Chapter 1

 

Rattling down the road in a musty carriage toward a strange man’s home with the intention of introducing oneself and securing an invitation to stay awhile is a good moment to discard concern for societal approbation. So when I heard a female voice holler out from the hedges along the country thoroughfare, I did not hesitate to scramble hastily across the width of the carriage bench in order to trace the source of the noise. I had just stuck my head through the small window when I heard her again.

“Whoa!” she cried, and I craned my neck behind us to catch a glimpse. “Whoa, driver!”

I did not stop to think about whether she might have had ill intentions or been working on behalf of a gang of highwaymen. I pounded on the roof of the carriage interior to alert the driver, Mr. Brown. I had hired him that morning in Peterborough to take me to Wainforth Village, and his courtesy was buffed to a shine by a substantial fare.

Mr. Brown brought the horses up sharply. I had unwisely failed to renegotiate my center of gravity prior to this deceleration and thus slid to my knees on the carriage floor. While giving thanks for the privacy of a hired hack, I clambered back to the bench and untangled my skirts. Mr. Brown was responding to the woman’s hail.

“Yes, sister? What’s this fuss?” he called back as the vehicle jerked to a halt. I decided the situation was safe enough, and curious enough, for me to emerge, especially in my new independent incarnation. To my considerable surprise, our delay was created by a nun in a black-and-white habit who scurried toward us at a swaying trot. Before I could say a word, she resumed her shouting.

“Did you see him? Did you see our lord and master? We must follow his lead, we must not stray from his path!”

She had already trotted past the carriage in the narrow space between it and the hedge, but then she suddenly halted and reversed course. She swung around to face me. Her skin was damp and hectic, her expression desperate. I hung half out of the carriage, clinging with my left hand to a strap just inside the door. The muscle in my upper arm began to quiver as the holy woman hissed at me.

“Cease this delay immediately. You must come with me now, and we will find him together. He cannot elude me much longer.”

I gaped at her for a moment, then fell naturally into my most well-trod mental pathway, which was calm and factual. “Sister, you appear to be overexerted. I am headed to Wainforth Village. Would you care to accompany me these last few miles?”

The nun reached out as if to clutch at me, then recoiled. Her mouth twisted to a sneer. “Foolish woman! We all have only limited hope in this world or the next, and you are too blind to see when hope must be chased.”

With that cryptic pronouncement, she turned and angled for a stile in the stone fence that bordered the road. I caught a glimpse of a sturdy black shoe and pale ankle as she clambered over the gate and off toward a copse of trees between the fields.

Mr. Brown craned his head around the side of the carriage from his perch on the front bench. “Do you want me to go after her, Miss Gilbert?”

I considered the question. On the one hand, clearly the nun should not be left alone overlong in the countryside, even fairly close to the village. It would be dark in another few hours, and the air would surely be much colder overnight. She did not seem, at the moment, capable of undertaking rational thought. On the other hand, I knew neither her name nor anything else about her. She was hardly my business. Finally I shook my head. “No, Mr. Brown, please drive on. That woman is long gone now.”

It was true, I could no longer see her black habit. Maybe she went to pray at a secluded altar hidden in the trees, I told myself, not believing it for a moment.

“Do you know the sister, miss?” Mr. Brown queried. I could tell he knew the answer to his own question, but wished to review the odd event further.

“I do not. She appeared to be…unwell, and anyway, she refused when I offered her a ride back to Wainforth. Tomorrow I shall stop in at the church and inform someone of her recent whereabouts and odd statements.”

“Very well, miss.” He turned back and clicked his tongue at the horses.

My voice sounded calm enough, but in truth the nun’s frantic face had unsettled me. Had she taken temporary leave of her senses in a fit of religious fervor? Or was she simply a troubled soul, never strongly tethered to this earth? Another possibility, which I did not allow myself to consider long, was that her wild command that I should help her find someone, or something, was based on a true, desperate need.

While planning this trip, I had excused myself from the difficult task of winning my mother’s blessing for my present course of action, given that she had died over fifteen years previously. I was nearly certain that she would not have actively tried to prevent my going to Wainforth Manor, although likely she would not have provided hearty approval. I felt this trip to be necessary, even essential somehow, regardless of how it may have appeared. After twenty-six years spent carefully cultivating an aura of respectability, I deserved to spend my hard-won pristine reputation how I saw fit. Anyway, Father would have wanted me to go.

The second day after my father’s funeral, I had woken up at home in my bed and realized I wasn’t needed there. No one would care if I left. I wasn’t needed anywhere, really. My father had needed me and loved me and appreciated me, but he was gone. I had devoted myself to his work and, when he was ill, to his care, perhaps to the exclusion of much else. My childhood friends had their husbands and their children. I worried that my closest friend might be Sally, my maid, who spent much of her time worrying over her own family and didn’t bestow a lot of extra effort on me.

The hired carriage was an extravagance I could scarce afford, but I found the privacy to be worth the cost. The dark green interior had seemed plush when I first climbed in. Several hours later, I could attest only that it was private, not quite comfortable. An additional benefit to the carriage was its contribution to my efforts at making a good impression on Thomas Norcliffe, whom I intended to soon be my host, because huffing up from the post stop in the village, arriving covered in a sheen of perspiration and dust, would not give the first impression I sought.

“Only another quarter of an hour now, miss,” Mr. Brown shouted from atop the carriage.

Although my ultimate destination was Wainforth Manor and Thomas Norcliffe, I had asked Mr. Brown for a short stop in the nearby village. I intended to visit the inn and assess its suitability for lodgings, should Mr. Norcliffe slam his door in my face.

The afternoon had passed quickly in a sort of blue-green daze as we bumped along the ancient road into Wainforth. The carriage window afforded me a view of folded and creased fields, undulating like mounds of fabric just taken from the drying line. I had never before visited this part of North Yorkshire. I found the expansive view soothing, and the crackling blue of the clear sky seemed a good omen.

The dry stone walls dividing the fields appeared such a part of the land, it was easy to image they had sprung up from the bones of the earth, not been carefully stacked centuries before by the local farmers’ forebears—probably under the direction of Thomas Norcliffe’s forebears. The crisp air and the first few loose leaves hinted at autumn. I felt the season had advanced two weeks during the day of travel north from my home in Peterborough.

We soon pulled to a stop in front of the White Horse Inn, and I exited the carriage gratefully. “Thank you, Mr. Brown. I shall look for you here in one hour.” I knew he intended to stay here tonight and begin the return journey to Peterborough on the morrow. He touched his cap and turned the horses to circle them around to the stable in the rear of the main building.