CHAPTER ONE
CUMBERLAND, 1835
“Charles, please, you can’t! What if you are caught?” Eleanor pleaded in an anxious, insistent whisper. She didn’t want Father to wake. It was late and the house was cold. It was always cold.
It was also dark. They’d not dared light a precious candle.
“There’s barely a soul about, sister,” her sibling hissed back. “A mostly empty Abbey still, no one will notice. They’ll think it was a fox. Same blasted fox that took our hens, crafty beast.”
Eleanor knew Charles had almost wept that morning to find the henhouse emptied of their last two birds, for they had nothing left to trade, nothing at all, and any chicks begged off neighbors now wouldn’t lay till springtime.
“But if you are caught, Charles, the fine . . . We’d never be able to pay!”
“I won’t get caught, hush. Besides, the Abbey’s new lord brought a veritable flock with him; two will hardly be missed. Now go back to bed, and if I’ve not returned by daybreak simply tell Father I’ve gone into town.”
Eleanor was only more alarmed by this. “But if you’re not here come morning?—”
“I’ll return, sister. Go back to bed.”
“Only, Charles, I wish you wouldn’t!”
“Yes, well, I wish I needn’t,” her sibling bit back. “I wish a lot of things, Ellie, but right now I wish simply to keep us alive come winter.”
Eleanor watched Charles wrap tight their father’s heavy cloak and slip out into the chill, black night. She stood a moment longer in the kitchen, Father’s rattling snores from the next room reminding her that she ought to be grateful for a sibling as unreasonable as the one she had. For without Charles to so stubbornly look after them, she and Papa would be in far worse straits.
She stared at the kitchen’s dim, bare shelves, praying for Charles’s safe return. She sat there some while before she crawled back into bed.
Lord Wellesley had just sat down to a glass of whiskey before a roaring hearth in the one room of his crumbling new home that was reasonably comfortable. There were other rooms serviceable, but the work needed to bring this old castle back to life was formidable. He’d not bargained on Almsdale Abbey being in quite such disrepair. Nor had he counted on Cumberland being quite so bloody rustic. It was just what he needed, but it was also damnably bleak. The village hadn’t a bookshop, barely a decent tavern, and no whorehouse he could unearth.
Amusements there were not.
Yet the barren landscape was spectacular and suited his craggy mood perfectly. The work might last years and suited him just as much. He knew he’d need skilled tradesmen come spring,but in all he was glad he’d come. Anything to escape the hell London had become.
He was sipping his whiskey, contemplating lighting a pipe, feet propped on a stool before the blazing fire, when he heard a ruckus in the hall right before his steward, John Cuthbert, wrenched open the parlor door, dragging a mess of skirts behind him.
Wellesley, or Wells as his crew called him, glared at his man for the interruption. “This had better be worth my time, John,” he grumbled.
Cuthbert shoved what looked to be a filthy human before his lordship, declaring, “Caught her stealin’ chickens, Yer Grace.”
“Chickens?” Wells almost laughed but instead frowned at the dirt-streaked face scowling back at him. “Why the hell bring her here and not before the magistrate?” He sensed not an ounce of contrition from the sharp green eyes shooting daggers at him.
“Because y’arethe magistrate here, Yer Grace,” Cuthbert ground out.
“Bloody hell,” Wells muttered, sighing deeply as he rose from his seat. He was as annoyed by the interruption as he was by Cuthbert’s continued, deliberate misuse of what was rightfully his father, the Duke of Allendale’s, title.
“Bring her in,” he ordered, and Cuthbert pushed the skirt forward till she stumbled to her knees.
“Get up,” Wells snapped.
The girl stood and squared off, looking as if she wished to punch him, and this despite the fact he was as tall as his steward and just as broadly built.
“You stink.” Wells registered his disgust.
“Chicken shit, my lord.” Her eyes flitted to his steward. “Your man made me wallow in it.”
Wells held his breath even as he held up his hand to stay Cuthbert from cuffing her one. “Impertinence only adds to yourguilt, girl.” He kept his tone terse. “You’ve one chance to explain yourself now before I give my sentence. Be quick.”
“How kind of you, my lord.” Her voice dripped disdain. “Only however should I defend myself? I sought to relieve you of two of your chickens, thinking you might indeed have more than your small household need keep.”
