Chapter 2 BELOVED WIFE

Clara did not step away.

The candle shook in her hand. Hot wax spilled onto her wrist and hardened there.

"Whose joke is this?" Her voice sounded thin in the dusty corridor. "Did my uncle pay you to have this painted?"

Adrian did not move closer. He stood beyond the chain, his face half in shadow.

"No."

"Then who is she?"

"Step away from it, Clara."

She lifted the candle higher. Up close, the resemblance was worse than she had thought. The artist had not just painted a woman who looked like her. He had painted her.

The same narrow mouth. The same dark brows that refused to arch prettily. Even the small scar at her left temple, left by a fall from her father's horse when she was nine.

"This is not possible," she whispered. "I was born in 1863."

"I know when you were born."

"You had this made after you met me."

"I had the east wing locked before I met you."

The chain rattled again as he stepped over it. He was not wearing his wet coat anymore. He wore a black shirt with the sleeves pushed to his elbows. His forearms were marked with old, white scars.

He stopped a foot from her. Close enough that she could see he was breathing hard.

"Put the sheet back."

"No."

"Clara."

"Tell me who she is."

He looked at the portrait, not at her. For a long time he said nothing. Then he reached past her and took the edge of the dust sheet between his fingers. His black glove was gone. His hand was bare.

"Her name was Clara Eleanor Vale," he said. "My great-grandfather's wife."

Clara stared at the brass plate. 1841-1861.

"She died twenty years before I was born."

"Yes."

"And she looked like me."

"Yes."

"That's all you have to say? Yes?"

The candle guttered. In the flicker, the painted woman's veil seemed to move.

Adrian's hand closed over hers where she held the candle. His skin was warm now. Rough.

"You are cold," he said.

"I'm holding a candle in a corridor you told me not to enter."

"You entered anyway."

"You tell me not to do many things."

That made him almost smile. The scar through his eyebrow caught the light.

He took the candle from her and set it on the floor. Then, carefully, as if touching something that might bite, he pulled the sheet back over the painting. The canvas disappeared under a cloud of dust.

"Come," he said. "Now."

She followed him because the corridor was suddenly too dark without the painting looking at her.

He did not take her back to her bedroom. He took her west, down a narrower passage where the wallpaper had been stripped to plaster. At the end was a heavy door bound with iron. He unlocked it with a key from his pocket.

Inside was a study. A fire burned low. Books were stacked on every surface, some open, some face down. On the desk lay a ledger and a pair of spectacles.

He locked the door behind them.

Clara crossed her arms. "Am I prisoner now?"

"You are a guest who does not listen."

"You married a guest?"

"I married a debt."

She flinched. He saw it and looked away, toward the fire.

"There are three other portraits like that in this house," he said quietly. "All in the east wing. All covered."

"Of the same woman?"

"Of different women. All named Clara Eleanor Vale."

The room felt colder.

"How many wives have the Vales had with my name?" she asked.

"Four. Including you."

"And where are the other three?"

He picked up a poker and stirred the fire. Sparks rose.

"Dead," he said. "All before their twenty-first birthday. All in this house. All in a black dress."

Clara sat down without being offered a chair. The ledger on the desk was open to a page of names and dates. She turned it toward her.

1841-1861 Clara Eleanor Vale - Fall from tower. 1861-1880 Clara Eleanor Vale - Drowned in lake. 1880-1899 Clara Eleanor Vale - Fever.

And at the bottom, fresh ink that had not yet fully dried.

1863- Clara Eleanor Vale -

The line was blank after the dash.

Her hand began to shake.

"This is why you wanted someone with no reason to protect my family," she said. "Because no one will look for me."

"No," he said. "Because no one will mourn you properly if you wear white."

She looked up at him.

He was watching her with an expression she could not name. Not pity. Not love. Something older. Something tired.

"Who put the white nightgown on my pillow?" she asked.

"The house does that," he said. "Every time."

Clara stood. "I want to leave."

"You cannot tonight. The road floods after rain. You saw the guests in the woods. They stand there when the road is closed."

"Who are they?"

"The other brides. Waiting."

She thought he was trying to frighten her. She wanted him to be trying to frighten her.

A sound came from beyond the study walls. A faint, high note, like a violin being tuned.

Adrian went very still.

"Do you hear music?" Clara asked.

He did not answer. He walked to the window and pulled the heavy curtain shut, though it was already dark outside.

"Cover the mirror," he said, pointing to a small glass above the fireplace.

"What?"

"Now, Clara."

She took the ledger and held it up against the mirror. Her own reflection disappeared behind the names of the dead women.

The violin note came again, closer this time, from the corridor outside the study. Then a second note. Then a simple, terrible lullaby that Clara knew though she had never learned it. Her mother had hummed it when she was a child.

Adrian blew out the lamp.

In the dark, with the fire as the only light, he knelt in front of her chair and took both her hands.

"Listen to me," he whispered. "Whatever you hear tonight, do not open the door. Do not answer if it calls you by name. And in the morning, burn that white nightgown you found."

His hands were shaking now.

"Is Evangeline the music?" she asked.

"No," he said. "Evangeline is the one trying to stop it."

Outside the study door, someone knocked three times, soft as a child.

"Clara," a woman's voice called. Sweet. Familiar. "Come try on your white dress. You will look so beautiful."

Adrian's grip tightened until it hurt.

"Do not answer," he breathed against her ear.

The voice called again, closer this time, right against the wood.

"Clara Eleanor Vale. Come back to your portrait."