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Nothing, not even bad weather, could dampen her spirits today. She ought to be frightened, sitting in the back of a rickety old cart rattling its way high over the moors, running away from her home, her few friends and everything else she’d ever known, but instead she felt exhilarated. Even the barren heather-and-gorse-filled wilderness didn’t intimidate her this morning, as it always had from a distance. Today it looked free and unconfined and alive, the way that she finally felt inside. In the space of a few hours, she’d travelled further than she ever had in the whole of her twenty-three years previously, not just in distance, but in herself, too. At long last, she’d taken charge of her own future, refusing to be the old, shrinking Violet any longer. For the first time in her life, she felt proud of herself.
Not a bad accomplishment for her wedding day.
‘The mine’s just over that ridge!’ the driver’s boy called back to her. ‘Don’t worry about the weather, miss. We’ve ridden through worse.’
She gave him a dazzling smile and settled back against the crates bearing supplies up to the miners at Rosedale. The driver had promised to take her on to Helmsley afterwards, though she could only imagine what he and his boy must be thinking of her. Her friend Ianthe had vouched for them, both for their characters as well as their ability to keep a secret, but they must surely still be wondering why a lone gentlewoman would arrange to meet them at dawn on the outskirts of Whitby as if she were fleeing the clutches of some evil tyrant.
Which in one sense, she supposed, she was.
She’d been planning her escape for the past week, almost from the moment Mr Rowlinson had taken her aside after her father’s funeral, saying he preferred to communicate the terms of the will in private. It hadn’t taken her long to understand why. The lawyer had been apologetic as he’d read, watching her anxiously over the metal rim of his spectacles, though no amount of sympathetic looks could have mitigated the shock of those words. Looking back she felt strangely detached from the scene, as if it had been someone else sitting in her chair like some kind of black-clad statue, frozen in horror as her father bequeathed her in marriage to the heir of Amberton Castle.
Bequeathed!
In that moment she’d felt something harden inside her, as if all her feelings of grief and loss had crystallised into something else, something colder and darker. She didn’t know what the emotion was, if it even was an emotion at all. It felt more like the absence of one, an emptiness at the very centre of her being, as if her ability to feel anything had been suspended.
She remembered laughing. She must have sounded hysterical because Mr Rowlinson had rushed to pour her a glass of brandy and, for the first time in her life, she’d accepted. Her father had never allowed her to touch any kind of alcohol, but she’d wanted to drink the whole bottle just to spite him.
A few sips had put paid to that idea, making her cough and splutter and her head spin even more as she’d tried to understand how her father could have done such a thing to her. After so many years of obedience, of living her life in the shadows, tolerating his abuse and his insults, how could he have arranged a marriage without even telling her—let alone asking her? Just when she’d thought she might finally be free.
She ought to have known that he wouldn’t let her go so easily. He’d never allowed her to make any decisions of her own and now it seemed he intended to keep on controlling her life even after his death. The terms of the will were so strict that even Mr Rowlinson had faltered in reading them. Unconventional as it was to hold a wedding so soon after a funeral, her father’s words were as uncompromising and unyielding as ever. Unless she married the man of his choosing within one month of his burial, she would be disinherited, would lose her home and her fortune to a distant cousin in Lancashire. In short, she would be penniless.
Unless she did as she was told.
Her spinning thoughts had rushed back to the ball at Amberton Castle five years before, the one and only such event she’d ever attended. At least the will finally explained why her father had been so uncharacteristically keen for her to spend time with Arthur Amberton, not just at the ball, but on the monthly visits he’d made with his own father since.
She’d been vaguely suspicious, especially when her father had started to drop hints about her future, even once going so far as to actually say he’d arranged a marriage for her, though she’d eventually concluded that it was some kind of cruel joke. After all, he was the one who’d always told her how small and unattractive she was, how only a fortune hunter would pretend to want her, how she was better off without a husband. It hadn’t made any sense that he would ever want her to marry.
Besides which, there had never been anything in Arthur Amberton’s behaviour to suggest that he was remotely interested in her. He’d always looked as depressed on his visits as he had the first time they’d met at the ball. Their few conversations had been stilted and uncomfortable, their fathers watching over them like a pair of severe-looking owls. He’d never as much as hinted at a secret engagement, if he’d even known of it, though if he had, he couldn’t have made it any more obvious that he didn’t want to marry her. No more than she’d wanted to marry him.
Though even he would have been preferable to the alternative...
She pulled her hood tight around her face, oppressed by a wave of sadness. Arthur Amberton had been lost at sea seven months before, sailing his small boat along the North Yorkshire coast on a calm, late summer’s day. He’d gone out alone, without telling anyone where he was going, and his boat had been discovered by a fishing vessel the next day, intact and undamaged, though Arthur himself had been nowhere to be found. There’d been numerous theories—that he’d hit his head and fallen overboard, that he’d been attacked, that he’d gone for a swim and developed cramp—though no one had wanted to mention the obvious answer, that he’d taken his own life rather than live with his despair a day longer. Rather than marry her.
Ironically, she’d been the one who’d insisted on keeping the news from her father. He’d been bedridden already by that point and she hadn’t wanted to distress him any further. She’d been half-afraid that Henry Amberton, Arthur’s father, might make an appearance, but the following day had brought further bad news. The father had suffered a fatal heart attack on being told about the empty boat. Father and son had died within twenty-four hours of each other, leaving a different heir to the estate.
Captain Lancelot Edward Amberton, the new Viscount Scorborough.
The very thought of him made her shudder, evoking the same feeling of stomach-churning embarrassment she’d felt at their first encounter. She’d been hopelessly naive, actually enjoying his company to begin with. She’d been excited and nervous about her first ball, all too vividly aware of the strange looks and whispered comments she knew her tiny size and extreme paleness attracted, but Captain Amberton had seemed not to notice.
He’d been confident, friendly and open, unlike any man she’d ever met before, seeming to embody the very freedom the ball represented. He’d come to her rescue when his father and brother had been arguing, encouraging her to talk when she felt tongue-tied and putting her at ease when she’d been too afraid to dance. She’d actually defied her father by dancing with him and she couldn’t deny how attractive she’d found him, far more so than his brother despite their being identical twins, with his carelessly swept-back chestnut hair, his broad, muscular frame, and the roguish glint in his eye that had made her want to smile, too. When he’d held her in his arms she’d felt a new and distinctly alarming sensation, a tremulous fluttering low in her abdomen, that had made her feel giddy and excited and awkward all at the same time.
That was before she’d realised he’d been laughing at her, mocking her about the possibility of suitors, as if she’d ever have any. She’d felt self-conscious enough at the start of the evening, but then she’d earnestly wished herself back in the isolation of her own bedroom.
Despite that humiliation, however, worse still had been the scene that had followed. Confusingly, he’d seemed to be standing up for her at first, though she’d felt compelled to defend her own father. The moment when he’d said he wouldn’t want to marry her had been one of the worst of her life. She could hardly have expected any other answer, but the words had still felt like a knife to the heart.
Yet his subsequent banishment had seemed like her fault somehow. Too late, she’d tried to say something to help, but she hadn’t been able to stop it. He’d stormed away and the look he’d given her from the doorway had been anything but friendly. It had seemed more like he hated her.
Her father had taken her aside afterwards, forbidding her to mention the name Lancelot Amberton in his hearing ever again, and she’d overheard enough of the subsequent gossip to understand why. What she’d thought was a hint of scandal about him was in fact the whole truth. He was exactly what her father had called him, a reprobate. A drunkard, a gambler, a notorious ladies’ man—and now the man that she was supposed to marry!
Never in a thousand years would her father have intended to leave her at the mercy of such a man, but he’d made one significant mistake in writing his will. He hadn’t specified a name, simply stating the heir to the Amberton estate—and the new heir was Lance.
She refused to even consider the possibility of marriage to him. He’d returned to Yorkshire a few months before, invalided out of the army a bare month after the deaths of his brother and father with a bullet wound to the leg, or so she’d heard, though he hadn’t been seen in Whitby at all. It was rumoured that he’d become a recluse, never venturing further than the walls of Amberton Castle.
He hadn’t attended her father’s funeral either, hadn’t sent any flowers, nor so much as a card of sympathy. The only communication had come two days afterwards through Mr Rowlinson—a brief note to say that he intended to honour the terms of their fathers’ agreement, that he would meet and marry her exactly one week later, at ten o’clock on the tenth day of March, 1867.
So she’d run away. He was the last man on earth she wanted to see, let alone to marry, and yet she was very much afraid that if she stayed then she would. After a lifetime of obedience, she wasn’t sure exactly how to assert herself, and Lancelot Amberton had struck her as the kind of man who knew exactly how to get what he wanted. And he wanted her fortune—that much she was sure of. It was the only possible motive he could have for wanting to marry her.
In which case, she’d decided, all she needed to do was hide and wait for the terms of her father’s will to expire. Captain Amberton might make efforts to find her during that time, but once the month lapsed, he’d lose interest and she’d be safe. It would leave her almost penniless, all except for a small legacy left by her mother, but it would mean freedom, and surely even a life of poverty would be better than him.
She’d confided her plans to her dearest friend in the world, Ianthe Felstone, and whilst she hadn’t approved, she had understood. After some initial reluctance they’d plotted her escape together.
Ianthe had arranged for Violet to join the supply run that left her husband Robert’s warehouse every two weeks for the Rosedale mines. Then she’d volunteered to go to Whitby station on the morning of the wedding, draped in a heavy black veil to catch the train to Pickering as a decoy. Even her eccentric Aunt Sophoria had been roped in. Ianthe had flatly refused to let her travel without a chaperon, so it was Sophoria that Violet was going to meet in Helmsley, from where they intended to travel to York.
Nervous as she was, the thought of visiting such a large city with all its museums and art galleries and parks was thrilling. She’d resolved to make the most of her time there because afterwards...
In all honesty, she had no idea about what she’d do afterwards, but she’d think of something. She’d escape first and think about the future later. She could be a governess or a companion, if anyone would take her, but there was one thing she was absolutely determined about, that she would never live under the control of any man, not ever, ever again. She wouldn’t be told what to do, nor how to think about herself or anything else either. From now on, she’d be free.
She clenched her fists at the thought, then loosened them again quickly as the cart lurched forward suddenly and then down, giving an ear-splitting creak as it dropped to one side so forcefully that she toppled with it, banging her head against one of the crates. For a few seconds, the world seemed to spin and blur, the whirling snowflakes above turning rainbow-coloured, before she focused again on the boy’s face peering down at her.
‘Are you all right, miss?’
Tentatively, she reached a hand to her temples. She felt slightly dazed, but otherwise unharmed. That was a relief. She wouldn’t get very far injured.
‘I think so.’ She took his proffered hand and clambered inelegantly over the front of the trap. ‘What happened?’
‘Pothole. One of the wheels has come loose from the axle.’
‘Can you fix it?’ She felt a flutter of panic at the thought of turning back.
‘Aye.’ The driver was crouched down beside the cart, examining the undercarriage. ‘We just need to get out of this hole first.’
‘Can I help?’
‘A tiny thing like you?’ He shook his head dismissively. ‘But if you want to be useful, lead the horses on a bit and hold them there.’
Violet grasped hold of the leather bridles, stifling a sense of resentment as she walked the animals on a few paces, dragging the cart back on to flat terrain. She was used to people commenting on her small size, but it wasn’t as if the driver’s lad was much bigger than her. She wasn’t completely useless, no matter what everyone around her seemed to think. There was more that she could do, she was sure of it, if only someone would give her the chance.
‘Right, then.’ The driver wiped a hand over his brow. ‘Now we just need to lift the frame and... Who’s that, then?’
Her heart almost jumped out of her chest at the words. The moorland road was rarely used these days, not since the railway had replaced the old stagecoach, and they hadn’t passed any other vehicles that morning. Not that there was any cause for alarm, surely. At this moment, Captain Amberton was most likely in pursuit of the steam train or, failing that, riding along the coast road towards Newcastle. Still...
Her nerves tightened as she peered around the edge of the trap, back along the road towards two bay-coloured horses just cresting the top of the rise behind them, one of them bearing a chestnut-haired man wrapped in a long, black greatcoat.
No! She whipped her head back again. It couldn’t be him. The riders were still too far away for her to be certain, but surely it couldn’t be. How could he possibly have found her? Even if he’d somehow discovered that she hadn’t caught the train, there was no way he could have guessed the direction in which she was travelling, never mind with whom... Was there?
‘Looks like they’re in a hurry.’ The driver stepped out into the road to hail them. ‘But maybe they’ll lend a hand.’
‘Wait!’
She tried to call out, but her voice seemed to have abandoned her, emerging as a fierce whisper rather than a call. It was too late anyway. The riders were already slowing to a halt, drawing rein just a few feet away from the trap. Quickly, she pushed her way between the two horses, glad for once of the short height that allowed her to hide more easily. With any luck they wouldn’t notice her, but even if they did, she still had her hood pulled over her hair. If she kept her head down, they wouldn’t be able to see her face, would hopefully assume she was another boy. She might still escape as long as she didn’t draw attention to herself—if it was him.
‘Might we be of assistance?’
Her heart plummeted. It was him. Captain Amberton, or her pursuer, as she now thought of him. Even after five years, there was surely no mistaking that voice, rich and deep, though without the hint of laughter that had seemed to accompany almost everything he’d said to her at the ball. It sounded positively stern now as he conversed with the driver, saying something about the wheel, although the blood was gushing so loudly in her ears that she couldn’t make out the individual words. The tension was unbearable. She peered out again, desperately hoping that her imagination was running away with her and that she’d made a mistake...
She hadn’t. She stifled a gasp. Somehow whilst he’d been just a distant idea, a reclusive villain who she hadn’t seen in five years, her plan to escape had seemed plausible, likely even. Now he was standing so close, she wondered how she could ever have thought she might fool him.
She’d forgotten how physically imposing he was, tall and broad-shouldered with an intimidating male presence she could sense even from her hiding place. He looked just as handsome as he had the first time they’d met, though his face appeared leaner and edgier, too, as if the soft angles had all been chiselled away and made more pronounced. A dark moustache and swathe of stubble gave him the rugged look of a man who didn’t care what anyone else thought of him either, a man who might plausibly do anything and could, too.
He dismounted in front of her, wincing slightly as he swung his right leg over his saddle, though by the way the muscles bunched in his jaw, she had the distinct impression he was trying not to show any pain. For a moment, he simply hovered in the air, holding himself up with his arms, before dropping to the ground with an abrupt thud. His companion dismounted at the same time, though he didn’t offer any assistance, she noticed, taking up a position to one side almost as if he were making a point of not doing so.
She held her breath as her pursuer made his way towards the cart, placing his weight on his left leg and limping with the right. Apparently his injury, whatever it was, had been even worse than the gossips had reported. After five months at home, the damage appeared to be permanent. She felt a flicker of pity, quickly repressed, though surely it was possible to pity him and still not want to marry him? After all, her objections had nothing to do with his leg.
He nodded to his companion and the pair of them braced themselves against the side of the trap, lifting it up with their bare hands.
‘Can you get the wheel back on?’ He spoke to the driver again.
‘Aye, I reckon so.’ The driver set to work at once, pushing the wheel back over the axle and hammering the pin swiftly into place before standing up again with a look of satisfaction. ‘There, that should hold for now. My thanks.’
‘You’re welcome.’ Her pursuer gestured towards the road. ‘You’re travelling up to Rosedale?’
‘Yes, sir. Supposed to be going on to Helmsley as well, though it looks like the weather’s closing in.’
Violet looked up at the sky in alarm. The boy had said they were used to driving in this weather, but there was no denying that the snow was getting heavier, gathering in piles now where before it had seemed to melt into the ground. What would that mean for her escape?
‘Then you’d better hurry.’ Her pursuer gave a curt nod. ‘I’m glad we could be of assistance.’
He turned away and she let out a sigh of relief, hardly able to believe the closeness of her escape. He was leaving! He hadn’t seen her! Even if she was going to be delayed up at Rosedale, she was still free...
‘Miss Harper?’
She jumped halfway into the air at the sound of her own name, heart pounding like a heavy drum in her chest, so hard she thought she might develop bruises on her ribs. She leaned out slightly, but her pursuer was facing in the opposite direction, still walking away from her. He hadn’t so much as turned his head to call out. If it hadn’t been for all the other faces looking in her direction, she might have thought she’d imagined it, but clearly she hadn’t. How had he known she was there? He’d shown no sign of being remotely aware of her presence.
‘Miss Harper?’ He sounded more insistent this time.
‘Yes?’ Her voice was little more than a squeak.
‘We’re leaving.’
The habit of obedience was so strong that for a moment she almost followed after him. She actually stepped out into the open before she stopped herself, seized with a fierce rush of indignation. How dare he summon her as if she were one of his soldiers, as if he thought he could just issue commands and she ought to do what he said! Just like her father! Well, she didn’t have to go with him. She was a free woman—in principle anyway. She could do what she ought to have done in the first place and simply refuse. She’d say that she didn’t want to marry him, not under any circumstances. How hard could it be to assert herself?
She stepped out from her hiding place and on to the track, keeping her hood lowered over her face so that he couldn’t see how nervous she felt.
‘No.’
He stopped at once, turning to greet her with a look that managed to be both jaw-droppingly handsome and icily menacing at the same time. There was no hint of emotion, as if he were deliberately presenting a blank canvas, and yet the undercurrent of tension was palpable.
‘It’s a pleasure to see you again, too, Miss Harper.’
She felt a shiver run the full length of her body. How could a man who’d seemed so warmly charming the first time they’d met now be so glacially chilling? She barely recognised him. There was an edge of danger about him now, as if he were restraining more than his temper. Her nerves quailed beneath the force of that formidable dark stare, but she didn’t respond, didn’t curtsy or so much as bend her head. She had the discomforting feeling that if she moved at all, then she might lose her resolve and give in. She already felt a powerful impulse to walk forward, as if he were drawing her towards him through sheer force of will.
He lifted an eyebrow slowly, though if he was concerned by her lack of response he didn’t show it.
‘I apologise for not having visited you before our appointment this morning, but I regret to say I’ve been indisposed.’ He didn’t sound apologetic at all.
‘You didn’t come to my father’s funeral,’ she accused him, finding her voice at last, though it sounded pitifully small in comparison.
‘Simply because I prefer not to add hypocrisy to the long list of my faults. I doubt he would have wanted me there and I was only informed about the terms of his will after the funeral.’ He shrugged. ‘However, I’m here now and willing to proceed.’
Willing to proceed? She sucked in a breath at the insulting tone of his words. He made it sound as if he were doing her a favour. As if the only reason she’d run away was because he hadn’t visited her before the wedding, as if it were simply a case of wounded pride and not abject loathing—as if she’d ever want to marry a reprobate like him!
She lifted her chin disdainfully. ‘You’re mistaken if you think I was offended by your absence, sir. I’ve no wish to keep our appointment at all.’
‘Indeed?’ His jaw tightened. ‘Then what, may I ask, are your plans?’
‘I’m going to Rosedale.’
‘To pursue a career in mining, perhaps?’
‘That’s none of your concern.’
‘On the contrary. Your father’s will was rather explicit on that point. He made me responsible for you.’
‘I can take care of myself!’
‘Really?’ The eyebrow lifted even higher. ‘Have you ever done so before?’
‘No.’ She stiffened at the insinuation. ‘But that doesn’t mean I can’t.’
‘True, though apparently your father thought otherwise. He made me your protector.’
‘He meant your brother, not you!’
Amber eyes blazed with some powerful emotion, quickly repressed. ‘None the less, it’s me that you’ve got. Your father wanted an Amberton to look after you and I appear to be the only one left.’
She felt a burst of anger so overpowering that her body started to shake with the force of it, as though she’d been holding her temper for so long that she felt about ready to burst. Words seemed to erupt out of her suddenly, pouring out in a fierce torrent that she seemed unable to either stop or curtail.
‘My father never cared whether I was looked after or not! He only wanted me to look after him. He wanted to control me. He still wants to. That’s why he gave me to you!’
She clamped a hand over her mouth at the end of her tirade, looking around in embarrassment, but the others weren’t looking at her any more. At some point they’d moved off to one side, turning their backs to stare out at the moors as if it were a pleasant day for enjoying the view and not the start of a blizzard, leaving her effectively alone with Captain Amberton.
‘I don’t want to marry you.’ She pulled her hand away again, saying the words with as much conviction as she could muster.
‘No more than I want to marry you. But since neither of us was offered a choice, I suggest that we make the best of it.’
‘I’m going to Rosedale.’ Maybe if she kept on saying it, then he would accept it, too...
‘Not in this weather or in that cart. Given the circumstances, it would be unwise to put any further strain on the axle. Wouldn’t you agree, Driver?’
