1. Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

NOVEMBER, 1828, RAVENSTONE CASTLE, EAST LOTHIAN, SCOTLAND

“ M ’lord.”

Noise. Noise in his ear he didn’t want to hear. He wanted quiet. Needed the quiet.

“M’lord.”

He lifted his arm, swinging blindly at the sound. Hoping to swipe it away from the air around him.

“M’lord.”

A sudden sharp pain vibrated up his leg, and then it was gone. The instinct to lunge and choke someone flared through his veins, but he squelched it.

Ravenstone.

He was at Ravenstone.

He had to remember that. Home. Ravenstone.

“M’lord.”

Bloody hell.

Could he get no sleep in his own damn castle?

“M’lord.”

His arm flung out again, swinging through the air, a roar on his lips. “Leave me, Jensen.”

“M’lord, good, yer awake. Ye are needed.”

Thomas cracked open the thinnest sliver of his eyelids, finding Jensen’s feet next to his face on the floor. “Don’t say it like you weren’t the one that just woke me the hell up, Jensen.”

“Apologies, m’lord. But there is a matter that needs yer attention.”

The growl came instant on his lips. “What the blast could need my attention at this ungodly hour?”

“’Tis four o’clock in the afternoon, m’lord.”

“It is?” Thomas fully opened one bleary eye, then the other, searching for the window in his room. The drapes were open, not that he or anyone else ever bothered to close them. The grey light of the overcast day was already waning.

Shit. When was the last time he’d seen the sun? Three days ago? A week ago? Two weeks?

No matter. The current grey cast in the sky counted as daylight hours.

In silent response, nature sent a cold sea wind to rattle the window and a draft of cool air skittered across the floor toward him.

He looked up at Jensen, his butler, standing in his ill-fitting jacket with his hands behind his back, his weight shifting back and forth from one foot to the other.

Frightened little bugger.

He’d hired Jensen because he appeared to be the laziest butler that could also serve as his valet in a pinch—young and inexperienced and with no business running a household. Jensen’s thick highland brogue would never allow him this high of a position in a household that actually cared about appearances.

A necessary evil, Jensen was here for one reason only—to give the slightest sheen of a properly running household, when they both knew that Ravenstone Castle was the farthest thing from a properly running household.

Jensen was perfect for the job. Exactly what Thomas needed—someone more inept than himself. It kept the judgement to a minimum.

Not that there was that much for a butler to run at Ravenstone. He’d pared down the staff to just Jensen, one maid that came in every other week to clean, a new driver that he couldn’t remember the name of, and the cook, Mrs. Havergrove. She’d been cook here at Ravenstone since before he was born, and she did enough judging for the entire household. He’d considered getting rid of her as well, but he’d kept her on because she was old and ornery, and could barely shuffle around the kitchen anymore and would never find another job. Even with her slow pace, she could make soup and could still roast any meat the gamekeeper brought in. That was enough. And she rarely left the kitchens or her room adjacent to them in the servant’s quarters.

Which left Thomas blissfully alone. Jensen rarely approached him, and when he did so, he was usually stuttering, his hands shaking as though Thomas was going to take one of his great-grandfather’s axes from the wall and lop his butler’s head off.

Better to have the man fear him.

Jensen left him alone. He left Jensen alone.

So why in the hell was Jensen kicking at his leg, waking him the hell up?

This had better be a life-or-death matter. He crooked a wicked glare at the butler.

“Ye have a visitor, m’lord.”

That got Thomas’s attention. He pinned his one eye that wasn’t blurry on Jensen. “Visitor?”

Jensen nodded. “Aye. One I don’t know what to do with. They have been waiting for five hours now.”

“They? You said one visitor. Now it’s more than one?”

“’Tis one, m’lord.” Jensen shifted nervously. “The other is, well, I don’t ken how to describe it.”

“It? Is it not a person?”

Jensen took a step back toward the door. “If ye could just see yerself to the main drawing room, I’m sure all of this can be sorted. If not, I can see the visitor to one of yer guest rooms for the night, if ye would like to wait.”

Thomas heaved a sigh. The last thing he wanted was a visitor here at Ravenstone.

The list of things that were the last thing he wanted was ever growing.

He glanced about his bedroom chamber. A mess of clothes rumpled on the floor. A bed he hadn’t bothered to sleep in for more than a year. Empty bottles of the finest Scottish whisky he hadn’t yet set out into the hallway for the maid, as he never allowed the woman into his chambers.

Everything around him the same today as it was yesterday. Just as he needed it.

But he may as well start moving about.

The whisky in his blood had waned enough that the screams haunting his dreams were making an appearance, and he never slept very long after the nightmares started.

He looked up at Jensen, noting his butler’s jittery hand already clutched the doorknob. “I will be down shortly.”

Jensen nodded. “There are two clean shirts the maid brought a week ago in the wardrobe.”

A clean shirt. Jensen must be trying to tell him something.

Thomas flicked his hand in the air, dismissing his man.

He’d wear a dirty shirt just to spite whoever had dared to enter his drawing room and expected him to show up as the earl he was.

His stench alone ought to get rid of them fast enough.