Chapter One
“If you insist upon reading that Gothic nonsense aloud, Molly, I shall be compelled to throw myself from this carriage.”
Fiona Hart had not the slightest intention of throwing herself anywhere. The rain hammering against the carriage windows had already soaked through one corner of the leather curtain, and she had no desire to adddrowned upon the Yorkshire moorsto her catalogue of indignities for the day.
Her maid lowered the penny pamphlet with an expression of wounded dignity. “It is a perfectly respectable tale, miss.The Beast of Brantwood Hall. Very educational.”
“Educational.” Fiona arched one brow. “And what, precisely, does it teach? That young ladies ought to wander into crumbling castles and expect to discover handsome, misunderstood lords awaiting reformation by the power of their virtue?”
“Well.” Molly considered this gravely. “Yes, miss. That is exactly what occurs in chapter four.”
Fiona bit back a smile. She had read the pamphlet herself, cover to cover, the previous evening—but Molly had no need to know it. Certain dignities must be preserved, even between mistress and maid who had known one another since girlhood.
The carriage lurched violently.
Fiona’s hand shot out to brace against the wall, her heart vaulting into her throat. Outside, the coachman shoutedsomething swallowed by the wind, and the horses screamed—a terrible, panicked sound that lifted the fine hairs along her arms.
“Miss—” Molly’s pamphlet flew from her grasp as the carriage tilted.
Fiona had precisely one coherent thought:This is what I deserve for mocking Gothic novels.
Then the world turned sideways.
The crash was a symphony of splintering wood and shattering glass, punctuated by her own scream and Molly’s frantic exclamations. Fiona’s shoulder struck something unyielding—the door, perhaps, or the ceiling; direction had lost all meaning—and pain bloomed, bright and immediate, across her vision.
When at last the carriage ceased its violent motion, she found herself crumpled against what had once been the window, rain pouring through a jagged breach in the wood to soak her face and hair. Her ribs throbbed. Her head pounded. Somewhere beneath her, Molly whimpered.
“Molly.” Her voice emerged as a rasp. “Molly, are you—”
“Alive, miss.” A pause. “I believe so. Though I may have left my stomach somewhere upon the road.”
Fiona attempted a laugh and discovered it hurt abominably. She shifted, endeavouring to ease her weight from whatever portion of Molly she had landed upon, and promptly learnedthat her left ankle had no intention of cooperating with any movement whatsoever.
“The coachman,” she managed. “Mr Briggs—”
“Here, miss!” The reply came from somewhere above and to the left, muffled by rain and wreckage. “I’m pinned, but I shall manage. You stay where you are—there’s a drop not three feet from the carriage. We’ve gone off the cliff road.”
A cliff road. Naturally. An ordinary tumble into a ditch would have been far too commonplace for this particular journey.
Fiona closed her eyes and allowed herself precisely five seconds of despair. She had been meant to reach Whitby by nightfall, to secure an introduction between her cousin Adelaide and the eligible—if reportedly insipid—third son of a viscount. She was meant to be useful. Practical. The sensible Hart daughter who managed things while her prettier, more frivolous relations secured advantageous matches.
She was not meant to be lying in a shattered carriage upon a Yorkshire cliff in a storm intent upon washing the entire county into the sea.
“Miss Fiona.” Molly’s voice had gone thin. “Miss… someone is coming.”
Fiona opened her eyes.
Through the rain and the broken frame of the carriage window, she saw a figure approaching. Not merely walking—striding, with a purpose that suggested the storm was no more than an inconvenience rather than the apocalyptic deluge it appeared. The figure was enormous. Tall and broad-shouldered, silhouetted against the iron-grey sky like something torn from the darker pages of Molly's Minerva Press romances.
Dark hair whipped about his face—too long, too untamed—fighting the wind like a living thing. His coat billowed behind him, and even half-blinded by rain and pain, Fiona could discern the sheer scale of him.
The Beast of Brantwood Hall, she thought, and nearly laughed at her own absurdity.
He reached the carriage. A face appeared in the jagged opening—rain-slicked and sharply hewn, with dark eyes that seemed to absorb the storm’s light rather than reflect it. He was not handsome, she decided. Handsome was too mild a word, too civilised. His features were stark, severe—the work of an artist who valued impact over elegance.
“Can you move?” His voice was deep enough to rival the thunder, rough as the rocks visible beyond the carriage’s wreckage.
Fiona blinked rain from her lashes. “I—my ankle. I do not think—”
