Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1)

by Jeanine Croft

  “The very same.” Lord Winterly grinned, but still did not remove his hat.

  Show your face! If she’d possessed a tithe of her sister’s moxie, she might have knocked the hat from his stately head under the guise of that clumsiness her uncle had just charged her with.

  “You must join us for a glass of cognac before you continue on your way, Lord Winterly. I simply must insist that you allow me to thank you properly. I am in your debt, you know.”

  “I thank you for the invitation, Mr. Haywood—” again that chthonic grin appeared “—but I must decline the offer. Leastwise for tonight. Let me see your niece the rest of the way to your door and we shall consider the debt paid.”

  Mr. Robert Haywood appeared delighted with the request and gave his assent most readily. Emma glanced back to see her aunt and uncle watching eagerly as his lordship escorted her to the door. But it was the hidden gaze of Lord Winterly that she felt most keenly. When at last they reached her uncle’s doorstones, Lord Winterly stood aside as her guardians ascended the stairs.

  “Are you quite sure you cannot join us, my lord?” her uncle inquired hopefully. “I hope you will not question your welcome despite the late hour.”

  “The invitation is duly noted,” he answered. “Another time, I assure you. I am late for dinner.”

  Late diners, these great men.

  Lord Winterly acknowledged their farewells with a confident flick of his brim and at once withdrew from the light pouring out the open door. The fog swirled around his tall frame for only a moment, lapping at his heels like hell hounds, before it closed about him. Hades himself could not have looked more frightening vanishing into the underworld mist than did that last glimpse of Markus Winterly. Nevertheless, Emma desired very much that it was not the last she’d seen of him.

  Chapter Five

  The Spider

  My dear Mary,—Last night I was accosted in a fog by a blind gypsy, and then rescued by a wicked monk who was later discovered to be a viscount. My spectacles, however, did not survive the speeding carriage that nearly claimed my life. London is indeed a strange, dark place; and now blurry besides. Your squinting cousin,

  Emma.

  Emma was awake long before cockcrow, gasping in the darkness. Cold terror slowly seeped from her rigid bones as the nightmare released its hold.

  The blank eyes of the gypsy had turned a ghastly, blood red and followed her into slumber, the gaze crawling over her as she’d lain supine and helpless beneath her sheets. Then, hideous to behold, he’d opened his mouth wide, and from between his teeth he’d disgorged a fat, white spider that had landed with a wet thud onto the floor out of view.

  Emma had writhed in panic and revulsion, strangely fixed to her bed, as the white-haired fiend melted back into the darkness until all she could see was his yawning, empty eyes, blinking with inimical fervor. Then the eyes too had vanished. But the sound of the spider, dragging its heavy weight eagerly across the wooden floor towards her bed, the needle-like clicking of its pincers maddening to hear, was somehow more dreadful even than the gypsy. It scuttled up the legs of her bed. Her sheet trembled beneath its dangling weight, slipping slowly down her body before finally falling in a useless heap to the floor with an ominous rustle. The mattress dipped as the spider loomed into view. Emma shrieked and tried to kick at it, but no sound left her throat and her legs gave only an ineffectual shudder as the fat spider pulled itself onto her shin. She could feel its cold fangs grazing her flesh as it tap-tapped clumsily up her thigh and hip. Then onto her stomach where it paused a moment, leering up at her with eight albino eyes, flashing crimson with lurid promise as it continued up her body. Finally, it settled its bulk on her chest.

  Emma had come awake in that harrowing moment, clawing up from the darkness with another silent scream before its fangs had descended. Slapping desperately at her nightshift, she’d cried with relief and fright. Fortunately, the thing had vanished along with that terrible nightmare. “Dear God!” Dream or not, she was loath to spend a second longer in the bed she’d been somehow trapped upon.

  Unwilling to see either the gypsy or the spider a second time (in fact, she might never sleep again), she had lit a taper and seated herself at the rosewood Davenport to mend her pen. That done, she becalmed her mind with pleasanter thoughts and recorded in a letter to Cousin Mary her fateful encounter with Lord Winterly. And yet she must have fallen asleep again, for she was later startled awake by Milli’s rendition of Robin Adair at the pianoforte downstairs. Her night-rail was divested of and morning attire thrown together before she hastened downstairs.

  Her uncle looked up from the sofa with a raised brow as she entered the drawing room. “Fell asleep on your journal again, eh?”

  Bemused, Emma paused at the piano and looked a question at her sister. Milli, who was leafing through her music sheets, tapped a finger over her own rosy cheek whilst casting a very pointed look towards Emma’s. Emma glanced over at the pier glass on the wall, and there, in her own reflection, descried a black smudge below her left eye. No amount of rubbing, however, seemed to efface it.

  Uncle Haywood set aside the book he was reading and gave his younger niece a long suffering sigh. “Milli, my dear, do play something a little more sedate; it is far too early for your silly Irish airs.”

  Milli ceased her playing at once and snatched her music sheets from the rack with a sniff.

  Music sheets were rather an expensive commodity and Emma grimaced to see the sheets so roughly treated. “Milli, what has you in a pique?”

  “Perhaps I’m not as well rested as I should like to be because someone kept me up all night threshing about in her sleep and uttering gibberish.”

  “Don’t be a child.”

  “Now, now, ladies,” said their uncle with some peremptory throat-clearing, “it is also far too early for quarrels. Do wait until after I’ve broken my fast.”

  “Uncle,” said Emma, still rubbing vigorously at her smudged cheek, “what do you know of Lord Winterly?”

  He regarded her archly. “Very little, I assure you.”

  “Who is Lord Winterly?” Milli halted beneath the drawing room lintel where she had flown to in high dudgeon.

  “That is all very well,” said Emma, “but I am sure you agree that I have every right to find out what I can about the man who saved my life?”

  “Who saved your life?” Milli seated herself beside her uncle on the sofa, her gaze flying back and forth between the interlocutors.

  Her uncle examined his cuticles, appearing a little flustered. “These great names do jump out at one, you know, though I myself have no opinion of the ton or their fancy titles.”

  “Indeed.” It was a good thing her uncle was deaf or he’d have heard Emma’s teeth grinding together in frustrated impatience.

  “To come to the point, my dear—”

  Yes, please do.

  “—I confess I saw the name associated with an unusual shipment newly arrived from the Balkans, of all places; that, as may be supposed, is not a locale from which we frequently receive imports. I inquired after him and my clerk informed me that it was the first time we’d imported goods on behalf of that particular gentleman from so far east along the Danube. So, my dear, now you know as much as I—he imports goods from across the Carpathians, and my company is that which facilitates such arrangements. That is all.”

  “I thought you were a China merchant, Uncle?” Milli said, still looking bemused.

  Emma waved her sister’s question aside. “But what does he import?”

  “Impertinent girl.” Her uncle gave a grunt and picked his book up again. “We do not make a habit of discussing our clients’ business affairs with curious young women.”

  Her arched brow proclaimed that she thought otherwise.

  His lips twitched before he admitted, “Well, between you and I, the captain of the Astraeus informed me of a boatswain having heard one of Lord Winterly’s crates growling at him. He was looking for one of the steerage passengers wh
o’d gone missing and found himself being growled at by a crate instead! Can you imagine?”

  “Growling crates? What the devil is going on?” Milli slapped her palm on the chintz and stomped her foot for good measure.

  “Mind your language, Milli.” Emma’s censure, however, was only half-hearted as she waited for her uncle to go on.

  Thankfully he did. “Ah, but sailors are a superstitious lot. Best not to take them too seriously. Hornpipes, grog, taverns, and tall tales—that’s all a sailor knows.” Uncle Haywood scrutinized his pocket watch a moment, ostensibly to confirm that the time corresponded accurately with the tall clock striking the hour of nine. “The crates were, of course, inspected by His Majesty’s Customs officers…”

  “And?” Milli appeared as invested in the details as Emma herself.

  “And you shall never guess what was to be found within.”

  “What? What was it?” Milli nearly screamed, she was that titillated. “A deformed circus man, wasn’t it? I just know it!”

  “Carpets! Oriental carpets, my dear.” Their uncle was chortling, dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief. “What a good joke! Milli, I wish you had seen your face.”

  Milli gave a sniff but said nothing.

  “Growling carpets?” said Emma. “How peculiar.”

  “Indeed. Very singular,” he replied distractedly, returning his timepiece to his waistcoat.

  “What of the missing third class passenger?”

  “Never found. Come, my dears, it is time for breakfast!” On cue, his stomach gave an enthusiastic rumble.

  “So there was naught else in the crate?” asked Milli, deflated. “No curious beasties? I wonder what the growl was then.”

  “Nothing of import—excuse the pun—just the tales of a superstitious seaman who had likely had a cup too many. Ships are known to creak and growl when the weather gets fretful.”

  “I should think a seasoned sailor ought to know the difference between the ship’s growling and a crate’s growling. Well, never mind. Is Lord Winterly a duke?” Milli clapped her hands together. “No, wait—an Ottoman Prince!”

  Emma rolled her eyes. “Ah yes, lest we forget you are to marry a prince.”

  “Afraid I must disappoint you, Milli,” said her uncle, glancing back at his niece. “His lordship is merely a viscount.” He settled himself at the head of the breakfast table and gave his nieces a stern glance over the top of the London Gazette—tacitly defying further conversation—and then disappeared behind it with a satisfied grunt.

  Emma turned to see her sister smiling impishly, her chin in her palm and her elbow resting nonchalantly on the table. “Imagine,” said Milli, “an Ottoman viscount! How romantic.”

  “Ay, and he saved me from a fiendish gypsy in the fog,” Emma whispered, knowing full well that neither her aunt nor her uncle were paying them the least bit of attention.

  “Did the gypsy steal your ghastly spectacles—you ought to thank him.”

  “I shall be sure to thank him as soon as he’s cursed you into a toad.”

  Milli, seeing that Emma was opening her book to read, stretched out a perverse hand to cover the pages. “Oh, do stop teasing me and tell me all that happened last night.”

  Glancing pointedly at her aunt and uncle, Emma promised to tell her everything as soon as they were upstairs. It was little wonder, therefore, that before Emma had taken three sips of her chocolate, she was being forcibly dragged from the room by her impatient sister. Only later, much later, was she suffered to catch her breath and read her book, for Milli was not satisfied until she had recounted last night’s every minutiae, even that horrible spider dream.

  Chapter Six

  The Watcher

  My dear Mary,—I feel as though I have awoken upon the pages of a Matthew Lewis novel! I bethought myself I’d been devoured by a great white spider! Your mad, blind cousin,

  Emma.

  “Shall we go into town for a bit?” said Emma, sketching the buildings across the street from the drawing room window.

  Milli gave an indelicate yawn and stood up from the sofa. “What on earth for?” Coming up behind Emma, she pressed her forehead against the glazing like a woebegone child and glanced up at the moody sky. “Cannot you see it is bound to rain later?”

  “It is not raining now, and I really ought to replace my spectacles today.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” complained her sister, “for they suit you ill indeed!”

  “Well, I shouldn’t think you’d care. It is not as if you shall wear them, my dear.”

  Milli snorted, scrutinizing her sister’s drawing. “I think you wear them so that you can hide behind those rebarbative frames and thereby blend in with all the rest of the sparrows. Emma, I forbid your acquiring another pair.”

  “Before you go forbidding me anything, I suggest you first repay the half crown you still owe me. Now get dressed before I leave without you.”

  “I shan’t repay a shilling if you threaten to buy spectacles with it!” Without preamble, Milli sashayed from the room before Emma could issue a satisfying retort.

  Once they were settled in the coach—Milli having decided to risk muddy petticoats for the purpose of thwarting her sister’s ‘perverse’ spectacle errand—they set off west, by way of Fleet Street and the Strand, having instructed the coachman to stop in Finsbury Square. There they perused the shelves of one of London’s most famous bookshops, The Temple Of The Muses. Much to Milli’s vocal disgust, they loitered there above an hour. But even Milli could not disguise being awed by the beautiful ware room with its cast iron columns. It was by these columns that four circular galleries were supported, bearing book-lined shelves beneath a vast dome, muted daylight pouring in through the cupola at the center.

  Once Emma had purchased herself a new book, something less likely to invoke horrid dreams, the ladies then strolled along the busy London streets. They, or rather Milli, admired all the window displays—milliners, tobacconists, linen drapers, mantua-makers, shoemakers, perfumeries, and sundry merchants scattered about the streets. Next they visited a confectioners shop, and then wandered around the more fashionable districts to admire the villas and mansions.

  “I wager a sovereign your viscount lives there!” Milli pointed up to a rambling terraced mansion with Ionic columns framing its entryway.

  “You shouldn’t wager, it’s indecent.”

  When the door opened and a portly old man emerged with his lady and a little white dog, both sisters glanced at one another and giggled as they hurried off.

  Milli’s gait slowed as the sisters passed before a modiste’s boutique window. “Emma, is that not the most beautiful muslin you have ever seen!” Her voice was rapturous as she pointed to a delicately embroidered muslin within. “Oh, let’s go inside!”

  “Whatever for? You just gambled your last sovereign away.”

  “Do be serious.”

  “Do you not already own a muslin exactly like that?”

  “Upon my word, Emma, you must see that this is vastly superior muslin. I know I shall absolutely die if I do not have it!”

  “Then by all means,” Emma replied, gesturing towards the door with an impatient sigh, “we cannot have you dying before supper.”

  But Millicent, upon entering the shop, was quickly diverted by a pretty turban and its melange of colorful plumage. The younger Miss Rose was not at all circumspect in her exclamations and awe, but on noticing the cost of the desired item, her felicity quickly waned. Her hopes were then instantly dashed again when she picked up and admired a lovely blue silk fan with a very extravagant price tag.

  “Ten shillings!” Milli gasped in horror ere she carefully placed the costly piece back whence she’d found it. “I cannot even purchase a fan without being reduced to impecuniosity!”

  “Well, at least you shall be fashionably impecunious.”

  “And did you not see that hat, Emma? I am convinced that I shan’t find better feathers anywhere else in the world were I to
spend a lifetime looking!”

  “There, there,” said Emma, endeavoring—and failing—to hide her mirth, “it may be for the best lest you wish to look as bird-witted as I sometimes fear you must be. Besides” —Emma gave Milli’s empty purse a knowing poke— ”you haven’t a feather to fly with.”

  At the close of their shopping adventure, Milli—despite the perverse injustice of costly feathers and fans—had acquired herself an elegant pair of gloves, as well as a bandbox containing yet another bonnet, and a vastly overpriced muff besides.

  As these costly items were being packaged, Emma drifted towards the window to look out at the straining grey clouds that pressed upon the chimney stacks with foreshadowing twilight. In the quickening shadows across the street, she descried a black carriage. It was drawn by four black brutes that pawed restlessly at the cobbles with massive hooves, and was presently parked alongside a boot-maker’s shop with two forbidding footmen of matching livery and broad-brimmed hats standing sentinel beside it.

  On the door of the vehicle was emblazoned a very singular coat of arms with a passant red dragon, atop which rested not a helmet but a castle shaped distinctly like a rook. The shield and mantling was supported either side by two identical black wolves, both of which were chained in gold. Inside the silver banderole at the base, only two words served as the motto: Vitam Aeternam.

  Spontaneity was not a trait to which the elder Miss Rose had ever been much inclined, but on this occasion, without considering the impulse that suddenly spurred her to cross the street, Emma found she was very much compelled by a powerful need to discover the name to which that crest belonged. When she had stepped inside the boot shop, Emma scanned the rooms without much hope of knowing whom exactly she was searching for. Erelong, she perceived that she herself was being avidly watched, and thus turned to discover whence the strange sensation seemed to emanate.