her cheek and making her eyes water, and in spite of her trepidation, she was glad to reach the shelter of the porch, where the wind dropped and she could shake off the worst of the water. Inside, she took off Abel’s coat, watching as the water pooled on the tiles, and feeling the sensation painfully returning to her chapped fingers, stinging as the blood began to return. From the drawing room she could hear male voices, and taking a deep breath, she put the coat on the peg and made her way across the hallway to the half-open door.
“Hal?” Abel looked around as Hal entered diffidently. “Bloody hell, you look like a drowned rat. Why didn’t you call me?”
“I was enjoying the walk,” Hal said. She moved closer to the fire, trying to mask the chattering of her teeth. It was not quite a lie. She had not enjoyed the walk, not exactly, but she had not wanted a lift. She’d needed the time to clear her head, work out what she was going to say.
Across the room Ezra was sprawled on the sofa, replying to something on his phone, but he looked up as Hal passed him, and gave a snorting laugh.
“I’ve never seen anyone look quite so impressively bedraggled. I’m afraid you’ve missed lunch, but we could probably brave Mrs. Warren’s lair for a cup of tea if you need something to warm you up. Or the water in the immersion tank should be hot, if you want a bath?”
“I’ll do that,” Hal said, grateful for the excuse. Part of her wanted to get this over and done with, but another, more cowardly part was clutching at any straw to postpone the cataclysm that was sure to follow. “Wh-where’s Harding?”
“In his room, I think. Having a nap, is my guess. Why?”
“Oh . . . just wondered.”
• • •
THE BATHROOM WAS UPSTAIRS—JUST one for the entire house, with a huge claw-footed tub streaked green with copper rust, and a lavatory in one corner with a chain that clanked and screeched when Hal pulled it, reminding her of the metallic groan of the gates.
But the water, when she turned the brass taps, was hot, and the pressure was good, and when she at last lowered herself into the scalding heat, she felt something inside her release, a tension that she hadn’t known she was holding on to.
Uncle Harding—I’m not who you think I am.
No. Absurdly dramatic. But how could she say it? How could she bring it up?
When I went back home, I discovered something. . . .
And then the story of the diary, as though she had just come to this dawning realization.
The trouble with that was that it was a lie.
So what, then?
Harding, Ezra, Abel—I set out to defraud you.
Maybe the words would come, when she was faced with them all. Closing her eyes, she submerged herself beneath the water, so that her ears filled with the sound of her own pulse and the drip, drip of the tap, driving out all the other voices.
• • •
“HARRIET?”
Hal jumped and turned, clutching the towel to herself, as Harding’s head came out of the doorway of one of the rooms. At the sight of her, damp and pink from her bath, bare shoulders rising from a swath of towel, he looked almost as horrified as Hal felt.
“Oh! My dear, I’m so sorry.”
“I had a bath,” Hal said, unnecessarily. She felt the corner of the towel slip, and hitched it up, holding her damp clothes in front of herself like a shield. “I was just going up to get dressed.”
“Of course, of course,” Harding said, waving a hand to indicate that she should feel free to go, though when Hal turned he spoke again, forcing her to turn back, shivering as she did, in the sudden draft. “Oh, Harriet, I’m so sorry—there was one thing I wanted to say, before we met with the others. I won’t keep you, but I wanted—well, your offer to perform a deed of variation was very generous, but I’m sorry to say that Abel, Ezra, and I discussed it, and Ezra is being rather difficult about it. He’s an executor, you know, and as such he has to agree to any such deed, and he feels, rather strongly, that Mother’s wishes should be honored, however perverse and disruptive. I must say it seems an extraordinary position to me, given he never showed the least interest in her wishes when she was alive, but—well—there it is. We’ll discuss it with Mr. Treswick tomorrow, anyway.”
Hal shivered again, unable to prevent it, and Harding seemed belatedly to realize the cold.
“Oh dear, I am sorry, I’m keeping you dripping in the corridor. Don’t mind me, I’ll see you downstairs for a gin and tonic, perhaps?”
Hal nodded, stiff with the knowledge of all that she had left unspoken; and then, unable to think what else to say that was not an addition to all the lies she had already told, she turned and made her way up the stairs to the attic room.
• • •
IT WAS PERHAPS HALF AN hour later when she pushed open the door to the drawing room and found all three brothers sitting around the coffee table, in front of a roaring log fire.
There was a bottle of whiskey on the table between them, and four tumblers—one unfilled.
“Harriet!” Harding said heartily. His face was flushed, with a mix of heat and whiskey, Hal suspected. “Come in and have a drink. I’m afraid my offer of gin and tonic turned out to be premature—there’s no tonic in the house. But I did take the precaution of buying a bottle of whiskey when I was in Penzance earlier, so we do at least have that.”
“Thanks,” Hal said, “but I don’t really—”
She stopped. She didn’t drink, not anymore. There had been too many oblivious nights after her mother’s death, too many times when one glass had dissolved into many. But now she had a sudden, powerful yearning for something, however small, to nerve her for what she was about to do.