There it was again—someone was moving about downstairs, carrying a single candle. Agnes jumped back, her heart racing. Who was it, her mother? God help her, but she’d heard her mother complain there were nights she could not sleep. Agnes hurried back to her room and shut the door. She stood with her back to the door in that darkened room, desperate to know what to do, imagining John at the potter’s shed, waiting for her.
Agnes whirled around and pressed her ear to the door, but it was impossible to hear anything with the storm raging outside. She looked at the window; a thought occurred to her, and she rushed to the window and opened it. Rain lashed her face and cloak; Agnes reared back and quickly pulled her hood over her blond hair, then leaned out again.
The drop to the ground was quite a long way, but she tossed her bundle out all the same. Directly next to her window was a tree with an overhanging limb. She had once excelled at tree climbing, and had managed this limb more than once. It scraped against the house, and she could stand on the window ledge and catch it, then swing down to a spot on the tree on which she could stand. She’d done it dozens of times.
Agnes looked down. There was her bundle on the ground below her, getting soaked by the rain. Her beautiful gown—it would be ruined! She pushed the window up higher and maneuvered one leg out. Then the other. Using the edge of the window recess, she managed to inch her way up to her feet.
The rain seemed to fall harder, and the branch danced before Agnes. She drew a breath, thought of John, and jumped. But the wind gusted at the moment she jumped, pushing the branch up just out of her reach.
Agnes’s last conscious thought as the ground rushed up to greet her was that John would think she hadn’t come.
In the years that followed, people would say it was the worst storm they’d seen in a generation. Agnes was not found until the following afternoon. Agnes’s mother thought she’d done Agnes a kindness about allowing her to sleep while the wretched rain fell, but by mid-morning, there were too many chores to do to allow the girl to sleep the day away. When Agnes’s mother found the note, and saw the open window, she screamed for her husband. She did not look out the window; she assumed Agnes was well on her way to Scotland.
The groundskeeper found Agnes’ body while friends searched for the young lovers. She was a bit waterlogged, and her neck was bent at an odd angle. Her hair had come undone and was strewn across her blue face like gold seaweed.
John Parker was found in the apple orchard near an old potter’s shed the following day. He’d died by his own hand, his fingers still curled around the gun. He’d left a note, full of the anguish of guilt and loss of his beloved.
There were those in the villages around Whitstone House who privately hoped the young lovers would be united in the hereafter.
***
Matthew and Hillary Sparks rocked down a pitted road in a rented car so small that one might have sworn it had previously housed two servings of peas. They came to a dead stop where the road met a circular drive and both leaned forward, peering through the bug-splattered front window of the car.
“That’s it?” Hillary asked.
“I guess so,” Matthew said. He turned off the car and climbed out.
Hillary reluctantly did the same. She was not exactly thrilled with this latest development in their lives. When Matthew’s mother had died last year, he’d discovered that he and his two siblings had inherited an old house in England. England! It was the first the three of them had heard of any house in England that any of them could recall, and they were shocked to discover that their mother had inherited it from a distant relative fifteen years prior. She’d never mentioned it, but then again, his mother had been suffering from a form of dementia. Perhaps she never understood she’d been willed a whole house.
Matthew was astounded and especially curious about the house. Of all of the siblings, he could afford to be—he’d been laid off from work when the recession hit. In some ways, Hillary believed this house had become a substitute for a job.
One day, when Hillary came home from work, Matthew told her they were going to England. “Neither Craig nor Elaine can go right now,” he’d explained, referring to his siblings. “So we need to go.”
“I can’t go,” Hillary had said quickly, shocked that he would think that she could. She had a thriving real estate business in the Hudson Valley, specializing in high-end properties. How could she go to England? Had he forgotten that she was the sole source of their income?