Chapter Eight
As soon as she arrived at Old Hickory Manor the next day, Marianne learned that the terms and conditions of her visit would be slightly different this time. She and Thomas stood in the foyer of the old mansion, Thomas nodding to Friedrich as he approached them. The pair’s silent communication told Marianne nothing. But when her husband gave her a kiss on the cheek and then turned to leave, she knew that without her husband there, her time in the house would take her far deeper than she’d been on her first visit. The weekend was the warm-up, this would be the real test, and she suspected that the rest of her life might hinge on the seven days that lay ahead.
Curiously, once she was finally on her own with Friedrich, she felt a little less panicked, less fearful, more excite
