Chapter 1
“Miss Fletcher, I really must protest. This route across the moor is treacherous even in daylight, and with this storm approaching...”
“Mr Reed, your protest has been duly noted for the third time.” Marianne Fletcher pressed her gloved fingers against her temple, where a headache had been building since they left the last coaching inn.
The ancient carriage, which she suspected had been in service long before she was born, lurched violently to one side, nearly unseating her.
“However, unless you’ve developed the ability to conjure additional funds from thin air, we don’t have the luxury of taking the longer route through Thornbury. ”
The coachman’s weathered face appeared at the small window, rain already beginning to streak down his worried features. “Begging your pardon, miss, but your safety is worth more than a few shillings saved.”
A few shillings, Marianne thought bitterly, might as well be a king’s ransom when one possesses exactly four pounds, six shillings, and tuppence to one’s name.
“How very touching, Mr Reed. I shall be certain to mention your concern to Mrs Whitmore when I explain why I have arrived a day late for my position.” She managed what she hoped was a reassuring smile, though the effect was somewhat ruined when the carriage hit another rut and sent her sliding across the worn leather seat.
“She appears to be the kind of woman who would find such considerations persuasive. Why I have no doubt she will be so affected by it that she will forgive my tardiness altogether, and not dismiss me before I have even had time to remove my bonnet.”
Mr Reed’s moustache twitched, a sure sign of his agitation. “Mrs Whitmore’s got a reputation, that she does. They say she dismissed her last governess for wearing too cheerful a shade of yellow.”
“Fortunate, then, that I own nothing but the most depressing shades of grey and brown.” Marianne gestured at her travelling dress, which had seen better days sometime during the last reign.
“I dare say even Mrs Whitmore couldn’t find fault with this particular shade of…
What would one call it? Despair? Destitution?
Oh, I know! They would call it discontinued dreams.”
Despite himself, the coachman’s mouth quirked upward. “You have a strange sense of humour, miss, if you don’t mind my saying.”
“It’s either laugh or cry, Mr Reed, and tears would quite ruin what little remains of my dignity. Not to mention they’d make my nose red, and we can’t have that. First impressions, you know.”
Thunder rumbled ominously overhead, and Marianne felt the first stirrings of genuine unease.
The moor stretched endlessly in all directions, a canvas of brown and purple under the darkening sky.
She’d travelled this way once before, years ago, when her family still had a carriage of their own and a father who hadn’t gambled away their fortune on a series of increasingly ridiculous investments.
“How much further to the crossroads?” she asked, striving to keep her voice light.
“Another five miles, perhaps six.” Mr Reed squinted at the horizon where lightning was beginning to dance. “Though if this storm breaks in earnest…”
“Then we’d best make haste, hadn’t we?” Marianne rapped on the roof with her umbrella; her mother’s umbrella, she corrected herself, one of the few items she’d been permitted to keep. “Unless you’d prefer to discuss meteorology while we’re struck by lightning?”
The coachman muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “stubborn as a mule” before disappearing from view. Moments later, the carriage lurched forward with renewed urgency, throwing Marianne back against the threadbare cushions.
Perhaps I am being foolish, she admitted to herself as the wind began to howl in earnest. But what choice do I have? Arrive late and lose the position, or risk the storm and have a chance?
Her reflection in the rain-spotted window showed a woman of four-and-twenty who looked older.
Worry had a way of adding years, she had discovered.
Dark hair severely pinned back, brown eyes that her mother had once called “spirited” but now seemed merely tired, and a chin that jutted perhaps a bit too stubbornly for fashion.
“You could have married Mr Hawkesbury,” she told her reflection, but the wind nearly swallowed her words.
Her reflection seemed to scowl back. Mr Hawkesbury, who was sixty if not older, with breath that could wilt flowers and hands that wandered like lost sheep.
Mr Hawkesbury, who’d generously offered to “save” her from her reduced circumstances in exchange for…
Well, best not to think too hard about what he had expected in exchange.
“I’d rather be a governess to a monster’s own children,” she muttered.
As if in response to her declaration, the heavens opened.
The rain didn’t begin gradually; it arrived as a solid wall of water that turned the world into a blur of grey and silver. The carriage swayed alarmingly as Mr Reed fought to control the horses, their frightened whinnies barely audible over the storm’s fury.
“Miss Fletcher!” The coachman’s voice was nearly lost in the tempest. “We need to find shelter!”
“Well, I had reached that conclusion myself!” Marianne gripped the seat as the carriage tilted at an impossible angle. Through the window, she glimpsed the road, or what had been a road, moments before. Now it resembled nothing so much as a river of mud.
This is how I die, she thought with a sort of detached amazement. Not from consumption in a garret like a proper tragic heroine, but drowned in mud on a Yorkshire moor. Mother would be mortified.
The carriage lurched violently to the right. There was a moment of weightlessness, rather pleasant, actually, like the time she’d jumped from the hayloft as a girl, before the world turned upside down.
The crash was tremendous. Marianne found herself in a heap on what had recently been the wall, her bonnet over her eyes and her dignity in tatters. Pain shot through her ankle as she tried to right herself.
“Mr Reed?” She pushed the bonnet back, wincing as she discovered several new bruises in the process. “Mr Reed!”
A groan from outside sent relief flooding through her. Alive, then. That was something.
The door, now above her head, flew open, and the coachman’s face appeared, blood trickling from a cut on his forehead. “Miss Fletcher! Are you hurt?”
“Nothing that won’t mend.” A lie, but a necessary one. Her ankle throbbed in protest as she struggled to stand. “The horses?”
“Cut them loose before we went over. They have more sense than us, and they are probably halfway to shelter by now.” He extended a hand down to her. “Can you climb up?”
Under normal circumstances, Marianne prided herself on her capabilities.
She could speak French poorly, play the pianoforte adequately, and manage a household on a budget that would make a church mouse weep.
But climbing out of an overturned carriage in a storm with what she strongly suspected was a sprained ankle?
That had not been covered in her education.
“Of course,” she said brightly, because what else could one say?
What followed was perhaps the least dignified five minutes of her life, and that included the time she’d accidentally set her own hem on fire at the Michaelmas dance.
By the time Mr Reed had hauled her out of the carriage, they were both soaked to the skin, and her ankle had progressed from painful to excruciating.
“We can’t stay here,” the coachman shouted over the wind. “There’s nothing for miles except…” He paused, squinting through the rain.
“Except?”
“Thornvale Hall. But miss, they say…”
“I don’t care what they say!” Marianne had to cling to his arm to remain upright. “Unless you’d prefer that we stand here discussing architecture until we’re washed away?”
Mr Reed looked as if he very much would prefer that, but another crack of lightning decided the matter. “It’s maybe a mile across the moor. Can you walk?”
No, her ankle screamed.
“Certainly,” her mouth said.
They set off into the storm, Marianne leaning heavily on the coachman’s arm.
The rain had transformed the moor into a treacherous bog.
Each step was a battle against mud that seemed determined to claim her boots as tribute.
Her travelling dress, never designed for such adventures, clung to her legs like seaweed.
“Tell me about this Thornvale Hall,” she said, partly to distract herself from the pain and partly because Mr Reed’s expression whenever he mentioned it was decidedly ominous.
“Been empty for near on two years now,” he replied, helping her over what might have been a stream or possibly a small river. “Ever since the Duke came back from London.”
“Empty? A ducal estate?” Marianne couldn’t hide her surprise. Even her family, in their reduced circumstances, had maintained a skeleton staff. “Whyever for?”
“They say…” Mr Reed hesitated, then forged ahead, both literally and figuratively. “They say he dismissed everyone. Every last soul except old Mrs Alder, and she only stays because she’s been with the family since the Duke was in short coats.”
“How peculiar.” Marianne winced as her ankle turned on a hidden stone. “Was there a scandal?”
Of course, there had to be a scandal, she thought. There’s always a scandal when a duke decides to live like a hermit.
“No one rightly knows, miss. He went to London for the Season two years past, betrothed to marry some earl’s daughter, Lady Catherine Something-or-other. Next thing anyone hears, the betrothal is off, and he’s back at Thornvale, living like a hermit.”
“Perhaps she had unfortunate teeth,” Marianne suggested. “Or a laugh like a donkey’s bray. These things matter more than one might expect.”
Mr Reed shot her a look that suggested he thought she might be slightly mad. Fair enough, she was beginning to wonder herself. The pain in her ankle had progressed to a sort of detached throbbing, as if it belonged to someone else entirely; someone sensible who would have taken the longer route.
“There!” The coachman pointed through the rain. “Thornvale Hall!”
Marianne squinted through the downpour and saw… nothing. Then lightning flashed, illuminating the landscape like a theatrical effect, and she gasped.
The Hall rose from the moor like something from a Gothic novel, all dark stone and forbidding towers, windows glowing faintly in the darkness. It was the sort of place where one expected to find mad wives in attics and skeletons in every cupboard.
“How perfectly ghastly,” she breathed. “I love it.”
Mr Reed made a sound that might have been a laugh or possibly a sob. “I knew you would say that, miss.”
They struggled on, the Hall growing larger and more imposing with each painful step. Marianne’s ankle had progressed now from “excruciating” to “possibly on fire,” and she was fairly certain she could no longer feel her fingers. Or her nose. Or her sense of self-preservation, come to think of it.
“Almost there,” Mr Reed encouraged, though he looked as miserable as she felt. “Just a bit further and…”
Marianne’s ankle finally decided it had endured enough. It buckled completely, sending her pitching forward into the mud with a most unladylike splash.
“Miss Fletcher!”
She tried to push herself up, but her arms seemed to have turned to water. How peculiar. She’d always thought drowning would involve more actual water and less mud.
“Just… just a moment,” she mumbled, though her words seemed to be coming from very far away. “I’m perfectly… Perfectly…” Then there was darkness.
After a few minutes, she opened her eyes, but the last thing she saw before darkness claimed her again was a light moving through the rain, a lantern, perhaps, or possibly an angel. Though what an angel would be doing at a place like Thornvale Hall was anyone’s guess.
If it is an angel, she thought muzzily, I hope it has the good sense to get me out of this rain.
Then she thought nothing at all.