The Dark Regency Series: Boxed Set

by Chasity Bowlin

  “Was that really necessary, Dorcas? Must you shriek at the man like a fishwife?”

  “Was I supposed to thank him then for ’bandoning us here to be picked off by robbers and Lord knows what other kind of brigands?” the scrawny woman challenged, clearly affronted. “You might be a bit long in the tooth, but I’m in me prime!”

  Ignoring that ludicrous and insulting comparison, Larissa lifted one of the valises. “Perhaps you have not heard this expression, or simply failed to grasp its significance, but one catches more flies with honey than vinegar.”

  Dorcas harrumphed loudly and stuck out her skinny, nearly sunken chest, her nose so far in the air she’d not be able to walk two steps without tripping. “I don’t want to catch a fly, now do I? I’d rather catch a coachman!”

  Frustrated, tired, cold, hungry and now filled with dread at the idea of hiking halfway up a mountain at dusk, Larissa eyed their luggage wistfully. No doubt most of it would be gone before they could even return for it. “There’s no hope for it but to leave the heavier items. We’ll take only what we can carry and pray those here about are honest.”

  Dorcas snorted derisively. “Honest? Ha! Plain as the nose on my face that any folk living here would be poor as a Quaker church mouse! One of your gowns alone cost more’n they see in a year!”

  “Then by all means, Dorcas, please say that a bit louder so that if they do decide to rob us, they will at least be well informed!” Larissa snapped at her.

  Dorcas narrowed her eyes and clenched her fists. “I won’t be talked to like that… not be you or anyone! Left my husband for treatin’ me that way!”

  “Which one?” Larissa asked. “Your late husband? Or the vicar, your almost husband? Or are there more of them in your background you’ve yet to disclose?”

  “Don’t much matter how many of them I’ve had, now does it? We’ll both die alone and frozen on this road!” Dorcas snapped.

  She was right. Setting aside her frustration and fear, Larissa could see that there was an unlikely wisdom in Dorcas’ words. Rising up to her full height, she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “We leave the bags… Now, Dorcas, and I’ll not hear a word of protest from you or so help me, I’ll leave you trussed up in a tree by your apron strings!”

  The maid said nothing, but glared in response. She lifted one of the smaller valises. At Larissa’s arched eyebrow, she picked up a hatbox, as well. Larissa hefted one of her own valises, “Which way?” she asked. The question wasn’t directed at Dorcas or to anyone else really. It was simply a spoken request for divine guidance.

  As if in response, the wind picked up and the trees to the left of the fork rattled in the breeze. The large blackbird which had been pecking absently at the branch he occupied suddenly rose up and flew off in that same direction.

  “What you think he meant by having truck with witches?” Dorcas demanded. Her voice was little more than a whisper and her eyes were fixed on the large bird as it swooped in the sky and cawed loudly.

  “Superstitious nonsense. You said it yourself,” Larissa reminded her. The wind picked up again, oddly direct. The bare, skeletal tree limbs danced a macabre jig from it but only along the left hand fork. The right was strangely, eerily still.

  Larissa shivered, but accepted the answer. “This way,” she said and motioned to the path on the left.

  Dorcas gave her a wary sideways glance. “You’re the witch!”

  “Wind,” Larissa replied. “’Tis only the wind. Now walk!”

  Turning from the road onto the rocky path, Larissa kept a firm grip on her bags as she climbed. She felt unsettled by the gloom created by the tall trees. The scent of decaying leaves and the rustle and snap of branches just beyond the road had her heart racing. She was on tenterhooks, waiting for something to jump out at them.

  “I don’t like it,” Dorcas grumbled. “Dark and full of beasties. I can feel their little eyes on me, right now!”

  Though the maid’s words echoed her own thoughts, Larissa knew better than to allow them to pass unchallenged. Dorcas was given to hysterics and she could easily devolve into eternal litanies of complaint. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Larissa exclaimed. “If there were any creatures about, you’ve undoubtedly frightened them off with your nattering!”

  Dorcas pointed to the top of the hill. “I told you!” she gasped, her voice a raspy whisper.

  Larissa followed her gesture and saw the large stag standing atop the ridge, it was solid, pure white. It stood there, perfectly still and stared back at them with an unsettling intelligence in its eyes. It was just a deer, she assured herself. It could be nothing else. “’Tis only a deer. Scotland is known for them,” she replied.

  “’Tis an omen! That blasted coachman was right about this place!” Dorcas muttered, her fear evident in her hushed tones.

  “Just keep walking,” Larissa urged, but offered no false reassurances. She was no longer certain herself. Another glance at the ridge and the stag was gone, if it had ever been there at all. “We must reach Kinraven before dark.”

  “Aye,” Dorcas agreed and for once, the woman kept her mouth shut.

  In the relative peace and solitude of his study, Lord Gervase Hamilton Spencer, formerly Lord Wolverstone and now the Earl of Kinraven, eyed the pistol before him much the way a drunkard would eye a bottle of whiskey. The desire to simply pick it up, place the barrel to his head and be done with it all nearly overwhelmed him. It was only an intense and long held fear of Hell that stayed his hand. Of course, his definition of Hell was beginning to shift. He feared that perhaps he was already in it, and if he wasn’t, he certainly didn’t want to imagine being anywhere worse than his current predicament. He replaced the pistol in the drawer and refilled his brandy snifter.

  “Coward,” the man at his right whispered.

  Spencer looked back at the hallucination, for he knew it was precisely that, at least for the time being. The man who had spoken was a Frenchman that he’d slain in battle during the war. It had been an ugly fight. The intimate brutality of a knife fight was something that he would never forget and with a shocking degree of clarity, he recalled the way the man’s breath had rattled as his lungs filled with blood. Even as he thought of it, the Frenchman smiled, his teeth coated with blood as some dribbled from his mouth to splatter on the carpet.

  “The roof leaks,” Spencer reminded himself. Nonetheless, he found himself reaching out to touch the spot. His fingers came away wet with the rain that had trickled through the slate and not with blood.

  “Madness,” he whispered. He couldn’t bear to say it in front of anyone else, but there, in the quiet of his study with no one else around him, or at least no one of flesh and blood, he could admit the truth. He was going mad. The other occupants of Kinraven, an ancient spinster cousin who had taken on the role of dowager and her younger, but still far past her prime niece, had taken to giving him a wide berth. He could certainly understand their caution. He terrified himself most days.

  In the large mirror above the hearth, he could see the shadowy reflection of the Frenchmen holding the pistol he’d just put away. He ignored the urge to check the drawer and see if it was still there. In part, because he refused to grant the hallucination any validity by acting on it and also because he was afraid to touch the damn gun again. He didn’t trust himself. While tempted to end his own misery, he recognized that he’d be far more likely to shoot some hapless servant instead.

  “English coward,” the Frenchman whispered, the dripping of his blood onto the carpet echoed loudly. “You put a knife between my ribs instead of fighting like a man of honor.”

  “There is no honor in war,” Spencer said. “only survival. I’d like to remind you that you had an extensive cadre of weapons at your disposal, as well!”

  The door opened and Forrester, his valet entered. “Did you need something, my lord?”

  Spencer frowned. “No, Forrester. I needed nothing.”

  “But you called out, my lord,” the valet insisted,
a worried look giving his face an uncharacteristically pinched expression.

  He’d been yelling at a figment of his imagination. Spencer sighed. “I was merely thinking out loud. I am sorry to have disturbed you.”

  The valet looked askance at the pile of letters that set unopened on the corner of the desk. “Perhaps we could obtain a secretary or man of affairs to assist you, my lord?”

  Spencer glanced at the stack of letters. He’d meant to get to them. He’d been meaning to get to them for weeks now. “I’ll deal with it, Forrester. I promise not to bankrupt myself and send you into the uncertain fate of the workhouse.”

  “Certainly, sir,” the valet said. “I’ll leave you then.”

  Spencer turned away from the little man to stare out the window. Even the dim light of the evening hurt his eyes. The room was chilled because he couldn’t abide the flickering light of a fire in the hearth; it made his eyes burn and his head ache. His skin burned beneath his clothes even in a room that should have been freezing; he talked to himself or worse, talked to those who weren’t real; and he was letting his business matters fall into ruin because he couldn’t be bothered to answer the letters he’d been sent. If those things weren’t harbingers of madness, what was?

  Spencer placed his hands over his face, blocking out the light and trying to block out the incessant whispering of other voices in his mind. “They’re not real,” he muttered. “None of it is real.”

  Chapter Two

  They’d barely reached Kinraven before full dark. Even then, the weak, winter sun had long since disappeared and the last lingering rays of light were faded and dim. It was so bitterly cold that she was numb from head to toe, which, she supposed was an improvement of sorts over aching from head to toe.

  The house was imposing to be sure. A mix of styles from a number of time periods, it was large and forbidding, constructed of dark stone that glistened as if constantly damp. Lichen and moss grew in the nooks and crannies between stones and there was an air of decay about the place, unaided by the barren hilltop that surrounded it.

  “It would look better in the dark,” Dorcas muttered. “Full of spooks and heaven knows what else. I should have stayed at the vicarage.”

  “Hush! You weren’t in a vicarage! You were swilling ale in a taproom! And a less patient, less sober and more unlikely vicar’s wife, I’ve never met!” Larissa scolded as she raised the heavy knocker and let it fall against the worn plate below. “It’s a bit imposing, I suppose, but I’m sure we’ll be quite comfortable inside. Spencer would never allow his household to be anything other than welcoming and efficient.”

  The heavy door opened inward in a loud protest of wood and hinges. The butler, if he could be called that, was a stick of a man. Rail thin and dour of face, he had a shock of unruly black hair and squinty eyes. “Why are you here?” he asked rather rudely.

  Larissa blinked, somewhat taken aback by the man’s demeanor. “I am Miss Larissa Walters. Lord Wolvers— forgive me, Lord Kinraven should be expecting us.” At the man’s blank look, Larissa continued, “My brother-in-law, the Duke of Briarleigh, wrote to him that we would be coming.” It was a lie. Rhys hadn’t written. Rhys hadn’t even received the letter Spencer had sent to him because she’d stolen it before he could. The ends, she reminded herself, would justify the means.

  “Never heard of any Walters or Briarleigh,” the man said as he stepped back.

  At the realization that he was ready to shut the door in their faces, to leave them out there in the dark, Larissa’s temper flared. Placing her hand flat on the door, she pushed back with all her might. “Sir, you will inform the earl of my presence immediately.”

  Dorcas was muttering gloom and doom under her breath again. “Whatever’s going on in this house, it ain’t good!”

  Larissa ignored the other woman and pressed firmly against the door for all that she was worth. “Sir, you will let me pass! This instant!”

  The butler glared at her, his dark brows forming a single, heavy line over his beady eyes. Larissa did not like him and she would speak to Spencer about that as soon as they were settled. Still, the man did step aside and allow them into the great hall. Larissa dropped the single valise she carried. Dorcas needed no inducement to follow suit, allowing the bag and hatbox she carried to fall to the floor with a less than gentle thump.

  “Have those taken up to the rooms that have been prepared for us.”

  “There are no rooms prepared for you!” the butler hissed. His face, thin and skeletal as it was, had gone nearly purple with rage.

  “What’s going on out there?” The question was spoken in a querulous tone and appeared to have originated with someone as old as the house itself. Behind the butler, she could see an older woman dressed in clothing that was nearly half a century out of date, her powdered hair piled high and precariously atop her head. She still wore a single red ribbon tied about her neck, that gruesome fashion trend seemed strangely apropos in the dark and gloomy house. Another woman appeared with her, this one younger and more fashionably dressed. Spencer had mentioned other inhabitants at Kinraven, but who were they? Noting just how attractive the younger woman was, Larissa found herself wondering precisely what her relation to Spencer might be. Jealousy was an ugly emotion and not one that Larissa was accustomed to experiencing.

  “Your servant was about to inform the earl of the our arrival,” Larissa said, smiling at the women as if she’d encountered them at a ball or party, rather than forcing her way into their home.

  “The earl cannot be informed of anything,” the butler replied coldly.

  “He is unwell,” said the younger of the women with a vague and dismissive wave of her hand. As she stepped forward, Larissa could see that she was not nearly as young as she’d imagined, but had taken great pains to preserve her appearance. At such a close proximity, she could see the heavy handed application of cosmetics to conceal the faint lines around her eyes. “I’m terribly sorry to be so rude, but who are you, miss, and why are you here at Kinraven?”

  Larissa looked past the butler toward the stairs. Forrester, Spencer’s valet, was standing at the foot of the stairs a look of such hopeful longing on his face that Larissa was taken aback. “My apologies. I am Miss Larissa Walters, and I am a close friend and family connection to the earl. His valet, Forrester, can vouch for us, can’t you?”

  The little man nodded, his head bobbing up and down like a cork. “They’ve known each other for years, miss.”

  The heavily made up woman leveled an assessing stare at her. “You are that well acquainted with the earl then?”

  There was a tone hidden beneath those deceptively cordial words that Larissa immediately recognized. “My brother-in-law, the Duke of Briarleigh, is a very old and dear friend of Spencer’s.” Her usage of his given name was not an oversight. If it hinted at a greater degree of intimacy that actually existed between them, so be it. “We have often spent time together at Briarwood Hall and in London. We are quite close.”

  “Let them pass, Fergus,” the woman instructed. “You will find the earl quite changed I am afraid. Scotland has not been kind to him. Once you have seen him in this state, you will no doubt be quite ready to flee back to London!”

  “I am aware that he is unwell,” Larissa said. “When he wrote to ask for assistance, he indicated such.” She didn’t bother to tell the woman that the letter hadn’t been addressed to her.

  The woman’s eyebrow shot up and a look of intense irritation crossed her face. She snapped, “Indeed? I was unaware he had written to anyone… I have been handling most of his correspondence. When he permits it, of course. His moods are quite erratic at best and his behavior — well, suffice to say, it would be unwise to be alone with him.”

  “And how exactly is it that you are related to Spencer?” Larissa asked. It was impertinent and bordered on rude, but there was something about the woman that simply put her on edge.

  The woman smiled coolly and faint creases appeared at the corners of
her eyes, the heavy powder creasing and flaking. “Forgive me, my dear. I am his fourth cousin, Katherine DeWarre. I have lived here at Kinraven all of my life. We had great hopes for him upon his arrival. Such a handsome and strapping man. It was quite kind of him to allow my dear aunt and I to remain… Almost heroic. No one would call him such now. But all the earls of Kinraven are destined to meet a tragic end. ’Tis the way of the curse.”

  Larissa couldn’t say what it was about the woman that set her on edge, but she was mistrustful of her instantly. After she stepped into the hall, Larissa glared pointedly at the butler who then assisted her with removing her redingote. Doffing her spencer, her arms now bare, Larissa took a step and then stumbled deliberately. She managed to right herself, but in the process brushed against Miss DeWarre’s arm. It had been her intent all along. However, the contrived contact did not have the desired effect. There was no flash of insight, there was no immediate intimate acquaintance with the woman’s motives. In fact, touching the woman, Larissa saw nothing but a black void. For the first time in her life, Larissa’s gift was utterly useless.

  Perplexed and somewhat uncertain, Larissa inclined her head as she apologized. “Forgive my clumsiness. I am tired from the journey.”

  “Of course, you are!” Miss DeWarre said, though her smile was cunning. “We’ll introduce you to Aunt Finella and then get you settled… at least until we’ve managed to ascertain what his lordship wishes to do with you.”

  As if realizing she’d been mentioned, the older woman piped in. “Who are these people, Katherine? Why have they come to Kinraven… and for heaven’s sake, don’t keep them standing in the doorway like beggars!”

  “Aunt Finella, this is Miss Larissa Walters. She’s a friend of the Earl’s,” Katherine said, pitching her voice quite loudly.

  The old woman guffawed. “No such thing as friends twixt a bachelor with a title and an unmarried woman! Why are you here, girl?”