Dawn Thompson Read online

  “A seductive, brooding tale of

  dark love. Victoria Holt, move over!”

  —Bertrice Small, Author of The Last Heiress

  * * *

  A SHOCKING DISCOVERY

  Sara’s heart pounded in her breast, thudded against her ribs. Pressed up against the crack in the door, she held her breath in anticipation. The heavy footfalls coming closer were not those of a servant, certainly, who were well-skilled at moving without making a sound. No, these footfalls had no care for discretion, their owner weary and borne-down. When he passed, she gasped in spite of herself. It was Dr. Breeden!

  What was this? The doctor’s rooms were on the second floor, not the third. Sara waited until he disappeared in the shadows of the landing below, before stepping into the corridor again. No candlelight flooded the hallway from the chamber he had vacated now, only a thin sliver of light seeped out from under the door. She crept toward it.

  Hot blood surged into her temples. The flush of it narrowed her eyes. She would not knock. Grasping the knob, she threw the door open . . . and stopped dead in her tracks, teetering on the threshold of a well-appointed sitting room. The man inside stood beside the hearth, naked to the waist, a brandy snifter in his hand. His left shoulder was wrapped in heavy bandages. He spun to face her, and the look in his eyes—half horror, half pain-laced rage—would have sent her fleeing if she weren’t rooted to the spot.

  “Step inside and close the door,” said her husband.

  DAWN THOMPSON

  THE RAVENCLIFF BRIDE

  Dorchester

  Publishing

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Epilogue

  In memory of my father, George Wellington Thompson.

  DORCHESTER PUBLISHING

  Published by

  Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © 2005 by Dawn Thompson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Trade book ISBN: 978-1-4285-1762-2

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-4285-0379-3

  First Dorchester Publishing, Co., Inc. edition: September 2005

  The “DP” logo is the property of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Visit us online at www.dorchesterpub.com.

  THE RAVENCLIFF BRIDE

  One

  The coast of Cornwall, 1815

  “Please, sir, I beg you, have the driver slow the coach!” Sara cried. “We shall tip over at this pace.” Clinging to its hand strap, she held her bonnet on her head as the carriage sped toward the summit with horses at full gallop. Since they passed through the spiked iron gates at the bottom of the approach to Ravencliff, they’d been traveling at breakneck speed through the darkness as though the hounds of hell were nipping at the horses’ hooves.

  “We need to maintain such a pace on this steep incline,” her companion replied. “Take ease, my dear, the coachman knows what he’s about.”

  Peering out the window at the sheer-faced drop to the rocky shoreline below, Sara doubted that. The road—if one could call it that—didn’t appear wide enough for another coach to pass. There was no shoulder. All that separated them from the edge of the bluff was the remains of a low, stacked stone fence on the sea side, while a high wall of granite looming over the road on the other seemed to nudge them toward impending calamity.

  The sound of loose pebbles and crumbling earth raining down over the rocks as they streaked along all but stopped her heart. Below, towering white-capped combers pounded the strand, the echo of their thunder amplified by a cottony fog ghosting in off the water with the turn of the tide. Chased by the risen wind, it climbed the cliff and crept across the road, obscuring Sara’s view through gaps in the broken fence. She shuddered. If she couldn’t see, how could the coachman?

  Its wheel struck a rut, and the coach listed, hesitating. The road was pockmarked with such. But the crack of the driver’s whip and guttural shouts to the horses soon set it in motion again, every spring and seam in the dilapidated equipage groaning under the strain.

  Sara sank back against the cold leather squabs and shut her eyes, certain that at any moment the post chaise would topple over the edge—coachman, groom, horses, and all. As if he’d read her thoughts, her gentleman traveling companion gave a throaty chuckle.

  “We are almost there, Baroness Walraven,” he said. “But for the fog, you’d be able to see Ravencliff once we round the next bend. Have no fear, I shall deliver you to your bridegroom all of a piece, you have my word.”

  Baroness Walraven. Her heart leapt at the sound of it. She must be mad—marrying a man she hadn’t even met.

  “You aren’t having second thoughts?” he said. “It’s a bit too late for that now, my dear.”

  “I’ve been having ‘second thoughts’ since you came to me with this bizarre proposal, Mr. Mallory.”

  Again, Mallory chuckled. “In that case, you should have voiced them before accompanying me all the way to Scotland to finalize it,” he said. “There’s nothing to be done now.”

  “That is what puzzles me,” Sara returned. “If the baron was so anxious to marry me—‘to our mutual betterment,’ I believe it was you said—how is it that he couldn’t come in person? Why did he send you, his steward, as proxy? That’s insulting. Even under these peculiar circumstances.”

  “I’m crushed,” the man said, feigning heartbreak, “And we made such a handsome couple, too.”

  “What if I don’t suit the baron?” Sara said, ignoring his flirtatious wink. Wasn’t her traveling companion full of himself, though? He was handsome, and he knew it—fair-haired and fashionable, impeccably dressed, and cultured; the second son of a baronet, to hear him tell it. She wasn’t impressed.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” he replied, sliding familiar eyes the length of her. They were the color of steel, and just as cold. “But if by some unlikely happenstance such should be the case,” he went on, “I’ll be only too happy to oblige you. I thoroughly enjoyed our . . . nuptials.
”

  Sara wasn’t about to dignify that remark with an answer, yet he was right: What was done was done. And there was no doubt that he looked down upon her for consenting to such an arrangement.

  Had the nodcock forgotten where he’d come to make the baron’s offer? After six months in the Fleet debtor’s prison, she’d have considered a marriage proposal from the Devil himself to buy herself free. Would her bridegroom look down upon her for it, too? She shuddered to wonder.

  How the mysterious baron had heard of her predicament puzzled her, although she’d been told that oftentimes benefactors would offer for the inmates of such places as the Fleet. That hers was an offer of marriage and not something more indelicate should have been a comfort, she supposed; but it wasn’t. The plain fact was, she had consented to wed a man she’d never even seen—by proxy out of the country, mind—and let a total stranger deliver her to him in this inhospitable place in exchange for payment of her debt. The exact details of the arrangement were yet to be disclosed. She knew nothing about the baron at all, except that their fathers had served together in India, and that they were evidently close friends in those days. He had stressed that point, she imagined, in order to put her at ease. Somehow it hadn’t. Aside from Mallory’s insistence that all proprieties would be strictly observed, and the baron’s well-written proposal that was too good to resist tucked away in her reticule, she had no idea what lay in store. It couldn’t be worse than the hellish nightmare she’d just come from . . . could it?

  “Will the baron be in residence to greet us, at least, Mr. Mallory?” she asked.

  “Why don’t you call me Alex, my dear,” he replied. “We shall be seeing quite a bit of each other, you know. I’m often at the manor. I keep rooms there . . . for when I’m not abroad on estate business.” He gave another chuckle. “You’ll likely see more of me than you will of your husband, truth to tell. He keeps to himself, does Nicholas—always has done. You can take me at my word on that. We go back a long way, Nicholas and I, since our school days actually.”

  “Then, why—”

  “You will have to take the whys and wherefores up with him, my dear,” he interrupted. “I am not at liberty to disclose his objectives.”

  “You haven’t answered my first question, Mr. Mallory,” she said, making sure he didn’t miss her rejection of his offer to put them on a first-name basis. “Is his lordship in residence now?”

  He consulted his pocket watch. “Oh, he’s in residence,” he replied. “Whether he’s available or not, I really couldn’t say.” He tucked the watch away again inside his waistcoat. “But I shan’t be. Once I’ve delivered you to the manor, I’m off to London for a sennight to collect his houseguest, and to give you two some time to yourselves.”

  Sara hadn’t missed the seductive implications in his tone, and said no more; the less discourse with this individual the better. She’d seen too many like him in the Fleet. She tugged her spencer into shape, and ordered her traveling dress of dove-gray twill. It had gone limp in the bone-chilling dampness that had run her through like a javelin since they sighted the sea. Though the coach windows were closed, she tasted the salt on her lips. The fog still blocked her view, but that was no hardship; it spared her the sight of the restless sea rolling up the coast below, creaming over the rocky shingle, and topping off the tide pools that filled the coves. This would have been a breathtaking sight by day. In the dark, it was a fearsome thing.

  “Look,” Mallory said, pointing, as the chaise careened around yet another turn. “Ravencliff. You see? We have arrived.”

  Sara’s breath caught. The sight knit the bones rigid in her spine. The house was in darkness, a huge, rambling structure steeped in fog to its turrets, looming three stories high above the courtyard. It was crowned with a pair of carved stone ravens, set like gargoyles in the eaves. It looked deserted. All at once, the dissipating mist drifted inland, as though the carriage had dispersed it by tooling into the drive, and she gasped again: Rising from the sheer-faced seawall, Ravencliff Manor looked as though it had been hewn from the rockbound cliff it crouched upon.

  The coachman reined the horses in, locked the brake, and climbed down to set the steps. The mist had soaked him through from his wide-brimmed hat to the red traveling shawl he wore beneath his coat—the only splotch of color in the vicinity, glistening in the light of the coach lamps. Meanwhile the groom, likewise drenched, hopped off the dickey behind, and began unloading luggage from the boot.

  “Not those,” Mallory spoke up, exiting the chaise, as the man began to unstrap the two portmanteaus on top. “They are mine. I’m not staying.” He offered Sara his hand, and she stepped down into swirling mist that all but hid the Welsh blue stone crunching underfoot. “Come along, my dear,” he said. “Unless I miss my guess that’s a flaw brewing, and I want to be on level ground again before it hits.”

  “A flaw?” she questioned.

  “That’s what the locals call the wicked storms that plague this coast, especially now, in spring. You’ll not want to venture out in one. The winds will blow you right over the cliff, a mere wisp of a girl like yourself. You’d best keep away from the edge even in fair weather.”

  They had reached the entrance, and Mallory banged the brass knocker. After a moment the door opened and they were greeted by an aging butler and two wigged footmen dressed in blue and gold livery. Mallory ushered her over the threshold, and raised her gloved hand to his lips.

  “Forgive my want of conduct, running off like this,” he said, returning her hand to her dutifully kissed, “but all good things must come to an end. You’re quite safe in the custody of Smythe here, Baroness Walraven. He will see to your every need. It has indeed been my pleasure, but now I must away.”

  Sketching a bow, he bounded down the steps and disappeared back inside the coach, whose wheels were rolling over the blue stone drive before he’d settled once more against the squabs.

  Footmen rushed past to fetch Sara’s luggage. There wasn’t much: one portmanteau and a small valise containing necessities bought in London. The rest was to be provided at Ravencliff. Once they’d been brought inside, the butler shut the door and slid the bolt.

  “Take Baroness Walraven’s bags up to the tapestry suite,” he charged the footmen. He turned to Sara. “If you will follow me, madam,” he said, “Baron Walraven awaits you in the study.”

  So, he was in residence. She almost wished he weren’t. What would he think of her in her damp, clinging traveling costume? She tried to tuck the wet tendrils of hair plastered to her cheeks underneath her bonnet, but it was no use; there were just too many. To her surprise, since it had seemed so dark from outside, candles set in branches on marble tables and in wall sconces lit the Great Hall, and each of the corridors they traveled. They did little to chase the gloom. There was a palpable presence of sorrow in the house, in the stale, musty air, and in the melancholy echo of their footfalls on the terrazzo floors.

  Just for a second, Sara thought she heard the patter of dog’s feet padding along behind. She turned, but there was nothing there, and after a moment, she turned back to find the butler watching.

  “Is something amiss, madam?” he inquired.

  “I thought I heard a dog,” she said, feeling foolish now that, as far as she could see, the corridor behind was vacant.

  “The house groans with age now and again,” he said, resuming his pace. “You’ll hear all sorts of peculiar noises, especially when the wind picks up. It’s naught to worry over.”

  When they reached the study door, Smythe knocked, but there was no response at first. It wasn’t until the butler paused a moment and knocked a second time that the Baron bade them enter, and then the butler ushered her into a large room, walled in books. Dark draperies were drawn at the windows. But for a branch of candles on a stand beside the wing chair Nicholas Walraven occupied, and a feeble fire burning in the hearth, the room was steeped in shadow. Sara flinched as the door snapped shut behind her in the butler’s hand. The Baron
set the tome he’d been perusing aside and surged to his feet, taking her measure.

  Alexander Mallory had provided her with a description of her bridegroom, but he hadn’t prepared her for the reality of the man. She assessed him to be in his mid-thirties, a striking figure, tall and slender, though well muscled. The Egyptian cotton shirt he wore tucked into skintight black pantaloons was open at the neck, giving a glimpse of chest hair beneath which matched the hair—as black as his namesake, the raven—waving about his earlobes, and falling in a rakish manner across his broad brow. The deep-set eyes beneath, dilated in the darkness, shone like obsidian. They had the power to hypnotize.

  “Please be seated,” he said, gesturing toward a Chippendale chair on the opposite side of the Aubusson carpet. “This needn’t be awkward unless you make it so.”

  “Forgive me for staring,” Sara said, sinking into the offered chair. “I didn’t expect—I mean to say . . . Mr. Mallory didn’t exactly prepare me for . . . all this.” What had really tied her tongue was why such a man as this needed to resort to such outrageous lengths to get a wife.

  “Have you eaten?” he asked. His deep voice resonated through her body, striking chords in places hitherto untouched in such a manner, and she shifted uneasily in the chair.

  “I have, sir,” she replied, “at the coaching station inn on Bodmin Moor.”

  “Would you like a glass of sherry, or perhaps something . . . stronger, to warm you?”

  “No, thank you,” she said. “I do not take strong spirits.”

  Walraven did not resume his seat. Instead, he strolled to the desk, and leaned against it, half-sitting on the edge with one well-turned thigh draped over the side in a casual pose. His polished Hessian boots gleamed in the candle glow, and the flickering firelight cast shadows that played about the deep cleft in his chin. No; Alexander Mallory had not done the man justice at all.

  “Naturally, you have questions,” he said in that throaty baritone that had such a shocking effect upon her. “To save time, how much has Alex told you?”