Prologue
In the forest surrounding Harbury Hall’s elegant grounds. It is late afternoon in January and the snow blanketing everything is touched with fire from the setting sun…
They were just a simple country couple, young Matthew Doran and his sweetheart, Jane Sanger. It was the perfect evening for them, too, since Matthew had something very special tucked away in a pocket beneath his greatcoat, and he steered his warmly-dressed love down a particular path to a small glade he knew would catch the last rays of the sun and become magic.
Indeed, it did.
Jane caught her breath. “Matthew. ‘Tis so beautiful.” She dropped his arm and spun around, entranced by the soft brilliance of the blushing snow.
“Nay, lass.” He laughed and caught her arm. “There’s something here more beautiful, I’m thinking.”
She smiled as he lifted his hand and brushed her cheek gently. “You’re a flatterer, Mr. Doran.”
He shook his head slowly and let his hand cup her chin, drawing her nearer for a quick kiss, mingling the clouds of their breaths in the cold air. “I tell naught but the truth. And I have something to ask you, Jane. Something serious.”
She blinked and her cloak rose and fell with the deep breath she sucked in past winter-chilled lips. “Oh Matthew.” Soft vapor touched her mouth as her words emerged into the winter chill.
He fell to one knee and she gasped with excitement.
Then she screamed, and Matthew almost lost his balance as he pushed back to his feet and spun around to see what had frightened her.
He damn near screamed himself.
It was a man, naked as a newborn babe and just as bloody. He stood still, leaning against a white birch that was already dappled with the red liquid pouring from his head.
Matthew could see no injury to his body, no fountain of brilliant life pumping out. It all came from above his shoulders and had coated him in a curtain of rich droplets, some of which seemed to be freezing as the temperature around them continued to fall.
Jane moaned pitifully and it was all Matthew could do to stop from losing his tea and biscuits as he stared at the terrible apparition.
There were no eyes, just gaping bloody holes. He had ears, but they were also erupting with a steady flow of his life’s fluid, steaming a little where it met the cold air.
His face was stained with the stuff, his hands twitching at his sides and what was so very frightening – his mouth moved but no sound emerged. It was as if he could sense their presence but could not speak to them.
The horror that once had been a man held them in thrall for long seconds before Jane choked and stumbled backward, disappearing behind a bush. Matthew was vaguely aware of the sound of her vomiting.
His gut churned, his heart thudded and—fighting the urge to find his own bush—he took a step toward the bloody man. He’d recognized him and knew he was no threat.
But it was too late.
The figure crumpled, silent, limbs sprawling loosely and the body going down face first into the pristine snow. Red stains spattered the white, a terrible contrast in the last rays of the sun.
Matthew gulped and held out a hand as he heard Jane’s boots on snow to his left. “Don’t look, love. Don’t look. Run back to the cottage and have someone summon the authorities.”
“Are you going to stay here, Matthew? You can’t…” She sounded hoarse and frantic.
“I can’t leave him. There’ll be animals out as soon as the light fades. Once they scent him, they’ll tear his body to shreds. He’s gone, Jane. We need to let someone know of this. ‘Tis not right.” Determined now, Matthew turned to her. “’Tis Finlay McCardle.”
“Oh no.”
“I’m pretty sure, yes. So I won’t leave him. Go quick, love. Run as fast as you can. I don’t want to be here too long.”
“I will. I’ll be back before you know it.” She tore off through the snow, her footsteps loud and crunching, breaking the silence, only fading when she was quite some way away.
He knew it wouldn’t be long. There were workers at the cottage, lads who’d cleared the road and had stopped for a quick drop of Jane’s mum’s elderberry wine. They had a cart with them, the one that pulled the log over the snow and rolled a smooth path for horses and wagons.
He tried to stop his hands from shaking and stuck them into his pockets. Walking loudly around to let predators know there was no meal here, Matthew felt the ring he’d been about to give Jane. Best leave that matter for now. He didn’t feel up to it and he doubted she’d be in the right mood to say yes.
His eyes returned to what was left of Finlay McCardle. And the truly gruesome sight of the back of his head.
It wasn’t there.
Instead there was a hole, a large hole, from which blood oozed slowly now. Matthew could see pale things within, bits and pieces of them. They seemed like marbles or gravel, which had to be wrong. The head was solid, wasn’t it?
He didn’t know.
All he did know was that the hole in the back of Finlay McCardle’s head was as clean and as round as a guinea coin and bigger than a cricket ball. No accident he could think of would make a wound like that.
Nor would it take out his eyes at the same time.
Matthew shivered at the implications. This poor helpless man who had only been in the area for a few months was dead.
Naked, bloody and dead.
How the hell had he gotten there? What had happened to him?
Curiosity overcame his anxieties and he sidestepped his way around the corpse as it chilled in its gently bitter grave of snow.
He squinted into the growing darkness and found what he sought… footprints. A blood-spattered trail of human footprints, red stains marking the direction from which Finlay had apparently managed to stagger, naked, blind, dying and missing half his head.
Matthew stared at the marks in the snow and then followed the direction with his eyes, looking past the snow-covered treetops to where lights shone like faint blurry stars.
He knew what he was looking at. And he shivered even more.
It was Harbury Hall.