Eve Silver (2 page)

“Good Lord, woman! Have you not the sense that God gave a mouse? My ears are ringing from the sound of you!”

She resented the comparison. Mice were meek creatures, and Emma was not meek. But she was cautious. Her fear subsided with near laughable speed, replaced by a niggling suspicion that the man across from her might be her new employer or, at the very least, was acquainted with him.

And she had shrieked in the man’s ear. Oh, dear. Pressing one hand to her breast, she willed her racing heart to slow to a more reasonable pace.

The small flame glowed in the interior of the coach, continuing to reveal the planes and hollows of what she now realized was a man's face, and just below that his hand, holding the remains of a friction match. The fire raced down the length of the match to burn the fingers that held it. Emma knew that fingers had been singed because she heard a hiss of pain just before the match was abruptly blown out, leaving them in the dark.

“You startled me, sir,” she ventured into the silence. “Had I known of your presence from the outset, I would not have reacted with such...such volume.”

He did not reply immediately, but when he did, his voice reached across the carriage, deep and smooth. “See that you do not raise your voice to my son.”

His reply gave confirmation of his identity. She was in the company of Lord Anthony Craven, and she had behaved ridiculously. Not an auspicious beginning.

Uncertain how to reply, she sat in tense silence, her back ramrod straight, a part of her thinking that he ought to apologize for giving her a fright.

“There is no need to perch on the edge of your seat like a little brown wren.” He sounded more amused than angry.

Emma's eyes widened. The man must have the vision of a cat to be able to see her when the inky blackness veiled him from her sight. The eyes of a cat, and the manners of a baboon.

He made a sound low in his throat. “Do you think I purposely lurked here in the darkness, waiting for the opportunity to frighten you out of your skin?”

She had thought exactly that, but hearing the question put so bluntly made the idea sound preposterous. “No, of course not,” she lied.

The silence lengthened, and then he grudgingly said, “I fell asleep. When I awoke, I had no idea you were unaware of my presence. And then you screamed.”

“I see.” Well, she now knew that her employer did not habitually lurk about purposely terrifying young women in his employ. At least, it seemed he had not done so on this occasion.

“Where is the chaperone I funded?” he asked.

Chaperone? For a moment she was strangely touched that he had thought to send funds for such. Yet the very idea was laughable. Aunt Cecilia would never spend money on a hired chaperone. She would consider it an arbitrary and foolish waste of coin, given that Emma was already tarnished beyond repair by the circumstances of her birth. In fact, given the choice, Cecilia would gladly have sold Emma into—

 “Ah, let me guess... Your Aunt Cecilia felt my monies could be better spent on herself, and your Aunt Hortense, having imbibed at least half a bottle of good brandy, hidden in her tea of course, was too insensate to argue on your behalf. Not that she would have bothered had she been conscious. She would have simply helped herself to more tea and muttered 'quite so, quite so'.” His tone was biting, but a subtle hint of humor softened the sound.

Emma swallowed a startled giggle at his irreverent monologue, a small amount of her fear allayed by his sarcastic, and accurate, description of Aunt Cecilia and Aunt Hortense. She frowned, wondering at this odd conversation.

Neither spoke for a time, and then Lord Anthony said, “The rain has stopped.”

She listened. There was no longer the sound of water beating on the carriage roof. “Yes, it has.”

“Damned rain.”

There was something in his tone that touched a place inside her, made her wonder why he disliked the rain so. And then she wondered why she cared.

She was saved from having to conjure a reply by the rapid jerk of the coach, heralding the termination of her journey. The beginning of her new life.

A soft rustling signaled Lord Anthony's movement on the opposite seat, and Emma sensed his nearness as he leaned close. She gasped, jerking upright at the feel of his warm fingers cupping her chin, the pad of his thumb brushing her cheek, her lower lip.

“So you came despite the storm, despite the rumors, alone, to a place far from home.”

She heard something in his tone, admiration, or perhaps surprise. “I have no home,” she whispered, and then wished she could call back those naked, far-too-revealing words.

He was close enough that she could feel the fleeting touch of his breath against her cheek, smell the subtle scent of sandalwood and man. She sniffed lightly, then deeper, enticed by the lovely aroma.

“And I gave my word to come,” she blurted into the silence. Her word was her greatest treasure, her most valuable asset.

She felt a subtle tension lace his frame.

“Brave girl to come alone,” he said softly. His voice held no humor now, and the words, along with the inflection, seemed to carry both praise and warning.

Brave? In the face of what danger? She opened her mouth, wanting to question him, uncertain of what query to pose. Before she could formulate her thoughts, Lord Anthony moved from his seat and flung open the door.

A swirl of black greatcoat and a tall, powerful frame filled her vision as he left their conveyance and strode toward the house. Deflated by his abrupt leave-taking, she scuttled forward to the open door of the carriage and watched his progress. The wind had carried the storm away, leaving behind the clear night sky and the smell of clean wet earth.

Lord Anthony vaulted up the wide stone stairs, then paused and turned slightly, leaving his profile silhouetted against the light that poured from the lamps flanking the open front door. She thought his hair was dark, so it seemed from this distance, his chin strong and his nose straight and fine. More she could not see, but the overall impression was of a tall, forbidding man. Handsome in both face and form.

Tension coiled inside her as she stared at him, and her skin tingled in the place his fingers had contacted. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, wishing that he had not walked away so quickly, wishing that he had tarried. She was left wondering why such thoughts should plague her, and why the lovely scent of him that yet dusted the air tantalized her.

Unwilling to forfeit the sight of him just yet, she leaned out a little farther. Lord Anthony inclined his head, appearing to speak to someone inside the doorway. Then with a swift glance in her direction, so brief she almost missed it, he turned and disappeared into the house.

A sound drew Emma's attention, and she glanced to her left to find a stranger standing near the coach. The light that shone so brightly closer to the house filtered to a timid glow this far from the source and left the man's face in shadow. Dark hollows and subtle highlights accentuated the terrible scars and puckers along his cheeks and chin, permanent marks that labeled him as one of the lucky.

Lucky because he had survived. Smallpox killed so many of those it touched, and scarred those whose lives were spared. Emma met the man's gaze, silently wondering what loved ones he had buried while he lived on to mourn them. Tears burned her eyes as she thought of her own mother, a victim of the same terrible plague, dead these many years but never forgotten.

“Is this Manorbrier, then?” she asked, with forced brightness. She had no doubt as to her location, but she wished to open a conversation and dispel her melancholic mood.

“Yes, miss,” the driver replied, his expression blank as a child’s fresh slate.

“And your name is?”

The man stared at her for a long moment. “Griggs,” he replied.

Emma heaved a sigh of relief. For a second she had feared he would not answer at all, but would turn and disappear like his enigmatic master, leaving her alone on the front stairs.

“I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Griggs.”

“No mister. Just Griggs. And you be Emma Parrish. Now we's got the introductions all done, let's get you in to Mrs. Bolifer.”

Griggs helped her down from the carriage. Emma spun slowly about, taking in her surroundings. The manor house appeared sizeable, a great, dark shadow against the vast backdrop of night sky. Two large lanterns flanked the open door and spilled light onto the stairs and the closest part of the cobbled drive. Emma stared at the front of the house for a moment, perplexed. There was something odd about the windows. Then understanding dawned. Every window was dark. Not a single light shone from the face of the manor, save that which radiated from the lanterns.

Struck by the strangeness of the place, Emma turned and examined the drive. It was cobbled and long, passing through a huge gate set in the crumbling remains of a wall that surrounded the bailey. Like a diamond hidden in a lump of rock, the newer house nestled within the crumbling shell of the original Manorbrier Castle.

To the south of the gate rose the silhouette of a round tower that looked to be as old as the wall. It leaned slightly to the right, giving the impression that it might tumble to the ground in a tumult of stone and mortar. This she saw by the light of the moon, giving the whole an eerie, shadowy cast that Emma assured herself would be gone when she saw the place on the morrow in the brightness of day.

Suddenly, near the top of the tower she saw a brief flash, a rapid burst of brilliance that was extinguished almost before she registered its existence.

“Oh!” she cried. “Did you see that, Griggs? There, at the top of the tower?”

“No, miss. I saw nothing at all.”

“A flash of light in that tower. It was there but a second.”

Griggs hefted Emma's luggage with a grunt. Ignoring her comment, he started toward the front door of the manor house. Emma lifted the hem of her still-damp skirt and followed, casting a glance over her shoulder toward the tower.

“What you got in here? Rocks?” Griggs asked, looking back at her.

“No. Books.” Again she glanced at the tower. “But, Griggs, I did see a light. A very bright flash. A flare. Almost like... I don't know...a match. No, brighter than a match… The light was bigger somehow, and then it vanished….”

Griggs stopped so suddenly that Emma trod on his heel before she could stop herself. He turned slowly to face her, his eyes narrowed. “If I was a new governess come to Manorbrier,” he said, drawing out each word, “I would pay no mind to the Round Tower. No mind at all.”

Taking a step back, Emma met his gaze, a strong flash of annoyance rushing through her. She had been uprooted from her home of the past five years. Despite her aunts’ malevolent attitude, Emma had taken pleasure in parts of her life as a sojourner in their house. She had loved Cook, and Annie, the downstairs maid, the flowers in the garden, and her stolen moments of freedom in the afternoons when her aunts slept. Whatever small sense of security she had enjoyed had been wiped out on her journey to this rain-washed castle so far from anything known and familiar. Griggs’s warning was the last straw.

She pulled herself up to her full height, which barely reached the hulking man’s shoulder, tilted her head and glared at him. Intent on politely but firmly setting some rules for their future association, rules that included an absence of veiled threats and warnings, Emma was startled into silence by his next words.

“There's death in the Round Tower, miss. Death in the very air. You stay away from that tower.” Griggs looked at her with focused intensity, as if willing her to heed his warning.

She shivered as she realized he meant it. Every word. Griggs was afraid of the tower, and he meant for her to be afraid as well. “What…?”

Ignoring her startled query, the man adjusted his grip on her bag and turned away.

A shadow fell across the lighted doorway, and Emma looked up to find a woman blocking the entryway. Her gray hair was coarse and wiry, with long strands poking out from the coil she had rolled in an attempt to tame her appearance. Her gray eyes were flat and seemed coldly unwelcoming, an impression bolstered by the fact that her thick brows were drawn together and the corners of her mouth pulled down in an expression of distaste.

“The servants’ entrance, if you please.” The woman held firm as Griggs approached.

“Bag’s heavy.” He shifted his stance. “This way’ll do for tonight, Mrs. Bolifer.”

Emma swallowed and took a step forward, more than willing to enter by whatever door would create the least controversy, but to her surprise, the woman moved to the side to let him pass.

“Griggs,” Mrs. Bolifer said, “you may take her bag to the blue room on the upper floor.”

He paused, looking down at Mrs. Bolifer, his mouth open as if he wished to say something. Her expression grew even more forbidding.

“The blue room,” she repeated firmly. “Until we know what sort she is.”

With a nod, Griggs moved on and thudded up the wide staircase at the end of the entrance hall, leaving Emma standing just outside the house on the top step, prevented from following by the barrier presented by Mrs. Bolifer's stout body. Bewildered by the odd exchange, she peered past the woman to the interior of the hall, gleaning the quick impression of geometric black and white floor tiles and a polished rosewood center table, complete with an arrangement of dark red roses.

Returning her attention to the woman who barred her entry, Emma hesitated. She was tempted to bob a curtsy to the housekeeper, but as the new governess, she thought the action inappropriate. Instead, she smiled and extended her hand.

“I am Emma Parrish. So pleased to make your acquaintance, ma'am.”

“We are not at a tea party, Miss Parrish,” Mrs. Bolifer snapped back, ignoring Emma's proffered hand. Her cold gaze scanned the girl from head to foot, and then she turned and made her way toward the stairs, the skirt of her stark black dress floating outward with her movement. Mrs. Bolifer pushed it down with her hands.

Or rather,
hand
. It was then that Emma noticed that Mrs. Bolifer's left sleeve ended in a gathered band, empty from just a bit below the shoulder. The woman used subtle movements to keep her empty sleeve out of sight, rolling her shoulder to hold what remained of her arm behind her when she faced forward, and ahead of her when she turned.