Prudence.
Even one fleeting glance at her through the window was enough to bring about the same surge of awareness he had felt the very first moment he had caught sight of her. He shifted uncomfortably and felt the rough bite of the bark against his back. A strong gust of wind snaked up his spine and made him shiver, but he made no attempt to move.
From his vantage point, he was hidden out of sight from the road, the house and the beach, yet he had a clear view of all three. If he climbed through the bramble hedge that lined the narrow lane that ran past the house, and walked along the protection of the hedgerow toward the back of the outbuildings, he could wander around the property completely undetected. It was perfect for his purposes, but it also raised alarm bells at just how easy it would be for anyone else to also creep up to the house unnoticed. He was fairly innocuous, however anyone with intent to cause damage to the property or its occupants, could do so completely undetected.
Not for the first time, he cursed the property’s remote location and wondered how the young women survived the hardships of living in such an isolated spot. He had no doubt that, during the worst of the winter months, the house would be practically cut off from the outside world, and the ladies would be forced to endure an arduous walk to even reach civilisation.
It irked him that their own relatives would allow them to live in such remote destitution and he made a mental note to find out just who those relatives were.
He turned slightly and studied the beach. There were narrow paths at both ends of the beach that led up to the cliff tops. The path closest to him was a private path that led to the house while the path on the opposite end of the sandy stretch of coastline led toward the village just over a mile away. He knew from recent experience that a short walk along the cliff tops took him to the rear of the public house in Marchwell harbour.
With a sigh, he shivered and rubbed a weary hand down his sodden face. Rain water cascaded down his chin and dripped uncomfortably into his shirt, soaking it until it lay against his cool flesh like a second skin. He was cold right down to his toes, and knew he would take some time to warm up, yet was strangely reluctant to leave. With a sigh, he also knew that Levant would send someone to look for him if he was gone for too much longer. With one last, lingering look at the house, he pushed away from the tree and made his way toward the back of the outbuildings.
Prudence had left her sisters discussing the yarn colours for the newest batches of shawls they needed to crochet to sell at the market next week. Although she had her own pile of mending to do, she didn’t seem able to settle her mind to anything. Her thoughts jumped randomly from her sister’s suggestion that they sell the parcels of land Levant wanted, to her own encounter with the hateful man himself earlier that afternoon, to their mother’s worrying state of health, to what would happen to the family if their Uncle Bernard ever got wind of their precarious situation. All the while, one shadowy thought lurked in the back of her mind. She tried really hard to block him out, but just couldn’t stem the continual urge to think about the handsome stranger who had stared at her so intently.
He was by far the most handsome, yet strangely disturbing man she had ever seen. He had not spoken one word to her, or Levant for that matter, yet had oozed menace that worried her. She wondered what his voice was like. Would it be deep and husky, or dark and sinister? Why had he stared at her so much? What had he been looking for? For all of Levant’s smarmy grins and double entendre, his silent employee had had far more of an impact on her, and had shaken her far more in one brief visit than any of Levant’s regular forays onto the Cragdale Manor estate.
She shivered at the sound of the howling winds outside, thankful that Robbie had come home while it was still light and was safely seated in front of the fire with Eloisa. For once, their mother wasn’t screaming and shouting and an almost amiable atmosphere had befallen over everyone. The low murmur of voices reminded her that despite the huge problems they currently faced, they were still a family.
She was in the process of folding her shawl when movement outside of the window captured her attention and she froze. When she had returned to her bedroom, she had not bothered to light a candle because she preferred the darkness sometimes. It not only gave her a better view outside the window when it was dark, but it made her feel somewhat safe and protected when she wanted some time alone with her thoughts. Right now, it gave her a perfect view of the gardens outside without being seen.
The small hairs on the back of her neck stood on end and her breath lodged in her throat at the sight of the tall, dark, shadowy figure. She watched him; and she had no doubt that it was a man, leave the sheltered protection of the huge fir tree and amble slowly toward the rear of the outbuildings that housed the family’s pigs. She knew, even without the light to be able to see properly, who the man was: the handsome stranger who had visited with Levant. Her stomach lurched and, for one brief moment, a wave of sickness swept over her that was so strong that she wondered if she was going to be sick right there on the floor.
She watched the head and shoulders of the man walk confidently along the hedgerow toward the lane that led to Dinnington Hall. The smooth, unhurried way in which he moved, regardless of the pelting rain, warned her that he was either extremely arrogant or completely unperturbed that anyone would notice him. What did he want? What was he looking for? Her worried gaze swept over the trees that sat atop the cliffs. They provided a barrier between the strong sea breezes and the house, and were really a rather small copse that blocked all view of the ocean and beach, which ordinarily wasn’t a problem, unless the density of the trees was being used as protection by someone who was watching them.
She swallowed, and was suddenly very glad that she hadn’t seen fit to light a candle in her room. By the time she had left her window seat and hurried to the window that faced the driveway of the house, all trace of the shadowy figure had vanished. If she hadn’t watched him for the last few minutes she would have considered him a figment of her over-active imagination. As it was, she knew now that Levant and his men were watching them.
Panic threatened to overwhelm her. She felt hunted, as though she didn’t know which way to turn and knew that whichever way she went, the outcome would be the same. Her thoughts immediately turned to her mother. Had the man seen Agatha out in the garden? She swallowed. Had he been watching her from the trees even then? The thought filled her with horror and she shivered. He had been so close yet she hadn’t known it. The realisation made her want to cry. She snapped the window shutters closed and flicked the catch, before she hurried around the room and repeated the process at each of the four windows. Once she had done, she scurried to her mother’s room to close the shutters there too, and then moved on to Robbie’s, before she called to her sisters downstairs.
“Come and help,” she yelled, only vaguely aware of her mother’s disconcerted rambling from the other side of the bedroom door. “Quickly!”
“What is it? What’s happened?” Georgiana gasped as she practically flew up the stairs.
“Close the shutters to the house,” Prudence ordered Georgiana and Eloisa and Maggie, who had appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “Hurry up.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Just do it. I will explain in a minute.”
Amid many bangs and a lot of grumbling, the house was shuttered and locked. The sudden slam of a loose shutter against the outside brickwork made them all jump and they made their way down to the library to wait for Prudence to join them and explain.
“Where is father’s old hunting rifle?” Prudence demanded and hurried past the library to the study to search for the wretched item before anyone could reply. Although she was busy pulling out drawers, she was aware that everyone had followed her into the study and stood just inside the door watching her.
“What on earth is going on, Prudence?” Madeline demanded, her eyes filled with fear.
Prudence spent several moments searching cupboards for their lat
e father’s old hunting gun and bit back a sigh of impatience when it was nowhere to be found.
“It’s upstairs in the attics, I think,” Eloisa suggested, her own concern rising at the worry on her eldest sister’s face. “Prudence, I insist that you tell us what has happened at once.” The stern rebuke in her voice was enough to make Prudence pause. She turned to her sisters and only then realised that she had just scared her entire family.
“I am sorry,” she paused and contemplated the wisdom of telling them what she had seen. A quick glance at the curiosity on Robbie’s face was enough to caution her not to spare them the details. “I saw someone outside. He was one of Levant’s men and he was watching the house.”
“What?”
“When?”
“Which one?”
“What is he after?”
“Is he still there now?” Robbie piped up. The eagerness in his voice drew everyone’s attention. When he tried to move to the window, Eloisa grabbed the collar of his shirt and drew him to a halt.
“Don’t you dare, Robert Freestone. You keep away from those windows.”
“I was just going to see if he is still there,” Robbie whined.
“He has gone,” Prudence declared flatly. She glared at Robbie. “You will not go outside, and you will not touch the shutters at that window or any of the others, do you understand Robert Freestone?” She watched hurt fill Robbie’s eyes and immediately felt awful for being so heavy handed with him but she knew that if she didn’t, he would have his boots on and would be charging toward the copse without a care in the word, or any fear of the danger that might lurk within.
“Where are you going?” Maddie demanded when Prudence flew out of the room and ran upstairs.
“The attics,” Prudence gasped. She hated the attics. It was by far the worst place in the entire house but, if the gun was up there, then she had to find it.
Minutes later, armed with nothing more than a feeble candle, Prudence eased open the small door to the uppermost room in the house. Cold immediately chilled her flesh and she shivered at the sight of the heavily dusted cobwebs that hung practically everywhere. She lifted her candle in the vain hope of being able to see through the gloom and almost screamed when there was a sudden movement beside her.
“It’s only me,” Robbie grinned. He rolled his eyes at the squeamishness of females and peered through the gloom. He was the man of the house when it came to dealing with the eight legged beasties, and he couldn’t resist ribbing Prudence just a little bit.
“Do you want me to go in and collect a few of them, you know, so they don’t nip at your toes while you are in there?”
Prudence merely threw him a dirty look. “I wouldn’t stand behind me if I were you. I can promise you this, Robbie, if I see one of them, I am going to be the first one out of there and you will be all alone in the dark.” She wrinkled her nose up and watched the smug smile leave Robbie’s face. She knew that he was a little bit afraid of the dark, even though wild horses wouldn’t be able to make him admit to it.
“I am not going in there,” he muttered. “I have to go and help Eloisa.”
Before Prudence could even draw breath, Robbie had disappeared down the stairs with a clatter of heels. “Coward,” she muttered and puffed out her cheeks as she briefly contemplated what it would take to try to coax one of her sister’s to go in there for her. Unfortunately though, they were even more scared of spiders than she was.
The image of the tall, handsome stranger flew into her mind. The memory of the shadowed figure watching the house was enough to propel her forward and, with a fortifying breath, she squared her shoulders and broke the first line of webs as she walked into the attics.
It was worse than she had feared. The approaching storm howled around the chimney stack and rattled the tiles on the roof alarmingly. The strangely haunting sound was awful in its own right, but nothing could match the scuttling movements on the wooden joists above her head as she moved through the cobwebs toward the old trunks against the far wall.
Her stomach knotted at the sight of the old dusty leather box that had the emblem JHF emblazoned on the front. Joseph Harold Freestone was her father; a dissolute wastrel who had abandoned his wife and children and left them to fend for himself so he could live the life of a gambling womaniser in the bright lights of London. Well, until his money ran out, at which point, penniless, pox ridden, and wanted for unpaid debts, he had taken his own life by throwing himself off a bridge over the River Thames. The innocuous trunk before her now held so many awful memories that Prudence wasn’t sure that she could bring herself to actually lift the lid. The last time she had seen the horrible thing had been on the day that their mother had received the news from father’s mistress that Joseph had died. Agatha had wailed and wept, screamed and ranted, until her voice was hoarse and there was wildness in her eyes that had unnerved all of them.
That had been the beginning of the downward spiral of their mother’s mental health and she had deteriorated each day since. They hadn’t thought anything of their father’s belongings and had tried to carry on regardless once they had learned of his demise. Eventually, Agatha had ordered Joseph’s belongings be removed from the house, although she hadn’t stated what she wanted to happen to them. Confused, scared and more alone than ever, the girls had hastily packed the one trunk left in the house with their father’s clothing, and had shoved it upstairs in the attic where it had remained for the last five years.
Unless Prudence was mistaken, they had been worried about their mother’s state of mind and, having no use for it themselves, had packed their father’s old hunting gun in the trunk too. Shaking off her melancholy, Prudence placed her candle on the floor by her feet. She gasped as the flame flickered alarmingly but, luckily, it didn’t go out. Being in the attics with meagre light to find her way was bad enough. In total darkness, it would be impossible to find her way out.
She screamed at the squeaking sound that broke the silence and she turned in horror to watch the small door to the attic slowly swing closed. Her breath locked in her throat and her heart began to pound as her connection with the rest of the house was severed.
“It’s just the wind. That’s what it is. The wind closed the door. Get a hold of yourself, Prudence,” she whispered and turned back to the trunk. This wasn’t the time for timidity or ridiculousness over spiders.
She flicked the catch and yanked the lid of the trunk up with rather too much force and was met with a slight tearing sound that warned her that she had just ripped the brittle leather on the aged object. She stared down at the folded clothes and didn’t quite know what she should feel. Should she feel sadness? Loss? Despair? She didn’t feel any of those things. It was strangely disconcerting to stare down at the objects with such disaffection. It felt as though the items in the trunk belonged to a total stranger, which they did really, because she was certainly of the opinion that she hadn’t really known her sire. The man who had been around throughout their childhood had spent many hours in the library and, even when he had joined the family, had been quiet and almost withdrawn. It was as though he was there, and knew he needed to be there for the sake of the family, but would have preferred to be far away. Which, of course, he did the first opportunity he got.
Pushing all thoughts of Joseph aside, she began to rummage through the clothes. A dark frown settled on her face as she rummaged deeper and deeper. She paused long enough to sneeze and wiped cobwebs off her nose with the back of her dusty hand, which only made her sneeze again even louder. Sniffing a little, she finally reached the bottom of the trunk and sighed when her fingers found nothing that was even remotely similar to the metal barrel of a gun. It wasn’t that she wanted one per se, it was just that she knew that visually it would act as a deterrent.
Determined not to be thwarted, she began a second, more thorough search, and was rewarded for her endeavours when her fingers found the long, cool metal barrel of what she was after. She slowly eased the gun out of the neatly
folded piles of clothes, and stared at it for a moment. Its unfamiliar weight in her hand made her shiver and she wondered how anyone managed to point the horrid thing at anyone, or anything, with intent to pull the trigger. She certainly couldn’t. She carefully put it onto the floor beside the candle and returned to the trunk to search again only to come up empty handed several moments later.
She stared blankly into the darkness while she tried to think if she had ever seen any shot for the gun, but couldn’t remember. With a sigh, she hastily shoved everything back into the trunk and slammed the lid down. Within minutes, she had closed the attic door behind her and stood within the upper hallway for several moments where she simply absorbed the warmth of the inner part of the house.
It was haven to her chilled flesh and she glanced down tentatively at her soiled and dirty skirts. Cobwebs tickled her cheeks and she knew she must look a fright, but couldn’t bring herself to care. She had mixed emotions about what she had found. A part of her wanted to put it back and pretend she couldn’t find it. It was a wicked looking object and something that she had absolutely no intention of using. However, needs must, and with Ludwig Levant and his men watching the house, she couldn’t afford to spare anyone’s delicate eccentricities.
“Oh, there you are,” Eloisa gasped. She stared at the gun with a frown. “You found it then,” she added weakly. Her disconcerted frown made her feelings about having the wretched thing in the house perfectly clear, but she didn’t voice any objection. The thought of strangers watching the house gave her the chills. She had no idea yet what Prudence wanted with the gun, but if she expected Eloisa to pull the trigger, or even practice using it, she had another thing coming.
“Where did you get that from?” Robbie demanded in an awed voice. His eyes were lit with keen interest that made Prudence groan.
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