“Hello!” called a plummy English voice from the other side of a high brick wall. “Hello!”
A black gate in the wall opened, and Sebastian appeared. There was no mistaking him. He was more ample in his build now, his face a bit more jowly and his hair silvered. He was dressed in gray pants and a simple but likely expensive black sweater, with white detailing down the sleeves. He made his way quickly across the gravel, talking as he went.
“Oh, you’re here! I hope the train ride was all right. Izzy. Izzy!”
He wrapped her in a massive embrace.
“Has there been news?” he said, pulling back enough to look down at her.
She shook her head.
“How are you?”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
“Well, quite, but we’re going to sort it all out, don’t you worry. Now, is this everyone? Please introduce me.”
Izzy made the round of introductions. Sebastian took note of all the names as she went and then repeated them back correctly.
“Right,” he said, clasping his hands together. “Come through the front, won’t you? I’ll take you in the proper way.”
He indicated a different gate through another high brick wall, which led into a private garden, lined with topiary, with benches and planted beds, with a winding gravel path.
“Welcome to Merryweather,” he said, turning as he led them along past a small fountain.
He put his arm over Izzy’s shoulders and leaned in to speak to her. David fell in beside Stevie as they made their way through the twisting garden path.
“There’s something going on in your head,” he said quietly. “I saw it on the train. What is it?”
“Can’t,” Stevie said in a low voice. “Not now.”
David frowned.
There was a break in the topiary wall that Stevie didn’t even see. Sebastian stepped up to it and led them to a long front stone porch. Did you call this a porch? Her house in Pittsburgh had a porch, with a crooked mailbox, a God Bless America banner, and two wicker chairs that housed generations of spiders. This was not a porch—this was a stone stage, balustraded, punctuated on the corners with lichen-marbled urns. Below it rolled lawns and gardens that seemed to stretch on for miles and miles, taking in the hills around, which were patchworked in dark green hedge lines and trees. Far down, sheep grazed freely, baaing and milling around. It seemed like they were utterly alone in the world here, in a peaceful idyll.
A stage waiting for an audience. That’s what it was.
Sebastian ushered them under a columned portico, in through an outer then an inner door, into a grand, high-ceilinged hall. Even though there was a fair number of them coming into what should have been an echoing space, Stevie was immediately aware of how Merryweather seemed to eat sound. There was the grandfather clock by the stairs that made a loud, ticking heartbeat.
“They’re here!” Sebastian bellowed. His voice was big—a professional voice—which took up that void. “You can set your things here, and leave your coats just there, on that table.”
He indicated a long side table with a marble top and no visible function. Above it hung a painting of a man with a shotgun and a dog, which felt like more of a warning than a greeting.
“Come through, come through,” Sebastian said. “We’re here in the sitting room. Just made some tea.”
Of course there was tea. Stevie had started looking forward to it. This one had already been laid out on a large tray on an ottoman. Sitting by the fire was a Black woman dressed in a gray cowl neck sweater dress, black tights, and tall, flat-soled boots. Her hair was cropped close to her head.
“You remember Theo?” he said to Izzy.
“Of course!” Izzy accepted a hug from Theo.
The introductions were made again. Theo, they were told, was “an A&E physician” at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London.
“I’ve got everything organized,” Sebastian said. “All the rooms are ready. Sooz will be here any moment. Peter and Yash are on the way. Julian will be coming later this evening, probably after dinner.”
Tea and a few biscuits were quickly consumed, then Sebastian guided them back out into the hall. Their American voices seemed to echo baldly through the space. The man in the painting was unimpressed. Even his dog wasn’t happy about their sudden appearance. They went up the stairs, which were lined with portraits of people who looked like they hated being in portraits. There were so many paintings—paintings of large, sweaty horses, fainting women, thin sunrises breaking over cottages and pastures, several ships in perilous seas, drooling Labradors, a man in medieval clothing being stabbed through a curtain. It was sadness, seasickness, and dread in frame after gilded frame. And there were things everywhere. At the top of the stairs, a porcelain bowl sat on a small table for anyone to knock over. Against the wall—a cabinet full of . . . fancy rocks? An oar above a door. A desk with a lute on it. Glass-fronted bookshelves. Ancient, framed photographs. A dish of old-fashioned keys. The jaw of a monstrous sea creature （possibly obtained in one of the sea battles pictured before?）。 Vases. More vases. A shepherdess made of china. Rugs on top of rugs.
It reminded Stevie of her grandparents, who had a serious addiction to buying things at yard sales and the Harbor Freight store, except they had six air fryers, a whole bunch of old computer monitors, a dartboard from a bar, and a Skee-Ball machine salvaged from a Chuck E. Cheese that had gone up in flames in an insurance fraud arson.
This stuff was different. It was at least more expensive.
“I think I’ll put you here, Izzy, in the Bishop’s Room,” Sebastian said, switching on the light in a sprawling bedroom with pale blue wallpaper and a four-poster bed. “Janelle, how about right here. The Rose Room. The ghost of my great-aunt lives in here, but all she ever does is move people’s eyeglasses, so don’t worry. She’s otherwise charming. Vi? This way, darling. The DeVere Room. Nate, was it? Smashing room over here—the Regent Room. Stevie and David, right this way, around the corner. I’ve got two lovely rooms back here that face the garden.”
David got a room called the Mountjoy Room. His was in bracing shades of deep blue and green. Stevie was guided down two more doors.
“And here you go, Stevie,” Sebastian said. “The Lilac Room. You might not be used to English heating. These houses get drafty. There are extra blankets in the chest at the foot of the bed.”
“Thanks,” Stevie said.
“Not at all, not at all. Let me just pop back downstairs and have a butcher’s to see how dinner is coming along. Come and join us when you’re ready.”
Stevie had absolutely no idea what he meant by “have a butcher’s” and was not going to ask.
Once he was gone, she shut the door, took the fire safe from her suitcase, and stashed it under the bed. She went to the window and pushed it open. There were no screens on the windows, so she could lean out a bit and touch the climbing vines that surrounded the window and snaked up the walls. The garden seemed to be functional, with sections of green vegetables and herbs all set out in neat rows, supported with wires and many covered by arches of netting. Some pear trees grew flat along the wall and were heavy with fruit. Beyond the garden was more garden, and beyond that green land rolling along, going right to the hills and the trees. England. Endless, green England.