Prologue

Hugh, Seventeen Years Ago

Thunder crashed outside Westendale Manor, sparks of lighting flashing through the sky through the window. Hugh startled awake to one of those flashes, gasping, through another fitful waking moment. Had he even properly fallen asleep yet?

His wide eyes glanced towards the window as another roll of thunder rumbled through the countryside. His small body quivered beneath the bed covers as he tried to burrow down and forget about the storm.

Just sleep , he willed himself. Mama will come to comfort you soon.

He whimpered, closing his eyes.

Once again, he drifted off fitfully, unsure of how much time passed before he was awoken again.

It was not by thunder this time. Hugh sat bolt upright in his bed, blinking in panic. The air was heavy and thick with smoke. He followed the trail to beneath his bedroom door, and beyond, flickering lights flashed.

“Has the storm come into our house?” he thought, his sleepy thoughts muddling what was happening. But before he could do anything or cry out for his mama, his bedroom door burst open. A wave of heat rushed into his face.

It is not the storm , he thought, panicked. It is a fire!

Behind the figure in the doorway, fire blazed through the hallway.

“Master Winterbourne.” The figure grew closer, but Hugh was paralyzed. “Master Winterbourne, forgive me, but we must get you to safety.” The butler coughed into his sleeve. Before Hugh had a chance to say anything, he was pulled up. And then he was taken—out of his bed, towards where those flames licked up the walls, destroying everything in its wake.

He watched in terror as the butler ran with him, right through the bedroom door.

“Mama!” Hugh yelled. “Papa!” But the fire tore his cries from his mouth and devoured them too.

“Please hold your breath as best as you can, Master Winterbourne!” the butler shouted, as he raced Hugh through the halls of the east wing. Hugh couldn’t help looking around in fright as he clung onto the butler’s jacket, eyes wanting to snag on something that would help him know where his mama or papa were. But the butler kept running, kept him close, and kept telling him to keep his mouth closed.

Debris fell, crackling resounding through the rooms and hallways. He could hear the harsh pants of the butler as he struggled to hoist Hugh for so long and run. What is happening ? Hugh wanted to ask, as terror tightened his chest. Smoke concealed his home, and paintings were falling victim to the flames as they dashed through to the staircase.

Heat pressed at Hugh’s back, through his thin pajama shirt, and he cried out as the butler ducked from more debris.

“I will get you outside, Master Winterbourne, please just hold on.”

The instruction came with as much tight panic as Hugh felt. Still, he could only cling on and watch as ruins fell around him. The butler raced them down the stairs of the east wing but as they reached the first landing, a deep crack sounded from above. The butler halted in fright, and Hugh looked up in time to see a flaming beam as it plummeted from the rafters above.

“Master!” The butler shouted and threw Hugh forward, but it wasn’t enough. As his shoulder hit the stairs, and he cried out, the beam came right for him. He tried to roll out of the way but even though he rolled fast, still that flaming, wooden pillar came hurtling for him.

“Help!” he cried helplessly but then all he knew was heat. Pain burst across his face as the beam soared past him, embers and flames jumping. A scream tore from Hugh’s throat, and he was aware of another crackling sound.

His breaths came in panicked bursts because that wasn’t just the halls and the paintings crackling—it was his skin.

He screamed and screamed, sobbing in pain and distress, hands twitching to grasp his face. The smell of burnt flesh hit his nose nauseatingly. Hugh’s vision went dark, or perhaps it was the smoke, but he felt utterly too light as arms wrapped around him. He moved, each jostle sending more stabs of pain through his face, and suddenly the cool embrace of the night air was a brief reprieve until the heat settled back in a moment later.

“He needs medical attention!” A voice yelled but Hugh’s vision was still going spotty with darkness.

“Where’s Mama?” he thought he asked, or maybe he didn’t, because nobody answered him. It was wet—tears, or rain. Both. As tears slid down his cheeks, and rain pelted his face, as if the sky wanted to cool down his skin and save him from the fiery grips of whatever had happened, Hugh lay there, immobile.

Crackles and the snapping of wooden beams falling, and the roll of thunder, and voices. It all reached him in a storm of noise that he wished he did not have to hear. Footsteps walked past him and every time their flurry of steps went past, the shift in air caused more agony to ripple through his face. Buckets of water were carried past. Some splashed over him.

Voices snapped to be careful but Hugh peeled his eyes open again.

Mama? Papa?

His head felt weak but he still lifted it, trying to find his parents in the chaos. Servants regarded him with expressions of alarm and trepidation. A wave of dread engulfed him as he perceived their horrified gazes upon him. What had transpired? Yet, where were his parents? He strained to seek their familiar visages. His mother’s dark tresses, elegantly coifed into a refined bun, came to mind, and his father’s deep, warm brown eyes, frequently alight with mirth, haunted his thoughts.

Where are they ? He thought desperately, a sob escaping him.

Time passed, and Hugh screamed at anyone who came near him. He kicked and thrashed, ignoring their pleas. All he did was beg and cry for his parents, telling anyone who would listen that he did not understand why they weren’t there. He didn’t know how much time did pass but soon, the sky above began to lighten, and the buckets got less and less, and servants retreated from him and towards the manor.

As dawn broke over Westendale Manor, Hugh met the eyes of his butler.

“Master Winterbourne,” the butler said, his voice hoarse. “I am here to support you.” There was a graveness about his face that Hugh didn’t like. The pain in his face was no longer sharp and searing, but now a dull, aching heat. He accepted the butler’s outstretched hand, wincing as he moved, for any motion seemed to aggravate the affliction that awaited him.

He heard whispers, glances at him as he was helped up.

Only ten years old, the poor thing , one whisper came from a maid.

He shall remain looked after , another said. We should not speak of his business, only await our new employer.

Hugh barely registered the words. He was dizzy and a nausea had settled within him.

The butler’s hands were on his shoulders as he was steered around. I am going home now , Hugh thought. He is taking me back inside where Mama and Papa are.

His thoughts broke off as soon as he saw the wreckage and devastation before him. The entire east wing was in charred ruins, blackened beyond recognition. Smoke still poured from the house as the orange flames no longer raged through anything in their path.

Windows were smashed through, and the roof had caved in. Walls crumbled, and a charred shell of the east wing stood in its tragedy against the breaking dawn.

“Master Winterbourne,” the butler said, his voice soft. “I am sorry to inform you that the Duke and Duchess of Westendale did not make it out of the manor. Your parents did not survive the night.”

Before Hugh could process the horrifying news, he heard hurried footsteps approaching, a physician rushed by his side, his expression grave yet determined. He had been summoned for the boy, the butler had said, with the weight of loss heavy in the air.

Hugh fell to his knees, tears falling down his face, and suddenly, he raced for the smouldering manor, screaming for his parents because that could surely not be true !

“No,” he moaned, in pain, in tragedy, in grief. “No, no, no. Mama—Papa!”

Hands caught him and stopped him from getting any closer.

“Please, Master,” the butler said, his voice thick. “I am so sorry.”

Hugh’s wails should have buried the sun beyond the horizon so the day did not have to begin, for he did not want any day to begin without his parents there. His screams tore the deathly silent morning apart, and he did not care that his skin cracked and crackled with each wail.

***

Hugh moved automatically in the days following. He was taken from his bed, the very bed he now hated, for his parents had last been alive when he had been in his bed, and he should have stayed there .

Questions rolled through his young mind. Why had the butler saved me? Why did my parents not leave? Why did I have to be the one who got rescued ? I wished I had gone with them.

He stared blankly as food was placed before him once he was dressed and seated in the dining room. He ate alone, and wept silently, as constables combed his father’s study in the east wing.

“The Duke had a candle burning,” he overheard several days after the fire. “It was among many papers and ledgers, and His Grace must have forgotten about it and retired for the night.” They looked at Hugh, who kept his head down. He now saw how people looked at his face: in utter horror.

“This has been a tragic accident, Master Winterbourne,” one of the constables said. “Pray, accept my heartfelt sympathies during this sorrowful time.”

Their words meant nothing to him. He stayed silent, built up his walls, and retreated into the heaviness of his mind. His face ached with the burns he now knew had seared right down his face but that was nothing to the grief burning through his heart. He moved from room to room only when instructed. Otherwise he remained still, a statue, a lost boy with no parents in a house that had taken them from him but should have taken him, as well..

In the days that followed, Hugh found a cane by the door, one of his father’s promenading canes, and he forced his legs to move. Each room he came by had a reflective surface of some sort. One by one, Hugh smashed every mirror, and when the butler tried to stop him, Hugh only screamed at him. He was a beast now, he knew that, and he used it to keep the butler away.

“Leave me be!” he cried out, wielding the cane. “Do not stop me.”

He could not bear to see the scar, to see the permanent damage of the fire—to not only feel it through grief but be the starkest reminder of what had happened. Hugh collapsed into angry, devastated tears, surrounded by the destruction of his own bedchamber, which he had ruined, lest no reminders linger of the beast that he had become.

***

Years passed, and Hugh grew older, and as he did, the shunning of himself grew deeper. His grandfather took over Westendale Manor. He was a cruel man who forced Hugh to dine with him, to show his face, but Hugh resisted and argued. Every argument pushed him further back into his reclusive state. He often hid away in his father’s study, hiding his face, his scar, his grief.

And Hugh did not speak a word to anyone in the years following his parents’ death.

News of the night of the Westendale Manor fire spread through London, and Hugh never once let the memories fade. They haunted him until he had built up walls so high he could not even peer over them. But he did not wish to. More time passed, and Hugh’s grandfather passed away, leaving the dukedom to him. He despised every moment of it, hired a steward, and proceeded to lock himself away in his study.

He was a beast, and he was afraid of seeing it reflected in the eyes of others.

To be alone was to remain safe and unjudged.

Hugh let more time pass isolating himself with such determination that he could hardly entertain the notion of any alternative. Westendale Manor was now his sanctuary and his prison, where the world did not have to see his scars—the ones on his face, or his heart.