The wording was careful. Too careful. Polished and smooth. The very fact that the note contained nothing specific, and certainly nothing revealing, lent it a hollow ring. Or was it only Papa’s acrimony toward Mr. Caradoc that made her wary and mistrustful?
The wraith glided forward from the corner where she lurked, eyes fathomless and dark.
“Go away,” Isabella whispered, then clamped her lips shut, appalled that she had acknowledged the creature in any way.
The air chilled, so cold that Isabella’s breath puffed white before her lips. On a dry whisper, the wraith moved closer, stirring the letters on the desk. Mr. Christopher’s note rose on an eddy of air, hovering a finger’s breadth above the desk before falling flat.
And then the wraith disappeared.
Snatching up the note, Isabella stared at it. Elaborate scenarios spun through her thoughts until she landed on one where she imagined that Mr. Caradoc had some hold over Mr. Christopher, that he had somehow placed the letters ostensibly addressed to her father in the desk while she was away from the house, “proof” meant to lure her into a situation where?—
Where what? What could his purpose possibly be? What storm gathered behind those gray eyes and that quiet, self-assured voice?
But try as she might, she could not conjure a motive for Mr. Caradoc to create an elaborate scheme in order to lure her to his home.
Unless it wasn’t her he wanted at all—but something of her. Something she possessed. Her fingertips traced the outline of the key through the cloth of her bodice.
He had never mentioned Papa’s secret collection. Yet the possibility nipped at her and clung like a burr: what if the books in Papa’s trunk were his true quarry?
A huff of incredulous laughter escaped her at the folly of her outlandish thoughts. She was not normally one for flights of fancy, and she did not enjoy the melodrama of a penny dreadful or a gothic novel, yet here she was, spinning a tale that would rival those of Radcliffe or Maturin.
She assessed her options. She had few, and none were pleasant. She had not the funds to continue living here. She had neither friends nor relations to turn to. She had thus far found no other options for employment.
Mr. Caradoc’s offer was all she had. The truth of it settled, heavy as a damp cloak.
She rose and went to pack her things.
Chapter Six
Monday dawned dreary, the low hanging sky a smear of charcoal and soot. It wasn’t quite wet enough to be called rain or cold enough to be called snow, but it was miserable all the same.
Isabella refused to look back as the hired hackney carried her away from the narrow house she and Papa had called home all her life. The windows had been shuttered, the hearth gone cold. She had sold or given away everything she could not carry, her life whittled to two trunks. One contained Papa’s secret books locked up tight. The other was stuffed with her clothing and accessories, her mother’s silver brush and comb set, a kit wrapped in oilcloth containing the tools of her trade, and Papa’s coat, folded flat at the trunk’s bottom. She had been unable to leave it, just as she had been unable to stay.
Now, as the hack creaked to a halt, the station loomed before her, its iron-and-glass roof rising like the ribcage of a monstrous beast. It struck her that this place, all steel and steam and shrieking metal, could not be more unlike her father’s book-lined study. He had hated trains, called them unnatural, noisy contraptions built to scar the countryside.
He would have hated this journey, and the destination even more.
Harrowgate Manor, home of Rhys Caradoc, a man her father had warned her about in the most strident terms. She could pretend that she had accepted his offer solely because there had been no other and because she had been desperate and afraid.
But while those things were true, they were not the only truths.
Beneath the grief and guilt and the echo of Papa’s disapproval, there was a well of curiosity, vast and deep.
Something about Mr. Caradoc’s visit had opened a wound in Papa that morning, one that had festered deep beneath the surface and gnawed at his spirit, igniting a darkness in him and sending him spiralling in a coil of despair and dismay. Ever since that visit, Papa had been afraid.
And now Rhys Caradoc wanted her under his roof. She intended to find out why.
Fog curled around her as she stepped down from the hack onto the damp stone. She paid the driver, and he dropped her trunks beside her, the smaller with a thud, the larger with a loud scrape and groan that made her ribs tighten.
A porter in a frayed waistcoat with a pencil behind his ear materialized with a handcart.
“Destination?” he asked.
“Maidenhead,” she said.
He tied on a pasteboard label written in a neat, black hand and whistled up a second man.
“Guard’s van for this beast, miss,” he said with a gesture at Papa’s trunk. “You’ll not want it crowding your compartment.”
