Chapter One
The interior of the cottage was clean and neat, everything tidy and in its place. That had far more to do with the village woman who cleaned for him than with any proclivities toward tidiness himself. It wasn’t that he was slovenly really, but a shirt or waistcoat tossed over the back of the chair and a news sheet spread across the table was hardly the end of the world. Still, it was nice to come home to a pot of stew simmering on the hearth and a bed that had been freshly made, even if it was unlikely he could make it to that bed in his current exhausted state.
Nicholas Warner settled deeper into the wing chair that faced the fireplace and rested his stockinged feet on the small, tufted ottoman that had magically appeared in his abode. It seemed that every day some new item of crockery, furniture or, heaven help him, a barnyard animal, manifested there. It was the way of being a country doctor. People rarely paid with actual coin but instead paid with the things he might have bought for himself had they done so. Of course, there was one particularly foul-tempered goat that he’d not have purchased for love or money. That beast had been deposited on his doorstep out of nothing more than spite. He wound up spending coin he didn’t have himself to pay for one of the neighboring farmer’s children to care for those animals.
It was almost as an afterthought that he retrieved the letter from the pocket of his discarded coat. It had been delivered to him earlier in the day but he had not yet had time to look at it. The seal on the back, pressed into ominously dark red wax, was ornate, heavy and painfully familiar.
Breaking the wax, he scanned the contents.
Doctor Nicholas Warner,
It is with my deepest regret that I must inform you of the death of our father, Edward Garrett, Lord Ambrose. The late Lord Ambrose suffered from a malady likely attributed to the many years of excess which he enjoyed.
Syphilis. Pox. A diseased liver likely from drinking so heavily for decades. Whatever it was, Nicholas tried to conjure some emotional response that was appropriate to hearing that his father had died, but he failed miserably. He hardly knew the man after all. Lord Ambrose had paid for his education and had purchased his commission in the Royal Navy, but all of that had been accomplished without the two of them ever occupying the same room together. The man had been nothing to him but a generous stranger. Rather than focus on that disturbing and shockingly morose thought, Nicholas returned his attention to the letter.
Despite his haphazard parenting, our late father has bequeathed a generous settlement to you in his last will and testament. When it is convenient for you to do so, please come to London. You will be welcome at the family’s townhome, though family may be a slight exaggeration as I alone remain to carry on the family name. Again, as one orphan to another, I bid you welcome.
Sincerely,
Your heretofore unknown brother,
Cornelius Garrett, Lord Ambrose
Nicholas read the missive again. It was the only time in the entirety of his life that any member of his father’s family had reached out to him. He didn’t know his mother’s family. Whatever actress, dancer, demirep or unfortunate housemaid had given birth to him, he’d been deposited with a family on one of Lord Ambrose’s estates and then, when old enough, plucked from that home and put into a school. There had been no interaction, no indication that anyone with whom he shared a blood connection would ever seek him out. Any childhood fantasies or foolish wishes to the contrary, he’d come to accept that he was merely an obligation to be discharged. But he supposed he should have some gratitude for that. He had the means to support himself and was viewed as a gentleman by most, when many of his ilk had been forgotten entirely, left to their own devices and whatever fate a cruel world held in store for them.
The note, while somewhat brief and abrupt, had been strangely welcoming nonetheless. But he was undecided on whether or not he should go. It seemed that establishing connections with them this late in his life might be nothing more than opening wounds unnecessarily. He had survived quite well for his thirty odd years without any interaction with them. It was an avenue fraught with potentially negative consequences. Regardless, he was too tired to decide.
Perhaps it was the heat of the fire, or the comfort of his favorite chair after a long day of tending to sick children and then a difficult birth, but he dozed there. His eyes drifted shut. He sank deeper into the chair and dreamed of a dark-haired woman. Her face was hidden. He saw nothing of her but the cascade of her dark hair and the lush curves of her body as he trailed behind her. In spite of the lack of contact between them, the dream was still intensely carnal. His ephemeral light o’ love wore nothing but a diaphanous gown that draped elegantly over her figure and served more to highlight than to conceal the exaggerated curve of her hips, the narrow indentation of her waist, the heart-shaped bottom that stirred his blood and roused his body.
In his dream, she paused and waited, letting him draw close enough to see the fine, silken texture of the dark waves that cascaded over her shoulders and the velvety texture of her skin. As he reached for her, his hand brushing the satiny skin of her shoulder, a sharp tapping sound jolted him from the pleasantness of his dream. Sitting bolt upright in his chair, Nicholas shook his head and tried to make sense of where he was and what he’d heard. It was rare that he slept deeply enough to dream. Even more rare that a dream was so tantalizingly real to him. Still trying to ground himself to the here and now, and to identify the source of noise that awakened him, Nicholas tried to focus his sleep-fogged mind. Before he could do either, the door burst open to reveal none other than Graham, Lord Blakemore himself.
“You’re needed,” he snapped.
“Lady Agatha or Lady Beatrice?” he asked, instantly awake and alert, the dream forgotten in the face of a potential crisis. He referred respectively to Graham’s mother who had overcome a long illness as well as an addiction to laudanum and Graham’s new bride who was expecting their first child. Both women were his patients. But he had also come to view both of them as friends if not family.
“Neither. It’s a shipwreck on the rocks below… I doubt there will be any survivors. You’ll be more a pair of strong hands than a doctor on this occasion,” Graham answered. The grimness of his expression told the truth of the situation far more than his sparse words.
Nicholas was already dragging his boots on. Shipwrecks were bad enough. But in the bitter cold of an early spring on the North Sea, the likelihood of survival was even slimmer. He didn’t bother to don his coat as he’d only have to remove it once he arrived at the shore. They’d all be wading out into the waters to retrieve the bodies of those lost to the capricious whims of nature. Fewer layers to trap the damp cold against their skin and less weight while trudging through the water would be to their benefit.
Outside the small cottage, Graham was already mounting his own horse with another one waiting beside him for Nicholas.
“Do we know the kind of ship? Smugglers?” Nicholas asked as he hoisted himself onto the back of the borrowed mount. The man had uncanny foresight as it would have taken much longer if he’d been forced to saddle his own.
“If they are, they’re not local. But I don’t think so. There was nothing furtive about their movements,” Graham answered. “I saw them earlier in the day heading south, flags and sails flying high, bright in the sun. The storm came up quickly and blew them back here.”
Nicholas didn’t ask how he knew it was the same ship. There were few enough that passed within viewing distance of their little spit of a coastline to imagine it could be anything else. He also didn’t speak because he needed all his wits about him to navigate the steep path down to the beach. He might have trusted the horse more if he’d been born to the saddle. But like Lord Blakemore, he’d spent more time aboard ships than on horseback. He was an adequate horseman, but lacked the love for it many Englishmen possessed.
Sweat had beaded on his skin, despite the cold, by the time they reached the rocky beach. It could only be laid partially at the door of exertion. There was a strange rush of energy that came with facing such situations and it brought a visceral response—heart racing, sweating, muscles tensed and ready. It was a terrible thing to feel such excitement in the face of tragedy. But while it might have marked him heartless to some, it was that which allowed him to be good at his chosen profession. He’d learned to appreciate it during his days in the navy and later serving on less than respectable ships in the Caribbean as they prepped for battle or harsh weather. This was no different.
Villagers had already arrived, many of them fishermen in their small boats. It wasn’t simply to help those poor souls that might be suffering or have already perished. Shipwrecks were an opportunity for riches and rewards that rarely came to those folks. Mercenary it might have been, but he didn’t lay blame. In the course of his work, he’d seen the poverty of their homes. If they could scavenge something to use or sell, in his mind, they were welcome to it.
An older man was dipping torches into a barrel of oil and setting them alight, giving one to each man in queue. When he saw Nicholas, he waved the others aside and extended a torch in his direction. “They’ve found a few survivors, Dr. Warner. They’re down the beach a ways though. Most of the poor souls will be needin’ an undertaker more than a physician!”
Nicholas said nothing, simply accepted the torch and headed off in the direction indicated. Many of those that survived the wreck were quickly succumbing to the cold or to injuries sustained as the ship broke apart beneath them. On the beach, chaos reigned supreme. Survivors and casualties alike were pulled from the water and laid out upon the sand. He worked through the night, ignoring the cold, ignoring the ache in his bones and the pounding in his head as he helped those he could and closed the unseeing eyes of those for whom he was too late. In many ways, he had transcended the limits of his own body, no longer feeling the exhaustion or the cold. His focus was such that he could ignore his own discomfort in those moments.
Others had ceased looking for survivors at all and were simply bent on scavenging what could be saved from the debris of the ship and its doomed cargo. As dawn broke, a skirmish erupted between two men over a small cask of brandy. As they struggled, grappling with one another for possession of the item, they tripped, collapsing onto the broken body of one of those unfortunate souls whose life had been claimed by the rushing waters of the sea.
Furious, Nicholas rose. “You worthless, grasping bastards! Fighting over a cask of second rate brandy atop the corpses of the men who died trying to bring it to shore! Have you no shame?”
“This ain’t no second rate brandy!” one of the men protested, still grumbling and attempting to elbow his competition in the ribs to wrest control of the contraband.
Nicholas was no longer paying attention to them. His eyes had been drawn to something beyond the beach, bouncing in the rough waves. A flash of red and then it was gone. He strained to see it again as the tide ebbed and flowed. Another wave crested and there it was again. A woman in a red gown. “Get a rope,” he growled.
“It ain’t worth hanging us over!” the other man said in defiance.
“Look out there, you fool! Do you not see her?” Nicholas demanded.
Dutifully, if the two miscreants could ever be described as such, they stared at the crashing waves for a second until the flash of red appeared again. “Likely just a bolt of cloth, Doctor. Ain’t no use in drowning yerself, too!”
“Get a rope for me to tie about my waist while I make my way to her,” he barked. “Even if it’s too late to save her, I’ll not leave her out there to be preyed upon by the fish.”
“Aye, Doctor,” the first man said. “You can have the brandy, you old sot,” he added to his companion and headed off in search of rope.
The other man eyed the cask with delight. “It’s a fine brother I have, Doctor. A fine one! Every time I have a sip of me brandy, I’ll be drinking to him for giving up his claim to it!”
Nicholas was still shaking his head when the drunkard’s brother returned with a length of rope. “It ain’t long enough. We’ll need men to make up the distance… I’d ask me brother, but he’ll likely not put down his barrel of brandy.”
“He will, or he’ll die for it,” Nicholas said with conviction even as he hastily tied the heavy rope about his waist, looping it in a way that it was unlikely to come loose even in the rough waves. When that was done, he removed his boots and waded into the water. The cold of it took his breath and made his muscles cramp. Forcing himself to relax, to ease into the water and not fight the sensations, he slowly made his way past the breaking waves to the figure that bobbed just out of reach.
Every wave rocked him back, the force of the water lifting him off his feet. Still, he pressed on. The nearer he got, the more certain he was that it was not simply a bolt of cloth. He could see the dark fall of her hair and the pale oval of her face. Blue with either death or cold, he had no notion of whether he was rescuing a woman or retrieving a body. He only knew that he was determined to get to her, to bring her back to shore and do what needed to be done, regardless of her state.
He was chest deep in the water, frigid and hurting from it, when at last he could lay hands on the lid of the crate she floated upon. She was still and unmoving, her lovely face almost certainly a death mask. With one hand hauling her makeshift raft, he struggled to swim back to the beach. Had it not been for the men gathered there towing the line tied about his waist, he would likely have drowned with her.
It seemed to take ages. Each inch gained was a hard fought and won battle. Slowly, the beach seemed to be growing nearer, the distance shrinking until, at last, his feet touched in the shallower waters. But it was no less treacherous there. The waves knocked into him forcefully and he struggled to hold himself upright, to keep a firm grasp on the woman he’d retrieved from the sea.
By the time he reached the sand, he was gasping for breath, every muscle taut and nearly to a snapping point from the bitter cold. As he laid there, sand crusting his skin and soaked clothing, he noted how unnaturally quiet the men around him had become. Not a word was spoken on that stretch of beach. Each and every one of them had gathered around those broken boards and the woman who rested upon them, staring down at her not just with sadness at her passing but with what he instantly perceived to be recognition.
“Do you know her then?” he asked the man who’d held so fiercely to his brandy.
“Aye, Doctor. She’s a dead woman.”
“I understand that… but do you know her name?” Nicholas asked, wanting alternately to laugh and strangle the sot.
It was his brother who answered the question then, turning back to Nicholas with wide eyes and a pale face as if he’d seen a ghost. “What he means, Doctor, is that this woman has been dead for nigh on two years. Lady Ramsleigh, she be… and there’s a marker in the boneyard for her in the Ramsleigh plot in the churchyard. I know, cause it were I that dug the grave and set the stone!”
Just then, the dead woman opened her mouth and gasped for air. The gathered men scattered like crows, almost as if the dead had truly risen.