“We can’t just rol right up to the front door; be sensible, Tess,” said Wil as Jem leaped out of the carriage and reached up to help Tessa down.
Her boots plashed into the wet, muddy ground as she landed; Wil dropped down lightly beside her. “We need to get a look at the place. Use Henry’s device to register demonic presence. Make sure we’re not walking into a trap.”
“Does Henry’s device actual y work?” Tessa lifted her skirts to keep them out of the mud as the three of them started down the road. Glancing back, she saw the coachman apparently already asleep, leaning back in the driver’s seat with his hat tipped forward over his face. Al around them the countryside was a patchwork of gray and green—hil s rising starkly; their sides pitted with gray shale; flat sheep-cropped grass; and here and there copses of gnarled, entwined trees. There was a severe beauty to it al , but Tessa shuddered at the idea of living here, so far away from anything.
Jem, seeing her shudder, gave a sideways smile. “City lass.”
Tessa laughed. “I was thinking how odd it would be to grow up in a place like this, so far from any people.”
“Where I grew up was not so different from this,” said Wil unexpectedly, startling them both. “It’s not so lonely as you might think. Out in the countryside, you can be assured, people visit one another a great deal. They just have a greater distance to traverse than they might in London.
And once they arrive, they often make a lengthy stay. After al , why make the trip just to stay a night or two? We’d often have house guests who’d remain for weeks.”
Tessa goggled at Wil silently. It was so rare that he ever referred to anything regarding his early life that she sometimes thought of him as someone with no past at al . Jem seemed to be doing the same thing, though he recovered first.
“I share Tessa’s view. I have never lived in anything but a city. I don’t know how I could sleep at night, not knowing I was surrounded by a thousand other sleeping, dreaming souls.”
“And filth everywhere, and everyone breathing down one another’s necks,” countered Wil . “When I first arrived in London, I so quickly tired of being surrounded by so many people that it was only with great difficulty that I refrained from seizing the next unfortunate who crossed my path and committing violent acts upon their person.”
“Some might say you retain that problem,” said Tessa, but Wil just laughed—a short, nearly surprised sound of amusement—and then stopped, looking ahead of them to Ravenscar Manor.
Jem whistled as Tessa realized why she had been able to see only the tops of the chimneys before. The manor was built in the center of a deep declivity between three hil s; their slanting sides rose about it, cradling it as if in the palm of a hand. Tessa, Jem, and Wil were poised on the edge of one of the hil s, looking down at the manor. The building itself was very grand, a great gray stone pile that gave the impression it had been there for centuries. A large circular drive curved in front of the enormous front doors. Nothing about the place hinted at abandonment or disrepair—no weeds grew over the drive or the paths that led to the stone outbuildings, and no glass was missing from the mul ioned windows.
“Someone’s living here,” said Jem, echoing Tessa’s thoughts. He began to start down the hil . The grass here was longer, waving almost waist-high. “Perhaps if—”
He broke off as the rattle of wheels became audible; for a moment Tessa thought the carriage driver had come after them, but no, this was quite a different carriage—a sturdy-looking coach that turned into the gate and began rol ing toward the manor. Jem crouched down immediately in the grass, and Wil and Tessa dropped beside him. They watched as the carriage came to a stop before the manor, and the driver leaped down to open the carriage door.
A young girl stepped out, fourteen or fifteen years old, Tessa guessed—not old enough to have put her hair up, for it blew around her in a curtain of black silk. She wore a blue dress, plain but fashionable. She nodded to the driver, and then, as she started up the manor steps, she paused— paused and looked toward where Jem, Wil , and Tessa crouched, almost as if she could see them, though Tessa was sure that they were wel hidden by the grass.
The distance was too great for Tessa to make out her features, real y—just the pale oval of her face below the dark hair. She was about to ask Jem if he had a telescope with him, when Wil made a noise—a noise she had never heard anyone make before, a sick, terrible gasp, as if the air had been punched out of him by a tremendous blow.
But it was not just a gasp, she realized. It was a word; and not just a word, a name; and not just a name, but one she had heard him say before.
“Cecily.”
IN SILENCE SEALED
The human heart has hidden treasures,
In secret kept, in silence sealed;
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,
Whose charms were broken if revealed
—Charlotte Bront?, “Evening Solace”