Chapter 1
“I can’t take the chance, Eleanor. You have been more than satisfactory as a governess, but in view of your history I shall have to let you go.” The words of Lady Fanshaw echoed in her memory.
As the coach rumbled up the long, tree lined drive Eleanor gripped her portmanteau and took a slow and steady breath.
Herndale Hall, high on the Yorkshire Moors. She had heard this place was bleak and cold, but…
How long will I be here? She thought to herself with a sinking feeling deep inside. They will find out about my past, about father, and dismiss me immediately.
She’d protested, trying to explain the situation, but her ladyship had made her decision.
“The carriage will take you as far as York, and I shall give you five pounds to help you until you find another position. I can only suggest you are honest when you are engaged by your next employer.”
She pulled her portfolio of paintings closer as the carriage began to slow down on the approach to the Hall.
I haven’t been honest. I didn’t take Lady Fanshaw’s advice. If I did, I would never find employment. How long before Lady Fenwick discovers my identity? She sighed audibly, telling herself this wasn’t worth thinking about. She had work today, and a place to live. That was all she needed.
At least her Mama had not lived to experience the penniless state her father’s actions had brought them to. She reached for the locket around her neck. She knew she would need to sell it at some point in the future, and had almost taken it to the pawnbroker’s a few days ago.
The locket with its tiny seed pearls was her last link with her mother. Her Mama had treasured spring flowers, and it had been difficult to see the snowdrops and daffodils knowing her mother was no longer with her.
I’m like Mr. Wordsworth’s poem, she thought to herself. I’m wandering lonely as a cloud, and trying to find my place in the world. Maybe it was here at Herndale Hall, as governess to two children? She was most anxious that it might prove so.
Jackson, the coachman, who had been sent to York to collect her and pulled up on the carriage drive, close to the entrance to the hall. He opened the door and set up the steps for her to alight. His face was etched with concern.
“Something’s amiss. I’m sorry Miss Aston, but I’m going to leave you here and find out what the problem is. I’ve never known anything like it,” and with those words he disappeared towards a group of footmen standing near the steps leading up to the main door of the hall.
She stood next to the carriage, looking around and trying to get her bearings. Jackson was right, something seemed very wrong. The group of footmen broke into a run towards a copse of trees at the edge of the parkland surrounding the hall.
A man raced towards her from the other direction, moving quickly towards the trees on the drive. She sensed panic in the way he moved, and he slowed down, calling to her to
“Get help. Tell Jackson I need men to follow me to the Elms.”
“The elms? Where? Who shall I…” but he had gone, disappearing into the distance. Eleanor turned around to walk back to the house. Everyone had disappeared, except a frail woman with a small boy huddling close to her.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” she enquired gently.
“It’s Caroline. My baby is missing. She’s run away, and we didn’t realise. She has been gone for at least two hours. Why didn’t that governess arrive? This wouldn’t have happened.”
“I’ve just arrived. I’m Miss Eleanor Aston,” she told the woman.
She felt a pang of annoyance that she had made a bad impression before she had even set foot in the hall.
She knew with certainty that the day she was expecting to begin her duties was today.
No matter, this lady must be her employer, and she was in a state of total agitation.
“My brother has gone to the Dower House, and needs help, and all the servants have scattered across the estate searching for Caroline. We think she might be at the Dower House, where we used to live and where her … I found a picture she had drawn of the house, and it must have been just before she disappeared.” Eleanor put her hand on the lady’s arm as her muddled words tumbled out breathlessly, straining to understand what she was telling her.
The woman, whom she now believed to be Lady Amelia Fenwick, who had engaged her as governess, seemed to need someone to follow her brother to the Dower House.
Is that the Elms? She wondered. It seemed likely.
“Stay here,” she urged Lady Fenwick.
“Is there a housekeeper or someone to look after you?”
“Pray, do not distress yourself on my account,” replied Lady Fenwick.
“Find my brother Sebastian, or if you come across a footman on the way ask them to go after him. It is absolutely imperative that we find Caroline.” Her voice sounded stronger, a little more like a grand lady of the ton.
Eleanor put down her portmanteau, hoping her sketches would be safe, and lifted up her skirts as she began to run in the direction the man had disappeared.
I have no idea where I am going. I could end up lost in these woods. Ah perhaps not, I can see a building in the distance, and it must be the Elms.
She stopped for a moment to catch her breath, feeling the pain of a stitch underneath her ribs. She had to reach the Elms, it seemed a child’s life could be in danger.
She rounded a corner on the path, almost tripping over the roots of an oak tree which had grown across the track. She looked up and felt her breath catch in her throat.
The blackened shell of a once magnificent house rose gauntly against the skyline. She could almost smell the soot in the air, this fire had been within the last two or three years.
Could a child be hiding in those ruins?
She heard a voice shouting within the charred remains of what she assumed was the Elms. She took a deep breath, hoped her travel gown would not be ruined as she would never be able to afford a replacement, and climbed up the steps and through the empty space where a door must have been.
It would have been a grand house. It wasn’t the largest stately home, but it had an elegance and many windows which would have given it lightness and warmth on a sunny winter’s day.
Eleanor stood still, waiting to hear the voice again. She heard a man calling “Caroline, it is Uncle Sebastian. We all want you to come home.”
Silence.
She followed the direction of the voice and saw the Duke of Herndale standing looking around him, clearly searching for a sign of the missing child.
He stood tall, with raven dark hair and the most arresting silver streaks at his temples. As he turned, Eleanor gasped at the contrast between each side of his face. The right hand remained devastatingly handsome, resembling a marble statue of a Greek god.
The left side was filled with raised red scars, still looking as angry as the day he must have been burned in a fire. In that moment she knew it had happened here, the Duke must have been injured with the most grievous injuries life in the fire which destroyed the Elms.
“Do you believe that the child is here?” she called to him, alerting him to her presence.
The Duke nodded.
“Have you brought help?” He asked.
Eleanor shook her head.
“Your sister sent me, she knew that you needed help and all the household and ground staff are out across the estate searching for the child. I’m afraid all you have is me.”
Eleanor felt a wave of compassion for whatever had happened in this family, when the Elms had burned into a shell.
“Well Miss …“
“Miss Aston, your Grace.”
“Well, Miss Aston, I do need your aid, as I am quite certain that Caroline is hiding out in this wreck of a building, and I’m sure you can see it isn’t safe.
If you can stay on this floor and keep looking and calling her name, then I’ll try to search upstairs.
She might respond better to a woman’s voice. ”
“Of course, your Grace.”
“Why my sister had to engage another governess, when everyone so far has been an absolute disaster and has just made matters worse, I have no idea. Did you have a governess?” he asked her with a note of exasperation in his voice.
“No, your Grace. My father tutored me.”
“You had a lucky escape,” he told her.
“Now you search that way, and I’ll take the other wing.”
Eleanor called Caroline’s name, treading carefully, as even on the ground floor there were holes leading down to the kitchen, scullery and cellars below.
When she reached the farthest room, she turned around re-tracing her steps. She saw the Duke moving towards her, taking each step slowly and carefully.
“Stay where you are,” he called.
“The floor here is close to collapse. I’m having to test every step I take.”
She watched his tall, powerful frame moving with the agility of a cat through the ruined building.
“Take care,” she called.
“Caroline, Caroline,” Eleanor heard him call.
And suddenly, a tiny voice responded. She wondered at first if she had imagined it, but no, she heard a voice talking to the Duke, and moved towards him as quickly as she could.
A tiny little girl sat on a pile of rubble in what looked to have been the library, as fragments of burned books surrounded her. The little girl held a ruined book in her hands as tears streamed down her face.
As the Duke moved tentatively towards the girl, taking every step with utmost care, a floorboard split and fell away into the void beneath them.
Eleanor stifled a scream, knowing it would only distress the child, terror telling her that the man was risking his life to try to rescue the child; one missed step and he could hurtle down into the cellar below.
He’d be gravely hurt even if he survived the fall.
Eleanor took a slow steady breath, moving towards the Duke, ready to support the rescue attempt.