Chapter 1
Crowmere Castle
October 13, 1811
Delmouth, Cornwall, England
Agust of cold ocean wind from the black depths of the horizon swept across the encroaching night. The gale shrieked through the lonesome turrets of South Cornwall’s most carefully avoided stronghold: the soaring monolithic stones of haunted Crowmere Castle.
From the day the castle had been constructed over six hundred years earlier, generations had been plagued by ill fortune. Some of the villagers claimed the grounds—and its inhabitants—were cursed. A few had even met their untimely demise within the castle’s dank walls.
Only a fool would willingly cross the ancient stone threshold into shadowy depths from which one might never return.
At two-and-twenty years, Miss Rebecca Bond was nobody’s fool. She was, however, desperate. And destitute. After five long years of living virtually unnoticed within the countless nooks and crannies of the castle, she’d come to think of it as her home.
Until now.
Rebecca aligned her billiard cue with the blood-red carom on the felt-topped table and drove the ball into its cushion with one strike. As with her other shots, systematically knocking the carom ball into a series of cushions with a single strike no longer brought a flutter of pleasure.
She was too worried about losing her home to care about a record six-month streak of successful billiard shots.
Besides, no one knew about her record. Other than a handful of servants, few souls recalled an orphaned miss named Rebecca even lived at the castle. Including its current master, the Earl of Banfield, who lay upstairs in his sickbed.
The elderly earl was not expected to survive the night.
Even on his deathbed, Lord Banfield’s bedchamber brimmed with life. Maids, footmen, surgeons, the vicar, even the heir apparent to the earldom…and to Crowmere Castle.
A shiver snaked down Rebecca’s spine. She might not have a home much longer. Time was running out.
The old earl might not remember the slip of a girl he’d allowed into his sprawling castle after her parents had died, but Rebecca was reminded of that kindness every moment of her life. She quite literally owed the roof over her head to his largesse…and his forgetfulness.
She placed her billiard cue back in its stand and carefully arranged the balls for lagging, as if she had never touched them.
When the billiards room appeared as undisturbed as every other abandoned chamber, she slipped out into the dark corridors to make her way toward the kitchen.
Because so few inhabitants of the castle registered Rebecca’s presence, she had not only dined alone these past five years, but had also been obliged to forage for her own meals.
At first, she had expected the vanishing bits of bread and cheese or the sudden appearance of raisin biscuits in the oven to raise eyebrows amongst the scullery maids. But once she realized that the staff attributed the random appearances and disappearances of foodstuffs to interference by any number of the castle’s meddlesome spirits, secretly helping servants keep the castle in order became something of a game.
After all, an orphaned spinster neededsomethingwith which to occupy her time.
The billiard room and the sumptuous library were Rebecca’s favorite haunts, but she believed it bad form even for a forgotten guest to devote herself solely to her own entertainment. The least a poor relation could do was tidy up after herself and ensure that her presence caused no undue burden upon the staff.
Tonight when she slipped into the kitchen, the cook—Mrs. Woodbead—was nowhere in sight. An exhausted scullery maid slumped fast asleep next to a table full of half-peeled apples.
Rebecca’s stomach gave a happy growl. Mrs. Woodbead’s apple pies were exquisite. The missing cook had likely dashed upstairs to receive any last minute instructions from the earl’s sickbed.
Without waking the scullery maid, Rebecca cleaned, cored, and peeled the rest of the apples. She gave them a quick rinse of honey water to keep them from turning brown before the cook returned to the kitchen.
To save room for pie, Rebecca ate a light repast of cheese and bread before heading back toward her guest chamber, where a stack of accounting journals awaited her careful eye.
When the elderly Lord Banfield had fallen ill, he could no longer audit his steward’s accounting entries into the estate journals.
Rebecca, however, had nothing but time on her hands—as well as a fine head for figures. She had even found a few tallying mistakes in previous years’ journals, and had taken to leaving the steward unsigned notes requesting his prompt attention to each discrepancy.
After inhabiting the dark recesses of the castle for half a decade, Rebecca wasn’t the least surprised when the steward obeyed each mysterious command as if he had been reprimanded by the earl himself. If the rebukes did not come from Lord Banfield, the steward undoubtedly presumed he was being targeted by the restless soul of a deceased castle guest… and truly, which was more frightening?
’Twas little wonder the Banfield accounts had never been in better form.
