by Ruth Owen
I’d rather hang! Rina cried silently. Her grandfather had turned his back on her mother, causing her death as surely as if he had driven the nails into her coffin.
She balled her hand into a tight fist around the locket. It wasn’t fair. She was the one who’d been attacked, yet she was the one who was going to be paying for the crime for the rest of her life. It seemed that the rich and powerful always won in the end. Like the widow. Like her grandfather.
Like Trevelyan.
A fierce, righteous anger rose up inside her. Her sensible side warned her that she was being foolish in the extreme, that she should take the safe future Quinn offered and be glad of it.
If her mother had taken a safe course, she would never have given up all she had to run off with Daniel Murphy. And if her father had taken the safe path, he’d never have asked Katie Poole to marry him, and had to flee his country for the sake of the woman he loved. The truth was, Rina had gambler’s blood from both sides of her heritage. And yet the fact that the odds were stacked in favor of the black-hearted earl and his self-absorbed family only made the chance of beating them all the more enticing.
She held the locket against her. Forgive me, Prudence. I’ll only borrow your life for a little while, I promise. “Well, if I’m going to have to change my name anyway, I might as well make it Winthrope.”
Chapter Four
“Sea air!” exclaimed Mr. Benjamin Cherry as he leaned out of the coach window and took in a bracing lungful of the cool, salt wind. Below, the ocean off the northwest Cornwall coast was scattered with the glitter of diamond-bright sunshine, and churned into a white froth as the base of the solemn gray cliffs. Seagulls and wheeled overhead, crying plaintively as they waited for the fishing boats to return with their daily catch. Mr. Cherry gave a satisfied sigh, then sat down against the cushions, his cheeks as round and red as his surname.
“Is it not exhilarating?” he exclaimed to the two women accompanying him. “I vow, had I not determined to take up the law, I would have cheerfully spent my youth as a midshipman on a king’s frigate before the mast. Is that not so, Mother?”
He turned to the lady beside him, a figure so heavily wrapped in blankets and woolen shawls that little could be seen of her except for her small eyes and pinched, wrinkled mouth. “Humph,” she sniffed. “You’d have caught your death in the cold and damp. Or drowned sure.”
Mr. Cherry’s jovial smile momentarily lost its luster, but it returned in a trice as he spoke to the young woman sitting across from him. “And you? Do you fancy the sea, Miss Winthrope?…Miss Winthrope?”
Sabrina started, belatedly realizing the solicitor was addressing her. Weeks of Quinn’s tutoring and she was still slow on the mark! “Forgive me, sir. I’m afraid my mind was…elsewhere.”
“Heavens, of course it was,” the solicitor stated, nodding in understanding. “No doubt you were thinking about your impending reunion with your dear great-aunt and your cousins. And after all the trials and tribulations you’ve endured! I vow, if I were in your self-same circumstances, I doubt I could remember my own name.”
“You do not know the half of it,” Rina muttered. She glanced down, and plucked nervously at one of the numerous satin bows that adorned her skirt. Quinn had commissioned several new dresses for her, all of which he’d insisted be peppered with “them bows, beads and goo-gas that show you got money to burn.” Personally Rina disliked the silk and satin trappings, but the gaudy dress was the least of her worries.
Barely a month had passed since Quinn had spirited her out of London and installed her in a small cottage in the isolated country near the Welsh border. For weeks he’d stuff her full of every detail of Prudence’s fabricated life, from her dramatic rescue by Irish missionaries passing through Italy on their way to Africa, to her adopted father’s death and her adopted mother’s deathbed confession that she was not really her mother at all, and her final charge that to her adopted daughter to find her true heritage.
To Rina’s mind, Quinn’s story was the most preposterous tale she’d ever heard—she told him straight out that she doubted anyone with an ounce of sense would believe it. But he had answered her with a smile and a canny wink. “You’ve got to tug on their heartstrings,” he’d told her. “It muddles their minds. If they hear you’re an orphan who’s a missionary girl to boot, they’ll take you to their hearts and no mistake.”
Quinn’s understanding of human nature proved to be dead on. When “Prudence” had appeared in Mr. Cherry’s Truro law offices with letters from her deceased “mother” and various witnesses proving her identity, the Trevelyans’ solicitor had spent less than a week confirming their authenticity. Soon after, she’d been summoned to Ravenshold, to meet her long-lost family. The speed of her apparent acceptance both astonished and unnerved Sabrina—and made her feel all the more guilty for the ease of her deception.
Mr. Cherry was a dear and generous man, and he’d been very kind to her—far kinder than his legal duties required. She hated deceiving him, but she was going to have to get used to lying to people. Luckily that wouldn’t be a problem where the Trevelyans were concerned. If even a quarter of the things Quinn had told her were true, then Prudence’s relatives were the most self-centered, detestable, and useless lot that ever roamed the hills of England.
The weather deteriorated as the day wore on. Threatening clouds rolled in from the northwest, turning the bright morning into a gloomy and ominous afternoon. A dank fog chilled their bones, and obscured much of the view of the road ahead. The waves grew fiercer, battering against the base of the cliffs like a titan’s fist. The crash of waves was so loud that sometimes Sabrina was not sure whether she was hearing thunder or the relentless pounding of the sea. Even the land seemed to mirror the inclement weather, turning from rolling green farmland to rock outcroppings as stark as the cliff below.
Strangely enough, the fierce landscape stirred something deep inside her. She’d spent years in the crowded, fouled streets of London, where the people were packed so closely together that it seemed that not even her thoughts were her own. Now the emptiness of the bleak, wild land made her feel free in a way she’d never felt before. It was desolate and barren, and dangerous in ways she couldn’t even begin to imagine, but it was also untamed and unbroken, a land that did not compromise. It did not pretend to be anything other than what it was: hard, unrepentant, and…beautiful—
“There it is,” the solicitor said, pointing out the carriage window. “Ravenshold.”
Rina leaned out the window, heedless of the raw wind whipping at her hair as she peered ahead through the storm’s gloom. At first she could make out nothing, then a stab of lightning illuminated the landscape—and Ravenshold. The ancient house sat on a rise above the cliff’s edge, as gray and foreboding as the coast is commanded.
There was nothing refined or courtly about the manor—it was made of the same somber stone as the cliffs, and built solid and plain to withstand the brutal onslaught of the sea and land. Modern architects might have seen its austere simplicity as ugly, but Rina saw strength and pride in the ancient building. To her it was finer than the most ornate, treasure-stuffed residences of the fashionable ton.
“It’s magnificent,” she breathed.
“It’s drafty and cold as the grave,” Mrs. Cherry remarked with her usual sourness. “You must be a Trevelyan. They’re the only ones who can abide the place, and they’d live nowhere else. In the blood, they say.”
In the blood, Rina thought, feeling a curious ache in her heart. She leaned back against the horsehair cushions and closed her eyes, and allowed herself to believe, just for a moment, that she truly belonged to this wild, windswept land.
Her thoughts ended as the carriage lurched sideways. Sabrina clutched the door as the carriage swayed precariously close to the edge of the road.
“Have no fear,” the solicitor hastily reassured her. “It was only a pothole left by our inclement winter.”
“Weren’t no pothole,” his mother st
ated. “It were a warning. From the ghost.”
“Mother—” Mr. Cherry warned.
“They say she walks the halls of Ravenshold, and the sea cliffs beyond. Say she’s lookin’ for someone to avenge her death.”
Sabrina didn’t believe in ghosts any more than she believed in Lady Luck, but she was intrigued. “And just who might this unfortunate specter be?”
“The spirit of Lady Isabel. Lord Trevelyan’s murdered wife.”
Murdered? Rina’s eyes widened in surprise and alarm. “But I thought the earl’s wife died of influenza.”
“That is precisely what the poor lady died of.” Mr. Cherry gave his mother a long-suffering look. “You must understand, Miss Winthrope, that the Duchy of Cornwall is rife with stories of ghosts, ghouls, and superstitions. It’s part of our history—some tales even date back to the time of the Romans. Every manor house worth its salt has its share of haunts and curses, and Ravenshold is no exception. But there’s no truth to the rumors about Lord Trevelyan’s wife’s death. You may rest assured on that point.”
“She may rest—but poor Lady Isabel isn’t so lucky,” his mother countered sourly. “She’s forced to walk the cliffs at night, moaning out the pain in her unavenged soul.” She shook a bony finger at Sabrina. “If there’s no truth to them rumors, you tell me why the lady was right as rain not three days before her passing. And why the coffin was shut tighter than a miser’s purse at the funeral, so that no one could see inside. And why the earl walked away from the grave before the parson was half done with the requiem—”
“The man was overwrought!” Mr. Cherry exclaimed. “Miss Winthrope, you are bound to hear many stories concerning his lordship. While I cannot deny that his reputation is far from spotless, I can state without reservation that he was a devoted husband and is an exemplary father—”
Rina started. ”Father? The earl has a child?”
“Two, actually. Lady Sarah and Lord David, the Viscount of Swansea.” He leaned over and gave her hand a companionable pat. “Forgive me. I forgot that you have been so long separated from your family. There is much about them that you have yet to learn.”
“Apparently,” Rina murmured as she settled back against the seat, nervously fingering the braided gold cord around her waist. A father! Quinn had described the Black Earl as a monster, the closest thing there was to a devil on earth. She’d relied on that image to justify stealing from him and his family. But to find out that he had children made the demon lord somehow more…well, human. It put the whole business in a entirely different light.
Which was probably why Quinn had never saw fit to mention the existence of the younger Trevelyans, she thought with a grim smile. She’d know from the start that stepping into Prudence’s life was going to be much more difficult than just showing a lawyer a handful of letters, but she hadn’t expected the difficulties to include ghosts, suspicious deaths, and children. Forced to walk the cliffs at night, moaning out the pain in her unavenged soul.
A chill snaked down Rina’s spine. She gazed out the window at the towering cliffs and the pounding, storm-dark sea, and wondered what else Quinn had neglected to tell her.
“Not here?” Mr. Cherry said, his smile disintegrating. “But I wrote to Lord Trevelyan. Several times. He could not have failed to get my letters, could he?”
“Can’t say,” replied the dour, lantern-jawed butler who bore the unlikely name of Merriman.
“But this is his long-lost cousin, returned home after thirteen years. Surely he would want to be here to welcome her?”
Merriman gave Sabrina a cursory glance, as if she were no more than a bit of lint on his black coat. He turned his gaze back to the solicitor. “His lordship does as he pleases. Always has. Always will. I suppose you’ll be wantin’ to see her ladyship, then.”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” Mr. Cherry replied.
In Rina’s opinion, Merriman looked as if he thought everything was too much trouble. “Well, you’ll have to wait. Dr. Williams is with her at the moment.”
“The physician?” Mr. Cherry asked. “I do hope it is nothing serious.”
“Maybe it is, maybe it ain’t. You’ll have to wait all the same.” Merriman shrugged and shuffled across the hall, pausing only the briefest moment to motion them to follow. Taking her son’s arm, Mrs. Cherry grudgingly started after him, complaining incessantly about wet clothes, drafts, and catching her death of something or other.
Rina lagged behind, caught up in the austere grandeur of the room. The high arched ceiling was supported with rough-hewn beams, and colorful coats of arms decorated the spaces between. Massive bronze chandeliers hung down on chains as thick as her arm, and the oak walls were covered with displays of swords, shields, and armor that must have dated back hundreds of years. She felt as if she’d stepped into one of the stories her mother used to read to her by the fire, about the court of the legendary King Arthur.
The butler and the Cherrys continued down the length of the hall, apparently not missing her. she paused in front of a finely polished suit of armor that stood in an alcove off to the room’s side. Her imagination called up an image of a knight seated on a black charger, battling some evil lord for the honor of his lady love. Unable to resist she reached up, and traced the intricate scrollwork that covered the breastplate. A knight in shining armor, she thought wistfully, recalling her childhood dreams. It was only her imagination, of course, but she almost believed that she could feel the beat of the knight’s heart under her hand, and see the glint of his eyes behind the slits of his ornate helm.
A whining sound jarred Sabrina out of her imaginings. Surprised, she peered into the dark alcove behind the armor. At first she could see nothing, but then her eyes picked out the shapes of a gangly girl and a shorter boy. The boy clasped a wriggling, whining ball of fur to his chest.
“Quiet, Pendragon,” he whispered. “We’re ‘posed to be hiding.”
Sabrina grinned. She was about to say hello when an angry call echoed through the hall.
“Where is that beast?”
Rina whirled around, and saw a short, rotund woman in a mobcap storming across the flagstones, sputtering like a Roman candle. “Where is it? I won’t have that filthy animal in my—”
She caught sight of Sabrina and halted, placing her hands on her ample hips as she queried, “And who might you be?”
“Sa—Prudence.”
“Ah. The cousin,” the woman replied with disinterested nod. “Well, I’m Poldhu, miss. The cook. And I’m looking for a mangy, flea-bitten mongrel that just stole a hen that was meant for this evening’s supper—a fully dressed hen, I might add, that took me a good hour to prepare. I’ll have that dog on a spit before I’m through with it. Have you seen the black-hearted creature?”
Sabrina glanced at the alcove, where three pairs of eyes pleaded for her silence. She turned back to Mrs. Poldhu. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
“More’s the pity,” intoned the cook as she resumed her frantic pace, and bustled out of the hall without so much as a good-bye.
As soon as the cook disappeared through the far door, Rina turned back to the alcove. “It’s safe now. She’s—”
She stopped, realizing the alcove was empty. Apparently the children had slipped out the far side while she was talking with Mrs. Poldhu. Sighing, she hurried out of the great hall to find the Cherrys. But Sabrina had not gone a dozen steps beyond the hall before she realized she was lost. The corridor was split in three, each branch leading off in a maze of doors and passageways. Merriman and the Cherrys were nowhere in sight. She looked around for Mrs. Poldhu or one of the other servants, but the hallways were empty. She was just about to swallow her pride and call out for help when she heard voices coming from the corridor on her left.
Relieved, Rina followed the sound to a nearby door. It was open barely an inch, but she could hear the murmur of conversation, and saw a flicker of a fire reflected in the highly polished wood surface of the doorjamb. Anxious to leav
e the chill gloom of the deserted hallway behind, she pushed open the door and stepped into the sitting room.
The Cherrys were not there.
The conversation fell to stunned silence as Rina waked in. The man was tall and wore spectacles but it was the older woman in the wheelchair who captured her attention. Her meticulously styled white hair was wrapped around her head like a crown, and her high cheekbones and striking features bore the stamp of what must have once been a remarkable beauty. Her hand rested on a cane with an ornate silver handle, and strands of perfectly matched pearls circled her graceful throat. Even sitting, she bore herself with the pride and power of a queen. She was haughty, imperial, and impressive. And, for the moment at least, speechless.
The dowager duchess. Sabrina had been preparing for this moment for weeks, going over and over how she would present herself to the Trevelyan matriarch. In her mind it had been easy—hoodwinking an imaginary family was far less difficult than facing living, breathing human beings. Her conscience urged her one last time to confess that this had all been a dreadful mistake, and to deal with the consequences as honestly and decently as she could. But since those consequences might very well include a hanging, she did not have much choice. She’d been dealt her hand and she had to play it out.
