Chapter 1

Chapter 1

August 1815, Two Roads Inn, in the countryside of Northumberland...

“Thomas, wait! Where the devil do you expect me to—Ow!”

Eileen cut herself off with a gasp. Her cousin had just slammed her wooden traveling trunk down on the edge of her foot, rolling his eyes at the sounds of her protestations. With an unladylike grunt, she balled her fists and kicked the trunk out of her path. She rushed toward Thomas, grabbing him by the arm before he could duck back into his gleaming black carriage.

“Think on this a moment,” Eileen said, putting on her best performance. The weaker she appeared, the more likely her cousin was to take pity on her. With round eyes and a little pout, she gave a shudder. “What will the gentlemen of Newcastle say when they learn that you have so callously cast me out? Oh, the misery that will befall us all! Thomas Gratwell, the master of Cally Grange, leaving his own flesh and blood on the roadside like a rotting pheasant carcass!”

“You will unhand me,” he commanded, ripping his wiry arm out of her grasp. Thomas was implacable. His face, weathered with age, contorted into a snarl of disgust. “The gentlemen of Newcastle...? Why, I suspect they will say what I have thought to be true for weeks…I should have turned you away the moment you landed on my doorstep. Aye, I will satisfy myself with getting rid of you on this day.”

The Gratwell driver stood up, watching the commotion from his perch. Eileen cast him a black look, warning him to stay out of things. The carriage door was cold against her hand as she grabbed it, stopping it before Thomas was shut inside.

“You have a duty to me,” Eileen argued through the gap, pressing her face inside the carriage. If he slammed the door shut and beheaded her, so be it. “We may not share the same name...Gratwell, Walton...but what does that matter? You were my father’s only cousin. By law, it falls to you to become my guardian.”

“Ha! By neither law nor principle do I owe you anything.” He scoffed, shoving Eileen back and taking the door for himself. “Oh, but the apple never falls far from the tree, does it? You are as dim-witted as your father was and twice as irksome. If Roger had had any sense in that thick skull of his before he put a bullet through it, he would have written up some sort of contract for you. As things stand, he did not. Any duty that you feel binds us is the product of your own imagination, dear girl. There are Walton relatives far and wide. I say, you better busy yourself with looking for them.”

Eileen stepped back in exasperation, shaking her head. She had long known that Thomas Gratwell was a miser and a bore, but she hadn’t thought that he was a monster, too. Fast approaching seventy, he had received a new lease on life with the acquisition of his cousin’s title. The former Baron Langsend, Eileen’s father, would have turned in his grave to see what Thomas had done with it.

If he even cares to look down on us , Eileen thought, watching as the groom spurred the horses into a trot. In those last months, Father didn’t care about anything. Not even me.

Her reflection flashed in front of her as the carriage took off down the road. The green eyes of her mother, the dark hair and aquiline nose from her father...Her image was dark and warped as the vehicle drove away.

Drawing in a fortifying breath, Eileen stared out at the road ahead of her. She barely had time to take in her surroundings before Thomas had booted her out of the carriage onto the roadside. They were deep in the countryside of Northumberland, around twenty miles from Newcastle, by her estimation. On one side of the thoroughfare, there was thick, unending woodland. On the other, a little way down the road behind her was a small tumbledown inn.

A few patrons stood outside, whispering to each other beside the adjoining mews now that the commotion was over. Eileen sucked in her cheeks and dusted off her traveling coat.

Another woman might have thrown herself down on the ground and bawled her eyes out—would have had good reason to—but Eileen hadn’t shed a tear since her father’s funeral. She heaved her trunk off the ground, refusing to look back, and with nowhere else to go, she proceeded toward the little inn.

It was a far cry from Cally Grange, and an even further cry from Langsend House, where she had once lived happily with her mother and father. The building was two stories high, white stucco peeling off the outside and revealing the beige stonework beneath. Fall was just around the corner, turning some of the green ivy to burgundy as it crawled up to the thatched roof.

Two small, crooked windows looked down on Eileen like a pair of old peepers. Three sets of real eyes watched her approach too, belonging to the travelers crowded around a stagecoach, while the presumed driver changed his horses. Every one of them looked like a letch.

When the shortest of them stepped forward, parting his mouth to say something to Eileen, she picked up her pace and burst through the inn’s front door, slamming it shut by accident.

“They’ll be none of that under my roof,” came a warning voice from in front of her. “Make sure that door’s shut and come over here.”

Eileen froze, adjusting her eyes to the dim light inside the entryway. The room was barely five feet wide and was maybe three times as long, with a recessed receiving area at the other end. Two archways stood on opposite sides of the hall, with a winding staircase leading upstairs behind one. The other stepped down into a room Eileen couldn’t see.

Blinking hard, Eileen approached the counter and braced herself for a dressing-down. Her arm ached with the effort of lugging her traveling trunk around. The woman stood on the opposite side of the counter barely looked up, scribbling in a leather-bound ledger with a quill that had seen better days.

A pair of bronze reading spectacles were perched on the end of her long nose. Behind the lenses were large brown eyes, which Eileen only noticed when the innkeeper finally condescended to look up at her.

“Forgive me for the disruption,” Eileen said when the innkeeper remained quiet, splaying her fingers on the counter. “It has been,” she said with a sigh, “a series of trying days. Perchance...could you tell me the name of this inn and whereabouts we are?”

The innkeeper raised an auburn brow, dancing the wrinkles on her forehead. She removed her spectacles and held them in midair, wafting the smoke rising from the candle on her desk.

“You must have missed the sign outside,” she replied. Her northern drawl made Eileen suddenly conscious of her accent, marking her as one of the ton . At least her dirty garments cast some doubt on her identity. “This here is Two Roads Inn, a mile out of Prudhoe...” She narrowed her eyes, looking Eileen up and down. “Where did you say you were from?”

“I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t say much of anything at all.” Eileen laughed nervously, trying to force a new accent, and failing miserably. It was probably easier to lie. “My family is from London.” Well, a half-lie. “I traveled up to Newcastle for...”

For what ? Eileen started, realizing for the first time just how alone she was. Announcing herself as the daughter of an aristocrat, even a dead and disgraced one like her father, was bound to attract the wrong sort of attention. She remembered the leering travelers outside.

Who was to say they wouldn’t try to rob her blind once they learned who she was? Or worse, attempt an abduction and try their luck with a ransom?

Fat chance that will get them far , Eileen thought, biting on her lower lip. Father entailed nothing but debt to me when he died, and the only thing of any value in this trunk is the one remaining jade necklace from my mother’s stash.

She wiped her brow with her sleeve, thinking hard. If there were Walton relatives still alive, they would likely be down in Kent, where her father was born. Thomas was the only relative of her father’s Eileen had ever met, and she had burned the last pittance of her father’s money on the journey up to Cally Grange. Roger Walton was the only son of an only son—and both his father and grandfather had died young. A solicitor would need to be called upon to sniff out any distant relations.

Alternatively, Eileen thought, she could try her luck soliciting her father’s former estate managers for leads. They had all fled as soon as Langsend House had been sold by Thomas to pay off the bulk of her father’s debts, since no one wanted to be connected to the Walton family after the baron’s death.

Again, that option necessitated a long and costly trip to London. Her mother’s family, the Du Bellays, were all still in Normandy. Trust her father to have imported a wife from France...

There was no one left Eileen could turn to, at least no one within her reach. To start anywhere, she needed money. Marrying a rich gentleman could work, but with no dowry to her name and no chaperones for the London Season, it was impossible for her to land one. She felt for her near-empty coin purse, hanging limply in the pockets of her skirt.

There was one recourse left to her, a temporary solution, but she didn’t like the idea of it one bit.

“So, what will it be?” the innkeeper took up again. By that point, she had returned to her ledger. “Two shillings a night for a room, and that includes a meal.” She glanced up, and her face flickered with concern. “Unless there’s something else I can do you for?”

“I...” Eileen swallowed her pride, letting her fist fall back onto the counter. “I don’t suppose you’re looking to hire anyone? I can cook...and clean...” And lie through her teeth, apparently. “Please, all I need is a little work to get me by. I’ll be out of your hair before you know it, once I’ve made enough money to move along.”

The innkeeper didn’t look convinced by her pleading smile. She gestured lamely towards the room on Eileen’s right. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be a dining hall furnished with three similarly long tables and benches on either side. The flagstone floors were pristine, and Eileen doubted it was thanks to diligent housekeeping. The room was completely empty, not a single patron in sight, even though it was quickly approaching lunchtime.

“We have all the hands we need and more,” the innkeeper replied, tilting her head in consolation. She seemed genuinely upset that she couldn’t help Eileen, proving to her once and for all that she definitely wasn’t in London anymore. Charity had fallen out of fashion with the ton years ago. “But I’ll put in a word for you down in Prudhoe tonight. Failing that, you can walk into one of the other nearby villages tomorrow. Corbridge and Hexham are not so far. More than manageable for a sprightly young lass like you.” She leaned in closer and dropped her voice. “And if you still need that room, I can make it one shilling a night until you’re settled. All I need from you is your name.”

“My name...?” Eileen thought back to Langsend House. She doubted her mother’s old lady’s maid would mind if she borrowed her name for a while. “Constance Knowles. Well, let’s just go with Connie.”

“A canny good name.” The innkeeper smiled. “You can call me Bridget. Now...” She closed her ledger. “Let’s get you sorted with that bed, Connie.”

Eileen was at a loss for words, both devastated by the lack of vacancies at Two Roads Inn and touched by Bridget’s kindness. A cheap room would just have to do for now.

Nodding, she unbuttoned her traveling coat and reached into her pockets. The front door creaked open behind her, sunlight beating against her back. Defeated, Eileen didn’t bother turning around, placing one of her remaining seven shillings on the counter between her and the innkeeper.

When her father had revealed the extent of his debts to her, all those months ago, she had wanted to believe that was the end of their misery. He had hit rock bottom after the death of her mother two years prior, and then the rest was history. Surely, Eileen had thought, he could not have sunk any deeper, not when she still needed him.

At twenty years old, she had only enjoyed one full Season in London to try and make something of herself before her father had taken an heirloom flintlock out of the gunroom and locked himself in his study, never to be seen alive again.

Since then, Eileen had been proven wrong time and time again. There was no rock bottom. Not for anyone. There was bad, and then there was worse.

“All right. Let’s get me sorted,” Eileen repeated, mainly to herself. She uncovered the shilling slowly, taking a step back so that she couldn’t change her mind. “Thank you. But please, if you hear of any offers at all, let me know as soon as you can. I’ll take anything, like I said.”

She leaned down to pick up her trunk, pausing halfway when a low, rich voice rang out from behind her.

“If it’s work you’re looking for,” the stranger said, “I might have something of interest to you...”