I glanced up as Mrs. Turner and her neighbor Mrs. Harper, arms linked and heads tilted toward each other, emerged from the path between the inn and the apothecary and turned toward the church.
“Even through the fog?” Mrs. Harper gasped in awe.
Mrs. Turner nodded her head, her voice grave. “Those lanterns o’ theirs are no’ normal. They’re witch lights. Brighter ’n even a star.” She leaned in closer to murmur, “Some say it’s ’cuz they’re lit wi’ the souls o’ their victims—those they drained the life from.”
A shiver ran down my spine at her words, as I knew precisely what she was talking about—the will-o’-the-wisps, the Lantern Men. Between my concern for Kate, my exhaustion, and my father’s uncustomary interference, I’d had little time to contemplate the matter, but I had managed to convince myself the man I’d encountered in the marshes must have been working with the local smugglers. However, hearing Mrs. Turner’s and Mrs. Harper’s concerns, now I felt less certain.
Everyone in Thurlton knew about the smugglers. People in Norfolk had been smuggling goods in and out of the country for the better part of 150 years. It had begun initially as a solution to the hefty import and export taxes few could afford to pay, but the system had simply become too ingrained in people’s lives to stop even when the taxes were lowered or repealed. Much of the village depended on their enterprise, and a large number of the men were employed by them in some capacity, including Mr. Turner and Mr. Harper. We all knew, but no one talked about it. At least, not in public. I assumed their wives and families were aware of far more than the smugglers wished them to know. So to hear Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Harper speak of those lights as if they were still the figures from myth, something to be feared, made my stomach hollow in apprehension.
That the women should notice me at the same moment was bad luck. I somehow managed a wobbly smile as they asked after Kate, hoping the women would attribute the strain in my voice as concern for my friend. I wanted to ask them more about what their husbands had seen the night before, but I knew I couldn’t. Not without breaking the unspoken rules we all followed. They were kind, assuring me they were all praying for Kate’s recovery, before they hurried off to join their friends, who were now pretending not to watch us from the churchyard.
Thankfully, Father came striding out the door a moment later, his step lighter than before, and a noticeable bulge in the pocket of his greatcoat. I didn’t comment, wondering if he actually thought he was hiding the bottle of brandy from me, from any of the villagers, or if he only carried it in his pocket out of propriety. After all, gentlemen simply didn’t stroll the streets with bottles of spirits. A discreet silver flask tucked in the inside pocket of a frockcoat, maybe, but not entire bottles. They normally didn’t collect it themselves either, but we’d long since lost all of our manservants, being unable to pay them, and Mrs. Brittle refused to procure the devil’s brew for him. How he was able to pay for the brandy when he couldn’t pay most of the shopkeepers, I never knew, but I had long suspected the steady supply of brandy Mr. Ingles, the proprietor, provided was the local smugglers’ bribe for my father’s silence.
I hurried away from the center of the village and the churchyard full of watchful women, knowing father’s long stride would easily keep up with mine. The sun was at our backs and the marshes stretched before us, the lush green blades of its grasses gently waving back and forth beneath the pale pink-and-gold-streaked sky. I watched my father out of the corner of my eye as we strolled past the last house on the outskirts of the village, wondering if he realized how ironic it was that it had been the French who killed his son, and now they and their cursed brandy were killing him, too. I bit back the urge to tell him so, knowing from bitter experience that nothing I said would make a difference. Father would only become cross and take greater pains to hide from me how much he was drinking. An effort that was fruitless, as Mrs. Brittle and I knew every hiding place in his study and would eventually clear the room of his empty bottles. How he could find the initiative to conceal them in the first place but not to remove them from the house, I never understood.
I pressed a hand wearily to my forehead and brushed the loose tendrils of hair that had escaped from my chignon back from my face. My anger and embarrassment spent, my fatigue from the long night and day of nursing Kate began to overwhelm me. Father kept pace with me, even though my steps had begun to drag, and I knew he must be anxious to return home to open his bottle of brandy. He might be a drunkard, but he was also a gentleman, and he would never have rushed ahead and left a lady, let alone his own daughter, to walk home alone.
From the furrow in his brow and the way he kept rubbing his temples beneath the brim of his hat, I knew he must have been craving his drink quite badly. I considered telling him I would look away if he wanted to take a swig of brandy straight from the bottle, but that would mean broaching this strange fiction that lay between us, and I refused to condone his actions even that little bit. He would simply have to suffer for the last quarter mile.
I thought perhaps he would question me about Kate’s condition, or at least mention my imprudent trek through the marshes the previous evening. For I was certain if he had known where to find me, Mrs. Brittle had been the one to tell him, and she would not have failed to complain about the stupidity of my actions. But he said nothing. A vague twinge in the vicinity of my heart grew more and more pronounced with each silent step we took closer to home. That I actually wished he would scold me for my foolishness was a sad testimony to the state of our relationship. I wondered, as I had so many times of late, whether he simply didn’t care or if he only couldn’t be bothered, so consumed were his thoughts by other things. I wasn’t sure which answer I preferred.
As we passed through the gate dividing our scraggy, overgrown front lawn from the end of the dirt track that served as a road, Father finally turned to me. “Will you take dinner in the dining room or retire directly to bed?”
I gazed back at him, trying to read the hopeful expression in his eyes. Did he want me to join him for dinner or, more likely, did he wish to avoid the strained ritual and instead barricade himself in his study for the remainder of the evening? I had planned to seek the solace of my bedchamber, hoping exhaustion would bring sleep and relief from my current uncomfortable emotions. But seeing Father’s eagerness to escape me, yet another reminder of how he preferred the contents of a bottle to his daughter, I found myself responding the opposite.
“I believe I’ll eat in the dining room this evening. Sleep can wait.” I lifted my chin, worried he would choose this of all things to scold me for.
He merely nodded and turned to hurry up the walk. I watched him go, suddenly wishing I’d been kinder. Perhaps if I’d been nicer, he wouldn’t have been quite so keen to leave me.
I lifted my face toward the deepening sky and closed my eyes, feeling the cool evening breeze play with the loose tendrils of my hair. I took a deep breath and released it, reminding myself it was useless to try to understand the quagmire of emotions associated with my father when I was in such a state. Exhaustion had a way of amplifying things better left unexamined. I already had too many worries dragging at me—Kate’s illness, Robert and our past, my future, and now that Lantern Man I’d seen in the marshes the previous evening.
The Lantern Man. That’s what I’d continued to call him in my mind, whether it was true or not, for I could think of nothing better. The luster of his pitch-black eyes fringed by thick lashes, the intensity of his gaze, appeared before my closed eyes and I blinked them open, startled by the clarity with which I could recall what little I had seen of him.
A crawling sensation began at the base of my spine, like the press of fingers inching up my back. I studied the windows of the house, wondering if Father or Mrs. Brittle were staring out at me, but the curtains and drapes remained undisturbed.
With growing unease, I slowly turned my head to scan the marsh grasses surrounding our house. Nothing seemed out of place. No dark eyes watched me from behind the waving
curtain of reeds. At least, none that I could see.
I pushed away from the gate, deciding it was past time I sought the shelter of our cottage.
Chapter 4
W
hen I entered the kitchen, Mrs. Brittle looked up from chopping root vegetables to scan me once from head to toe before returning to her work. Her knife struck the table with a solid thunk, accenting her obvious agitation. “Nursed Miss Rockland through the night, did ye?”
“Yes,” I replied, sidling closer. “Her fever broke this morning, but I thought it best to continue to dose her with your feverfew tea.”
She nodded. “Ye look like ye’re aboot to fall asleep on yer feet. Git yersel’ off to bed.”
My lips curled into a slight smile, used to her cantankerous nature. “Not yet,” I answered, speaking to the top of her bent head and the faded white mobcap covering the steel-gray strands of her hair. “I told Father I would eat dinner with him in the dining room.”
She glared up at me. “Noo, why’d ye do that?”
I sighed wearily and dropped my gaze to the scarred tabletop, hoping Mrs. Brittle wouldn’t make me put it into words. I already regretted my silly impulse. Forcing Father to eat dinner with me would be no punishment for him, but it was beginning to be for me. Fatigue dragged at my limbs, and I sank onto the stool Mrs. Brittle often leaned against when her hip was paining her. I reached out to finger the soft green leaves of a sprig of parsley and snuck a glance at her. Her beady black eyes had narrowed in understanding.
“Aye. Stopped at the White Horse, did he?”
I nodded.
She harrumphed and lifted the hem of her apron to scrape the carrots and turnips she had diced into the little well she created with the fabric. She shuffled across the short space to the cook top and unceremoniously dumped the contents into the pot of boiling liquid with a cascade of splashes. I was grateful for the short reprieve from her knowing stare. Mrs. Brittle’s shrewdness was often as unsettling as it was comforting, and as grateful as I was for her continued presence here at Penleaf—for she was often my only companion—I also tired of her disapproving ways.
I rested the side of my head in my hand and turned to gaze out the kitchen window at the deepening shadows cast by the cottage over the kitchen garden. Our lone tree, a stunted sycamore, always appeared so forlorn to me at this time of day. Its limbs, already withered and bent by the sometimes fierce winds that blew in from the North Sea ten short miles away, lost all definition and color in the dying light. Its flaky bark was drained of its silvery sheen, and the lush green leaves deepened to gray, resembling nothing so much as a once-lovely woman who has lost her beauty. I sighed, wondering if I was to become that woman—solitary, pitiful, my beauty and ultimately my life wasted away here by the marshes.
My options had always been few. My father’s stipend from his family being only modest and his social connections limited, there was never to have been a London season for me, and so my suitors had been restricted to those of our acquaintance and proximity. I had never minded. My heart had been settled on Robert from as early as I could remember, and it had seemed Robert felt the same way. Until he went to London that fateful November almost four years ago and met Olivia Deveraux.
The sour taste I always associated with Robert’s late wife flooded my mouth. I swallowed hard, trying to wash away my memories of the woman, and my failings to befriend her. She had just been so very difficult to like, particularly as she never let me forget how Robert had chosen her over me. More than once I had been tempted to take her out into the marshes and abandon her to her own fate. Either she would find her way out or she wouldn’t.
Or she would have been discovered by someone—or something—else.
I sat up taller, wrapping my arms around my middle. What would the Lantern Man have done if he’d found Olivia? Would he have let her go as easily? Or would we have found her floating face-down in the marshes like Joseph Bexfield?
“Is yer father all that be troublin’ ya, lass?” Mrs. Brittle’s eyes studied me beneath her scraggly eyebrows as she stripped the needle-like leaves from a sprig of rosemary with one swipe between her fingernails, releasing their evergreen scent into the air. I could tell my silent rumination had sparked her curiosity. “Did somethin’ frighten ye oot there in the bogs?”
For a moment I considered telling her—about the marsh man, about how frightened I’d been, about how confused I was about who he was and why he’d let me go. But somehow I knew I would only be asking for more trouble. Mrs. Brittle was nothing if not superstitious, and I had no desire to hear her predictions for the dire consequences I now faced, whatever she thought they might be. There would be no doubt in her mind that he had been one of the men from the myth, and I needed to think logically about this, not indulge in a flight of fancy.
No, it seemed better to keep it to myself. After all, there was every possibility there would be no ill effects, and that I would never see the Lantern Man, whoever he was, again.
Oddly, that thought did not comfort me.
“Just the fog,” I replied, having no trouble sounding convincingly distressed. “I had no idea it could be so thick or disorienting.”
Mrs. Brittle studied me for a moment and then nodded. “Aye. Mr. Brittle often spoke o’ it, and he a retired seaman who’d seen his fair share o’ fogbanks.” She paused and then added with a searching look, “’Tis no’ fer the faint o’ heart.”
I rose from my perch on the stool. “I’ll set the table in the dining room,” I told her, eager to escape her penetrating gaze before she dragged my secrets from me.
Mrs. Brittle didn’t argue, as she sometimes did when I offered to perform the tasks that under normal circumstances would have been completed by a servant. As if Father and I could still afford to worry about such distinctions. However, she refused when I suggested for perhaps the thirtieth time that she dine with Father and me. She still clung to the long-held propriety that servants such as she ate their meals in the kitchen, even though I insisted that I had ceased thinking of her as anything but family years ago. She barely tolerated my dining with her in the kitchen when Father was too incapacitated to join me; but when he did dine with me, always in the dining room, she would not join us.
By the time I carried the soup tureen out to the dining room, Mrs. Brittle hobbling behind me with a fresh loaf of bread and butter, Father had had over an hour and a half to imbibe his French brandy. Though he wasn’t completely sotted, he was well on his way to being tipsy. He reclined in his chair at the head of the table, cradling a glass of the warm caramel-colored liquid in his hand. Father had broken most of the tulip-shaped goblets traditionally used for holding brandy one-by-one over the past few years, and I had broken the last two in a fit of anger six months ago, but he seemed not to care what kind of cup he drank his preferred liquor from. I suspected he would use a dainty teacup if necessary, or simply swill it straight from the bottle.
Mrs. Brittle insisted on ladling the soup into our bowls and then retreated to the kitchen, leaving me to my father’s dubious company. Knowing I was too tired to mind my tongue and effectively suppress my feelings, I had resolved to pass a quiet meal, but Father had other ideas. He refilled his glass from the already almost half-empty bottle on the table beside him, largely ignoring his stew of vegetables and a meager amount of mutton. Mrs. Brittle did an admirable job of stretching our often paltry resources with produce from the garden, but it was sometimes difficult not to recall how delicious her stews had been when we had beef and wine and spices for her to cook with.
“So, Rockland seemed perfectly civil,” he drawled, his voice slurring only slightly.
I glanced up at him, wishing I could ignore him, but the levelness of his gaze told me he wasn’t sufficiently foxed for me to try such a thing just yet. “Robert is always civil.”
“Yes. But civil as an orange.” He smiled at his own jest and I suppressed the urge to scowl.
Though that pun from Shakespeare’s Much Ado A
bout Nothing might have aptly described Robert’s behavior toward Father, he had never acted bitter towards me. No, I would have to say I was the one with the tart tongue when it came to my and Robert’s interactions.
I returned my attention to my soup, not liking the speculative gleam shining in Father’s eyes. Hungry as I was, I was having trouble stomaching the meal, perhaps because of my worry over Kate and my fatigue. Or the uncomfortable emotions that had been dredged too close to the surface since last night. I silently prayed Father would leave me be, but I released a weary sigh, already knowing that was not to be the case.
“I expect he’ll be paying me a call before long,” he mused out loud, watching me for a reaction, which I gave him.
“Why, Father?” I asked in irritation.
“Don’t play ignorant, Ella,” he scolded. “It’s not attractive.”
I frowned.
He settled deeper into his chair. “You know Robert Rockland needs to take a new wife. And it makes perfect sense that he should look to you.” He narrowed his eyes and took a sip of his brandy. “Should have married you years ago instead of Lord Deveraux’s chit.”
I stared at the handle of my silver spoon where it rested against the side of my soup dish. The old familiar ache squeezed my chest again, making it difficult to breathe. One would have thought I would have become accustomed to it by now.
“I considered suing him for breach of promise. But you said he never made you a formal offer.” He looked to me and I shook my head. “Well, even so, the man had made his intentions clear to all of Thurlton. His behavior was shameful. And I let him know it.”
“Yes, Father,” I replied crossly. “You let everyone know it.” I clenched my fists in remembered embarrassment of the scene he had caused in the Rocklands’ front parlor in front of half the good society of Norfolk and Suffolk.
Father seemed to remember as well, for he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Yes, well, I’m of half a mind to tell you to refuse the cad. But…” His face fell. “I don’t know that you’ll receive another offer.”
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