Chapter 1
The Yorkshire Coast, 1821
Lady Perpetua Everly rattled the latch in frustration, and sat back on her heels.
Given the state of her half boots, that was probably a mistake. She shifted herself upright, fought her tight stays for a breath, and rolled the picks between her fingers.
By all the stars, shewouldconquer this lock. She would get this door opened and then she would close it again on the world outside. No one would know she was here. Not the people in the nearby village, nor the Riding Officer and the free-traders he chased, not even the local squire, Sir Richard Fenwick.
The cold flagstone soaked through her layers of skirts, crimping her knees and sending a moist chill into her marrow. When her grasp on the narrow picks slipped yet again, she tore off her wet kid gloves and willed her fingers to cease their trembling.
Jenny had laced her far too tightly that morning for any sort of calming breath.
Blast it. She could do this. She had learned how to manage a lock the same way she’d done everything—carefully, while no one was looking, using her intellect. During one of her brother’s construction sprees to make the country estate and the London townhouse secure against yet another of Father’s enemies, she’d stolen a new lock from a pile of them. It had been a day and a night of faked ague before she’d conquered that mechanism and returned it, to the relief of the servant charged with the inventory.
Jenny bent for the discarded gloves and hovered nearer. “It’s a shame your spectacles broke. Shall I have a go at it, my lady?”
Perry squeezed her eyes shut. The rough road had rattled her glasses right off her face, but no matter. Only a few people knew she didn’t truly need the spectacles, and Jenny wasn’t one of them. Wearing them was her small act of defiance, and here, in her own home, she wouldn’t need them. There’d be no one here to defend herself against. She could be her true self.
If she could but work the dratted lock. “You’re in my light, Jenny.”
The maid shuffled aside. “Such as it is on this gloomy day, miss.”
This lock was not the newest sort, but neither was it ancient. Someone—her brother, Viscount Bakeley, her father, the Earl of Shaldon, or the family steward, someone—had included this unused, unknown property on the Shaldon maintenance list. The deed called this a cottage, yet it sprawled on the side of a cliff and had a plethora of windows and at least two outbuildings.
With a few more delicate jiggles and careful clicks, the lock shifted, sending a warm elation that made her want to whoop. She tilted her chin and beamed at the maid.
“Good on, my lady.” Jenny still whispered. “I couldn’t have done it as well meself.” She grinned. “Myself.”
Jenny had learned many skills in her rookery years, proper English not being one of them, nor proper limits on lacing a corset.
Never mind. Her other abilities made her a perfect companion for this journey.
The drops of comfortable drizzle that had beset them on the trip turned fat and impossibly wetter. Jenny’s bonnet was limp and her gown clinging, as must be her own.
A cascade of louder crashes on the other side of the house made the girl tense.
“That’s only the waves,” Perry said. “Don’t worry. You saw when we came up the cliff road how high we are.”
High. Very high. As the plodding horse had struggled pulling their cart, the mist below had shimmied and shifted, revealing the sharp points below, Neptune’s daggers, welcoming errant travelers.
At the narrowest point of the cliff road, she’d had to stop the cart and get out just to be able to take a proper breath. Whether the cause of her inability to breathe was the height or the tight lacing, she couldn’t be sure.
Had that been the spot of her mother’s accident? The road was so treacherous that every bend and every tight corner might lure a carriage over the side, perhaps even a rider.
Jenny had discovered a fear of heights. After that, there was no returning to their seats in the cart. The remaining few furlongs of slick coastal road, the only access to the cottage that dodged the village of Clampton, had stretched impossibly high, interminably long. Perry had taken the halter of the hired plodder pulling the cart and untied Chestnut for Jenny to lead, warning her against showing fear to the horses, reminding her that the surefooted mare would not take her over the side.
Now Jenny was shivering again. Afraid of heights, and horses, and the sea, was this saucy girl.
“Stop shaking, Jenny, and don’t be a nodcock. The waves can’t reach us up here.” Perry got to her feet. “We should get inside and light a fire. There’s a storm coming in.”
“Storm’s here already, my lady.” The words rattled through chattering teeth. “I wonder, will there be coal?”
Coal? She hadn’t thought of fuel. Whether the estate’s steward kept this house fully provisioned was an open question. Perhaps along with their soggy basket of food and the feed for the horses, she should have hauled up some wood on the cart she’d obtained from the inn where they’d stopped for the night.
She certainly didn’t wish to visit Clampton and make her presence here known.
She shook off the worry and tried to sound cheery. “We’ll throw a chair on the grate if we must.” The latch opened easily and the slightest of nudges swung the door wide. No squeaking, no creaking. Well-oiled and well-maintained, like everything in the Earl of Shaldon’s empire.
