Devil at the Gates Read online

  “I can’t leave Mama here, not with him.”

  “You can and you will. Your mother told me when she fell ill that she feared she wouldna be around to protect you. She made me promise that I’d help you escape,” Mrs. Reed insisted. “The master has plans for you. Plans I cannot abide, you ken. He means to hurt you, to use you like a…” She shook her head as though the rest of what she might have said was too awful. “He wanted me to drug you. But I drugged him and his men instead. We dinna have long.” The cook put an arm around her shoulders and dragged her back down the servants’ stairs and into the kitchens. A scullery maid named Bess was cleaning a pot and looked up at them as they entered.

  “How are they, lass?” Mrs. Reed asked the girl.

  “Still asleep,” Bess whispered, her eyes wide with fear. “Mr. Johnson has the coach ready. He thinks he can take Miss Russell as far as Dover, despite the storm.”

  “Dover?” Harriet repeated in shock. That was so far away.

  “Aye, lassie. You’ll take this.” Mrs. Reed pulled a leather pouch of coins from a pocket in her dress. “Buy passage to Calais.”

  “France?” Harriet trembled. To travel alone as a single woman was to invite trouble, possibly even danger.

  “France will be safe. The master could have you tracked from here all the way to the bloody Isle of Skye in the north. ’Tis best if you leave England.”

  Harriet swallowed hard and nodded. She knew some French and could learn more when she was there. Her father had relatives in Normandy, second cousins. Perhaps she could reach them and find work. She tried to do what her mother had taught her, which was to focus on a plan of action rather than let fear freeze her in place.

  Mrs. Reed pulled a heavy woolen cloak off of a nearby coatrack and wrapped it around her shoulders. “We have no time to delay.” She led Harriet to the servants’ entrance, which took them to the back of the house where the stables were. George’s coach stood waiting, and the driver huddled near the horses, which pawed the ground uncertainly.

  The rain came down in thick sheets, and Harriet splashed through the mud to the waiting coach.

  “Take this.” Mrs. Reed followed her and handed her a basket of food before she climbed into the vehicle.

  “Mrs. Reed…” There were a thousand things she wanted to say, and a dozen new fears assailed her at what her life would become now as she fled. But only one thing truly mattered above all the rest. Her mother was still dying, and Harriet was abandoning her.

  “I know, lass.” The cook squinted in the rain and squeezed her hand. “I know, but you canna stay here.” She turned to head back to the servants’ entrance.

  “Take care of my mother. Tell her I made it to a ship and sailed for Calais,” Harriet called out from the coach as Mr. Johnson, the driver, shut the door, sealing her inside. She wanted her mother to believe she had escaped, even if she never made it. It might be the last comfort anyone could give her. Harriet’s bottom lip trembled, and she fought off a sob.

  Mrs. Reed waved at her and then ducked back inside the house. Harriet began to shake as the wet woolen cloak weighed her down. An extra chill settled into her skin from her soaked clothes.

  The coach jerked forward, and the basket of food in Harriet’s lap nearly toppled over. She set it down on the floor and closed her eyes, trying to calm herself.

  “Oh, Mama… I wish I didn’t have to leave you.”

  But if she had stayed, the horrors she would have endured were unthinkable. And to suffer a life trapped beneath George’s control… She knew he wouldn’t honor her twentieth birthday—that must have been what her mother wished to tell her. That she would be free of him as a guardian, but she would need to escape him before he could stop her. Harriet collapsed back onto the seat and silently sobbed for her mother, for the life of the last person she’d loved in the world.

  “Dry your eyes, kitten.” Her father’s voice seemed to drift from the past as old memories of her childhood came to her. She closed her eyes, imagining how he used to find her when she’d fallen and scraped a knee. He’d curl his fingers under her chin and gently make her look up into his smiling, tender face.

  “Papa,” she breathed, feeling more like a child now than she had for years. She clung to the vision of him inside her head.

  “You are my daughter. You do not cower when life becomes difficult. Face every challenge with courage, and refuse to accept defeat.”

  Harriet’s eyes flew open as she thought for a moment that she felt a caress on her cheek. But the ghost of him vanished just as quickly as it had come. She wiped her eyes and tried to steady herself, lest she burst into tears again.

  She remembered how her father used to counsel the young lords he taught fencing. Harriet used to hide behind a tall potted plant, tucking her skirt up under her knees as she watched her father move about the large room with a dozen young men wielding fencing foils. He would call out the positions, and the men would fall in line, raising their blades and performing. When they began to tire, he would call out, “Clear eyes, steady hands, you shall not fail.”

  She would need that advice and more to find a new life in Calais.

  She leaned against the wall of the coach, listening to the rain and wondering what the dawn would bring.

  2

  Rain whipped at the coach windows as Harriet attempted to catch a few hours of sleep. Thunder shook the road so hard that more than once Harriet was jostled awake in fright. She rubbed her eyes, fatigue hanging heavy in her limbs. It was close to midnight, and they still had a ways to go before they reached Dover. In good weather it would take at least two hours, but with the roads muddied and visibility hampered, that time might double.

  With a quiet sigh, she wrapped her black wool cloak tight about her shoulders; it was freezing in the carriage. Her toes were already numb and her fingers icy as she twisted them beneath her skirts to try to keep them warm. She turned her thoughts to what would happen when she reached Calais. Harriet was completely alone and had no one to help her find her way, but surely with her passable French she could find a coach to Normandy. With the coins Mrs. Reed had given her, she should be able to afford a room at an inn before she journeyed ahead.

  Caution would be crucial, however, because she knew she would be a target for men. Alone, and just shy of destitution, she would be easy prey if she wasn’t careful. Harriet’s only hope now was to trespass on the kindness of her father’s distant cousins until she could find suitable work. She’d attended a finishing school for young ladies until her father had died, and she’d been a prized pupil of the instructors there. Perhaps she could find her way as a governess? If that didn’t work, she might have a chance to be a seamstress. She wasn’t completely useless with a needle and thread.

  The storm only worsened as midnight passed, and the rains flooded the road. More than once, Mr. Johnson slowed the coach to allow the horses to walk through deeper pools of water that had gathered on the road. Harriet pressed her forehead against the coach window and peered into the darkness. She glimpsed nothing until a flash of lightning lit up the roads, and she was at last able to see what obstacles the horses were facing.

  The poor beasts, they were risking their lives to save hers. They didn’t even have the comfort of stopping here, because the countryside around Dover wasn’t a safe place, at least according to the gossip she’d heard in Thursley Manor.

  Harriet prayed that they would make it to Dover’s harbor without a reason to stop. They were passing through the Duke of Frostmore’s country, and Harriet feared meeting up with him. Redmond Barrington was known as the Dark Duke or the Devil of Dover by the servants at Thursley, and rumors followed his name like shadows cast by gravestones.

  Harriet knew all the stories, of course. The duke feasted on naughty children who did not abide by the wishes of their parents; he stole the virtue of unsuspecting maidens foolish enough to travel alone in his lands. Perhaps the most gruesome tale was that he had killed his younger brother, Thomas Barrington, in
a duel after Lord Frostmore discovered his brother bedding his new bride. They said he cast his wife off the cliffs before he shot Thomas in the stomach and watched him slowly bleed to death. Harriet knew that the younger brother was in fact dead, according to parish records, but no one knew the truth of how he’d met his end other than that he had been shot.

  George had often bragged at dinner that he was well acquainted with Lord Frostmore, and that only made Harriet’s fears of being caught in Dover that much stronger. What if the duke discovered she was here and returned her to George?

  Regardless of the veracity of the grim tales, Harriet knew it was not wise to be caught alone on the duke’s lands, especially when the cliffs of Dover were so close. Flights of imagination led Harriet toward visions of carriages plummeting over the cliffs and crashing into the sea below.

  She shuddered at the notion of gasping for air and breathing in only icy seawater. Harriet tried to dismiss her fears as much as she could, and instead focused on thoughts of her father. She was almost asleep again when the carriage suddenly lurched and toppled onto its side.

  Harriet’s head struck the wall of the coach when the carriage overturned, and something warm began to trickle into her eyes. For a long moment she was paralyzed with pain and confusion as her vision blurred. Finally, her sight cleared enough for her to get up. Her right arm felt oddly numb after a violent pain. She lay against the window of the coach, which was now pressed into the muddy ground. Broken glass cut her palms as she tried to rise, and she winced as her shoulder suddenly flared with fresh pain.

  “Mr. Johnson?” she called out.

  There was a cry, muffled beneath the crash of thunder. Harriet shoved at the door above her so she could climb out of the side of the carriage, now the ceiling. Her hem tore as she jumped from the carriage, and her arm twinged as she braced herself to land. She sank almost instantly into several inches of oozing mud. The road was dark; moonlight was unable to pierce the storm clouds. In a brief flash of lightning, she saw Mr. Johnson clutching his leg, his face twisted in pain. Harriet ran over to him, hunching over to get a better look.

  “Are you able to ride, Mr. Johnson?”

  “Afraid not, Miss Russell.” Mr. Johnson winced as he tried to stand, but fell back to the ground. “You should take a horse, ride to find help. I’ll stay with the coach.”

  “We have to get you to a doctor,” Harriet insisted. Lightning tore across the sky, and in the distance a mountainous edifice was momentarily revealed. “What place is that, Mr. Johnson?” She pointed in the direction of the distant building.

  The driver’s face darkened. “That is Lord Frostmore’s estate.”

  “The Dark Duke?” Harriet’s heart jumped in her chest.

  “Yes, miss. I know you to be a brave lady, but you mustn’t go there.” Mr. Johnson grasped her arm as though to prevent her from going for help.

  Harriet pried his fingers off her arm gently. “Is there nowhere else close enough to reach?”

  “Not in this weather,” the driver admitted.

  “Then I must go to the duke.”

  “Miss, please…,” the driver protested, but she shook her head.

  “Do not worry about me, Mr. Johnson. Now come, let me help you up. You can rest inside the carriage until help arrives. You mustn’t catch a chill in this storm.”

  Harriet forced him up and got him inside the carriage with some difficulty. After Mr. Johnson was secured, Harriet loosed one of the horses and pulled herself up onto the beast’s back, grasping the long reins. She hadn’t ridden a horse since she was a child, and while she was uncertain as to her skill now, she knew Mr. Johnson depended on her.

  Her torn and muddied skirts split easily as she straddled the horse. Wrapping the reins tight around her fingers, she kicked the horse’s sides. It didn’t need any other urging to fly across the soaked road toward the distant estate. Her cloak flew out behind her as she dug her muddy boots into the horse’s flanks again, spurring it toward the dark, shadowy edifice she’d glimpsed moments before.

  Harriet rode the horse hard all the way to the gates. The heavy wrought-iron structure was open just enough for her horse to pass, but Harriet lingered at the entrance, taking in the sharp spiked tops of the gates and the stone carved with the name of “Frostmore” near the gates.

  A pair of devilish gargoyles crouched menacingly on either side of the entrance pillars. And when the lightning flashed over them, Harriet nearly screamed as she swore they moved. More pain lanced through her shoulder, and she cried out, clutching her injured shoulder.

  The large mansion lay in the gloom beyond. There within its walls was the Dark Duke. Could she pass these gates and brave the risks? Harriet thought of Mr. Johnson and his injuries, and she remembered her father’s fencing lessons. She was capable of defending herself if it came to it, assuming he wasn’t like her stepfather, with men hired to trap her, so she spurred her horse again and rode through the gates, ready to risk her life in order to help her driver. But she would do her best to beg for help from the servants who would answer the door, and hopefully they wouldn’t share with their master that she was here. It was a small hope, but she clung to it, nonetheless.

  The manor house was dark; only a few lights were lit near the main entrance. She abandoned her horse and ran up the stone steps, beating on the heavy oak door with the knocker. After a few minutes, a middle-aged man with a somber face opened the door. He was in his nightclothes, with a candle raised near his head. His bleary eyes focused on her in surprise and confusion.

  “Please, sir. My coachman is injured. Our carriage overturned on the road to Dover. He cannot walk or ride without assistance!” Harriet blurted out quickly.

  The man took in her dirty, drenched appearance and opened the door wider. “Come in, my child. Quickly now,” the man whispered in a soft tone. Harriet followed him, and he led her through darkened halls until they reached a small sitting room. The man lit fresh kindling under the logs in the hearth with his candle and turned to her.

  “Now, more slowly, tell me exactly what has happened.” He gestured for her to sit on the settee. She did her best to recount the accident on the road.

  “I will see to his retrieval and care at once. Please remain here. Do not leave this room—it is better that no one but myself and a few others know you are here,” the old man warned. There was a shadow of concern in his eyes that urged her compliance. He must wish to hide her arrival from the duke, and that was quite fine with her. But if the carriage was broken, she had no way to reach the port of Dover…and George may already be looking for her.

  After the butler left her alone, Harriet stood up and walked to the fire, holding her hands out to warm them over the meager flames. Her shoulder still ached with a dull, agonizing pain, but she didn’t want anyone to know she’d been hurt. Weakness in a woman traveling alone was even more dangerous.

  A few minutes of dead silence passed with nothing but the ticking of a grandfather clock before she heard a stirring in the hall. She looked up to see a large black dog standing in the doorway. The silhouette of the creature was startling, like the interruption of a dream by a hellhound. It let out a low growl, its white teeth bared. It was nearly as tall as her chest. The dog took a step toward her, its growl deepening to a deadlier tone.

  Harriet brushed her hood back and shoved wet locks of blonde hair away from her face so she could better make eye contact. Her stepfather had several mean-spirited hounds back at Thursley, which she’d had to defend herself against more than once. She did not back away or show fear. She braced her hands on her hips and leaned menacingly toward the dog. The dog took another step forward, its brown eyes boring into her blue ones. It let out a snarl and trotted toward her.

  “Sit!” Harriet shouted in a commanding tone.

  The massive dog froze, the growl dying in its throat. In mild confusion, it slowly lowered its back haunches so it now sat two feet away from her. For a long moment she continued to glare at the beast, which as sh
e got a better look at it appeared to be some kind of hound…a schnauzer? But she had never seen one this large. It had a noble black beard, a strong and well-formed body, and a glossy coat.

  Harriet carefully extended her hand to the creature, who craned its neck forward, brushing its wet black nose over her fingertips in a cautious but friendly manner. It snuffled loudly but made no move to bite her as she stroked its great head. The hairs on the back of her neck rose, and a sense of being watched prickled along her skin, sending little tremors down her spine.

  “You are the first person Devil hasn’t bitten upon first meeting,” a cold voice said from the doorway.

  Harriet’s head flew up, and she saw a tall man leaning in the doorway. His head was afire with deep-red hair that was cut a tad too long, and his hazel eyes gleamed with the fire’s distant glow like topaz. His face was carved with perfect masculinity, but there was a hint of cruelty that hung about his sensuous lips, and anger radiated from his eyes. She bit her lip and tried to still the trembling of her body as she took him in. There was no question—this was the Duke of Frostmore.

  He was not pretty, as some men tended to be. There was certainly nothing angelic about his face or form to bring forth a sense of natural charm. Instead, he seemed to exist in a singularly masculine way that made her sit up and take notice. Fear and curiosity warred with each other as she continued to stare at him.

  “Devil?” It was a foolish thing to say, but no other thoughts in her mind were coherent enough to say. The effect George had on her paled in comparison to this man. Fighting George, had it come to that, would have been difficult, but she could tell with one look that attempting to resist this man would be impossible. She swallowed hard and resolved to be pleasant, but not overly so, lest he think she was a woman he could take to his bed.

  “Yes, my black-haired companion here. I spent a summer in the Bavarian Alps two years ago and brought him back with me. He’s a rather new breed of dog, a giant schnauzer. Devil seemed a fitting name for the brute. He’s torn many a throat from a careless man and even a few careless ladies.” His tone was serious, but she thought—or rather hoped—she saw the glint of teasing in his eyes, a dark, cruel teasing.