Hillary had caved. And now, here she was in England, gazing up at the house that was so important to Matthew. It was bigger than most of the houses they’d passed on the way up from London, but it looked old and dilapidated. Matthew had told her it was manor house—it looked more to Hillary like an overgrown cottage. Even with her professional realtor’s eye, she couldn’t see much potential.
The west end of the house was covered with thick, leafy green ivy, but where stone was exposed, it looked dirty and crumbling. It was a two-story structure, with two rows of eight windows across the top and bottom, several of them broken. There were four chimneys, a weathered double door and small round stoop.
“Wow,” Matthew said. He was grinning. “This is great.”
“It looks kind of run down to me,” Hillary said skeptically.
“Are you kidding? It will look like a palace once we get it cleaned up.”
For this house to in any way resemble a palace would take much longer than the two weeks they planned to be in England, which she wanted to point out to Matthew, but he was already on the stoop, trying to fit the key into the door.
Hillary followed him inside.
“This is spectacular,” Matthew said.
To Hillary, the house did not improve on the inside. There were no furnishings save a table in the foyer and a single chair beside it. On the table was a cardboard box full of candles, which Hillary did not see as a fortuitous sign. She understood that the house had been without an inhabitant for several years and had been looked after by an occasional caretaker, but the dirt and grime and general ramshackle was overwhelming.
“Look at this wood work,” Matthew was saying, his fingers running along the molding around the doorframe. “And these windows. Do you know how much windows like this cost these days?”
“No clue,” Hillary said, looking up. There was a lighting fixture hanging from the ceiling, in the center of a papier-maché medallion. The walls were covered in dark wallpaper, the floors a dull, pitted wood.
“Come on,” Matthew said, and disappeared into a dark corridor.
They walked through the ground floor. There was a large room with an enormous fireplace, which Matthew said was likely the drawing room. Next to it, a dining room, which he guessed from the wainscoting. Hillary had no idea when he’d become an expert on old English manor houses, but he seemed to know a lot about them.
There was another room with a smaller, stone fireplace that he guessed would have served as a sitting room. “Where the ladies practiced their piano and needlework.”
“Who are you?” Hillary asked, and Matthew laughed. He looked happier than she’d seen him in some time.
The kitchen looked positively medieval, with a wooden table in the middle of a stone floor, an old industrial sink, and a gas stove that she doubted would actually fire. There was also an old-fashioned icebox, complete with an ancient refrigeration unit on top. “Oh my God,” Hillary groaned.
“Hey, if it works, who cares what it looks like?” Matthew asked. “Hillary, please try and enjoy this. We’re in England, stomping around an old house. Can you try? It’s important to me.”
“Why?” Hillary asked. “Why is this so important?”
He pushed his fingers through his dark hair. “I don’t know. It just is. I’ve felt drawn to this house since I saw the words printed on the probate papers.” He didn’t say more than that, but turned his back on her, as was his practice these days, and walked down the corridor ahead of her, his shoes clapping loudly on the wood floors and kicking up dust that made her sneeze.
“Look at this staircase,” he said, pausing at the bottom. It curved up to the landing. The steps were covered in what Hillary guessed was red carpet underneath all the grime.
The upstairs was a series of bedrooms, two smaller rooms that had been turned into baths, and a large family area. There was something about the emptiness of the house, of the dusty drapes and floors, that felt strange to Hillary. Something just not quite right, although Hillary had no clue what. She wandered over to look out the window. The grounds were, predictably, overgrown. There was a faded barn and a clothesline that stretched across the garden. She could see a small pile of trash, as if someone had quickly picked up the grounds before they’d arrived.
There it was, that feeling again, a sense that the energy in this house was a little off.
After an hour of looking around, Hillary was tired and hungry and was still suffering from jet lag. “Shouldn’t we go find a hotel?” she asked, checking her watch. “I am dying for a hot bath, and I really need to make a few calls.”
“A hotel?” Matthew said. “We’re staying here.”
Hillary looked up. She looked around the empty landing. “Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“Here?” she cried. “There is no here! This house has been closed up for years—we can’t stay here, Matthew. That’s insane.”
“We’ll open some windows and air it out,” he said quickly. “We’ve got time to clean a room tonight.”