Chapter 7: Town of Shades
The silence Patrick left behind was a palpable thing. For two days, Teresa worked in the library, the dry scent of old paper and dust her only company. She traced the gold-leaf titles on spines, organized treatises on forgotten battles, and tried to ignore the growing restlessness in her bones. The grand house, for all its space, began to feel like a beautifully appointed cage. She thought of the yellow roses, of Charlotte, of the raw confession in the moonlight. It was too much history, too much contained grief pressing in from the ornate walls.
On the third morning, she pushed away from the desk, the ledger only half-updated. She found Cho in the stables, methodically cleaning a saddle. The sharp, clean smell of leather and horse was a welcome change.
“I need to get out,” she said, her voice firm. “Take me to the village.”
Cho didn’t look up from his work. “No.”
“It wasn’t a request.”
Now he did look up, his dark eyes assessing her. “He wouldn’t like it.”
“He isn’t here,” Teresa countered, crossing her arms. “And I am not a prisoner. I’m going to the village, Cho. With you or without you. I imagine he’d prefer it be with you.”
A long silence stretched between them, broken only by the soft snort of a horse in its stall. Cho’s expression was unreadable, but she saw the minute calculation in his eyes. The risk of her going alone versus the irritation of disobeying a vague, absent directive.
Finally, he gave a single, curt nod. “Horses will be ready in ten minutes.”
Her resolve faltered for a second. “Actually, could we take the cart?”
Cho paused. “Horses are faster.”
She looked away, toward the large, shifting animals in their stalls. One stamped a heavy foot, the sound like a hammer on wood. She forced the admission out, hating how small it made her feel. “I never learned to ride. I’m… not good with them. They’re too large. Unpredictable.”
Cho considered her. There was no judgement in his face, just a recalibration. “The cart, then,” he said, and hung up the saddle.
The journey was bumpy, the cart’s wheels catching in ruts on the overgrown track that served as a road. The estate’s wild woodlands gave way to scraggly fields and then, suddenly, the village sprawled before them. Teresa’s breath caught.
It wasn’t a village. It was a scar.
She’d expected cottages with smoking chimneys, a dusty square, maybe a bustling inn. This was a haphazard colony of despair. Shanties built from warped planks, torn tarpaulin, and crumbling wattle leaned against each other for support. What few stone structures existed—a likely tavern, a long building that might have been a communal storehouse—were in such disrepair they seemed to be melting back into the earth. The church’s spire was a rotten skeleton against the grey sky, half its slates gone. The blacksmith’s forge was not just cold, but appeared abandoned for years, its chimney a gaping black mouth.
A deep, unsettling quiet hung over the place, broken only by the caw of crows. The air smelled of damp rot, unclean latrines, and woodsmoke from feeble fires. A few women scurried along the muddy path, heads bowed, bundles clutched tight to their chests. They didn’t look up, moving with the tense, efficient speed of prey.
And there were men. They lounged in the shadowed doorways of the more solid ruins, or sat on barrels, watching. Their gazes were not curious, but predatory, calculating. Their clothes were worn to grimy shapelessness, but Teresa’s eye, trained in hardship, picked out details: a pair of decent boots here, a well-made knife hilt there. These weren’t just desperate villagers. They looked idle, hardened, and ownership radiated from their postures. They owned the doorways, the street, the very fear in the air.
Cho’s hand had moved imperceptibly to rest near the worn grip of a pistol tucked under the cart’s seat. His posture was relaxed, but his eyes were constantly moving, mapping threats.
“This is his village?” Teresa whispered, the words barely audible. The scale of the neglect was monstrous. Patrick Jane lived in a palace of books and silver, while the people nominally under his care lived in hovels worse than any she’d seen by the abbey. A cold fury began to mix with her shock.
Slowly, deliberately, still scanning the street, he checked the priming on the pistol with a soft, metallic click. “You saw the study,” he said, his voice low and flat. “You saw the maps, the ledgers from other counties, the correspondence from London. He has been… busy.”
“Busy?” The word erupted from her, too loud in the suffocating quiet. She struggled to keep her voice down, a harsh whisper scraping her throat. “Busy letting people live in filth? Busy watching a church rot? This isn’t neglect, Cho, this is dereliction. This is a crime.”
Before Cho could form a reply, movement caught her eye. The men. They were shifting, uncoiling themselves from doorframes and barrels. There was no rush, no shouted threat. That was worse. It was a slow, convergent flow, like oil seeping across water, their eyes fixed on the cart, on her. One, a bulky man with a matted beard, wiped his hands on his trousers and started ambling toward them. Another, younger and leaner, pushed off a wall and fell into step beside him.
The calculation in Teresa’s mind switched from moral outrage to cold, spatial logistics. Four of them. Twenty yards and closing. Cho had one pistol. The road behind them was clear, but a rough turn would be needed.
Her body knew this script. The fear was there, a sharp acid in her veins, but it was neatly compartmentalized, shoved into the box labeled later. Right now, there were only variables: distance, weapons, avenues of escape.
She placed her hand firmly on Cho’s forearm. He didn’t jump, but his muscles tightened like steel cable under her touch.
“Take us back. Now,” she said, her voice devoid of all anger, stripped down to pure, clear command.
Cho didn’t hesitate. He didn’t fire a warning shot or shout a challenge. He simply snapped the reins, hard. The horse jolted forward. The cart wheel squealed in protest as he wrenched it around in a tight, teeth-rattling arc, the wooden side skimming perilously close to a stone post.
Teresa gripped the seat, half-standing, twisting to keep the men in view. They had stopped their advance, now just a loose knot in the center of the muddy street. They didn’t run. They just watched, their expressions unreadable at this distance, but their posture spoke of ownership, of time being on their side. One of them, the younger one, slowly lifted a hand and scratched his chin, a gesture that felt obscenely casual.
The cart hit the main track, and Cho urged the horse into a steady, distance-eating trot. The grim tableau of the village disappeared behind the screen of skeletal trees. Only then did Teresa sink back onto the bench, her hands trembling. She clenched them into fists, pressing them against her knees.
The fury was still there, but it had transformed. It was no longer a hot, scattering thing. It was a cold, hard knot in her stomach, waiting for a target.
They rode the rest of the way in a silence thicker than the forest around them. The manor’s gates, when they appeared, felt less like a sanctuary and more like the door to a separate, baffling reality. Grace was at the front steps, her face drawn with concern, but Teresa strode past her with a murmured, “Later.”
The grand hallway, with its portraits and polished sideboards, felt like a mockery. She didn’t stop until the heavy library door slammed shut behind her, the sound echoing in the cavernous silence.
She stood there, breathing hard, the images of those leaning shacks and the men’s slow, confident advance playing behind her eyes. The smell of the village—rot and hopelessness—seemed trapped in her clothes. She walked to the nearest shelf, her fingers trailing over the perfectly ordered spines. All this knowledge, all this careful preservation, and just a few miles away people were living in a different century of despair.
Her hand closed around a thick volume on botany. She pulled it out, then slammed it back into place with a force that made the surrounding books shudder. The action felt good. She did it again, yanking books out, checking their catalog numbers with a vicious scrutiny, and shoving them into their correct spots. The physicality of it was a channel for the fury that had no clear target.
A few days later, well after midnight, Patrick returned home.
The crunch of a single horse on the gravel drive was a solitary sound. He unsaddled his horse and brushed him down in the dark stable, his movements weary and automatic. The animal was lathered and spent. He headed into the house, boots tracking damp earth onto the marble floor.
Cho, as usual, met him at the door to take his cloak and weapons. Patrick handed over a heavy, worn leather pistol holster and a long, thin dueling case without a word. His face was grey with exhaustion, etched with lines that hadn’t been there five days ago.
He turned and headed to his study, where Cho always kept the lamps lit at night, and sat heavily behind the desk, immediately starting to write notes. The quill scratched rapidly, a frantic, skittering sound. He was still writing when Cho walked in and set Patrick’s items on a nearby chair.
Cho poured them each a brandy and set one firmly on the desk in front of Patrick.
Patrick looked at the drink and up to Cho, “What’s this for?”
"Fortification," Cho said, and drank his entire drink in one swallow. He then set the empty glass on the table with a definitive clunk.
Patrick didn’t touch his, “Why would I need fortification?”
"Teresa visited the village," Cho stated.
Patrick looked like he had forgotten the village existed for a second, his mind still clearly on the notes before him. Then his eyes focused, sharpening with a sudden, stormy intensity. He became angry. "You let her go?"
Cho remained impassive. "She was going with or without me."
A muscle worked in Patrick’s jaw. He leaned back, the rage deflating into a deeper, more miserable tension. Then he took a sip of his drink, the liquor barely wetting his lips, “How bad?”
"Bad," Cho said.
Patrick watched him, waiting for more. When it wasn’t offered, he asked, "How did she handle it?"
Cho just raised an eyebrow, a gesture that conveyed the scene perfectly: Teresa’s freezing calm, her immediate tactical retreat, the silence that was louder than any explanation Cho could have provided.
Patrick sat back with a sigh that seemed to come from the foundation of the house itself. He took another, longer sip of his drink. The firelight caught the amber liquid, glinting in the glass like a trapped, failing sun. "I am starting to regret this contract," he muttered, not quite to Cho, not quite to the room.
Cho silently turned, picked up Patrick’s cloak and weapons case from the chair, and went to bed.
Alone, Patrick stared at the unfinished notes. The name Marquis was scrawled in the margin, circled twice. He looked from the page to the brandy glass, then toward the dark hallway beyond his door. Upstairs, in the wing opposite his, a floorboard creaked. He went very still, listening.
Then he slowly closed the ledger, blotting the name from sight. He didn’t blow out the lamps. He just sat in the circle of light, waiting, the clock on the mantle ticking off the seconds toward a confrontation he now knew was inevitable.
Sleep never came. He spent the hours until dawn in his study chair, chasing brandy with tepid water, watching the fire die to embers. The word Marquis sat in the dark of his mind, a burning coal. When grey light finally leaked around the curtains, he shaved with clumsy hands, nicking his chin. The sting was a welcome anchor.
He avoided the house all day. He walked the perimeter woods with a restless, punishing energy, ending up at the overgrown family plot where his parents lay under mossy slabs. He didn’t look at the two smaller, newer stones beside them. He just stood there, hands in his pockets, feeling the village’s silent accusation like a physical pressure at his back. He returned at dusk, soil on his boots, his body aching with a fatigue no sleep could fix.
The next night, Teresa was already at dinner when Patrick arrived. She sat perfectly straight, her hands folded in her lap, staring at the empty plate before her. She heard his footsteps, measured and slow, crossing the hall. She had decided to keep her calm and not get angry as Patrick would expect. Anger was a lever he would know how to pull. This, she hoped, would be something else.
He entered, the scent of cold air and damp earth lingering on his clothes. He looked wrecked, shadows like bruises beneath his eyes. He took his seat without a word. Grace served the soup, a simple leek and potato, her movements unnervingly quiet.
Teresa picked up her spoon. She took a deliberate, slow taste, then dabbed her lips with the napkin. She looked across the table. “How was your trip?” she asked, her voice mild, politely distant.
Patrick’s spoon paused halfway to his mouth. His eyes flicked to hers, then back to his bowl. “It was fine.”
She took another spoonful. She could tell he was watching her out of the corner of his eye, waiting for the strike. She felt a surge of accomplishment knowing she had thrown his normally calm observation. The only sound was the clink of silver on china. She finished her soup, set the spoon down precisely.
After a while, Patrick said, “Cho told me you went to the village.”
“I did,” Teresa said, picking up her water glass. She took a sip, letting the silence expand. Then, with the tone of someone who is discussing a new vacation spot, she asked, “Have you been?”
Patrick leaned back, his chair creaking. He studied her face, searching for the trap. “No. Not recently.”
Teresa smiled then, a small, tight, utterly mirthless thing. She met his gaze directly, her green eyes cool. “You really should go,” she said, her voice light, almost playful. “You would enjoy the atmosphere.”
Patrick went very still.
“It’s a graveyard,” Teresa continued, the false brightness dropping from her voice like a stone. “And you live in a mausoleum. It’s a fitting pairing.” She said it flatly, a simple statement of fact.
The air left the room. Patrick’s knuckles were white where they gripped the edge of the table. The casual, almost bored cruelty of it was a masterstroke. It bypassed his defenses entirely, leaving raw truth bleeding on the polished wood between them.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, his voice low and ragged.
“Don’t I?” She didn’t raise her voice. She leaned forward slightly, and her restraint was more powerful than any shout. “I saw crumbling houses with holes for windows. I saw a church that’s picking itself apart, slate by slate. I saw women who look at the ground, and men who look at everything like they own it. They looked at our cart like it was a meal. Cho had to prime a pistol just to drive down the main street.”
“That is not my concern,” Patrick snapped, the words escaping before he could cage them.
Teresa blinked, a slow, deliberate motion. “Not your concern.” She repeated the phrase as if tasting something rotten. “They are your tenants. They live on your land. Their misery is your signature.”
“My signature is on other documents,” he fired back, his own composure fracturing. “Things you couldn’t possibly understand.”
“Enlighten me.” She spread her hands. “What ledgers, what grand strategy, could possibly justify letting human beings live like that? What is so important in London that it’s worth a child growing up in a shack that smells of shit and mildew?”
“You think it’s about money?” He gave a harsh, disbelieving laugh. “You think I’m hoarding coin while they starve? Is that the neat little narrative you’ve built?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing!” For the first time, her voice cracked, a fissure of pure frustration. “Because you won’t say! You hide in the study and you bury yourself in maps and you take mysterious trips and you let everything else rot. You asked for my truth. That village is my truth. It’s the truth of every woman who comes to an abbey gate because the world men build is unbearable. And you are just another man building a world of ruins.”
Patrick shot to his feet, his chair scraping violently against the floor. He loomed over the table, his breath coming fast. “You want to fix it?” The challenge was a snarl. “Go ahead. You have free rein. Use the accounts. Hire the laborers. Rebuild the damn church.”
It was a reckless, furious offer, intended to shock her into silence.
Teresa didn’t flinch. She looked up at him, her face pale but set. “Is that an order, my lord?”
“It’s a capitulation,” he hissed. “Do what you want. Just stop looking at me like I’m the monster under the bed.”
“Then stop lurking in the shadows,” she said softly.
He stared at her, the fury draining from him as suddenly as it came, leaving a hollowed-out exhaustion. He saw not an enemy, but a witness. A relentless, uncompromising witness to a failure he had no language to explain.
“Do what you want,” he repeated, his voice now a hollow echo. He turned and walked out of the dining room, his footsteps fading down the hall. A moment later, the front door opened and shut with a solid, final sound.
Teresa sat alone in the cavernous room, the remains of the dinner going cold. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She had won the exchange, she thought. She had held her ground. But the victory tasted like ash. She had called a ghost from the shadows, and it had just offered her the keys to its haunted house before vanishing into the night.