Leaning into the wind, Rachel prodded Mrs. Tate’s donkey forward while clinging tenaciously to the lantern she carried. Cold down to her bones in spite of her cloak, she shivered like someone with a palsy. Traversing the five hilly miles from the village to Blackmoor Hall seemed to take forever. But Rachel was so intent on her purpose she scarcely acknowledged the wet or the cold, except to wipe the clinging flakes of snow out of her face.
Amid the growling of the sky and the howling of the wind, Rachel could hear the surf not far away. Under normal circumstances, she loved the ocean, thought its rhythmic hush… hush the best of lullabies.
Tonight it proved a lonely sound.
As soon as she reached the portico, she lowered herself from the donkey’s back and ducked inside its half-shelter. Many of the villagers believed Lord Druridge set the blaze that had destroyed his ancestral home to kill his unfaithful wife and the unwanted child she carried. But why would a man like the earl risk his own life and property? If he was bent on murder, there were easier ways to rid himself of both wife and child—and Rachel’s imagination readily supplied them: poison, strangulation, an unfortunate incident on a horse. Any number of possible accidents, really…
Unless he acted out of rage.
Rachel remembered the clenched muscles of his jaw at her thoughtless words, “Someone else’s child,” and wondered if the temper she had glimpsed could provoke him to murder. Perhaps she wasn’t wise to arrive at his house alone in the dark with no one to say where she was. But she was determined. Her mother was dying. The earl had won. Only he possessed the trump card.
Stamping her feet to rid her skirts of the snow that clung to her hem, Rachel raised her lantern to reveal the door. Although she put all her energy into pounding on the thick, wooden panel, she could scarcely hear the impact of her fist above the storm.
“Let me in!” she called. “Please!”
Her efforts conjured nothing. No light. No sound.
After setting down her lantern, she raised hands as cold and unwieldy as blocks of ice to knock again.
Several minutes passed during which only the wind answered her pleas. The gale shrieked and moaned as it whipped about her. In that instant, Rachel could imagine the voice of the woman who had been murdered in the fire, crying out for vengeance.…
The door creaked inward, and a single candle lit an older woman’s seamed face. Deep-set eyes peered at her above a hawkish but proud nose. “Who goes here?”
In her panic, Rachel took no thought of the spectacle she made. She pressed forward with a desperation that caused the other woman to shrink back. “I need to speak to Lord Dru—”
A man moved out from behind the woman, leveling a pistol at her. “That’s far enough, Miss. We’ll ’ave yer name an’ yer purpose for besettin’ this ’ouse in the middle of the night before ye take another step.”
The barrel of his pistol glinted in the candlelight. Hugging herself in an effort to control the shaking of her limbs, Rachel said, “I-I need to speak to Lord Druridge.”
“Why?” The woman addressed her again. Rachel guessed, from her age and autocratic manner, she was the earl’s housekeeper. Dressed in a linen nightgown with cambric frill edging, she wore a mobcap on her head, testifying to the fact that Rachel had indeed summoned her from bed, which, of course, came as no surprise.
“My mother is dying.”
“And what has our master to do with that?”
Rachel eyed the pistol, checking her emotions. Evidently a commoner’s life wasn’t sufficient reason to disturb a peer of the realm’s slumber. “Lord Druridge offered me a trade today. I have come to accept it.”
The woman gaped at her. “And who might you be?”
“Rachel McTavish. My mother owns the bookshop in the village.”
“Well, you’re daft if you think I’ll drag Lord Druridge from his bed at this hour. I’ll tell him you were here. Perhaps he’ll send a few shillings to help with your mother’s burial.”
“I’m not after money!” Rachel heard her voice rise to a shrill note. “Lord Druridge will want to see me, I assure you. Just rouse him.”
The woman propped her fists on her hips. “I’m supposed to wake him on your word, am I? As if you have the right to come barging into this house?”
“Is the doctor here?” Rachel tried to circumvent the two servants, despite the pistol. “Doctor?” she called into the vast reaches of the house. “Is there a doctor here?”
Hurrying to bar her way, the housekeeper nodded to the man, who waved her toward the door with his gun. “Get out or I’ll shoot.”
Rachel turned back to the woman. “Please…”
The light of the candle expunged the color from the housekeeper’s face, leaving it as bleak and empty as the snow-covered hills. “Do you think for one second that—?”
“For God’s sake, it’s only a woman.” A deep voice boomed through the cathedral-like entrance. “Arthur, put that gun away.”
Rachel stared at the spiral staircase where the Earl of Druridge descended, a mere shadow in the darkness.
“But m’lord, she might not be alone,” Arthur argued. “Thieves can be right tricky, they can, and—”
“There is no need for this little incident to disturb your sleep, my lord,” the housekeeper cut in. “Everything is under control. I told this young woman that you would see to her in the morning.”
“By morning she might not have need of me.” Ignoring his housekeeper’s tacit disapproval, the earl moved toward them with the same sure-footed grace Rachel had noticed earlier at the shop. “Perhaps, Mrs. Poulson, you will be so kind as to put on some tea. I believe our guest could use a spot to hearten her nerves.”
“I haven’t come for tea.” Rachel’s eyes attempted to pierce the darkness, to latch onto the man she had come to see, but it wasn’t until he stepped into the circle of light shed by Poulson’s candle that she could make him out. There was no sleep lingering about his face, but he was wearing a close-fitting pair of dark trousers and a single-breasted dressing gown open down the front, as if he’d donned it in haste.
The sight of his chest, covered with a light matting of hair that tapered down a flat stomach, caught Rachel unaware. For a moment, she couldn’t help but stare. He looked so different from her father, so firm and muscular.…
Her cheeks flushing hot despite the chill, she forced her eyes up as he captured and tied the ends of the belt dragging behind him. The scars on his left hand could not extend far, she realized. His torso appeared unblemished.