Chapter 1

V

ICAR JOHN BARTON took the last nail into his hand and hefted his hammer once more. Pounding the finishing nail into the last framing board around the final window of the entire house should have been a triumph. The large but drafty old vicarage had been reborn into a spacious, snug home bright with fresh paper on the walls and fine glass windows. He’d begun the work when he’d first arrived in Haven a little over two years past. Only the painting of the last few window frames remained.

John should have been exultant. Instead he only felt edgy and cold.

It was not the proper season for building. It was December, lacking only a few days until Christmas. And December in Staffordshire was no summer day in Brighton!

Yet John had been determined to finish his vicarage. Furthermore, he needed to keep busy so as not to dwell upon the lord of Havensbeck and his lady, getting ready to put on their first Christmas celebration as a wedded couple at the manor. All of Haven was invited. John’s invitation had been penned by her ladyship herself, the warm greeting simple, the wistful request an act of reconciliation toward a family friend.

He would never receive any other sort of message from her now. That ship had sailed, that stable door had been left open, that water had turned to ice under the bridge—and Matthias was a bloody, greedy poaching bastard!

Except he wasn’t. Lord Matthias was a good man and a dedicated, responsible landlord who took excellent care of Haven and all its residents. In fact, he and John had almost become friends before John had encouraged pretty Bernie and her family to spend the previous Christmas in Haven.

John had thought himself clever, timing it all so well. He would spend some time with Bernadette, whom he’d begun to care for a very long time ago but who’d never much noticed him, all the while with the enthusiastic support of his former mentor, Bernadette’s uncle, who favored the match. John would show Bernadette his very fine vicarage and the lovely village and when he’d beguiled her with his success, he would propose.

And he had.

And she’d accepted him. It had all been storybook perfect—except that even before he’d had the opportunity to make an impression on the new, adult Bernadette, she’d already unhorsed Lord Matthias into a snowdrift and irrevocably captured his lordship’s attention. A momentary encounter on a country road had overturned every single meticulously planned detail of John’s courtship.

John hammered more violently for a moment, picturing a certain poaching rake of a lord sitting upon the head of his nail. Then the anger subsided, as it always did, because Matthias wasn’t a rake or a poacher. He’d been a man lost in mourning for the wife and child he’d lost tragically several years before. Since he’d come to Haven, John had racked his brain for some way to help Matthias.

Well, John had certainly helped him, by bringing the one person who carried within her a certain spark, a clear, brilliant vitality that shone from her lovely eyes—and yes, with enough experience with her own tragedy to help a broken man move on from his. Bernie had even brought along a new child, her worldly-wise little brother Simon, to brighten the dark halls of Havensbeck.

At the thought of Simon, John put the hammer down and drank a swig of tepid, overly steeped tea. He grimaced at the taste. He couldn’t seem to make a decent pot of tea for himself. He ought to go inside and warm himself at the hearth, but the sun was still on the crystalline valley and the days were so short now. He couldn’t bear to spend a moment of it indoors.

Young Simon would be climbing the walls on a day like today, wanting to be outside. John felt the same way, edgy and twitching with house-bound restiveness. The sun was bright on the snow and the wind was slight, giving the day a deceptively balmy feel. John had lived in Haven long enough to know better. The ice was thick on the River Churnet and the night would fall black and impenetrable in just a few hours.

John stepped back and looked at his handiwork.

Building things wasn’t what he’d been raised to do. His father would likely shudder at the very idea, yet John had found real enjoyment in the use of his healthy body and his new, hard-won skills.

Now, the exterior window frames were entirely complete. Every window had fine new glass and a spacious windowsill. He’d designed deep sills for the single shining memory of young Bernadette curled up on a sunny windowsill of her uncle’s vicarage, lost in a book. The sun had glinted on her amber-brown hair and the light had shone into her eyes, making her squint resentfully though she was clearly too enraptured by what she was reading to bother adjusting her position. She’d been no more than a gawky fifteen and he’d been just another boring adult, albeit a young one. She’d been polite to him when she remembered he existed, but she’d never invited him into that personal, clearly magical world behind those eyes.

John had been an awkward and officious twenty, very aware of his own importance as the selected student of the venerated Vicar Goodrich. Young Bernie mocked him politely for his determination to bring God to the world whether the world liked it or not, and Vicar Goodrich had shown him a gentler approach of guidance and support. Vicar Goodrich had led John by example, bestowing grace in constant small doses that brought succor and strength to everyone around him. A new ambition had been born in John, to set aside the fire and brimstone he’d been taught to favor, and instead to serve with generosity and patience.

And to do it with Bernadette Goodrich at his side.

He’d been so relieved when his scrawny, spotty youthful looks had improved and it became likely that a young lady would not be averse to becoming the vicar’s wife. John’s only hope was that clever, lively Bernie might feel the same.

So close. He’d missed making that impression upon her by a bloody hour!

John sighed and closed his eyes. You are the vicar. “I shall not curse.” He looked skyward. “Sorry.”

The empty house didn’t comment. The spacious rooms and the fine new windowsills and the impervious roof simply sat there, offering nothing in return for his hard work.

The feeling gripped him again, that need for action, for desperate occupation so that he could fall exhausted into his cold bed at night and not spend hours imagining the Christmas he might have been having this year with his beloved new family.

One bloody hour.

He ran his hand through his saw-dusted hair and squinted at the bright day once more. He had close to three hours before night fell.

 

 

STUPID. BLOODY. ROCK!

John didn’t even bother to pronounce his anti-cursing ritual. He was one chunk of sandstone short of a full load in his mule-cart and the small white sun hung so low on the hillside across the river that it looked as if it might roll right down the snowy slope. It was already growing dark in the cut of the river.

He should leave now, if he wished to get the cart home before full dark. He would just have to come back another time for the last stone. It wasn’t as if he would even be able to lay the stone on the terrace until spring. Sometimes he doubted his own good sense. Yes, he should definitely go.

Instead he dug his pry bar into the crack between the frozen ground and the large hunk of sandstone he had ambitiously chosen. This was meant to be a cost-saving measure, not a penance. It didn’t hurt that it was one less thing he would have to request from his lordship. Matthias would shrug and order the finest flagstones the quarries downriver could cut. Then every time John walked upon them, he would recall that his life and his work was entirely dependent upon the support of the man who had stolen the woman John had set his heart on.

Grunting, John pounded the pry bar deeper with a few strikes of his sledgehammer, then he put all his weight into shifting the rock. The exertion made his cold, tired body ache and his head pound.

For just a bit more strength, he cast his thoughts back to the sight of Bernadette and Matthias, with their coats covering their wedding garb, leaving the Havensbeck chapel to be greeted by every single denizen of Haven, all equally bundled up, who had cast cut paper snowflakes at the sheepishly grinning couple in lieu of flower petals. Bernie, laughing, alight with joy. Matthias, gobsmacked by his own good fortune and most definitely smug about it.

Weeks. Mere weeks of courtship. Bernie had been so mad for Matthias, and he for her, that John had taken the high road and stepped aside—and Matthias hadn’t lost a moment in making his conquest.

“Rraahh!” Spurred by the twist of the knife of memory, John convulsed his entire body, aiming all his disappointment and fury and hurt at the pry bar—and ripped the wide, flat piece of sandstone from the frozen earth.

As if in answer, a high, feminine scream cut the icy air.

 

 

JOHN FOLLOWED THE cry, running along the riverbank, slipping in the snow. Ahead he could see the silhouette of the bridge against the dimming sky and the shadow play of a damaged carriage tilting slowly, slowly over the stone balustrade of the bridge.

The neighing of distressed horses echoed the screams. He kept running, scrambling up the bank now to access the bridge level.

“Hold on!”

More cries from the carriage. “Help! I can’t hold her. She’s falling!”

John looked up to see a limp form hanging from the carriage that still threatened to topple over the edge of the bridge. Then he realized why. One of the horses had already fallen over the side and was now dangling from its harness, screaming in panic and thrashing wildly. Every convulsion of its giant body tore at the carriage, dragging it down, crushing it against the low stone wall, while the other panicked horse, still on the bridge but fighting the pull with all its might, threatened to rip the vehicle apart with its plunging antics.

The lady in the silk gown hung pale and unmoving except for the limp sway of her upper body as she hung with her lower half and skirt trapped within the carriage.

It only took a split of a second for John to assess the situation and make a decision. He’d never be able to secure the carriage in time, for the dangling horse was doing more damage by the moment. “I’m getting below her! I’ll catch her!”

“Hurry!”

John scrambled down the rocky bank and slithered awkwardly out onto the ice until he stood just beneath the insensible lady. She’d slipped a bit farther out of the carriage. The other woman must be losing her grip.

“Now! Let her go!” John cried over the wheezing and groaning of the trapped horse, whose rear hooves whipped the air in alarming nearness to John’s upraised arms.

The lady fell silently, with only the flutter of her skirts and cape to mark her descent. As she turned in the air, John had a brief impression of black and white and scarlet before she landed in his arms and knocked him back hard onto the ice. The wind left his lungs in a great whoosh and his arse ached, only partially protected by his thick woolen coat, but he’d caught her!

As he tried to bring any possible scrap of air back into his chest, he looked back up at the carriage to spy wide, worried eyes in a pale face, peering down at him and his catch.

“Get free!” he tried to say. Before he could gather the breath to shout a warning, the harness broke into pieces, the sounds like gunshots as the leather straps rent and the traces snapped—

And the horse fell.