“Take care of my mother. Tell her I made it to a ship and sailed for Calais,” Harriet called out from the coach as Mr. Johnson, the driver, shut the door, sealing her inside. She wanted her mother to believe she had escaped, even if she never made it. It might be the last comfort anyone could give her. Harriet’s bottom lip trembled, and she fought off a sob.
Mrs. Reed waved at her and then ducked back inside the house. Harriet began to shake as the wet woolen cloak weighed her down. An extra chill settled into her skin from her soaked clothes.
The coach jerked forward, and the basket of food in Harriet’s lap nearly toppled over. She set it down on the floor and closed her eyes, trying to calm herself.
“Oh, Mama… I wish I didn’t have to leave you.”
But if she had stayed, the horrors she would have endured were unthinkable. And to suffer a life trapped beneath George’s control… She knew he wouldn’t honor her twentieth birthday—that must have been what her mother wished to tell her. That she would be free of him as a guardian, but she would need to escape him before he could stop her. Harriet collapsed back onto the seat and silently sobbed for her mother, for the life of the last person she’d loved in the world.
“Dry your eyes, kitten.” Her father’s voice seemed to drift from the past as old memories of her childhood came to her. She closed her eyes, imagining how he used to find her when she’d fallen and scraped a knee. He’d curl his fingers under her chin and gently make her look up into his smiling, tender face.
“Papa,” she breathed, feeling more like a child now than she had for years. She clung to the vision of him inside her head.
“You are my daughter. You do not cower when life becomes difficult. Face every challenge with courage, and refuse to accept defeat.”
Harriet’s eyes flew open as she thought for a moment that she felt a caress on her cheek. But the ghost of him vanished just as quickly as it had come. She wiped her eyes and tried to steady herself, lest she burst into tears again.
She remembered how her father used to counsel the young lords he taught fencing. Harriet used to hide behind a tall potted plant, tucking her skirt up under her knees as she watched her father move about the large room with a dozen young men wielding fencing foils. He would call out the positions, and the men would fall in line, raising their blades and performing. When they began to tire, he would call out, “Clear eyes, steady hands, you shall not fail.”
She would need that advice and more to find a new life in Calais.
She leaned against the wall of the coach, listening to the rain and wondering what the dawn would bring.
2
Rain whipped at the coach windows as Harriet attempted to catch a few hours of sleep. Thunder shook the road so hard that more than once Harriet was jostled awake in fright. She rubbed her eyes, fatigue hanging heavy in her limbs. It was close to midnight, and they still had a ways to go before they reached Dover. In good weather it would take at least two hours, but with the roads muddied and visibility hampered, that time might double.
With a quiet sigh, she wrapped her black wool cloak tight about her shoulders; it was freezing in the carriage. Her toes were already numb and her fingers icy as she twisted them beneath her skirts to try to keep them warm. She turned her thoughts to what would happen when she reached Calais. Harriet was completely alone and had no one to help her find her way, but surely with her passable French she could find a coach to Normandy. With the coins Mrs. Reed had given her, she should be able to afford a room at an inn before she journeyed ahead.
Caution would be crucial, however, because she knew she would be a target for men. Alone, and just shy of destitution, she would be easy prey if she wasn’t careful. Harriet’s only hope now was to trespass on the kindness of her father’s distant cousins until she could find suitable work. She’d attended a finishing school for young ladies until her father had died, and she’d been a prized pupil of the instructors there. Perhaps she could find her way as a governess? If that didn’t work, she might have a chance to be a seamstress. She wasn’t completely useless with a needle and thread.
The storm only worsened as midnight passed, and the rains flooded the road. More than once, Mr. Johnson slowed the coach to allow the horses to walk through deeper pools of water that had gathered on the road. Harriet pressed her forehead against the coach window and peered into the darkness. She glimpsed nothing until a flash of lightning lit up the roads, and she was at last able to see what obstacles the horses were facing.
The poor beasts, they were risking their lives to save hers. They didn’t even have the comfort of stopping here, because the countryside around Dover wasn’t a safe place, at least according to the gossip she’d heard in Thursley Manor.
Harriet prayed that they would make it to Dover’s harbor without a reason to stop. They were passing through the Duke of Frostmore’s country, and Harriet feared meeting up with him. Redmond Barrington was known as the Dark Duke or the Devil of Dover by the servants at Thursley, and rumors followed his name like shadows cast by gravestones.
Harriet knew all the stories, of course. The duke feasted on naughty children who did not abide by the wishes of their parents; he stole the virtue of unsuspecting maidens foolish enough to travel alone in his lands. Perhaps the most gruesome tale was that he had killed his younger brother, Thomas Barrington, in a duel after Lord Frostmore discovered his brother bedding his new bride. They said he cast his wife off the cliffs before he shot Thomas in the stomach and watched him slowly bleed to death. Harriet knew that the younger brother was in fact dead, according to parish records, but no one knew the truth of how he’d met his end other than that he had been shot.
George had often bragged at dinner that he was well acquainted with Lord Frostmore, and that only made Harriet’s fears of being caught in Dover that much stronger. What if the duke discovered she was here and returned her to George?
Regardless of the veracity of the grim tales, Harriet knew it was not wise to be caught alone on the duke’s lands, especially when the cliffs of Dover were so close. Flights of imagination led Harriet toward visions of carriages plummeting over the cliffs and crashing into the sea below.
She shuddered at the notion of gasping for air and breathing in only icy seawater. Harriet tried to dismiss her fears as much as she could, and instead focused on thoughts of her father. She was almost asleep again when the carriage suddenly lurched and toppled onto its side.
Harriet’s head struck the wall of the coach when the carriage overturned, and something warm began to trickle into her eyes. For a long moment she was paralyzed with pain and confusion as her vision blurred. Finally, her sight cleared enough for her to get up. Her right arm felt oddly numb after a violent pain. She lay against the window of the coach, which was now pressed into the muddy ground. Broken glass cut her palms as she tried to rise, and she winced as her shoulder suddenly flared with fresh pain.
“Mr. Johnson?” she called out.
There was a cry, muffled beneath the crash of thunder. Harriet shoved at the door above her so she could climb out of the side of the carriage, now the ceiling. Her hem tore as she jumped from the carriage, and her arm twinged as she braced herself to land. She sank almost instantly into several inches of oozing mud. The road was dark; moonlight was unable to pierce the storm clouds. In a brief flash of lightning, she saw Mr. Johnson clutching his leg, his face twisted in pain. Harriet ran over to him, hunching over to get a better look.
“Are you able to ride, Mr. Johnson?”
“Afraid not, Miss Russell.” Mr. Johnson winced as he tried to stand, but fell back to the ground. “You should take a horse, ride to find help. I’ll stay with the coach.”
“We have to get you to a doctor,” Harriet insisted. Lightning tore across the sky, and in the distance a mountainous edifice was momentarily revealed. “What place is that, Mr. Johnson?” She pointed in the direction of the distant building.
The driver’s face darkened. “That is Lord Frostmore’s estate.”
