The Demons of Fenley Marsh
by Blair Bancroft
Published by Kone Enterprises
at Smashwords
Copyright 2015 by Grace Ann Kone
For other books by Blair Bancroft,
please see http://www.blairbancroft.com
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Author’s Note
A Problem of Language
When I began The Demons of Fenley Marsh, I was faced with a dilemma. In Britain a drainage ditch is called a dyke. But in the United States, a dike (also spelled dyke) is an embankment constructed to prevent flooding.
Yet I was writing a book set in England—shouldn’t I use the English definition? Then again, the majority of my readers are American. The issue was decided when I realized the vision of a dike as a great mound of earth was so fixed in my mind that I absolutely could not use it to refer to a ditch. Therefore, my apologies to my British readers. To avoid confusion, I have banished the word dyke from The Demons of Fenley Marsh.
Chapter One
“You have a what?”
I sat, stiff and belligerent in my chair, as Miss Emily Brightwell—an imposing woman on the far side of fifty and owner of one of London’s finest employment agencies for females—stared at me from the far side of her desk. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Tyrell,” she continued, “but I must have misheard.”
Losing a brief bout with my better judgment, I stared right back, making no effort to hide my annoyance. “I am a widow, Miss Brightwell. Surely there is nothing surprising about a widow having a child.”
“A widow may have a child, Mrs. Tyrell. A governess does not.”
This time I bit back the hot words that demanded to be said, ordering my all-too-arrogant temper to lie dormant beneath a fragile façade of calm. “I do not expect to find a position in London, Miss Brightwell, nor in one of the great country houses of the aristocracy. But somewhere in this realm there must be someone in need who does not mind the addition of one small boy to the schoolroom. A house with several children, perhaps, hopefully one of them of an age with my Chas. I am, after all, willing to work for a mere pittance as long as my son may be accommodated as well.”
Miss Brightwell flashed a glance that could almost be called pitying. “My dear Mrs. Tyrell, all governesses work for a mere pittance. Adding a child of your own to the mix is unheard of, a solecism of the first order. And a boy at that.” Miss Brightwell, in all fairness, paused to consider the matter. “A sweet young girl, perhaps . . . but a boy—so rumbustious, are they not? No, no, it would never do. I would risk the reputation of my agency if I even suggested such a thing.”
I could not, would not, accept Miss Brightwell’s verdict. How dare she tell me I was unemployable? Every instinct urged me to bid Miss Emily Brightwell an icy farewell, deliver a biting apology for wasting her time, and stalk out of the office in high dudgeon. And yet I suspected that my reception at London’s other employment agencies would be similar. The truth was, I had married for love only to discover that happily-ever-after could be cut shockingly short, leaving me alone and unprotected when help was most needed. My dearest Avery, a neck-or-nothing rider, had taken one rasper too many, and now, two years later, I faced a situation that required me to flee into obscurity. And surely little could be more obscure than the role of governess in a rural household.
I could advertise for a position on my own, of course, but common sense dictated that Miss Brightwell had the far-reaching resources and experience which would ensure I was taking Chas to a place that offered the comforts and safety of a gentleman’s household. So, through jaws stiff with frustration, I admitted, “I fear I have burned my bridges, Miss Brightwell. I have leased our property in Kent and am currently staying with my godmother on Bruton Street. A position is imperative. I simply have no choice. “The lease money,” I added hastily, “is to be set aside for my son’s education. Hence my need for a position.”
Miss Brightwell’s gray eyes sharpened. “But surely your husband provided for you and the child?”
“We lived quietly on a modest amount of acres,” I said, making an uncharacteristic show of diffidence. “We were a runaway match, you see, rejected by both families.”
“Even in your present circumstances?” Miss Brightwell’s skepticism was all too clear.
“I informed my husband’s parents of their son’s death. I heard no word in return. My own family had already left no doubt I was dead to them.”
Miss Brightwell skewered me with a look that could have withered a rock. “I have run this agency for many years, Mrs. Tyrell, and heard many stories. Enough to suspect you are not telling me the whole. And I cannot possibly recommend you without understanding more fully why you have taken the drastic step of leaving a perfectly good home in Kent and undertaking the role of governess, particularly when I suspect you have no more aptitude for subservience than I.”
My stomach roiled. Clearly, I should have prepared a better story. Another partial truth would have to do. “Let us say merely,” I offered, “that I am avoiding unwanted attentions.”
“Ah, I see.” Miss Brightwell examined me more closely and nodded. “You are indeed a comely young woman, Mrs. Tyrell, yet another problem for someone seeking a position in a gentleman’s household.”
Once again I bristled, even though I knew perfectly well she was right. Nicely arranged features marked by sky blue eyes and framed by waves of golden hair tended to attract gentlemen like flies to honey. Though that was not at all the reason Chas and I had abandoned our home in Kent.
To my astonishment, Miss Brightwell’s posture suddenly deflated from autocratic disdain to something closer to sympathetic. “My dear girl, what a coil. Did you not realize that a woman with a child was unemployable?”
Now that I’d found a crack in Miss Brightwell’s armor, I allowed myself a small sigh. “I was aware it was unusual, ma’am. I did not think it impossible.” I fixed a hopeful, and suitably modest, look on my face and waited.
Miss Brightwell drummed her fingers on her desk, gazed frowningly at a considerable stack of papers—hopefully, letters from clients in search of a governess or companion. “There may be a possibility, Mrs. Tyrell, though I warn you it is also possible I am doing you a grave disservice. Give me your direction, and I will see what I can manage.”
When I stood to express my thanks and make my bow, I found my legs so wobbly I had to grasp the back of the chair. Dear God, I’d thought myself made of sterner stuff. But the looming likelihood of no home, no place to go short of begging the dubious charity of relations who had cast me off long since, was a more dire specter than I had anticipated. Whatever position Miss Brightwell offered, I must accept. Chas and I needed a home. A safe home.
Fortunately, a rush of pride stiffened my legs. Thrusting up my chin, I thanked Miss Brightwell for deigning to consider my problem. At the least, I would be able to face Chas’s anxious gaze with some slim hope for our future.
“Mama? Are we almost there?”
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I smiled into Chas’s blue eyes, so like my own, as I tucked the bedcovers up under his chin at our room in the Crown Inn on the road to Lincolnshire. “We are indeed. I am told it is but another four or five hours to Lunsford Hall. Tomorrow night I shall be tucking you up in your very own bed.”
“And there will be another boy to play with?” Chas’s angelic face, topped by a tousle of pale blond curls, gazed up at me, full of hope.
Somehow I managed to sound confident as I told him, “Yes, indeed. Nicholas Lunsford is only a year older than you. His uncle believes having another boy in the house will be good for him.”
An odd child, Miss Brightwell had said. In the past four months I have sent two governesses to Lunsford Hall. One lasted but two weeks before she demanded I find her a new position. The other simply packed up and left without notice. Miss Brightwell had glanced down, shaking her head. Frankly, my dear, I would not offer you this position if there were any alternative, but you are so determined, as is the boy’s uncle to find the right person . . . Her voice trailed into a soft aside that still managed to reach my ears quite clearly. Why they don’t send him to school and be done with it, I can’t imagine.
“What’s an uncle?”
Startled, I blinked, a rare pang of loneliness stabbing through me. That Chas’s life had been so devoid of relatives that he did not know what an uncle was, when in truth he had two of them, and several great-uncles, to boot . . . Before I could answer him, I was forced to wrestle with a wave of sorrow for all that had been lost—not just Avery but the Chastain way of life that no longer seemed so heinous.
No! I was simply melancholy from the upheaval in our lives. Chas and I were fleeing into the unknown, into a situation shunned by two previous governesses. I was mad, not melancholy. We had, after all, been content, if not happy, since Avery’s death, living the quiet village life in Kent. Until we found ourselves in need of the protection of a male relative, and no such person existed. At least not one we could call upon.
“Mr. Jason Lunsford is the brother of Nicholas’s father,” I told Chas. “That’s what an uncle is. He is also Nicholas’s guardian, which means he acts in place of Nicholas’s father, who was has gone to Heaven, like your papa.”
“Was he hunting?”
I smoothed back a curl that was drooping over Chas’s forehead. “I’m afraid Miss Brightwell did not say, love. Perhaps she didn’t know.”
In a mercurial switch of topics, Chas asked, “Is Nicholas a lord?”
“He is, but his uncle is just a ‘mister.’”
Chas frowned. “Will I have to call Nicholas ‘my lord’?”
I stifled a huff. I most sincerely hoped not, but after Miss Brightwell’s reservations—perhaps more aptly described as “warnings” . . . “It is possible,” I returned carefully, “that you will be expected to call him by his title, which is Kempton. He is a viscount, which is quite grand, even if he is only nine.”
“Oh.” Chas’s lower lip extended into something close to a pout. Clearly, he had been an adored only child for too long to accept his change in status with equanimity. Just one more cross I must bear for snatching him up and taking him away from our familiar and cherished nest in Kent.
“Nicholas’s mother and grandmother also live at Lunsford Hall,” I offered, hoping to cheer him up. “I am expected to prepare Nicholas for the day he goes away to school and teach you both good manners while I am at it.”
“Will I go away to school?”
Oh dear. I had hoped to distract him but had merely added another problem. Chas was no more ready to contemplate going off to school than I was to let him go.
I kissed him goodnight and removed the single candle to a small table by the window. Cracking open a shutter, I peered out, but from this room at the rear of the inn, there was nothing to see except the black bulk of trees silhouetted against a star-filled sky. I had never felt more alone in my life, not even when my father disowned me for not marrying the man he had chosen as my husband. But then I’d had Avery. Now I had only an eight-year-old boy I must protect from the vicissitudes of a world that I had long since realized could be both capricious and cruel.
Therefore, I was on my way to the unknown, dragging my child into God alone knew what. I could almost hear my maternal grandmother admonishing, Out of the frying pan, into the fire! You always were a widgeon, Miranda!
Ha! At twenty-seven, I had learned a thing or two. And for every turn of the coach wheels that brought us farther away from Kent, my worries lessened. For all Miss Brightwell’s reservations, Lunsford Hall had to be better than what we’d left behind.
I would make it so. No namby-pamby miss to run at the first sign of trouble, I would make Lunsford Hall a proper home for Chas. And for myself.
I peered over Chas’s head as the stagecoach rattled over a bridge. Instead of the usual gurgling stream flowing over granite boulders, I saw only a broad but sluggish canal, with tall grasses waving from sloping banks on each side.
“That there’s the great ditch the Romans dug,” a fellow passenger offered. The speaker was a large, hearty man who from previous remarks, I judged to be a farmer. He and a vicar were seated facing Chas, myself, and a sour-faced female who had not yet said a word.
“Indeed,” agreed the vicar. “Some say it was the first attempt to drain the fens, others that it was used for transport. Certainly it ranks with Hadrian’s Wall as a remarkable feat of engineering.”
“I have never been in Lincolnshire before,” I admitted. It’s so . . . so flat.”
“Aye,” the first speaker agreed. “Makes for grand farming. Let me tell you, ma’am, without Lincolnshire England would starve!”
“Not such an exaggeration,” the vicar assured me. “The county is nothing but farms from one end to the other. Wheat, barley, potatoes, nearly any vegetable you can name.”
“’Course you’ll have to look sharp and keep the nipper from falling into the ditches,” the farmer offered with a chuckle. “If it wasn’t for the drainage ditches, near the whole county would be under water.”
“Ditches?” I asked, not finding the farmer’s remark the least bit amusing.
“Big ditches, little ditches, criss-crossed into a maze,” the vicar explained. “The ditches run into canals, which run into rivers or into the sea. And he’s quite right. Without them the fens would be one great salt marsh, flooding with each high tide, with the sea running inland for miles on full moon tides, swallowing everything in its path.”
“Merciful heavens,” I murmured. “I had no idea.”
“Do they have ditches at Lunsford Hall?” Everyone stared at Chas, who had been remarkably silent during the morning’s journey.
The woman sitting next to me gasped, and both men stared at Chas. “You are going to Lunsford Hall?” the vicar said at last, looking grave.
“I am the new governess,” I told him.
“Heaven help you,” the sour-faced woman whispered.
The flaring anxiety in my eyes prompted the farmer to explain. “There’s been a spot of trouble near Fenley Marsh these past few months,” he told her. “Lunsford Hall’s right in the middle of it.”
“Nothing but rumor, you understand,” the vicar confided. “Nonsense, really.”
“A fine thing, a man of the church calling demons nonsense!” the woman declared stoutly.
“Madam, I assure you the Church of England does not countenance talk of demons!”
The farmer, obviously reveling in the controversy, added his mite. “Dancing lights where neither feet nor boat can go, gutted animals, stillborn calves, mysterious fires—”
“Not to mention a demon child!” the woman inserted. “Best you not go next or nigh Lunsford Hall, my girl. You’ll regret it. As did those other poor girls.”
“Madam, you’re frightening the boy,” the vicar said in strangled tones.
“I beg your pardon.” The woman subsided into a corner of the coach, turning her face to the window.
I hug
ged Chas to me, murmuring reassurances. If only I could believe a word I was saying. Oh, dear God, what had I done?
Out of the frying pan into the fire . . .
Chapter Two
Naturally, after such revelations—even though I knew they must be nine-tenths rumor, if not outright slander—I fully expected Lunsford Hall to be Gothic and gloomy, a pile of dark stone rising in monolithic manner out of the flat green plain of Lincolnshire. It was, instead, a four-square, unimaginative structure of red brick with multi-paned windows framed in white. An unpretentious pediment topped the front door, which was unprotected by any semblance of a portico. A solid house, not unwelcoming. And yet . . .
There were but three marble steps from ground to threshold, and as I ascended them, clutching Chas by the hand, my skin pricked as if eyes lurked behind every one of those multitude of windows. Curious eyes or inimical? No! I would not succumb to gossip. This was not some threatening ruin out of one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels. Lunsford Hall was the home of a gentleman. Ordinarily, I would hesitate to send one of my ladies to a bachelor establishment, Miss Brightwell had said, but with Lady Kempton and her mother in residence, I am confident there will be no nonsense.
As if I would ever countenance such a thing! Yet Lunsford Hall seemed far more isolated than the houses in Kent. Though we had passed through a village a mile or so before the crossroads where the carriage from Lunsford had been waiting, it seemed little more than a few cottages clustered around a small stone church. And yet, in spite of Miss Brightwell’s hints that young Nicholas was the problem, could it be the master of Lunsford who was the actual threat, preying on the young women he hired?
Demons of Fenley Marsh Page 1
