Excerpt from Black Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"A deer. Pretty sure just a deer." "Oh, thank God. Not  a person."

He whistles beneath his breath. "Close call. Sure you're okay?"

 A rapping on  the  driver's door.  The  knuckles are  hairy,  the  skin raw red. The tractor driver is a dripping mountain of orange anorak.

Jon  winds down  the  window apprehensively. "Sorry for  the  hard braking, mate."

"Bloody deer." A man's  face, as battered as  the  landscape itself, veers up to the window.  He  peers over Jon's shoulder and fixes his dull stare  on Lorna.  It is a stare  that  suggests  he doesn't come across many petite thirty-two-year-old brunettes  wearing yellow  sundresses. A stare  that  suggests  he doesn't come across many women at all.

Lorna tries  to smile  at him  but  her mouth  feels twitchy  at the cor­ ners. She might burst into tears instead. It hits her how close they've just come  to catastrophe. It seems all the more  unbelievable because  they are  on holiday. She's always felt immortal on holiday, especially with Jon, who is protective, secretly rather sensible, and built like a hammer. "They get in through gaps in the  hedging.  Caused  a crash only last month." The  man  blows a gust of stale  breath into  the small  confines of the car. "Two  mangled a few yards from  this  spot.  Damn creatures out of control."

 Jon turns to Lorna. "Someone's trying to tell us something. Can we call it a day?"

 She feels the tremor in his fingers, knows  she can't push  him fur­ther. "Okay."

 "Don't look like that.  We'll come back another time."

 They won't, she knows it. They live too far away. Their lives are too busy. They work too  hard.  When they get back, Jon's family  building firm  is due for a long  project,  some swanky new penthouses in  Bow, while the first  day of the  September school term  rears  ever closer for her. No,  it's all too difficult. They won't  come back. And  Cornwall is impractical. It's expensive.  It asks too much of their guests.  It asks too much  of  Jon.  Her  dad.   Her  sister.  Everyone  is indulging her  only because they feel sorry for her losing Mum.  She's not silly.

"You don't see much  traffic on this  road.  Where you folks going?" asks the tractor driver, scratching his bull neck. "You certainly picked the day for it."

"Trying to find  some old house." Jon reaches  into  the  glove com­ partment for a sugar fix to steady his hands.  He finds an ancient sticky mint, half unwrapped. "Pencraw Hall?"

"Oh." The man's face withdraws into the cave ofhis hood.

 Sensing recognition, Lorna sits  more  upright in  her  seat.  "You know it?"

A brisk nod. "Black Rabbit Hall."

 "Oh, no, sorry, we're looking for a Pencraw  Hall." "Locals call it Black Rabbit Hall."

"Black  Rabbit Hall." Lorna rolls it around her tongue.  She likes it.

 She likes the  name. "So it's near?" "You're practically on its drive."

Lorna turns to beam at Jon, near-death crash forgotten.

 "One more turn off this lane-last chance  to leave-that takes you into  the farmland, what's  left of it. Another half-mile or so before you hit  the estate  proper.  You'll  see the signpost. Well,  I say you'll  see it. Buried  in  the  bushes.  You'll  need  to  keep  a lookout." He  stares  at Lorna again. "Funny place. Why do you want to go there( If you don't mind  me asking."

Excerpted from Black Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase. Copyright © 2016 by Eve Chase. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.