Wife of the House

Thornfield Grange has one orchard, six bedrooms, and three hundred years of paper that doesn't add up. Ines Marchetti has lived there for thirty-four of them. First as a maid from Naples with a suitcase. Then as the wife. Now, since her husband's stroke, as the woman who runs the place, answerable to no one. Then her husband's nephew Owen arrives from London with his new wife, Poppy, a surveyor's report, and a smile that says the house is his. Ines offers them the East Wing, and the welcome of a gracious woman with nothing to hide. She also turns up the boiler. She also loosens the third stair. She also mislabels a tin. Not to kill them. To wear them down. But Poppy does not spook easily. Poppy stays. Poppy notices. And Poppy has started pruning the pear tree at dawn, wearing Ines's own gloves. Only one woman can be the wife of this house.