Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Magnus Sterling, former captain in Her Majesty’s navy and current Earl of Eversleigh, carried the unconscious trespasser into his house.
Turner kept pace at his side. “She’s dead, I reckon,” he remarked unhelpfully.
Magnus shot his valet a cold glare. The girl was a lifeless bundle in his arms. Scarcely breathing, as far as he could tell, but not dead.
Not yet, anyway.
“Summon the doctor,” Magnus commanded.
Turner shut the door after them, blocking out the light of the morning sun.
They were at once consumed by the unrelenting gloom of the manor house.
It was colder inside than out. Damper too.
The cloying fragrance of structural decay was punctuated, not by drafts of fresh air, but by the scent of rotting papers, disintegrating tapestries, and silk damask upholstery that had long since been decimated by moths and mice.
“A doctor?” Turner questioned as though hearing the name of the profession for the first time.
Magnus mounted the creaking stairs. “There must be one in this godforsaken village.”
Turner trotted after him, careful to avoid the broken steps.
He’d been with Magnus for nearly ten years, originally assigned to him after Magnus had been injured during the Royal Navy’s bombardment of Kagoshima in ’63.
Turner had been a simple steward then. A bit coarse in manner, slightly long in the tooth, and never what one might call top shelf in the brains department. But he was capable when it suited him.
Since returning to England, it seemed to suit him less and less.
“Maybe so,” he replied with his usual pessimism. “Don’t mean he’ll come here. Not when he finds out who you are.”
Magnus’s already foul mood darkened further.
“No one in the village even knows you’re back,” Turner continued as they reached the first landing. “Or that you’ve inherited the title. Might come as a shock to ’em.”
Magnus didn’t doubt it. He was rather shocked to be back himself. Given the choice he’d have preferred to remain abroad. But someone had to unravel the mystery of what his late father had done with his fortune. Magnus’s fortune now, if he could find it.
The best Magnus had hoped for was to be left alone to do so.
To be here and gone before any of the villagers were the wiser.
He’d come with that very plan in mind, arriving in the dead of night, with no horses, no carriage, only Turner and what little luggage they’d carried with them from the station.
But it wasn’t to be.
Not three days in residence and a trespasser had already infiltrated the grounds.
Magnus glowered down at the girl. She showed no sign of stirring. And why would she after falling from a nine-foot stone wall? Precious few could have survived such a spill without a broken limb or two to show for it. Or possibly a broken neck.
Perhaps she would die after all.
A fresh surge of irritation tightened Magnus’s chest. He directed another glacial look at his valet. “Go,” he snapped. “If the doctor balks, offer him money.”
“How much?” Turner asked. “A few pounds? More? Best to be up front about these things with backward people like the sort what live in the village. I once had a cousin who was backward and he—”
“Are you still talking?”
“I was just saying, sir—”
“The doctor, Turner.” Magnus’s voice was hard as steel. “Before I lose my temper.”
Magnus trusted that after all these years together, traversing the length and breadth of Europe, India, and the Far East, he didn’t need to make his threat any more explicit than that.
“Apologies, your lordship.” Turner bobbed his head with what was lately becoming an infuriating show of deference. “Just saying you shouldn’t expect any miracles is all.”
“I never do.” Magnus continued down the hall toward the set of tall double doors that led to the master’s chamber. It was the only room in the house that was occupied thus far. Magnus had seen no purpose in making the others fit for company. He wasn’t intending on staying long.
Turner stopped behind him. “Might take me a spell to fetch someone,” he said. “What’ll you do in the meanwhile?”
“I don’t know,” Magnus grumbled. “Something.”
A cold compress? A sip of whiskey? A tourniquet to stop the bleeding?
Was she bleeding?
Her cheek was scratched, presumably by the thorns. But it was her head that had struck the ground when she’d fallen, not her face. A head that was presently hidden within the confines of a bonnet gone woefully askew.
He kicked open the doors to the bedroom. Striding inside, he laid her carefully upon the unmade bed.
“Might try a purgative!” Turner called as he departed. “Worked wonders for you in Japan!”
“A purgative bedamned,” Magnus muttered. He lit the lamp on the bedside table. The flame sprung to life beneath the clouded glass, casting a diffuse glow over the girl’s face.
Magnus hadn’t got a proper look at her before.
He’d been too angry when he’d seen her standing on the wall to care if she was plain or fair.
It was enough that she’d been spying on him.
Another infernal busybody from the village, he’d thought.
Someone who had discovered he’d returned and had come here to disturb his precarious peace.
To poke, to peep, to pry. And then to spread the word like some hateful village crier, broadcasting to all of Yorkshire what a monster Magnus had become—as much in form now as he’d once been in reputation
And possibly that’s exactly who and what she was, and what she’d intended.
But as Magnus untied the satin ribbons of her bonnet, he felt a faint flicker of doubt.
She wasn’t as humbly dressed as a village lass. Her bonnet was exquisitely woven and trimmed. So was the close-fitting redingote she wore buttoned up over her gown. Expensive garments, possibly London or Paris made. They were far out of the reach of the people of Bead’s Hollow.
And her complexion.
It was deathly pale, to be sure. It was also flawless, save for the ragged scratch; her skin completely unmarred by the ravages of the sun or the storm.
A pit began to form in his midsection as the truth sank in.
This was no overly curious country girl, toiling for her supper. This was something far worse. This was a young lady.
Good God. What was that she’d said in the seconds before she fell? Something about a dog?
Cursing his bad luck under his breath, Magnus removed her bonnet, revealing a luxuriant tumble of dark auburn hair half falling from its pins. He scanned the disheveled tresses for blood. His stomach dropped when he found it.
A head wound, sure enough. It had already bled profusely, matting her hair at the roots. No wonder she was corpse white. Her dark brows and long black lashes stood out in stark relief. All she lacked was a burial shroud to complete the picture.
“Bloody perfect,” he muttered to himself as he rose from the bed. “Another scandal with another girl.”
He stalked to the marble-topped mahogany washstand in the corner. Filling the basin with a pitcher of cold water, he wet a dingy cloth and wrung it out. “A dog?” he questioned, returning to the bed. He sank down beside her. “Your dog?”
The young lady didn’t reply. Her eyes remained closed, her body limp as a ragdoll as he took hold of her chin to turn her head. Her skin was rose-petal soft beneath his callused fingers.
“Or was that just an excuse to sate your curiosity?” he asked. “To pry into my affairs so you could report your unscrupulous findings back to your legion of giggling comrades?”
Still roiling with anger at being so thoroughly put out, he folded the cloth over itself and pressed it to her wound.
Only then did the young lady stir. A vague flinch of her elegant brow and a faint shudder of breath.
It was hardly detectible, yet Magnus felt it like a lightning strike. Both relief and alarm.
He instantly loosened his grip on her chin, viscerally reminded of how much of a brute he could be without even knowing it. Always too big. Too strong. Too dangerous. The kind of man that could crush something as easily as cure it.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked gruffly. “Or was it this?” He touched the cloth to her wound again, more gently this time.
Again, she flinched.
His conscience twinged. It was no match for his sense of aggravation. “I’m afraid you’ll have to endure it,” he told her as he finished sponging the blood from her hair. “The price of your stupidity in coming here.”
And stupidity it was.
Everyone knew that Moorcross Manor was cursed. And if they didn’t, they damn well should. Magnus certainly did. When he’d left it eleven years ago as a lad of barely seventeen, he’d vowed never to return. His father had taken no pains to persuade him otherwise. Quite the reverse.
“You’re a blight, boy,” he’d said. “Would that you’d never been born.”
Magnus’s jaw tightened at the memory.
Had his father wanted to, he could have protected him. But there never was much loyalty among the Sterling clan. They were each of them lone wolves, ruthless and calculating, caring only for themselves.
Magnus looked to the recently wound clock on the cobweb-strewn mantel. He held out little hope that Turner would be back anytime soon. Even less that he’d come with a doctor. As ever, Magnus was completely and entirely on his own.
Except he wasn’t. Not this time.
His frowning gaze dropped to the unconscious beauty in his bed. “I should never have come back here.”