It would be easy to fall out a window like this, she also noted. Lean out a bit too far to look at a rose or a cloud or a sheep and you’d be sprawled on the terrace stones in no time, Agatha Christie–style.
She shut the window.
The bathroom was nice. There was a massive claw-foot tub and a small sofa. Just to sit on. In the bathroom. She sat on it for a few minutes, staring at the tub, pushing down an anxiety attack that threatened to rise. She breathed slowly, making her exhalations longer than her inhalations.
Angela. That’s why she was here. Sure, she had brought everyone here under a bit of a lie, but it was a lie for a good reason, and if you lied for a good reason, was it even a lie?
She needed to tell someone. Nate. Nate would understand. She had to let Nate know, and then she would tell Janelle and Vi and everything would be fine and then she could get on with the business of finding Angela.
She stepped back into the dark paneled hallway and the warren of doors. Stevie crept along, though she couldn’t quite tell why she was creeping. There was something about the ornate carpets and runners and all the eyes on the walls and the grandfather clock that suggested that creeping was the only acceptable way to move around a house like this. Clomping was vulgar. Walking was for poors. David stepped out of his room.
“Hey,” he said. “Going back down?”
“Just need to talk to Nate for a second,” she said. Then, lowering her voice, she added, “Do you think they’re really fine with us being here?”
“They’re English,” David said. “They complain when your back is turned. They’ll never say it to your face. And they sort of expect Americans to be rude so it kind of doesn’t matter.”
“Not rude,” Sooz said.
Stevie let out a startled sound. A weird one. Kind of like heep. Sooz had apparently arrived and had dropped her things in a nearby room. Today she was wearing a deep blue jumpsuit with silver piping. Her curly red hair bounced as she walked.
“Good to see you again. Most Americans I meet are lovely. And I would tell you if everyone was annoyed, but the others probably wouldn’t. They’re more polite. It really is fine that you’re here. We might as well be together. Better than sitting alone at home sick with worry. Come down. Sebastian was just saying that he wanted to give you a tour of the grounds.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Stevie said.
“I’ll come with you,” David offered.
“Good. Sebastian!”
Her voiced boomed through the space.
“Yes, darling?” came the reply.
“Do you have anything for a little afternoon bring-me-down?”
“There’s a nice little cabernet left over from a wedding a few weeks ago. In the kitchen.”
David glanced back at Stevie, then descended the steps. Stevie continued, backtracking until she found the door of the room that she was pretty sure had been assigned to Nate. She knocked and found him in a room with maroon walls, deep and saturated like drying blood. He had stationed himself on the bed and was looking at his phone.
“Are you enjoying your stay in the Rocky Horror house so far?” he asked. “When do we Time Warp?”
“I need to talk to you,” she said, shutting the door.
“Why does that fill me with dread? You never need to talk to me about finding a baby dragon or a bottomless pit of KFC. It’s always something terrible.”
“Quinn didn’t say we could come.”
Nate lowered his phone to his lap.
“What does that mean, exactly? I thought you asked her?”
“I did ask her, but . . .”
“But?”
Stevie looked at her friend.
“But?” he prompted.
“She said no.”
Nate put his hand over his eyes.
“That’s a joke, right?”
“We’ll be back so soon,” Stevie cut in. “And I’ll take all the blame. All of it. I’ll tell her I told you guys she said it was okay. I will take it. All of it.”
She allowed him a moment of silence, the heel of his hand pressing into his forehead. He finally lowered it and looked at her seriously.
“You have to tell Janelle and Vi.”
“Are you mad?”
“You do this shit, Stevie. This is how you are. I guess I probably knew on some level that Quinn said no and we were going anyway. That’s just what happens with you. Lying kind of sucks? And, I don’t know, Vi and I can probably take it, but you shouldn’t lie to Janelle.”
For some reason, this was more painful and difficult than Nate just being mad. He was right. Nate and Vi might roll with this nonsense, but Janelle didn’t play around with the truth.
“How bad will it be, do you think?” she asked.
“Bad,” he said. “Do it now. And then we have to figure out what to do when Quinn calls.”
“I already thought of that. She can’t tell where we’re calling from, so we can . . .”
He just stared at her.
“Yeah, I . . .”
“Everyone!” Sebastian called. “Would you like the tour?”
“Tell her soon, Stevie. Shit. I’m not telling her, and I’m also not going to lie to her.”
Lie. It was such a gross word, with spikes on it. She was a liar. A fiendish thing. Her throat felt dry.
“I’ll tell her tonight,” Stevie said. “I promise.”
19
SEBASTIAN GUIDED DAVID AND STEVIE OUT THE FRONT DOOR, AND they stood a moment on the grand flagstone porch, overlooking the rolling greens and the sheep and the sunset. Nate had opted out of the tour, and Janelle and Vi had vanished somewhere in the depths of Merryweather. Izzy was deep in conversation with Theo, so only David and Stevie were making the rounds outside.
“Good of you to come with Izzy,” Sebastian said, leading them down the steps to the lawn. “How is she doing?”
“She’s nervous,” David said as they descended the low stone steps onto the lawn.
“So are we all. Julian should be bringing news. Until then, keep calm and carry on, I suppose. And you get to see a bit more of England. See a place like this. My family has lived here since 1675. Somebody in the family did something or other for the king and got the land and an old house as a gift. This is the kind of thing I’m supposed to care about and remember, but I don’t. They tore that house down and built a new one, and then a hundred years later, some other ancestor of mine decided that house wasn’t quite right and ripped it down and built this one. Madness. But here it is.”
He waved a hand in the direction of the house that reared up behind them.
“I’d never be able to keep this place if it didn’t pay for itself,” he said. “It’s absurd for one person or family to own something like this, but here we are. Now it earns its keep by hosting weddings and events, film shoots, things like that. Spring and summer, Christmas and New Year’s . . . those are the busiest times. But there’s going to be a film crew here in two weeks’ time to shoot some scenes for a new period drama. It’s quite fun when that happens. I’ve worked as an extra in a few things. I played a butler once. Even got a line.”
He smiled.
“All the grand rooms, I leave those open for guests and filming. The top floor is where I live. Those are the poky servants’ rooms, but there’s loads of space and I knocked a few of them through to make myself a bigger bedroom and lounge. My husband is an antiques expert for Sotheby’s. He’s in Vienna at the moment, appraising items for an auction. He’s absolutely mad for boot sales—or yard sales, you call them? He can spot a treasure in a pile of dreck and picks it up for a tenner or something. And so, we live in a pile of tea sets and Georgian tripod tables that people found in their attics and basements.”