Unfortunately, the storm had become worse and the shelter less frequent on the barren landscape the farther they traveled toward the Norfolk coast.
The original inn being farther behind them than Moreland Park was in front of them, they had been forced to press onward to their final destination, despite the rapid deterioration of roads that had now become mere tracks awash with the heavy rain.
But they now appeared to have come to an abrupt halt, and along with those worrying noises from the horses, the carriage was being rocked dangerously from one side to the other.
It made Georgiana feel something akin to the seasickness she had suffered when she had traveled by boat with her parents to the Isle of Wight for a holiday when she was their only child and her father had not yet become bitter when he realized his only children would be three useless-to-him daughters.
Quite what she would have done next, Georgiana had no idea, because the door beside her was wrenched open by one of the grooms and her arm grasped in his tight hold.“You need to get out, miss.”He took the lit lamp from inside the carriage to help light the way as he pulled her toward the open doorway.“Quickly now, before you’re carried away in a driverless carriage,” he urged as the carriage began to lurch forward.
Georgiana only just managed to stumble down the steps.The wind instantly blew her bonnet off her head, and only the ribbon tied beneath her chin prevented it from being taken away completely.The moment her booted feet touched the ground, they slid from beneath her, and she tipped forward in the mud.
She looked up in time to watch as the St.Albans ducal carriage, and the two horses pulling it, shot away into the darkness.
The silence was instant, even if the darkness was slightly alleviated by the lantern still being held aloft by the second groom, who looked to be as covered in mud as she now was.“You all right, miss?”
Was she?
It had seemed like the start of an adventure for her to travel alone to Norfolk and take up employment with the Duke of Moreland.A heady excitement in a life which had so far mainly consisted of a childhood spent avoiding her father’s cutting cruelty, and then as an adult attending balls and other Society entertainments, where her mother, at least, had hoped Georgiana would eventually find a suitable beau to marry.
But nowhere in that perceived adventure had Georgiana envisaged sitting in a carriage for days on end, watching the scenery become flatter and flatter the moment they entered Norfolk, before she was rudely deposited onto the muddy ground and then forced to watch as the carriage and horses disappeared into the darkness.
“I am well, thank you,” she nevertheless answered the groom calmly.“Are the two of you uninjured?”
“Yes, miss,” the grooms answered in unison.
“What on earth happened—” Georgiana let out a bloodcurdling scream—she had always wondered what one of those sounded and felt like when she read of it in a book, now she knew it was exactly as described!—as an apparition separated and rose from the muddy ground a few feet in front of her.
Revealing a ghoulish mask of a distorted face covered in mud and blood and dominated by two bright and gleaming green orbs that stared at her with venom in their depths.
Georgiana let out another terrified scream as that apparition began to rise to its feet.
CHAPTERTHREE
“For God’s sake, stop that dreadful caterwauling!”Julian snapped in his frustration with the screaming woman now scrambling away from him before rising hastily to her feet in the mud just a yard or so away.
Her wide blue eyes, the color of forget-me-nots in the lamp light, and the only visible feature within the mud which covered the front of her from head to toe, were fixed unwaveringly on him.As if she expected him to attack her at any moment.
Was it not bad enough that Julian had already gone through the indignity of being thrown from Shadow’s back when his horse was suddenly confronted with a carriage the moment the stallion stepped onto the track leading to Moreland Park?
That said horse had also now chosen, after a physical disagreement with the horses pulling that carriage, to gallop off into the darkness.Hopefully, the riderless horse would return to the stables at Moreland Park, where his grooms would instantly realize something was amiss.
Did Julian really have to now suffer the indignity of a woman screaming the moment she looked at him?
Julian had been avoided and blatantly socially shunned these past two years, but no one had ever screamed before merely from looking at him.
“I said enough!”he rasped harshly, breathing a sigh of relief when the screaming abruptly stopped.
“You speak, so you must be human,” the woman gasped while still staring at him as if he might attack her at any moment.
Julian’s top lip curled back.“I disagree with that assumption, madam.Because I can assure you, I have heard several beings speak whom I would consider far from human,” he added with scorn.
“I thought— I— You looked so?—”
“Inhuman?”he derided.
“Yes!”A certain steeliness had begun to return to her tone.“You have blood dripping down from your left temple, as well as being covered from head to boots in mud.”
Julian removed a handkerchief from the pocket of his great coat.The white square was as wet as the rest of his clothing, but it was clean enough and would suffice to wipe away at least some of the blood the woman had said was on his face.
