Free The Ashford Affair by Lauren Willig

do.”
    “Yes, but I do it for a living.” His breath was warm on the back of her neck. “And about people who aren’t related to me. You love Addie. Addie loves you. That’s the important thing.”
    She turned, awkwardly, at the wrong moment, so that they bumped together and had to disentangle themselves. “Thanks, so much, Dr. Phil,” she said, shoving her hair out of her face. “I’ll bear that in mind.”
    Jon leaned over to fish out her scarf from under the chair, thigh muscles showing to good advantage beneath his snowmen. “I think the appropriate answer to that is probably something along the lines of ‘yeah, right.’”
    “Strange as it is,” said Clemmie, taking the scarf from him, “I think I’m actually glad to have you back.”
    “Strange as it is,” said Jon, reaching around her to unlock the door, “I think I’m actually glad to be back. I’ll let you know once I’ve found a place.”
    Clemmie wrapped her scarf around her neck, shaking her too-short hair out of the way. “Good luck with the apartment-hunting. Tell Aunt Anna I stopped by.”
    “Will do.” He held the door for her with exaggerated courtesy. “And, hey, if you need me for anything—”
    “—I’ll think of someone else to call,” said Clemmie.
    He gave her a thumbs-up and the door swung shut behind him.
    It was only after the door had closed that she realized: He had never told her what Aunt Anna meant to tell her. And he had never explained about Bea.

 
    FOUR
    Ashford, 1906
    “Is it true that you were raised by heathens?”
    It was Addie’s first night at Ashford. She lay wide-awake, her covers pulled up to her chin, doing her very, very best not to cry. She was afraid that if she did, her tears would freeze on her face. The fire in her room had long since burned down and it was bitterly cold. There was no Fernie to fix it for her, no Mother to come kiss her on the temple and tuck the edges of the blanket around her chin.
    Addie rolled onto her side, but the creak of the mattress sounded uncomfortably loud in the silence. It was darker than she had ever imagined it could be. The white-painted wardrobe and nightstand were gray shapes in the general gloom. Addie missed the light of the gas lamps shining through her window through the chink in the drapes. She missed the comforting sounds of London, the creak of carriages, the dull rumble of automobiles. There were other sounds here, strange creaks and rustles that made her shrink beneath the sheets for safety.
    Imagination was all very well in the daylight, but it was an uncomfortable thing late at night. This was the sort of house where ghosts seemed less a superstition and more a certainty, white ladies and phantom cavaliers and carriages that thundered down the lane with no one driving. Her parents’ friends used to have competitions to see who could tell the ghastliest tales, but it had been one thing in the well-lit drawing room of the little house on Guilford Street, quite another here at Ashford, with the strange, keening cry of an unknown animal coming from the woods.
    They had arrived at Ashford late, late enough that Addie’s only image of the house was a confused impression of burning torches at the entrance and gray stone walls that had seemed to go on forever. There had been servants lined up, waiting for them outside, but Addie hadn’t been introduced to them, just shooed along the row, up an endless flight of stairs, and into a hall bigger than her parents’ entire house, with a ceiling that went up and up. Addie had craned her head to look back at it, bending back as far as her neck would let her to goggle at the painted people cavorting in tiers so far, far above her.
    Don’t gawk, had said Aunt Vera.
    Aunt Vera was full of don’ts. Don’t run, don’t fidget, don’t disturb your uncle.
    Uncle Charles had, in his own way, tried to be kind. Your father and I used to race up that, he told her, pointing to the double staircase, although Addie