"She is not to ask about the door." That was the last of three lines pinned to the room they gave Thomasin Bray at Carrow Abbey, in the housekeeper's careful hand, and no reason was written beside it.

Thomasin was 24, a wife for 11 months and a widow for 5, brought to the great house because a widow with no portion is cheaper to house than to settle. They gave her the coldest room, at the end of the west passage, across from a door that had been locked for 20 years. The maids went white when she asked about it. The housekeeper had a smooth, sad story ready, and could not once meet her eye while she told it. That first night a tray went up the dead passage under a cloth, steam coming through it. A window opened on the far side of the locked door. Empty rooms do not carry hot food, or open their own windows.

Then the Duke of Carrow rode to the Abbey in the dark, on her first night, and put the key to that door into her hand. Because he had decided to stop. And because he needed one person under that roof who was not there when it was decided.

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This is a work of fiction. All characters and events are imaginary, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Chapters:
0:00 She Is Not to Ask
1:00 A Widow With Nothing
2:38 The Man No One Would Sit With
4:08 The Room Across the Passage
5:10 What Mrs Skerne Would Not Say
7:50 The Duke Comes in the Dark
8:26 The Key in Her Hand
10:27 Behind the Door
14:04 The Letter From the Spring of 1804
19:45 What He Said to the House
22:02 The Bad Mornings
24:48 The Key on the Nail

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