Chapter 2

Chapter Two

T he lantern threw odd shadows on the narrow, circular staircase as Daniel Fletcher followed his father into the castle’s battlements. Their steps landed in a comforting shuffle that awakened childhood memories. How many times had he scrambled up these very steps, sword in hand, ready to defend his fortress? Once atop, he pushed his knees against a parapet and gazed through the darkness, straining to see the fields around him. Tiny pricks of light from the tenant cottages shone at him. Soon, with the money he’d saved and the investments that continued to earn for him, those glowing dots would multiply. With his return home, the castle he loved so well would gain its former glory.

“Here we are. Magnificent.” His father gestured at the sky.

Frigid air penetrated Daniel’s superfine wool coat. “It’s freezing for April.” He did not expect a response from his astronomer father, who cared more for the heavens than anything on earth.

“See that? Look, there. Do you observe…” Daniel’s father said into his telescope, a favorite possession his mother acquired twelve years prior to celebrate her husband’s birthday. It demonstrated her love for her husband, a fact that no one doubted. If nothing else, his parents loved one another, but their love led them to unscrupulous behavior. The purchase had been made in lieu of repairing the roof, and Daniel had not forgotten the long winter that followed wherein he and his family dined on potatoes and withered apples. Nothing of that sort would ever happen again. He would make sure of that.

“You brought me here to discuss something. What is on your mind?” That morning, Daniel arrived home after a ten-year absence. A week since, he’d received a letter requesting his return home on account of Father’s ill health. But he found the man well and as energetic as ever. The lie existed among many, and it should not have stung as it did. He reminded himself that it didn’t matter since he’d already been wrapping things up with the bank in preparation to return home for good. Since his arrival, the conversations between him and his parents were stilted. They were keeping something from him.

“Ah, always too clever. A step ahead of me, eh?” Father’s tone was good-natured, but the comment was a jab. A self-educated man, he had never wanted Daniel to attend school. However, since his maternal grandfather had paid his way, Daniel attended university, and his father disparaged the Cambridge education any chance he could. Perhaps Father felt embarrassed by his own lack of formal education. More likely, it was due to having not gotten his way. “It is simply that you must marry.” Father continued looking through the reflector. “I won’t live forever, and I want to see my grandchildren running about the castle.” Daniel sat on a parapet and faced his father, who remained hidden behind his brass contraption. “Your mother and I are finished with your moping. That episode with Miss Jensen happened long ago, and it is time to leave her in the past.” Stiff white hair brushed his shoulders as he turned grey eyes to Daniel. “I found you a wife. You will marry and stay in the castle.”

“I retired from the bank and plan to stay home.” He was saving this surprise announcement, but his father robbed him of the celebration by expressing no pleasure at the news. “I’ll stay here, but I will not marry.”

“If you don’t wed the lady of my choosing, I must appoint another heir. The castle is for families, children—not single men.” Father looked back into the reflector. “Andrew will do.”

Daniel stood. “What?” He could not be earnest. Was this another lie? The stakes were too great to make that assumption, but he did not trust his father’s word.

“So bright tonight. Always steady in its course. Enchanting.” Father’s tone turned whimsical, and Daniel doubted he’d get anything further by way of serious conversation.

“After everything I sacrificed to preserve the castle, you would disinherit me?” Disinheritance it must be, for he would not involve himself with any woman, not after Miss Jensen’s betrayal, though he certainly no longer mourned it as his father implied.

No response.

Andrew Chapman, a vicar and member of Father’s lunar society, married Daniel’s sister, Emma, and was as featherbrained as they came. The silent, glacial night folded Daniel into its solitary darkness, opening a familiar chasm in his chest. Though only a few feet away, his sire may as well have been floating among the stars.

The injustice of the threat simmered. Daniel’s money ran the estate. The very battlements upon which they stood had been repaired with his funds. He sat and rested his head on the cold wall behind him, pressing his hands against the ancient rocks that supported him.

“Come! Look at this. You’ve never seen Venus so bright.”

The muscles in Daniel’s back tightened, and his jaw twitched, while his father was swallowed into the sky, oblivious or merely careless of his son. It was always thus—and the reason Daniel had avoided coming home. Talking with his father was like trying to catch a flea. As a child, he’d loved his father’s eccentric ways, but as he’d grown older, he recognized the manipulation.

“Answer my question, Father. You would disinherit me after all the money I’ve poured into the castle?” He spoke deliberately through clenched teeth, trying to temper his twisting stomach.

“In fourteen years, Venus will pass over the sun, and we will be able to calculate our distance from the sun.”

“Gah! You are impossible,” Daniel yelled into the night.

“It happens only once a century, and Venus is the key to that calculation.”

Daniel took a deep breath, but the growing coils in his gut tightened. “Talk to me!” Father remained attached to his telescope.

Why had he come home? He should have stayed in Nottingham at the bank, where his superiors valued him, and the work was straightforward, where he excelled. He missed the castle more with every breath, but no one deceived him or tried to control him at Smith’s Bank.

He left his father and sped down the spiral stairs, head spinning, fist clenched around his lantern. Before he spoke with his mother, he would need to calm down.

He stomped across the courtyard to the castle’s thick wooden front door and pressed his forehead against it. After three deep breaths, he pushed it open, scraping it across stone flooring as he stepped inside. He inhaled the cool, earthy musk of home. Almery Castle had come to his family in a roundabout way generations ago. According to family tradition, the maternal line passed the castle down from mother to daughter until there was no daughter, only a second son, Daniel’s father. His parents spoke as if Daniel would inherit it upon his father’s death, but no entailment made that a requirement. The women had taken prodigious care that the vast estate remain lucrative and undivided, even while they spent most of their time at their husbands’ homes. A row of portraits shifted in his lantern’s light. His female ancestors glared at the shabby rug and rickety tables.

“Do not fret,” Daniel told them. “I have the means to renovate, but you must haunt my father until he comes to his senses.” Father’s poor maintenance of the property showed in the tattered curtains, crumbling walls, and immense acres of land that struggled to turn a profit. When Daniel first began work at Smith’s Bank, he sent his wages home with his father’s promise to use the funds to repair cottages and invest in the land. When he discovered his father had instead donated the money to scientists investigating the rotation of the moon, Daniel began corresponding with the steward directly. He had done his best to retain value and make repairs, but powers were limited from a twenty-five-mile distance.

His boots clicked over flagstone, and he roughed his fingers against the grooves of the rock-walled entry. He felt a kinship for the decrepit, old castle that would tumble deeper into disrepair should it fall into the hands of Andrew and Emma.

Grandmother’s stare met him from her portrait as he rounded the corner. Though she did not blink or move, Daniel squirmed. Her eyes were as bright and vivacious as they’d been in life. Through still lips, she sent him a clear message. “Don’t be an idiot, Daniel. Do what you must to keep your castle.”

As a boy of maybe six or seven, she had taken him on her knee and pressed her arthritic fingers a little too tightly around his shoulders. “When I am gone, your father will take control of Almery for a time, but never forget it is yours to love and protect. It is your duty to care for it.” She captured him during his peak obsession with knights, when his play consisted of plastering paper into makeshift armor and clamoring around the towers with a wooden sword. “This castle is your future,” Grandmother had said, and his armor tightened around him, solidified into true iron fittings. With those words, she knighted him.

As he’d matured, the castle became a living, breathing entity that defined Daniel. It shared his heartbeat so that each dislodged pebble that crumbled from its majestic fa?ade cracked his soul. It whispered for him not to abandon it. Yet, he had. For ten long years, he’d worked diligently elsewhere, leaving his castle in the hands of his father, the man who foolishly invested his money and lost it all. The family had only learned of their penury when creditors lined up at the front door. It was then that Daniel left to restore the family fortunes. It was time for him to become the knight of the castle and bring back the glory it had once shown.

“There you are.” His mother sat knitting beside the fire, wearing an old linen gown. The lace that used to embellish its cuffs was missing, probably disintegrated from decades of wear. “I have said it again and again, but I’m glad you are home.” She had a childlike, enthusiastic voice.

Daniel sat beside her, soothed after staring down Grandmother. “You aren’t wearing the fabric I sent you.”

“Don’t be angry. I gave it to Emma. Since she became the vicar’s wife, she thinks everyone ogles her at church. But anyhow, I hope you are staying. For you to have been away all these years with barely a visit and only the most tedious of correspondence was an insufferable way to treat your mama.” She rested her hand on his arm.

“Someone has to look after the estate’s finances.”

“You will do it much better from here.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Your father spoke to you about our plans.”

“If by plans you mean that I am to be disinherited in favor of Emma and Andrew, then yes.”

“But did he mention he found you a bride?” She sparkled, as if telling him they’d found a trunk of gold in the cellar.

“I don’t want a bride.”

“You must let go of Miss Jensen.”

He snorted. “I haven’t thought of her in years.”

“She used you ill. Count it a blessing, my dear, for rumor has it she spends her husband’s money with the abandon of a duchess. Not the woman you want. Certainly not worthy of you. But never fear. Your father found you a match.” She giggled, then stopped short. “Oh, darling. I apologize for my hard heart. You are hurt.”

“Mother, please. It was eight years ago. I promised her I’d return in a few months, which turned into a year and then another. It is my fault she was unfaithful.” Despite knowing his culpability, his mother was not entirely wrong. Miss Jensen had wounded him, robbed him of the hope he had clung to that his future would hold warmth and family. It was a long time ago, and he rarely thought of her.

“Unfaithful! That puts it mildly. You forget that she flirted with every man in the parish and was with child on her wedding day. It is no wonder you don’t wish to marry.”

“So, to ease my heartache, you and Father found me a stranger to wed on threat of disinheritance?”

His mother beamed. “She is no stranger. Well, we have never met her, but her name is Louisa Thorpe. Your father is a friend to her father. I hear she is lovely. Her dowry is seven thousand pounds, and she has a little property somewhere.”

“I don’t care about her dowry. How could you go along with this?” He wiped her hand off his arm.

“It was my idea—and a splendid one. I want you home. We need your steady influence. I need it. I am surrounded with lunatics, which is quite literally true, for, as you know, the word is from the Latin lunaticus , madness caused by the moon.” She laughed at her own overused witticism. “Besides, you are…what shall we say? A little left-footed around women. Don’t look like that. You know as well as I that the span of an age may pass before you capture another.”

How would she know if he were awkward? The passage of ten years changed him, probably. It was hard to say since he’d spent far more of those ten years earning money than socializing. He clenched a cushion but kept himself from throwing it across the room. “I’m going out.”

“It is far too late, sweetness. Stay with me.”

Daniel walked away, turning to kick the library door closed, but it didn’t budge. He kicked it again and groaned when it remained in place. The conversation reignited that horrible time when he had learned his fiancée had married another man. The news came directly after his receipt of an amorous letter from her. The sphinx.

His mother tittered. “It hasn’t shut in ages. Rusty hinges, you know.”

Turning his back to his mother, he trudged up the stairs to his room, where he removed a bundle of letters from his still packed trunk and left the castle. It was a twenty-minute ride to the tavern. No matter. If he over imbibed, maybe he would stay all night and teach his parents a lesson. Perhaps he should let them give Almery to his sister Emma and her useless husband Andrew and watch it crumble around them. It would only be what they deserved. Therein lay the problem. They would not care. The castle was of no worth to them, neither did they value the improvements he had made, though the estate now had the potential to sustain them all for generations.

In the stable, he ran his hand over his mare’s velvet neck. “It is too bad that women are not as trustworthy as you.” He mounted and bolted into town.

A full moon led Daniel over the country road and to the tavern without incident. He tied up his horse and followed raucous noises to a door that opened before him with a whoosh of warm air, laughter, and song. A man staggered into Daniel, who offered a steadying arm.

“Can I help you home?” Daniel asked.

“Nar, I’m-a nearly there.”

Daniel watched a moment, making certain the man could walk.

“Close the door!” someone shouted.

Daniel shut himself into the dark tavern, where a fire blazed, setting aglow men of all ages and stations, who bellowed, sang, and drank. A group of men played a loud game of dice in a corner. He approached the bar, pushing himself between two men, and asked the barman for a gin, downed it in three gulps, and begged an ale. Drinking away sorrows did not suit him, but there was nowhere else to go.

He took his mug and sat in a lone chair close to the fire. He pulled the collection of letters from his pocket and eyed Miss Jensen’s looping script. His fingers caressed the satin-soft paper and stroked the edges of the letters, which had worn into decided creases. He could read them once more, but there was no need. When the relationship began, he was working at Smith’s Bank with a desperate frenzy nearly every waking moment. When not analyzing investments or meeting with clients, he was reading Miss Jensen’s letters. He had his favorites, certain lines he repeated to himself. They’d given him hope, a vision of the comfortable domestic future that awaited him once he earned enough to restore Almery. How absurd of him to have kept her letters. Once she had married, he worked even harder, though without the softening expectation of matrimony.

Behind him, a raucous group of young men sang a song about a wench with a thousand lovers. How appropriate.

Heat from the raging fire burned his legs and face, signaling it was long past time to bid farewell to his unfaithful love. His reluctant fingers pulled on a pink satin ribbon, unraveling the bow and releasing the stack of missives. He tossed a letter into the fire. It curled in on itself and fluttered to ash. He threw in another and another.

“Good evening. Mind if I sit?” A young man scraped a chair toward Daniel’s and sat before gaining permission. Daniel recognized him as one of the men who had been playing hazard. “It’s never good to drink alone, especially not when burning a lady’s letters.”

“How would you know what I’m burning?”

“What else could it be?”

Daniel shrugged, the letters tight between his fingers, somehow not wanting this man to witness the ceremony.

“How long have you known her?” The man was in his early twenties, perhaps a decade younger than Daniel, of medium build, with sparkling eyes, brown wavy hair, and pleasing manners. The kind of man who made everyone feel like his best friend.

“It is an old wound. I hardly know why I still have them.” The man waited, so Daniel continued. “I thought we had an understanding, but I mistook her intentions.” Speaking the truth aloud freed him to fling another letter into the fire.

“Such are women. I’m through with them myself. Through with this whole town and heading to Bath.”

“So far? Why not London?”

“Too big for me.”

Daniel envied his open and jovial laughter.

“I like a small town where I can know everyone. Plus, less competition.”

“I thought you were through with ladies.”

“A lie.” He winked and leaned forward. “I need a fresh supply.”

Daniel tossed letters into the fire in twos and threes, each a burden lifted. “My parents want to arrange a marriage for me.”

“And why not? Much simpler. Fewer expectations.” He leaned back and shouted to the barman, “Two mugs over here, if you please.”

“When do you leave, then?” Daniel asked.

“Tomorrow, if it suits. Why not join me?”

Wouldn’t that be nice? Run away. Before his parents strapped him to a stranger, he might take a holiday. Three letters remained in Daniel’s lap. His fingers twitched with the urge to return them to his pocket. Losing them terminated something he wanted to hold on to—not Miss Jensen, for that was long over, but to the hope that somewhere in the world a woman existed whom he could love. Love was problematic and addled the mind.

“Here I am inviting you to join me, and I’ve not introduced myself. Tobias Savage.” He extended his hand.

“Savage? We are neighbors. I’m Daniel Fletcher. The last time I saw you, you let a toad loose in church.”

He smiled. “I promise to keep any pets in my pocket when in Bath. The fine weather and abundance of women will have you forgetting those letters.”

The soft paper weighed heavy between Daniel’s fingers, and he tapped the letters on his thigh, as if they meant nothing. He would accept this Louisa Thorpe and keep the castle. Surely, she would do as well as any woman.

“In fact, I will join you,” he said.

Mr. Savage clapped him on the back. “We’d better go home to prepare. By the by, you don’t mind traveling post?”

“I have a landau and a fast pair.”

“Perfect! I invited the right man.” Mr. Savage’s grin convinced Daniel that he, too, was in luck.