Chapter 1
Lilstock Priory, Somerset
Thomas rode out through the gates with the
sun glistening on the frosted grass and sparkling in the dewdrops decorating the
still bare branches.
His horse was a pale gray he’d bought some months
previously, when traveling with Roland on one of his visits to the abbey. Their
route had taken them through Bridgewater, and he’d found the dappled gray there.
The gelding was mature, strong, very much up to his weight, but also steady, a
necessity given Thomas’s physical limitations; he could no longer be certain of
applying sufficient force with his knees to manage the horse in stressful
situations.
Silver—the novices had named him—was beyond getting
stressed. If he didn’t like something, he simply stopped, which, in the
circumstances, was entirely acceptable to Thomas, who harbored no wish whatever
to be thrown.
His bones already had enough fractures for five
lifetimes.
As he rode down the road toward Bridgewater, he
instinctively assessed his aches and pains. He would always have them, but, in
general, they had sunk to a level he could ignore. That, or his senses had grown
dulled, his nerves inured to the constant abrading.
He’d ridden daily over the last month in
preparation for this journey, building up his strength and reassuring himself
that he could, indeed, ride for the four or five days required to reach his
destination.
The first crest in the road drew near, and a sense
of leaving something precious behind tugged. Insistently.
Drawing rein on the rise, he wheeled Silver and
looked back.
The priory sat, gray stone walls sunk into the
green of the headland grasses, with the blue sky and the pewter of the Channel
beyond. He looked, and remembered all the hours he’d spent, with Roland, with
Geoffrey, with all the other monks who had accepted him without question or
judgment.
They, more than he, had given him this chance—to go
forth and complete his penance, and so find ultimate peace.
Courtesy of Drayton, he had money in his pocket,
and in his saddlebags he had everything he would need to reach his chosen abode
and settle in.
He was finally doing it, taking the first step
along the road to find his fate.
In effect, surrendering himself to Fate, freely
giving himself up to whatever lay in wait.
Thomas stared at the walls of the priory for a
moment more, then, turning Silver, he rode on.
His way lay via Taunton, a place of
memories, and of people who might, despite the disfigurement of his injuries,
recognize him; he rode straight through and on, spending the night at the small
village of Waterloo Cross before rising with the sun and continuing west.
Late in the afternoon on the fourth day after he’d
ridden out from the priory, he arrived at Breage Manor. He’d ridden through
Helston and out along the road to Penzance, then he’d turned south along the
lane that led toward the cliffs. The entrance to the drive was unremarkable; a
simple gravel avenue, it wended between stunted trees, then across a short
stretch of rising open ground to end before the front door.
He’d bought the property years ago, entirely on a
whim. It had appealed to him, and for once in his life he’d given into impulse
and purchased it—a simple, but sound, gentleman’s residence in the depths of
Cornwall. In all his forty-two years, it was the only house he’d personally
owned, the only place he could imagine calling home.
A solid but unimaginative rectangular block
constructed of local bricks in muted shades of red, ochre, and yellow, the house
consisted of two stories plus dormers beneath a lead roof. The windows of the
main rooms looked south, over the cliffs, to the sea.
As he walked Silver up the drive, Thomas scanned
the house and found it the same as his memories had painted it. He hadn’t been
back in years—many more than the five years he’d spent in the priory. The
Gattings, the couple he’d installed as caretaker and housekeeper, had clearly
continued to look after the house as if it had been their own. The glass in the
windows gleamed, the front steps were swept, and even from a distance the brass
knocker gleamed.
Thomas halted Silver at the point where the track
to the stable met the drive, but then, in deference to the old couple, who he
hadn’t informed of his impending arrival, he urged Silver nearer to the front
steps and dismounted. Despite the damage to the left side of his face and his
other injuries, the Gattings would recognize him, but he didn’t need to shock
them by walking unheralded through the back door.
Or clomping, as the case would be.
Retrieving his cane from the saddle holder that the
stable master at the priory had fashioned for it, then releasing Silver’s reins,
Thomas watched as the big gray ambled a few steps off the drive and bent his
head to crop the rough grass. Satisfied the horse wouldn’t stray much further,
Thomas headed for the front door.
Gaining the small front porch, he was aware of
tiredness dragging at his limbs—hardly surprising given the distance he’d
ridden, combined with the additional physical effort of having to cope with his
injuries. But he was finally there—the only place he considered home—and now he
could rest, at least until Fate found him.
The bell chain hung beside the door; grasping it,
he tugged.
Deep in the house, he heard the bell jangling.
Straightening, stiffening his spine, adjusting his grip on the silver handle of
his cane, he prepared to meet Gatting again.
Footsteps approached the door, swift and light.
Before he had time to do more than register the oddity, the door opened.
A woman stood in the doorway; she regarded him
steadily. “Yes? Can I help you?”
He’d never seen her before. Thomas blinked, then
frowned. “Who are you?” Who the devil are you? were
the words that had leapt to his tongue, but his years in the priory had taught
him to watch his words.
Her chin lifted a notch. She was tallish for a
woman, only half a head shorter than he, and she definitely wasn’t young
enough—or demure enough—to be any sort of maid. “I rather think that’s my
question.”
“Actually, no—it’s mine. I’m Thomas Glendower, and
I own this house.”
She blinked at him. Her gaze didn’t waver, but her
grip on the edge of the door tightened. After several seconds of utter silence,
she cleared her throat, then said, “As I’m afraid I don’t know you, I will need
to see some proof of your identity before I allow you into the house.”
He hadn’t stopped frowning. He tried to look past
her, into the shadows of the front hall. “Where are the Gattings? The couple I
left here as caretakers?”
“They retired—two years ago now. I’d been assisting
them for two years before that, so I took over when they left.” Suspicion—which,
he realized, had been there from the outset—deepened in her eyes. “If you really
were Mr. Glendower, you would know that. It was all arranged properly with
. . . your agent in London—he would have informed you of the
change.”
She’d been smart enough not to give him the name.
As she started to edge the door shut, he replied, with more than a touch of
acerbity, “If you mean Drayton, he would not have thought the change of
sufficient importance to bother me with.” With a brief wave, he indicated his
damaged self. “For the last five years, I’ve been otherwise occupied.”
At least that served to stop her from shutting the
door in his face. Instead, she studied him, a frown blooming in her eyes; her
lips—quite nice lips, as it happened—slowly firmed into a thin line. “I’m
afraid, sir, that, regardless, I will need some proof of your identity before I
can allow you into this house.”
Try to see things from the
other person’s point of view. He was still having a hard enough time
doing that with men; she was a woman—he wasn’t going to succeed. Thomas stared
at her—and she stared back. She wasn’t going to budge. So . . . he set
his mind to the task, and it solved it easily enough. “Do you dust in the
library?”
She blinked. “Yes.”
“The desk in there—it sits before a window that
faces the side garden.”
“It does, but anyone could have looked in and seen
that.”
“True, but if you dust the desk, you will know that
the center drawer is locked.” He held up a hand to stop her from telling him
that that was often the case with such desks. “If you go to the desk and put
your back to that drawer, then look to your right, you will see a set of
bookshelves, and on the shelf at”—he ran his gaze measuringly over her—“about
your chin height, on the nearer corner you will see a carriage clock. In the
front face of the base of that clock is a small rectangular panel. Press on it
lightly and it will spring open. Inside the hidden space, you will find the key
to the center drawer of the desk. Open the drawer, and you will see a
black-leather-covered notebook. Inside, on the first leaf, you will find my
name, along with the date—1816. On the following pages are figures that
represent the monthly ore tonnages cleared from the two local mining leases I
then owned.” He paused, then cocked a brow at her. “Will that satisfy you as
identification?”
Lips tight, she held his gaze steadily, then, with
commendable calm, replied, “If you will wait here, I’ll put your identification
to the test.”
With that, she shut the door.
Thomas sighed, then he heard a bolt slide home and
felt affronted.
What did she think? That he might force his way
in?
As if to confirm his incapacity, his left leg
started to ache; he needed to get his weight off it for at least a few minutes,
or the ache would convert to a throb. Going back down the three shallow steps,
he let himself down to sit on the porch, stretching his legs out and leaning his
cane against his left knee.
He hadn’t even learned her name, yet he still felt
insulted that she might imagine he was any threat to her. How could she think