Chapter 1 #2
She gazed over the empty road before her, possessed by a boundless optimism. It had rained last week. There were still patches of mud about, as the hem of her redingote could attest. But the sun was out this morning, and the day promised to be a fine one.
The village was but four brisk miles ahead.
An easier drive than a walk, though not terribly difficult for one who was accustomed to a good country ramble.
Which Charlotte was. The halfway point was marked by a broken hawthorn tree, blackened from a lightning strike.
Lucy had pointed it out on their first day here with ominous significance.
“The devil’s crossroads,” she’d called it.
Charlotte reached it in record time. She rewarded herself with the apple in her basket. She hadn’t yet had breakfast. Indeed, it was likely the very meal Mrs. Goodenough had been preparing on the stove. Another offering of lumpy porridge, thick as glue and scarcely fit to eat.
“It’s too far off, the future.” Charlotte bit into her apple, ignoring the mealiness of its flesh. “Besides,” she added. “Who knows what might transpire over the next several months?”
She could win the locals over. Make new friends. Expand her horizons. Perhaps, she might even dispel this backward notion of curses that had plagued the village for far too long.
“I can certainly show them that not every member of the gentry is a devil from the pit,” she said. “Regardless of what the dastardly son of an earl once did.”
Her footfalls sounded on the recently dried road, a soft echo in the endless silence.
“Killed someone, I don’t doubt,” she mused. “Or ravished a girl.” A notch worked its way between her brows. “Or ravished her and then killed her.”
The unsettling thought was so consuming that Charlotte didn’t realize she’d taken the wrong path until her eyes lit on a startling prospect: a looming stone wall, covered with thorny vines and brambles.
She stopped where she stood, her last bite of apple sticking in her throat. She hastily gulped it down.
Good heavens. It was the evil earl’s estate! But how—?
“Botheration!” she said in swift realization. “I should have stayed to the right after the broken tree! I must have gone left instead, drat me. This is what I get for being absorbed in a conversation with myself.”
She immediately turned to double back. Before she could finish the motion, a streak of black moved at her periphery. Her head jerked reflexively to follow it, even as her pulse jumped with alarm. The words of Lucy and Mrs. Goodenough ricocheted through her head. Curses! Evil! The devil!
But it was none of those things.
Charlotte’s breath shuddered out of her in relief. It was only a black dog.
A limping black dog.
He stopped a few feet from the wall surrounding the evil earl’s estate, staring at Charlotte with wary eyes.
He was undeniably injured—his right front paw held close to his chest. He was also quite small.
Just a trifling little thing. Some unfortunate mix of spaniel, terrier, and long-eared lapdog, possibly.
Charlotte’s heart swelled with pity. “Poor dear.” She slowly advanced on him. “It’s all right. I mean you no harm.”
The dog hopped closer to the wall before stopping again to look at her over his scrawny shoulder.
“No, no,” she said. “Don’t run away.”
Ignoring her entreaties, the dog pressed his face into the brambles as though looking for a means of entrance.
Charlotte continued toward him, step by cautious step. “Easy,” she said. “You must let me help you.”
All at once, the dog shoved his body into the brambles. There was a sharp “yip!” of pain, a frantic rustling, then he was gone.
Charlotte raced forward. The devious little scoundrel! He’d managed to get through the wall. There must be a crack in it somewhere.
She stopped to examine the brambles. There was no means of entry that she could see. Yet, the dog had found one. Which meant he was now inside this terrible abandoned place.
What if he couldn’t find his way out again?
Or worse.
What if he chose not to come out? Wounded animals often hid themselves away in dark, lonely places, resigned to die rather than accept aid.
Charlotte suppressed a frustrated groan.
She had been raised by her mother to love and value all animals.
She couldn’t recall the number of times as children that she and her siblings had risked life and limb to help a creature in peril.
To abandon this one now went against everything Charlotte stood for.
But what to do? She couldn’t very well follow the dog through a crack in the wall. Although…
That didn’t mean she couldn’t follow him another way.
Settling her basket more firmly over her arm, she stuck her booted foot into the brambles. A toehold established, she gripped the treacherous vines with her hands and proceeded to half climb, half hoist herself, up the wall.
“I did promise Lucy I would avoid this wretched estate,” she muttered as she went. “But these must be counted as extraordinary circumstances.”
Sharp thorns caught at her basket and skirts and pricked at her hands through her gloves. “Oh bother!” she cried as one scratched her face. A warm trickle of blood rolled down her cheek. She couldn’t spare a hand to brush it away. She was nearly at the top.
“Thank God,” she gasped when she reached it.
With a final surge of strength, she pulled herself to a sitting position atop the wall.
The brambles crunched loudly beneath her weight.
Pausing briefly to catch her breath, she vaguely registered the stings of what must be dozens of thorn pricks on her limbs.
But that was a problem for later. Now, she could think only of the injured little dog.
Alas, she still couldn’t see him. Her view of the grounds was obscured by a tangle of trees and shrubs, as overgrown as the brambles were. Her only hope was to climb even higher. An impossibility, given she’d already scaled to the top of the wall. However…
She could certainly stand up.
That would give her an additional five feet and five inches at least. Surely enough to get a better vantage point.
“It’s fortunate I’m not afraid of heights.
” She rose into a crouch, her basket swinging precariously from her arm.
“Well done on that score, Charlotte.” With the aid of one of the tree branches, she slowly straightened to a standing position.
“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Now you can practically see—”
“What the devil are you doing up there, you little spy?” a deep, growling voice cracked out.
Charlotte started. A distance away, just visible through the chaotic remains of what must have once been a magnificent rose garden, stood a figure all in black. It was a man, she realized in swift alarm. A furious man, with wild raven hair and a face like thunder.
A scarred face.
But it wasn’t that which made Charlotte’s heart hammer uncontrollably in her breast. It was the pistol the man was holding in his right hand. A pistol that was presently aimed at her.
Her knees weakened. She caught hold of one of the tree branches to steady herself. It creaked dangerously beneath her hand. “I b-beg your pardon, sir,” she stammered. “If you would give me a moment to explain—”
“You have exactly thirty seconds.” He cocked the pistol. “Either remove yourself from my property or say your prayers.”
She took a reflexive step back on the edge of the wall, still clutching the branch for balance.
This was surely the devil that Lucy and Mrs. Goodenough had warned her about.
A pitiless, black-eyed demon who seemed to have no qualms at all about shooting Charlotte dead. Everything within her told her to flee.
Yet she couldn’t forget the dog.
This dreadful man—whoever he was—didn’t appear to be the sort to minister to such a creature.
She mustered her courage. “I was only looking for a dog. Perhaps you’ve seen him? He has an injured—”
The branch cracked loudly under her hand before she could finish. It fell away beneath her grip, plummeting down into the tangled shrubbery. Robbed of her balance, Charlotte tumbled after it. A startled scream was wrenched from her lungs as the ground rose up to meet her. And then—
Darkness.