“You failed!” you hear Manvers cry out, stiffly, to an unknown conversation partner. “The chit should be gone by now! Did you not give her the false diary? Did you not warn her of the sinful beast that she dares to bed, desecrating the memory of my lady?”
“I tried!” cries a familiar voice you cannot yet place. “But the young lady turned out to be made of stronger stuff than either of us realized!”
“No, it is you who has turned out to be weak and incompetent! The girl needs to go or, I swear, I will expose you and ruin you for your sinful exploits with my sweet lady!” The manservant’s voice rises and becomes uncharacteristically agitated. “My lady was not made for your base desire! Nor for Lord Craven’s! She was pure and true, and you tried to muddy her waters!”
“I muddied nothing! I was naught but her plaything!” cries the second voice. “She used me. She took my joy for vanity! We were all her playthings, until she tired of us! Me. Craven. We were wanted until we were no longer desired.”
“Do not speak ill of my lady!”
You cannot take it anymore. You throw open the door of the morning room to see Manvers arguing with none other than…
“Reverend Loveday?!” you cry, unable to contain your surprise. The handsome vicar cowers in shame. “What have you done, sir? What have you done?”
The vicar drops to his feet. “The late Lady Craven, many times over,” he weeps. “I should have married a simple girl. But Lady Craven was so exotic, so fiery, so…hungry. I could not stop myself. I am sorry! I am shamed!”
“You ruined my life!” Lord Craven cries, raising his hand as if to strike the Reverend Loveday. He lowers it almost immediately, upon seeing the angrily arched eyebrow you throw his way.
“Please, have mercy on me. Forgive my sins. I am a man, I am but a man!” The vicar claws at your face and pulls it close, then whispers, wild-eyed, “The boy. Manvers has the boy.”
You pull your face from the wretched vicar’s grasp, spin on your heel, and witness Manvers striking a match on the side of a portrait of the dead Lady Craven. He holds the flame to the small Master Alexander, who is tied to a wooden chair, which is tied to the rest of the wooden furniture in the room.
“Manvers, no!” you yell.
“Miss!” Alexander calls. Your head snaps to him, his little face peering knowingly at you from its roped confines. “Find your move.”
You can’t know for sure, but it seems that the child flicks his little wide eyes to an area just beneath the portrait of the late Lady Craven. You act on instinct and crash past Lord Craven, the vicar, and the insane Manvers until you face the portrait dead-on.
Find your move. Master Alexander’s echoing of your own words echoes in your mind, and suddenly you punch through the portrait’s eyes. You are both shocked and unshocked to find your fist tear through the canvas as if it were no more than a spider’s web.
Your hand, now busted through the face of the late Lady Craven, feels its way around a small, secret shelf. Your fingers detect the outline of a pocket-sized leather volume, what you guess is the lady’s true diary.
As you snatch up the book, the scent of fire and smoke snatches your nose. You spin around to see Manvers setting fire to anything he can reach while training a small golden pistol on your heart. Craven and the vicar desperately attempt to untie Master Alexander.
“You should never have come here, girl,” Manvers spits at you. “All of this could have been avoided if not for you. You angered her, you see. You angered her ghost, and so I must take action to protect her.”
“Nonsense,” you spit back. Acting on instinct, you flip to a random page in the diary. You begin to read with all of the confidence you can muster: “ ‘I despise it here, and I should never have come. Craven is terrible since the baby has been born, so fatherly and kind. It repulses me, how dull he has become.’ ”
You cringe at the words and the effect they have on Lord Craven. Still, you read on. “ ‘I have taken the vicar to my bed. It thrills me to corrupt a pure man.’ ” You shudder. The vicar slumps in disgrace and self-loathing. “ ‘Plus,’ ” you continue, “ ‘his manhood is always as hard as it is for me to pay attention at chapel.’ ” At these words, the vicar blushes even more deeply.
“What is the use of reading her secret thoughts? These thoughts belong to my lady!” Manvers takes dead aim at you with the pistol.
“ ‘Manvers is worse than the others,’ ” you continue. “ ‘He is so simple and devoted, I often think of asking him to jump off a cliff to please me.’ ” As you utter these words, Manvers deflates. “ ‘He is as obsessed with me as a father would be with a child. He disgusts me. I anxiously await the day he dies, so that I may dance on his grave and then forget where he is buried.’ ”
“Stop your lies! Stop your lies!” Manvers drops the pistol, half begging, half damning you. Though doing so crushes you, and seriously makes you question Craven’s prior taste in women, you continue.
“ ‘I’d wager if this secret diary were ever read aloud to him, Manvers would beg for it to stop being read, so ridiculous is his devotion to an entirely false version of myself.’ ” You close the sinister little tome and throw it aside.
Manvers sinks to the ground. Lord Craven and the vicar have freed the child, at last. It took them long enough. Manvers looks from you, to the portrait, to the men, and then to the child.
“Nothing matters anymore,” he sobs. And with the kindling of some hidden spark, all of Hopesend Manor is aflame.
Turn to .