His Wicked Sins Read online

  In turn, she had gifted her gentleman with a lock of her hair. It was all he had asked of her, and she had been happy enough to give it.

  Sarah moved to the next room, the next chamber pot, and the next. Seven bedrooms. Almost done now.

  She paused and smiled as she thought of him. She’d not let him do more than hold her hand and kiss her cheek. Only once, she’d been brave and bussed him on the lips. They had been smooth and warm, and she thought perhaps today was the day she would let him do more. He had been true, meeting her every week on her free afternoon. Today marked the sixth week.

  Sarah was no fool. He was taken with her, but no man of his ilk would stoop to marry such as she. The best she hoped was that he might set her up with a house and a coach, and barring that, well, a few trinkets and gifts. She was sentimental, but only to her limit. In the end, she would sell what he gave her in order to buy herself a better life.

  There was a sound in the hallway, barely a whisper. Sarah quickly fell to her knees and dragged out the chamber pot. It would not do to be caught woolgathering. She emptied the pot and wiped it as she had done with the others already that morning, then she rose and turned toward the door. As she had expected, Mrs. Sykes, stood in the doorway.

  Sarah bobbed a quick curtsey.

  Mrs. Sykes frowned, her brows drawing together to gouge deep furrows, her fingers worrying the ring of keys at her waist. She looked as though she meant to say something, and Sarah wished she would not.

  Perhaps the housekeeper knew what Sarah did with her free afternoon. Perhaps she meant to warn her away. If that was the case, Sarah wanted no part of it. ‘Twas her own affair, and she meant to keep it that way.

  Pressing her lips together, Mrs. Sykes shook her head, and after a moment, she turned and left Sarah alone.

  Sarah’s breath left her in a harsh whoosh as, hefting the half-full bucket, she moved to the next room. There, she repeated her motions, emptying the slops, the stink from the bucket heavy in her nostrils. Hot, revolting work, it was, and she dragged the back of her wrist across her forehead, anxious to be done.

  In the final chamber was a pitcher and bowl, and when she had emptied the last pot, she poured fresh water, and was thrilled to see a sliver of soap—too dry to work a good lather—laid by the side. The servants here at Briar House were allowed to take the remnants of the soap and the worn-down stubs of candles for their own use. That was not considered thieving, though she would catch a tongue-lashing at the very least if Mrs. Sykes caught her washing here in an upstairs chamber.

  With a glance at the open door, she used the water and soap to wash her hands and scrub her face. She’d not go to him smelling like a hog rooting in the mud, and if she emptied the basin and wiped it clean, none would be the wiser.

  Above the hearth was a looking glass, and Sarah checked her appearance. Her hair, a bright guinea-gold, was naturally straight as a pin, and fine. Her man liked curls. Thick, bouncing curls. He had said as much, more than once. So early this morning, long before the sun came up, she had wet her hair, doused it in a mixture made from water and sugar. She had turned the strands with a hot iron—she had a horrible blister at the top of her right ear where she’d not been careful enough—until she had a head full of curls. They weren’t soft and fine, for the sugar water made them hard. Instead, they were solid, fat ringlets.

  When Mrs. Sykes had seen them she had frowned something fierce, and made tsking sounds and clicked her tongue. In the end, she had said nothing, just shook her graying head with its white cap, and let Sarah go see to her chores.

  Sarah turned from the mirror and did a cursory dusting of the room. Finally, finally, her work was done, and she walked as quickly as she could along the dark hallway, down the servants’ stairs, and out the back door. She was careful to avoid the other servants, having no wish to be enveloped by a group of chattering girls off to buy ribbons in town on their half day.

  Stepping out, she found that the afternoon was warm enough, if a little gray. Anxious now, she lifted her skirt and flew along the muddy lane, past the icehouse and into the woods. Their special place was a clearing deep in the trees. As she came upon it, she saw he was waiting, tapping his crop lightly against his thigh, impatient.

  A fine figure he was, in his cord breeches and square cut coat.

  Turning at her approach, he stilled and stared hard for a moment, saying nothing. At length, he stepped forward to take her arm and hold her in place, his fingers biting deep until she gasped.

  “You’ve done you hair in curls,” he said in a strange, dead voice. His grip tightened, making her flinch and jerk in response, but he held fast, raising his free hand to touch her hair.

  His gaze slid to hers, cold and dark and pitiless, and his lips curved in a terrible smile. It was only then that Sarah thought to be afraid.

  o0o

  Burndale, Yorkshire, September 3, 1828

  Beth drew forth the letter from the headmistress of Burndale Academy. She showed it to the stagecoach guard when he refused to leave her alone on the road.

  “This is the place I was instructed to wait. The letter states that someone shall come for me by six o’clock on the third of September,” Beth said, attempting to infuse her words with confidence. She was uncertain if the guard could read, but he stared at the page for a time, then nodded.

  As the guard strode toward the stage once more, Beth called, “Wait. I have one question... Is there another route between Grantham and Northallerton? Another stage that would have reached here more quickly?”

  The guard frowned and shook his head. “No, miss. Why do you ask?”

  “The two gentlemen who traveled with us from London to Grantham... I thought I saw one of them on the road in Northallerton this morning...” She had glimpsed his face through the open coach window and, surprised to see him, had half raised her hand in greeting. For an instant, she had been so certain it was he—thin, sandy hair, pale eyes, pale skin, his stock so high and tight he looked as though he had neither neck nor chin—and then she had thought perhaps not.

  “Not likely, miss. There’s no other stage that goes this way.”

  No, of course not. She wondered that she thought of him at all. Likely, because his presence in Northallerton was a puzzle that tickled her thoughts, and she had ever been fond of puzzles. Or rather, of solutions.

  She liked everything neat and tidy, everything in its place.

  The guard tapped his foot, impatient now. Raising his head, he met Beth’s gaze, his brow furrowed, and she realized that it was not impatience that made him edgy, but something else. Worry.

  “You have a care, miss. Burndale’s a small place, but there are goings-on—”

  “Oy, Bill, come on, then!” the driver called, shifting on his seat as he glanced at them over his shoulder.

  Beth knew he must stay on schedule as measured by a chronometer held under lock and key. He had already done her a great kindness, leaving her at the crossroads by the church as defined in her letter rather than at a prescribed stage on his route. Had he declined her request, she would have been forced to hire a cart in Northallerton, an expense she could ill afford. She was very grateful that he had chosen to acquiesce, and she knew it was churlish to hold him up any longer.

  Stepping back, she watched in silence as the guard climbed up and the coach rocked into motion, creaking and jingling as it picked up speed, the wheels crunching on the road. A place right below her ribs, deep inside, tightened and did an odd little dip as the carriage grew smaller and smaller, and finally disappeared from view.

  She was left utterly alone as the dust slowly settled.

  What had the guard meant about goings-on in Burndale? From his tone and his frown, she could surmise it was nothing good.

  Reaching up to settle her bonnet more securely on her head, Beth tamped down her apprehension. She turned to the north, and then to the south. There was no sign of an approaching vehicle. Not the sound of a bridle. Not a cloud of dust on the road. Her trep
idation surged as she wondered if she and the guard had both erred, trusting that someone from Burndale Academy would soon come to fetch her. Perhaps she would be left here as the sun sank low and the shadows grew and blended with the night.

  She made a huffing little laugh, laced more with anxiety than humor. To be left alone in the dark in a strange and foreign place was a less than appealing outcome. She glanced about at the unfamiliar surroundings, then up at the bruised sky. Heavy clouds of pewter and dark purple hung brooding on the horizon. She most definitely had come to the location outlined in the letter, for here was the stonebuilt church, with its peaked roof and squared tower, and the crossroads just as the letter described.

  Only... she had presupposed the crossroads to be at the hub of the village. She had not expected this place to be so very solitary, with not a single living thing in sight. Not even a rabbit or a goat.

  But it was not yet six o’clock, and she must trust that someone would arrive forthwith to fetch her.

  And if no one came...

  Beth pressed her lips together and gave a last look along the empty road as she assessed her options. She would feel more secure if she formulated a plan for the eventuality that no one arrived to greet her. She could not possibly drag her trunk all the way to Northallerton, some five miles to the south, and she disliked the idea of leaving her every possession untended here in the roadway while she trudged the distance unencumbered.

  The village of Burndale was closer, but in which direction? Not south, for they had not passed it on their way from Northallerton, but that left three possibilities and she was more likely to choose wrong than right.

  Unfortunately, the landscape provided no clue. From where she stood, she had a clear view of rolling hills on all sides, and in the immediate vicinity, the church, the graveyard, and the drystone wall that surrounded it.

  She ran her fingers over the small cloth bag she carried at her wrist wherein were colored threads and needles and linen squares she meant to embroider with her mother’s initials and send home as a birthday gift. But she could not imagine sitting on the low wall and sewing neat, tidy stitches while her skin fairly tingled with both excitement and anxiety.

  With a last look about, she determined to walk through the graveyard, to read the stones and know a little of the inhabitants of Burndale, or at least a little of those who had passed some time in this place. Anything to carry her thoughts from the uneasy contemplation of the dire possibility that she would be left here, forgotten, and the full dark of night would come upon her like a pall.

  From the graveyard, her trunk would still be in view should she turn to glance back at it, and she would be able to see the cart from Burndale Academy should it arrive—No!—when it arrived.

  She reached the low wall around the yard and saw that a broad, pebbled path cut a swathe to the wooden front doors of the church. She supposed that if it rained, she could drag her trunk along the path and under the overhang so that both she and her belongings might remain dry. The plan offered her some small comfort.

  Meandering through the rows of headstones, she paused now and again to read one or another, refusing to allow her thoughts to wander to supposition and desperation.

  She had made her decision, and it was a sound one. Her employment at Burndale Academy offered her family a small spot of hope in an otherwise desperate situation. Worry and exhaustion could not change that.

  She was inordinately fortunate to have secured this teaching placement. One advertisement she had read in the London paper had asked that a governess come for no pay at all, merely room and board. Another position as companion to an elderly widow would have paid a pittance in comparison to the thirty-five pounds per annum offered her as a teacher at Burndale Academy. Once she had earned her pay and could send monies home to help her family, she would feel far better, far more secure, than she did now.

  The thought cheered her and she turned her attention once more to reading the words etched in the stones.

  Here was a cherished wife and mother, and here a loving husband. A son. A daughter. She stopped, head cocked to one side as she studied the epitaph before her. With a vague sense of unease, she read the words a second time to be certain she had not misunderstood.

  Helen Bodie-Stuart. Born July 5, 1798. Died January 10, 1828 at Burndale Academy of this place.

  A chill of foreboding touched her skin, or perhaps it was only the gathering wind that made her shiver so.

  This woman, Helen Bodie-Stuart, had died at Burndale Academy, the exact destination Beth sought. A portent? She did not like to think it.

  The cry of a raven made her stiffen, and she glanced at the leaden sky, and then the still-empty road. Swallowing, she shook off her disquietude and continued on to the next grave marker, and the next.

  Some moments later, she read another epitaph that made a second, stronger surge of unease snake through her veins like a poison, leaving her heart thudding in her chest.

  Katherine Anne Stillwell of Burndale Academy of this Parish who departed this life 13th day of September in the year of our Lord 1825 aged 24 years.

  Two women had died at Burndale Academy.

  Died there.

  Distressing recollections of the guard’s warning that she have a care, and of the conversation with the rather nasty gentleman in the carriage—his assertions of beatings and starvation and death at schools such as Burndale—burgeoned, giving rise to all manner of horrific suppositions.

  Pressing her palms flat against her skirt, she steadied her thoughts, willing the darkest part of her, the desperate, ever-fearful part, back to its gloomy corner. She silently remonstrated herself for allowing her imagination such free rein. She ought to know better; open the gate just a little and the tugging, black mire would ooze free and suck her deep, shrouding her in memories and waking dreams more terrifying than any nightmare.

  She inhaled slowly, then exhaled, resting her fingers on the cold gravestone. Yes, ‘twas a sad thing when one died so very young, but perhaps there had been cholera here, or typhoid fever. Surely there was no sinister implication in the death of the two women some two years apart.

  Despite her silent reasoning, Beth could not help the wariness that scratched at her, could not dampen the need to glance around the graveyard, suddenly painfully aware of its isolation... her own isolation...

  With a shudder, she turned away.

  Her gaze lit on the road, and she saw a carriage in the distance coming from the same direction that she herself had traveled earlier, the road from Northallerton. She hurried back to her trunk and stood waiting as the conveyance drew near. She had the impression of fine horses with glossy black coats and flashing hooves, all moving at a frantic pace. For a fraught moment, she thought the carriage would not stop, so great was its speed and so disinterested its driver, but at the last, he drew rein and halted a dozen feet beyond her place.

  She glanced down at her travel-rumpled clothes—far dustier now than they had been a moment past—and then up again at the vehicle. She had expected a dray or a wagon to fetch her, a simple cart of some sort, and so she was startled by the quality of the curricle, sitting high on two wheels, drawn by two magnificent, perfectly matched horses.

  Her attention shifted from the beasts to the driver. She could see only his broad back clothed in a dark brown riding coat, a glimpse of one leg in buff-colored cord breeches, and a booted foot, splattered with dried mud.

  “Bloody hell. They’ll likely have forgotten you.”

  The words, spoken in a gruff male tone—the words coarse, the clipped vowels cultured—gave Beth pause. She froze, one foot before the other, halfway to moving in the direction of the curricle. With a quick, shuffling step, she retreated.

  The driver swung down then, lithe agility and leashed impatience.

  A gentleman, she thought, and then her gaze met his for the briefest instant, shadowy and cold as the Thames in winter, and she wondered. Perhaps not.

  He was taller than she by a he
ad, his shoulders broad, his frame lean and hard. His gaze flicked over her, from her face to her dusty hem and back again. She clenched her fist at her side, refusing to succumb to the silly urge to reach up and smooth her hair.

  A half dozen steps brought him closer, and the sinuous grace of his movements made her think that he would dance well, this curricle driver. He exhibited innate balance and masculine elegance. Something about the way he moved made her think of her mother’s stories, of foils and fencing masters, and men who feinted and parried and moved as if in a deadly dance.

  That was the world her mother had been born to.

  “Do you fence?” she blurted, thinking surely he must. Then she thought she ought to have tempered her tongue. She was accustomed to asking question upon question, had been encouraged by her father to do exactly that. But this was not home, and she would be wise to guard her words.

  He blinked, drew up short at her odd address, and his brows rose as he said, “I do.”

  His clothes—fine cut, fine cloth—defined his station, but even without them, she would have known. There was a way he held himself, a steady confidence to his gaze. He looked... unconquerable... a walled fortress. But there was something else... an impression that his wall not only held others out, but held himself in.

  She shook her head. What an odd notion.

  One thing was certain. This man was not a driver sent here to fetch her, and his words when first he had stopped suggested that no other was coming.

  Her father would be proud to know she noted all these bits of the puzzle. The thought was misty sad.

  “You are not sent from Burndale Academy to fetch me,” Beth observed.

  “No, not sent from Burndale, but willing to fetch you nonetheless.”

  He walked closer still, studying her with a curious air, frank perusal, the light in his liquid dark eyes mesmerizing. Her heart did an odd little dance, tripping faster than it ought.