Caroline emerged from the Collier’s Arms and blinked up at the late afternoon sun. It had to be an optical illusion, she was sure, but the cliffs rising around the village seemed higher and closer than an hour ago, when her train first rolled into the station. Rather than go straight up to Linwood Hall — home, she reminded herself — she’d ducked into the village inn for a cup of tea and a scone, but some things could not be put off indefinitely. She did not want to still be in the village when the sun began to set behind Linwood Hall, and its shadow reached out across the valley like a jealous, grasping claw.

From this angle, the tall tower that once housed the Camelot of her childhood was not much more than a nub of grey stone half-obscured by the bulk of the roof. The terrace, jutting out like a shelf over the valley, looked like a glorified royal balcony from which the liege lord might gaze down upon his subjects. But the short tower, Father’s study, built away from the house and straddling the ridge where the land dropped straight down to the valley, was by far the dominant feature. Even now, Caroline thought she could feel Father’s eyes on her as he stood at his window, looking down on all of which he was master — not with the gilded pomp of the hypothetical liege lord on the terrace, but with the dark brooding of some Ruritanian count out of a Gothic romance.

“The taxi’s ready, Miss.”

Caroline tore her eyes away from the looming shape of Linwood Hall and turned to the man standing a respectful distance away, his shoulders slightly hunched as though caught in the act of bowing. This was Giles Brewster, the innkeeper, a pale, heavyset specimen of humanity whose thinning hair seemed, chameleon-like, to take on the colours of his surroundings. Caroline was surprised to learn that he also operated a taxi service nowadays, with a battered, black vehicle that, he said, was a present from her brother Roger.

Her suitcase was already in its back seat.

“Thank you, Brewster. I could have managed my case myself.”

“I’m not saying you can’t, Miss! Only . . . only —”

Only the village held House Linwood in too high a regard to allow her to shift for herself.

Comparing notes with her peers, Caroline doubted if even the king commanded such fealty from the villages attached to such royal estates as Sandringham or Balmoral. The relationship here between Hall and Hollow was positively feudal. She’d forgotten, in the two years since her last visit, the sense of constantly being watched — the hushed expectation that dogged her heels when she walked through the village. She found herself standing taller in response, holding her head higher, speaking in more decisive terms, as though she really were the princess the villagers expected.

It was, after all, the role that Father had prepared for her.

“We’ve missed you,” Brewster said as he got behind the taxi’s steering wheel. “Mr. Roger visits once in a blue moon, but with Mr. Alan in South America and you over in Paris, it hasn’t been the same.”

Seated behind him, Caroline managed a wan smile and murmured, “Hasn’t it?”

Father discouraged casual visits to the village. Caroline had an idea it was meant to encourage a certain mystique about the house, though Father would have denounced such a suggestion as unworthy of a Linwood.

“You’re still writing for the French newspapers, Miss? Sir Lawrence used to say you’d be better off in London.”

“One gets a better perspective of the world this way, Brewster.”

“I reckon that’s true.” He glanced back at her, smiling eagerly. “But you’ll be back again, now, aye?”

Aye. Father expected her to stand for parliament at some point. Journalism was only a means to that final end. Some might have called him mad for expecting this of a daughter, but Lady Astor was an MP now, and so — technically — was Countess Markievicz; there was no reason for Caroline not to follow in their footsteps, though Father would probably have preferred her to have blazed the trail ahead of them. That was one thing about Father. He believed women eminently capable of walking the same roads thoughtlessly trod by men; and if the village deferred to Caroline Linwood, then Caroline Linwood had better work to deserve it.

A black shadow swept over the taxi as it rolled through the gates of Linwood Hall and into the courtyard. The great front doors rose up before them, almost like gates themselves and as solid as the stone in which they were set. All around, the crumbling courtyard wall seemed to describe a space bigger than Caroline remembered, while at the same time closing in so tightly she could hardly breathe. She knew without seeing that the short tower, Father’s study, was off to one side, and she thought she could sense Father watching her from its open door.

Caroline could find no desire to get out of Brewster’s taxi.