Dark Prince
Page 26
Elizabeth Canham found she could not look away, for the scene touched a place inside her, one that nagged and ached like a sore tooth.
That cottage must once have been a home, a haven.
Surrounded by harsh moorlands, it was now a friendless place, steeped in loneliness, calling to her as the stagecoach rumbled on its way. There was a haunting beauty to the sight, and an odd, disturbing afterthought, a warning... but perhaps that was only the tuneless echo of her own melancholy.
Beth turned in her seat and leaned close to the window, watching the ruin until it disappeared from view.
What had happened to them, the family who had once lived there? Her imagination conjured all manner of terrible visions, but in the end, she decided to lean toward the hope that they had escaped the fire and gone on to live healthful and content lives. To think otherwise was horrific, for she had intimate knowledge of the damage that fire could do to human flesh.
After a time, she glanced down and unclenched her fingers where they curled and crushed the material of her black bombazine skirt. She was not in mourning, but the dress had been both available and inexpensive, two factors in favor of its purchase.
The drone of a woman’s voice buzzed through the confined space of the coach. Today, Beth was not alone in the conveyance, but tomorrow she would be. That was an eventuality she could not despise. Blessed quiet would be most welcome.
Her carriage-mate, Mrs. Beacon, had nattered on the entire trip from the coach yard at the Saracen’s Head in London. A well-meaning and fine woman of incomparable verbosity, she was free with both her words and her advice.
“You are pale as a shroud,” Mrs. Beacon offered now, shifting on the seat beside Beth and leaning close to peer at her from beneath her bonnet. She evinced no hesitation to offer such personal observation to a near stranger. “That dull black makes you look whiter than a cod’s belly. With your blond hair and fair skin, you need a bit of color.”
Mrs. Beacon’s observations aside, Beth was well pleased with her drab and sad wardrobe, purchased at a significant discount when the young widow who had ordered it never arrived to claim the dresses from the seamstress. Mindful of her limited funds, Beth had bought only the bare minimum that she needed, serviceable garments of black and gray, clothing suitable for her new position.
Mrs. Beacon clucked and produced a tin of peppermints, offering one to Beth, then to each of the two gentlemen occupying the opposite seat.
One was plump and pasty, and rather green about the gills. Coach travel appeared to disagree with him.
The other was bland as oat pudding, with thin sandy hair worn in a disheveled style, and small, pale eyes that darted nervously about until landing on Beth and remaining there.
“Blond hair and blue eyes... my youngest daughter has the same coloring as you, though she is by no means as skinny. There, there” —Mrs. Beacon patted Beth’s knee consolingly— “you’ll put on a bit of meat when you reach my age.”
Her monologue continued throughout the ride, and then, close to Grantham, the sandy-haired gentleman took advantage of Mrs. Beacon’s need to draw breath and spoke in the rare instant of silence.
“We are near to Gonerby Hill. ‘Tis just to the north of Grantham,” he said, leaning forward in his seat. The movement pushed his high collar and stock even higher, and his chin was nearly swallowed by the cloth. “Steep it is. The steepest on the Great North Road. Why, I heard that last winter there was so much ice and snow that the wheels could not hold to the road and the stagecoach slipped and careened down to the bottom, flipping end over end and crushing the driver and guard.”
No one said a word.
“Everyone died,” he continued, his tone tinged with morbid glee. “And the horses, as well.”
A cheering thought.
“Oh.” Beth could summon no more appropriate rejoinder.
Mrs. Beacon made a sound low in her throat and, after a moment, leaned close to Beth and spoke for her ears alone.
“Remember, luv, you must pay the coachman an extra shilling per stage, and the guard, lest you find he loses your luggage. At the inn where you stay the night you must give sixpence to the chambermaid and tuppence to the boots. My son and his wife are in Grantham and their twelve little ones. I’ll not be going on with you to Northallerton...”
There, Mrs. Beacon made a lengthy pause, cleared her throat, blinked again and again, her rheumy gaze locked on Beth’s, until at last Beth understood the hint and spoke. “I am bereft to lose your fortifying companionship, Mrs. Beacon,” she murmured, attempting to instill the observation with the appropriate tone of regret. In truth, her thoughts were consumed by Mrs. Beacon’s talk of shillings and sixpence and tuppence, inordinate sums when compared with Beth’s rapidly dwindling resources. Those resources, or lack thereof, being the reason she had left home and family to travel north.
Closing her eyes, Beth battled a sharp pang of loss, not for the thought of leaving Mrs. Beacon, but for her home, her parents, her brother, for everything known and customary.
She opened her eyes to find the gentleman who had spoken of the carriage accident studying her with interest.
“I believe you mentioned Northallerton... Do you stay on there?” he asked.
“No. I go to the village of Burndale, to Burndale Academy. I am to be a teacher.”
To Burndale Academy. Her mother had not wanted her to go, but there had been little choice that Beth could see. Unless starvation was an option. Food was not free, nor lodging, nor coal.
The gentleman made a rude sound that snuffled out his nose. “I know of such places, such academies.” He sneered and nudged the man next to him. “William Shaw, the headmaster at Bowes Academy, was prosecuted... oh... some years past, on account of two boys went blind from his beatings. And he starved them, too.”
Beth felt a wary tension creep through the muscles of her limbs, her shoulders, her back. His assertion shocked and horrified her. Pressing her lips together, she suppressed a shudder.
Her horror would only burgeon and grow to unmanageable proportions if she let it.
Beatings and starvation.
“Burndale Academy has no such reputation,” she said firmly.
“So you say.” The man shrugged. “But such schools always harbor death, from maltreatment, neglect, disease.”
“If that is the case, who would send their children to such a place?” Beth demanded.
“Well, I suppose some do not know, and others do not care. Some of the children are born on the wrong side of the blanket—”
Mrs. Beacon cleared her throat loudly, and the gentleman broke off and gave a nervous little laugh.
“I would not lodge a dog at Bowes Academy,” he finished vehemently.
“You ain’t got a dog,” the second gentleman pointed out, and gave a loud guffaw, the noise drowning out Beth’s rejoinder as she said, “Then it is a fine gift of fortune that I do not travel to Bowes.”
For some inexplicable reason, Mrs. Beacon chose this moment to cocoon herself in silence. Beth gritted her teeth and turned her gaze back to the window, her heart heavy.
What viciousness had precipitated such discourse?
She recalled the gleam in the gentleman’s icy pale eyes as he spoke of the carriage accident. Some people were malicious creatures who thrived on tales of horror and pain. Perhaps he was such a one and had set out with the purpose of creating unease.
She should not allow it.
Still, a troubling wariness gnawed at her. Was there a possibility that the man’s horrific assertions sprouted from a seed of truth? She truly knew almost nothing of Burndale Academy...
No, she would not cast her mind to needless worry. Her correspondence with the headmistress of Burndale had been most pleasant, and she would carry that positive expectation until such time as it might be proved faulty.
Not so very far now, she thought, though she felt as though she had been traveling for an eternity. The jolt of the wheels as they dipped into grooves
and ruts in the road shook her bones, leaving her feeling bruised and broken.
But worse still was the confining nature of the carriage, the walls close, the space small and tight. Panic tugged at her, and she tamped it down lest it surge free and drown her in an icy deluge that would rob her of breath, of rational thought, leave her in a despised state of mindless terror.
An attack of dismay, her mother called it. Beth thought that a polite and benign term for the ugly reality of her secret infirmity.
Forcing her shoulders to relax, she turned her gaze to the carriage window and the vast space beyond. She could only be grateful that her destination was not so far as Edinburgh, which would take a full fourteen days of travel. A fortnight in a small, restricting coach. Dear heaven, what a thought.
Mrs. Beacon shifted closer, pressing her tight to the corner. Beth fixed her gaze on the patch of sky she could see through the window and deliberately ignored the walls that surrounded her.
Despite her current discomfort, she knew herself to be fortunate. Many women in her position would be driven to truly desperate ventures. Surely traveling to Burndale, alone, with only a letter to guide her and without friend or even acquaintance, was not desperate. After all, she had secured honest employment as a teacher at Burndale Academy, and so must count herself as privileged.
Her strengths lay in French, English language, music and drawing, and she was quite competent in geography and history. She was glad of her mother’s tutelage these many years, else they would all be in a terrible fix.
Yes, well, a worse fix than they were in.
You must not be afraid. The thought brought a sad smile to her lips, for she could hear her mother’s voice, kind but firm, recalling that exact sentiment so many times over the years.
She must not be afraid.
Yet, in a secret corner of her heart, a place she shared with no one, Beth admitted only to herself that she was always afraid of so many things...the memories...the dreams.
The truth.
* * *
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About the Author
National bestselling author Eve Silver has been praised for her “edgy, steamy, action-packed” books, darkly sexy heroes and take-charge heroines. In 2015 she won the OLA Forest of Reading White Pine Award, her work was shortlisted for the Monica Hughes Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy (2014), and was both an American Bookseller’s Association Best Book for Children and a Canadian Children’s Book Centre Best Books for Kids and Teens (2013). She has garnered starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Quill and Quire, two RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Awards, Library Journal’s Best Genre Fiction Award, and she was nominated for the Romance Writers of America® RITA® Award. Eve lives with her husband, two sons, an energetic Airedale terrier and an exuberant border collie/shepherd.
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