Read Chapter 12: The Village Visit

The morning light was thin and grey, the sky the colour of unwashed pewter. Elowen stood at the kitchen window, watching the storm’s aftermath. The garden was a ruin of flattened grass and scattered slate, the distant line of the sea a bruised, restless metal. But the bridge was there, a dark spine of granite against the churn of the water below. Receded. Passable.

She hadn't slept. The letter—the third one, the one that spoke of escaped rooms—burned in her memory, its ink as fresh as blood. Every shadow in the house had been a footstep, every creak a whispered sentence. And Merrick. She’d heard him pace until the small hours, his tread heavy on the floor above her.

Now she pulled on her waxed jacket and pushed her bicycle out the service door before she could change her mind. The wind swung at her, sharp and salty, as she bumped down the gravel track to the cobbled lane. Merrick was a fool if he thought the storm had sealed her in. His secrets didn’t live inside the manor walls. They lived in the village. In the whispers of old women who had known the Merrick family longer than he had been alive.

The ride to Porthallow took the better part of an hour. Her legs burned against the incline, the tyres slipping on wet leaves and loose stone. Twice she nearly dismounted and turned back, but the image of that blue dress, hanging motionless in the dark wardrobe, kept her pedalling. The house was trying to tell her something. And Merrick, with his careful half-truths and apologetic silences, was trying to keep her from hearing it.

The village unfolded before her like a faded photograph: a crescent of white-washed cottages, a small stone quay where a pair of fishing boats sat tilted on the mud, and a single pub with a wooden sign that creaked in the breeze. She leaned her bike against a low wall outside a bakery that smelled of yeast and burned sugar. The street was nearly empty. An old man in a flat cap nodded at her as he passed, his eyes quick and curious on her face, marking her as a stranger.

She found the postmistress first—a brisk woman with glasses on a chain who pointed her toward the parish records. But when Elowen asked about the asylum, about who Merrick paid his monthly sum to, the woman’s smile thinned.

“You’d be wanting Mrs. Polwhele,” she said, not meeting Elowen’s eyes. “End cottage, past the chapel. She’s lived here longer than most and remembers everything she ought not to.”

The chapel was a grey stone husk with a crooked spire. Beyond it, the lane turned to packed earth and ended at a cottage smothered in climbing roses, their heads bowed and heavy with rain. Elowen knocked. The wood was salt-worn, the paint peeling. For a long moment, nothing. Then the door cracked open on a chain, and a narrow face peered out.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Polwhele? My name is Elowen Ash. I’m staying at Merryn House.”

The door clicked shut. Elowen’s heart sank. Then she heard the rattle of the chain, and the door swung wide. The woman was small and wiry, her white hair pinned in a loose knot, her eyes bright as chips of flint. She wore a floral apron over a thick cardigan, and her hands were gnarled, their knuckles swollen with age.

“Ash,” she repeated, tasting the name. She stepped back, gesturing Elowen inside. “You’d better come in then. The kettle’s on.”

The cottage was warm and low-ceilinged, crammed with furniture that had lived several lives. China dogs lined the mantelpiece, and the air smelled of lavender and coal smoke. Mrs. Polwhele waved Elowen into a wingback chair and set a cup of tea before her without asking how she took it—milk first, then a heaped spoon of sugar. Elowen didn’t correct her.

“You’re the writer,” the old woman said, settling into a chair opposite. “Heard about you from the butcher’s boy. Says you’re working on a book about the house.”

Elowen wrapped her fingers around the warm cup. “Something like that. I’m trying to understand the people who lived there. The families.”

Mrs. Polwhele snorted. “One family, more like. The Merricks and the Ashes have been tangled in that place since before I was born. My grandmother used to say the house itself was the marriage, and the families just the rings on its fingers.”

Elowen’s own ring pulsed, a faint, dull heat against her skin. She ignored it. “Merrick—the current keeper. He’s a Merrick, isn’t he?”

“Aye. But he’s not from here.” Mrs. Polwhele’s eyes grew distant. “Came to the manor maybe ten, twelve years back. Said he was settling an old account. Clean, quiet boy. Kept to himself.” She took a sip of her own tea, then set it down with a decisive click. “He had a sister, you know. Younger, I think. Pretty little thing with dark hair.”

Elowen’s breath caught. “A sister. What happened to her?”

Mrs. Polwhele’s mouth tightened. She stared into her cup for a long moment, as if weighing the cost of the words. “Sent away,” she said at last. “That’s all anyone knew. One day she was there, running along the cliffs with him, and the next she was gone. No fuss, no farewell. Just gone.”

“Sent where?” Elowen leaned forward.

“They said a school. But schools don’t take children who scream the way that one did.” Mrs. Polwhele shook her head slowly. “I heard things. From a girl who worked up at the manor back then—a cousin of my niece’s. She said the girl were wild, not right in the head. Threatened to throw herself from the tower more than once. And the boy—young Merrick—he worshipped her. Would have done anything for her.”

Elowen’s mind raced. Merrick had a sister. A sister who was unstable, who was sent away. The ledger in his office had listed monthly payments to an asylum. He’d claimed he didn’t know the resident’s name—a lie that now tasted bitter and obvious. He had known her face. He knew her name. He had been paying for her care for a decade, and he’d hidden it behind a curtain of quiet denial.

“Do you remember her name?” Elowen asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Mrs. Polwhele’s flint-bright eyes met hers. “Clara. Clara Merrick. She would be about your age now, if she’s still among the living.”

Clara.

The name landed in Elowen’s chest like a stone in still water, sending ripples through everything she thought she knew. Merrick’s fear—not of the house, but of her. His confession that he knew her father. The room he guarded with such desperation, the blue dress hanging in the dark. He wasn’t hiding her sister’s fate. He was hiding his own.

“She was in love with someone, wasn’t she?” Elowen said, the certainty rising in her like tidewater. “Someone she couldn’t have.”

Mrs. Polwhele’s face flickered, ancient and knowing. “My grandmother used to say that girls like Clara love too hard and too deep. They burn brighter than the rest of us, but they burn out faster.”

Elowen set down her cup. Her hands were shaking. She rose, her knees unsteady. “Thank you for the tea,” she said, but the words felt mechanical, distant.

Mrs. Polwhele followed her to the door. As Elowen stepped into the cold, salt-tinged air, the old woman caught her wrist. Her grip was surprisingly strong, her fingers like wire.

“If you find her,” Mrs. Polwhele said, her voice low, “if you find Clara—do not give her what she wants. It will only hurt you both.”

Elowen pulled her hand free, her ring burning cold and sharp against her finger. “I don’t even know what she wants.”

Mrs. Polwhele’s stare was unblinking. “Same thing all daughters of the manor want, dear. She wants to come home.”

The door shut with a soft click. Elowen stood on the path, the wind pulling at her hair, the word ringing in her skull like a bell.

Clara.

She grabbed her bicycle and pushed off towards the lane, her legs pumping harder than they needed to, the manor a dark shape on the horizon, waiting for her. She knew now that the room in the east wing was not the grave of her sister. It was the prison of a living woman. And Merrick, with his sad eyes and careful apologies, was the gaoler who refused to open the door.

But Elowen had learned other things tonight. She had learned how to pick a lock. No—she had learned where to find the key. Merrick kept his ring on the hook by the back door, in the scullery, where he thought no one was watching.

She intended to prove him wrong.