Chapter 1
While it may forever be debated whether there is an objectively correct way in which things should be done, Miss Lucy Elliot held firmly to the belief that there was.
That she was born to a good family, both in heritage and fortune, no doubt fostered this sentiment.
Lucy strove to be a paragon of proper and precise behaviour – in every way she could achieve.
Her meticulous nature extended to the mechanical world. For instance, it was not enough to know how to play the pianoforte – Lucy frustrated her music tutor by being vastly more interested in the internal workings of the instrument than in the artistic subtleties of playing.
While Andrew and Alice Elliot found their youngest daughter’s behaviours concerning, she placated them with her otherwise good-hearted and thoughtful nature. She was polite and pleasant on all occasions, but for those where her internal ordering conflicted with the arbitrary rules of society.
This was exemplified in a tale that her mother delighted in retelling, despite her father blushing beetroot if it resurfaced at social occasions.
At the age of ten, Lucy Elliot was presented with a gift from her wealthy aunt.
It was an ornately crafted replica of a coach carriage, complete with crossbar and spring suspension.
While her aunt was concerned that the lack of horses might be upsetting to a ten-year-old, Lucy was thrilled by the gift and thanked her aunt with excessive enthusiasm.
She was left to play while the adults conversed.
When they next looked in on Lucy, it was to discover – to the utmost dismay of her aunt – that the floor of the conservatory was now laid out with row upon row of neatly dismantled coach pieces.
‘I just wanted to see how it worked,’ a tearful Lucy tried to explain as she was sent to her room by her father.
Whether it was fierce determination to complete her task, or youthful indignation, Lucy waited until the adults were walking the grounds to defy her confinement and descend to the conservatory once more.
Upon their return, the adults discovered Lucy sitting proudly with the coach perfectly reassembled.
‘You’ve put it back exactly like it was,’ her aunt had exclaimed with surprise and more than a hint of pride.
‘Not exactly,’ Lucy corrected her. ‘Now the suspension works properly.’
This was by no means an uncommon occurrence at Atherton Manor in Lucy’s youth.
Her parents had hoped her quirks might soften with age, but now, at twenty, Lucy was as upright and proper a daughter as any manor estate might hope to produce.
So firm was her sense of propriety, in fact, that her parents despaired of ever finding a suitor to meet her exacting and esoteric nature.
She was highly intelligent yet displayed a focus that excluded all else; kind-hearted yet earnest to the point of discourtesy; and expert in the theory of social rules, yet ill at ease in their practice.
The contradiction that was Miss Lucy Elliot led to much speculation as to what manner of fortune she would find.
Thus, few who knew her could imagine that she might be found, sometime after midnight on a full moon, covertly re-entering Atherton Manor well after those within were fast asleep.
Nonetheless, there she would be, squeezing through a ground-level window into a dimly lit kitchen in a most improper manner.
What, they might wonder, had so altered the scrupulousness of Miss Elliot?
The answer was simplicity itself to those who knew it, yet quite alien to those who did not.
Lucy Elliot had found the Night Races.