Bury the Ex, Wed the Heir novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Door at the End of the Hall

She opens the door she was told not to, calls the man in the dark a corpse, and turns on the lamp. It is the face from the portrait, a month dead, and he says she has been his wife for six hours.

Linnet did not decide to go.

She found herself in the hall in her bare feet, with a thin robe over her nightdress and the ring cold on her finger.

The east wing was long and dark, lit only by one lamp at the far end.

At the far end was a tall door of black wood.

Madam's rule was still in her ears.

Never open the door at the end of the hall.

Linnet put her hand on the knob.

Behind the wood, the chair scraped again, and the same man coughed.

She turned the knob and pushed.

The room was dark except for a line of moonlight across the floor.

A man stood at the window with one hand on the sill and the other on a cane.

He was tall and broad through the shoulders, and he stood stiffly, like someone who had been told to rest and had not.

He did not turn around.

"I was told this door would be locked," he said.

It was the voice from the hotel.

Linnet's heart slammed against her ribs, and she gripped the doorframe.

"You," she said. "You were in my room this morning. You gave me water and you left."

"I did."

"Who are you? Some relative she keeps hidden up here?"

He said nothing.

Her fear turned sharp and loud.

"Is this where she keeps the corpse?" Linnet said. "The one I married today? Is that what you are?"

His back went still.

For a moment the only sound was the clock on the mantel.

"Close to it," he said.

He reached out slowly and switched on the lamp beside the window.

The light came up warm and yellow, and he turned around.

Linnet stopped breathing.

She knew the face.

She had bowed to it three times in the great hall that morning, wrapped in black ribbon.

The portrait had not lied about the dark eyes.

It had lied about everything else.

The man in front of her had a half-healed cut across his right eyebrow and a gray look under the skin.

His collar was open, and a pale line of bandage showed beneath it, tied around his ribs.

He leaned on the cane because he could not yet stand without it.

He was alive, and he was staring at her.

"You're dead," Linnet said.

"That's what the newspapers say."

"The funeral was a month ago. Hundreds of people went."

"I'm told the flowers were excellent."

He said it so dryly that she almost laughed, and the laugh stuck in her throat.

She had never in her life been so confused, and she had died once already.

"Sit down before you fall," he said. "You've gone white."

"You sit down. You're the one on a cane."

"I stand for the first ten minutes of every hour. The doctor says it's good for me."

"Doctor," Linnet repeated.

"Madam has a doctor who lives in the village and says nothing," he said. "The rest of the house thinks I'm a patient of his cousin's, in the south room. The cook leaves my tray at the end of the hall and leaves quickly."

He lowered himself carefully into the armchair by the window.

It took him a moment, and he did not make a sound.

Linnet watched his hand shake once on the arm of the chair.

She felt it in her own stomach, and she did not know why.

"This morning," she said slowly. "At the hotel."

"You were drugged," he said. "Someone carried you in at five and left you on the bed. I sat there until your breathing was steady."

"You were buttoning your shirt."

"You were sick on the first one."

Heat climbed her neck, and she hated it.

"You didn't tell me who you were."

"You weren't in a state to hear it," he said. "And I wasn't supposed to be there either."

He looked at her steadily, and for the first time he looked at the whole of her, from the robe to the ring on her left hand.

"I want to ask you something," he said.

"Ask."

"My grandmother tells me you walked up to Anselm Dray on my front lawn this morning and sent him off with his tail between his legs. She says you did it without being asked and without blinking."

"Yes."

"Why?"

Linnet held onto the doorframe.

She could not tell him she had already lived this day once, and she could not lie to the man who had sat up all night over her.

"Because I know him," she said.

"I thought so," he said.

He rested his cane across his knees.

"Then you should know who you married, Mrs. Ravenscroft," he said. "My name is Silvan Ravenscroft."

He looked at the ring on her hand.

"I'm told you've been my wife since noon."

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