“A grand house like this, it starts to become a living creature.” Ben sighs, giving one of his small smiles, this one belying a certain irony. He presses his foot onto the floorboards. They creak, and a sticky crimson liquid oozes through the wood. “See? The red clay leaks through. Nothing we can do to stop it.”
“Can’t you just sell it? You’d make enough money, even with—”
“No.” Rose turns. Rey stands in the kitchen doorway. The house keys hang on a chain around her waist. She wears plum velvet, her hair swooped into a tight bun. She has a seductive aura, as noted enviously in whispers by the ladies of Buffalo, but now, she carries a fragile humour. “No. My brother and I have discussed it, but I’m afraid – I’m afraid we’re too attached to broken things.”
Rey steps forward. Her mouth lifts with a smile. “We must seem quite pathetic.”
Rose laughs, glancing towards Ben. He avoids her eyes. “No,” she replies. “I find it quite charming really.”
In 1901, the turn of the century, Rose Tico suffers grief when her sister dies, leaving Rose the only living heiress of their parents’ fortune. Her childhood friend, Finn, is there for her and they tentatively begin to feel something more than friendship for one another.
However, news reaches Buffalo, New York (Rose’s hometown), that Ben Solo has returned to America with his twin sister, Rey, after returning to the family home in England. The other available women of New York write off Rose as lumpen and awkward and dismiss any idea of her catching the eye of Ben Solo.
Contrary to popular belief, Rose is the only one Ben Solo and Rey pays any attention to. Much to the sadness of Finn, Rose becomes swept into Ben’s seductive world and marries him, travelling to live with him in England in his family home, Chandrila Hall.
After Ben announces certain parts of the house are off-limits, and becomes off-handed and closed off, in contrary to how he behaved around her in New York, Rose begins an investigation into the workings of the house, trying to reach past the cold exterior of her husband and her sister-in-law. In investigating, keeping communication with Finn all the while, she uncovers dangerous secrets about Ben’s past and begins to see ghostly figures, all seemingly leading her to a truth which remains the true horror lying in the heart of the fading manor.
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