by Eve Silver
Dark Prince
Eve Silver
Contents
Also by Eve Silver
Copyright
Praise For Dark Prince
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Also by Eve Silver
Sample: His Wicked Sins
About the Author
Also by Eve Silver
Dark Gothic Series
(Books in this series can be read in any order)
Dark Desires
His Dark Kiss
Dark Prince
His Wicked Sins
Seduced by a Stranger
Kiss of the Vampire (in the Anthology Nature of the Beast)
Otherkin/Sins Series
Sins of the Heart (Book 1)
Sin’s Daughter (Book 1.5)
Sins of the Soul (Book 2)
Sins of the Flesh (Book 3)
Body of Sin (Book 4)
Northern Waste Series
Driven
Hidden
Compact of Sorcerers Series
Demon’s Kiss (Book 1)
Demon’s Hunger (Book 2)
Trinity Blue (short story)
The Game Series (Young Adult)
Rush (Book 1)
Push (Book 2)
Crash (Book 3)
Revised edition copyright © 2014 by Eve Silver
First edition copyright © 2007 by Eve Silver
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. This book may not be resold or uploaded for distribution to others.
This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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www.EveSilver.net
ISBN: 978-0-9869357-9-4
Praise For Dark Prince
“…an outstanding tale about two wounded souls with so much feeling and emotion that there were times my eyes became a little misty…Eve Silver deserves praise for this complicated and moving story.”—Fresh Fiction—
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“With her ability to create the perfect chilling atmosphere, a dark, tormented hero and an intrepid heroine, Silver rises to the ranks of Victoria Holt and Daphne du Maurier…” —RT BOOKreviews, Top Pick, Winner of Reviewers Choice Award —
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“...bittersweet relationship between ...two damaged souls...”— Publishers Weekly
Chapter 1
Desperation made for a poor walking companion.
Jane Heatherington studied the horizon, dread gnawing at her with small, sharp bites. The sky was a leaden mass of churning gray clouds that hung low on the water, and the ocean pummeled the shore with a strength that heralded the furor of the coming storm. Breathing in the tangy salt scent of the sea, Jane clenched her fists, making the edges of the delicate pink shell in her hand dig into the skin of her palm, grounding her as she struggled to hold her misery at bay.
Life was burdened by tragedy. Naive girl, to have believed that fate had dealt out all her cruel jests years ago. Jane shook her head. No, not fate. She could blame no one but the true perpetrator of this terrible thing that had come to pass.
How much money?
Five hundred pounds.
Her own father had consigned them both to uncertainty and despair. Yet fate was there too, lurking, laughing, playing her horrible game. Was not Jane’s presence here this morning some act of chance?
Ill chance, to be sure.
Less than an hour past, as the cold, gray dawn had crawled into the heavens, Jane had left her father’s hostelry, needing a few moments to understand, to accept the terrible choices he had made, the dreadful consequence he had brought down upon them. She had walked along the beach, mindless of any destination, seeking only to calm her concerns and fears. Fate had brought her here.
She shuddered, studying the two men who stood in the churning surf. They waited as the waves carried forth a grim offering, a single dark speck that dipped and swayed with each turbulent surge, growing ever larger, taking on defined shape and macabre form.
Indeed, desperation made a poor walking companion, but death even more so.
The dark outline floated closer, closer, discernable now as human, facedown in the water with arms outstretched, long tendrils of tangled hair fanning like a copper halo.
A woman, bobbing and sodden.
And dead.
Heart pounding, Jane took a single step forward as the men sought to drag their gruesome catch from the ocean’s chill embrace. She was held in thrall by the terrible tableau unfolding before her, and she swallowed back the greasy sickness that welled inside her. ‘Twas not morbid curiosity, but heart-wrenching empathy that froze her in place.
Most days, she could look at the ocean as a thing of great beauty.
Most days.
But not today.
Today there were disquieting clouds and churning surf and the icy kiss of the mist that blew from the water’s surface to touch land. Too, deep in her heart, there was the awful knowledge of her father’s actions and the terrible feeling of foreboding, of change, unwelcome and unwanted.
It seemed all too similar to a day long past, a day best buried in a dark corner of her mind. The sea. The storm. And there, just beyond a great outcropping of rock, the brooding shadow of Trevisham House, looming silent and frightful against the backdrop of gray water and grayer sky.
Separated from the sweeping curve of sandy beach by swirling waves, the massive house was a lonely, empty shell balanced atop a great granite crag that rose out of the sea like the horny back of a mythical beast, a fearsome pile of stone and mortar that offered no warmth. Trevisham was linked to the mainland by a narrow causeway that was passable at low tide or high. Unless there was a storm, and then it was not passable at all.
Chill fingers of unease crawled along Jane’s spine, and she tore her gaze away, glancing to her right, to her left, feeling inexplicably wary. She was given to neither fanciful notions nor wild imaginings, yet today it appeared she was subject to both. Her heart tripped too fast, and her nerves felt raw as she scanned the beach, searching for the source of her unease. She could swear there was someone watching the beach. Watching her.
This was not the first time she had suspected such. Twice yesterday she had spun quickly, peering into darkened corners and shadowed niches, finding nothing but her own unease. She sighed. Perhaps it had been a portent rather than a human threat, a chill warning of the news her father had been about to share.
“She’s been in the water less than a week, I’m thinking,” Jem Basset called grimly, drawing Jane’s attention to where he stood thigh deep in the water, the corpse bobbing just beyond his reach.
“Where’s she from?” Robert Dawe asked, wading a step farther into the waves. “A ship, do you think?”
“There’s been only fine weather for more than three weeks. No ship’s gone down here. If she’s from a ship, then it was wrecked on the rocks to the north, I’m thinking.”
The two men exchanged a telling look.
Jem grunted and reached as far as he could, but the waves carried the body just beyond his grasp. He glanced up, saw Jane, and shook his head. “Go on now, Janie. No need for you to see this.”
He was right, of course. There was no need for her to watch them drag this poor, unfortunate woman from her watery grave, but Jane could not will her feet to move. The talk of wrecks and rocks haunted her.
There had been whispers of late that the coast to the north was safe for no ship, that in the dark of the night wreckers set their false lights where no light should be. They were vile murderers bent on luring the unsuspecting to their doom, tricking a ship into thinking it was guided by a lighthouse’s warning beacon, only to see it torn asunder on jagged rocks.
Torn asunder like the fabric of her life.
But at least I have a life, Jane thought fiercely as she watched the corpse bob down, then up, long, copper hair swaying in the current like snaking tendrils of dark blood.
Pulling her shawl tight about her shoulders, Jane steadied her nerves, battling both her fears for her future and the ugly memories of her past. Dark thoughts. Terrible recollections of storm and sea and Trevisham House and a dead woman dragged from the water.
Jem lunged and caught the dead woman’s arm, and then Robert came alongside him. Together they wrestled her from the frothing waves.
“You think there’ll be others?” Robert asked, breathing heavily as they slogged toward the shore, the sand sucking at their booted feet, the woman’s body dragged between them, her head hanging down, legs trailing in the water.
Shaking his head, Jem cast a quick glance toward Jane. “Not likely. Bodies usually sink into the deep dark. Strange that this one didn’t.”
“They sink only until they fill with bloat, and then they float up again like a cork, don’t they?” Not waiting for a reply, Robert waved his free hand and continued. “Her skirt. See the way it’s tangled round her ankles? It must have caught the air when she went into the water and held her afloat. That’s why she didn’t sink.”
Drawn despite herself, Jane took a step along the beach, and another, gripped by the image of this poor woman, her limbs growing heavier and heavier as she was tossed about on a cruel sea. Struggling, gasping, praying.
And finally, dying.
Such an image.
Such a memory. She could feel the tightness in her chest, the great, gasping breath that brought only a cold burning rush of water to fill her nose and throat and lungs. With her heart pounding, she struggled against the strangling recollection, determined to hold it at bay.
Jem laid the drowned woman in the back of a rough wooden cart, mindful of her modesty, though such was long past any value to her. With a twist of pity, Jane saw that the woman was both bloated and shriveled at once, her face white, in frightful contrast to her copper hair, and her eyes...
The woman’s eyes were gone from her skull, leaving only empty black sockets.
Jane wrenched her gaze away, swallowing convulsively as she stared at the wet sand dusted with a smattering of white and pink shells.
Shells.
She had come to walk on the beach to soothe her soul, and to fetch a handful of shells to carry with her. Just a handful of shells for her mother. Those were her reasons for being on the beach. Now, instead of shells and ease of mind, she would carry the memory of the dead woman’s bloated face and the empty holes that had held her eyes.
A new nightmare to haunt her rest. Imaginings of another woman’s suffering, as though her own was not companion enough in the darkest hours of the night.
Suddenly, she froze, and her head snapped up. The hair at her nape prickled and rose. She rubbed her hands briskly along the outsides of her arms. Apprehension chilled her from within, swelling in tandem with the rolling waves.
Someone was watching them.
Jane turned to face the great wall of sea-carved cliffs that rose alongside the long, slow curve of sand. Tipping her head up and back, she studied the stark precipice with measured interest. The sound of the waves hitting the shore surrounded her, punctuated by the cry of a lonely gull high overhead. From the corner of her eye she caught a hint of motion, a shadow, far, far to her left, up on the cliff.
There was a blur of movement, a dark ripple of cloth that might have been a man’s cloak.
She spun so quickly, her balance was almost lost. Reaching down, she pressed the flat of her palm to her left thigh, adding sheer will and the strength of her arm to the paltry force of the muscles that would straighten her knee and hold her upright—if she was lucky. If not, her leg would crumple as it was often wont to do, and she would sink to the sand in a graceless heap.
After a moment, she righted herself, and turned her attention to the place she had glimpsed the shadowy stranger.
The cliff was empty. No one stood outlined against the ominous backdrop of gray sky. The man—if in truth she had seen one—was gone.
But the sinister unease that clutched at her remained.
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Leaving the beach, Jane inched along the narrow dirt path that hugged the jagged cliffs, her thoughts awhirl with both her own personal turmoil and the horror of the drowned woman’s tragic and pitiable fate. She climbed to the top and paused, her attention snagged by her father’s cousin, Dolly Gwyn. The frail woman stood by the edge of the cliff, arms raised, her wild gray hair unbound, whipped by frantic eddies of air, her form swathed in layer upon layer of faded black cloth. Before her lay the roiling turmoil of the angry sea, above her the leaden sky that pressed its ominous weight down upon her as she perched there atop her precarious roost, summoning the storm.
Jane sighed. “Cousin Dolly!” she called, cupping her hands about her lips to amplify the sound. “Come away from the crag!”
The wind and the crashing sea swallowed her cry, or perhaps Dolly chose to ignore her. ‘Twould not be the first time. As Jane reached her side, Dolly stretched out a thin arm, waving her hand to encompass the storm-washed beach and the sea cliffs that extended as far as the eye could see.
“I saw a light, oh, about a week past,” Dolly said, diving into the topic without preamble. Her voice was strong, though her body was beginning to weaken as years and hardship took their toll. “Far to the north it was. An evil light. A false light.” She cast a glance at Jane. “A wrecker’ s light.”
“Never say it,” Jane whispered, a sick feeling rising inside of her.
“I say it because I saw it,” Dolly insisted. “We’ll be hearing the tale of a ship gone down within a short time, my girl. You heed me now. We’ll hear of a ship gone down and all aboard her dead. What can that be but wreckers, I ask you? What?”
A wrecker’s light, so close to Pentreath.
Jem and Robert had guessed that the dead woman had been in the water but a few days. They had hinted with brief words and subtle glances that they believed she had come from a wreck on the northern shore. And if Dolly spoke true...
“I pray you are wrong,” Jane said.
“As do I, Janie. As do I. But I tell you... the woman pulled from the waves this morning... she came from that ship. She died for men’s greed.” Dolly wrapped her thin arms around herself and swayed to and fro in the wind as they stood, shoulder to shoulder, facing the crashing surf, listening to the building furor of the ocean.
“And it’s him, his coming, what’s brought the evil down upon us,” she continued, stretching out one gnarled finger toward the sea, and toward Trevisham House, guiding Jane’s unwilling gaze.
This of all days, with the horrible news her father had shared and the image of that poor drowned woman so fresh in her mind, Jane would have preferred not to think of Trevisham, not to remember. But wasn’t that ever the way of things, with one tragedy recollecting others?
“He is in league with the devil. I feel it in my bones.” Dolly pulled back her lips in distaste, revealing the uneven outline of her three remaining teeth.
“The new owner?” Jane asked. “We know nothing about him and
I am loath to tar and feather a man without cause.”
With a careless shrug, Dolly shuffled a short way along the path, clutching her tattered cloak about her hunched shoulders.
“What do we know? What do we know about him?” She slanted a sly glance at Jane. “We can guess that he has a very, very large fortune, for Trevisham surely cost him more than most could ever imagine. But how he came by his money...” Dolly’s voice trailed away, leaving her allusions all the more sinister for being unspoken.
“I am sure that is none of my concern,” Jane said. She knew from experience exactly where this conversation would lead. Dolly loved nothing better than to sniff out her neighbors’ secrets, and if she smelled naught of interest, she was not averse to providing details from her own vivid imagination.
“His money’s ill gotten, if you ask me. Smuggling. Wrecking. Murder.” Dolly’s words conjured an image of the terrible bloated face of the woman Jane had seen dragged from the sea.
The old woman turned a jaundiced eye to the heavens. “There’s an ill wind blowing,” she said. “You mind me well... it blows from Trevisham”—she stabbed a finger in the general direction of the house—”and from the man who will be master there.”
“The man who will be master there,” Jane repeated. She could not recall a time when Trevisham had been inhabited. The previous owner had left more than two decades past, before Jane had come to Pentreath, and the house had stood empty all the time since. Curiosity surged. Who was this man who had purchased a crumbling, forgotten pile of rock and mortar, this man of mystery and shadow?
He was a man of great fortune, if Dolly was to be believed. A pirate. A smuggler. A wrecker.
With a shudder, Jane turned and stepped forward, moving closer to Dolly’s side. Fierce breakers pummeled the jagged rocks that surrounded Trevisham House, then crashed against the stretch of beach, churning the sand.