PROLOGUE
Julian laid his un-gloved hands on the windowsill. The moonlight spilling through the glass made the pale skin appear even whiter. Like the hands of an alabaster statue.Inhuman.
He frowned, remembering his brother’s words from days before, after his return from long months at sea.
“There are no such things as curses, Jule. I have traveled the world and I have seen a lot of strange things. But never have I seen an actual, real-life curse. Not once.”
Dark hair falling across a pale forehead. The aquiline nose that was common to the male line of the Barrington family. Bright blue eyes, alive with intelligence and humor. Julian could recall his brother’s face as he had spoken those words. Spoken to the terrified little boy who believed himself cursed, never to be able to touch another human being. Samuel had taken the gloves and pressed Julian’s bare hands to his cheeks. Nothing had happened. Julian had waited for the curse to strike Samueldown. Instead, his brother only smiled at him, that familiar roguish grin that always heralded adventure.
“Father told me that I was cursed,” Julian had said in a small, wondering voice, “why did he tell me that?”
Samuel had frowned, looking out of the window with a troubled expression.
“Father is… not a well man. You know that. He never has been for as long as I have known him. I think it preys on him, weighs him down. And it makes him think strange thoughts. You must not judge him for it, Jule. He does not mean it.”
Julian had not dared to walk about the halls of Windermere Castle without his gloves. The first victim of the curse, according to his father, had been Julian’s mother, who had died giving birth to him. Died from the first touch of her infant son’s hands.
There had been others.
Rather than risk the ire of his father, Julian had continued to wear the black, leather gloves that he had worn since he was a small child. But alone, here in his turret room, high above the castle and isolated from its other residents, none could be touched by him or by the curse.
Could Samuel have been correct? Was the curse no more than the rambling notions of an unsound mind? Julian wished hecould believe it. But then he had touched his brother and nothing had befallen him.
A wail rising from somewhere below in the castle turned Julian’s insides to ice. He jumped from the window seat, indecisive. He was not permitted to leave his high tower room during the night.
But then the wail came again.
It was his father and it was the sound of a man being torn by grief. Julian’s heart pounded in his chest. Samuel, his older brother, the heir to the Dukedom of Windermere had defied the curse. Julian prayed that the curse had not taken its revenge.
Not wanting to know the source of that keening grief but unable to stay away, Julian crept to the door of his bedchamber. His father had left strict instructions that the door be locked and the servants followed these orders without question. But Samuel had scoffed, taking away the key when he left Julian hours before.
Feeling a sense of liberty, Julian turned the handle and opened the door. It creaked, frighteningly loud.
He peered out and down the benighted spiral stair that would lead him to the rest of the castle. He knew its steps well enough that he could traverse them with his eyes closed. The deep gloom of night was no bar to him.
With the nimbleness of a mountain goat, he skipped down the smooth, stone steps. Bare feet felt for the depressions in the middle of each step, worn over time. They stepped over the step whose mortar had worn away and which wobbled precariously when any weight was applied. Then he was standing on the long patterned rug that covered the floor of the hallway at the bottom of the staircase. It was a deep blue, but in the dark, it might as well have been black.
At his next step, his small foot struck something hard and cool, sending a small glass bottle skittering across the floor. Startled, he bent to pick it up, squinting at the faded label in the dim light. “Monk… monkey…shoo,” he tried to read. The rest had been smudged away, leaving the word incomplete. Confused, he frowned, wondering what it could mean. But then the wail came again, louder this time, and Julian quickly set the bottle down.
He scurried along the carpet to the end of the hallway where another, broader staircase led down further. He flitted along hallways, drawing nearer to the sound of the wailing. The haunting sound certainly was coming from his father.
Finally, he came to a halt. A long hallway stretched before him, seeming longer than it did by the light of day. Not that the light of day was ever allowed to intrude into the rooms and passageways of Theydon Mount Castle. Halfway along that hallway, Julian knew, was his brother’s room. The door was open and a cluster of servants stood around it. Their faces were creased with concern and anguish. Some of them held candles in holders, carefully shielding the light with their hands lest it spill into the room beyond.
Licking his lips, Julian crept along the hallway. He steered clear of the servants, sticking to the wall of the hallway until he stood opposite the doorway.
“My son! My only dear son!” Harold Barrington’s cracked and broken voice cried out.
The words stabbed at Julian, second son of the Barrington family. He stamped firmly on the pain, knowing it to be his lot.
His birth had removed his mother from the world, and now… his touch had removed his brother.
The servants saw the nine-year-old boy, pale and ghostlike, standing near them. Without a word, they parted until Julian had a clear view of the room beyond.
Harold Barrington was thin and pale, his wraithlike pallor even more pronounced than his son. He was fully dressed, his phobia of daylight rendering him a creature of the night. His hair was white and hung to his shoulders. His fingers were the fleshless talons of a skeleton. His eyes were red-rimmed, emphasizing the colorless irises. Harold Barrington was the denizen of Barrow, long buried and hidden from the clean, bright light of the sun.
But it was the form over which Harold Barrington wept that captured Julian’s eye and held it.
Samuel Barrington lay atop his bedclothes, fully dressed and with wide-staring eyes. His face was contorted into a grimaceof agony and there was no sign of breath from his lips. No movement of his chest, no blinking of his eyes.
