Chapter One
Babs
Langford Hall
Devonshire, England
April 1964
It was always worse at night. The shadowy figure that followed me each waking hour yet seemed just beyond my reach, just around the corner. That fleeting flash of movement out of the periphery of my vision became mortal at night. It slipped into my bed and rested its head on Kit’s pillow, melded itself against my back under the counterpane, exhaled a breath against my cheek in the darkness.
Sometimes, if I was in that half-world between wakefulness and sleep, I’d imagine Kit had come back to me, that he slept in his spot on the bed that even a year later I hadn’t encroached upon. Other times, like tonight, it would only remind me that Kit was truly and completely gone, and the tight ball of grief that resided in my chest would unfurl its sharp talons, stealing all hope of sleep.
With a sigh, I threw back the bedclothes and slid from the bed, shivering. I was always cold in the house, even more so now that it was almost unbearably empty. After sliding on my slippers and pulling on Kit’s dressing gown that rested at the foot of the bed, I wandered aimlessly through the drafty, cold hallways and rooms of Langford Hall, Kit’s ancestral home.
Although I’d been raised with three older brothers at the neighboring estate, I’d always considered Langford Hall mine as much as Kit’s, having spent as much time growing up there as in my own home. Since the time when I’d been a little girl, I’d adored the elegant rectangle of red-brown Georgian brick, the three stories tucked under a hipped, dormered roof. The sash windows, twelve panes each, evenly spaced on either side of the door. Or maybe I’d simply adored it because it was where Kit lived.
I’d been in love with Kit since I was four years old and he’d lifted me up onto the saddle in front of him when I’d announced that ponies were for babies. When I was eight I’d told my eldest brother, Charles, that I would marry Kit one day despite our ten-year difference in age. He’d laughed but had promised to keep my secret. And he had, taking it with him when he’d been shot down over the Channel during the war.
Clutching Kit’s robe tightly around me and trying my best not to personify a tragic heroine from one of my sister’s novels—those gothic romances that she thought nobody knew she read—I walked slowly down the upstairs hallway and visited the three vacant bedrooms of our children, all but one away at school. Even the family dog, Walnut the whippet, had abandoned me, allowing pity cuddles now and again but vastly preferring the warm kitchen and the prickly housekeeper, Mrs. Finch. It made no sense that Walnut would choose to align himself with a woman who professed daily that she didn’t like dogs, but I had long since given up trying to make sense of a world that refused to make itself logical.
Moonlight through the tall windows guided me across the foyer to the closed door of Kit’s study. I paused, my hand on the knob, still feeling as if I might be intruding. I was beyond exhausted of feeling that way. Tired of pretending and acting as if everything were normal, that Kit had merely been away for a short trip and would be returning soon. But he wouldn’t. I knew this, but I still found myself turning toward him in the evening to say something or tiptoeing past his office so not to disturb him. It was all so foolish of me, yet I couldn’t seem to resurrect the sure-footed and unwavering young woman I’d been when I’d first married Kit. The same woman he might have even been a little in love with. Turning the handle, I pushed gently on the door and stood in the threshold for a long moment. The spicy scent of his pipe smoke wafted toward me and I found myself peering inside the room expectantly, as if Kit might be sitting at his desk or in his favorite reading chair by the window. But the scent quickly evaporated, and I was left with the empty room again. With a resolute jut of my chin for encouragement, I walked forward as memories like water threatened to drown me.
The large leather couch was where Kit had done most of his convalescing in the year following the war. He’d been in a prison camp in Germany for nearly two years before that, and he’d been returned to Langford Hall with a racking cough and an insatiable hunger that merely tormented him as he couldn’t keep down more than a spoonful at a time. His blue eyes had sunk deep into their sockets, his cheekbones bird-wing sharp. His parents had hired doctors to oversee his care, but it had been I who’d slept on a cot beside him, first in his bedroom and then in his study when he’d threatened mutiny if he was kept in his bed one more moment, dropping water onto his tongue and feeding him soup until he was strong enough to hold a spoon.
It’s where I’d cooled his fevered brow with water-soaked cloths, held his hand, and listened to his almost incoherent ramblings that only hinted at the horrors of what he’d experienced. Of how he’d prayed for death just to end the constant hunger, cold, and pain. He’d spoken of other things, too, things he never mentioned again. Things that I never brought up afterward, either. The absence of the signet ring with the two swans that he’d always worn was never mentioned as its memory, too, became entangled with his time in France. It was as if those years hadn’t existed if we never spoke of them, surviving only in the occasional outburst fueled by nocturnal nightmares. And I found that ignoring unpleasant things made it easier to pretend they didn’t exist.
I had always been a stickler for the truth, for facing unpleasantness and dealing with it forthwith. But I’d discovered that there were some things too fragile to touch, the threat of shattering too imminent. It’s why when the letter arrived for Kit after he’d been home for nearly a year, after he’d slipped his mother’s sapphire engagement ring on my finger and we’d made plans to marry in the new year, I had gone against everything I believed myself to be and hidden it. I was too pragmatic to destroy it, its continued existence a balm to my conscience, never truly forgotten but more like a ticking bomb whose day of detonation I knew would be as sudden as it would be devastating.
My gaze traveled to the study window, seeing the white path of moonlight that led to the folly where Kit’s father, Robert Langford, had written most of his bestselling spy novels. In a testament to her grief, his widow, Tess, had ordered it locked up after he’d died. I stared at the gray glow of stone in the middle of the lake, like a monument to a broken heart. I had never considered myself the sentimental sort, but the sight gave me pause, made me wonder if I needed to make some grand gesture to acknowledge my own grief. Or if wandering Langford Hall like a nocturnal wraith might be sufficient.
With one last look at Kit’s desk, where his pipe still sat in the empty ashtray, I let myself out of the study, then paused at the bottom of the stairs, loath to go up and return to bed. Maybe I could change bedrooms or rearrange the furniture. Or do what everyone had been telling me to do since Kit’s death and the resulting taxes—deed the hall to the National Trust. But how could I? Langford Hall was Kit’s legacy, the place where I’d fallen in love, where we’d raised our children. It was inconceivable, really, to imagine strangers traipsing over the Exeter carpets and staring at the portraits of the Langford ancestors that glared down from their perches.
My feet were already leading me away before I realized where I was headed. I pretended I’d heard Walnut whimper, which was why I needed to be in the warm kitchen, making sure he was all right and had water in his bowl. I would be the last person to admit that I needed the warm comfort of a living creature, even a four-legged one, to face the rest of the night.