Prologue
October 1830
Pixham, Surrey
Before
Sabine Noble agreed to marry because of a cupboard.
It was a cedar cupboard, built into the wall of the green salon, formerly used to store table linens and silver. Now the linens were draped over furniture, and the silver had been long sold. The cupboard sat empty, a three-foot-by-three-foot space, secured from the outside with a wooden peg.
The cupboard represented a new level of humiliation for Sabine. She couldn’t explain the cupboard away with a lie about a fall from her horse or an accident on the stairs; and dark, tight spaces elicited a particular sort of hysteria.
Perhaps it was understandable that Sabine was not herself when she was finally, unexpectedly, released from the cupboard after forty-five terrible minutes of dark, airless indignity. Perhaps the cupboard—or rather freedom from the cupboard—was the perfect storm of relief and opportunity and panicked going-along.
Perhaps she wouldn’t have agreed to the marriage if her uncle hadn’t locked her in the cupboard on the first day Jon Stoker came to call, but he did lock her in, and this is the story of what came after.
Jon Stoker agreed to marry because saving women had become a rather burdensome lifelong habit, and Sabine Noble was meant to be his last hurrah.
Stoker had turned up to Park Lodge that day, uninvited and unknown to Sabine or her uncle, due to an advertisement that Sabine and her friends had posted in London. The advert offered the girls’ dowries in exchange for marriages of convenience. The girls hoped to gain access to London after speedy marriages to sailors who would be rarely, if ever, at home.
Stoker wanted no part of it, despite the unexplained enthusiasm of his business partners. He’d called that day for no other reason than to tell her that he’d been volunteered out of turn; marriage was not in his future, thank you, but no.
He was met on the doorstep by an impervious old man who tried immediately to send him away. Stoker heard shouts of distress from inside, banging, muffled cries for help, and he forgot the advertisement and stepped around the sputtering old man to follow the sounds.
For ten minutes Stoker prowled the ground floor, his ear cocked to the cries, while the man threatened eviction and the sheriff. Stoker ignored him and located the source of the noise in a back parlor. A cupboard, its hinges rattling with blows from inside. He removed the lock and whipped the doors open and Sabine Noble tumbled out, gasping for air.
Jon Stoker’s life was forever changed.
Sabine recovered with the speed of a woman prepared for the next terrible blow. She darted behind a chair, gasped for breath, and shook her hair from her eyes. When she looked up, she saw a stranger shoving her uncle into the very cupboard from which she had just been released.
“Duck,” the stranger ordered Sir Dryden, his hand pressing the older man’s head.“Duck,”he said, louder. Sir Dryden ducked, the door was slammed shut, and the stranger turned calmly. Sabine gripped the back of the chair.
“I’m Jon Stoker,” the stranger said.
Sabine nodded cautiously, too breathless and hoarse to speak. She touched a hand to her swollen eye. She tasted blood on her lip. He watched with solemn patience, no wincing, no reaching out, no bellowing for a maid. He waited.
“Mr. Stoker,” she finally repeated, but she thought,Who?
When realization dawned, it was as swift and painful as Sir Dryden’s backhand.
No,she thought, disbelieving. Her hands slid from the chair and she took two steps back.
No.
NotthatJon Stoker. Not—
Jon Stoker was the name of the man who had answered the advertisement posted by her friends. The advertisementfor a husband.
Jon Stoker, her friend Willow had told her, had been the applicant most suited for Sabine.
Jon Stoker could only be here for one purpose—a proposal. To her. Today. On this of all days. As her face swelled and her lip bled. As her uncle began to slowly knock a bony knuckle against the inside of the cupboard door.
Surely not.
Sabine closed her eyes, willing herself to disappear. She willed Jon Stoker to disappear. She willed Sir Dryden to hell and beyond.
Stoker cleared his throat. “This man”—he pointed to the locked cupboard—“is a problem. Obviously.”
